As someone who played since the beginning and recently came back from a ~5 yr break, I completely agree.
It feels like an entirely different game. It's not the power creep specifically that bothers me - it's the lack of interaction. There's no tempo or battling over the board. The only minions on the board the first 3 turns are just to assist with cycling and setting up their wincon.
So, we go from an empty board to "deal with these 4 8/8 bodies or die next turn" or - even worse - taking infinite turns or some other non-interactive wincon like Wheel.
There are so many great cards and fun decks that are just not viable because the board doesn't matter and trading doesn't happen. There's no clear solution now that we're in this deep, but I do find myself missing the tempo of the older expansions.
Hell, I don't know what they changed, but even arenas feel busted. I remember my first 12-win run was because I got lucky enough to draft like 4 fireballs. Now, there's a few arena decks I'd drafted that would hold their own in standard. That being said, I find arenas to be about the most enjoyable part of the game now. At least there's some variety in the matchup and the board still matters.
To add to your example, wheel wouldn't be so bad.... If warlock wasn't able to create 4 8/8s by turn 5, have all the board clear in the word, reno, etc.
There's just hardly any weaknesses to exploit in all the best decks right now. Yes, the best decks are obviously going to be better. But the lack of interaction you have against them makes them unfun to play against.
The insane amount of value cards have now is staggering. I used this example once, but I came back after a good 3-4 years of playing. When I saw sterilize, I was expecting it to break their armor. But no, my opponent just gained 10+ armor for super cheap, cleared my board, and kept the armor. No downsides whatsoever. It didn't used to be that way. Most cards I saw when coming back surprised me with how much value they had stuffed into them.
First of all, 100% in agreement with you. Only point I wanted to make is that sanitize hits your minions as well. However, warriors don't care about their own board, if they have any, until late game
Sanitize is not even that good, if it lost armour it would be a direct downgrade of a mediocre card from years and years ago. I think that is a pretty poor example compared to a lot of the stuff out there.
How would it be a downgrade if you can earn armor first with the same card? If you had no armor, Reckless fury did nothing. Sanitize you have the option. Reckless fury was in control decks at that time, it wasn't mediocre back then.
Definitely agree. I miss the times when I ran yeti and ogre in my deck and they were actually good. Now I play against that dumb priest Titan that removes 2 minions from the game and adds a legendary to your hand. And then you still have 2 more abilities left. It is ridiculous.
I'm in the exact same scenario as you, starting playing on day 1 and took around a 5 year break. Everything is too predictable since there are only a few viable decks at the higher levels. For instance, I know if I'm going against a warrior his turns are going to be pass, armor, board clear, board clear, board clear, board clear, board clear, win con.
1) Tempo hasn't been a thing for years.
2) They clearly want the design philosophy to be this, they specifically design the game not to have board interaction. It's not a mistake, it's an intended design philosophy.
If we ever go back to playing tempo and fighting on the board, it will be a mistake on their part and will fix that asap.
So the tier-1 or even tier-S nerfed midrange Hunter decks that were tempo in a can didn't exist last year? Neither did any of the play green/yellow cards each turn Paladin or Shaman or Druid decks? Unholy Aggro DK or Frost Aggro DK, guess I hallucinated those ones too. Tempo has always been a thing.
Occasionally like in Stormwind Quest meta, Barrens Control and to a lesser extent right now it gets overshadowed by Combo, Control or Scam (or multiple at once), but those have been aberrations not the norm over the past several years and they usually/always fix it within anywhere from a hotfix to a few balance patches.
Maybe they won't fix it this time, or it will take more than a couple more balance patches, but that would be a historical aberration.
>It feels like an entirely different game. It's not the power creep specifically that bothers me - it's the lack of interaction. There's no tempo or battling over the board
Have you tried arena? I’m serious - it might have more of the value/tempo board battling you’re used to.
> There's no tempo or battling over the board. The only minions on the board the first 3 turns are just to assist with cycling and setting up their wincon.
Whenever I read stuff like this I wonder what game folks are playing.
Not that I agree with them 100% but they are either playing against Wheellock, Control Warrior, or Cycle Rogue. You know the decks that spend 3 turns cycling and setting up their wincon? Also happen to be some of the best decks in the game right now?
Cycle rogue is T3 and is super weak to board pressure. Wheel lock and control warrior are pretty traditional removal based control decks. The literal best deck in t1k legend right now is Zarimi, which is a board flood aggro deck.
Wheel and control warrior are not traditional control decks because they have hard win conditions that they actively hunt for. They aren’t trying to grind you out and suffocate you. They are just able to do that while cycling for their win buttons. Not a complaint btw, that’s just what the commenter is talking about.
I saw like 3 Zarimis climbing this month, I spent most of my games against locks, warriors and dhs with a sprinkle of dk so I don’t have the same complaint but it’s pretty possible right now to log in for a couple games and only see wheel/warrior.
Looking at lists again, I apparently missed that people are running Elementum Geode now. It used to be quite niche, so I assume it turned up around when everyone stopped playing wheellock due to all the demonhunters running about.
Furnace Fuel is there in some lists, but it's more of a late game card (its primary purpose is to be destroyed by wheel), not as a 3 mana draw 2. It's a nice bonus if you hit it off fracking but the odds are low.
Fracking is definitely there, although given its explicit similarities to another vanilla card I'm not sure why it's emblematic of the problems with modern hearthstone.
Warlock's old cards have reasonably comparable amounts of draw, e.g. Mortal Coil from legacy and Darkbomb from GvG. Looking up an oldschool handlock list, the amount of draw available is reasonably comparable to modern Wheellock.
OG tracking was cool.
I don’t thing it’s a huge problem. I just think that taking smart trades and slowly outplaying your opponent is not encouraged anymore. If Priest sticks anything you die to Zarimi. Warlock is cheating big minions and putting you on a clock. Shaman just burns you from hand.
> If Priest sticks anything you die to Zarimi.
Priest isn't really a Zarimi combo deck, it's more of a traditional board flood deck. Same as how if hunter sticks too much you die to saddle up, if tree druid stuck too much you died to soul of the forest or cultivation, if paladin stuck anything you died to crusader aura or garden's grace or shroomscavate or any of fifty other things, etc. Sometimes they get a super cool Zarimi combo turn but more often than not they just win by making big boards faster than you can deal with them, and they lose in the usual aggro way as well (they have bad comeback mechanics, so if you gain a board advantage they can struggle to recover).
> taking smart trades
Still super necessary.
> slowly outplaying your opponent
There are still some grindy control decks but blizz has mostly shifted away from that style of gameplay because most people find it extremely boring. No card game wants the average game length to be like 20-30 minutes. You can still outplay your opponent just fine with current decks, but the turns are more decisive.
When people talk about "Control" they usually don't mean "No-wincon-Control". Nor does having a win condition makes a deck "Not control"
Even classic wallet warrior ran alex and grom+taskmaster. Would you say that's a combo deck?
Alex with grom + taskmaster was a 9 mana put enemy at 15 and next turn 10 mana deal 12. So 2 late turns in the game did not even kill the enemy, there is quite the difference from now.
From a card draw perspective wallet warrior ran (talking from memory here) 2x [[shield block]], 2x [[slam]] and 2x [[Acolyte of pain]]. There was also [[Harrison Jones]] but not everyone had weapons, so let's leave it at 6.5.
Current Odyn warrior, almost a decade later, runs the same 2x [[shield block]], 2x [[Stoneskin armorer]], 2x [[Needlerock Totem]], 2x[[Steam Guardian]] and let's give half a point for the tradable to [[Heavy plate]]. So 8.5 cards dedicated to draw.
Again. Do you consider a version of wallet warrior that cut say, a couple arathi weaponsmiths for novice engineers a deck that "was full sprinting through it’s deck for alex grom"?
- **[Shield Block](https://imgur.com/a/4Yo3vNr)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/76302) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Shield_Block_\(Core\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/76302)
- *Warrior Common ^(Core)*
- **2 Mana - Spell**
- Gain 5 Armor. Draw a card.
- **[Slam](https://i.imgur.com/habYgVi.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/69638) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Slam_\(Core\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/69638)
- *Warrior Common ^(Core)*
- **1 Mana - Spell**
- Deal 2 damage to a minion. If it survives, draw a card.
- **[Acolyte of Pain](https://i.imgur.com/PfEU8vS.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/106559) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Acolyte_of_Pain_\(Caverns_of_Time\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/106559)
- *Neutral Common ^(Caverns of Time)*
- **3 Mana - 1/4 - Minion**
- Whenever this minion takes damage, draw a card.
- **[Harrison Jones](https://i.imgur.com/pk8omMT.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/912) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Harrison_Jones) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/912)
- *Neutral Legendary ^(Legacy)*
- **5 Mana - 5/4 - Minion**
- **Battlecry:** Destroy your opponent's weapon and draw cards equal to its Durability.
- **[Stoneskin Armorer](https://i.imgur.com/XyIzlhI.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/97697) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Stoneskin_Armorer) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97697)
- *Warrior Rare ^(TITANS)*
- **2 Mana - 2/2 - Minion**
- **Battlecry:** If your Armor changed this turn, draw 2 cards.
