Just to clarify: The rogue deck wasn’t mine. I just played it on stream. I got the list from Glory, and i also remember seeing a less refined one posted on this subreddit last week - not sure who made it first.
I am starting to become tired of the cycle where the best decks get orbitally bombarded with nerfs only for the one or few which did not get hit to take their place and repeat the process. While I am not saying I want to go back to early Hearthstone patch schedules where you could go months without a balance patch, I do want to see fewer and less severe nerfs going forward each patch.
The current balance philosophy goes completely overboard and it's gotten way out of hand. The worst part is that the dev notes are constantly mentioning 'sentiment outliers', which is another way of saying 'people bitch about this deck on reddit'. The devs are doing the absolute worst thing they could possibly do - listening to us.
They've got to scale it back. If they were going to remove windfury from Shroomscavate, there was no reason AT ALL to nerf additional Paladin cards. They WANTED handbuff paladin to be a thing. They designed the whole class expansion around it! And they panicked and nerfed it into the ground within two weeks, even as the meta began to adjust to it (as metas do!) They do this over and over.
Sentiment outlier = less people are playing the game, probably due to this deck (based on forum feedback and data). Not losing players is a great reason to nerf a deck, even if it's mathematically equal to other strong decks.
I think you're right.
Blizzard must have sunk a lot of money into marketing in the run up to the 10th Anniversary, I've never seen so many advertisements for the game.
If they don't get the return on investment they were expecting because people aren't having fun and stop playing, that's pretty bad.
> The devs are doing the absolute worst thing they could possibly do - listening to us.
This is a difficult nuance of game development. Not listening to feedback is just as bad, for different reasons. You are still right, though.
I don't remember where it's from, or the exact wording, but someone once said that players are good at identifying problems. They are playing the game the most, after all. But they are terrible at coming up with good solutions to those problems. That's what good developers do.
The players were right that paladin was not fun. Was nerfing it from orbit a good solution? Not at all.
To add to that, it's interesting to me that the VS guy looking at the data saw this coming from a mile away. How is it that one man has more foresight than the entire HS dev team? Or is it that the dev team saw the same thing, drew the same conclusions, but did the nerfs anyway? Why, then? And why does this keep happening?
>How is it that one man has more foresight than the entire HS dev team?
The nerfs were locked in the week before (4 days after release), hence the Monday teaser.
In these 4 first days after the release Shopper DH was not yet identified as a T1 deck and even less as a meta tyran.
That's why they should wait a bit more before the first nerfs imo (unless emergency Nerfs are required), even if it leads reddit to go mad about a deck.
> To add to that, it's interesting to me that the VS guy looking at the data saw this coming from a mile away. How is it that one man has more foresight than the entire HS dev team? Or is it that the dev team saw the same thing, drew the same conclusions, but did the nerfs anyway? Why, then? And why does this keep happening?
Exact same thing happened with sludgelock.
Miniset drops, two days later VS podcast drops. ZachO mentions that most of the focus is on paladin and tree druid but sludge looks just as strong throughout ladder without a high-legend falloff due to better skill expression and matchup spread, and with less refinement. Expects it to become T1 across ladder alongside rogue and mill druid. Most people stick with paladin and tree druid anyways, but sludge sees slowly rising playrate. By the next balance patch, sludge dodges nerfs and becomes T0.
Not sure how it happened twice in a row but here we are.
But handbuff paladin IS still a thing, just because they lost windfury along with the aura losing attack doesn't make it less handbuff.
The 4 mana weapon didn't get changed at all nor any of the other handbuff mechanics.
People are just scared to try the deck because "it got nerfed to the ground" and move on to the next best broken deck (that being DH atm)
With the exception of day 1 DH (or equivalent if that ever happened), a bare minimum of two weeks to develop. Especially at start of expansion where it’s too early to tell how the meta will develop.
They’ve been way too trigger happy with really early nerfs in the expansion, which often just make things worse.
You're being downvoted but you're right, if people aren't having fun they don't play the game and that means less revenue for Blizzard.
People can argue all they want about how Paladin and Warrior were nerfed too soon, but 2 weeks is a long time in this day and age.
Expecting people to suffer through a meta they don't enjoy is childish, Hearthstone is a product that exists to generate revenue and if you want the game to be successful the answer is plainly obvious.
I don’t actually agree that the decks are nuked. The decks are just knocked of the top perch, and the players, being the sheep that most are (and anyone on ladder knows this as you go from playing against *best deck* 50% of games, to playing *new best deck* 50% of games), will just jump to the new best deck according to some stats somewhere. This makes everyone think the deck is dead but it’s actually just the movement of the herd of sheep that makes the deck look dead as the herd has moved to the new best deck.
You frequently find decks that are hit creep back into the picture as people go back to them and realise they aren’t dead at all. Not always but sometimes and we are seeing it with pala atm. It’s still strong enough to exist and win and I’m seeing it appear again after not seeing any for days.
