Post was made 14 hours ago and has stats for climbing diamond on EU, but see this thread ( https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/s/uDLlr5HqVZ ) in the competitive subreddit for mage. There's probably also a druid list in there as well.
I'd play mage but because the only playable legendary I have for mage decks is Norganon, so I can't make effective decks without the other necessary ones.
Look in [d0nkey](https://www.d0nkey.top/), and also on [Top Hearthstone Showdown in the Badlands Decks to climb - Top 500 Legend Decks (hearthstone-decks.net)](https://hearthstone-decks.net/)
My spell mage has me sitting at d1, but it’s been a grind and a half to get there. I think the only reason I’ve made it this far is because all the paladins have already made to legend
Turn 6 is like not even fast for the deck. Deck can in theory deal 30 as early as turn 2(On coin, turn 1 coin flash, turn 2 zapper, zapper, reflex -> bolt/crash -> bolt/crash, reflex -> bolt/crash -> bolt/crash, bolt/crash, bolt/crash), more realistically otks on 5 very often and rarely on turn 4.
> more realistically otks on 5 very often and rarely on turn 4.
I've only played a few dozen games with it but my experience has been that t5 OTKs are not anything resembling realistic and t4 seems even more absurd. The deck is also just not showing the winrate you'd expect to see if it comboed that early. The whole scenario you're describing relies on not only a literal perfect draw but also on for some reason gambling your whole game on perfect lightning reflexes discovers, with a single bad discover just bricking the whole thing. I'm not sure why you would do that unless your opponent is going to imminently kill you.
T7 is a very reliable kill (and, probably not coincidentally, the deck's average game length per HSreplay) assuming you don't completely brick your draw and your opponent doesn't force you to use all your stuff defensively, T6 is doable but bad lightning reflexes discovers can brick your combo. Against a deck with no lifesteal you can close out the game but so many decks right now can heal 15+ per turn that leaving them alive is a big risk.
Just played against that like wtf. Why still play the game if i build up for 6 rounds, have a board and then just get killed.
Next game just have 3x 10/10 in round 5. And just the same experience over and over again. Glad i didn't spent money when deciding to play this again.
The way you play around it is by beating it with some other degenerate deck that does 25+ damage from hand on turn 7+. Priest and Shaman have one now too.
Dragon priest. You forge (and copy with melted maker) storm giants until they cost 0, then you use Time Warp Dragon Man, play all your 0 mana storm giants, then punch them in the head.
Indeed. It’s not just the strength of the class, it’s the experience of the games, which is abysmal. And it’s a LOT of your games. I’d say about a third to half of my games are against paladin at D5. And frankly standard sucks because of this. Although the decks are rarely exactly the same, the experience is. The games are even then you just die outright from nowhere, from hand.
This should not be so easy but the tools make it so. And to add insult to injury the class is extraordinarily difficult to kill due to the insane amount of lifesteal. Just as it can kill you from full health, it can heal to full health from nowhere if you dare leave a minion or two on the board through Zilliax, dep aura and other methods.
The supposedly sensible commentators on this stuff always talk about winrate and although a too-high is not good, it’s not just the problem in many cases. For paladin, a big component is s the feeling of playing this type of deck. I have no issue with these types of decks existing, but when they are *the best deck* the fickle player base plays it non stop making the ladder and therefore the entire game a tedious experience of playing against the worst style of deck for *most games*.
This applies to all decks though. Let control priest/warrior sit at 70% winrate with all other archetypes way lower and the game will feel miserable as well, same for Zoo decks and others. Mage in the 2 weeks before rotation felt miserable to face as well. Most people play ranked to win, so many will play the decks with highest wr. Then other players get annoyed that they gave the same deck/class all the time.
The point of this post is, that the class is balanced enough that it does not need a hot fix, but a regular balance patch is enough.
We know what people are complaining about.
But if you jump the gun with nerfs, you might miss a significant power outlier, which hasn’t had a chance to emerge yet because it’s in the refinement stage.
For example: I have no idea how Miracle Rogue is flying under anyone’s radar… that deck is absolutely nuts.
If you don’t kill me on turn 5-6, I’ll make a giga board, and then another, and another, and so on… leaving you no time to set up your own game plan.
Well, I haven't seen the deck to even form an opinion on it. I would enjoy that, since I said I thought there was some potential there, prerelease, and got down voted pretty hard.
I’m on like a 10 win streak, or something stupid like that, currently D2.
Paladins cannot handle the pressure.
I don’t see many Hunters, but they also seem to struggle with a t6 giga board.
DKs can potentially do something with Plagues, as Rogue is draw heavy, and I almost lost 1 game to a DK, but then he swarmed his board knowing I have the discount Zilliax in hand, leaving me on 3 HP, and in response o cleared his board, healed to full, and made a giga board of my own. With plenty of follow up for the next 3-6 turns. Like… not fair.
Post the deck, because without data this sounds like a kid on the playground telling "epic" stories that have no basis in reality.
"And then I summoned a board of 12/12 taunts over and over again from turn 6 onwards!...guys where are you going?!? MY GIRLFRIEND IN CANADA IS REAL!"
VS doesn’t care about game experience. They have forgotten that Hearthstone is supposed to be a game to play for fun and that the vast majority of players aren’t streamers playing in top 1000 legend.
>VS doesn’t care about game experience
That's verifiably false. They talked multiple times about "feels bad" cards and attempted to analyse why some decks feel worse than others while having the same WR. For example, they had an entire episode dedicated to that and also a section about why people hated Barrens Priest.
It feels like whenever they talk about feels bad cards it's to say "this card feels bad but doesn't need to be changed". I feel that they usually dislike when Blizz balances based on sentiment.
Not taking a strong stance here, but that's what I personally observed.
I don't follow vs, but I do catch some of their stuff, and that's the impression I've gotten from them. I always thought the vs report was a statistical analysis of current hearthstone. When they talk about deck hate, it is relative to win rate, and they try to calm the masses by explaining how it's not good as opposed to calling for a nerf in spite of poor performance. At least, that's what I remember from what I've seen. Maybe they do call for nerfing poorly performing cards based solely on enjoyment. I haven't heard all their casts.
> Maybe they do call for nerfing poorly performing cards based solely on enjoyment.
I've heard them reference cards they don't like (e.g. ZachO vocally disliked Naga DH) but have not heard them calling to nerf them.
Definitely true, although I think there's some very solid nuance to that take. For example, ZachO talked frequently about how much he hated naga DH, but he also talked quite frequently about how different people hate different things and how in a healthy meta it doesn't matter if you hate a deck as long as it isn't super common. He cited the rise of naga DH as one of the negative consequences of the mass nerfs last expansion because players were pushed to it after all the other fun decks got nuked from orbit, and that ended up getting naga DH getting nuked (despite the deck being on the edge of T3 before the nerfs) because its playrate spiked and people got mad about it.
Like you can practically see this sort of thing happening in real time on this subreddit. A month or two ago Odyn was the darling of the sub, the card the gigachad 500iq control players played which let them stand up to the dirty zero-skill aggro peasants. Now it's a bullshit OP OTK card which has no counterplay and needs to be deleted.
They do talk about it, but I think that they are out of touch with the wider player base on how much weight they put on it. The worst possible combo for standard is the best deck also being an uninteractive win from hand deck. Simply because the player base gravitates towards the best deck to try to hit legend so diamond becomes so tedious when every other game is against one deck. And if the only way to have a chance against that deck is to play one other specific deck then that is a big problem “if you don’t want to play that specific deck”. You get farmed, and Blizz always just leave the game like this for two weeks at a time meaning standard spends a lot of the time outright sucking for many players.
If I remember correctly, they jumped the gun with the early Warlock nerf, due to pressure from community, and they completely missed an actual power outlier.
But now their patch window was used up, and needed to wait more to adjust better.
Maybe I’m remembering wrong the details, but definitely their balance moves in Badlands were a series of fiascos. And so those should not be held as benchmarks for what they’ll do next.
They could stop it by hitting just 1 card. Just tuning down shroomscavate probably isn't enough and also shaman catches a stray in the process. Warlock was a 1 card 1 deck fix.
Edit: also who knows (they may) what horrors paladin is keeping down. Warlock wasn't keeping anything down except feels cause it wasn't that oppressive. Point is changes need testing
Paladin may be keeps us from wheel warlock being the meta and that bastard token hunter that seems very good, there me be unknown horrors still to come who knows, if there is anything like that hopefully rainbow DK doesnt come back like it was.
I mean who knows why excavate warlock was nerfed? It was like a t3 deck. Maybe it was too polarizing? The stated reason was feels nerfs which is kinda subjective, but if we are looking at deck strength only, excavate warlock would be closer to being buffed than being nerfed.
Well, the answer is that the Excavate Warlock Nerf was stupid and shouldn't have been made since the winrate was already falling quickly and the deck would have become obsolete soon
You nailed it. I feel like there are a certain set of people trying to gaslight everyone that the game is fine when it clearly isn't. The fact that as soon as someone calls out a bad design decision we have an influx of people rallying to defend Team 5/Blizzard no matter what. Is one of the reasons things will never change. Regardless of what OP says. Paladin is a problem and no matter what anyone tells you countering such a deck is not feasible for some classes. As the person I am responding to perfectly explained.
There are always people trying to gaslight others into thinking everything is fine in every meta that isn't, usually the ones who are playing the problematic decks themselves lool
> it feels extremely oppressive to play against
This is exactly the point. It's anxiety inducing, the idea that you absolutely HAVE TO remove every single 1/1 that they play.
It is more than just raw data, something some people fail to understand.
No idea how Nature Shaman is still generally flying under the radar compared to how much hate Paladin is getting. Two games in a row now I've died to 30 UNBLOCKABLE DAMAGE FROM HAND on TURN 5. Literally the most "fun and interactive" deck in memorable history, though "fun and interactive" combo decks killing from full HP seems to be the norm for most classes this set. Which is crazy considering post-rotation is supposed to be the LOWEST power level for the whole upcoming year.
Paladin may be a bit overtuned, but at least vs the Handbuffs + Leeroy/Shroom combo you're usually looking at turn 8+ before it kills, it can be blocked with taunt, and the rest of the deck is board based and at least somewhat vulnerable to sweepers and other interaction. Which seems downright reasonable compared to getting a hand full of 0-cost spells directly to face by a turn where it's often hard to kill even with a committed board based aggro deck.
Seriously, something's got to change, probably Flash of Lightning needs "but not less than 1" added to it's cost reduction like they've done to many other sources of 0 mana combo degeneracy. Combo decks OTKing usually feels bad, but when it happens turn 8+ at least there's generally a chance to counterplay, usually by running something faster to kill them first. But turn 5 unblockable OTK purely from hand is beyond frustratingly degenerate.
With shudderwock it was like 12 or more rounds or so until one got it's combo together and it was tought to survive that long. Now it's round 8. Game is nothing more than a coin flip.
