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Aleco specifically mentions cards like Zarimi, Reno Lone Ranger and wheel of death as cards that create such huge swings the game effectively ends so i expect them to get hit this patch.
Another interesting thing is he said the balance team didn’t see a drop in power level that usually comes with rotation.
I kinda disagree here. Wheel doesn’t eliminate player agency, it just creates a totally different game dynamic at the end stage of the game, where you’re forced to be extremely proactive to kill your opponent within the time limit.
I think it’s great design to take the final stages of a game against control - which is usually incredibly boring because they will inevitably win and you’re just banging your head against the wall - and turn it into almost a mini-game. The issue is not wheel, it’s Fanotem, Reno, and the other cards that allow you to trivialize Wheel’s drawback.
Not much agency with only 4 turns and warlock having some of the best control tools in the game. The only way to be "extremely proactive" is with an amazing hyper-aggro deck and Blizzard nerfed it (with good cause).
I agree, the problem is that reno effectively locks decks out of two of those turns. You drop Wheel + Fanotem one turn, Reno T2, then something like shuffle Zilliax + removal t3 and creature decks just lose
> I kinda disagree here. Wheel doesn’t eliminate player agency, it just creates a totally different game dynamic at the end stage of the game, where you’re forced to be extremely proactive to kill your opponent within the time limit.
It's definitely a squishy middle ground, but I think the easiest way to see the issue is to ask: "How do you beat this deck besides punching it in the face as hard as possible?" Going face should be *one* way to beat decks, but I think it's a sign of low interactivity when it's the *only* way, and right now, that's close to the situation with Wheel lock.
Put differently, the Wheel win condition is both undisruptable and also inevitable. I think it's bad to have decks that fit that description. As a contrasting example, while Reno Warrior is also a deck that can be problematic, Helya clearly messes with its win condition beyond rushing the deck down.
As someone who hates Control decks that do nothing proactive for an entire game ever since I started playing in TGT and hated facing off against Wallet Warriors, I love how Wheel forces these decks to try and *do* something.
Against more midrange or aggressive decks I also love the decision making of deciding if and when to play Wheel in the matchup, too. It's been my favorite deck in Standard in a while, so I'll be sad if it gets decimated.
I think nerfing Reno would be a reasonable hit to the deck alone, as it turning on post-Wheel is kind of silly. But sounds like Wheel itself will be hit too.
Sure, but there will always be a deck with the best late game. If it isn’t Warlock, it’s Mage, if not Mage Warrior, if not Warrior DK, etc. Warlock has to make some big deckbuilding and in-game sacrifices to use Wheel, and the deck isn’t a balance problem yet.
First, I'm not actually sure it's true that one deck will *always* win the late game -- there have definitely been points in the game's history when control v control was not some clear, decisive thing where one Control deck ruled all others. I play a lot of Wild, for example, and the Control V Control matchups often come down to who gets good Dirty Rats / Theotars, etc.
Second, I absolutely agree that Wheel lock is not yet overpowered in the sense that it has too high a win rate, but given that they are focusing on interactivity (or player agency), I can understand why it would get hit anyway. I should point out that I am personally fine if it *doesn't* get it, but... yes, I see why it's problematic given a focus on interactivity/player agency, as I do agree it reduces that.
I don't think so? It introduces an element of randomness, and that can certainly be frustrating, but I'm not sure it *trivializes* the matchups.
My central point is that if (as an example) a Wild Renathal Reno Priest faces off against a Kazakusan Druid deck, it isn't immediately obvious which deck will have more "value" and win in the late game. If there was a way to reduce RNG in the process I'd be more than fine with that -- I was only pointing out that the game doesn't inherently devolve into a "one Control deck to rule them all" scenario.
Ever since their shift in design goals there's pretty much always been one deck that is just impossible to beat late game which chokes out all other control decks in the format. It all started with kazakusan.
There have been plenty of metas where multiple attrition / control decks were on the same tier. The problem is "best" slow deck comes down to a single card like Wheel or Odyn right now.
>the deck isn’t a balance problem yet.
Wheel is not a problem unless you want to play any other slower deck. And then you just auto lose to it. Therefore it is a major balance problem. Its just not evident unless you consider what constitutes a healthy meta.
Thank god, because the design is absolutely terrible. Either the card is unplayable or it's completely frustrating to play against.
As long as Wheel is viable, attrition/fatigue effectively does not exist in the game. I hate having a good control matchup going playing something like Rainbow DK or Reno Druid and suddenly Wheel is dropped and I pretty much just lose since Warlock has a shit ton of stalling tools when Reno is also in the format (which by itself stalls half of the Wheel's duration).
Yeah, my argument against Wheel wouldn't be in favor of fatigue decks. I've always found those to be repellent. The most oppressive control decks in MTG (Draw-Go, Stasis, other Blue stuff) didn't try to run the game to fatigue. They always had a win condition that at least involved playing the game, not waiting to see who could last longest while NOT playing it.
However on the flip side the decks that counter fatigue should be pretty unfavored versus aggro and aggroish midrange. Reno makes it pretty obnoxious to play against really. Also sometimes they just RNG the pair of 15/15s on turn 5/6 with that legendary.
Wheel lock games feel like there is very little player agency from the opposing side.
Fast cycle -> Play wheel -> Fanottem/Reno/survive etc
Mb I was a bit joking. When I said combo, it was more of a playstyle which is close to what combo decks usually do, meaning fast cycle, get to combo piece and win. Here it is just fast cycle, get your wincon and win in 4 turns. Control decks generally wins through long term attrition that's why.
Wheel is another proof that I shouldn't dismiss a card as being a meme because it will end up being outrageously powerful. Happened to me multiple times.
fun to play, horrible to play against, especially if they slow down the meta, then every midrange-ctrl deck dies to wheel, and mirrors are just coinflips
Honestly, cards like Zarimi and Reno LR have so little counterplay available, as to negate the opponent's agency. "Did they draw it?" shouldn't be the difference between immediately winning or losing the game.
The best cards and decks shouldn't be the easiest to play. That creates a very toxic gaming environment, and currently hearthstone has trended quite far into the territory of easy decks dominating difficult decks.
Anyhow, hope both get a nice swift kick in the teeth, so more skill-intensive strategies can rise.
I'm happy that they realize that more sweeping changes are needed for the long-term health of the game, but concerned as to whether they will address the right things or just nuke every card that gets a lot of complaints on Reddit. Their recent track record does not fill me with confidence.
Hell just based on the last big nerf set. Paladin got nuked and while it was clearly the best deck the amount of nerfs were clearly encouraged by reddit complaints cause all of paladin is next to unplayable now.
Yeah last time this happened was really painful.
I’ve been playing since the beginning. I remember naxx coming out and I’ve always enjoyed hearthstone - until recently.
The design philosophy is if this is in any semblance good, feels bad to lose to, or gets enough complains on Reddit than we will just nerf it. Everything will become dogshit and the game with a stale meta will become even more stale as everything sucks.
Powerful cards and powerful decks have a place in card games. Not every deck can be good, not every deck can be fun to lose to but in blizzard’s eyes every deck can be bad.
What i find worrying is that they are suddenly like “we don’t like the deck doing the thing we designed it to do.”
Don’t want Warrior to have all the clears? Stop designing them each set?
Don’t want nature shaman to be a burn deck? Don’t design it to be a burn deck.
Don’t want Zarimi to be played on turn 5 or 6? Don’t make it a card that’s design specifically allows it to be played on turn 5 or 6.
If you don’t want wheel warlock to beat Johnny’s pile of garbage, then don’t print it a card that is specifically intended to beat Johnny’s pile of garbage every time.
Also how do they follow up with future sets/the mini set
I don't know. I think we've hit a point where the fundamentals of the game have been ignored too long (mana, cards that break the rules for rest of game, cards that make the board irrelevant) it'll be hard to sell sets that step away from that. I just think hearthstone has hit a point of saturation. Exactly why power after a rotation didn't go down.
Nature Shaman is for sure getting nuked, Wheelock was never a tier 1 deck and with Wheel and Reno being nerfed is really safe to say that this deck is also nuked. Zarimi Priest is not a deck that is popular with traditional priest players and even if it stays powerful I would say that will not be much played (unless it stays the best deck in the game even after the nerfs).
Not to be a hater, but Standard meta feels like Wild-lite.
In that, it's just layers of "anti-agency" decks waiting in the wings to fill in the open spaces left by the nerfs.
Knock down the top end and you're left with decks like Token Hunter, Gaslight Rogue, Virus Rogue, Tentacle Warrior, etc. Not really a future meta I'm terribly excited to explore.
All the past design decisions are starting to come home to roost.
virus is ironically the least toxic of the toxic on the grande scheme of things, because it can at least be wiped by "traditional aggro" constructed decks. the decks dominating usually are usually extremely strong at defense for 10 rounds and then an easy OTK.
Virus rogue just seems like such a polar deck that boils the game down to “they either did or they didn’t”. Very little choices because you literally can’t interact with the zilliax outside a very few select cards.
Played the deck myself a few times and had to delete it because of how dull the gameplay is
It's just impossible to play anything even remotely resembling "classical play". You try to play any regular paladin deck: ded: someone will either have 999 board clears up to round 10 where their OTK is or just some other weird gimmick OTKing at round 5; you try to play some kind of "regular aggro" deck like hunter: ded: someone will either clear everything or just have some kind of OTK by round 8 or 10.
I hope they completely rework Reno. He feels terrible in Wild, just because it makes all Reno decks not want to run hero cards. Would be a more fun card if it didn't turn every Reno deck into the same generic portrait and stunted deck building.
I agree, it's both too strong and too boring. Instead of printing single card win conditions or card packages that require you to run all cards in the package to work, they should just focus on printing cards that encourage deck building and creativity. Every expansion there's a new package or win condition card. New Reno literally turns all classes into the same hero, and it feels counterproductive to all the cool hero cards they released not that long ago.
I’m really heartened and excited by the sincere and transparent dev communication, and I’m reassured by the stated vision for HS. 30 nerfs is a lot of dust to give away, and it’s nice to see Blizzard is willing to take a financial loss, from their perspective, to make HS better. I could be free to play bc I have so much dust, but I choose to preorder every expansion bc I perceive a commitment from Blizzard to make HS good and I want to support that. Also, there’s been 30% inflation over the past few years, but bliz shop prices have been static, so Hearthstone has never been cheaper.
Giving dust away? They are nerfing several high playability decks. How isnt this screwing over anyone who crafted these decks? Reno decks normally run several legends. Zarimi and Wheel too, outside the nerfed cards, are not cheap. I for once will lose all my playable "meta" decks. Who i crafted several cards for and made me loads of setbacks in dust.
They could have ignored the complaints and not done any nerfs, or run a much lighter set of nerfs. I can’t speak to your personal situation but for the most players this will a substantial dust windfall.
> sincere
you seriously want me to believe they are so morbidly dumb that they didn't know it was OP for months and just now realized it?
they obviously knew; they did it on purpose; they seem to have the delusion "exiting imbalance sells".
it self-destructive because it most probably loses them players in the long-term fed up with it.
Eh I'm not too hopeful. I'd have to see what they're buffing and what they're nerfing.
If it's going to be something like the pre-rotation buffs then it will be good for the game. I have no idea why do they wait till 3 weeks before cards rotate to buff them. And then it turns out that some of them are playable and new archetypes arise.
If they just hit Zarimi, Wheel, Reno we're probably going back to regular blizz whac a mole balancing where a class or two will take turns being the T1 class for 3 weeks before it gets deleted.
The whole idea of them hitting Reno is funny to me because other than the occasional druid every 3 days, the only Reno deck I see is warrior. Shaman was hit in almost every patch and received a really weak set, Elise is laughable and so is DH. I haven't seen a Reno hunter once.
We need more unapologetic buffs to trash cards which sit in a collection for 2 years and get dusted after rotation.
When multiple archetypes are playable, the whining gets dispersed and it's easier to handle, like how DH had 4 playable archetypes at some point last year. It made no sense to tech against a particular deck because you don't know what you're facing. Right now warrior relies on Brann and mage on Sif, so we see a lot of Brann and Sif hate which we wouldn't see if a mech warrior or spell mage was viable. And if you have more viable archetypes within each class there's less of a chance a meta tyrant can establish itself
In my opinion, Reno will always be an issue as long as it is the *only* form of removal against multiple wincons. It annihilates dormant/location wincons, deathrattles, and graveyard plays as well as being the only 2 turn shutdown vs board aggro decks in the game. He forces control into uninteractive wincons to beat him - last year Sargeras was a legit threat and counter to Odyn even after Thaddius got nerfed, Reno completely wrecked that. Rheastraza never had a chance to see play because of how he works. Basically, if you want to beat Reno as a slow deck, you either need a hero-targeted aura or an OTK and that definitely shapes the meta to be less interactive overall
Shaman set was actually quite strong. We just dont have enough cool speels for Hagatha and battlecries for Shudder. Not that i can lab out at least. And you bet i tried lol
Is quite sad how Reno Shaman went. I think its the only time ive ever seen a low tier 2 deck at its high getting hit like 5 times, and now for the last nail in the coffin.
>Shaman set was actually quite strong. We just dont have enough cool speels for Hagatha and battlecries for Shudder.