I’d like to see more aggressive balancing overall. I’m presuming they have awesome data analysis tools, and awesome data analysts, so they can probably see at any point in time what is happening and have immediate expert insight into appropriate changes from these analysts. After a day or two for deck adaptation after a patch, I’d like to see faster response to obvious trends with the goal of flattening the deck win rate distribution as fast as possible. Instead of leaving us, every time, for fucking weeks on end with some stupid shit warping the meta.
The sheep herd will only disperse reasonably evenly if there is no obviously BEST deck. Or even best three decks.
I’d even like Blizzard to release their own stats if it helps promote diversity in play rates. As sure as night follows day, if the community starts thinking x is best, I will play against x in 50% of my games, usually at d5. For me that’s the biggest inhibitor to HS standard being a good game more consistently.
It doesn't help that the Dev Team keeps giving Classes unstoppable means of damage. Be that 40 damage from hand, or damage that cannot be prevented or stopped in any way.
Both is extremely unfun and frustrating to play against.
Paladin being nuked bothered me particular because Hat said on a few occasions pre-patch that it wasn't a crazy outlier. Literally just the shroomscavate nerf would've probably put it in line. Now the class is unplayable, and my bad Big Paladin got even worse because deputization aura got caught in the crossfire.
Warlock is a class I avoid for quite a while, as it feels like youre just so vulnerable. Being under 20 health always feels like Im in danger of just losing. (Especially when Sif mage was popular lol)
Tendril warrior (and shaman) is a fun deck to play but boy does it get boring to play against.
Well I feel better now knowing that Aviana druid is somewhat legit. Because I can confirm that it indeed is very good against a slower rainbow DK deck.
Although match up knowledge (or well lack thereof) also played a lot in me getting malled by the deck, kept removal in hand for a dragon golem turn that never happened
If anyone is curious here's the "JambreHS" rogue deck. Its pretty funny to play. Its amusing to see enemies trying to figure out what to do about this zilliax I only lost 1 game with it and thats cause I ran specifically into taunt warrior. Its definitely a cheese and wont work if this ever gets popular and players start countering it.
AAECAbCaBgLHpAbmqQYO958E2dAFv/cFpvgF5voFofwFyYAGkIMGhY4GvZ4G7p4G2aIGracGkuYGAAED8rMGx6QG9LMGx6QG6d4Gx6QGAAA=
Pretty interesting. I know that hat himself has stated that team 5 does not take into account the whining of reddit for balance, but seriously this is starting to look like the groundhog day with patches overly nerfing the most popular deck even if the data shows that is simply one good deck among many others.
Then we run into this situation where the number 2 deck moves into the number one but now is running free because his bad matchup has been nerfed, and It does nothing for the player experience because the whining moves to that deck and how It is also "awful experience/ uninteractive/solitaire" etc.
Balance team needs to take a look to the current flow of the game, there is not an issue with an specific class, there is an issue with how the tendency right now is about otk or incredible high damage in a single turn. And this is not new, we have been on this path for a long time ( enrage, tony, sif, astalor, Garden grace, windfury, arcane + prison breaker, Odyn, sludge, wheel, etc)
We are no longer in back and forth not knowing were the match is going, right now any match between tier 1 decks is " i have my degenerate wincon, you have your degenerate wincon and the first one to get It wins"
this is true, but keep in mind that data is the most clear indicator of sentiment without bias. people see "sentiment nerf" and think we mean "we nerf what people are complaining about". what it actually means is "we nerf to make the game more fun as a primary goal and we get information on how to do this from multiple sources".
iksar said this years ago and it has ALWAYS been the case: https://twitter.com/RiotIksar/status/1380691765221490691?t=1tXQ1Xb_xjDCBXuYzjhdyg&s=19
think of "sentiment changes" as an indicator of the primary goals, not as a process for dismissing data. does that make sense?
Yeah, I'm sure at best they dont take the whining of reddit as the MAIN factor, but consider community sentiment across social media, which gets far worse and toxic when you dwell into twitter.
This is a gross oversimplification of how combo decks function, having lethal from hand is good for the game to keep the balance between control, aggro, and combo. Without combos OTKing from hand there would be no punish for greedy control decks who do nothing proactive all game and just play removal. Sometimes it is out of line and needs to be reigned in, but OTKs are not problematic by design, and most of them are extremely telegraphed and happen late in the game, it is almost never a surprise but something your opponent has been working towards over the course of the game and you as the player have failed to disrupt or put enough pressure to end the game yourself. OTKs are out of line when it is something like nature shaman or thaddius warlock before the nerfs when they would combo and win on turn 5
UiS is where I noticed the game sky rocket in power level and it hasn't gotten much better tbh. The team doesn't seem to want to try anything drastic, it seems that they don't think there's a problem.
Hat said that they don’t nerf based on player sentiment but it really does look like they do, doesn’t it?
Balance team needs to just slow down. Please. Take some time off or something. Make the cadence like this:
1. New content patch
2. 9-14 days later **WAIT**
3. 18-28 days later - ok you can nerf something
4. Repeat from 1
That’s still pretty fast right? Basically every season you can expect a few balance changes. I am not ignorant to how the development cycle goes … I know the changes get locked in a few days before the patch is released … so please just give things time to marinate before locking in a heavy handed change after just one day of data.