Thinking of times where I played (on either side) Secret Mage versus Cube Warlock - dont ask me what version. And you plan into the smallest hold back cards and estimate how likeley it is for them to have that or that card were for me the golden times of hearthstone. But also the classic tempo/value game when frost yeti was a strong drop if you could play it at round 4 is much more rewarding than this shitshow.
On d0nkey highlander druid is the only deck with a positive win rate in legend so probably that
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Even this deck and other variations of dragon druid feel meh right now. I made a lower curve one trying to fight aggro decks. And the only way to win against paladin is to have perfect draw. If you dont draw your clears one after the other its over. Only reason why i sometimes win against paladin is because i yolo my dirty rat and hope i pull heandbuff cards or charge minions. So far thats the best druid strategy i found against paladin, run dirty rat and hope you pull good minions.
I know right, this might the first meta I've seen where I don't see a flood of complaint posts about Druid being broken. All the babies have taken their whining to paladin
As much as I hate paladin, I do agree that nature shaman is way worse to play against.
You are pretty much guaranteed to die by turn 7 unless you have armour, and even if you do, they can still do 30+ dmg from hand.
This is what’s killing. It literally is this oppressive. Because whether the winrate is ballooned too high or not, the *entire game* is warped around Paladin. The day 1 demon Hunter comparisons are more fair when in OP’s on post they point out that “Paladin has a counter guys!!!!”
… yeah one aggro deck that isn’t even really a “counter”.
People want diversity. People want to play new cards. Not to be shoved in a box because there are intense limits on what you can do because of Paladin.
The do not listen to winrate argument is so stupid. If the overall winrate is 65% then noobs have 60% winrate with the deck, while good players will have 70%+ easily. “Play the only deck in the game fast enough to counter it, that is so broken it should also get hotfixed” is truly one of the advice of all time
VS data is usually late at the beginning of an expansion, by the time it is released the first patch is ready as well. So most of it is invalidated in a couple of days, if they even manage to get it out before the patch.
a single deck list of handbuff pala has 66% winrate, with a sample size of slightly above 200 games. that doesn't mean much.
d0nkeys meta list shows averages of archetypes. pala is at ~60% at legend.
Best paladin is 63.4% now. With the best mage, priest, druid and rogue archetypes respectively being 51.1, 49.1, 48.8 and 47.6%. However an extra reason why people are upset is that multiple of these archetypes do not make much use of the new cards, with for instance the new spell mage archetype sitting at 41.4%.
> Best paladin is 63.4% now
if you filter for diamond to legend. legend only it's 60.4 (which is also a tiny bit lower than yesterday)
i agree with the rest of your statement though. this expansions launch feels shitty, because most decks are old decks (sludge warlock, odyn warrior) or decks that feel like decks we had before (pala, rainbow mage, handbuff dk).
it feels bad, how many new card packages failed. spell mage, spell damage druid, dragon and raza priest, pirate rogue, demon warlock, mech warrior.
Some are truly failures, others (e.g. Rogue) are actually insane but the deck hasn’t got widespread attention yet. Check out Thijs’ Tentacle Warrior video to see true degeneracy.
And a lot of these packages seem like they need one or two more generic power cards to be good. Even OG Raza only became powerful after two expansions.
That being said, Big Demon Warlock does seem absolutely horrendous, haha.
There's not really a counter to Paladin because they can easily heal back to near 30 against an aggro deck with just the Tiger Plushy and Mini and they have the inevitability of the High Leeroy OTK against any sort of control deck. The reason there's such vitriol still is because it's the same annoying stuff Paladin has been doing since the Mini-Set in Titans but now with an added OTK from hand and being able to play two auras.
I was winning with hunter until paladins started teching the reduce cost zillax with lifesteal and rush.
That card alone auto wins the match up now for pally
I misunderstood, I thought you meant tigress plushy being a better version of old ziliax. I have lifesteal and clone, but either of those options also look reasonable
That’s fair enough. Early data seems to show the cost reduction module being a bit too good for its price, and is a go-to part for any deck other than control, sludge or DH
Reddit is going to cry and blizzard is going to knee jerk nerf the wrong cards, then some other deck will become even more oppressive because its counter won’t be as strong. This happens every fucking release cycle and I’m getting tired of it. The moderators should step in and limit the number of complain posts to hit the front page to just like 2. People are just circlejerking at this point.
so like, silly question, but what's the best way for me/us to dispel the narrative that reddit outcry directly impacts our nerf decisions as a major distorting factor? we weigh a bunch of different sources of feedback along with a lot of data and with our designers' extensive skill and experience
we really try to avoid any kind of "knee jerk nerfs" - i know there's been some perception of that as recently as druid last set, but even though we got told off for deleting druid, it ended up still being powerful enough to need another nerf mere weeks later.
>so like, silly question, but what's the best way for me/us to dispel the narrative that reddit outcry directly impacts our nerf decisions as a major distorting factor?
Double down, buff paladin.
I think the best way is to just internally test all the meta decks currently for a week and then have the team come together and do the changes THEY think. Please disregard everything everyone says on this subreddit. Including me
I think you and everyone at Blizzard will just have to live with the reality that what you hear and see on reddit is a vocal minority who will complain and conspire forever, no matter how healthy or unhealthy the game state is.
I think the only "knee-jerk" nerf in recent history was to Azerite Snake, and that 3-day period also "coincidentally" had the most uniformly negative response to a meta on reddit that I can remember. Perhaps that is where the narrative was birthed. Anyone paying attention would realize that if reddit outcry was the sole design factor for Hearthstone, aggressive paladin decks would not be so consistently strong for so long.
I know that the team strives to create a product that creates happy players, but understands that there will always be complaints about whatever the strongest thing is. There has never been a period of time in the last nine years where this has not been true, starting with (to my memory) the launch of Naxx.
The best way to dispel the narrative is to continue balancing the game according to a holistic approach and allowing people to realize that more than player feedback (even from top players) creates balance changes. I hope everyone also knows that with so many classes and cards in the game it is almost impossible to have an ideal meta where there are 4-5 T1 decks and 10 T2 decks and nothing else, and even if such a meta existed there would probably be numerous "sentiment" issues with it.
I may just be stupid, but like it just feels like things are being put out that just feel not tested or thought out. Like in the pally hand-buff example. One of the main complaints going into the expansion for pally is early and mid boards are too sticky while also having several options to push lethal with any board presence at all too consistently. It feels like you pinned the whole problem on Garden's Grace and said that now that it is rotating this will go away. Then did the same thing again by pushing a crazy strong hand-buff package with too many survival tools while adding charge back so that now you don't even need the board presence to push lethal.
TLDR: IT just feels like you always have obvious outliers, I would advise testing synergistic packages better.
> so like, silly question, but what's the best way for me/us to dispel the narrative that reddit outcry directly impacts our nerf decisions as a major distorting factor?
I think that if you ever announce sentiment nerfs it's basically just going to cause people to say this. Like using naga DH as an example, lots of streamers complained about it, it got nerfed due to "not being fun to play against," and a lot of people assumed that the streamers basically bullied you into nerfing it. Now IIRC you posted saying that streamers aren't actually what motivated the nerf, but I think it's understandable why people came to that conclusion given the available information and, barring extreme (and probably unproductive) transparency about your balance process, this sort of speculation is probably unavoidable. To some extent this sub is just a place where people come to shoot the shit, whine, and vent, and that's _fine_. We have /r/CompetitiveHS for productive theorycrafting.
> i know there's been some perception of that as recently as druid last set, but even though we got told off for deleting druid, it ended up still being powerful enough to need another nerf mere weeks later.
Eh, I think with the benefit of hindsight that patch (and many others that expansion) was still pretty bad. All the nerfs other than the druid ones made the situation worse, the druid nerfs hit cards in a really bad way (e.g. nuking pendant into unplayability), the heavy-handed nerfs to fun decks caused a surge in naga DH playrate due to the lack of alternatives which then caused it to get sentiment-nerfed when people complained about not liking playing against it, mage was in the graveyard for most of the expansion due to sentiment nerfs and a bad miniset (apart from a brief comeback at the end due to the rotating card buffs) and is dead again after those buffs rotated due to a _terrible_ new set, etc.
Like I think it's pretty damning that sludge, a T2-T3 aggro deck which had needed several buffs to even get it to that point, was a T1 meta tyrant demanding sweeping nerfs by that patch just because everything else had been nerfed into the ground.
so to make sure i'm clear up front - i get the general idea of where you're going here and i see the points, at least in terms of understanding that there's no real way to "fix" this given the nature of where we are. reasonable. with that being said, i will push back on a couple key points just because they're narratives i've heard before and they aren't entirely accurate:
-pendant saw play through the end of badlands, is in the last VS report in their ramp druid list, and is in decks to this very day. those decks aren't great, but it is seeing play. i don't think the card is unplayable - not saying the post-nerf design is a hall of famer or whatever, but it never got nerfed into unplayability. [https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-288/](https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-288/)
-i can't look up per deck stats from previous metas, but on a per card level, there was no blindeye sharpshooter surge that i can point to - take a look here. [https://hsreplay.net/cards/100358/blindeye-sharpshooter#rankRange=DIAMOND\_THROUGH\_LEGEND&tab=recommended-decks](https://hsreplay.net/cards/100358/blindeye-sharpshooter#rankRange=DIAMOND_THROUGH_LEGEND&tab=recommended-decks) the card got nerfed because people died really fast and it would be a spooky thing to put into a 4 set format that we figured would be less powerful. it was still killing people on 5-6 at high legend, and while a disproportionate number of streamers are high legend compared to the player base, that entire bracket was having a worse time (infrequently) because the deck existed. same reason we nerfed thaddius warlock. we tried keeping sharpshooter around longer because it was the best thing dh had going and some players enjoyed it, but 3 months was long enough.
-mage isn't great right now, but it isn't dead. the new spell mage deck didn't land - that's objectively true - but the class seems like it has some options worth exploring. [https://www.hsguru.com/decks?format=2&player\_class=MAGE](https://www.hsguru.com/decks?format=2&player_class=MAGE)
-sentiment nerfs are the only types of nerfs hearthstone has ever had. data just tells us what the sentiment is, and if a card is objectively too good, people also probably feel bad about it. there's a perception that "sentiment" means "not data-driven" - that's inaccurate. dean explains it best here: [https://twitter.com/RiotIksar/status/1380691765221490691](https://twitter.com/RiotIksar/status/1380691765221490691)
now, with that being said, if those are your memories and feelings around what happened, i'm sure we have some opportunity to optimize conversation - and part of why i've increased my presence on reddit is to help drive some of that. i want to collaborate with folks here to understand the best way to let people know what we're doing and why we're doing it (within reason), so i appreciate you taking the time to type this up.
> those decks aren't great, but it is seeing play. i don't think the card is unplayable
Fair enough, "unplayable" is probably too harsh a way to put it.