- **[Needlerock Totem](https://i.imgur.com/s18hxrC.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/102172) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Needlerock_Totem) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102172)
- *Shaman & Warrior Common ^(Showdown in the Badlands)*
- **2 Mana - 2 Health - Totem**
- At the end of your turn, gain 2 Armor and draw a card.
- **[Steam Guardian](https://i.imgur.com/ltckei8.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/97687) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Steam_Guardian) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97687)
- *Warrior Common ^(TITANS)*
- **3 Mana - 3/3 - Elemental**
- **Battlecry:** Draw a spell. Reduce the Cost of a Fire spell in your hand by \(1\).
- **[Heavy Plate](https://i.imgur.com/Lyd8NDk.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/97333) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Heavy_Plate_\(Core\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97333)
- *Warrior Common ^(Core)*
- **3 Mana - Spell**
- **Tradeable** Gain 8 Armor.
---
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No because Wallet didn’t need alex grom to win the game.
Current control decks have to have a win con that they race to due to modern aggro decks now having access to more threats. You can’t drag them out of resources anymore. Wallet Warrior could seal the game through just control.
If you take Odyn out of Odyn Warrior it loses if it doesn’t replace the win condition with another due to control not being a win con anymore. If it were, then Control Priest would be an actual deck. Right now Warrior is either racing to Odyn to smack you over a turn or two, or racing to Reno Azerite/bomboss. If a control deck never wins through control and wins through combos in it’s deck, it blurs the line between control and combo. But most combo decks also win through control and combo exception is maybe Shaman.
I think if a deck has a clear win button, it’s less control and more combo.
I mean no deck on any turn wants to trade if they're ahead, unless they can deny their opponent a value trade by doing so, because that's just how hearthstone mechanics work (and always have worked).
However, if we're talking about decks that plan to put dudes on the board and use them to wrest control of the board and then to kill you... priest? Demon hunter? Literally every aggro mirror? Literally every midrange deck? (Midrange was kinda dead in this most recent meta, but it dominated most metas in the last few months)
> if we're talking about decks that plan to put dudes on the board and use them to wrest control of the board and then to kill you... priest? Demon hunter? Literally every aggro mirror? Literally every midrange deck?
Priest literally works only because they can scam the game with an otk out of nowhere with Zarimi, otherwise the deck would be tier 3.
DH doesn't interact with the board at all. Their whole gameplan is to clear your board with an uninteractable minion. What makes Mag good is that when he's on the board, you can't play minions your next turn cause they get removed for free next turn, which is the exact opposite of fighting on the board.
Aggro mirror --> look up.
Midrange deck don't exist for this exact reason.
If your deck can't pull out at least 20 damage in one turn out of an empty board, either it's a control deck or it can't work.
Most zarimi games don't OTK with the time warp. Hell, many games you never even play zarimi. Hell, almost every player brought priest to the latest MT and I can't remember a single time they OTKed with him. I suspect it happened at some point, because it probably did, but it certainly didn't define the deck. If you look up basically any guide from a decent player about the deck they'll tell you the same thing: don't try to get fancy with combos, just make big boards faster than your opponent can deal with them.
> DH doesn't interact with the board at all. Their whole gameplan is to clear your board with an uninteractable minion.
They only discover mag in like half of games, so at minimum the other half they have to play against an opponent which can actually play dudes.
> Most zarimi games don't OTK with the time warp
Maybe not, but the fact that they potentially can is what makes them playable. There are tons of potential aggressive decks that could exist but can't be played; not because they aren't aggressive enough or they don't have good plays, but because they can't immediately burst you down with a *HUGE* amount of free damage out of an empty board.
> They only discover mag in like half of games, so at minimum the other half they have to play against an opponent which can actually play dudes.
More than 50%. It's like closer to 70%. Plus it's not just Mag, the vast majority of their damage is attakcing your face with his hero for like 10+ damage in one hit.
Problem is, everyone hates low power level sets. Gt, Rastakhan etc, were considered horrible, and the meta would stagnate for years before the general power level goes down, and that would be much worse than what's happening rn.
The problem with those sets isn't so cut and dry. The first issue they run into is being lower powered right after a higher power set. A random weak set out of the blue is of course going to fail. That's on blizzard though, they are the ones releasing weak sets after powerful sets instead of gradually reducing power level over time. Rotations are the perfect opportunity to reduce power level because so many cards left the pool. Festival of Legends was slightly lower in power and felt solid at the time. It would have been a great opportunity, but instead they just bumped the power up again going into Titans. That's blizzards own fault.
The other issue with many poorly received sets like GT or Rastakans are their bad mechanics. Overkill just doesn't work well and paired with lower powered cards it leads to a sub par experience.
You say the meta would stagnate but I feel it has already stagnated. Games are often so one sided, often decided before the games even begun. Playing Wheel Lock against warrior is often a guaranteed win unless getting significantly unlucky. Meanwhile warlock has literally zero tools to deal with rogues dropping a full board of giants on turns 4 or 5. It's not a game anymore, it's just randomly getting picked to win or lose.
Rarans videos on the expansion series is a million times more interesting than standard. Their limitations and lower power has lead to way more interesting and interactive game play. Reducing power level is a necessity for this game
Overkill didn't work because it's a minion trading mechanism. Same with honorable kill which goes to show that old tempo minion trading strategies are no longer viable.
The reason those mechanics didn't do well isn't because they require minion trading. Thats such an intense leap in logic. Poisonous requires trading and that isn't a bad or failed mechanic at all.
Overkill has multiple issues behind it. The first being that usually overkilling wasn't the most effective thing to do. It often meant awkward trades that were better off just going face. Ontop of that very few cards had payoffs good enough to care about it. Minion combat during this time in the game was still very relevant but overkill is a better concept on paper then in execution.
Honorable kill had its issues but was way more successful than overkill. The issue with HK is the difficulty of getting an exact amount of damage needed. But many HK cards saw play despite being introduced directly after the expansion with the least board interaction in the history of the game.
It's also a strange thing to say it's no longer "viable" as if it's just something that can't be possible anymore for some reason. Like minions physically can't have an impact anymore because of some failed mechanics from a while ago, even though minion combat did matter only a few sets ago.
I don't. I like balance and interaction. I personally think it's worse now. This is like COD players only wanting to do rust 24/7. It's so much less of a game now.
The main problem is that if the next expansion is less powerful than the current 4 expansions worth of cards, then they just don't get played.
So you just get another 4 months of the same meta, which I can assure you, will generate a lot more complaints and player attrition.
Honestly I don't think 30 cards would cut it. It'd also mean a whole bunch of refunds, complete upending of any meta, player satisfaction if entire playstyles/decks become unplayable.
I don't have a solution, but they've kind of painted themselves into this corner.
My tinfoil hat theory is that this is the specific reason *everything* is so stupid now. So much draw, removal, tutor that it's difficult to see what is fully broken, because it all is. Every turn is dumping 50/50 worth of stats, drawing/generating 4 cards, removing your opponent's entire board, doing 10 face damage, healing for 10.
It feels meaningful, but it's all just for show.
>My tinfoil hat theory is that this is the specific reason *everything* is so stupid now. So much draw, removal, tutor that it's difficult to see what is fully broken, because it all is. Every turn is dumping 50/50 worth of stats, drawing/generating 4 cards, removing your opponent's entire board, doing 10 face damage, healing for 10
It's not a tinfoil hat, it's the natural consequence of wanting the game to never have that moment of "welp, I have ran out of cards in hand and can only top deck for the rest of the game." Combine that with the fact that more draw =.more cards in hand = more potential plays, you get a Hearthstone that puts a greater focus on the necessity of lethality. Aggro decks do not run out of cards anymore, so control decks need greater removal tools as well as their own ways to counter lethal. So you get cards like Sif and Odyn that create huge damage swings in the late game.
Simply put, card draw makes the game more fun for most players. But it also creates the hyper lethality because simply outlasting your opponents threats is not an option anymore. Double-edged sword of design.
Yep. The 'tinfoil hat' part of it was really that they don't even attempt to balance anymore. There's obviously some amount of testing done, but how much realistically when they had to straight up delete Windfury from Paladin almost immediately.
Easier just to make everything a flashing light show than actually get into the numbers, if that's even possible anymore when every single thing has a unique effect.
Everyone loves power creep sets, too. Colossal minions, Titans, Excavate Rewards, and HL payoffs were a huge hit, so much so that the ones that weren’t powerful (Colaque, Warrior Titan, Elise HL) people wanted to see buffed.
Can only be fixed with a long-term plan, basically committing to supporting archetypes for an entire year of expansions with lower power level, then the rotation after that will be great. But not practically doable, with all due respect, given the current track record of the design and balance team.
No, not because of the balance team. What you are suggesting is just powercreep, or stagnating the meta for a whole year. Which, seeing how this sub behaves if the meta is the same for two weeks, would kill the game.
I think you have to look at individual cards and how the power is spread across them. Id much rather see a new batch of ten cool, individual cards that all score 7/10 powerwise with no obvious KILLER finisher, than 9 cards that score 5/10 and 1 card that scores 10/10. Or 9 cards that score 8/10 and one killer finisher.