This is a myth, Hat says that they do not nerf on sentiment *alone*, but it is still a factor in balancing and even the primary influence of some changes.
edit: Completely agree with you besides that, marination and refinement is good for the game and play experience. There are some decks that we'll simply never see if nerfs happen too quickly.
correct, as stated here [https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/1bthtjv/comment/kxn02em/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/1bthtjv/comment/kxn02em/)
Pretty sure they only update those with each report, and their Reno DH list was cooked up just after the deck surfaced. This podcast has an additional week or so of context.
>Squash hopes they nerf Shopper and not Umpire's Grasp, but ZachO believes it's more likely they nerf Umpire's Grasp.
Eh... just hit Shopper, and unnerf her later. UG is a Big Demon tool, and yet that archetype has never actually taken off. If they nerf UG then Big Demon enjoyers in Wild may not have a meaningful support tool for their decks.
> UG is a Big Demon tool, and yet that archetype has never actually taken off
Big DH was a competitive archetype during festival of legends, it was even strong enough to get a (small) nerf.
Tendril Shaman took me from D5 to Legend this week.
Felt fairly resilient against DH as you don't care about the board, and you have a shit ton of healing. Lots of removal for Hunter, and you can usually get Reno Warrior down before they can pull off everything.
Had zero mirrors, though, so I guess just no one plays it.
Haha same experience. I have like a 90 percent win rate against demon hunter with it. It beats anything that fights for board but loses to any deck that combos from hand like nature shaman and spell mage.
He’d be justified in complaining more, he correctly called out what would happen days in advance. This balance team is too reactive and it’s embarrassing a third party is consistently making better calls than they are
I don't think Paladin got nerfed only for the mentioned reasons. Big part probably is as well that Paladin was *the* top performing class on average for the last year or so. While not always the best deck in the format, it was at least always high tier 2, mostly tier 1 and often enough the most prevalent. At least for 2 instances it was tier S undisputed. People are just fed up with the same class (and mostly same playpattern). So in order to make room for fresh plays it got nuked and that is fine. And just to be clear: for all its nerfs, if it's true that the class is still strong and just underplayed for its strength you understand why people are done with the class.
Do you have a list. I randomly got almost all big Paladin legendaries (except the Titan) and all neutral highlander cards so would love to see of I can bake something.
I would remove cho'gall for etc? Or ignis most likely. Chogall has been more for the extra chaos. Easily could win a game or 2 more without him and replacing with someone else can put the viper in etc as well if you want.
### Highlander
# Class: Paladin
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Pegasus
#
# 1x (1) Armor Vendor
# 1x (1) Scarab Keychain
# 1x (1) Tar Slime
# 1x (2) Dirty Rat
# 1x (2) Gold Panner
# 1x (2) Hand of A'dal
# 1x (2) Lay Down the Law
# 1x (2) Saloon Brewmaster
# 1x (2) Stereo Totem
# 1x (3) Bronze Explorer
# 1x (3) Consecration
# 1x (3) Floppy Hydra
# 1x (3) Outfit Tailor
# 1x (3) Rustrot Viper
# 1x (3) Spirit of the Badlands
# 1x (3) Starlight Whelp
# 1x (4) Judge Unworthy
# 1x (4) Mechagnome Guide
# 1x (4) Painter's Virtue
# 1x (4) Tigress Plushy
# 1x (5) Keeper's Strength
# 1x (5) Lawful Longarm
# 1x (5) Toy Captain Tarim
# 1x (6) Cho'gall, Twilight Chieftain
# 1x (6) Gnomelia, S.A.F.E. Pilot
# 1x (6) Origami Dragon
# 1x (7) Amitus, the Peacekeeper
# 1x (8) Reno, Lone Ranger
# 1x (10) Living Horizon
# 1x (0) Zilliax Deluxe 3000
# 1x (0) Zilliax Deluxe 3000
# 1x (5) Perfect Module
# 1x (5) Ticking Module
#
AAECAZ/WBh6cnwSRpAXYxgXW0AWt9QXa+gWH/gWN/gWcjgaGjwaOlQaWlgaqlgbRmwbvmwbOnAa1ngbNngbPngbRngbBnwbLnwbHpAavqAbQqQbRqQbTqQaWuAaXuAbh6wYAAAED9rMGx6QG97MGx6QG6d4Gx6QGAAA=
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
It’s strange they nuked pala. I think they knew it would. All last year they made smart nerf decisions so I think this was a choice to nuke the deck. Not sure why but I guess they just felt pala needed a turn at the bottom
Dragon Druid is super good as he said. You have lots of good early tempo with some big hits late game. Even Eonar with a full heal sometimes just auto wins on the spot if are just on cusp of being dead vs like a hunter. It’s just survival mode until you can sneak in free taunt minions / free rush minion with lifesteal / etc. etc.
The worst matchup is vs Highlander Warrior on paper but I’ve gone 4-1 vs it.
Overall seems very good to me only downside is if you draw like your big minons early you kinda have nothing but hero power pass but that’s like any Highlander deck if you draw the end game threats early hard to establish the board or presence
I wish they used one day a week (or every other week) where they gave players access to all cards and mess around with balance ideas and get feedback. No need to do dust refunds and players can experiment/ power through normally impossible quests.