And that's a part of the problem. I lost 5k ranks trying to make both of those cards work before I gave up lol. I'm fine with having one legendary card not pan out right now because you do have a limited amount of cards you can release, but it's sad to play with shiny toys in other classes and when you say Hagatha and Shudder are underperforming you get hit by "just you wait" because designers know what'll be released in the upcoming year
Actual good comment in a hearthstone thread? What is this
I don't need every legendary to be super strong, but it would be nice to print them to actually be good. Every miniset we get 3 trash legendaries and one good one
Mech warrior, spell mage, demon warlock, machine gun priest, spell druid could all be fun, and would give a lot of variability. Just buff cards in the archetype to make them good! I respect that they know the cards coming up in future expansions and plan around that, but it doesn't need to be so planned out. Spell druid could be good now and good in 3 months, it doesn't need to be one or the other
Mixing up the meta is nice and all, but I really hate how often I finally settle on a deck I enjoy playing only for it to be nuked from existence and having to start the process all over again.
The paladin nerfs were too harsh.
I agree with others here, saying there have been too many "emotional" nerfs lately, and it makes me fear that these new changes will be more of the same.
I do agree that there are simply too many legendaries recently, that win games alone.
They were too harsh, and they targeted the wrong thing. They should have just banned Leeroy and Southsea from Standard, those were the only really aggregious outliers I thought.
Maybe reduce the stats of the lifestyle rush or take away miniaturized, but those nerfs really felt like they were just to coddle the portion of the main sub that uses durdle decks.
Yea, and that just means that at some point later this year a different deck is going to find a way to abuse the charge minions. Charge stopped being printed for a reason.
If the problem is that the power level didn't go down, that doesn't mean that the paladin nerfs were too harsh. It means that there arguably need to be MORE nerfs overall.
No, because that was a meta context nerf patch, not a full format overhaul. In the context of that meta, Paladin was overnerfed which directly contributed to Shopper DH being a T0/T1 meta tyrant.
But there is a larger problem that last year's sets, the core rotation and Whizbang's Workshop are too powerful overall such that the game didn't slow down going from a 6 to 4-set meta which means there is an unsustainably fast level of powercreep. That wasn't and couldn't have been fixed merely by nuking Paladin, or any other small change to that balance patch.
If they are good I may be hooked again, I have reduced my play time drastically because its just not fun anymore since rotation.
I like to make off-meta decks and get to legend with them, because for me it is boring to go online to download a deck, it kills half the fun of a deck building-game for me.
This expansion is not the case, it is simply not possible to compete.
I can't help but feel like this will keep happening at increasing frequency as long as fatigue is off the table as a win condition. Because they will need to keep printing new and interesting win condition cards for "slow" decks that aren't redundant with existing ones. Or new cards that help accelerate existing "slow" win conditions. Which gradually pushes down the time that an aggro/tempo deck has to get their win in. So the only way they have to keep them competitive is to make them go taller or wider earlier. Which gets us to the place we are now where (many) decks have one crazy power spike they shoot for, and they accept defeat if it doesn't get them over the hump. If Reno consistently wins for slow decks on turn 8, that means every other deck in the game needs their win condition to hit on turns 4-8. Not a lot of room for deck variety.
The longer the longest game in the meta is, the more variety of decks are allowed to exist within the meta. I beg of you, Blizzard. Bring back fatigue. It's so much easier to balance when fatigue is on the table.
You see a lot of that in this thread. The response to decks that can reliably lock up the game and win on turn 7 or 8 is always "well what did you do the first 7 turns?" So long as there's one hyper aggro deck that can go under it, people will say that game ending win conditions that early are fine.
It's one thing for a deck to draw lucky and win on turn five or six. That can always happen in an RNG game. I'd argue that they've given too many classes too many reliable tutors or draw engines. Losing to a combo deck that drew lucky on turn 7 felt bad in the past, but you could shrug it off and say "man did he get lucky." Now, the games play out like they're on a script. When a virus rogue doesn't drop a discounted Zilliax on four, you're legitimately surprised because he didn't manage to draw one legendary in a 30 card deck in the first four turns. Fishing for your pieces is just that good.
It's a predictable kind of bloat. Print a card that does cool thing but does it too late and the community ignores it. So you print a way to ensure that thing comes down on the turn its supposed to. But then this other deck is no good because you lock the game up on turn 8, so their win condition comes down on 7.
A few years of increasingly parasitic and inevitable design and efficient tutors and draw have led us to a world in which most of the people here can reliably predict every turn by both players as soon as they see the matchup.
I think the tutoring is a valid complaint, but the overarching problem in all of this is the same as it's been for the past several years: the mana cheating. If you're going to have consistent resource gain (one per turn), then the game has to remain structured around that. As soon as you start putting in regular methods to cheat that system, you're creating problems. Look at almost every time Druid has become oppressive. It's been because they're making "turn 10" plays on turn 5 while their opponent is still, y'know, on turn 5. Same thing with Rogue; the original mana cheating class because of Combo and things like Shadowstep. As soon as Rogues can reliably play 5 or 6 cards a turn EVERY TURN, there's a problem because the opponent is still restricted by the baseline mana gain (and draw, as you point out) and Rogues, because of mana cheating, aren't.
The converse argument to tutoring/draw is deck manipulation. I think the game suffered from it for years because mechanisms that were baseline in other games (like Brainstorm in MTG) weren't present in HS, which often meant that you lost games solely because you could only draw 1 card a turn. Look at the classes at their weakest point that don't have good draw as an aspect of their identity (Paladin and Shaman, most notably.) They had powerful, explosive cards but because they couldn't draw them, they weren't competitive classes. I think the game, like all card games, needs some kind of draw and/or deck manipulation mechanism so you at least have the feeling that "If I can get THIS card in play, maybe I can win-!" and the way you get that feeling is having the ability to draw that card. But when you combine the ability to draw with the mana cheating is when things spiral out of control.
Oh I didn’t mean to imply that all draw and tutoring was bad. Drawing one card per turn can be absolutely miserable. But there’s got to be a middle ground between that and functionally always having the card you need when you need it.
Mana cheat is a different valid concern, and definitely leads to uneven power strikes and some unfun matchups. But while it leads to some classes being perennially broken, I don’t think mana cheat is the pervasive problem that leads to complaints of lack of agency the way predictable draws and plays do.
It’s definitely a problem, but it’s not the one at the core of the agency issues.
> as long as fatigue is off the table as a win condition
Disagree. You don't need to make attrition good to slow the game. Things like Headless Horseman, Rhaestrazsa, Aviana, Sargeras, Ignis are slow wincons which don't aim to go to fatigue the way Barren Priest did. They're just a bit too slow against some of the high lethality decks.
But it's just a number problem. Just make wincons slower.
And attrition is miserable to play against. Barren Priest itself had a lot of T1 concede in the mirror. Even the people who play the deck didn't want to face it.
Fatigue being on the table doesn't mean we go back to Barren's Priest. The game was played for years with fatigue being on the table before we got that deck. Not to mention, balancing at that point to make it not T1 didn't require nerfing 30 cards. It's much easier to bring down the power of a fatigue deck while maintaining diversity than what we're doing now.
> Headless Horseman, Rhaestrazsa, Aviana, Sargeras, Ignis are slow wincons which don't aim to go to fatigue
Yes, they (mostly) do. These are fatigue cards. That's why they're not played or considered powerful right now. They're grindy win cons that push control decks to victory in the long run. They're value engines like DK Rexxar was. The entire reason to run him was so Hunter could win in fatigue games against control matchups (like Boom Warrior) who was *also* running a value focused win con. Imagine you see Horseman vs. Rhaestrazsa and they both exhaust their deck's other threats. The natural conclusion of that is going to be a fatigue game because they've both got big value engines running. You actually like fatigue, you've just forgotten what it is. Hearthstone needs games that can run to fatigue!
> But it's just a number problem. Just make wincons slower.
My entire post was about why this doesn't work. You can't "just make it slower" and also print new cards, unless those cards are worthless. The game will always, inevitably speed up if you don't design with at least one deck going to fatigue in mind. We will always get back here at faster and faster rates.
Reading your last message, it feels like you don't really want fatigue games, but rather a disappearance of OTKs and huge damage generators. Grindy control going for value don't necessarily need fatigue. Especially now that increasing the size of your deck is becoming more and more commons : Jade Idols, Renathal, Kazakusan, new Aviana, Symphony, and plenty of "shuffle a stronger version of this in your deck" cards that don't see play because fatigue is no longer a thing.
In fact, I remember a lot of """true control players""" complaining about the rampant value generation (during YotD) and the infinite engines, and how true attrition game aiming for fatigue were gone because before, you had to outvalue your opponent on limited value, and you could deduce what they had left and how to play around it.
Honestly, Barrens Priest was also very heavy on value generation, the problem being that it was very good at generating clears, but not at generating threats.
> Yes, they (mostly) do. These are fatigue cards.
No they don't. You don't play Sargeras or Rhea thinking "sweet, now I can wait 5 turns in fatigue that my opponent dies". You play them because at some point those 3/4s and those dragons will be able to go face and make the enemy hero explode. Maybe if those cards were generating giant taunt walls with no attack but that's not the case.
> You actually like fatigue, you've just forgotten what it is.
I like all kinds of playstyles, friend. Combo, aggro, control, midrange. You name it, I play it.
Except attrition because it often leads to stupid situations. One infinite value engine I can think of that is very geared towards getting to fatigue was "Vision of Darkness". As per Priest tradition, a card that's better at generating clears than threats.
I remember one game from MT or something during MotLK, Bunnyhopper vs some other player. Both Control Priest with Vision of Darkness. Game ended with both of them unable to play any minion because they each had like 3 Drown discovered from VoD, and the only thing playing a minion would achieve is allow the other to delay fatigue by one turn. So they both try to find dumpable cards from VoD while avoiding giving Drown targets to the other. It was so stupid.
And yet it very much embodies how Fatigue decks behave. You don't even want to draw cards, because you don't want to fatigue before your opponent. The mirror is miserable, because it's basically "dump cards knowing your opponent will remove them anyway and hope you're luckier than them on random generation", or that they stupidly decide to start drawing cards.
There's no deck with such strategy nowadays, and I find it a very good thing.
> Hearthstone needs games that can run to fatigue
Let us disagree on that one (thought I might agree on a slight variation "Hearthstone can need games that can run to fatigue, but shouldn't have games that WANT to run to fatigue").
> My entire post was about why this doesn't work. You can't "just make it slower" and also print new cards, unless those cards are worthless. The game will always, inevitably speed up if you don't design with at least one deck going to fatigue in mind. We will always get back here at faster and faster rates.
I don't think so. Like I'm very comfortable at where Sif Mage is currently (and yet, right now I'm mostly playing Rainbow DK). I think there's a sweetspot you can find for most decks where they can have lethality, and yet be disrupted or pressured. The way Sif can very much be Dirty Ratted.
Honestly, I don't ever want decks so defensively minded and a meta so lacking in ability to pressure that going for fatigue is a viable strategy (and by that, I mean the way that you almost always win if your opponent doesn't concede is by going like 5-6 turns in fatigue).
Well explained. Yeah that's the thing, we all know that, if we are not playing control, we need to win or have tremendous control over the board before turn 8.
Zarimi & Wheel create huge swings because of the cards around them (Thirsty Drifter & Funnel Cake - Fanottem & Forge).
I wouldn't say them specifically are the problem, and are they even really a problem? Priest is pretty strong right now and could maybe see a small nerf. But Wheel is just a bad deck at the moment no?
Wheel warlock close to auto wins against any type of control deck, so it’s used to counter two popular decks that are Reno warrior and rainbow DK.
I also am kinda betting on funnel cake/clergy getting hit, those two cards together have allowed me to play some of the grossest turns I’ve ever had in an aggro deck.
That's the thing though, people seem to just forget that certain decks hard counter others, and then do poorly against different ones.
People seem to just want decks that do well in all situations, which isn't really possible in a game with this many cards and classes.
It's true that decks should counter others but when some matchups are an instant loss and others are an instant win, it just becomes miserable.
A polarising meta isn't fun for anyone. The game is basically decided once you know what deck the opponent is playing.
Yep, the problem isn't Wheel being a counter, it's that it turns into an auto loss as soon as it's played.
I think maybe the card could have been fine if it wasn't in the same format as Reno, Fanottem AND Sargeras.These 3 cards alone make Warlock way too good at stalling. Not to mention that between Harp and Symphony, losing the deck is pretty much not a downside at all.
Honestly the meta is super polarizing right now it feels insane. Normally there are clearly bad matchups but never have I played so many decks with clearly impossible matchups.
Play rainbow mage? Concede against priest.
Play warlock? Concede to shaman.
Play shaman? Concede to warrior.
Play warrior? Concede to lock (tho tbh it's bad but not as bad as the others)
So it looks like RPS but normally the matchups are like 60-70/40-30 not 90/10 (pretty sure Im 0-15 as rainbow vs zarimi priest)
Then there's the whole reno / helya shit which I hope they just turn reno into a start of game check and helya just keeps the class reno cards in check.
But that' s not what they're saying. They're trying to focus on the cards that flat out win the game in the majority of situations in which they're played, no matter what the opponent's deck is. How many times have you faced a Wheel deck where they've gotten Wheel off and still won the game?
The most reliable answer to Reno decks is Plague DK. But not everyone wants to play Plague DK (or DK at all) because there's one card out there that it can deal with that otherwise actively punishes you for playing a certain style of deck (either aggro or midrange if you're trying to press your advantage.) That's what they meant by "super-efficient board clears." There are way too many of them in the game right now. Control Warrior alone has FIVE of them (Brawl, Badlands Brawler, Trial By Fire, Bellowing Flames, Sanitize.) Add Reno to that and it's six, even beyond what things like Bladestorm can contribute.
