I want the goblin battle to feel different than other battles. Right now, they don't feel much different than the gnolls or the folks raiding the tomb near the beginning. The thing about goblins is that they are individually pretty weak, but they have numbers. So make them very weak - give them low HP so you can one-shot them and give them plinky little damage, but have there be a ton of them. Give the elite goblins better armor and weapons if you want, but the goblins should have a fighting style that feels different from fighting anything else - in this case, they should swarm and overwhelm and it's no big deal if you take out a couple of them right away because there are tons of them.
This encourages the player to go for different tactics than in e.g. an ogre/minotaur fight. You want attacks that impact lots of enemies at once. Encourage players to explore all of the tools, not just find one that works and flog it.