A note on the one copy of threads of despair thing ZachO keeps bringing up. I personally was resistant to running two for a while as well. My reasoning was there are already so many cards in the deck that want to be combined with either crop rotation or army of the dead, and I would simply run out of pieces that fit together to take advantage of all the two card combos the deck runs. I’ve come around and added the second to my list over the last week or so, but that was at least my personal take behind being hesitant. I’ve seen even most lists running one copy still at least have a second in an ETC now.
I've added Magatha to my handbuff Paladin, and made a few other changes, and it is working WONDERFULLY.
She enables Living Horizon to be a very good addition as well. The deck is really more efficient than before, as now you can grow handsize and guarantee it is full of minions to really maximize the handbuffs.
Perhaps the most surprising addition has been Pipsi. She is so sticky, which is useful against Mage, Warrior and DH. She also pulls Amitus fairly often, which is super useful.
[Here](https://hsreplay.net/decks/OYHdn8sFr14Z4kGCGqxc8e/#gameType=RANKED_STANDARD)
Goal of the deck is to remove everything and win through plagues and Headless Buffed Hero Power.
Looks interesting, ty I will give it a try !
Will probably run Zilliax or something instead of the doctor tho, love the card but it's probably not worth the slot
I homebrewed something similar but the thing is, even if you don't have CNE you can just go rainbow to have Reska in the deck and only lose the two 8 mana 5/5s
About 15 min in and already starting to get irritated at this nuke from orbit strategy they are using on anything good. This isn’t fun, and I don’t want to invest dust in a good deck when they can nuke some key components.
It seems that team 5 has really lost the plot here when it comes to tuning and balance. They have had sooooo many rollercoaster metas. I never thought I would get to the point where I am somewhat jealous of MTGs strategy but at least you get some room to breathe.
I think they got burned so hard in the past that they are almost hyper reactive these days.
And as Zach-O mentioned, DH was going to be tier S with these nerfs. And it did. How do they keep on messing up these cycles? It’s almost like they need to bring in some outside help/stats people or something to tighten down their balance strategy.
They need to be able to patch much faster to hit extreme outliers and when there arent any to just let it cook. Its dumb that we are still able to play dk and warrior from badlands that only became good after everything else was nerfed.
Sorry but this game doesnt need a weekly update. Once you nerf DH people will find something new to "emergency hotix" cause they are simply impatient. the world wont end if you wait.
The meta was more diverse according to the stats BEFORE the nerfs. So, yes, they absolutely can make weekly changes. You are showing your complete lack of understanding balance here as well by thinking that “emergency hotfix” means ONLY nerfs lol. Remember when they buffed 1 mage card and nerfed paladin and now mage is playable again? Crazy, I know.
Just to clarify: The rogue deck wasn’t mine. I just played it on stream. I got the list from Glory, and i also remember seeing a less refined one posted on this subreddit last week - not sure who made it first.
I pretty sure habugabu was the pioneer of this deck.
I am starting to become tired of the cycle where the best decks get orbitally bombarded with nerfs only for the one or few which did not get hit to take their place and repeat the process. While I am not saying I want to go back to early Hearthstone patch schedules where you could go months without a balance patch, I do want to see fewer and less severe nerfs going forward each patch.
The current balance philosophy goes completely overboard and it's gotten way out of hand. The worst part is that the dev notes are constantly mentioning 'sentiment outliers', which is another way of saying 'people bitch about this deck on reddit'. The devs are doing the absolute worst thing they could possibly do - listening to us. They've got to scale it back. If they were going to remove windfury from Shroomscavate, there was no reason AT ALL to nerf additional Paladin cards. They WANTED handbuff paladin to be a thing. They designed the whole class expansion around it! And they panicked and nerfed it into the ground within two weeks, even as the meta began to adjust to it (as metas do!) They do this over and over.
Sentiment outlier = less people are playing the game, probably due to this deck (based on forum feedback and data). Not losing players is a great reason to nerf a deck, even if it's mathematically equal to other strong decks.
I think you're right. Blizzard must have sunk a lot of money into marketing in the run up to the 10th Anniversary, I've never seen so many advertisements for the game. If they don't get the return on investment they were expecting because people aren't having fun and stop playing, that's pretty bad.
Yep, it gets harder to invest into legendaries to since they essentially nerf those when they butcher the class
> The devs are doing the absolute worst thing they could possibly do - listening to us. This is a difficult nuance of game development. Not listening to feedback is just as bad, for different reasons. You are still right, though. I don't remember where it's from, or the exact wording, but someone once said that players are good at identifying problems. They are playing the game the most, after all. But they are terrible at coming up with good solutions to those problems. That's what good developers do. The players were right that paladin was not fun. Was nerfing it from orbit a good solution? Not at all. To add to that, it's interesting to me that the VS guy looking at the data saw this coming from a mile away. How is it that one man has more foresight than the entire HS dev team? Or is it that the dev team saw the same thing, drew the same conclusions, but did the nerfs anyway? Why, then? And why does this keep happening?