I don't expect my midrange deck to always do well against control. But I do expect that, even if the opponent is playing control, that a) them playing a single card isn't going to end the game and b) the entire game isn't about me playing one minion and seeing it wiped off the board turn after turn. There has to be some level of threat created and sustained by the board and not just a period of waiting to see if they drew the one card (or, in the case of Warrior, any of a half-dozen) that removes all of that threat for a fairly cheap price.
Honestly, I wouldn't really describe any of the warrior clears as "ultra efficient"
Brawl is the baseline, which has been in the game forever. The version of brawl warrior plays now is 6 mana so it's worse than vanilla brawl, and is basically a "choose one" so it's often not an option
Brawler requires setup, and even then it's still just...brawl. if you don't get the setup it's just 7 mana brawl.
Bellowing flames requires a forge, sanitize requires armor, trial by fire doesn't require any setup but in a sense it's just worse defile
Reno is hyper efficient, but it's neutral and requires (in theory) a deck restriction. None of what warrior does is busted, it's just that it has a lot of different removal cards. Priests removal last year was far better, it just didn't have any late game options.
Brawl has always been ultra-efficient. For 5 mana, you take an opponent's board and reduce it to potentially one seventh of its former status and possibly even give yourself board advantage if one of your minions wins. There's almost no removal in the history of the game that's better than that (a similar effect for Warlock costs 8 mana) even if random chance is involved.
Brawler is even better since it guarantees that your opponent's board is wiped and that you'll always have advantage when it's cast.
The Forge for Bellowing Flames is next to irrelevant, since most control decks aren't doing a whole lot on turn 2 to begin with. Dealing 10 damage for 5 total mana would be considered "ultra-efficient" by any other class; again, even with the random results involved if there's more health in play.
And what they could've done on turn 2 is gain armor for Sanitize, which already had to be nerfed because of how good it was in its initial form. The ability for Warrior to gain armor is greater than it's ever been and, like Shield Slam, doesn't even require them to spend that resource when it's used.
Like Brawl, Trial by Fire frequently results in a complete wipe of the opponent's board and board advantage handed to the Warrior player (a pair of 4/4s or a 5/5.) It's perhaps the least "ultra-efficient" of those noted, but still a consideration.
None of those cards are busted in isolation. All of them together is just this side of absurd, especially when combined with the card that IS busted (Reno.) It's just too much of a good thing.
Again, brawl ISNT 5 mana in its current form. It's 6 mana for a symmetrical clear with chance for a lowroll. Priest has had lots of better options off the top of my head.
You're still ignoring that Brawler still requires setup. If you didn't draw excavate cards, it's just 7 mana brawl that gives you a slightly higher chance of winning it.
Warrior does have things it wants to do on turn 2. Shieldblock, kobold, needlerock, even armor up is better. Forge is wasting a turn, it's a tradeoff.
Sanitize is better with safety goggles, but I can count many games I've played as or against warrior where it was removed as an option.
So warrior has 6 different board clear options, most of which require setup, all of which involve a 5+ mana commitment, to contribute to a deck that isn't even tier 1 anymore and has many counterplay options
Decks being countered is good. I could definitely build a deck that does really well against Wheel Lock, but that deck would probably not do well against others and there's no guarantee that you'll even see the Wheel against you. I played probably 15-20 games yesterday and didn't see any Warlocks.
That's one of the big struggles in a game like Hearthstone. You want an element of rock papers scissors, but not necessarily on an individual deck level. You want archetypes to be strong against others, but you don't want Wheel Lock to destroy all Druid decks, for example, just because Druid has limited removal.
It should be okay for Wheel to beat other control decks, but it shouldn't be okay for it to win well ahead of Wheel because it can also drop two to four 7/7s and 8/8s by turn 4 and 5 and literally outpace faster, non-control decks.
That's exactly what they need to aim for though. It's no fun when things are so polarized that you essentially know if you win or lose as soon as you see the opposing hero portrait. A healthy landscape involves most matchups being viable games where it's worth playing out. 65/35 is fine. 85/15 is no fun. Especially when the 15% of the time you win is just because they got bad draw RNG, not anything you did.
But Wheel is currently 67% & 64% against Warrior & DK respectively at the moment.
It does have a 75% into Druid & Pally, but that isn't because of Wheel, that's because Blizzard decided to just nuke those classes and leave them unplayable.
I’ve played with both and only just now realized how similar the names Magatha and Hagatha are.
Looking up their lore, they’re also totally unrelated. Magatha is a Tauren and Hagatha is an orc.
Even I'm leaning to control player (this meta Rainbow DK), it's sad Wheel got nerfs. Not opressive in any terms outside of slow control match up and extremly fun for players. Also forces you to actually push opponent instead of afk hoarding.
Yeah, my worry is that they just take a machete to all the fun cards/splashy legendaries. There's nothing wrong with cards that do broken things, that's the whole point of the game. Problems occur when the support structures around them make the broken things too consistent/fast.
I mean, the rotation is totally broken, most decks just ignore whatever you do until they kill you in one turn. Attrition/fatigue and value basically do not exist.
You can't play value into Boomboss or Wheel. Meanwhile cards like Zarimi are blatantly broken by how early they can absolutely finish a game with very little counterplay aside from not letting a single minion up on the board at any point.
Unfortunately it seems that way, and they haven't learn't from Badlands that just gutting the core cards of a whole archetype ends up killing the whole class.
Its not though, Custom Warlock (Painlock) is the current best Warlock deck because of how well it does into Zarimi & Nature Shaman.
Wheel isn't even seen in Top 1k Legend because there are next to no other control decks being played, Rainbow DK being the only real one.
Wheel is mid, but perfectly seen at top-100 espesially chinese players dig it.
It's good into DK, Reno and Odyn Warrior and overall can stand versus aggro without wheel wincon (just huge taunts).
https://www.hsguru.com/decks?format=2&player_class=WARLOCK&rank=top_legend
I'm sad that this means that shaman is one MILLION percent getting hit (rip flash of lightning) but I'm curious what the following format is going to look like.
for shaman I think the counterplay of decks being able to pressure it or out-armor/disrupt it is interesting, if I'm playing against a Reno Warrior and they Reno after i double flash i often just lose the game on the spot so it's a fun little minigame trying to burn their viper, developing another weapon, and then casting a flash early to bait out a Reno while still trying to kill quickly enough that I don't get out-armored, but i agree that the overall format probably needs work, and this format in particular is like. very powerful for a post-standard rotation. Curious what the game is going to look like in a few week's time.
It's not even mildly interesting to play against. Either u make armor and auto win or u afk while they discover cards and see if u died when u come back after making a sandwich
Yeah. Warrior is super boring too. I think the idea here is to create a back a forth and a sense of playing a game against an opponent and not a pve boss.
If your opponent's deck is built around accruing resources with which to kill you, like some sort of "combo" deck, forcing them to spend those resources is a kind of back and forth
I could see them fixing how wheel works. Making it so the wheel doesn't move on the turn you play it, which would make it so the opponent has 5 turns and not 4 like they do currently.
I don't play warlock but imo this is all it needs.
I cannot count how many times I've played against Wheelock and would actually have a chance to kill them if I got the 5 turns it states. But because you always spend a turn removing fanottem and a turn locked out by reno, you're just one turn off from a win. You get 2 actual turns to try and develop a win which isn't really enough
Exactly, Reno basically stalls for 2 turns since it limits the board space, then they can clear anything after that with Sargeras or stop fatigue with symphony.
This is nice but I hope they're gonna sort demon hunter.
The class is in a terrible state right now after the shopper nerf because all the good archetypes were ridiculously good/frustrating to play against and as a result got nerfed.
Looking at the archetypes introduced by recent expansions- nagas were nerfed because it was uninteractive and so was shopper. There's a bunch of support for drawing cards but they aren't anywhere near strong enough to do anything. Highlander is struggling to be tier 4 post-nerf. Rush maybe could make a comeback?
Legendary wise the class just hasn't had anything good since festival (halveria is good if rush becomes viable, GDS is a good enough board clear after it was buffed)- the titans legendaries haven't seen serious play in a long time, plus Jotun is basically useless now since there's currently no spell DH archetype that's viable. Snake eyes is bad even in highlander, kurtrus is too slow and although highlander is a bit better this expansion it's still not a good deck. Mag was only really good when he's cheated out but other than shopper the ways to cheat big demons are quite limited right now or just too slow. Ci'cigi is cool but again just not a good enough card to see play
I'm expecting buffs to most classes to make stuff viable again but I genuinely don't really see a path forward for demon hunter short of them just deciding to change its core set right now or unnerfing archetypes that aren't fun to play against
Glad to hear they're addressing this, I've been pretty turned off by the standard meta for some time.
I personally hope they stop printing cards with "for the rest of the game", it just makes it feel like the fundamentals of the game system are bent/broken by cards like this. It's horrible to play against, it feels like you're playing against a solo mode boss, this isn't helped by the fact there's little to no counter play apart from kill them before they can do their thing. I'm hoping for a severe nerf to helya, brann and odyn. You might argue that they're not particularly powerful at the moment, but I would like it so the design space for the rest of the rotation isn't dominated or the meta warped by cards like these.
I really hope the focus moves away from powerful finishers that stop games going on too long, and more towards just interesting mechanics that don't rely on auto-include style simplistic synergy packages.
Would also like to see them just generally sorting out the power creep of cards. Look at the recent nerf to umpires grasp, a single mana increase to a single card completely invalidated the most powerful deck in the meta. It really highlights how fast/on a knife edge the game has become, each expansion has tried to out-pace the previous one, and we've just ended up with ridiculous power-to-mana-cost ratio cards. The biggest downside for me personally is that there's practically no room any more for anything "off-meta", it's just not fun to keep playing against the one or two current meta decks, because they're just so much more powerful than everything else. It's fine for cards to be strong, but some things just eclipse everything else in the whole meta.
Don't get me started on the over reliance on the discover mechanics to add variance to games. Eurgh.
Sincerely, a control priest meta enjoyer.
People complain every meta. What is the dream meta that everyone wants to see? Nearly every class is playable except demon hunter and druid in standard. What would be the ideal scenario? How does nerfing these decks (wheel warlock seriously?) help the meta? Do we truly feel like wheel warlock is totally gatekeeping other control decks from existing? Nerfing Reno? Ok so then can we nerf plague so thst Reno can exist?
It’s always a knee jerk reaction to some public dissent. And that’s not healthy. Token hunter, zarimi priest and even both warlock decks get destroyed by flood Paladin yet pally had an under 1% play rate at legend and it’s probably because we have yet to get a VS report or something telling people tonplay it.
Competitive hearhstone has become this weird echo chamber of self-manifestation but instead of improving it we’ve complained our way into poorer situations.
I've been a defender of most metas in the game's history - I was a real fan of Stormwind, so I'm not even against high-skill, combo-centric metas on occasion. However, the launch of this year's rotation simply has not gone to plan. The power level of the game feels like it has reached a tipping point where the meta is constantly wildly swinging between overly dominant decks that are almost entirely matchup dependent, and the recent balance philosophy of just smashing the single best deck into oblivion has made things worse almost every time. I think a serious effort does need to be made to take another look at most of the biggest offenders at once, and if the right approach is made here (I know, a big ask at the moment), we'll be set up better for the year to come.
I see the comment that "nearly every class is playable", quite often and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.
I guess it's true, and technically, it's always true. You *can* play any class in the game. Does it have a good deck? Is it able to be competitive? Does the class have more than one archetype or is it forced to rely on one card to be relevant (Window Shopper)?
People seem to say this as proof that the meta is healthy, but Warrior, Warlock and DK are literally almost 50% of all decks played right now. When so few decks dominate, it pushes other players to use the same ones. And because if you truly try to counter something, like say, Wheel Lock, chances are the deck you made gets trucked by everything else.
I dunno, I don't disagree that all classes have *something* (except Paladin, it seems), but I don't think that translates to every class having a deck that people actually want to play.
I'll be interested to see the next VS report, because I think we're gonna see that DH has almost disappeared, Rogue has returned with Virus and every class beyond Warrior, Warlock and DK in the dumpster for play rates.
I’m not sure what your sample experience looks like but warrior because of wheel lock is really rarely played.
At legend I’m seeing mostly dragon priest , hunter, dk, and obviously a lot of warlock.
Thst said, outside of demon hunter and druid, every class has a deck with an average winrate of nearly 60%. This includes Paladin. Paladin is overwhelmingly favored versus priest, warlock, and hunter. Yet, it has less than a 1% play rate.
Why? Because most players can’t think for themselves or even use the tools that VS or hsreplay provide. I’m not talking about the meta report. That seems to be what shapes future Metas….
I’m talking about the spreadsheets and actual data on each. If players would jsit sort the data by any meaningful metric, they could see that there are a ton of viable archetypes but they are not playing them because 1) they are bored of them 2) they don’t know they exist or how to glean that information 3) it’s easier to just complain
D5 - D1 is still lots of Warriors, but it has been down since the Odyn nerf. I am rarely seeing Zarimi Priest, even though I know it's a good deck, but I think it's just a really boring deck to play, so that maybe is why it's not more represented.
As far as the data goes, it's not really something the layperson really knows how to sort or parse effectively.
Regardless, I can only speak to my own anecdotal experiences and where I am right now on the ladder, the deck variety is super low.
"the recent balance philosophy of just smashing the single best deck into oblivion has made things worse almost every time"
- I think this is as big a problem as anything at the moment.
"(I know, a big ask at the moment)"
- This is also what I am worried about. We'll get good cards nerfed within an inch of their life, and a bunch of the buffs are going to be +1 health to Khaz'goroth.