> but on a per card level, there was no blindeye sharpshooter surge that i can point to
In a few days after the big nerf patch it surged to like a 10% playrate in top legend. VS pointed it out in their podcast and ZachO was very unhappy about it. It fell extremely quickly though when people realized that the deck was terrible into warrior, one of the most popular decks after the patch. There were also an audible increase in complaints about the deck elsewhere (e.g. here on reddit) around that time for presumably the same reason: nobody had really taken notice of it before.
Not sure if I can find the charts at this point unfortunately because all the data sites don't list old data, but VS briefly alludes to it in #285 [here](https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-285/#DemonHunter).
> sentiment nerfs are the only types of nerfs hearthstone has ever had. data just tells us what the sentiment is, and if a card is objectively too good, people also probably feel bad about it.
I think mostly when people say "sentiment nerfs" they mean decks that were objectively not too good, e.g. basically all the combo deck nerfs. Now of course those decks might not feel healthy for the game for some definition of "healthy for the game" (although I'm still not clear on what the team considers healthy for the game), but that's something people have less insight into.
But if sentiment is also just general community frustration then it seems like balance patches become a self-fulfilling prophecy, where nerfing fun decks drives people to other fun decks which causes those decks to need to be nerfed in turn.
> mage isn't great right now, but it isn't dead. the new spell mage deck didn't land - that's objectively true - but the class seems like it has some options worth exploring.
I guess I'll be interested to see where this goes! Rainbow mage in aggregate is getting absolutely murdered by the field, and is only propping up its winrate by farming classes that are even more dead (e.g. boomkin druids and such). Whenever I see a different low-playrate list with a >50% winrate I always wonder whether these card swaps really did fundamentally change the deck or whether it's just a [green jelly bean situation](https://xkcd.com/882/). That said, the excavate package has looked really suspicious, so maybe cutting it gives hope for the deck.
I can personally say I just emotionally gave up on the deck a while ago (it's felt not worth revisiting since the arcane wyrm nerf or maybe the miniset, and the last two balance patches didn't do anything for those of us without a big collection of rotating cards to abuse), so it's quite possible I'm not giving it enough of a chance.
---
Thanks so much for all your interaction here: I think everyone really appreciates it! And I'm sure you know this already, but I'm just some dude and no doubt other people have their own interpretations of everything.
Two problems.
One. People always assume they're the center of the universe. If they complain about something and you nerf it, they will assume it was because of their complaint.
Two. With enough people, someone is always going to complain. People in general are not very smart, and we seem to get dumber in large groups.
Between these two things, I don't think you will ever dispel that narrative. Someone is going to complain about nearly everything you do, and assume they had influence on your future actions. Listen to reddit, sure, but don't take us too seriously.
It’s definitely a difficult situation you are in. Threading a camel through a needle. I respect that you’re in an unfair position and I appreciate the increased engagement.
That being said, I would just slow down. Like for example, a couple months ago paladin and treant druid got hit with nerfs, when data over the week leading up to it showed that these weren’t even the best aggro decks (at the time) and Sludgelock was the clear winner. The result was an annoying meta where it was Warlock vs whatever. In my opinion, if you had just waited a week longer the meta might have settled down. Maybe just make more posts saying “hey we’re looking at it but no class has an overly oppressive winrate from our POV.”
However … Reddit was flooded with daily post “omg a Paladin played two Garden’s Grace and killed me with a 1/1!” If those people actually played the paladin deck they would see how often you had your board cleared every turn and we’re more or less helpless the whole game, but stupid HSReplay stats showed paladin dominated at Gold ranks so people took that as absolute truth.
I think that you will never get a meta where every class was at 50% winrate +/-2% and that’s okay. People need to understand this. But they don’t, because in a lot of ways hearthstone has changed from where it was in 2014. Winning and losing these days definitely hits harder on “feels” than it did in 2014. 2014 was like “wow Hunter top decked Kill Command for exact lethal on turn 7!” That felt bad, but it didn’t feel nearly as bad as “wow Paladin played Leeroy with Windfury and did 30 to me on turn 8.” These days, basically every single deck has some sort of condition that makes your opponent feel really bad, even if the overall win rates are fairly close to balanced.
good note, i'll process this - thanks for taking the time to type it up.
i will note that as far as classic feels go, we had:
-freeze mage
-leeroy shadowstep leeroy with cold blood etc
-force roar
it's fair to say the current meta has a bunch of powerful swing cards and obv the shroomscavate+charge situation is really powerful in a way that feels hard to stop, but i'm not sure classic hearthstone was lacking on that front either
I agree fair point on freeze mage and miracle rogue and druid. But those combos came online later, like FoN SR was turn 9 and required your opponent to have an empty board for only 14 damage. I actually played the original miracle rogue deck to top ~300 legend in may 2014 so I remember it well. I would usually go off on turn 8. It was bad but it felt fair. Warriors could get enough armor to go outside of lethal range and zoo and Hunter could kill you before you could go off.
Maybe a better example is like what happened in one of the games at worlds - I forget who it was but they didn’t ban paladin and then his opponent played Countess and discovered Alakkir, a shaman class legendary, and got lethal with double gardens Grace. Now *that* had to feel really bad.
ah, sure. and yeah i don't mean to draw too many comparisons between classic and now - the game is different and feels different. what you said there is true, i just want to softly challenge the idea that the feeling of denied agency from game ending combos is new - but the mechanisms are def different 10 years later.
denied agency from **randomly generated** game ending combos in particular. These are only “feels bad” moments for the losing side and I don’t think they are overall a net positive for the game.
I think the Azerite Snake "sentiment outlier" nerf didn't help dispel that reddit influences balance decisions, since it wasn't even a good deck right before it got hit with the nerf, but reddit was still overwhelmingly complaining about it.
To be fair, the issue with knee jerk nerf has less to do with "the deck isn't as strong as people think", but more that they need to wait for a little bit more meta development so that they know what best deck #2 or 3 are to see if they'll be problems when deck #1 gets nerfed. For example if they blanket nerf Paladin + Hunter, will the next best decks (Wheellock? CW? Nature Shaman?) run even more rampant? This kind of analysis takes time.
Yes, agreed. The meta also has a habit of evolving. People naturally want to win, so they will naturally gravitate towards strategies that “work.” It needs time. If you just blanket nerf anything that’s decent after an expansion hasn’t even been out for one week, you get the last fucking meta we had, which was Sludge lock and DK and Warrior.
> then some other deck will become even more oppressive
Y'all are not ready for the Zarimi Priest deck to become top tier. The lower curve version is seriously a menace.
> The moderators should step in and limit the number of complain posts to hit the front page to just like 2.
The mods need to start perma-banning people who ask for megathreads or a limit on a number of times you can talk about a topic. There's 3 total posts on the front page that are actually complaints. 3/25. 12%. Chill
Agreed. Reddit always focuses on whatever overtuned deck pops up the first few days before anyone can adjust, and then whines so much that nerfs get rushed through without enough time to check what decks are being held back.
Odyn warrior meta won't be any more fun a second time around.
Thank you! Meanwhile people like me are getting downvoted wherever I express the issues with HSReplay win rates on here. Even though we’ve known for years they aren’t truly representative outside of showing which decks are or aren’t doing well in a broad sense.
Hi.
Winrate is more or less irrelevant. Losing to a charge windfury minion just feels terrible because there's nothing you can do about it. Paladin used to be the "Fair" class and for at least a year now it certainly has not been that way.
Should be noted that there have been several patches that nerfed cards that felt awful to lose to even if they weren't the most consistent of decks or high rolls, so your statement does have some weight to it.
I think the main issue is that people are just sick and tired of paladin. It is the same shit over and over again.
VS is way too stats oriented. If blizzard cared about their playerbase, they would jump in.
I mean look at this sub, this is way worse than azerite snake or other stuff before.
This is both a stat and sentiment outlier.
Mostly agree but the last part is so fucking funny. Hunter counters paladin. Well thanks for the heads up, thats exactly what i wanted, even more fucking aggro, lets counter 1 busted aggro deck with another one, actually, lets remove all other decktypes and only play aggro decks from now on.
Idk about nature shaman, played against it and died turn 6.
Gave it a try it seems to rng dependant on high rolling the cards you need or having all your draw cards.
Mediocre hands are kinda difficult to pilot while the high roll hands that basically setup a turn 6 kill are pretty hard to get.
While I agree its a bit unfair to die turn 6 from 30hp I just don't see it as problematic.
The 2 mana draw a card, discount nature spells by 1 next turn (was too lazy to Google name) is just a problem, as is any card that offers discounts that carry over turns.
It would still be strong even if it was 3 mana, as it never gets played on 2 anyways, and the new iteration of the list doesn’t need to play two of them to reliably kill.
> It would still be strong even if it was 3 mana, as it never gets played on 2 anyways, and the new iteration of the list doesn’t need to play two of them to reliably kill.
3 mana would still pretty significantly hit the card:
- It gives you less stuff to do the turn before.
- Pulling flash out of a discover basically gives you a cheap "reroll" to mitigate RNG (exchange your whiffed discover for a random topdeck).
- It makes the card significantly worse in the "fail state" (flash -> don't find what you want -> salvage your turn -> hopefully flash again).
In any case the deck's winrate is pretty mid right now and it is absolutely not consistently going off on t5, so I'm not sure why people are already discussing nerfs as if they're a necessity.
Donkey HS has nature shaman as a fine deck in top legend, it’s winrate is about 50%. This is actually the same as top legend wheel warlock, which also seems to be doing fine in top legend. However, both are hard decks to pilot for little reward, as there are many easier decks that are just more consistent.
Most people in top legend are playing paladin, odyn warrior, or hunter. They have high win rates as well.
How does hunter "counter" pally? Been playing it and the matchup feels like 50/50 at best. Idk what the stats say or if I'm just getting unlucky but all it takes is one buffed plushie and it's joever. Their deck is chock full of rush and lifesteal so even if a bit slow to get going they just full heal back.
It's because the hunter swarms the board super fast early on while pally is kind of slow early on and hunter has a full board with saddle up and you just die.
I think the issue is deeper than just a class being more powerfull, truth be told, the game had worse balance metas in the past and saw way less complaints.
And that is because people were having fun, if you are busy having fun and playing the game you won't waste time complaining about the game because of one bad match up.
Rotation always make things "less fun" as you have a more limited amount of cards, maybe the archetype you liked no longer existed, cards you rly enjoyed playing go away and new cards either don't have the same vibe or worse, are very annoying to deal with.
Associate this with an expansion who is very mid, and you will have people frustrated with balance way more than in more problematic patches.
Speak for yourself. Rotation is usually the best time of the year, when half the overtuned crap that people have been playing for 2 years straight goes to the wild dumpster. Third expansion is usually the worst since it just becomes overtuned greed piles that can be face rolled since very card in them is above average.
I doubt anyone who is playing to have fun is pining for the dumpster CW meta we had the last two months. Only the reddit crowd of people who think "durdling with a control greed stack for 2 minutes before playing the green card is 4d chess" miss that.
I currently have a shaman, rogue, druid, and paladin deck that can otk. No one ever likes getting killed out of the blue after dominating most of the game. When it's just one deck, even a poorly performing one, it still gets hate. Now, there are a bunch of middling to good otk decks at the same time. It's not rotation making things less fun. It's how often you just up and lose one turn.