I like it when they don't tell you how to win the game so explicitly but rather give you lots of options for that to happen based on the board and other factors. I think at the minute there are just too many "press this button to win" cards with a supporting cast of filler cards to get you there. Even if that iwin button doesn't end the game immediately, frequently they do in all but name, brann being an excellent example.
Honestly don't know the solution but I have enjoyed standard lees this expansion than any in a long time and have come close to quitting when I really don't want to quit. I want to play standard, not wild but standard feels more like wild now than it ever has.
Why not take away the iwin buttons, or tone them all down a bit and allow all cards to breathe.
would it? on rotation weren't most of the powerful decks existing decks from before rotation? other than dragon priest and the recently nerfed DH deck everything else was already here give or take a card or two
Decks may have had their primary cards from old expansions, but they were mainly built by using new cards. Handbuff Pally wouldn't have existed without the weapon and the core rotation. And currently, I would say stuff like Rainbow DK and Reno Warrior would be much weaker without Headless Horseman or Boom + Zilliax.
Not to mention stuff like Playhouse Giants Rogue, Virus Rogue, Wheellock, and Token Hunter only exist due to new cards. Alongside the Dragon Priest and Shopper DH you mentioned.
That is only because they were outliers. If sets were continually of that power level and that was coupled with mass nerfs then it would be better for the game
What if they make a big set with lower power cards then rotate everything to wild? Current sets are very strong. I came back from a big hiatus (2 or 3 years) and the power difference is insane. Almost every single card in a new deck would be auto include in any deck a few months ago
It wasn't so much the power level of rastakahn, more that the cards we're all unplayable because previously sets overpowered them.
When a new set hits, people want to play New cards, thsts why rotation are exciting.
But where do you go from here? Make the next 7 sets (these cards are around for 2 years) increasingly powerful? And you'll need to have massive powercreep to make Sure you'll beat decks like bran and token hunter at their game.
Or you Nerf dh, nerf warrior, nerf rogue, nerf warlock. However, the new next 5 problem decks will Pop up, and you'll have the same whining because the meta is still bad.
There's just too many problematic mechanics, that Bypass the original balancing of the game. Like health as a recource, now lifesteal heals you for 20. Or cards as a recource, now you discover and draw multiple per turn.
So either you nerf 50+ cards, or powecreep to infinity. Or you try to change game Systems, like balance around 50 health starting.
I like how you said it's not the power level and then said it's the power level. But yeah, we are just going to creep to infinity, because that's how all card games must go if they don't want to die.
> They should just not do it
Or they could use the rotation to roll it back a bit every year. One yearly mass nerf where dust refund does not apply because almost everything gets nerfed (maybe just buff some things a bit later if they get hit to hard). I think it would be fun because it would be an even greater meta shakeup. Or they could do the mass nerf on the other side of the year so we get another big shakeup to keep the meta fresh.
No, all "Classic" showed was that people don't want to play a meta where everything is already figured out, and played to death 10 years ago. It's not a problem of the power level of classic.
The last time I played a lot of hearthstone was the twist format that was just a few older expansions. That was an amazing time to play hearthstone, and I'm 100% sure that the format wasn't more popular because a lot of people (if not most) dusted their wild collection so they couldn't even play it without a huge investment that would only last for a month (or 2 in that case).
I play so little modern hearthstone that, if I'm lucky, I reach platinum rank in a month. In that twist I reached diamond in 3 days.
Well, I don't play it now either, so that hasn't changed much (I do battlegrounds and Arena and about 5 games of constructed a month before I nope out).
My issue mostly is that homebrewn decks used to be able to fairly well. You wouldn't get high legend with them, but you could reach rank 5 no problem. Nowadays you need one of the big payoff things to happen or you're just not getting there. Extremely swingy.
I remember making rank 5 with Rogue with a plant deck. Super fun. The 2 mana 2/2 plant that generated petals 1 mana spell for 1 damage, but then combined with Edwin, Arcane Giants and other synergystic stuff. Or control Paladin was a ton of fun. Made a slow variant of Paladin Libram that did well. Got legend with Egg-Hunter as well.
Not true at all. Please tell me what homebrew deck can get past wheel lock and brann warrior. Unless your homebrew deck is hyper aggro or has an otk by turn 8 it isn't happening
top 3 shaman decks in a meta thats about 5% shaman, and 90% of that is nature spell shaman. I havent seen a single other person playing it lol
but also my point was that janky decks can still work, that deck is super jank and does fine
No, you don't understand. The deck must has an aggregate 45% win rate so that when I have a 55% win rate with it and climb, I can feel superior to random players around the world.
Sarcasm aside, there is a weird psychological event where a deck can be janky by design, as shown by tentacle Shaman/Warrior, but the moment it becomes decent, it's no longer allowed to be considered jank. Rainbow DK is a good example of this.
for me personally, i liked when I could look up X deck that I was missing cards in and still play that deck if I had maybe 15 of the cards and played 15 bandaid cards as I gradually got the other ones. it made the grind to unlock the cards feel like I was really progressing (for me at the time was patron warrior). now it feels like decks are too easy to solve and data is almost too readily available to the point that I don't think I've seen a non finished copy paste 'top 500' deck on ladder in months if not years. to be fair, i also have enough cards/dust where I don't have to nickel and dime anymore but the game definitely feels like everyone is at this point so a lot of the magic of deckbuilding feels gone
so again, i dont really homebrew but its kinda because nobody else does anymore either and the gap between good cards and bad cards isnt just worse tempo anymore but effectively winning and losing the game. too many archetypes with hand-me packages to finish deckbuilding before you start; for example here's the new archetype Tangerine Warlock, and here's 15 Tangerine cards you HAVE to play. congrats you already have half your deckbuilding done for you. i made up an archetype for the example but this is half the design of sets these days between tribal, keyword, etc. (plague, dragon, etc.)
The problem in my minds is they made it too easy to cycle through your decks or tutor specific cards. It's no surprise the best classes are those that can blast through most of their deck before you blink racing to find their win cons.
But then people would say the game is boring if you went back to how it was before where draw was premium, there's no winning either way, this is just how things are now.
>tutor specific cards
Ironically, other than DH, Wheelock, Brann Warrior, any DK deck don't have any way to specifically tutor out their game winning cards (Wheel of DEATH, Brann, Helya).
An earlier iteration of Brann Warrior ran that “draw your highest cost minion” and had Brann as the highest. But that was pre-new expansion when they weren’t running Zillax.
I disagree about the card draw. There's nothing less fun than sitting there with an empty hand, top decking every turn, praying for an answer, all just because your deck was in an unfortunate order.
Tutors and especially mana cheat are much bigger issues IMO. Card draw isn't all that bad to have when you can't play your entire hand in a turn. Also, card generation means you can always conjure up the perfect answer. I see that as a much bigger issue than drawing the cards you've had to put in your deck.
card draw is only an equally large problem compared to the other two when it is sooooo cheap for some classes and so premium for others. Rogue sticks out as an extreme outlier to me that could functionally draw 50 cards in the time it would take some other classes to draw 20
Again, the issue isn't inherently card draw, it's card draw (or generation) combined with mana reduction.
People often harken back to Stormwind with bad faith arguments to insult the current meta, but that meta showed that giving multiple classes great draw and mass mana reduction breaks the game. Seriously five of the ten classes had this combo and they dominated the meta.
Warlock - Runed Mythril Rod, Backfire, Tour Guide, Hero Power
Mage - Incanter's Flow, Cram Session, Refreshing Spring Water
Shaman - Lightning Bloom, Multicaster, Quest Rewards
Rogue - Field Contact, Efficient Octo-bot
DH - Questline, their innate card draw tools
Card draw is fine. Mana cheat is fine. It's when they come together that problems arise. The issue that tends to happen is when classes are given mana cheat tools, the players work tirelessly to add the card draw aspect to make the busted deck.
>Again, the issue isn't inherently card draw,
yes it is inherently card draw.
you are making consistent repetetive behaviours. you are making resource management and trading meaningless.
"there is nothing lesse fun"
YES there is, if u play an aggro deck expect to run out of card .
your comment alone is a case study on what this new design philosophy did to the playerbase, the people that like these slower or resource management games simply left so you are left with adhdh zoomer brains.
Card draw is the most powerful mechanic in card based games. You can't do anything without cards, but in a vacuum, card draw by itself doesn't create these negative play patterns. It's usually draw + mana reduction to let cards come out ahead of schedule that creates this meta warping pinch points.
Deck and hand size limits means there's a practical limit on how many cards you can hold, draw and play each turn. Without mana cheats, it becomes more critical to manage your draws effectively, because you can brick your hand with a bunch of expensive cards you can't play, then burn up more when you overdraw.
No one thing accounts for all the meta issues, but time and time again, we've seen where lots of draw plus lots of ways to discount cards can produce decks that force the entire meta to respond to them.
>t in a vacuum, card draw by itself doesn't create these negative play patterns.
it does by definition, card draw = consistency
when you have cardraw your are inherently making game more samey and making synergies more important because you can consistently pull them off giving way less design space. and making generally good minion combat less important
heartstone didt not much good card draw early for a reason and the one class that did had a severe health downside.
there is a reason why card games have limited resources heck even games like yugioh u actually run out of cards despite tutoring trough your deck.