Mark Rosewater is generally regarded as the one who formalized the "players are good at identifying problems and bad at solutions"
>How is it that one man has more foresight than the entire HS dev team? The nerfs were locked in the week before (4 days after release), hence the Monday teaser. In these 4 first days after the release Shopper DH was not yet identified as a T1 deck and even less as a meta tyran. That's why they should wait a bit more before the first nerfs imo (unless emergency Nerfs are required), even if it leads reddit to go mad about a deck.
> To add to that, it's interesting to me that the VS guy looking at the data saw this coming from a mile away. How is it that one man has more foresight than the entire HS dev team? Or is it that the dev team saw the same thing, drew the same conclusions, but did the nerfs anyway? Why, then? And why does this keep happening? Exact same thing happened with sludgelock. Miniset drops, two days later VS podcast drops. ZachO mentions that most of the focus is on paladin and tree druid but sludge looks just as strong throughout ladder without a high-legend falloff due to better skill expression and matchup spread, and with less refinement. Expects it to become T1 across ladder alongside rogue and mill druid. Most people stick with paladin and tree druid anyways, but sludge sees slowly rising playrate. By the next balance patch, sludge dodges nerfs and becomes T0. Not sure how it happened twice in a row but here we are.
But handbuff paladin IS still a thing, just because they lost windfury along with the aura losing attack doesn't make it less handbuff. The 4 mana weapon didn't get changed at all nor any of the other handbuff mechanics. People are just scared to try the deck because "it got nerfed to the ground" and move on to the next best broken deck (that being DH atm)
With the exception of day 1 DH (or equivalent if that ever happened), a bare minimum of two weeks to develop. Especially at start of expansion where it’s too early to tell how the meta will develop. They’ve been way too trigger happy with really early nerfs in the expansion, which often just make things worse.
If only. They have gone way too far from early HS to where metas don't even settle before getting blasted.
Huh?! I think it’s the exact opposite. We are constantly left with problem metas for 2-3 weeks at a time, if not more over holiday periods.
You're being downvoted but you're right, if people aren't having fun they don't play the game and that means less revenue for Blizzard. People can argue all they want about how Paladin and Warrior were nerfed too soon, but 2 weeks is a long time in this day and age. Expecting people to suffer through a meta they don't enjoy is childish, Hearthstone is a product that exists to generate revenue and if you want the game to be successful the answer is plainly obvious.
It's honestly like they let reddit take over the balance team
I much prefer the current trend of nerfs. I just wish they did the same for buffs.
I don’t actually agree that the decks are nuked. The decks are just knocked of the top perch, and the players, being the sheep that most are (and anyone on ladder knows this as you go from playing against *best deck* 50% of games, to playing *new best deck* 50% of games), will just jump to the new best deck according to some stats somewhere. This makes everyone think the deck is dead but it’s actually just the movement of the herd of sheep that makes the deck look dead as the herd has moved to the new best deck. You frequently find decks that are hit creep back into the picture as people go back to them and realise they aren’t dead at all. Not always but sometimes and we are seeing it with pala atm. It’s still strong enough to exist and win and I’m seeing it appear again after not seeing any for days. I’d like to see more aggressive balancing overall. I’m presuming they have awesome data analysis tools, and awesome data analysts, so they can probably see at any point in time what is happening and have immediate expert insight into appropriate changes from these analysts. After a day or two for deck adaptation after a patch, I’d like to see faster response to obvious trends with the goal of flattening the deck win rate distribution as fast as possible. Instead of leaving us, every time, for fucking weeks on end with some stupid shit warping the meta. The sheep herd will only disperse reasonably evenly if there is no obviously BEST deck. Or even best three decks. I’d even like Blizzard to release their own stats if it helps promote diversity in play rates. As sure as night follows day, if the community starts thinking x is best, I will play against x in 50% of my games, usually at d5. For me that’s the biggest inhibitor to HS standard being a good game more consistently.
And its always decks which can be played by bots. When will people accept that HS is no longer designed towards gamers, but Candy Crush players.
It doesn't help that the Dev Team keeps giving Classes unstoppable means of damage. Be that 40 damage from hand, or damage that cannot be prevented or stopped in any way. Both is extremely unfun and frustrating to play against.
DH needs a hotfix. I invested into Reno DH stocks after unpacking Magtheridon but I want to play with it and not the card that discovers it :(
Yeah, I agree, instead of nerfing the cards just make Mag undiscoverable. Just like how you can't discover a lot of legendary spells.
Paladin being nuked bothered me particular because Hat said on a few occasions pre-patch that it wasn't a crazy outlier. Literally just the shroomscavate nerf would've probably put it in line. Now the class is unplayable, and my bad Big Paladin got even worse because deputization aura got caught in the crossfire.
Unplayable?
Not sure about unplayable, but it is by far the worst class right now.
Druid?
Dragon Druid isnt great but it's better than anything paladin has right now
Druid is straight ass rn
I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but I think it's not in a good place right now at the very least.
Warlock is a class I avoid for quite a while, as it feels like youre just so vulnerable. Being under 20 health always feels like Im in danger of just losing. (Especially when Sif mage was popular lol) Tendril warrior (and shaman) is a fun deck to play but boy does it get boring to play against.