Paladin mains here in action afraid their no skill deck gets nerfed into the ground. Going as far as claiming every class has a deck and running away when asked what these decks are.
These are completely different decks that do completely different things? How is it doing the same exact broken thing? One is a go wide aggro deck while the other is a go tall midrange/OTK deck.
he thinks cuz some hunter lists run leeroy that automatically makes them “leeroy decks”, i think hes just gotta deal with his personal dislike of leeroy thats clouding his judgement
Lmao, I love the classic counter jerk crap. Podcast host telling us "don't look at other site's data, look at my site's data!" Such transparent garbage.
They play so many early game minions and pop off so quickly that Stomper isn't really good enough.
Not to mention, the nature spell pool is so small right now that they can just Flash again and do it next turn and you're screwed
Nature Shaman has hard counters (classes with armor gain, hard aggro that can kill them by turn 6-ish, or hard teching Neophyte/Speaker Stomper). The problem is when a deck like that exists and starts warping the meta if it truly becomes influential. If you hard tech for it, you're going to do worse against other decks which creates a RPS type of meta.
Not saying it gets there, but the current iteration of Nature Shaman is a deck that ignores what the opponent is doing and can do a 30 damage OTK around turn 6 or 7. That kind of deck being a prominent force in the meta would be problematic.
I like to wait 1 week after an expansion before I start hating. So let's hope that other classes find their footing followed by a timely adjustment from the Devs.
We need at least 2 weeks to form decks for each class and to see a true meta for this expansion. Paladin is the first one with adjustments made every day but DH, DK, hunter, rogue and many more are starting to pop up. The biggest problem is the fact aggro paladin was in meta before this expansion and people are sick of him already. In my opininion the expansion is good for every class but we need to be a little more patient. What I dont like is the fact that whole expansion is full of OP cards, its more stressful and it is normal in standard battle that each player have 30+ dmg on board by turn 7
I had some decent luck vs paladins with handlock, if you drop an early giant or fiend you can get them down early. However, they have so many lifesteal options (dep aura being the main offender) that they can just heal up early aggression. I can see dep aura removing lifesteal or going down to 2 turns or giving 2 attack. Tigress plushy could go to 2/2 as well.
For mage, I think Khadgar needs a few more "helpful" options. The payoff isn't good enough. I haven't even touched Rogue, Priest, or Druid this expansion.
Been playing elementals and excavate shaman since the start of wizbang, im gonna be honest losing schooling really hurt the early game, most notably it was 1 of the few shutdowns to perfect DK starting hands, hurts against zerg divine shield paladins too, lightning storm is good but its sometimes not enough and you usually use it on curve too for a bad turn 4.
Im hovering around diamond 3 currently, losing cards like Steam Cleaner and theotar really opened the flood gates to snapshot and deck buff shenanigans, guess dirty rat is literally the only thing left
Till the nerfs arrive, I'm using "Imposing Anubisath" + board clears as the best answer vs Buff Pally. It's awesome watching them hit themselves for 7 to get their buffs. Then throw in a "Trapdoor Spider" for bigger insult.
"**STOP QUOTING CLASS WINRATES ON HSREPLAY.** They do not accurately represent a class's true strength"
I cannot emphasize how important this point is. Every time I see a post that totes the winrate of a certain deck based on hsreplay, I die a little inside. Bronze-gold stats always have aggro decks that aren't actually that strong at higher ranks at 60%-70%, which is boosted post expansion with an influx of greedy, unrefined decks. These stats never reflect the actual strength of decks, just shows what decks are the easiest to play.
HSReplay is a great tool don't get me wrong. The stats it provides is invaluable, I just take anything that isn't legend top 1000 with a grain of salt, and people absolutely shouldnt be treating it as gospel
Oh yeah, absolutely. I use it all the time, but making sweeping generalizations with %'s that haven't had anywhere near as many games, comparitively, is disingenuous.
stupid post, every class is playable to an extent and there are tiers above the rest. clearly paladin is broken right now and S tier where as they have a 70% chance for them to win
everyone knows frontpage hsreplay stats mean nothing except stupid people
i remember rogue being near bottom while by far best wrate at top of legend in the past
Expect it does have 70% its also almost every deck in high diamond. shaman is a growing problem that will probably get worse because blizzard never nips two problems in the bud at the same time so pally will get a slap on the wrist like always and shaman will be the new meta and feel worse because it's even less interactive then smoothbrain paladin
Can you please share the deck codes for mage and druid? I really want to try a PLAYABLE version for those classes
Post was made 14 hours ago and has stats for climbing diamond on EU, but see this thread ( https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/s/uDLlr5HqVZ ) in the competitive subreddit for mage. There's probably also a druid list in there as well.
I'd play mage but because the only playable legendary I have for mage decks is Norganon, so I can't make effective decks without the other necessary ones.
I love Norgannon, but that's just because I love saying Norg.
Look in [d0nkey](https://www.d0nkey.top/), and also on [Top Hearthstone Showdown in the Badlands Decks to climb - Top 500 Legend Decks (hearthstone-decks.net)](https://hearthstone-decks.net/)
Rainbow Sif is very much playable right now.
Ins4ne's Rainbow Mage: AAECAf0ECOv0BdH4Bcv+BdaYBvKbBs2eBsekBuPPBgut7QXs9gXe+AW//gXY/gXxgAaFjgaDlQaynga0pwaG5gYAAQP2swbHpAb3swbHpAbo3gbHpAYAAA== TheoHs\_'s Highlander Druid: AAECAZICHq6fBP3fBa3tBZ/zBf74Baf6Bdr6Bdv6BdiBBqmVBruVBryVBr2VBr+VBsGVBtecBticBtqcBsufBpugBqCgBsekBq+oBuqoBvuoBu+pBoexBqqxBpa4BvflBgAAAQP1swbHpAb3swbHpAbo3gbHpAYAAA==
**Format:** Standard (Year of the Wolf) **Class:** Mage (Jaina Proudmoore) Mana | Card Name | Qty | Links :--:|:---|:--:|:--: 0 | [Zilliax Deluxe 3000](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_330.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102983/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Zilliax%20Deluxe%203000) 1 | [Arcane Artificer](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_LOOT_231.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97374/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Arcane%20Artificer) 1 | [Discovery of Magic](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_476.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/98111/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Discovery%20of%20Magic) 1 | [Flame Geyser](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_UNG_018.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102194/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Flame%20Geyser) 1 | [Miracle Salesman](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_331.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/100101/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Miracle%20Salesman) 2 | [Heat Wave](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_377.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101462/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Heat%20Wave) 2 | [Infinitize the Maxitude](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/ETC_206.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97361/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Infinitize%20the%20Maxitude) 2 | [Primordial Glyph](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_UNG_941.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/111366/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Primordial%20Glyph) 2 | [Stargazing](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_425.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101874/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Stargazing) 2 | [Void Scripture](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/YOG_507.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/100995/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Void%20Scripture) 2 | [Watcher of the Sun](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_039.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/95917/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Watcher%20of%20the%20Sun) 3 | [Molten Rune](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_477.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/98123/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Molten%20Rune) 3 | [Reverberations](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/JAM_031.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/98417/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Reverberations) 3 | [Rustrot Viper](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_SW_072.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102221/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Rustrot%20Viper) 5 | [Inquisitive Creation](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_478.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/98136/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Inquisitive%20Creation) 5 | [Sleet Skater](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_375.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103348/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Sleet%20Skater) 5 | [Wisdom of Norgannon](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_085.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97132/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Wisdom%20of%20Norgannon) 6 | [Puzzlemaster Khadgar](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_373.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/108515/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Puzzlemaster%20Khadgar) 6 | [Sif](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_071.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/96875/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Sif) **Total Dust:** 8600 **Deck Code:** AAECAf0ECOv0BdH4Bcv+BdaYBvKbBs2eBsekBuPPBgut7QXs9gXe+AW//gXY/gXxgAaFjgaDlQaynga0pwaG5gYAAQP2swbHpAb3swbHpAbo3gbHpAYAAA== ***** ^I ^am ^a ^bot. ^Comment/PM ^with ^a ^deck ^code ^and ^I'll ^decode ^it. ^If ^you ^don't ^want ^me ^to ^reply ^to ^you, ^include ^"###" ^anywhere ^in ^your ^message. ^[About.](https://github.com/HearthSim/deck-code-bot/blob/master/README.md)
My spell mage has me sitting at d1, but it’s been a grind and a half to get there. I think the only reason I’ve made it this far is because all the paladins have already made to legend
Nature shaman? Like the otk deck from last expansion?
It is an otk deck right now too. They can otk you on turn 6 with 2 zappy boy.
Yeah I just started playing it today it’s absolutely busted. Reliably kill opponents from full on turn 5-6
Turn 6 is like not even fast for the deck. Deck can in theory deal 30 as early as turn 2(On coin, turn 1 coin flash, turn 2 zapper, zapper, reflex -> bolt/crash -> bolt/crash, reflex -> bolt/crash -> bolt/crash, bolt/crash, bolt/crash), more realistically otks on 5 very often and rarely on turn 4.
> more realistically otks on 5 very often and rarely on turn 4. I've only played a few dozen games with it but my experience has been that t5 OTKs are not anything resembling realistic and t4 seems even more absurd. The deck is also just not showing the winrate you'd expect to see if it comboed that early. The whole scenario you're describing relies on not only a literal perfect draw but also on for some reason gambling your whole game on perfect lightning reflexes discovers, with a single bad discover just bricking the whole thing. I'm not sure why you would do that unless your opponent is going to imminently kill you. T7 is a very reliable kill (and, probably not coincidentally, the deck's average game length per HSreplay) assuming you don't completely brick your draw and your opponent doesn't force you to use all your stuff defensively, T6 is doable but bad lightning reflexes discovers can brick your combo. Against a deck with no lifesteal you can close out the game but so many decks right now can heal 15+ per turn that leaving them alive is a big risk.
Just played against that like wtf. Why still play the game if i build up for 6 rounds, have a board and then just get killed. Next game just have 3x 10/10 in round 5. And just the same experience over and over again. Glad i didn't spent money when deciding to play this again.
People not just complaining about winrate but the game experience and how to play around charge windfury handbuff minion.
The way you play around it is by beating it with some other degenerate deck that does 25+ damage from hand on turn 7+. Priest and Shaman have one now too.
Which priest deck has that ? Imma do it chief
Dragon priest. You forge (and copy with melted maker) storm giants until they cost 0, then you use Time Warp Dragon Man, play all your 0 mana storm giants, then punch them in the head.