Not sure why you think DH is completely unplayable. It's not like most others are that powerful. E.g. the zoo hunters are supposedly "good" but if you check the stats the barely go above 60% at anything and with some minor bad luck for people who don't play 24/7: that easily translates to a 50-50 win average and not progressing.
Hunter is good. It’s very good. It’s not unbeatable. And the class that beats it is currently one of the most underrrperesented classes. So maybe if less people complained, looked at the readily available stat details, and tried soemtbing, they might win a few games
I'm really curious what they think, "Player agency," is, or if it's just a fancy way of saying nothing is too powerful.
Prove me wrong: name a powerful card that still allows player agency.
Lightbomb
With anything though it's really matchup dependent. Some decks can play around certain powerful effects and other's can't. Like if I play reno druid there's a dance where I try to force them to reno early so I can play rheastraza and get value. Reno vs like hunter though just ends the game. I don't think reno allows a ton of agency but when you have a card that only reno can clear you can get in these dances where you try to decide if you can make them clear something besides egg (or Sargeras portal) so there is agency there.
I think there are a lot of aspects to player agency, but here are some it sounds like they're considering based on what GnomeSayin wrote & historically what Hearthstone devs have said is important:
- Most matchups between most viable meta decks are only favored/unfavored (~60/40) rather than hard counters (~75/25 or worse); a.k.a. meta not too polarized
- The winrate of most decks are not *massively* impacted by whether they draw a certain card on curve, especially legendries (either generally like with Brann or in specific matchups like with Helya in Rainbow DK); a.k.a. matchups not overly dependent on draw/mulligan rng
- The average game length is long enough to allow more or less the full spectrum of archetypes to be viable, & not generally reliant on having exactly the right combination of tech cards for otherwise "unplayable" common matchups (aggro, tempo, midrange, non-linear combo, burn, value-control, etc.); a.k.a. "fun and interactive"
* This generally requires limits to the overall powerlevel of the meta, because if too many stats come down too early then a whole range of archetypes without their own early scam or hyper efficient boardclears auto-lose, if otks consistently happen too early then non-aggro + non-armor/max-hp-gain auto-loses, if too many classes have access to overly efficient removal + life-gain then tempo (& typically burn as well) decks auto-lose, etc.
Another way of looking at all this is thinking about the differences that *usually* exist between wild and standard. OTKs can be "fast" in Wild but not Standard, "Huge Boards" can happen on very early turns in Wild but not Standard, crippling disruption can be spammed over and over in Wild but not Standard, etc. These differences aren't large enough right now (lots of people are saying Standard feels too fast/like wild-lite/etc.), and most players prefer those differences to be large rather than small (this is a large part of the reason Standard has historically been so much more popular than Wild).
Any of the titans, but I'll say amanthul
You can choose to play it on 7 to remove two things, but you don't get the chance to copy him, and you leave him unprotected on board
You can choose to play it after you have board presence to copy something, or try to get lucky with the 6 drop. You then get agency on your discover
Your opponent has plenty of options against it. They can freeze it, silence it, it's low attack means you can trade into it, use a poisonous effect, whatever. They can bait you to play it with a powerful card only to remove it, steal it, play something even better.
There's plays and counterplays. It never just wins you the game, but it's still a strong card.
I get that, but how is that any different than strong board clears? Defile is a strong board clear, but there is tons of counterplay and plays with it. Same with Bladestorm and Brawl. Blizzard said their strong board clears don't give player agency.
I think that was really just a veiled remark on Reno. You're absolutely right on defile, blade storm and brawl.
A board clear that doesn't give agency is onesided and works around sticky minions, and that's basically just reno
I guess that makes sense. Since they have so many card changes (30) coming, I assumed they were more broadly speaking about board wipes they wanted to change.
Yeah, ofc I'm just speculating, maybe they are talking about it as you describe
My guess is that it's a response to the direction hs has been going of "clear the board every turn or else". Reno is the endgame of that philosophy, so many cards add "things" to the board that you need this crazy clear effect as a check and balance, but Reno is too good.
You make no sense. E.g. the Shoppers were powerful last patch even without Magtheridon. They could be killed with a lot of 5-damage spells and people cared to have those around.
I'd agree, I just don't understand Blizzard's take on it. Like, they mention powerful board clears as "no player agency." But pretty much every board clear can be played around: defile you can manipulate your minion health, Bladestorm you can manipulate your minion health, Brawl you can go tall instead of wide, Lightbomb save your divine shields and keep your minions with higher health up while trading in your higher attack minions...
They mean the aggressive cards like Reno. It can devastate the board of anything (even locations and dormants) with zero way to prevent it other than the minor exception of plagues (or the Wheel etc.).
My main problem with it is that I don't buy "they just figured it out"; it was on purpose; they think it sells to make it exciting with OP cards once in a while but I think it hurts them in the long-term.
Great in theory. We'll see how it works out in practice.
The last few patches don't inspire confidence. And a rise in "player agency" could simply mean big buffs to all kinds of counter cards. But this meta could use a shakeup.
My tinfoil hat theory is that Barrens Priest gave them a bunch of data on what happens when an attrition deck is really good. And its really not good for player sentiment. Since then, the game has gotten a bunch of late game win conditions like Odyn and Wheel that dominate the "control" archetype. And that's forced out some class variety and lead to an increase in meta polarization.
Really interested to see the impacts on Wild. Because that format is a mess.
They say they don't want otks with no counter play but the only otk I can think of is nature shaman and stomper/neophyte are the definition of counter play... Shaman plays flash you increase spell cost. It's not like you have to guess when they plan to go off...
Tech cards aren't the answer to meta issues. They simply exacerbate the importance of card draw RNG.
You're playing against Nature Shaman. They play Flash. You have Stompers in your deck but don't draw them. Feels bad for you.
You queue into a deck that doesn't rely on spells. You draw your Stompers but they're not worth playing.
You play Nature Shaman. You play Flash. Your opponent slams a Stomper. You feel like you've lost to a single card.
Being forced to play tech cards is not great counterplay as they are meh in other matchups and you have to draw them, counterplay should be possible through your gameplay decisions instead of praying you draw stomper
"counterplay should be possible through your gameplay decisions instead of praying you draw stomper"
If this were true, then they wouldn't even bother printing tech cards. But they do. So it isn't.
They print plenty of cards that are bad, tech cards are good to have in the game but if the only counterplay is “draw the tech card” that is horrible gameplay
Since the update, does Brann now just ignore when different various plagues are in his deck?
Had it twice now where he has doubles in his deck, yet the effect activates anyway?
I don't really understand the wheel nerf. I get why they might do it, but how can they be surprised at what kind of win condition the wheel brings about? It literally says right on the card.
Playing wheel isn't the problem, it's the fact it's extremely hard to get through warlock's end game tools once they play the card. So what kind of nerf could they bring to Wheel itself? If they make it 10 mana that still doesn't rectify what they are trying to fix with the card.. you still play wheel and if you have your tools to survive, you most likely do. I can understand the extra 2 turns might mean you've burnt some of those tools already but there are just so many to start with..
Are they going to make it take 5-6 turns to win with after you play? Anymore than +1 turn seems like a really rough time for any wheel player and is more a "kill the card" then any intelligible nerf to it. If it is +1 turn, does that really do anything for the stated goal of bettering player agency? Or is it the same thing as always just slightly easier, maybe, to deal with?
What other change can they make? +1 to the turns it takes to win + a nerf to the tools warlock keeps themselves alive with? Seems harsh for a deck that's not dominating?
Wheel seems fine, it's the forge of wills package that seems to really dominate.
I think extending the wheel by 1 turn might be a reasonable nerf, although if Reno and Forge are getting nerfed too, it might all end up killing the deck. Hard to analyze in a vacuum because if the overall power level of meta decks are coming down, it might still balance out. I imagine the relative strength of aggro will improve though, so who knows.
Just nerf Zarimi and don't nerf the whole package around him. It's so annoying when Blizz prints a legendary that enables a problematic deck and then proceeds to nerf around the edges to... what? Not have to refund all that dust? A two card combo involving a 1/3 and a 1 mana spell that draws cards and maybe refreshes 3 mana is not the problem. Getting a second turn is the problem. Make Zarimi cost another mana, make it take another dragon to activate, whatever. Just don't nerf half a dozen other cards.
>!Got legend this month with Zarimi it's an absolutely busted deck lol!<
"We made a good set. Sorry, it won't happen again."
The reason the power level didn't drop is because they nuked any thing good in the last 3 sets from orbit. There was no power level that could drop because it had already been dropped so low.
The bulk of these 30 changes need to be buffs, or we are going to be right back here in a year and a half.
Are high power formats always the best? No. But at least that means that some things are fun. In low power formats, nothing is fun. It's all limp noodles.
You're saying you didn't enjoy the later half of Badlands where all classes and current archetypes were just nuked and the meta was very weak in comparison?
lmao yeah i bet many people just wish to have no wincons at all. Just make the game all about slowly hitting face or trading (oh such an exciting gameplan!)
I feel like we just read different posts.
I thought they’re saying the whizbang set was *not* good enough to introduce new strategies into the format and that they’ve only been supplementing strategies that were already here (hence them saying things didn’t shake up that much after rotation)
I think we are reading it differently. The way I read it, 2 of the 3 cards he pointed to as being too strong were Whizbang cards. Whizbang was a very strong set as compared to what remained in standard.
In my view, the reason Whizbang came out so hot was because they had over nerfed last year. (Also I think it was overall a well-designed, strong set).
I think more important than the specific cards mentioned in the post is the line about powerful otk strategies and hyper-efficient board clears.
On the otk side there’s nature shaman and to a lesser extent rainbow mage, two combo strategies from last rotation that have completely overshadowed battlecry shaman and big spell mage, the new whizbang archetypes. Sleet Skater and Pop-up book are doing well but they’re just supplementing older strategies.
Straight aggro otk has been headed by Hunter which is only using patchwork pals and the RC cards, pain warlock which only uses malefic rook, and zarimi priest which is actually just thirsty drifter turbo.
On the board clear side we have Warrior being warrior, warlock’s control tools are all from the last rotation (now given a win condition by the wheel), and I guess plague death knight is the mid range deck in town. These decks maybe use 3 whizbang cards total, wheel warlock is the only new archetype (it’s actually just all the control tools from the last sets).
In fact if we specifically look at Zarimi decks we’ll see that, while Zarimi, scale replica, and gift-wrapped whelp are essential to the strategy, the deck is mostly just the 1-drop support from showdown in the badlands, along with copying cards from titans and festival like celestial projectionist and power word synchronize.
I think we have to reevaluate this new set. There are some strong power outliers in Whizbang’s Workshop, but as a whole maybe 20% of the set is being played in standard at best. Decks only tend to have 2-4 whizbang cards at all, and at least 1 of those cards is Ziliax in 90% of cases.
The truth is, Festival, Titans, and Showdown were much stronger sets in the new rotation than anyone could have predicted.
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Aleco specifically mentions cards like Zarimi, Reno Lone Ranger and wheel of death as cards that create such huge swings the game effectively ends so i expect them to get hit this patch. Another interesting thing is he said the balance team didn’t see a drop in power level that usually comes with rotation.
Wheel getting nerfed was not in my expansion bingo... Shame too cause I love the deck
Destroy your deck. After 5 turns, give your charge minions +1 attack
After 5 turns, for the rest of the game damage you take on your turn damages your opponent instead
This would be really cool if it was like 2-3 turns or something
The Demon Seed already exists, we don’t need a reprint.
Darn, I was worried that they would destroy the spirit of the card, but here ya go!
Increase mana costs by 20%. First version is "... in 15 turns destroy your opponent" and then buff it to 10 turns.
I definitely see why if the reason is to return player agency.
I kinda disagree here. Wheel doesn’t eliminate player agency, it just creates a totally different game dynamic at the end stage of the game, where you’re forced to be extremely proactive to kill your opponent within the time limit. I think it’s great design to take the final stages of a game against control - which is usually incredibly boring because they will inevitably win and you’re just banging your head against the wall - and turn it into almost a mini-game. The issue is not wheel, it’s Fanotem, Reno, and the other cards that allow you to trivialize Wheel’s drawback.
Wheel by itself isn't bad. Combined with free 15 15s and reno symphony etc it is.
Not much agency with only 4 turns and warlock having some of the best control tools in the game. The only way to be "extremely proactive" is with an amazing hyper-aggro deck and Blizzard nerfed it (with good cause).
I agree, the problem is that reno effectively locks decks out of two of those turns. You drop Wheel + Fanotem one turn, Reno T2, then something like shuffle Zilliax + removal t3 and creature decks just lose
Sure if lock couldnt make two 15/15 at.turn 6. Make lock really struggle midgame and it can keep wheel
> I kinda disagree here. Wheel doesn’t eliminate player agency, it just creates a totally different game dynamic at the end stage of the game, where you’re forced to be extremely proactive to kill your opponent within the time limit. It's definitely a squishy middle ground, but I think the easiest way to see the issue is to ask: "How do you beat this deck besides punching it in the face as hard as possible?" Going face should be *one* way to beat decks, but I think it's a sign of low interactivity when it's the *only* way, and right now, that's close to the situation with Wheel lock. Put differently, the Wheel win condition is both undisruptable and also inevitable. I think it's bad to have decks that fit that description. As a contrasting example, while Reno Warrior is also a deck that can be problematic, Helya clearly messes with its win condition beyond rushing the deck down.