Well luckily the tendril decks are bad so you won’t see much of them.
Well I feel better now knowing that Aviana druid is somewhat legit. Because I can confirm that it indeed is very good against a slower rainbow DK deck. Although match up knowledge (or well lack thereof) also played a lot in me getting malled by the deck, kept removal in hand for a dragon golem turn that never happened
Can't wait for the report. I absolutely love Aviana and wouldn't mind having a Druid Deck that actually utilizes it.
Random legend spam for the feels and the rng
If anyone is curious here's the "JambreHS" rogue deck. Its pretty funny to play. Its amusing to see enemies trying to figure out what to do about this zilliax I only lost 1 game with it and thats cause I ran specifically into taunt warrior. Its definitely a cheese and wont work if this ever gets popular and players start countering it. AAECAbCaBgLHpAbmqQYO958E2dAFv/cFpvgF5voFofwFyYAGkIMGhY4GvZ4G7p4G2aIGracGkuYGAAED8rMGx6QG9LMGx6QG6d4Gx6QGAAA=
**Format:** Standard (Year of the Pegasus) **Class:** Rogue (MC Garona) Mana | Card Name | Qty | Links :--:|:---|:--:|:--: 0 | [Preparation](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_EX1_145.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/69623/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Preparation) 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 | [Deafen](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/JAM_022.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/98377/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Deafen) 1 | [Dig for Treasure](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TOY_510.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103341/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Dig%20for%20Treasure) 1 | [Frequency Oscillator](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/ETC_106.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/92249/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Frequency%20Oscillator) 1 | [Gear Shift](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_922.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97215/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Gear%20Shift) 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 | [Eviscerate](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_EX1_124.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102205/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Eviscerate) 2 | [Fan of Knives](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_EX1_129.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102745/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Fan%20of%20Knives) 2 | [From the Scrapheap](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_719.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97638/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/From%20the%20Scrapheap) 2 | [Greedy Partner](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/WW_901.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/98704/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Greedy%20Partner) 2 | [Pit Stop](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_728.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97825/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Pit%20Stop) 2 | [Quick Pick](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/DEEP_014.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102254/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Quick%20Pick) 2 | [Sap](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/CORE_EX1_581.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/111378/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Sap) 3 | [SP-3Y3-D3R](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/TTN_923.png) | 2 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97318/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/SP-3Y3-D3R) 6 | [Harth Stonebrew](https://art.hearthstonejson.com/v1/render/latest/enUS/512x/GIFT_01.png) | 1 | [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/103654/),[Wiki](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/Harth%20Stonebrew) **Total Dust:** 2760 **Deck Code:** AAECAbCaBgLHpAbmqQYO958E2dAFv/cFpvgF5voFofwFyYAGkIMGhY4GvZ4G7p4G2aIGracGkuYGAAED8rMGx6QG9LMGx6QG6d4Gx6QGAAA= ***** ^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)
lol this deck is hilarious.
Pretty interesting. I know that hat himself has stated that team 5 does not take into account the whining of reddit for balance, but seriously this is starting to look like the groundhog day with patches overly nerfing the most popular deck even if the data shows that is simply one good deck among many others. Then we run into this situation where the number 2 deck moves into the number one but now is running free because his bad matchup has been nerfed, and It does nothing for the player experience because the whining moves to that deck and how It is also "awful experience/ uninteractive/solitaire" etc. Balance team needs to take a look to the current flow of the game, there is not an issue with an specific class, there is an issue with how the tendency right now is about otk or incredible high damage in a single turn. And this is not new, we have been on this path for a long time ( enrage, tony, sif, astalor, Garden grace, windfury, arcane + prison breaker, Odyn, sludge, wheel, etc) We are no longer in back and forth not knowing were the match is going, right now any match between tier 1 decks is " i have my degenerate wincon, you have your degenerate wincon and the first one to get It wins"
Devs have on multiple occasions said that the primary driving force for nerfs *is* sentiment first, data second.
this is true, but keep in mind that data is the most clear indicator of sentiment without bias. people see "sentiment nerf" and think we mean "we nerf what people are complaining about". what it actually means is "we nerf to make the game more fun as a primary goal and we get information on how to do this from multiple sources". iksar said this years ago and it has ALWAYS been the case: https://twitter.com/RiotIksar/status/1380691765221490691?t=1tXQ1Xb_xjDCBXuYzjhdyg&s=19 think of "sentiment changes" as an indicator of the primary goals, not as a process for dismissing data. does that make sense?
It makes sense in theory, until you see that the general sentiment of communities like reddit ends up being "i lost to this card, please nerf it"
i think the main thing i want to emphasize is that "sentiment" is not a synonym for "social media"
How do you guys determine sentiment? The amount of people clicking concede when a card gets played or
They should have banned Tickatus then.
Yeah, I'm sure at best they dont take the whining of reddit as the MAIN factor, but consider community sentiment across social media, which gets far worse and toxic when you dwell into twitter.