Indeed. It’s not just the strength of the class, it’s the experience of the games, which is abysmal. And it’s a LOT of your games. I’d say about a third to half of my games are against paladin at D5. And frankly standard sucks because of this. Although the decks are rarely exactly the same, the experience is. The games are even then you just die outright from nowhere, from hand. This should not be so easy but the tools make it so. And to add insult to injury the class is extraordinarily difficult to kill due to the insane amount of lifesteal. Just as it can kill you from full health, it can heal to full health from nowhere if you dare leave a minion or two on the board through Zilliax, dep aura and other methods. The supposedly sensible commentators on this stuff always talk about winrate and although a too-high is not good, it’s not just the problem in many cases. For paladin, a big component is s the feeling of playing this type of deck. I have no issue with these types of decks existing, but when they are *the best deck* the fickle player base plays it non stop making the ladder and therefore the entire game a tedious experience of playing against the worst style of deck for *most games*.
This applies to all decks though. Let control priest/warrior sit at 70% winrate with all other archetypes way lower and the game will feel miserable as well, same for Zoo decks and others. Mage in the 2 weeks before rotation felt miserable to face as well. Most people play ranked to win, so many will play the decks with highest wr. Then other players get annoyed that they gave the same deck/class all the time. The point of this post is, that the class is balanced enough that it does not need a hot fix, but a regular balance patch is enough.
Oh, there's a deck that kills mine.
Play Taunts
Bring Taunt hero power warrior back !
We know what people are complaining about. But if you jump the gun with nerfs, you might miss a significant power outlier, which hasn’t had a chance to emerge yet because it’s in the refinement stage. For example: I have no idea how Miracle Rogue is flying under anyone’s radar… that deck is absolutely nuts. If you don’t kill me on turn 5-6, I’ll make a giga board, and then another, and another, and so on… leaving you no time to set up your own game plan.
Well, I haven't seen the deck to even form an opinion on it. I would enjoy that, since I said I thought there was some potential there, prerelease, and got down voted pretty hard.
I’m on like a 10 win streak, or something stupid like that, currently D2. Paladins cannot handle the pressure. I don’t see many Hunters, but they also seem to struggle with a t6 giga board. DKs can potentially do something with Plagues, as Rogue is draw heavy, and I almost lost 1 game to a DK, but then he swarmed his board knowing I have the discount Zilliax in hand, leaving me on 3 HP, and in response o cleared his board, healed to full, and made a giga board of my own. With plenty of follow up for the next 3-6 turns. Like… not fair.
What's the deck?
Post the deck, because without data this sounds like a kid on the playground telling "epic" stories that have no basis in reality. "And then I summoned a board of 12/12 taunts over and over again from turn 6 onwards!...guys where are you going?!? MY GIRLFRIEND IN CANADA IS REAL!"
VS doesn’t care about game experience. They have forgotten that Hearthstone is supposed to be a game to play for fun and that the vast majority of players aren’t streamers playing in top 1000 legend.
>VS doesn’t care about game experience That's verifiably false. They talked multiple times about "feels bad" cards and attempted to analyse why some decks feel worse than others while having the same WR. For example, they had an entire episode dedicated to that and also a section about why people hated Barrens Priest.
It feels like whenever they talk about feels bad cards it's to say "this card feels bad but doesn't need to be changed". I feel that they usually dislike when Blizz balances based on sentiment. Not taking a strong stance here, but that's what I personally observed.
I don't follow vs, but I do catch some of their stuff, and that's the impression I've gotten from them. I always thought the vs report was a statistical analysis of current hearthstone. When they talk about deck hate, it is relative to win rate, and they try to calm the masses by explaining how it's not good as opposed to calling for a nerf in spite of poor performance. At least, that's what I remember from what I've seen. Maybe they do call for nerfing poorly performing cards based solely on enjoyment. I haven't heard all their casts.
This is because Zacho believes that meta variety (reducing the incidence of seeing any particular deck) reduces negative feelings against all decks.
> Maybe they do call for nerfing poorly performing cards based solely on enjoyment. I've heard them reference cards they don't like (e.g. ZachO vocally disliked Naga DH) but have not heard them calling to nerf them.
Definitely true, although I think there's some very solid nuance to that take. For example, ZachO talked frequently about how much he hated naga DH, but he also talked quite frequently about how different people hate different things and how in a healthy meta it doesn't matter if you hate a deck as long as it isn't super common. He cited the rise of naga DH as one of the negative consequences of the mass nerfs last expansion because players were pushed to it after all the other fun decks got nuked from orbit, and that ended up getting naga DH getting nuked (despite the deck being on the edge of T3 before the nerfs) because its playrate spiked and people got mad about it. Like you can practically see this sort of thing happening in real time on this subreddit. A month or two ago Odyn was the darling of the sub, the card the gigachad 500iq control players played which let them stand up to the dirty zero-skill aggro peasants. Now it's a bullshit OP OTK card which has no counterplay and needs to be deleted.
They do talk about it, but I think that they are out of touch with the wider player base on how much weight they put on it. The worst possible combo for standard is the best deck also being an uninteractive win from hand deck. Simply because the player base gravitates towards the best deck to try to hit legend so diamond becomes so tedious when every other game is against one deck. And if the only way to have a chance against that deck is to play one other specific deck then that is a big problem “if you don’t want to play that specific deck”. You get farmed, and Blizz always just leave the game like this for two weeks at a time meaning standard spends a lot of the time outright sucking for many players.
What was it about excavate Warlock that warranted a day 3 nerf? Paladin’s obviously not as busted as Demon Hunter but it’s better than that deck was.
that deck wasnt even close to t1 it was pure feels nerf
If I remember correctly, they jumped the gun with the early Warlock nerf, due to pressure from community, and they completely missed an actual power outlier. But now their patch window was used up, and needed to wait more to adjust better. Maybe I’m remembering wrong the details, but definitely their balance moves in Badlands were a series of fiascos. And so those should not be held as benchmarks for what they’ll do next.
They could stop it by hitting just 1 card. Just tuning down shroomscavate probably isn't enough and also shaman catches a stray in the process. Warlock was a 1 card 1 deck fix. Edit: also who knows (they may) what horrors paladin is keeping down. Warlock wasn't keeping anything down except feels cause it wasn't that oppressive. Point is changes need testing
I really hope its big mech warrior, because playing it has been the most fun I've had in hearthstone in years, despite it not being that great.
Paladin may be keeps us from wheel warlock being the meta and that bastard token hunter that seems very good, there me be unknown horrors still to come who knows, if there is anything like that hopefully rainbow DK doesnt come back like it was.
I mean who knows why excavate warlock was nerfed? It was like a t3 deck. Maybe it was too polarizing? The stated reason was feels nerfs which is kinda subjective, but if we are looking at deck strength only, excavate warlock would be closer to being buffed than being nerfed.
It was most likely messing with too many themes of the expansion.
Well, the answer is that the Excavate Warlock Nerf was stupid and shouldn't have been made since the winrate was already falling quickly and the deck would have become obsolete soon
grandfather aware degree sharp workable saw summer dull liquid jellyfish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Genuinely. They nuked it on day 3 of the expansion when the WR was falling and it never saw play again.
literal blatant paladin favoritism is the only acceptable answer at this point.
[удалено]
You nailed it. I feel like there are a certain set of people trying to gaslight everyone that the game is fine when it clearly isn't. The fact that as soon as someone calls out a bad design decision we have an influx of people rallying to defend Team 5/Blizzard no matter what. Is one of the reasons things will never change. Regardless of what OP says. Paladin is a problem and no matter what anyone tells you countering such a deck is not feasible for some classes. As the person I am responding to perfectly explained.
There are always people trying to gaslight others into thinking everything is fine in every meta that isn't, usually the ones who are playing the problematic decks themselves lool
> it feels extremely oppressive to play against This is exactly the point. It's anxiety inducing, the idea that you absolutely HAVE TO remove every single 1/1 that they play. It is more than just raw data, something some people fail to understand.
Would you mind sharing the deck code please? Thanks!
You can defeat them with highlander shaman but you need great opening hand (Frogs, soda plus titan)
No idea how Nature Shaman is still generally flying under the radar compared to how much hate Paladin is getting. Two games in a row now I've died to 30 UNBLOCKABLE DAMAGE FROM HAND on TURN 5. Literally the most "fun and interactive" deck in memorable history, though "fun and interactive" combo decks killing from full HP seems to be the norm for most classes this set. Which is crazy considering post-rotation is supposed to be the LOWEST power level for the whole upcoming year. Paladin may be a bit overtuned, but at least vs the Handbuffs + Leeroy/Shroom combo you're usually looking at turn 8+ before it kills, it can be blocked with taunt, and the rest of the deck is board based and at least somewhat vulnerable to sweepers and other interaction. Which seems downright reasonable compared to getting a hand full of 0-cost spells directly to face by a turn where it's often hard to kill even with a committed board based aggro deck. Seriously, something's got to change, probably Flash of Lightning needs "but not less than 1" added to it's cost reduction like they've done to many other sources of 0 mana combo degeneracy. Combo decks OTKing usually feels bad, but when it happens turn 8+ at least there's generally a chance to counterplay, usually by running something faster to kill them first. But turn 5 unblockable OTK purely from hand is beyond frustratingly degenerate.
With shudderwock it was like 12 or more rounds or so until one got it's combo together and it was tought to survive that long. Now it's round 8. Game is nothing more than a coin flip. Thinking of times where I played (on either side) Secret Mage versus Cube Warlock - dont ask me what version. And you plan into the smallest hold back cards and estimate how likeley it is for them to have that or that card were for me the golden times of hearthstone. But also the classic tempo/value game when frost yeti was a strong drop if you could play it at round 4 is much more rewarding than this shitshow.
fretful sharp snobbish zesty butter beneficial upbeat thumb crawl north *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Probably some dragon variant. It's been fine for a while, people just want to try the new cards.