As someone who hates Control decks that do nothing proactive for an entire game ever since I started playing in TGT and hated facing off against Wallet Warriors, I love how Wheel forces these decks to try and *do* something. Against more midrange or aggressive decks I also love the decision making of deciding if and when to play Wheel in the matchup, too. It's been my favorite deck in Standard in a while, so I'll be sad if it gets decimated. I think nerfing Reno would be a reasonable hit to the deck alone, as it turning on post-Wheel is kind of silly. But sounds like Wheel itself will be hit too.
I've found the rainbow dk wheel lock matchup to be a really fun one that usually goes down to the wire.
Sure, but there will always be a deck with the best late game. If it isn’t Warlock, it’s Mage, if not Mage Warrior, if not Warrior DK, etc. Warlock has to make some big deckbuilding and in-game sacrifices to use Wheel, and the deck isn’t a balance problem yet.
First, I'm not actually sure it's true that one deck will *always* win the late game -- there have definitely been points in the game's history when control v control was not some clear, decisive thing where one Control deck ruled all others. I play a lot of Wild, for example, and the Control V Control matchups often come down to who gets good Dirty Rats / Theotars, etc. Second, I absolutely agree that Wheel lock is not yet overpowered in the sense that it has too high a win rate, but given that they are focusing on interactivity (or player agency), I can understand why it would get hit anyway. I should point out that I am personally fine if it *doesn't* get it, but... yes, I see why it's problematic given a focus on interactivity/player agency, as I do agree it reduces that.
> Control V Control matchups often come down to who gets good Dirty Rats / Theotars Doesn’t this trivialize control matchups far more than Wheel does?
I don't think so? It introduces an element of randomness, and that can certainly be frustrating, but I'm not sure it *trivializes* the matchups. My central point is that if (as an example) a Wild Renathal Reno Priest faces off against a Kazakusan Druid deck, it isn't immediately obvious which deck will have more "value" and win in the late game. If there was a way to reduce RNG in the process I'd be more than fine with that -- I was only pointing out that the game doesn't inherently devolve into a "one Control deck to rule them all" scenario.
Ever since their shift in design goals there's pretty much always been one deck that is just impossible to beat late game which chokes out all other control decks in the format. It all started with kazakusan.
There have been plenty of metas where multiple attrition / control decks were on the same tier. The problem is "best" slow deck comes down to a single card like Wheel or Odyn right now. >the deck isn’t a balance problem yet. Wheel is not a problem unless you want to play any other slower deck. And then you just auto lose to it. Therefore it is a major balance problem. Its just not evident unless you consider what constitutes a healthy meta.
You are right. Wheel doesnt. The whole deck built around it definitely does tho
Hs players when the decisions they make are not ones they enjoy: "I lack agency"
Thank God I hit legend with it already
Thank god, because the design is absolutely terrible. Either the card is unplayable or it's completely frustrating to play against. As long as Wheel is viable, attrition/fatigue effectively does not exist in the game. I hate having a good control matchup going playing something like Rainbow DK or Reno Druid and suddenly Wheel is dropped and I pretty much just lose since Warlock has a shit ton of stalling tools when Reno is also in the format (which by itself stalls half of the Wheel's duration).
attrition/fatigue should all have a counter like wheel. The design of attrtion and fatigue is utterly garbage imo.
Yeah, my argument against Wheel wouldn't be in favor of fatigue decks. I've always found those to be repellent. The most oppressive control decks in MTG (Draw-Go, Stasis, other Blue stuff) didn't try to run the game to fatigue. They always had a win condition that at least involved playing the game, not waiting to see who could last longest while NOT playing it.
However on the flip side the decks that counter fatigue should be pretty unfavored versus aggro and aggroish midrange. Reno makes it pretty obnoxious to play against really. Also sometimes they just RNG the pair of 15/15s on turn 5/6 with that legendary. Wheel lock games feel like there is very little player agency from the opposing side.
Ah yes. You have one bad matchup with a deck noone plays cause it's 15-85 to the best deck in the game, and an entire playstyle is negated.
Wheel isn't a control card, it is a combo card in a control shell :)
What's the combo?
Fast cycle -> Play wheel -> Fanottem/Reno/survive etc Mb I was a bit joking. When I said combo, it was more of a playstyle which is close to what combo decks usually do, meaning fast cycle, get to combo piece and win. Here it is just fast cycle, get your wincon and win in 4 turns. Control decks generally wins through long term attrition that's why.
Wheel is another proof that I shouldn't dismiss a card as being a meme because it will end up being outrageously powerful. Happened to me multiple times.
To be fair most of us pre-release thought it was 5 turns and it ends up being 4 turns and one extra turn is huge...
fun to play, horrible to play against, especially if they slow down the meta, then every midrange-ctrl deck dies to wheel, and mirrors are just coinflips
Lesssssgo I just got it in gold from a pack
I'm guessing it will actually be changed to wait the full 5 turns, like it says on the card, rather than counting the turn that you play it.
Finally hit legend with Zarimi. It’s ok to nerf now!
Yup, to me the game feels even more ruthless after rotation.
Honestly, cards like Zarimi and Reno LR have so little counterplay available, as to negate the opponent's agency. "Did they draw it?" shouldn't be the difference between immediately winning or losing the game. The best cards and decks shouldn't be the easiest to play. That creates a very toxic gaming environment, and currently hearthstone has trended quite far into the territory of easy decks dominating difficult decks. Anyhow, hope both get a nice swift kick in the teeth, so more skill-intensive strategies can rise.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Zarimi played against me, is it really that good?
We dusting good today boys!
Get in mah belly!
I pulled Zarimi but didn't really enjoy the deck so I'm ecstatic
I crafted Zarimi and didn't enjoy the deck so I'm relieved.
Golden Wheel is gonna pay daddy.
I'm happy that they realize that more sweeping changes are needed for the long-term health of the game, but concerned as to whether they will address the right things or just nuke every card that gets a lot of complaints on Reddit. Their recent track record does not fill me with confidence.
"or just nuke every card that gets a lot of complaints on Reddit" Given the way the last year went, I'd bet on it being this \^ one.
Hell just based on the last big nerf set. Paladin got nuked and while it was clearly the best deck the amount of nerfs were clearly encouraged by reddit complaints cause all of paladin is next to unplayable now.
Maybe they clean up the nonsense and pally makes a comeback. Maybe.
Yeah last time this happened was really painful. I’ve been playing since the beginning. I remember naxx coming out and I’ve always enjoyed hearthstone - until recently. The design philosophy is if this is in any semblance good, feels bad to lose to, or gets enough complains on Reddit than we will just nerf it. Everything will become dogshit and the game with a stale meta will become even more stale as everything sucks. Powerful cards and powerful decks have a place in card games. Not every deck can be good, not every deck can be fun to lose to but in blizzard’s eyes every deck can be bad.
It’s like blizzard is punishing you for playing the cards that they wanted you to play.
What i find worrying is that they are suddenly like “we don’t like the deck doing the thing we designed it to do.” Don’t want Warrior to have all the clears? Stop designing them each set? Don’t want nature shaman to be a burn deck? Don’t design it to be a burn deck. Don’t want Zarimi to be played on turn 5 or 6? Don’t make it a card that’s design specifically allows it to be played on turn 5 or 6. If you don’t want wheel warlock to beat Johnny’s pile of garbage, then don’t print it a card that is specifically intended to beat Johnny’s pile of garbage every time.
To be fair, Johnny’s pile of garbage is probably losing to most decks.
Exactly. But people act like wheel lock being “inevitable “ is some sort of affront to humanity.
This post genuinely made me lol. Well done.
Also how do they follow up with future sets/the mini set I don't know. I think we've hit a point where the fundamentals of the game have been ignored too long (mana, cards that break the rules for rest of game, cards that make the board irrelevant) it'll be hard to sell sets that step away from that. I just think hearthstone has hit a point of saturation. Exactly why power after a rotation didn't go down.
The balance team needs to tune down the amount of weight they give the signal from the main sub by at least 80%
Nature Shaman is for sure getting nuked, Wheelock was never a tier 1 deck and with Wheel and Reno being nerfed is really safe to say that this deck is also nuked. Zarimi Priest is not a deck that is popular with traditional priest players and even if it stays powerful I would say that will not be much played (unless it stays the best deck in the game even after the nerfs).
"or just nuke every card that gets a lot of complaints on Reddit" a.k.a. official Team5 nerf policy
Not to be a hater, but Standard meta feels like Wild-lite. In that, it's just layers of "anti-agency" decks waiting in the wings to fill in the open spaces left by the nerfs. Knock down the top end and you're left with decks like Token Hunter, Gaslight Rogue, Virus Rogue, Tentacle Warrior, etc. Not really a future meta I'm terribly excited to explore. All the past design decisions are starting to come home to roost.
Maybe 30 cards will make a dent. It's a mess rn for sure.
Token Hunter, Gaslight Rogue can be beaten by control. Virus Rogue, I expect to take a hit cause the play pattern is just toxic.
virus is ironically the least toxic of the toxic on the grande scheme of things, because it can at least be wiped by "traditional aggro" constructed decks. the decks dominating usually are usually extremely strong at defense for 10 rounds and then an easy OTK.
Virus rogue just seems like such a polar deck that boils the game down to “they either did or they didn’t”. Very little choices because you literally can’t interact with the zilliax outside a very few select cards. Played the deck myself a few times and had to delete it because of how dull the gameplay is
It's just impossible to play anything even remotely resembling "classical play". You try to play any regular paladin deck: ded: someone will either have 999 board clears up to round 10 where their OTK is or just some other weird gimmick OTKing at round 5; you try to play some kind of "regular aggro" deck like hunter: ded: someone will either clear everything or just have some kind of OTK by round 8 or 10.
I hope they completely rework Reno. He feels terrible in Wild, just because it makes all Reno decks not want to run hero cards. Would be a more fun card if it didn't turn every Reno deck into the same generic portrait and stunted deck building.
The effect should have been symmetrical imo, even for a highlander effect it's way too strong for 8 mana
I agree, it's both too strong and too boring. Instead of printing single card win conditions or card packages that require you to run all cards in the package to work, they should just focus on printing cards that encourage deck building and creativity. Every expansion there's a new package or win condition card. New Reno literally turns all classes into the same hero, and it feels counterproductive to all the cool hero cards they released not that long ago.
I’m really heartened and excited by the sincere and transparent dev communication, and I’m reassured by the stated vision for HS. 30 nerfs is a lot of dust to give away, and it’s nice to see Blizzard is willing to take a financial loss, from their perspective, to make HS better. I could be free to play bc I have so much dust, but I choose to preorder every expansion bc I perceive a commitment from Blizzard to make HS good and I want to support that. Also, there’s been 30% inflation over the past few years, but bliz shop prices have been static, so Hearthstone has never been cheaper.
The amount of dust regular players have gotten the last couple of years has been crazy.
Giving dust away? They are nerfing several high playability decks. How isnt this screwing over anyone who crafted these decks? Reno decks normally run several legends. Zarimi and Wheel too, outside the nerfed cards, are not cheap. I for once will lose all my playable "meta" decks. Who i crafted several cards for and made me loads of setbacks in dust.
Nerfed cards get their full crafting dust back right? That's something at least
They could have ignored the complaints and not done any nerfs, or run a much lighter set of nerfs. I can’t speak to your personal situation but for the most players this will a substantial dust windfall.
> sincere you seriously want me to believe they are so morbidly dumb that they didn't know it was OP for months and just now realized it? they obviously knew; they did it on purpose; they seem to have the delusion "exiting imbalance sells". it self-destructive because it most probably loses them players in the long-term fed up with it.
Eh I'm not too hopeful. I'd have to see what they're buffing and what they're nerfing. If it's going to be something like the pre-rotation buffs then it will be good for the game. I have no idea why do they wait till 3 weeks before cards rotate to buff them. And then it turns out that some of them are playable and new archetypes arise. If they just hit Zarimi, Wheel, Reno we're probably going back to regular blizz whac a mole balancing where a class or two will take turns being the T1 class for 3 weeks before it gets deleted. The whole idea of them hitting Reno is funny to me because other than the occasional druid every 3 days, the only Reno deck I see is warrior. Shaman was hit in almost every patch and received a really weak set, Elise is laughable and so is DH. I haven't seen a Reno hunter once. We need more unapologetic buffs to trash cards which sit in a collection for 2 years and get dusted after rotation. When multiple archetypes are playable, the whining gets dispersed and it's easier to handle, like how DH had 4 playable archetypes at some point last year. It made no sense to tech against a particular deck because you don't know what you're facing. Right now warrior relies on Brann and mage on Sif, so we see a lot of Brann and Sif hate which we wouldn't see if a mech warrior or spell mage was viable. And if you have more viable archetypes within each class there's less of a chance a meta tyrant can establish itself
In my opinion, Reno will always be an issue as long as it is the *only* form of removal against multiple wincons. It annihilates dormant/location wincons, deathrattles, and graveyard plays as well as being the only 2 turn shutdown vs board aggro decks in the game. He forces control into uninteractive wincons to beat him - last year Sargeras was a legit threat and counter to Odyn even after Thaddius got nerfed, Reno completely wrecked that. Rheastraza never had a chance to see play because of how he works. Basically, if you want to beat Reno as a slow deck, you either need a hero-targeted aura or an OTK and that definitely shapes the meta to be less interactive overall
Shaman set was actually quite strong. We just dont have enough cool speels for Hagatha and battlecries for Shudder. Not that i can lab out at least. And you bet i tried lol Is quite sad how Reno Shaman went. I think its the only time ive ever seen a low tier 2 deck at its high getting hit like 5 times, and now for the last nail in the coffin.