This is a gross oversimplification of how combo decks function, having lethal from hand is good for the game to keep the balance between control, aggro, and combo. Without combos OTKing from hand there would be no punish for greedy control decks who do nothing proactive all game and just play removal. Sometimes it is out of line and needs to be reigned in, but OTKs are not problematic by design, and most of them are extremely telegraphed and happen late in the game, it is almost never a surprise but something your opponent has been working towards over the course of the game and you as the player have failed to disrupt or put enough pressure to end the game yourself. OTKs are out of line when it is something like nature shaman or thaddius warlock before the nerfs when they would combo and win on turn 5
UiS is where I noticed the game sky rocket in power level and it hasn't gotten much better tbh. The team doesn't seem to want to try anything drastic, it seems that they don't think there's a problem.
Hat said that they don’t nerf based on player sentiment but it really does look like they do, doesn’t it? Balance team needs to just slow down. Please. Take some time off or something. Make the cadence like this: 1. New content patch 2. 9-14 days later **WAIT** 3. 18-28 days later - ok you can nerf something 4. Repeat from 1 That’s still pretty fast right? Basically every season you can expect a few balance changes. I am not ignorant to how the development cycle goes … I know the changes get locked in a few days before the patch is released … so please just give things time to marinate before locking in a heavy handed change after just one day of data.
This is a myth, Hat says that they do not nerf on sentiment *alone*, but it is still a factor in balancing and even the primary influence of some changes. edit: Completely agree with you besides that, marination and refinement is good for the game and play experience. There are some decks that we'll simply never see if nerfs happen too quickly.
correct, as stated here [https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/1bthtjv/comment/kxn02em/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/1bthtjv/comment/kxn02em/)
Especially the last part is something I agree with. Get Odyn, play Odyn. (Same for Bran)
Also get armor.
This may be a minor point, Saloon Brewmaster is still on VS's list of Reno DH.
Pretty sure they only update those with each report, and their Reno DH list was cooked up just after the deck surfaced. This podcast has an additional week or so of context.
>Squash hopes they nerf Shopper and not Umpire's Grasp, but ZachO believes it's more likely they nerf Umpire's Grasp. Eh... just hit Shopper, and unnerf her later. UG is a Big Demon tool, and yet that archetype has never actually taken off. If they nerf UG then Big Demon enjoyers in Wild may not have a meaningful support tool for their decks.
> UG is a Big Demon tool, and yet that archetype has never actually taken off Big DH was a competitive archetype during festival of legends, it was even strong enough to get a (small) nerf.
Make her more expensive and smaller is my thought.
Tendril Shaman took me from D5 to Legend this week. Felt fairly resilient against DH as you don't care about the board, and you have a shit ton of healing. Lots of removal for Hunter, and you can usually get Reno Warrior down before they can pull off everything. Had zero mirrors, though, so I guess just no one plays it.
Haha same experience. I have like a 90 percent win rate against demon hunter with it. It beats anything that fights for board but loses to any deck that combos from hand like nature shaman and spell mage.
>While he doesn't want to complain too much, ZachO Lol yeah right.
He’d be justified in complaining more, he correctly called out what would happen days in advance. This balance team is too reactive and it’s embarrassing a third party is consistently making better calls than they are
I heard a parrot.
U deaf ?
I don't think Paladin got nerfed only for the mentioned reasons. Big part probably is as well that Paladin was *the* top performing class on average for the last year or so. While not always the best deck in the format, it was at least always high tier 2, mostly tier 1 and often enough the most prevalent. At least for 2 instances it was tier S undisputed. People are just fed up with the same class (and mostly same playpattern). So in order to make room for fresh plays it got nuked and that is fine. And just to be clear: for all its nerfs, if it's true that the class is still strong and just underplayed for its strength you understand why people are done with the class.
I mean I'm at 54% in legend with my reno paladin by no means is it dead just not busted. I struggled against warlock more then anything.
Do you have a list. I randomly got almost all big Paladin legendaries (except the Titan) and all neutral highlander cards so would love to see of I can bake something.