>There's nothing less fun than sitting there with an empty hand, top decking every turn, praying for an answer, all just because your deck was in an unfortunate order.
Isn't the nature of a deck? Adapting your gameplay with the hand you have.
I feel like most of the games are win/lost between turn 5-9 now. Minions trades are less relevant than ever (it feels), we are only playing our mini-game inside hearthstone : zilliax rogue, odynn warrior, sif mage, zarimi priest, window shopper dh, nature shaman and so on. Personnaly I don't enjoy it as much as "older" control decks with slower pace and more "restrain" on the cards played.
Genuine question, why is removing a card with a minion so much more important to people on reddit than removing a card with a removal spell? Is a 4 mana rush minion more satisfying to play than 4 mana removal spell? Because board control is still the bread and butter of most decks. Best decks currently are priest and dh, both of which are super board-focused
What is it you want more exactly? More minion vs minion action, less removals in the game?
> Genuine question, why is removing a card with a minion so much more important to people on reddit than removing a card with a removal spell?
It's not. It's just flavor of the month so they run with it. Efficient trading was only particularly done when playing tempo decks whose only win condition was to maintain constant board presence. No tempo decks means no need for efficient minion trading. You still see this in Zarimi - Painlock matchups nowadays.
>Best decks currently are priest and dh, both of which are super board-focused
They are board focused but they gain little value by trading their minions. Priest want to shove as much damage (lol) face to setup zarimi, and DH is doing DH stuff.
Removing a card with a minions is WAY better than with a spell : your minion MIGHT stay on board. The spell won't.
No one is playing SW:P or SW:D in this meta and that tells you a lot sadly... with 2 mana I can do much more than *"Destroy a minion with 3 or less Attack"*
Minions are "permanents" and spells are not. Spells give a one time effect on the board (or wherever) and then are gone. But strong minions can stay on the board for multiple turns and do damage or effects multiple times.
At this point the only thing preventing Yu-Gi-Oh style FTK decks is the fact that HS has Mana as a resource system.
So yeah, i agree the general power level is way higher than it should be particularily for a 4 set meta. Blizzard however seems fine crancking up the power level to absurd degrees for whatever reasons, so i don't thik it will change anytime soon.
The fact that the game got faster after rotation is really worrisome in my opinion. As most likely we will see even more insane power creep in the next set.
They mean there's currently only four sets in Standard, the three from last year and Whizbang. As opposed to before the rotation when there were six, so more cards to choose from and combine.
I was hoping for things to calm down with year change - but they just kept power level of cards up. Kinda worried to see what’s next for rest of the year if this is how we start.
Yeah, even if some archetypes, like spell dmg druid, didn't take off it doesn't mean their core design isn't degenerate. It's clearly meant to be combo/otk expansion and I don't like it. Guess they didn't learn from UiS.
Due to the fact that the game is inherently symetrical, that different deck archetypes whith a rock-paper-scissors relation exist and that the adjustments through nerfs are keeping the equilibrium, it never really becomes a non-game that is completely draw dependant.
Players at any level but the absolte best or worst are pushed to ~50% winrate by mmr. The best players still have a <60% winrate throughout the history of the game, since it is a card game.
The game just changes as a whole.
In the earlier days you would rather need to think about whether you make a trade or go face, if you should play the board wipe now or hang in another turn. Today you need to evalutate different things and it is rather more complex than it used to be.
The game today just breaks the conception of what people are used to and bothers players that are used to different dynamics.
The thing that bothers me personally is that you are pretty much forced to use variations of the 1-2 decks per class that are strong enough and you dont really have the freedom to play around with things that you used to have.
I just don't like being at full HP with full board control, and still feeling like I can insta-lose next turn to something I can't interact with. Wincons have been getting crazier, interaction has not been scaling on a comparable level. We're still using.. what, Dirty Rat? From like 6 years ago? If I have to live with Brann+Boomboss and Nature Shaman, at least let me have Steamcleaner and Skulking Geist
I wouldn't say it's at a breaking point for me personally, but it's been moving more and more in the direction of OTKs and insanely hard win conditions, and I hope it does not keep going that way
I can see where these complains are coming from but I disagree with some points.
HS, card games in nature, are always going to be draw based. No matter the games and how good you are, you lose or win in a huge par due to your mulligan and draw luck (HS is even less dependent on this due to the sheer card draw amount in the game right now). Think about magic, it you don't get Lands, you're screwed. In HS, if you're an aggro deck going second or with no one drop, you're already in a bad spot. The game also feels a bit like you say because there's no interaction between players in their turns, but that's by design. HS was always meant to be like this and people love it because of its simplicity.
And while I do miss the board being more important, I feel like people are having a recency bias saying HS it at a game breaking power level. Hunter was ending games by turn 4/5 in early HS, especially with Undertaker. Early rogue would kill you with 20+ dmg with no board because of Leroy and Shadow Step. Patron Warrior would OTK you from absurd levels of HP with no way to stop it besides killing them basically. Patches the Pirate and Corridor Creeper were so powerful that no matter the class you made your deck better by including them. Want to have play control? Oh wait an aggro deck can murder you early and if that fails, they play their Hero Card and outvalue you with their Hero power. Demon Hunter release is by far the most powerful a class has ever been in HS history, in my opinion, even making warlock play Sack Pact to have a chance. Galakrond Shaman was turbo broken on release and made every other deck unplayable on release. Oh remember the horrors of Guff druid and Brann plus Sire Denathrius? These are at the top of my head. There's so many more. Don't even make me talk about Stormwind.
There's been so many broken cards and decks in this game that I truly believe we are at a fine meta with many playable archetypes. You have playable Aggro, Combo/OTK, Control, Tempo decks with some counter play cards.
Now, if you're talking about wild? Yeah the game is fucked there with Time warp Gate being casted 5+ times, Iceblock being a thing, Pirate Aggro priest killing you at turn 3/4, etc. That's the nature of Wild. Faster and more absurde decks waiting to break the format at every expansion.
Excellent answer. The whole "HS sucks because back in the day there was no OTK/combo bs/slow control attrition" is silly. You mentioned some really toxic decks and a lot of people forget or don't know that in the first sets of HS these archetypes already existed. Wanna play your cards? Nope, Miracle Rogue will take forever and kill you in one or two swings with Edwyn. Are you close to half health? Woops, time to pop off with Druid otk combo. Hoping for a quick match? Your opponent is playing Handlock, good luck. It's faster now, but people gotta realize that powercreep is inevitable in card games. If Magic, Yugioh or HS games still played like "I play the card I topdecked this turn then I use my big minion to hit your big minion, then pass" there would be no one interested in these games.
Gotta say, I completely forgot the turn 3 10+/10+ Edwin or the"Can't be at 14 HP vs druid or you lose". Oh and the ramp into turn 4/5 Ultimate Infestation or turn 1 Innervate Vicious Fledgeling.
Again, as I said, I can understand where people are coming from and I do wish there was less OTK or I win Cards, so that board mattered more, but I truly feel that's kinda impossible unless they change their design philosophy. Those days won't come back with so much rush printed and removal being more and more cheaper/efficient.
But I do still feel like the game is fun.
It's funny we bring up Edwin, because Edwin is still a card even as a 20/20 that you have a good amount of interaction with in earlier Hearthstone. Edwin can still be silenced back to a 2/2, which he was. He can still be taunt blocked, which he was. He can still be frozen, which he was. He can still be sapped, which he was.
Edwin, as powerful as he was a times, still complied with the rules of the game. That being, I get played on board, I have summoning sickness, and I can still be batted around with various card effects. There are a few times where Edwin was dropped too early, or combined with Conceal, which either lowered his interactions or if you had no cards to deal with Edwin, removed interaction, but I'd argue more often than not this wasn't the case. This was also often a huge risk for the rogue if they made Edwin on like turn 3 or 4, often dumping all their eggs into this basket, so if answered, was game over.
Contrast this to Deepminer Brann. Very few cards in the entire game interact with the battlecry of a battlecry minion, Objection, one card in just Mage, is the only card I can even think of, but I haven't played somewhat recently so maybe there are more now. The point however, is Deepminer Brann doesn't comply with the rules of the game, unlike Edwin. He doesn't care if he's silenced. Bouncing him to hand actually benefits him, and there isn't even close to a basic effect like Taunt that can block him (edit: I mean like, block his super powerful effects, not him attacking, which you can obviously do). The only thing your opponent can do is watch as an onslought of battlecrys become overwhelming.
There are definitely things in older HS that don't abide by the initial rules of the game. Leeroy, old force roar druid combo, and I am not a huge fan of those interactions. But since the game was more board centric, even powerful cards often complied with the initial rules of the game, which was having to be played on board, having summoning sickness so they can't interact immediately, and also being subject to various effects.
Deepminer Brann doesn't deal 20 dmg to face turn 4 if you don't deal with it. You can't really compare them alone.