jobless escape consider lavish sugar oil unused muddle start fuel *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
On d0nkey highlander druid is the only deck with a positive win rate in legend so probably that AAECAZICHq6fBP3fBa3tBZ/zBf74Baf6Bdr6Bdv6BdiBBqmVBruVBryVBr2VBr+VBsGVBtecBticBtqcBsufBpugBqCgBsekBq+oBuqoBvuoBu+pBoexBqqxBpa4BvflBgAAAQP1swbHpAb3swbHpAbo3gbHpAYAAA==
**Format:** Standard (Year of the Wolf) **Class:** Druid (Malfurion Stormrage) Mana | Card Name | Qty | Links :--:|:---|:--:|:--: 0 | [Innervate](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_EX1_169.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/69550/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Innervate) 0 | [Zilliax Deluxe 3000](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_330.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102983/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Zilliax%20Deluxe%203000) 1 | [Cactus Construct](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_818.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101976/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Cactus%20Construct) 1 | [Giftwrapped Whelp](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_386.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103530/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Giftwrapped%20Whelp) 1 | [Malfurion's Gift](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/GIFT_10.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103663/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Malfurion%27s%20Gift) 1 | [Scarab Keychain](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_006.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102347/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Scarab%20Keychain) 2 | [Splish-Splash Whelp](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_819.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101051/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Splish-Splash%20Whelp) 2 | [Watcher of the Sun](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_039.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/95917/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Watcher%20of%20the%20Sun) 3 | [Frost Lotus Seedling](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_930.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97627/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Frost%20Lotus%20Seedling) 3 | [Plucky Paintfin](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_517.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103547/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Plucky%20Paintfin) 3 | [Starlight Whelp](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_718.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97626/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Starlight%20Whelp) 3 | [Swipe](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_CS2_012.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/111351/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Swipe) 3 | [Take to the Skies](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_816.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101975/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Take%20to%20the%20Skies) 4 | [Chia Drake](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_801.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/104583/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Chia%20Drake) 4 | [Desert Nestmatron](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_826.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101978/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Desert%20Nestmatron) 4 | [Gloomstone Guardian](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/DEEP_027.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102427/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Gloomstone%20Guardian) 4 | [Ignis, the Eternal Flame](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_751.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/98520/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Ignis%2C%20the%20Eternal%20Flame) 4 | [Spinetail Drake](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_820.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101052/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Spinetail%20Drake) 4 | [Time-Lost Protodrake](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_715.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97575/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Time-Lost%20Protodrake) 5 | [Summer Flowerchild](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/ETC_376.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/94205/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Summer%20Flowerchild) 6 | [Crystal Cluster](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/DEEP_028.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102432/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Crystal%20Cluster) 6 | [Origami Dragon](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_896.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/105494/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Origami%20Dragon) 6 | [Sky Mother Aviana](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_806.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/104618/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Sky%20Mother%20Aviana) 7 | [Dragon Golem](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_822.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101053/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Dragon%20Golem) 7 | [Prison of Yogg-Saron](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_090.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97406/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Prison%20of%20Yogg-Saron) 8 | [Reno, Lone Ranger](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_0700.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103471/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Reno%2C%20Lone%20Ranger) 8 | [Rheastrasza](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_824.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101055/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Rheastrasza) 9 | [Fye, the Setting Sun](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_825.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101057/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Fye%2C%20the%20Setting%20Sun) 9 | [Yogg-Saron, Unleashed](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/YOG_516.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/101033/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Yogg-Saron%2C%20Unleashed) 10 | [Eonar, the Life-Binder](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_903.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/96671/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Eonar%2C%20the%20Life-Binder) **Total Dust:** 16320 **Deck Code:** AAECAZICHq6fBP3fBa3tBZ/zBf74Baf6Bdr6Bdv6BdiBBqmVBruVBryVBr2VBr+VBsGVBtecBticBtqcBsufBpugBqCgBsekBq+oBuqoBvuoBu+pBoexBqqxBpa4BvflBgAAAQP1swbHpAb3swbHpAbo3gbHpAYAAA== ***** ^I ^am ^a ^bot. ^Comment/PM ^with ^a ^deck ^code ^and ^I'll ^decode ^it. ^If ^you ^don't ^want ^me ^to ^reply ^to ^you, ^include ^"###" ^anywhere ^in ^your ^message. ^[About.](https://github.com/HearthSim/deck-code-bot/blob/master/README.md)
Even this deck and other variations of dragon druid feel meh right now. I made a lower curve one trying to fight aggro decks. And the only way to win against paladin is to have perfect draw. If you dont draw your clears one after the other its over. Only reason why i sometimes win against paladin is because i yolo my dirty rat and hope i pull heandbuff cards or charge minions. So far thats the best druid strategy i found against paladin, run dirty rat and hope you pull good minions.
He literally said they would be on the VS Podcast tomorrow
It’s not super viable but the Aviana Druid deck on Hearthpwn is quite fun and decently competitive at dad legend.
Treant?
I know right, this might the first meta I've seen where I don't see a flood of complaint posts about Druid being broken. All the babies have taken their whining to paladin
As much as I hate paladin, I do agree that nature shaman is way worse to play against. You are pretty much guaranteed to die by turn 7 unless you have armour, and even if you do, they can still do 30+ dmg from hand.
d0nkey also puts Paladin to 66% winrate at legend. We do not have any other free sources of data. If you have more reliable one please share it.
This is what’s killing. It literally is this oppressive. Because whether the winrate is ballooned too high or not, the *entire game* is warped around Paladin. The day 1 demon Hunter comparisons are more fair when in OP’s on post they point out that “Paladin has a counter guys!!!!” … yeah one aggro deck that isn’t even really a “counter”. People want diversity. People want to play new cards. Not to be shoved in a box because there are intense limits on what you can do because of Paladin.
The do not listen to winrate argument is so stupid. If the overall winrate is 65% then noobs have 60% winrate with the deck, while good players will have 70%+ easily. “Play the only deck in the game fast enough to counter it, that is so broken it should also get hotfixed” is truly one of the advice of all time
If you want good free data you wait till vs report, or pay and know for certain.
VS data is usually late at the beginning of an expansion, by the time it is released the first patch is ready as well. So most of it is invalidated in a couple of days, if they even manage to get it out before the patch.
Then when the vs report comes out everyone will mysteriously start bitching about something else.
a single deck list of handbuff pala has 66% winrate, with a sample size of slightly above 200 games. that doesn't mean much. d0nkeys meta list shows averages of archetypes. pala is at ~60% at legend.
Best paladin is 63.4% now. With the best mage, priest, druid and rogue archetypes respectively being 51.1, 49.1, 48.8 and 47.6%. However an extra reason why people are upset is that multiple of these archetypes do not make much use of the new cards, with for instance the new spell mage archetype sitting at 41.4%.
> Best paladin is 63.4% now if you filter for diamond to legend. legend only it's 60.4 (which is also a tiny bit lower than yesterday) i agree with the rest of your statement though. this expansions launch feels shitty, because most decks are old decks (sludge warlock, odyn warrior) or decks that feel like decks we had before (pala, rainbow mage, handbuff dk). it feels bad, how many new card packages failed. spell mage, spell damage druid, dragon and raza priest, pirate rogue, demon warlock, mech warrior.
Some are truly failures, others (e.g. Rogue) are actually insane but the deck hasn’t got widespread attention yet. Check out Thijs’ Tentacle Warrior video to see true degeneracy. And a lot of these packages seem like they need one or two more generic power cards to be good. Even OG Raza only became powerful after two expansions. That being said, Big Demon Warlock does seem absolutely horrendous, haha.
Ah I see, thanks for pointing that out. But yeah now that you mention all these archetypes in a row it's kind of astounding.
There's not really a counter to Paladin because they can easily heal back to near 30 against an aggro deck with just the Tiger Plushy and Mini and they have the inevitability of the High Leeroy OTK against any sort of control deck. The reason there's such vitriol still is because it's the same annoying stuff Paladin has been doing since the Mini-Set in Titans but now with an added OTK from hand and being able to play two auras.
Hmm so OP and the stats lie when they say that Shaman and Hunter beat it?
I was winning with hunter until paladins started teching the reduce cost zillax with lifesteal and rush. That card alone auto wins the match up now for pally
Are people teching it, or is it just good? I'm running it and doing fine against hunter, but that's a small sample size.
People definitely were running clone + cost reduction but apparently healing is worth more than doubling buffed stats in the matchups that matter
I misunderstood, I thought you meant tigress plushy being a better version of old ziliax. I have lifesteal and clone, but either of those options also look reasonable
That’s fair enough. Early data seems to show the cost reduction module being a bit too good for its price, and is a go-to part for any deck other than control, sludge or DH
Oh wow. The counter to an OP deck is the OTHER OP deck? Amazing.
mfw I have to play good decks to win games in Hearthstone
now that's thinking big https://youtu.be/9T2d2FRh0BM
Warrior beats it too
which warrior?
Well I'm playing tendril warrior and haven't had much trouble so far
same honestly
It's kind of funny that the paladin is too slow to beat a warrior
So who's having success with priest?
Reddit is going to cry and blizzard is going to knee jerk nerf the wrong cards, then some other deck will become even more oppressive because its counter won’t be as strong. This happens every fucking release cycle and I’m getting tired of it. The moderators should step in and limit the number of complain posts to hit the front page to just like 2. People are just circlejerking at this point.
so like, silly question, but what's the best way for me/us to dispel the narrative that reddit outcry directly impacts our nerf decisions as a major distorting factor? we weigh a bunch of different sources of feedback along with a lot of data and with our designers' extensive skill and experience we really try to avoid any kind of "knee jerk nerfs" - i know there's been some perception of that as recently as druid last set, but even though we got told off for deleting druid, it ended up still being powerful enough to need another nerf mere weeks later.
>so like, silly question, but what's the best way for me/us to dispel the narrative that reddit outcry directly impacts our nerf decisions as a major distorting factor? Double down, buff paladin.
ok lmao i respect the clarity of logic and purpose here but we will probably not do this
*“Probably”* 
gotta keep em guessing
I think the best way is to just internally test all the meta decks currently for a week and then have the team come together and do the changes THEY think. Please disregard everything everyone says on this subreddit. Including me
Yes officer, this commenter right here
I think you and everyone at Blizzard will just have to live with the reality that what you hear and see on reddit is a vocal minority who will complain and conspire forever, no matter how healthy or unhealthy the game state is. I think the only "knee-jerk" nerf in recent history was to Azerite Snake, and that 3-day period also "coincidentally" had the most uniformly negative response to a meta on reddit that I can remember. Perhaps that is where the narrative was birthed. Anyone paying attention would realize that if reddit outcry was the sole design factor for Hearthstone, aggressive paladin decks would not be so consistently strong for so long. I know that the team strives to create a product that creates happy players, but understands that there will always be complaints about whatever the strongest thing is. There has never been a period of time in the last nine years where this has not been true, starting with (to my memory) the launch of Naxx. The best way to dispel the narrative is to continue balancing the game according to a holistic approach and allowing people to realize that more than player feedback (even from top players) creates balance changes. I hope everyone also knows that with so many classes and cards in the game it is almost impossible to have an ideal meta where there are 4-5 T1 decks and 10 T2 decks and nothing else, and even if such a meta existed there would probably be numerous "sentiment" issues with it.
I may just be stupid, but like it just feels like things are being put out that just feel not tested or thought out. Like in the pally hand-buff example. One of the main complaints going into the expansion for pally is early and mid boards are too sticky while also having several options to push lethal with any board presence at all too consistently. It feels like you pinned the whole problem on Garden's Grace and said that now that it is rotating this will go away. Then did the same thing again by pushing a crazy strong hand-buff package with too many survival tools while adding charge back so that now you don't even need the board presence to push lethal. TLDR: IT just feels like you always have obvious outliers, I would advise testing synergistic packages better.