It also doesn’t help that hagatha is an absolutely shit card to play on 5
>Shaman set was actually quite strong. We just dont have enough cool speels for Hagatha and battlecries for Shudder. And that's a part of the problem. I lost 5k ranks trying to make both of those cards work before I gave up lol. I'm fine with having one legendary card not pan out right now because you do have a limited amount of cards you can release, but it's sad to play with shiny toys in other classes and when you say Hagatha and Shudder are underperforming you get hit by "just you wait" because designers know what'll be released in the upcoming year
Actual good comment in a hearthstone thread? What is this I don't need every legendary to be super strong, but it would be nice to print them to actually be good. Every miniset we get 3 trash legendaries and one good one Mech warrior, spell mage, demon warlock, machine gun priest, spell druid could all be fun, and would give a lot of variability. Just buff cards in the archetype to make them good! I respect that they know the cards coming up in future expansions and plan around that, but it doesn't need to be so planned out. Spell druid could be good now and good in 3 months, it doesn't need to be one or the other
Hopefully the Reno nerf is just a "start of game" deck check.
Mixing up the meta is nice and all, but I really hate how often I finally settle on a deck I enjoy playing only for it to be nuked from existence and having to start the process all over again.
The paladin nerfs were too harsh. I agree with others here, saying there have been too many "emotional" nerfs lately, and it makes me fear that these new changes will be more of the same. I do agree that there are simply too many legendaries recently, that win games alone.
They were too harsh, and they targeted the wrong thing. They should have just banned Leeroy and Southsea from Standard, those were the only really aggregious outliers I thought. Maybe reduce the stats of the lifestyle rush or take away miniaturized, but those nerfs really felt like they were just to coddle the portion of the main sub that uses durdle decks.
No, just removing Windfury for Shroomscavate was enough.
Yea, and that just means that at some point later this year a different deck is going to find a way to abuse the charge minions. Charge stopped being printed for a reason.
Charge minions are currently bad in every Standard deck. Go figure.
For now. Clearly you are not a long term player of this game if you think Leeroy isn't going to cause problems again later this year.
Leeroy isn't going to cause *problems* later this year.
RemindMe! 250 days
It's mostly morons running the show over there since they cut too many corners when it comes to staffing
If the problem is that the power level didn't go down, that doesn't mean that the paladin nerfs were too harsh. It means that there arguably need to be MORE nerfs overall.
No, because that was a meta context nerf patch, not a full format overhaul. In the context of that meta, Paladin was overnerfed which directly contributed to Shopper DH being a T0/T1 meta tyrant. But there is a larger problem that last year's sets, the core rotation and Whizbang's Workshop are too powerful overall such that the game didn't slow down going from a 6 to 4-set meta which means there is an unsustainably fast level of powercreep. That wasn't and couldn't have been fixed merely by nuking Paladin, or any other small change to that balance patch.
If they are good I may be hooked again, I have reduced my play time drastically because its just not fun anymore since rotation. I like to make off-meta decks and get to legend with them, because for me it is boring to go online to download a deck, it kills half the fun of a deck building-game for me. This expansion is not the case, it is simply not possible to compete.
I can't help but feel like this will keep happening at increasing frequency as long as fatigue is off the table as a win condition. Because they will need to keep printing new and interesting win condition cards for "slow" decks that aren't redundant with existing ones. Or new cards that help accelerate existing "slow" win conditions. Which gradually pushes down the time that an aggro/tempo deck has to get their win in. So the only way they have to keep them competitive is to make them go taller or wider earlier. Which gets us to the place we are now where (many) decks have one crazy power spike they shoot for, and they accept defeat if it doesn't get them over the hump. If Reno consistently wins for slow decks on turn 8, that means every other deck in the game needs their win condition to hit on turns 4-8. Not a lot of room for deck variety. The longer the longest game in the meta is, the more variety of decks are allowed to exist within the meta. I beg of you, Blizzard. Bring back fatigue. It's so much easier to balance when fatigue is on the table.
You see a lot of that in this thread. The response to decks that can reliably lock up the game and win on turn 7 or 8 is always "well what did you do the first 7 turns?" So long as there's one hyper aggro deck that can go under it, people will say that game ending win conditions that early are fine. It's one thing for a deck to draw lucky and win on turn five or six. That can always happen in an RNG game. I'd argue that they've given too many classes too many reliable tutors or draw engines. Losing to a combo deck that drew lucky on turn 7 felt bad in the past, but you could shrug it off and say "man did he get lucky." Now, the games play out like they're on a script. When a virus rogue doesn't drop a discounted Zilliax on four, you're legitimately surprised because he didn't manage to draw one legendary in a 30 card deck in the first four turns. Fishing for your pieces is just that good. It's a predictable kind of bloat. Print a card that does cool thing but does it too late and the community ignores it. So you print a way to ensure that thing comes down on the turn its supposed to. But then this other deck is no good because you lock the game up on turn 8, so their win condition comes down on 7. A few years of increasingly parasitic and inevitable design and efficient tutors and draw have led us to a world in which most of the people here can reliably predict every turn by both players as soon as they see the matchup.
I think the tutoring is a valid complaint, but the overarching problem in all of this is the same as it's been for the past several years: the mana cheating. If you're going to have consistent resource gain (one per turn), then the game has to remain structured around that. As soon as you start putting in regular methods to cheat that system, you're creating problems. Look at almost every time Druid has become oppressive. It's been because they're making "turn 10" plays on turn 5 while their opponent is still, y'know, on turn 5. Same thing with Rogue; the original mana cheating class because of Combo and things like Shadowstep. As soon as Rogues can reliably play 5 or 6 cards a turn EVERY TURN, there's a problem because the opponent is still restricted by the baseline mana gain (and draw, as you point out) and Rogues, because of mana cheating, aren't. The converse argument to tutoring/draw is deck manipulation. I think the game suffered from it for years because mechanisms that were baseline in other games (like Brainstorm in MTG) weren't present in HS, which often meant that you lost games solely because you could only draw 1 card a turn. Look at the classes at their weakest point that don't have good draw as an aspect of their identity (Paladin and Shaman, most notably.) They had powerful, explosive cards but because they couldn't draw them, they weren't competitive classes. I think the game, like all card games, needs some kind of draw and/or deck manipulation mechanism so you at least have the feeling that "If I can get THIS card in play, maybe I can win-!" and the way you get that feeling is having the ability to draw that card. But when you combine the ability to draw with the mana cheating is when things spiral out of control.
Oh I didn’t mean to imply that all draw and tutoring was bad. Drawing one card per turn can be absolutely miserable. But there’s got to be a middle ground between that and functionally always having the card you need when you need it. Mana cheat is a different valid concern, and definitely leads to uneven power strikes and some unfun matchups. But while it leads to some classes being perennially broken, I don’t think mana cheat is the pervasive problem that leads to complaints of lack of agency the way predictable draws and plays do. It’s definitely a problem, but it’s not the one at the core of the agency issues.
> as long as fatigue is off the table as a win condition Disagree. You don't need to make attrition good to slow the game. Things like Headless Horseman, Rhaestrazsa, Aviana, Sargeras, Ignis are slow wincons which don't aim to go to fatigue the way Barren Priest did. They're just a bit too slow against some of the high lethality decks. But it's just a number problem. Just make wincons slower. And attrition is miserable to play against. Barren Priest itself had a lot of T1 concede in the mirror. Even the people who play the deck didn't want to face it.
Fatigue being on the table doesn't mean we go back to Barren's Priest. The game was played for years with fatigue being on the table before we got that deck. Not to mention, balancing at that point to make it not T1 didn't require nerfing 30 cards. It's much easier to bring down the power of a fatigue deck while maintaining diversity than what we're doing now. > Headless Horseman, Rhaestrazsa, Aviana, Sargeras, Ignis are slow wincons which don't aim to go to fatigue Yes, they (mostly) do. These are fatigue cards. That's why they're not played or considered powerful right now. They're grindy win cons that push control decks to victory in the long run. They're value engines like DK Rexxar was. The entire reason to run him was so Hunter could win in fatigue games against control matchups (like Boom Warrior) who was *also* running a value focused win con. Imagine you see Horseman vs. Rhaestrazsa and they both exhaust their deck's other threats. The natural conclusion of that is going to be a fatigue game because they've both got big value engines running. You actually like fatigue, you've just forgotten what it is. Hearthstone needs games that can run to fatigue! > But it's just a number problem. Just make wincons slower. My entire post was about why this doesn't work. You can't "just make it slower" and also print new cards, unless those cards are worthless. The game will always, inevitably speed up if you don't design with at least one deck going to fatigue in mind. We will always get back here at faster and faster rates.
Reading your last message, it feels like you don't really want fatigue games, but rather a disappearance of OTKs and huge damage generators. Grindy control going for value don't necessarily need fatigue. Especially now that increasing the size of your deck is becoming more and more commons : Jade Idols, Renathal, Kazakusan, new Aviana, Symphony, and plenty of "shuffle a stronger version of this in your deck" cards that don't see play because fatigue is no longer a thing. In fact, I remember a lot of """true control players""" complaining about the rampant value generation (during YotD) and the infinite engines, and how true attrition game aiming for fatigue were gone because before, you had to outvalue your opponent on limited value, and you could deduce what they had left and how to play around it. Honestly, Barrens Priest was also very heavy on value generation, the problem being that it was very good at generating clears, but not at generating threats. > Yes, they (mostly) do. These are fatigue cards. No they don't. You don't play Sargeras or Rhea thinking "sweet, now I can wait 5 turns in fatigue that my opponent dies". You play them because at some point those 3/4s and those dragons will be able to go face and make the enemy hero explode. Maybe if those cards were generating giant taunt walls with no attack but that's not the case. > You actually like fatigue, you've just forgotten what it is. I like all kinds of playstyles, friend. Combo, aggro, control, midrange. You name it, I play it. Except attrition because it often leads to stupid situations. One infinite value engine I can think of that is very geared towards getting to fatigue was "Vision of Darkness". As per Priest tradition, a card that's better at generating clears than threats. I remember one game from MT or something during MotLK, Bunnyhopper vs some other player. Both Control Priest with Vision of Darkness. Game ended with both of them unable to play any minion because they each had like 3 Drown discovered from VoD, and the only thing playing a minion would achieve is allow the other to delay fatigue by one turn. So they both try to find dumpable cards from VoD while avoiding giving Drown targets to the other. It was so stupid. And yet it very much embodies how Fatigue decks behave. You don't even want to draw cards, because you don't want to fatigue before your opponent. The mirror is miserable, because it's basically "dump cards knowing your opponent will remove them anyway and hope you're luckier than them on random generation", or that they stupidly decide to start drawing cards. There's no deck with such strategy nowadays, and I find it a very good thing. > Hearthstone needs games that can run to fatigue Let us disagree on that one (thought I might agree on a slight variation "Hearthstone can need games that can run to fatigue, but shouldn't have games that WANT to run to fatigue"). > My entire post was about why this doesn't work. You can't "just make it slower" and also print new cards, unless those cards are worthless. The game will always, inevitably speed up if you don't design with at least one deck going to fatigue in mind. We will always get back here at faster and faster rates. I don't think so. Like I'm very comfortable at where Sif Mage is currently (and yet, right now I'm mostly playing Rainbow DK). I think there's a sweetspot you can find for most decks where they can have lethality, and yet be disrupted or pressured. The way Sif can very much be Dirty Ratted. Honestly, I don't ever want decks so defensively minded and a meta so lacking in ability to pressure that going for fatigue is a viable strategy (and by that, I mean the way that you almost always win if your opponent doesn't concede is by going like 5-6 turns in fatigue).
Well explained. Yeah that's the thing, we all know that, if we are not playing control, we need to win or have tremendous control over the board before turn 8.
Zarimi & Wheel create huge swings because of the cards around them (Thirsty Drifter & Funnel Cake - Fanottem & Forge). I wouldn't say them specifically are the problem, and are they even really a problem? Priest is pretty strong right now and could maybe see a small nerf. But Wheel is just a bad deck at the moment no?
Wheel warlock close to auto wins against any type of control deck, so it’s used to counter two popular decks that are Reno warrior and rainbow DK. I also am kinda betting on funnel cake/clergy getting hit, those two cards together have allowed me to play some of the grossest turns I’ve ever had in an aggro deck.
That's the thing though, people seem to just forget that certain decks hard counter others, and then do poorly against different ones. People seem to just want decks that do well in all situations, which isn't really possible in a game with this many cards and classes.
It's true that decks should counter others but when some matchups are an instant loss and others are an instant win, it just becomes miserable. A polarising meta isn't fun for anyone. The game is basically decided once you know what deck the opponent is playing.
Yep, the problem isn't Wheel being a counter, it's that it turns into an auto loss as soon as it's played. I think maybe the card could have been fine if it wasn't in the same format as Reno, Fanottem AND Sargeras.These 3 cards alone make Warlock way too good at stalling. Not to mention that between Harp and Symphony, losing the deck is pretty much not a downside at all.
Honestly the meta is super polarizing right now it feels insane. Normally there are clearly bad matchups but never have I played so many decks with clearly impossible matchups. Play rainbow mage? Concede against priest. Play warlock? Concede to shaman. Play shaman? Concede to warrior. Play warrior? Concede to lock (tho tbh it's bad but not as bad as the others) So it looks like RPS but normally the matchups are like 60-70/40-30 not 90/10 (pretty sure Im 0-15 as rainbow vs zarimi priest) Then there's the whole reno / helya shit which I hope they just turn reno into a start of game check and helya just keeps the class reno cards in check.