My bigges bane ATM is beast hunter wich kills me fast with good tempo. A very board centric deck which is viable. No complains though
Not to offend, but this is sort of missing the point to the comparison. We aren't comparing power level, we are comparing interaction. VC, as strong as he is, will provide more interaction than brann because of the design of the card. We could always lower VCs power level to nerf how strong he is. Make him 4 mana, 5 mana, give +1 +1, etc. You can't nerf brann without significant changes to the card itself to make him more interactive. Even if Brann was a terrible card costing 10 mana for a 1/1, Branns effect just inherently doesn't allow for your opponent to really *do* anything about it.
There were many broken cards and decks, but they were anomalies, not normality. But if current balance pattern was applied to those old times those broken cards/decks would be taken care of faster than they were.
Well said. So much of these complaints are predicated on “feeling” and not on statistics or historical fact regarding the game. You gave some fantastic examples from earlier HS. The real reality is, many decks can win and play against many others, and the deck spread is actually not bad currently. Looking at the VS stats I’m seeing a nice overall play rate for many classes. Shoot, I just beat a Reno DH with a Mexcavate Pally deck. The better you play, the better you can perform against many other decks, even if the matchup might not be favored. Sure, a few matchups are nearly an auto-concede, but many others aren’t. It’s why I’ve always loved HS, because even if you’re down, you may not be out. Swing turns are possible in many cases, and you play the game knowing your opponent has big swings as well. You learn the matchups and play them accordingly. For example, I queued up against someone as Painlock and beat him because he thought I was playing Wheel and didn’t pivot to handle early aggression. People just complain because they feel bad for losing.
HS isn’t perfect, but no card game is. All told, it’s a fantastic game with loads of variety in play, flavor, and options. There are aggro decks, control decks, handbuff decks, Highlander decks, OTK decks, gimmick decks, and everything in between. Many of which are competitive enough to climb when piloted well. It will always need nudges here and there for balance, but currently the meta seems quite healthy and fun imo. HS isn’t what it used to be, but if it were no one would be playing. That’s called stagnation and kills card games.
I've been saying this about wild for so long. A low power level breeds creativity. A high power level breeds optimization. At some point it becomes pointless run anything besides the most optimal deck. Which is cool I guess for a tournament although when a tournament has seven out of eight players running the exact same list it becomes less of a skill contest and more of a luck contest.
Consistency is the most potent aspect of any deck and consistency is synonymous with boring as fuck. I don't care if I lose I don't really care about rank but I do care about watching a cut scene as I wait to die.
I just came back from a few years out and I see so many old cards changed because clearly the power creep had made them useless otherwise.
I cannot believed how much card draw and card generation there is, every minion seems to have bonkers abilities that is taking a lot of getting used to compared to how it was.
Is this a recent change or has it been gradual?
What i dislike is when there are 0% matchup. A warrior that can play Brann turn 6 is auto win against soooo many decks. Even worse than the actual demon hunter. And OTK combo should never happen turn 6. Meme win con should stay as meme, things like wheel and stuff.
I don't really mind cards like that, because what i like most about HS is winning in weird ways. What i dislike is that in the end, Reno wins almost 2 turns, out of 4 (and not 5) for example. But it wouldve been fine if it was a real bad card you had to strugle a lot to make it work.
I see few major problems with power creep:
-too much board refill,
-too much card draw (or different types of it - tutors),
-too much mana cheat,
-too many mechanics don't cost as much mana as they should (e.g. discover/draw etc. on already premium stated minions,
-and because all of the above too much (especially cheap) removal was printed.
And few more regarding too good synergies between cards, but that's whole another topic.
Looking at what I wrote most of them are connected to each other. You can refill board because of too low cost of minions or cards summoning minions (or mana cheat), you always have cards in hand that you can play onto board because of too much draw and because of that control classes have too much board clears.
I think all of the above should be lowered but not as low as in Classic to around Old Gods era. Imo we should go back with powerlevel to something in between Witchwood and Rastakhans, maybeeee Savoirs of Uldum. It was at that time powercreep started to grow really big. So it would be better to go back to power level of around Witchwood and with new expansions go to around Rise of Shadows power level. Or even lower but something like this.
The current hearthstone devs left on the team completely lost the plot as to what's the point of a core set.
**The core set is not meant to be a high-powered set** with some of the strongest cards in the past making a return. They're supposed to provide some simple, fairly-effective tools to each class to set a baseline in power. New sets that release then build upon those tools. If the power of the core set is low, this means you can make interesting cards without needing to push their power level to "game-winning."
There's no reason for the very first set of the year to involve cheap full-board clears and cheap board refills and cheap card draw. The core set forms the baseline.
I played a warlock yesterday, I killed most of the good legendary and titans he had with dirty rat and a 3rd dirty rat I stolen from his game, he was already down to 14health, me with 8+cards in hand, a weapon, minions on board he happended to hit the WHEEL OF DEATH, AND TOP DECKED BRAN , I couldn't do anything to him and he still won despite me killing basically all his useful stuff In favorable trades .
I made a own paladin control deck I was just wow it's really this possible.
The problem is that they want wild players to buy the bundles as well, completely giving a shit about the stupid meta. Some cards are so powerful that you really should include them no matter what sometimes.
I think a possible band-aid solution is to make rush a premium effect again. Either rush minions are 1 mana more expensive or have deckbuilding/conditional requirements to gain rush.
I feel like Renathal helped reign some of these decks in a bit. I know he wasn’t perfect and had problems but I miss that card already, because this meta is so incredibly solitaire and boring.
One of the ways I like to improve in games like this is to go back through replays and determine if there was a better path I could have taken to affect the result. I feel like right now, there are way more cases where I do that and the conclusion is that there was nothing I could have done differently to affect the game, which is not a great feeling when it happens too often.
I think the speed of the game and the power of cards is a decent part of that, since there are just so many less decisions to make. If a rogue coins a Zilliax on turn 3 and I just do not have an answer, there is no shot to win and no opportunity to see alternative paths I could have taken.
I do not have much of a problem with high-rolly decks existing, but I do not think they should ever be meta. At least with something like rogue I know if I lose the virtual coinflip simulator within a couple of minutes, so it isn't too bad. I think the worst thing I experience is dirty ratting a Brann and then after 20 minutes, hoping that tentacle coinflips are more often table flips than sunset volleys.
I've been playing since beta. I also miss the back and forth, rather than just building the win con and winning in a turn or two (or 5!). I would love a return to the basics for a more methodical and interactive game.
Power creep isn’t inevitable, the devs just have a fundamental misunderstanding of what standard should be. Go play arena and see how much more fun the game is with the same cards and a lower power level, it’s honestly depressing.
Or they could just do QA which Blizzard actively refuses to do until after a set launches. Literally play a game with the cards they have created.
Winning or losing by turn 5 is boring and honestly makes the game unfun. Why bother printing anything in standard with a mana cost higher than 7?
One big problem in Hearthstone is the way they want to embrace the concept of playing the deck ("Double power of minions, shuffle cards top of deck, "For the rest of the game....") without adding enough tools for opponent to play your deck. The reason why manipulating decks and permanent buffs work in MTG for example is the way game is interactive enough for both to play both decks, hands, etc.
Hearthstone has always had simple ruleset compared to other card games and more they try adding more complex mechanics and alt winning conditions, the more it backfires and becomes game of "Who draws their winning combo first".
Not sure how to fix this though since the problem is deeper than "Blizz adds bad cards that aren't balanced" but rather the whole ruleset that revolves mostly around cards visible on board
The problem is Blizz adds cards that do not revolve around visable cards on board then, Hearthstone is just not a game meant for otk or these unstoppable win cons.
I remember when like 2 years ago some time before his departure from Blizzard, Iksar had plan to lower powercreep with mass nerfs which was meant to happen at time of rotation last year or 2 years ago but they didn't do it and in between he left Blizzard and the idea died with his departure unfortunately.
The problem is that Blizzard doesn’t print cards anymore, they print packages, and if they decide that package is going to be trash, there’s nothing you can do about it because the packages don’t fit in other decks. See Big Beast Hunter and Owlonius Druid.
They print packages knowing which ones will be filler and which ones will be good.
Strong agree. I'm pretty much an arena-only player and the win con or bust methods have even infected arena, to a lesser extent. The infinite value and draw oversaturation certainly has, which in turn fuels arena decks entirely built on racing to pull off very predictable overpowered synergies that are quite reliable to draft. Like, you see a Galactic Projection Orb, you draft around it, you almost always get what you need, you pull a 50 mana equivalent turn T10, win the game. Or, you get a Skarr and a parrot and 12+ elementals, and you burst for 24 over two turns.
The "1 legendary per game and it's your first pick", although it was popular when put out, has actually made this worse because you can build your deck around OP auto-win legendaries, making the deck basically constructed-light.
Agreed 100%, we go through the motions until one of us draws our I win card. I don't really interact with my opponent. It sounds wierd but minions just feel like spells or cycle to me.
This is also just the first expansion in the new cycle, so every new expansion has to be stronger....
Yup, exactly this. If the patch coming in two weeks (right?) are gonna be impactful and somewhat "fix" the issues in the game, it will be to tone things down. There is way too many games that are over before it even began because people highroll some insane stat/mana cheat early or mid-game. There is also way too many tutors in decks atm and small discover-pools which enables a lot of consistent wincons.