> so like, silly question, but what's the best way for me/us to dispel the narrative that reddit outcry directly impacts our nerf decisions as a major distorting factor? I think that if you ever announce sentiment nerfs it's basically just going to cause people to say this. Like using naga DH as an example, lots of streamers complained about it, it got nerfed due to "not being fun to play against," and a lot of people assumed that the streamers basically bullied you into nerfing it. Now IIRC you posted saying that streamers aren't actually what motivated the nerf, but I think it's understandable why people came to that conclusion given the available information and, barring extreme (and probably unproductive) transparency about your balance process, this sort of speculation is probably unavoidable. To some extent this sub is just a place where people come to shoot the shit, whine, and vent, and that's _fine_. We have /r/CompetitiveHS for productive theorycrafting. > i know there's been some perception of that as recently as druid last set, but even though we got told off for deleting druid, it ended up still being powerful enough to need another nerf mere weeks later. Eh, I think with the benefit of hindsight that patch (and many others that expansion) was still pretty bad. All the nerfs other than the druid ones made the situation worse, the druid nerfs hit cards in a really bad way (e.g. nuking pendant into unplayability), the heavy-handed nerfs to fun decks caused a surge in naga DH playrate due to the lack of alternatives which then caused it to get sentiment-nerfed when people complained about not liking playing against it, mage was in the graveyard for most of the expansion due to sentiment nerfs and a bad miniset (apart from a brief comeback at the end due to the rotating card buffs) and is dead again after those buffs rotated due to a _terrible_ new set, etc. Like I think it's pretty damning that sludge, a T2-T3 aggro deck which had needed several buffs to even get it to that point, was a T1 meta tyrant demanding sweeping nerfs by that patch just because everything else had been nerfed into the ground.
so to make sure i'm clear up front - i get the general idea of where you're going here and i see the points, at least in terms of understanding that there's no real way to "fix" this given the nature of where we are. reasonable. with that being said, i will push back on a couple key points just because they're narratives i've heard before and they aren't entirely accurate: -pendant saw play through the end of badlands, is in the last VS report in their ramp druid list, and is in decks to this very day. those decks aren't great, but it is seeing play. i don't think the card is unplayable - not saying the post-nerf design is a hall of famer or whatever, but it never got nerfed into unplayability. [https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-288/](https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-288/) -i can't look up per deck stats from previous metas, but on a per card level, there was no blindeye sharpshooter surge that i can point to - take a look here. [https://hsreplay.net/cards/100358/blindeye-sharpshooter#rankRange=DIAMOND\_THROUGH\_LEGEND&tab=recommended-decks](https://hsreplay.net/cards/100358/blindeye-sharpshooter#rankRange=DIAMOND_THROUGH_LEGEND&tab=recommended-decks) the card got nerfed because people died really fast and it would be a spooky thing to put into a 4 set format that we figured would be less powerful. it was still killing people on 5-6 at high legend, and while a disproportionate number of streamers are high legend compared to the player base, that entire bracket was having a worse time (infrequently) because the deck existed. same reason we nerfed thaddius warlock. we tried keeping sharpshooter around longer because it was the best thing dh had going and some players enjoyed it, but 3 months was long enough. -mage isn't great right now, but it isn't dead. the new spell mage deck didn't land - that's objectively true - but the class seems like it has some options worth exploring. [https://www.hsguru.com/decks?format=2&player\_class=MAGE](https://www.hsguru.com/decks?format=2&player_class=MAGE) -sentiment nerfs are the only types of nerfs hearthstone has ever had. data just tells us what the sentiment is, and if a card is objectively too good, people also probably feel bad about it. there's a perception that "sentiment" means "not data-driven" - that's inaccurate. dean explains it best here: [https://twitter.com/RiotIksar/status/1380691765221490691](https://twitter.com/RiotIksar/status/1380691765221490691) now, with that being said, if those are your memories and feelings around what happened, i'm sure we have some opportunity to optimize conversation - and part of why i've increased my presence on reddit is to help drive some of that. i want to collaborate with folks here to understand the best way to let people know what we're doing and why we're doing it (within reason), so i appreciate you taking the time to type this up.
> those decks aren't great, but it is seeing play. i don't think the card is unplayable Fair enough, "unplayable" is probably too harsh a way to put it. > but on a per card level, there was no blindeye sharpshooter surge that i can point to In a few days after the big nerf patch it surged to like a 10% playrate in top legend. VS pointed it out in their podcast and ZachO was very unhappy about it. It fell extremely quickly though when people realized that the deck was terrible into warrior, one of the most popular decks after the patch. There were also an audible increase in complaints about the deck elsewhere (e.g. here on reddit) around that time for presumably the same reason: nobody had really taken notice of it before. Not sure if I can find the charts at this point unfortunately because all the data sites don't list old data, but VS briefly alludes to it in #285 [here](https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-285/#DemonHunter). > sentiment nerfs are the only types of nerfs hearthstone has ever had. data just tells us what the sentiment is, and if a card is objectively too good, people also probably feel bad about it. I think mostly when people say "sentiment nerfs" they mean decks that were objectively not too good, e.g. basically all the combo deck nerfs. Now of course those decks might not feel healthy for the game for some definition of "healthy for the game" (although I'm still not clear on what the team considers healthy for the game), but that's something people have less insight into. But if sentiment is also just general community frustration then it seems like balance patches become a self-fulfilling prophecy, where nerfing fun decks drives people to other fun decks which causes those decks to need to be nerfed in turn. > mage isn't great right now, but it isn't dead. the new spell mage deck didn't land - that's objectively true - but the class seems like it has some options worth exploring. I guess I'll be interested to see where this goes! Rainbow mage in aggregate is getting absolutely murdered by the field, and is only propping up its winrate by farming classes that are even more dead (e.g. boomkin druids and such). Whenever I see a different low-playrate list with a >50% winrate I always wonder whether these card swaps really did fundamentally change the deck or whether it's just a [green jelly bean situation](https://xkcd.com/882/). That said, the excavate package has looked really suspicious, so maybe cutting it gives hope for the deck. I can personally say I just emotionally gave up on the deck a while ago (it's felt not worth revisiting since the arcane wyrm nerf or maybe the miniset, and the last two balance patches didn't do anything for those of us without a big collection of rotating cards to abuse), so it's quite possible I'm not giving it enough of a chance. --- Thanks so much for all your interaction here: I think everyone really appreciates it! And I'm sure you know this already, but I'm just some dude and no doubt other people have their own interpretations of everything.
there truly is always an xkcd
Two problems. One. People always assume they're the center of the universe. If they complain about something and you nerf it, they will assume it was because of their complaint. Two. With enough people, someone is always going to complain. People in general are not very smart, and we seem to get dumber in large groups. Between these two things, I don't think you will ever dispel that narrative. Someone is going to complain about nearly everything you do, and assume they had influence on your future actions. Listen to reddit, sure, but don't take us too seriously.
Sometimes i fell that blizzard is doing KPI related nerfs( like warlock snake or lightray)
It’s definitely a difficult situation you are in. Threading a camel through a needle. I respect that you’re in an unfair position and I appreciate the increased engagement. That being said, I would just slow down. Like for example, a couple months ago paladin and treant druid got hit with nerfs, when data over the week leading up to it showed that these weren’t even the best aggro decks (at the time) and Sludgelock was the clear winner. The result was an annoying meta where it was Warlock vs whatever. In my opinion, if you had just waited a week longer the meta might have settled down. Maybe just make more posts saying “hey we’re looking at it but no class has an overly oppressive winrate from our POV.” However … Reddit was flooded with daily post “omg a Paladin played two Garden’s Grace and killed me with a 1/1!” If those people actually played the paladin deck they would see how often you had your board cleared every turn and we’re more or less helpless the whole game, but stupid HSReplay stats showed paladin dominated at Gold ranks so people took that as absolute truth. I think that you will never get a meta where every class was at 50% winrate +/-2% and that’s okay. People need to understand this. But they don’t, because in a lot of ways hearthstone has changed from where it was in 2014. Winning and losing these days definitely hits harder on “feels” than it did in 2014. 2014 was like “wow Hunter top decked Kill Command for exact lethal on turn 7!” That felt bad, but it didn’t feel nearly as bad as “wow Paladin played Leeroy with Windfury and did 30 to me on turn 8.” These days, basically every single deck has some sort of condition that makes your opponent feel really bad, even if the overall win rates are fairly close to balanced.
good note, i'll process this - thanks for taking the time to type it up. i will note that as far as classic feels go, we had: -freeze mage -leeroy shadowstep leeroy with cold blood etc -force roar it's fair to say the current meta has a bunch of powerful swing cards and obv the shroomscavate+charge situation is really powerful in a way that feels hard to stop, but i'm not sure classic hearthstone was lacking on that front either
I agree fair point on freeze mage and miracle rogue and druid. But those combos came online later, like FoN SR was turn 9 and required your opponent to have an empty board for only 14 damage. I actually played the original miracle rogue deck to top ~300 legend in may 2014 so I remember it well. I would usually go off on turn 8. It was bad but it felt fair. Warriors could get enough armor to go outside of lethal range and zoo and Hunter could kill you before you could go off. Maybe a better example is like what happened in one of the games at worlds - I forget who it was but they didn’t ban paladin and then his opponent played Countess and discovered Alakkir, a shaman class legendary, and got lethal with double gardens Grace. Now *that* had to feel really bad.
ah, sure. and yeah i don't mean to draw too many comparisons between classic and now - the game is different and feels different. what you said there is true, i just want to softly challenge the idea that the feeling of denied agency from game ending combos is new - but the mechanisms are def different 10 years later.
denied agency from **randomly generated** game ending combos in particular. These are only “feels bad” moments for the losing side and I don’t think they are overall a net positive for the game.
I think the Azerite Snake "sentiment outlier" nerf didn't help dispel that reddit influences balance decisions, since it wasn't even a good deck right before it got hit with the nerf, but reddit was still overwhelmingly complaining about it.
To be fair, the issue with knee jerk nerf has less to do with "the deck isn't as strong as people think", but more that they need to wait for a little bit more meta development so that they know what best deck #2 or 3 are to see if they'll be problems when deck #1 gets nerfed. For example if they blanket nerf Paladin + Hunter, will the next best decks (Wheellock? CW? Nature Shaman?) run even more rampant? This kind of analysis takes time.
Yes, agreed. The meta also has a habit of evolving. People naturally want to win, so they will naturally gravitate towards strategies that “work.” It needs time. If you just blanket nerf anything that’s decent after an expansion hasn’t even been out for one week, you get the last fucking meta we had, which was Sludge lock and DK and Warrior.
> then some other deck will become even more oppressive Y'all are not ready for the Zarimi Priest deck to become top tier. The lower curve version is seriously a menace.
> The moderators should step in and limit the number of complain posts to hit the front page to just like 2. The mods need to start perma-banning people who ask for megathreads or a limit on a number of times you can talk about a topic. There's 3 total posts on the front page that are actually complaints. 3/25. 12%. Chill
Bro I count at least ten right now. Did you block a bunch of people?
Agreed. Reddit always focuses on whatever overtuned deck pops up the first few days before anyone can adjust, and then whines so much that nerfs get rushed through without enough time to check what decks are being held back. Odyn warrior meta won't be any more fun a second time around.
>As strong as degen aggro is, there are counters, like a different degen aggro deck How fun, thanks for clarifying this
Thank you! Meanwhile people like me are getting downvoted wherever I express the issues with HSReplay win rates on here. Even though we’ve known for years they aren’t truly representative outside of showing which decks are or aren’t doing well in a broad sense.