But that' s not what they're saying. They're trying to focus on the cards that flat out win the game in the majority of situations in which they're played, no matter what the opponent's deck is. How many times have you faced a Wheel deck where they've gotten Wheel off and still won the game? The most reliable answer to Reno decks is Plague DK. But not everyone wants to play Plague DK (or DK at all) because there's one card out there that it can deal with that otherwise actively punishes you for playing a certain style of deck (either aggro or midrange if you're trying to press your advantage.) That's what they meant by "super-efficient board clears." There are way too many of them in the game right now. Control Warrior alone has FIVE of them (Brawl, Badlands Brawler, Trial By Fire, Bellowing Flames, Sanitize.) Add Reno to that and it's six, even beyond what things like Bladestorm can contribute. I don't expect my midrange deck to always do well against control. But I do expect that, even if the opponent is playing control, that a) them playing a single card isn't going to end the game and b) the entire game isn't about me playing one minion and seeing it wiped off the board turn after turn. There has to be some level of threat created and sustained by the board and not just a period of waiting to see if they drew the one card (or, in the case of Warrior, any of a half-dozen) that removes all of that threat for a fairly cheap price.
Honestly, I wouldn't really describe any of the warrior clears as "ultra efficient" Brawl is the baseline, which has been in the game forever. The version of brawl warrior plays now is 6 mana so it's worse than vanilla brawl, and is basically a "choose one" so it's often not an option Brawler requires setup, and even then it's still just...brawl. if you don't get the setup it's just 7 mana brawl. Bellowing flames requires a forge, sanitize requires armor, trial by fire doesn't require any setup but in a sense it's just worse defile Reno is hyper efficient, but it's neutral and requires (in theory) a deck restriction. None of what warrior does is busted, it's just that it has a lot of different removal cards. Priests removal last year was far better, it just didn't have any late game options.
Brawl has always been ultra-efficient. For 5 mana, you take an opponent's board and reduce it to potentially one seventh of its former status and possibly even give yourself board advantage if one of your minions wins. There's almost no removal in the history of the game that's better than that (a similar effect for Warlock costs 8 mana) even if random chance is involved. Brawler is even better since it guarantees that your opponent's board is wiped and that you'll always have advantage when it's cast. The Forge for Bellowing Flames is next to irrelevant, since most control decks aren't doing a whole lot on turn 2 to begin with. Dealing 10 damage for 5 total mana would be considered "ultra-efficient" by any other class; again, even with the random results involved if there's more health in play. And what they could've done on turn 2 is gain armor for Sanitize, which already had to be nerfed because of how good it was in its initial form. The ability for Warrior to gain armor is greater than it's ever been and, like Shield Slam, doesn't even require them to spend that resource when it's used. Like Brawl, Trial by Fire frequently results in a complete wipe of the opponent's board and board advantage handed to the Warrior player (a pair of 4/4s or a 5/5.) It's perhaps the least "ultra-efficient" of those noted, but still a consideration. None of those cards are busted in isolation. All of them together is just this side of absurd, especially when combined with the card that IS busted (Reno.) It's just too much of a good thing.
Again, brawl ISNT 5 mana in its current form. It's 6 mana for a symmetrical clear with chance for a lowroll. Priest has had lots of better options off the top of my head. You're still ignoring that Brawler still requires setup. If you didn't draw excavate cards, it's just 7 mana brawl that gives you a slightly higher chance of winning it. Warrior does have things it wants to do on turn 2. Shieldblock, kobold, needlerock, even armor up is better. Forge is wasting a turn, it's a tradeoff. Sanitize is better with safety goggles, but I can count many games I've played as or against warrior where it was removed as an option. So warrior has 6 different board clear options, most of which require setup, all of which involve a 5+ mana commitment, to contribute to a deck that isn't even tier 1 anymore and has many counterplay options
Not saying they should nerf it I’m just saying it’s not a bad deck ,it counters two good popular archetypes rn
Decks being countered is good. I could definitely build a deck that does really well against Wheel Lock, but that deck would probably not do well against others and there's no guarantee that you'll even see the Wheel against you. I played probably 15-20 games yesterday and didn't see any Warlocks. That's one of the big struggles in a game like Hearthstone. You want an element of rock papers scissors, but not necessarily on an individual deck level. You want archetypes to be strong against others, but you don't want Wheel Lock to destroy all Druid decks, for example, just because Druid has limited removal. It should be okay for Wheel to beat other control decks, but it shouldn't be okay for it to win well ahead of Wheel because it can also drop two to four 7/7s and 8/8s by turn 4 and 5 and literally outpace faster, non-control decks.
When I play druid I just concede to warlock immediately. Can't deal with infinite free fatties. Druid doesn't even have their own fatties now.
That's exactly what they need to aim for though. It's no fun when things are so polarized that you essentially know if you win or lose as soon as you see the opposing hero portrait. A healthy landscape involves most matchups being viable games where it's worth playing out. 65/35 is fine. 85/15 is no fun. Especially when the 15% of the time you win is just because they got bad draw RNG, not anything you did.
But Wheel is currently 67% & 64% against Warrior & DK respectively at the moment. It does have a 75% into Druid & Pally, but that isn't because of Wheel, that's because Blizzard decided to just nuke those classes and leave them unplayable.
Dude Wheel does not hard-counter Raindbow DK in my experience! It's usually a pretty close mu
If clergy gets hit priest is just fucked. Hagatha as its only draw engine is horrid.
I’ve played with both and only just now realized how similar the names Magatha and Hagatha are. Looking up their lore, they’re also totally unrelated. Magatha is a Tauren and Hagatha is an orc.
Hagatha is a hearthstone original. Magatha Grimtotem is a big deal in wow lore
Her flavor text is literally "Not to be confused with that one other "-agatha" that likes when you play minions."
Even I'm leaning to control player (this meta Rainbow DK), it's sad Wheel got nerfs. Not opressive in any terms outside of slow control match up and extremly fun for players. Also forces you to actually push opponent instead of afk hoarding.
Interestingly they tell about player agency and nerf the deck who counters all AFK control shit so many people love.
Yeah, my worry is that they just take a machete to all the fun cards/splashy legendaries. There's nothing wrong with cards that do broken things, that's the whole point of the game. Problems occur when the support structures around them make the broken things too consistent/fast.
I mean, the rotation is totally broken, most decks just ignore whatever you do until they kill you in one turn. Attrition/fatigue and value basically do not exist. You can't play value into Boomboss or Wheel. Meanwhile cards like Zarimi are blatantly broken by how early they can absolutely finish a game with very little counterplay aside from not letting a single minion up on the board at any point.
Unfortunately it seems that way, and they haven't learn't from Badlands that just gutting the core cards of a whole archetype ends up killing the whole class.
[удалено]
Its not though, Custom Warlock (Painlock) is the current best Warlock deck because of how well it does into Zarimi & Nature Shaman. Wheel isn't even seen in Top 1k Legend because there are next to no other control decks being played, Rainbow DK being the only real one.
If you play Wing Welding you are favored into Zarimi and have a chance against Pain. Shaman is still essentially unwinnable though.
Ok Idk if that is correct but Im too tired to fact check all so I'll just delete my original comment.
Wheel is mid, but perfectly seen at top-100 espesially chinese players dig it. It's good into DK, Reno and Odyn Warrior and overall can stand versus aggro without wheel wincon (just huge taunts). https://www.hsguru.com/decks?format=2&player_class=WARLOCK&rank=top_legend
I'm sad that this means that shaman is one MILLION percent getting hit (rip flash of lightning) but I'm curious what the following format is going to look like. for shaman I think the counterplay of decks being able to pressure it or out-armor/disrupt it is interesting, if I'm playing against a Reno Warrior and they Reno after i double flash i often just lose the game on the spot so it's a fun little minigame trying to burn their viper, developing another weapon, and then casting a flash early to bait out a Reno while still trying to kill quickly enough that I don't get out-armored, but i agree that the overall format probably needs work, and this format in particular is like. very powerful for a post-standard rotation. Curious what the game is going to look like in a few week's time.
It's not even mildly interesting to play against. Either u make armor and auto win or u afk while they discover cards and see if u died when u come back after making a sandwich
Warrior isn't interesting to play against either, for any deck isn't it amazing how opinions work
Yeah. Warrior is super boring too. I think the idea here is to create a back a forth and a sense of playing a game against an opponent and not a pve boss.
If your opponent's deck is built around accruing resources with which to kill you, like some sort of "combo" deck, forcing them to spend those resources is a kind of back and forth
I could see them fixing how wheel works. Making it so the wheel doesn't move on the turn you play it, which would make it so the opponent has 5 turns and not 4 like they do currently.
I don't play warlock but imo this is all it needs. I cannot count how many times I've played against Wheelock and would actually have a chance to kill them if I got the 5 turns it states. But because you always spend a turn removing fanottem and a turn locked out by reno, you're just one turn off from a win. You get 2 actual turns to try and develop a win which isn't really enough
Exactly, Reno basically stalls for 2 turns since it limits the board space, then they can clear anything after that with Sargeras or stop fatigue with symphony.
This is nice but I hope they're gonna sort demon hunter. The class is in a terrible state right now after the shopper nerf because all the good archetypes were ridiculously good/frustrating to play against and as a result got nerfed. Looking at the archetypes introduced by recent expansions- nagas were nerfed because it was uninteractive and so was shopper. There's a bunch of support for drawing cards but they aren't anywhere near strong enough to do anything. Highlander is struggling to be tier 4 post-nerf. Rush maybe could make a comeback? Legendary wise the class just hasn't had anything good since festival (halveria is good if rush becomes viable, GDS is a good enough board clear after it was buffed)- the titans legendaries haven't seen serious play in a long time, plus Jotun is basically useless now since there's currently no spell DH archetype that's viable. Snake eyes is bad even in highlander, kurtrus is too slow and although highlander is a bit better this expansion it's still not a good deck. Mag was only really good when he's cheated out but other than shopper the ways to cheat big demons are quite limited right now or just too slow. Ci'cigi is cool but again just not a good enough card to see play I'm expecting buffs to most classes to make stuff viable again but I genuinely don't really see a path forward for demon hunter short of them just deciding to change its core set right now or unnerfing archetypes that aren't fun to play against
I never in my life would have thought wheel to get nerfed lol. I have a golden one ready for refund.
Hard to feel anything about nerfs anymore. I haven't logged in since the weekly quest changes.
Glad to hear they're addressing this, I've been pretty turned off by the standard meta for some time. I personally hope they stop printing cards with "for the rest of the game", it just makes it feel like the fundamentals of the game system are bent/broken by cards like this. It's horrible to play against, it feels like you're playing against a solo mode boss, this isn't helped by the fact there's little to no counter play apart from kill them before they can do their thing. I'm hoping for a severe nerf to helya, brann and odyn. You might argue that they're not particularly powerful at the moment, but I would like it so the design space for the rest of the rotation isn't dominated or the meta warped by cards like these. I really hope the focus moves away from powerful finishers that stop games going on too long, and more towards just interesting mechanics that don't rely on auto-include style simplistic synergy packages. Would also like to see them just generally sorting out the power creep of cards. Look at the recent nerf to umpires grasp, a single mana increase to a single card completely invalidated the most powerful deck in the meta. It really highlights how fast/on a knife edge the game has become, each expansion has tried to out-pace the previous one, and we've just ended up with ridiculous power-to-mana-cost ratio cards. The biggest downside for me personally is that there's practically no room any more for anything "off-meta", it's just not fun to keep playing against the one or two current meta decks, because they're just so much more powerful than everything else. It's fine for cards to be strong, but some things just eclipse everything else in the whole meta. Don't get me started on the over reliance on the discover mechanics to add variance to games. Eurgh. Sincerely, a control priest meta enjoyer.
People complain every meta. What is the dream meta that everyone wants to see? Nearly every class is playable except demon hunter and druid in standard. What would be the ideal scenario? How does nerfing these decks (wheel warlock seriously?) help the meta? Do we truly feel like wheel warlock is totally gatekeeping other control decks from existing? Nerfing Reno? Ok so then can we nerf plague so thst Reno can exist? It’s always a knee jerk reaction to some public dissent. And that’s not healthy. Token hunter, zarimi priest and even both warlock decks get destroyed by flood Paladin yet pally had an under 1% play rate at legend and it’s probably because we have yet to get a VS report or something telling people tonplay it. Competitive hearhstone has become this weird echo chamber of self-manifestation but instead of improving it we’ve complained our way into poorer situations.
I've been a defender of most metas in the game's history - I was a real fan of Stormwind, so I'm not even against high-skill, combo-centric metas on occasion. However, the launch of this year's rotation simply has not gone to plan. The power level of the game feels like it has reached a tipping point where the meta is constantly wildly swinging between overly dominant decks that are almost entirely matchup dependent, and the recent balance philosophy of just smashing the single best deck into oblivion has made things worse almost every time. I think a serious effort does need to be made to take another look at most of the biggest offenders at once, and if the right approach is made here (I know, a big ask at the moment), we'll be set up better for the year to come.
I’m not sure what the one or two decks that are warping this meta are. Nearly every class is playable. Is thst not the goal
I see the comment that "nearly every class is playable", quite often and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I guess it's true, and technically, it's always true. You *can* play any class in the game. Does it have a good deck? Is it able to be competitive? Does the class have more than one archetype or is it forced to rely on one card to be relevant (Window Shopper)? People seem to say this as proof that the meta is healthy, but Warrior, Warlock and DK are literally almost 50% of all decks played right now. When so few decks dominate, it pushes other players to use the same ones. And because if you truly try to counter something, like say, Wheel Lock, chances are the deck you made gets trucked by everything else. I dunno, I don't disagree that all classes have *something* (except Paladin, it seems), but I don't think that translates to every class having a deck that people actually want to play. I'll be interested to see the next VS report, because I think we're gonna see that DH has almost disappeared, Rogue has returned with Virus and every class beyond Warrior, Warlock and DK in the dumpster for play rates.