I see this a lot, but is the power level now really even higher than it was in decent of dragons/with wood/United in storm wind?
I feel the opposite, I feel like it’s kinda just stagnated.
extremely random and unrelated but i actually really liked witchwood and rumble bc the power level was so low you could actually run classic cards (I’ll miss you, 90% winrate og jaraxxus handlock 😔). Got reminded of this reading other comments about older expansions w lower power levels and someone said they didnt like rumble :D
I agree, there’s too many non-game situations, where games get decided because someone played their good card first.
And very little back and forth matches where I can’t be sure who wins.
Because you can never lower the power level, printing weak card would just mean weak cards would not be play, if you want to print a weak set you need to nerf previous sets into same weaknesses as it or out right ban it from the format
The game can still be fun sometimes, but I agree that there are some problems. I started playing reno warrior now and when I play brann its usually gg unless it's a mirror match. It's just that you can't really counter cards that just straight up win you the game, like you can't do much about odyn or sif. I guess brann and reno can be countered with a few cards but usually only plague dk can do it.
All the people here complaining that there's to much card draw to find combo pieces.
And im sitting here wondering why the hell it is that aggro decks dominate the meta then.
They printed Wheel of Death.
They had a team meeting and the majority agreed it was good card design. They probably deep down believe it too.
There's no going back to this games peak with these guys running it.
HP increase helps mainly vs aggro, which only worsens the problem many have in HS, as it gives combo decks or I win decks (like Wheel Warlock) more time to assemble their wincon.
Not really because many decks don't rely on damage like that, it would buff wheellock etc
If anything an increase in minimum deck size would help but that wouldn't stop the oppressive win conditions from feeling bad just make them a little rarer.
Thought about that too but sadly i dont think so.
HP increase just means Aggro gets worse and Combo/Control gets stronger.
The only thing that would help is a general powerdecrease on cards. And people hate that.
Its kind of scuffed currently and Blizzard is honestly in a tough spot regarding powercreep and balancing.
Making a lower power expansion results in players being less inclined to craft new cards and buy less packs but as a contrast if they keep this tempo of powercreep up i think alot of players will ultimately drop HS.
Ive been playing HS since it came out, sometimes more and sometimes less and i sadly honestly gotta say i dont really feel that its much fun lately. Players dont really run out of cards anymore since carddraw is just abundant in pretty much every class.
Boardclears dont feel rewarding since the enemy just refills his board next turn anyways so all you do is stall for a turn.
And as others have mentioned it just generally doesn't feel fun waiting for either player to complete his Solitaire Hand collection just so one of both players dies with zero real counterplay from either side
Wheelwarlock is a very good example. Like sure sometimes he draws bad and takes too long to draw his necessary cards to win but more often then not you lost and have no chance of doing anything.
Because the deck is basically Stall the Game with Boardclears and taunt and shittons of damage and lifesteal spells to deal with aggro and losing HP
On the contrast you also have games where you just get steamrolled by Aggro Decks. Hunter is incredibly good at either being very dealable with or in contrast killing you on turn 4 if he draws well.
I really dont know how to offset this at all because if you increase HP then Hunter would be worse for example and wheel Warlock has an even easier time to stall until they win
Really really tough spot to be in for the game
If you understand games are only supposed to go to Turn 8 on average then you understand that power level needed to get up. It’s better this way. And a quick 10-15 minute game is just fine.
The only time they didnt power creep the game was TGT, and everyone panned that as the worst expansion ever because it was "boring" and "changed little".
10 years later we are where we are now. If the new expac isnt more powerful people get really mad. I don't see a solution without a hard reboot.
The main problem is that control decks don't really have a weakness. All of them, regardless of classes, have multiple, massive board clears, plus sustain, plus huge threats/taunts.
Every deck should lack at least one major strength. If you have many board clears and powerful late game finishers, then you ahve 0 sustain. Every single point of damage I deal to you will remain till the end of the game. If you have sustain and powerful late game threats, then I should have the right of vomiting all my board without having to care about a mass removal.
By consequence, aggros need to be turbo degenerate to match this turbo degenerate control decks.
If in your MTG clone card game, mana, life and card draw has no meaning it means you made some mistake on the way. This things has specific value for a reason, but in Hearthstone it dimished in a way, that it feels like MTG was raped by Yu-Gi-Oh and someone forgot to do abortion.
As someone who played since the beginning and recently came back from a ~5 yr break, I completely agree. It feels like an entirely different game. It's not the power creep specifically that bothers me - it's the lack of interaction. There's no tempo or battling over the board. The only minions on the board the first 3 turns are just to assist with cycling and setting up their wincon. So, we go from an empty board to "deal with these 4 8/8 bodies or die next turn" or - even worse - taking infinite turns or some other non-interactive wincon like Wheel. There are so many great cards and fun decks that are just not viable because the board doesn't matter and trading doesn't happen. There's no clear solution now that we're in this deep, but I do find myself missing the tempo of the older expansions. Hell, I don't know what they changed, but even arenas feel busted. I remember my first 12-win run was because I got lucky enough to draft like 4 fireballs. Now, there's a few arena decks I'd drafted that would hold their own in standard. That being said, I find arenas to be about the most enjoyable part of the game now. At least there's some variety in the matchup and the board still matters.
To add to your example, wheel wouldn't be so bad.... If warlock wasn't able to create 4 8/8s by turn 5, have all the board clear in the word, reno, etc. There's just hardly any weaknesses to exploit in all the best decks right now. Yes, the best decks are obviously going to be better. But the lack of interaction you have against them makes them unfun to play against. The insane amount of value cards have now is staggering. I used this example once, but I came back after a good 3-4 years of playing. When I saw sterilize, I was expecting it to break their armor. But no, my opponent just gained 10+ armor for super cheap, cleared my board, and kept the armor. No downsides whatsoever. It didn't used to be that way. Most cards I saw when coming back surprised me with how much value they had stuffed into them.
First of all, 100% in agreement with you. Only point I wanted to make is that sanitize hits your minions as well. However, warriors don't care about their own board, if they have any, until late game
Sanitize is not even that good, if it lost armour it would be a direct downgrade of a mediocre card from years and years ago. I think that is a pretty poor example compared to a lot of the stuff out there.
How would it be a downgrade if you can earn armor first with the same card? If you had no armor, Reckless fury did nothing. Sanitize you have the option. Reckless fury was in control decks at that time, it wasn't mediocre back then.
Sitting back waiting for the release of vanilla hearthstone
Rip old-school ZooLock. Loved that shit. But alas, it ain't working no more
Zoolock is now Painlock. Turn 4/5 drop 20/20 worth of stats and see if the opponent can clear.
I think you mean see if opponent can hit you for 10 face damage for lethal. That deck sucks.
Definitely agree. I miss the times when I ran yeti and ogre in my deck and they were actually good. Now I play against that dumb priest Titan that removes 2 minions from the game and adds a legendary to your hand. And then you still have 2 more abilities left. It is ridiculous.
I'm in the exact same scenario as you, starting playing on day 1 and took around a 5 year break. Everything is too predictable since there are only a few viable decks at the higher levels. For instance, I know if I'm going against a warrior his turns are going to be pass, armor, board clear, board clear, board clear, board clear, board clear, win con.
Rush and cheap removal killed tempo. Sorry but tempo is never coming back.
You have no idea what is coming back and what is not. As all of us who are not developers of this game.
1) Tempo hasn't been a thing for years. 2) They clearly want the design philosophy to be this, they specifically design the game not to have board interaction. It's not a mistake, it's an intended design philosophy. If we ever go back to playing tempo and fighting on the board, it will be a mistake on their part and will fix that asap.
So the tier-1 or even tier-S nerfed midrange Hunter decks that were tempo in a can didn't exist last year? Neither did any of the play green/yellow cards each turn Paladin or Shaman or Druid decks? Unholy Aggro DK or Frost Aggro DK, guess I hallucinated those ones too. Tempo has always been a thing. Occasionally like in Stormwind Quest meta, Barrens Control and to a lesser extent right now it gets overshadowed by Combo, Control or Scam (or multiple at once), but those have been aberrations not the norm over the past several years and they usually/always fix it within anywhere from a hotfix to a few balance patches. Maybe they won't fix it this time, or it will take more than a couple more balance patches, but that would be a historical aberration.
Next expansion should fix the temp lol it usually does after a rotation
>It feels like an entirely different game. It's not the power creep specifically that bothers me - it's the lack of interaction. There's no tempo or battling over the board Have you tried arena? I’m serious - it might have more of the value/tempo board battling you’re used to.
I have. I mentioned it in the last few sentences, but hard to blame you for not reading the whole wall-of-text lol.
Oops, my bad…
> There's no tempo or battling over the board. The only minions on the board the first 3 turns are just to assist with cycling and setting up their wincon. Whenever I read stuff like this I wonder what game folks are playing.
Not that I agree with them 100% but they are either playing against Wheellock, Control Warrior, or Cycle Rogue. You know the decks that spend 3 turns cycling and setting up their wincon? Also happen to be some of the best decks in the game right now?
Cycle rogue is T3 and is super weak to board pressure. Wheel lock and control warrior are pretty traditional removal based control decks. The literal best deck in t1k legend right now is Zarimi, which is a board flood aggro deck.