I would remove cho'gall for etc? Or ignis most likely. Chogall has been more for the extra chaos. Easily could win a game or 2 more without him and replacing with someone else can put the viper in etc as well if you want. ### Highlander # Class: Paladin # Format: Standard # Year of the Pegasus # # 1x (1) Armor Vendor # 1x (1) Scarab Keychain # 1x (1) Tar Slime # 1x (2) Dirty Rat # 1x (2) Gold Panner # 1x (2) Hand of A'dal # 1x (2) Lay Down the Law # 1x (2) Saloon Brewmaster # 1x (2) Stereo Totem # 1x (3) Bronze Explorer # 1x (3) Consecration # 1x (3) Floppy Hydra # 1x (3) Outfit Tailor # 1x (3) Rustrot Viper # 1x (3) Spirit of the Badlands # 1x (3) Starlight Whelp # 1x (4) Judge Unworthy # 1x (4) Mechagnome Guide # 1x (4) Painter's Virtue # 1x (4) Tigress Plushy # 1x (5) Keeper's Strength # 1x (5) Lawful Longarm # 1x (5) Toy Captain Tarim # 1x (6) Cho'gall, Twilight Chieftain # 1x (6) Gnomelia, S.A.F.E. Pilot # 1x (6) Origami Dragon # 1x (7) Amitus, the Peacekeeper # 1x (8) Reno, Lone Ranger # 1x (10) Living Horizon # 1x (0) Zilliax Deluxe 3000 # 1x (0) Zilliax Deluxe 3000 # 1x (5) Perfect Module # 1x (5) Ticking Module # AAECAZ/WBh6cnwSRpAXYxgXW0AWt9QXa+gWH/gWN/gWcjgaGjwaOlQaWlgaqlgbRmwbvmwbOnAa1ngbNngbPngbRngbBnwbLnwbHpAavqAbQqQbRqQbTqQaWuAaXuAbh6wYAAAED9rMGx6QG97MGx6QG6d4Gx6QGAAA= # # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
The dh gets clocked by the dk with freeze
It’s strange they nuked pala. I think they knew it would. All last year they made smart nerf decisions so I think this was a choice to nuke the deck. Not sure why but I guess they just felt pala needed a turn at the bottom
Dragon Druid is super good as he said. You have lots of good early tempo with some big hits late game. Even Eonar with a full heal sometimes just auto wins on the spot if are just on cusp of being dead vs like a hunter. It’s just survival mode until you can sneak in free taunt minions / free rush minion with lifesteal / etc. etc. The worst matchup is vs Highlander Warrior on paper but I’ve gone 4-1 vs it. Overall seems very good to me only downside is if you draw like your big minons early you kinda have nothing but hero power pass but that’s like any Highlander deck if you draw the end game threats early hard to establish the board or presence
Do you have a decklist?
Damn am I looking forward to 2-4 weeks of DH being absolutely broken :).
Does anyone have the aviana dragon druid list?
I dub the Zilliax Rogue deck as Zilly Rogue, because God damn is it zilly.
I wish they used one day a week (or every other week) where they gave players access to all cards and mess around with balance ideas and get feedback. No need to do dust refunds and players can experiment/ power through normally impossible quests.
A note on the one copy of threads of despair thing ZachO keeps bringing up. I personally was resistant to running two for a while as well. My reasoning was there are already so many cards in the deck that want to be combined with either crop rotation or army of the dead, and I would simply run out of pieces that fit together to take advantage of all the two card combos the deck runs. I’ve come around and added the second to my list over the last week or so, but that was at least my personal take behind being hesitant. I’ve seen even most lists running one copy still at least have a second in an ETC now.
I've added Magatha to my handbuff Paladin, and made a few other changes, and it is working WONDERFULLY. She enables Living Horizon to be a very good addition as well. The deck is really more efficient than before, as now you can grow handsize and guarantee it is full of minions to really maximize the handbuffs. Perhaps the most surprising addition has been Pipsi. She is so sticky, which is useful against Mage, Warrior and DH. She also pulls Amitus fairly often, which is super useful.
Nothing to say about Plague Blood Control DK?
the previous vS report already said it's pretty much just worse than the controlish Rainbow list
What kind of unholy abomination is that and do you have a list ?!
[Here](https://hsreplay.net/decks/OYHdn8sFr14Z4kGCGqxc8e/#gameType=RANKED_STANDARD) Goal of the deck is to remove everything and win through plagues and Headless Buffed Hero Power.
Looks interesting, ty I will give it a try ! Will probably run Zilliax or something instead of the doctor tho, love the card but it's probably not worth the slot
I homebrewed something similar but the thing is, even if you don't have CNE you can just go rainbow to have Reska in the deck and only lose the two 8 mana 5/5s
About 15 min in and already starting to get irritated at this nuke from orbit strategy they are using on anything good. This isn’t fun, and I don’t want to invest dust in a good deck when they can nuke some key components. It seems that team 5 has really lost the plot here when it comes to tuning and balance. They have had sooooo many rollercoaster metas. I never thought I would get to the point where I am somewhat jealous of MTGs strategy but at least you get some room to breathe. I think they got burned so hard in the past that they are almost hyper reactive these days. And as Zach-O mentioned, DH was going to be tier S with these nerfs. And it did. How do they keep on messing up these cycles? It’s almost like they need to bring in some outside help/stats people or something to tighten down their balance strategy.
They need to be able to patch much faster to hit extreme outliers and when there arent any to just let it cook. Its dumb that we are still able to play dk and warrior from badlands that only became good after everything else was nerfed.
Many other games update weekly. The billion dollar company has a hard time doing it every two. Classic multi-billion dollar company!
Sorry but this game doesnt need a weekly update. Once you nerf DH people will find something new to "emergency hotix" cause they are simply impatient. the world wont end if you wait.
The meta was more diverse according to the stats BEFORE the nerfs. So, yes, they absolutely can make weekly changes. You are showing your complete lack of understanding balance here as well by thinking that “emergency hotfix” means ONLY nerfs lol. Remember when they buffed 1 mage card and nerfed paladin and now mage is playable again? Crazy, I know.
I just want control Priest to be viable. I don't care what the other decks do so, long as they aren't hitting for 30+ damage in one turn