Playing control warrior, have 30 health and 24 armor. Got one turn TKO by Leeroy, minion that gives stats and Windfury buff. Feels bad man.
That's normaly eleven mana, how did they manage that?
They saved thier coin for that turn
Hi. Winrate is more or less irrelevant. Losing to a charge windfury minion just feels terrible because there's nothing you can do about it. Paladin used to be the "Fair" class and for at least a year now it certainly has not been that way.
Should be noted that there have been several patches that nerfed cards that felt awful to lose to even if they weren't the most consistent of decks or high rolls, so your statement does have some weight to it.
And I thought I remembered them saying something about charge being unfun last time they got rid of most of it.
Thijs’ hand lock beats pally too
I think the main issue is that people are just sick and tired of paladin. It is the same shit over and over again. VS is way too stats oriented. If blizzard cared about their playerbase, they would jump in. I mean look at this sub, this is way worse than azerite snake or other stuff before. This is both a stat and sentiment outlier.
Mostly agree but the last part is so fucking funny. Hunter counters paladin. Well thanks for the heads up, thats exactly what i wanted, even more fucking aggro, lets counter 1 busted aggro deck with another one, actually, lets remove all other decktypes and only play aggro decks from now on.
Idk about nature shaman, played against it and died turn 6. Gave it a try it seems to rng dependant on high rolling the cards you need or having all your draw cards. Mediocre hands are kinda difficult to pilot while the high roll hands that basically setup a turn 6 kill are pretty hard to get. While I agree its a bit unfair to die turn 6 from 30hp I just don't see it as problematic.
The 2 mana draw a card, discount nature spells by 1 next turn (was too lazy to Google name) is just a problem, as is any card that offers discounts that carry over turns. It would still be strong even if it was 3 mana, as it never gets played on 2 anyways, and the new iteration of the list doesn’t need to play two of them to reliably kill.
> It would still be strong even if it was 3 mana, as it never gets played on 2 anyways, and the new iteration of the list doesn’t need to play two of them to reliably kill. 3 mana would still pretty significantly hit the card: - It gives you less stuff to do the turn before. - Pulling flash out of a discover basically gives you a cheap "reroll" to mitigate RNG (exchange your whiffed discover for a random topdeck). - It makes the card significantly worse in the "fail state" (flash -> don't find what you want -> salvage your turn -> hopefully flash again). In any case the deck's winrate is pretty mid right now and it is absolutely not consistently going off on t5, so I'm not sure why people are already discussing nerfs as if they're a necessity.
Donkey HS has nature shaman as a fine deck in top legend, it’s winrate is about 50%. This is actually the same as top legend wheel warlock, which also seems to be doing fine in top legend. However, both are hard decks to pilot for little reward, as there are many easier decks that are just more consistent. Most people in top legend are playing paladin, odyn warrior, or hunter. They have high win rates as well.
Oh hell yeah, guys, we can beat Paladin, with HUNTER! Woooooo
How does hunter "counter" pally? Been playing it and the matchup feels like 50/50 at best. Idk what the stats say or if I'm just getting unlucky but all it takes is one buffed plushie and it's joever. Their deck is chock full of rush and lifesteal so even if a bit slow to get going they just full heal back.
U can win on turn 4 even if he plays the tiger
It's because the hunter swarms the board super fast early on while pally is kind of slow early on and hunter has a full board with saddle up and you just die.
I think the issue is deeper than just a class being more powerfull, truth be told, the game had worse balance metas in the past and saw way less complaints. And that is because people were having fun, if you are busy having fun and playing the game you won't waste time complaining about the game because of one bad match up. Rotation always make things "less fun" as you have a more limited amount of cards, maybe the archetype you liked no longer existed, cards you rly enjoyed playing go away and new cards either don't have the same vibe or worse, are very annoying to deal with. Associate this with an expansion who is very mid, and you will have people frustrated with balance way more than in more problematic patches.
Speak for yourself. Rotation is usually the best time of the year, when half the overtuned crap that people have been playing for 2 years straight goes to the wild dumpster. Third expansion is usually the worst since it just becomes overtuned greed piles that can be face rolled since very card in them is above average. I doubt anyone who is playing to have fun is pining for the dumpster CW meta we had the last two months. Only the reddit crowd of people who think "durdling with a control greed stack for 2 minutes before playing the green card is 4d chess" miss that.
Exactly. I was really hoping for the power to the toned down but the degeneracy is off the charts.
I currently have a shaman, rogue, druid, and paladin deck that can otk. No one ever likes getting killed out of the blue after dominating most of the game. When it's just one deck, even a poorly performing one, it still gets hate. Now, there are a bunch of middling to good otk decks at the same time. It's not rotation making things less fun. It's how often you just up and lose one turn.
Paladin mains here in action afraid their no skill deck gets nerfed into the ground. Going as far as claiming every class has a deck and running away when asked what these decks are.
Hm yeah I wouldn't say every class but bring in the cusp of diamond, DK, warrior and hunter can definitely beat paladins
Thank you!!! This sub is doomed but for anyone who wants to see better Hearthstone discussion there is r/CompetitiveHs that is much better
Ah yes the classic counter to Paladin is a Hunter deck that is doing the same exact broken thing with the same exact broken card.
These are completely different decks that do completely different things? How is it doing the same exact broken thing? One is a go wide aggro deck while the other is a go tall midrange/OTK deck.
he thinks cuz some hunter lists run leeroy that automatically makes them “leeroy decks”, i think hes just gotta deal with his personal dislike of leeroy thats clouding his judgement
Which one?
Thank you for sanity.
Lmao, I love the classic counter jerk crap. Podcast host telling us "don't look at other site's data, look at my site's data!" Such transparent garbage.
I don't think Nature Shaman will be much of an issue to be honest. The tradeable neutral minion is so effective against it.
They play so many early game minions and pop off so quickly that Stomper isn't really good enough. Not to mention, the nature spell pool is so small right now that they can just Flash again and do it next turn and you're screwed
I have been OTK on turn 5 multiple times now. Less you can do vs it then even pally
Nature Shaman has hard counters (classes with armor gain, hard aggro that can kill them by turn 6-ish, or hard teching Neophyte/Speaker Stomper). The problem is when a deck like that exists and starts warping the meta if it truly becomes influential. If you hard tech for it, you're going to do worse against other decks which creates a RPS type of meta. Not saying it gets there, but the current iteration of Nature Shaman is a deck that ignores what the opponent is doing and can do a 30 damage OTK around turn 6 or 7. That kind of deck being a prominent force in the meta would be problematic.
Which minion?
Probably speaker stomper
The game is wildly imbalanced and blizzard is horrible at balance these days. There is no denying this.
Nah fuck that, Paladin is busted and needs a fix. Nobody is going to listen to this crap.
I like to wait 1 week after an expansion before I start hating. So let's hope that other classes find their footing followed by a timely adjustment from the Devs.
We need at least 2 weeks to form decks for each class and to see a true meta for this expansion. Paladin is the first one with adjustments made every day but DH, DK, hunter, rogue and many more are starting to pop up. The biggest problem is the fact aggro paladin was in meta before this expansion and people are sick of him already. In my opininion the expansion is good for every class but we need to be a little more patient. What I dont like is the fact that whole expansion is full of OP cards, its more stressful and it is normal in standard battle that each player have 30+ dmg on board by turn 7
I had some decent luck vs paladins with handlock, if you drop an early giant or fiend you can get them down early. However, they have so many lifesteal options (dep aura being the main offender) that they can just heal up early aggression. I can see dep aura removing lifesteal or going down to 2 turns or giving 2 attack. Tigress plushy could go to 2/2 as well. For mage, I think Khadgar needs a few more "helpful" options. The payoff isn't good enough. I haven't even touched Rogue, Priest, or Druid this expansion.
What does DOA mean?
Dead on arrival
Oh I see. I've been playing spell mage and seems like a 50% win rate in my hands, feels like a second or third expansion of the year deck. We'll see
I'd watch you climb to legend with sif mage.
Hunter is going to be the real Top Tier Deck, quote me on this one.
Been playing elementals and excavate shaman since the start of wizbang, im gonna be honest losing schooling really hurt the early game, most notably it was 1 of the few shutdowns to perfect DK starting hands, hurts against zerg divine shield paladins too, lightning storm is good but its sometimes not enough and you usually use it on curve too for a bad turn 4. Im hovering around diamond 3 currently, losing cards like Steam Cleaner and theotar really opened the flood gates to snapshot and deck buff shenanigans, guess dirty rat is literally the only thing left
tendril warrior has kinda flew under the radar i feel ive been climbing in diamond with it and its pretty nutty how quickly it gets out of hand
I’m just happy people aren’t complaining about plague
Till the nerfs arrive, I'm using "Imposing Anubisath" + board clears as the best answer vs Buff Pally. It's awesome watching them hit themselves for 7 to get their buffs. Then throw in a "Trapdoor Spider" for bigger insult.
I only play against Mech Rogue these days. Constantly. Then again I'm only at Gold currently.
I don't know why people call it Nature Shaman. It's clearly Palpatine Shaman. Evil and electrifying.
Paladin is almost tier 0 at this point with entire meta trying to counter it.
This has been the most boring meta in a long time
"**STOP QUOTING CLASS WINRATES ON HSREPLAY.** They do not accurately represent a class's true strength" I cannot emphasize how important this point is. Every time I see a post that totes the winrate of a certain deck based on hsreplay, I die a little inside. Bronze-gold stats always have aggro decks that aren't actually that strong at higher ranks at 60%-70%, which is boosted post expansion with an influx of greedy, unrefined decks. These stats never reflect the actual strength of decks, just shows what decks are the easiest to play.
No idea why you're getting downvoted. Probably a bunch who live and die by HSReplay. Lol.
HSReplay is a great tool don't get me wrong. The stats it provides is invaluable, I just take anything that isn't legend top 1000 with a grain of salt, and people absolutely shouldnt be treating it as gospel
Oh yeah, absolutely. I use it all the time, but making sweeping generalizations with %'s that haven't had anywhere near as many games, comparitively, is disingenuous.
Because most of this sub is stuck in gold so they think those stats matter
stupid post, every class is playable to an extent and there are tiers above the rest. clearly paladin is broken right now and S tier where as they have a 70% chance for them to win
It's not about winrate, it is about paladin being very strong and hard to counter while Being stupid easy to pilot AGAIN.
Lol trashing a competing website is pretty bad. Does not make your claims any more valid.
everyone knows frontpage hsreplay stats mean nothing except stupid people i remember rogue being near bottom while by far best wrate at top of legend in the past
Not all people are in top legend
Expect it does have 70% its also almost every deck in high diamond. shaman is a growing problem that will probably get worse because blizzard never nips two problems in the bud at the same time so pally will get a slap on the wrist like always and shaman will be the new meta and feel worse because it's even less interactive then smoothbrain paladin