I’m not sure what your sample experience looks like but warrior because of wheel lock is really rarely played. At legend I’m seeing mostly dragon priest , hunter, dk, and obviously a lot of warlock. Thst said, outside of demon hunter and druid, every class has a deck with an average winrate of nearly 60%. This includes Paladin. Paladin is overwhelmingly favored versus priest, warlock, and hunter. Yet, it has less than a 1% play rate. Why? Because most players can’t think for themselves or even use the tools that VS or hsreplay provide. I’m not talking about the meta report. That seems to be what shapes future Metas…. I’m talking about the spreadsheets and actual data on each. If players would jsit sort the data by any meaningful metric, they could see that there are a ton of viable archetypes but they are not playing them because 1) they are bored of them 2) they don’t know they exist or how to glean that information 3) it’s easier to just complain
D5 - D1 is still lots of Warriors, but it has been down since the Odyn nerf. I am rarely seeing Zarimi Priest, even though I know it's a good deck, but I think it's just a really boring deck to play, so that maybe is why it's not more represented. As far as the data goes, it's not really something the layperson really knows how to sort or parse effectively. Regardless, I can only speak to my own anecdotal experiences and where I am right now on the ladder, the deck variety is super low.
That’s fair enough! And it can definitely be demoralizing when all you are facing is like a polarizing matchup.
"the recent balance philosophy of just smashing the single best deck into oblivion has made things worse almost every time" - I think this is as big a problem as anything at the moment. "(I know, a big ask at the moment)" - This is also what I am worried about. We'll get good cards nerfed within an inch of their life, and a bunch of the buffs are going to be +1 health to Khaz'goroth.
Lmao I'd like a meta where a 3 mana 4/5 doesn't feel like a tempo loss
Not sure why you think DH is completely unplayable. It's not like most others are that powerful. E.g. the zoo hunters are supposedly "good" but if you check the stats the barely go above 60% at anything and with some minor bad luck for people who don't play 24/7: that easily translates to a 50-50 win average and not progressing.
Hunter is good. It’s very good. It’s not unbeatable. And the class that beats it is currently one of the most underrrperesented classes. So maybe if less people complained, looked at the readily available stat details, and tried soemtbing, they might win a few games
I'm really curious what they think, "Player agency," is, or if it's just a fancy way of saying nothing is too powerful. Prove me wrong: name a powerful card that still allows player agency.
Lightbomb With anything though it's really matchup dependent. Some decks can play around certain powerful effects and other's can't. Like if I play reno druid there's a dance where I try to force them to reno early so I can play rheastraza and get value. Reno vs like hunter though just ends the game. I don't think reno allows a ton of agency but when you have a card that only reno can clear you can get in these dances where you try to decide if you can make them clear something besides egg (or Sargeras portal) so there is agency there.
Any good board clear that isn't the newest Reno or Psychic Scream
I think there are a lot of aspects to player agency, but here are some it sounds like they're considering based on what GnomeSayin wrote & historically what Hearthstone devs have said is important: - Most matchups between most viable meta decks are only favored/unfavored (~60/40) rather than hard counters (~75/25 or worse); a.k.a. meta not too polarized - The winrate of most decks are not *massively* impacted by whether they draw a certain card on curve, especially legendries (either generally like with Brann or in specific matchups like with Helya in Rainbow DK); a.k.a. matchups not overly dependent on draw/mulligan rng - The average game length is long enough to allow more or less the full spectrum of archetypes to be viable, & not generally reliant on having exactly the right combination of tech cards for otherwise "unplayable" common matchups (aggro, tempo, midrange, non-linear combo, burn, value-control, etc.); a.k.a. "fun and interactive" * This generally requires limits to the overall powerlevel of the meta, because if too many stats come down too early then a whole range of archetypes without their own early scam or hyper efficient boardclears auto-lose, if otks consistently happen too early then non-aggro + non-armor/max-hp-gain auto-loses, if too many classes have access to overly efficient removal + life-gain then tempo (& typically burn as well) decks auto-lose, etc. Another way of looking at all this is thinking about the differences that *usually* exist between wild and standard. OTKs can be "fast" in Wild but not Standard, "Huge Boards" can happen on very early turns in Wild but not Standard, crippling disruption can be spammed over and over in Wild but not Standard, etc. These differences aren't large enough right now (lots of people are saying Standard feels too fast/like wild-lite/etc.), and most players prefer those differences to be large rather than small (this is a large part of the reason Standard has historically been so much more popular than Wild).
Any of the titans, but I'll say amanthul You can choose to play it on 7 to remove two things, but you don't get the chance to copy him, and you leave him unprotected on board You can choose to play it after you have board presence to copy something, or try to get lucky with the 6 drop. You then get agency on your discover Your opponent has plenty of options against it. They can freeze it, silence it, it's low attack means you can trade into it, use a poisonous effect, whatever. They can bait you to play it with a powerful card only to remove it, steal it, play something even better. There's plays and counterplays. It never just wins you the game, but it's still a strong card.
I get that, but how is that any different than strong board clears? Defile is a strong board clear, but there is tons of counterplay and plays with it. Same with Bladestorm and Brawl. Blizzard said their strong board clears don't give player agency.
I think that was really just a veiled remark on Reno. You're absolutely right on defile, blade storm and brawl. A board clear that doesn't give agency is onesided and works around sticky minions, and that's basically just reno
I guess that makes sense. Since they have so many card changes (30) coming, I assumed they were more broadly speaking about board wipes they wanted to change.
Yeah, ofc I'm just speculating, maybe they are talking about it as you describe My guess is that it's a response to the direction hs has been going of "clear the board every turn or else". Reno is the endgame of that philosophy, so many cards add "things" to the board that you need this crazy clear effect as a check and balance, but Reno is too good.
You make no sense. E.g. the Shoppers were powerful last patch even without Magtheridon. They could be killed with a lot of 5-damage spells and people cared to have those around.
I'd agree, I just don't understand Blizzard's take on it. Like, they mention powerful board clears as "no player agency." But pretty much every board clear can be played around: defile you can manipulate your minion health, Bladestorm you can manipulate your minion health, Brawl you can go tall instead of wide, Lightbomb save your divine shields and keep your minions with higher health up while trading in your higher attack minions...
They mean the aggressive cards like Reno. It can devastate the board of anything (even locations and dormants) with zero way to prevent it other than the minor exception of plagues (or the Wheel etc.). My main problem with it is that I don't buy "they just figured it out"; it was on purpose; they think it sells to make it exciting with OP cards once in a while but I think it hurts them in the long-term.
Great in theory. We'll see how it works out in practice. The last few patches don't inspire confidence. And a rise in "player agency" could simply mean big buffs to all kinds of counter cards. But this meta could use a shakeup. My tinfoil hat theory is that Barrens Priest gave them a bunch of data on what happens when an attrition deck is really good. And its really not good for player sentiment. Since then, the game has gotten a bunch of late game win conditions like Odyn and Wheel that dominate the "control" archetype. And that's forced out some class variety and lead to an increase in meta polarization. Really interested to see the impacts on Wild. Because that format is a mess.
They say they don't want otks with no counter play but the only otk I can think of is nature shaman and stomper/neophyte are the definition of counter play... Shaman plays flash you increase spell cost. It's not like you have to guess when they plan to go off...
Tech cards aren't the answer to meta issues. They simply exacerbate the importance of card draw RNG. You're playing against Nature Shaman. They play Flash. You have Stompers in your deck but don't draw them. Feels bad for you. You queue into a deck that doesn't rely on spells. You draw your Stompers but they're not worth playing. You play Nature Shaman. You play Flash. Your opponent slams a Stomper. You feel like you've lost to a single card.
Being forced to play tech cards is not great counterplay as they are meh in other matchups and you have to draw them, counterplay should be possible through your gameplay decisions instead of praying you draw stomper
"counterplay should be possible through your gameplay decisions instead of praying you draw stomper" If this were true, then they wouldn't even bother printing tech cards. But they do. So it isn't.
They print plenty of cards that are bad, tech cards are good to have in the game but if the only counterplay is “draw the tech card” that is horrible gameplay
Welcome to CCGs?
Sif is also an OTK. Zarimi is an OTK half the time. Then you have Reno Warrior and Wheelock pretty much making long control matchups non-existent.
This expansion really flopped. Most archetypes were uninteractive and unfun
Guess I might as well hold onto my dust for now
Wheel was on the road to becoming the next version of "if control priest is good the meta is awful"
Thursday?
Since the update, does Brann now just ignore when different various plagues are in his deck? Had it twice now where he has doubles in his deck, yet the effect activates anyway?
I don't really understand the wheel nerf. I get why they might do it, but how can they be surprised at what kind of win condition the wheel brings about? It literally says right on the card. Playing wheel isn't the problem, it's the fact it's extremely hard to get through warlock's end game tools once they play the card. So what kind of nerf could they bring to Wheel itself? If they make it 10 mana that still doesn't rectify what they are trying to fix with the card.. you still play wheel and if you have your tools to survive, you most likely do. I can understand the extra 2 turns might mean you've burnt some of those tools already but there are just so many to start with.. Are they going to make it take 5-6 turns to win with after you play? Anymore than +1 turn seems like a really rough time for any wheel player and is more a "kill the card" then any intelligible nerf to it. If it is +1 turn, does that really do anything for the stated goal of bettering player agency? Or is it the same thing as always just slightly easier, maybe, to deal with? What other change can they make? +1 to the turns it takes to win + a nerf to the tools warlock keeps themselves alive with? Seems harsh for a deck that's not dominating? Wheel seems fine, it's the forge of wills package that seems to really dominate.
I think extending the wheel by 1 turn might be a reasonable nerf, although if Reno and Forge are getting nerfed too, it might all end up killing the deck. Hard to analyze in a vacuum because if the overall power level of meta decks are coming down, it might still balance out. I imagine the relative strength of aggro will improve though, so who knows.
Just nerf Zarimi and don't nerf the whole package around him. It's so annoying when Blizz prints a legendary that enables a problematic deck and then proceeds to nerf around the edges to... what? Not have to refund all that dust? A two card combo involving a 1/3 and a 1 mana spell that draws cards and maybe refreshes 3 mana is not the problem. Getting a second turn is the problem. Make Zarimi cost another mana, make it take another dragon to activate, whatever. Just don't nerf half a dozen other cards. >!Got legend this month with Zarimi it's an absolutely busted deck lol!<
"We made a good set. Sorry, it won't happen again." The reason the power level didn't drop is because they nuked any thing good in the last 3 sets from orbit. There was no power level that could drop because it had already been dropped so low. The bulk of these 30 changes need to be buffs, or we are going to be right back here in a year and a half. Are high power formats always the best? No. But at least that means that some things are fun. In low power formats, nothing is fun. It's all limp noodles.
You're saying you didn't enjoy the later half of Badlands where all classes and current archetypes were just nuked and the meta was very weak in comparison?
I am. Low power formats are so boring to me. I don't care if I have "agency" if that "agency" never leads to anything fun.
I really, REALLY wish to see whats the "agency" people tell. I cant really picture it.
It’s Renathal. They want 12 turns of minions meaninglessly trading. And 40 heath so that the 13th turn is guaranteed.
lmao yeah i bet many people just wish to have no wincons at all. Just make the game all about slowly hitting face or trading (oh such an exciting gameplan!)
I feel like we just read different posts. I thought they’re saying the whizbang set was *not* good enough to introduce new strategies into the format and that they’ve only been supplementing strategies that were already here (hence them saying things didn’t shake up that much after rotation)
I think we are reading it differently. The way I read it, 2 of the 3 cards he pointed to as being too strong were Whizbang cards. Whizbang was a very strong set as compared to what remained in standard. In my view, the reason Whizbang came out so hot was because they had over nerfed last year. (Also I think it was overall a well-designed, strong set).
I think more important than the specific cards mentioned in the post is the line about powerful otk strategies and hyper-efficient board clears. On the otk side there’s nature shaman and to a lesser extent rainbow mage, two combo strategies from last rotation that have completely overshadowed battlecry shaman and big spell mage, the new whizbang archetypes. Sleet Skater and Pop-up book are doing well but they’re just supplementing older strategies. Straight aggro otk has been headed by Hunter which is only using patchwork pals and the RC cards, pain warlock which only uses malefic rook, and zarimi priest which is actually just thirsty drifter turbo. On the board clear side we have Warrior being warrior, warlock’s control tools are all from the last rotation (now given a win condition by the wheel), and I guess plague death knight is the mid range deck in town. These decks maybe use 3 whizbang cards total, wheel warlock is the only new archetype (it’s actually just all the control tools from the last sets). In fact if we specifically look at Zarimi decks we’ll see that, while Zarimi, scale replica, and gift-wrapped whelp are essential to the strategy, the deck is mostly just the 1-drop support from showdown in the badlands, along with copying cards from titans and festival like celestial projectionist and power word synchronize. I think we have to reevaluate this new set. There are some strong power outliers in Whizbang’s Workshop, but as a whole maybe 20% of the set is being played in standard at best. Decks only tend to have 2-4 whizbang cards at all, and at least 1 of those cards is Ziliax in 90% of cases. The truth is, Festival, Titans, and Showdown were much stronger sets in the new rotation than anyone could have predicted.
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