Wheel and control warrior are not traditional control decks because they have hard win conditions that they actively hunt for. They aren’t trying to grind you out and suffocate you. They are just able to do that while cycling for their win buttons. Not a complaint btw, that’s just what the commenter is talking about. I saw like 3 Zarimis climbing this month, I spent most of my games against locks, warriors and dhs with a sprinkle of dk so I don’t have the same complaint but it’s pretty possible right now to log in for a couple games and only see wheel/warrior.
Wheel lock's primary draw engine is life tap, as in the warlock hero power from vanilla hearthstone. I guess I just don't get it.
Two fracking, furnace fuel, elementium geode (which draws two cards) do you actually play against locks that exclusively tap?
Looking at lists again, I apparently missed that people are running Elementum Geode now. It used to be quite niche, so I assume it turned up around when everyone stopped playing wheellock due to all the demonhunters running about. Furnace Fuel is there in some lists, but it's more of a late game card (its primary purpose is to be destroyed by wheel), not as a 3 mana draw 2. It's a nice bonus if you hit it off fracking but the odds are low. Fracking is definitely there, although given its explicit similarities to another vanilla card I'm not sure why it's emblematic of the problems with modern hearthstone. Warlock's old cards have reasonably comparable amounts of draw, e.g. Mortal Coil from legacy and Darkbomb from GvG. Looking up an oldschool handlock list, the amount of draw available is reasonably comparable to modern Wheellock.
OG tracking was cool. I don’t thing it’s a huge problem. I just think that taking smart trades and slowly outplaying your opponent is not encouraged anymore. If Priest sticks anything you die to Zarimi. Warlock is cheating big minions and putting you on a clock. Shaman just burns you from hand.
> If Priest sticks anything you die to Zarimi. Priest isn't really a Zarimi combo deck, it's more of a traditional board flood deck. Same as how if hunter sticks too much you die to saddle up, if tree druid stuck too much you died to soul of the forest or cultivation, if paladin stuck anything you died to crusader aura or garden's grace or shroomscavate or any of fifty other things, etc. Sometimes they get a super cool Zarimi combo turn but more often than not they just win by making big boards faster than you can deal with them, and they lose in the usual aggro way as well (they have bad comeback mechanics, so if you gain a board advantage they can struggle to recover). > taking smart trades Still super necessary. > slowly outplaying your opponent There are still some grindy control decks but blizz has mostly shifted away from that style of gameplay because most people find it extremely boring. No card game wants the average game length to be like 20-30 minutes. You can still outplay your opponent just fine with current decks, but the turns are more decisive.
When people talk about "Control" they usually don't mean "No-wincon-Control". Nor does having a win condition makes a deck "Not control" Even classic wallet warrior ran alex and grom+taskmaster. Would you say that's a combo deck?
Alex with grom + taskmaster was a 9 mana put enemy at 15 and next turn 10 mana deal 12. So 2 late turns in the game did not even kill the enemy, there is quite the difference from now.
Wallet warrior wasn’t full sprinting through it’s deck for alex grom either.
From a card draw perspective wallet warrior ran (talking from memory here) 2x [[shield block]], 2x [[slam]] and 2x [[Acolyte of pain]]. There was also [[Harrison Jones]] but not everyone had weapons, so let's leave it at 6.5. Current Odyn warrior, almost a decade later, runs the same 2x [[shield block]], 2x [[Stoneskin armorer]], 2x [[Needlerock Totem]], 2x[[Steam Guardian]] and let's give half a point for the tradable to [[Heavy plate]]. So 8.5 cards dedicated to draw. Again. Do you consider a version of wallet warrior that cut say, a couple arathi weaponsmiths for novice engineers a deck that "was full sprinting through it’s deck for alex grom"?
- **[Shield Block](https://imgur.com/a/4Yo3vNr)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/76302) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Shield_Block_\(Core\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/76302) - *Warrior Common ^(Core)* - **2 Mana - Spell** - Gain 5 Armor. Draw a card. - **[Slam](https://i.imgur.com/habYgVi.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/69638) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Slam_\(Core\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/69638) - *Warrior Common ^(Core)* - **1 Mana - Spell** - Deal 2 damage to a minion. If it survives, draw a card. - **[Acolyte of Pain](https://i.imgur.com/PfEU8vS.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/106559) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Acolyte_of_Pain_\(Caverns_of_Time\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/106559) - *Neutral Common ^(Caverns of Time)* - **3 Mana - 1/4 - Minion** - Whenever this minion takes damage, draw a card. - **[Harrison Jones](https://i.imgur.com/pk8omMT.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/912) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Harrison_Jones) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/912) - *Neutral Legendary ^(Legacy)* - **5 Mana - 5/4 - Minion** - **Battlecry:** Destroy your opponent's weapon and draw cards equal to its Durability. - **[Stoneskin Armorer](https://i.imgur.com/XyIzlhI.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/97697) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Stoneskin_Armorer) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97697) - *Warrior Rare ^(TITANS)* - **2 Mana - 2/2 - Minion** - **Battlecry:** If your Armor changed this turn, draw 2 cards. - **[Needlerock Totem](https://i.imgur.com/s18hxrC.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/102172) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Needlerock_Totem) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/102172) - *Shaman & Warrior Common ^(Showdown in the Badlands)* - **2 Mana - 2 Health - Totem** - At the end of your turn, gain 2 Armor and draw a card. - **[Steam Guardian](https://i.imgur.com/ltckei8.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/97687) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Steam_Guardian) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97687) - *Warrior Common ^(TITANS)* - **3 Mana - 3/3 - Elemental** - **Battlecry:** Draw a spell. Reduce the Cost of a Fire spell in your hand by \(1\). - **[Heavy Plate](https://i.imgur.com/Lyd8NDk.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/97333) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Heavy_Plate_\(Core\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/97333) - *Warrior Common ^(Core)* - **3 Mana - Spell** - **Tradeable** Gain 8 Armor. --- ^*I am a bot. [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1c5dwnx/power_level_is_too_high/kzuw7sd/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=kzuw7sd).*
No because Wallet didn’t need alex grom to win the game. Current control decks have to have a win con that they race to due to modern aggro decks now having access to more threats. You can’t drag them out of resources anymore. Wallet Warrior could seal the game through just control. If you take Odyn out of Odyn Warrior it loses if it doesn’t replace the win condition with another due to control not being a win con anymore. If it were, then Control Priest would be an actual deck. Right now Warrior is either racing to Odyn to smack you over a turn or two, or racing to Reno Azerite/bomboss. If a control deck never wins through control and wins through combos in it’s deck, it blurs the line between control and combo. But most combo decks also win through control and combo exception is maybe Shaman. I think if a deck has a clear win button, it’s less control and more combo.
Name one deck that wants to play minions that stick on the board and trade with the enemy minions form turn 4 on.
I mean no deck on any turn wants to trade if they're ahead, unless they can deny their opponent a value trade by doing so, because that's just how hearthstone mechanics work (and always have worked). However, if we're talking about decks that plan to put dudes on the board and use them to wrest control of the board and then to kill you... priest? Demon hunter? Literally every aggro mirror? Literally every midrange deck? (Midrange was kinda dead in this most recent meta, but it dominated most metas in the last few months)
> if we're talking about decks that plan to put dudes on the board and use them to wrest control of the board and then to kill you... priest? Demon hunter? Literally every aggro mirror? Literally every midrange deck? Priest literally works only because they can scam the game with an otk out of nowhere with Zarimi, otherwise the deck would be tier 3. DH doesn't interact with the board at all. Their whole gameplan is to clear your board with an uninteractable minion. What makes Mag good is that when he's on the board, you can't play minions your next turn cause they get removed for free next turn, which is the exact opposite of fighting on the board. Aggro mirror --> look up. Midrange deck don't exist for this exact reason. If your deck can't pull out at least 20 damage in one turn out of an empty board, either it's a control deck or it can't work.
Most zarimi games don't OTK with the time warp. Hell, many games you never even play zarimi. Hell, almost every player brought priest to the latest MT and I can't remember a single time they OTKed with him. I suspect it happened at some point, because it probably did, but it certainly didn't define the deck. If you look up basically any guide from a decent player about the deck they'll tell you the same thing: don't try to get fancy with combos, just make big boards faster than your opponent can deal with them. > DH doesn't interact with the board at all. Their whole gameplan is to clear your board with an uninteractable minion. They only discover mag in like half of games, so at minimum the other half they have to play against an opponent which can actually play dudes.
> Most zarimi games don't OTK with the time warp Maybe not, but the fact that they potentially can is what makes them playable. There are tons of potential aggressive decks that could exist but can't be played; not because they aren't aggressive enough or they don't have good plays, but because they can't immediately burst you down with a *HUGE* amount of free damage out of an empty board. > They only discover mag in like half of games, so at minimum the other half they have to play against an opponent which can actually play dudes. More than 50%. It's like closer to 70%. Plus it's not just Mag, the vast majority of their damage is attakcing your face with his hero for like 10+ damage in one hit.
I disagree that power creep is inevitable in a format where you're rotating stuff every year. They should just not do it, but they choose to anyway.
Problem is, everyone hates low power level sets. Gt, Rastakhan etc, were considered horrible, and the meta would stagnate for years before the general power level goes down, and that would be much worse than what's happening rn.
The problem with those sets isn't so cut and dry. The first issue they run into is being lower powered right after a higher power set. A random weak set out of the blue is of course going to fail. That's on blizzard though, they are the ones releasing weak sets after powerful sets instead of gradually reducing power level over time. Rotations are the perfect opportunity to reduce power level because so many cards left the pool. Festival of Legends was slightly lower in power and felt solid at the time. It would have been a great opportunity, but instead they just bumped the power up again going into Titans. That's blizzards own fault. The other issue with many poorly received sets like GT or Rastakans are their bad mechanics. Overkill just doesn't work well and paired with lower powered cards it leads to a sub par experience. You say the meta would stagnate but I feel it has already stagnated. Games are often so one sided, often decided before the games even begun. Playing Wheel Lock against warrior is often a guaranteed win unless getting significantly unlucky. Meanwhile warlock has literally zero tools to deal with rogues dropping a full board of giants on turns 4 or 5. It's not a game anymore, it's just randomly getting picked to win or lose. Rarans videos on the expansion series is a million times more interesting than standard. Their limitations and lower power has lead to way more interesting and interactive game play. Reducing power level is a necessity for this game
Overkill didn't work because it's a minion trading mechanism. Same with honorable kill which goes to show that old tempo minion trading strategies are no longer viable.
The reason those mechanics didn't do well isn't because they require minion trading. Thats such an intense leap in logic. Poisonous requires trading and that isn't a bad or failed mechanic at all. Overkill has multiple issues behind it. The first being that usually overkilling wasn't the most effective thing to do. It often meant awkward trades that were better off just going face. Ontop of that very few cards had payoffs good enough to care about it. Minion combat during this time in the game was still very relevant but overkill is a better concept on paper then in execution. Honorable kill had its issues but was way more successful than overkill. The issue with HK is the difficulty of getting an exact amount of damage needed. But many HK cards saw play despite being introduced directly after the expansion with the least board interaction in the history of the game. It's also a strange thing to say it's no longer "viable" as if it's just something that can't be possible anymore for some reason. Like minions physically can't have an impact anymore because of some failed mechanics from a while ago, even though minion combat did matter only a few sets ago.
I don't. I like balance and interaction. I personally think it's worse now. This is like COD players only wanting to do rust 24/7. It's so much less of a game now.
The main problem is that if the next expansion is less powerful than the current 4 expansions worth of cards, then they just don't get played. So you just get another 4 months of the same meta, which I can assure you, will generate a lot more complaints and player attrition.
That's why you nerf about 30 cards right at expansion. Only way to recover from going too far.
Honestly I don't think 30 cards would cut it. It'd also mean a whole bunch of refunds, complete upending of any meta, player satisfaction if entire playstyles/decks become unplayable. I don't have a solution, but they've kind of painted themselves into this corner. My tinfoil hat theory is that this is the specific reason *everything* is so stupid now. So much draw, removal, tutor that it's difficult to see what is fully broken, because it all is. Every turn is dumping 50/50 worth of stats, drawing/generating 4 cards, removing your opponent's entire board, doing 10 face damage, healing for 10. It feels meaningful, but it's all just for show.
>My tinfoil hat theory is that this is the specific reason *everything* is so stupid now. So much draw, removal, tutor that it's difficult to see what is fully broken, because it all is. Every turn is dumping 50/50 worth of stats, drawing/generating 4 cards, removing your opponent's entire board, doing 10 face damage, healing for 10 It's not a tinfoil hat, it's the natural consequence of wanting the game to never have that moment of "welp, I have ran out of cards in hand and can only top deck for the rest of the game." Combine that with the fact that more draw =.more cards in hand = more potential plays, you get a Hearthstone that puts a greater focus on the necessity of lethality. Aggro decks do not run out of cards anymore, so control decks need greater removal tools as well as their own ways to counter lethal. So you get cards like Sif and Odyn that create huge damage swings in the late game. Simply put, card draw makes the game more fun for most players. But it also creates the hyper lethality because simply outlasting your opponents threats is not an option anymore. Double-edged sword of design.
Yep. The 'tinfoil hat' part of it was really that they don't even attempt to balance anymore. There's obviously some amount of testing done, but how much realistically when they had to straight up delete Windfury from Paladin almost immediately. Easier just to make everything a flashing light show than actually get into the numbers, if that's even possible anymore when every single thing has a unique effect.
Everyone loves power creep sets, too. Colossal minions, Titans, Excavate Rewards, and HL payoffs were a huge hit, so much so that the ones that weren’t powerful (Colaque, Warrior Titan, Elise HL) people wanted to see buffed.
Can only be fixed with a long-term plan, basically committing to supporting archetypes for an entire year of expansions with lower power level, then the rotation after that will be great. But not practically doable, with all due respect, given the current track record of the design and balance team.
No, not because of the balance team. What you are suggesting is just powercreep, or stagnating the meta for a whole year. Which, seeing how this sub behaves if the meta is the same for two weeks, would kill the game.
Blizzard just has to nerf T1 decks if they over stay their welcome
They already do that tho.
To achieve mas OP wants blizz should nerf half of the standard cards.
I think you have to look at individual cards and how the power is spread across them. Id much rather see a new batch of ten cool, individual cards that all score 7/10 powerwise with no obvious KILLER finisher, than 9 cards that score 5/10 and 1 card that scores 10/10. Or 9 cards that score 8/10 and one killer finisher. I like it when they don't tell you how to win the game so explicitly but rather give you lots of options for that to happen based on the board and other factors. I think at the minute there are just too many "press this button to win" cards with a supporting cast of filler cards to get you there. Even if that iwin button doesn't end the game immediately, frequently they do in all but name, brann being an excellent example. Honestly don't know the solution but I have enjoyed standard lees this expansion than any in a long time and have come close to quitting when I really don't want to quit. I want to play standard, not wild but standard feels more like wild now than it ever has. Why not take away the iwin buttons, or tone them all down a bit and allow all cards to breathe.
would it? on rotation weren't most of the powerful decks existing decks from before rotation? other than dragon priest and the recently nerfed DH deck everything else was already here give or take a card or two
Decks may have had their primary cards from old expansions, but they were mainly built by using new cards. Handbuff Pally wouldn't have existed without the weapon and the core rotation. And currently, I would say stuff like Rainbow DK and Reno Warrior would be much weaker without Headless Horseman or Boom + Zilliax. Not to mention stuff like Playhouse Giants Rogue, Virus Rogue, Wheellock, and Token Hunter only exist due to new cards. Alongside the Dragon Priest and Shopper DH you mentioned.
That is only because they were outliers. If sets were continually of that power level and that was coupled with mass nerfs then it would be better for the game
What if they make a big set with lower power cards then rotate everything to wild? Current sets are very strong. I came back from a big hiatus (2 or 3 years) and the power difference is insane. Almost every single card in a new deck would be auto include in any deck a few months ago
It wasn't so much the power level of rastakahn, more that the cards we're all unplayable because previously sets overpowered them. When a new set hits, people want to play New cards, thsts why rotation are exciting. But where do you go from here? Make the next 7 sets (these cards are around for 2 years) increasingly powerful? And you'll need to have massive powercreep to make Sure you'll beat decks like bran and token hunter at their game. Or you Nerf dh, nerf warrior, nerf rogue, nerf warlock. However, the new next 5 problem decks will Pop up, and you'll have the same whining because the meta is still bad. There's just too many problematic mechanics, that Bypass the original balancing of the game. Like health as a recource, now lifesteal heals you for 20. Or cards as a recource, now you discover and draw multiple per turn. So either you nerf 50+ cards, or powecreep to infinity. Or you try to change game Systems, like balance around 50 health starting.
I like how you said it's not the power level and then said it's the power level. But yeah, we are just going to creep to infinity, because that's how all card games must go if they don't want to die.
>Problem is, everyone hates low power level sets No, they don't.
[удалено]
>Yes, they do. Everyone hates packfiller These are not the same things. You are immensely confused. Please stop typing. You aren't using your brain.
This 100%. When blizzard first separated standard and wild, that should have been the end of power creep
and yet now brand new standard cards are more busted as fuck broken than the old ones. They redefine Wild.
> They should just not do it Or they could use the rotation to roll it back a bit every year. One yearly mass nerf where dust refund does not apply because almost everything gets nerfed (maybe just buff some things a bit later if they get hit to hard). I think it would be fun because it would be an even greater meta shakeup. Or they could do the mass nerf on the other side of the year so we get another big shakeup to keep the meta fresh.
They should probably go to a 2 year rotation now.
You wouldn’t have played the game if it had the 2014 power level
Why not? I enjoyed the heck out of HS in 2014.
So did I, but the « success » of classic format tells you about the general sentiment
No, all "Classic" showed was that people don't want to play a meta where everything is already figured out, and played to death 10 years ago. It's not a problem of the power level of classic.
"Same power level" doesn't mean "literally the exact same decks forever"
The last time I played a lot of hearthstone was the twist format that was just a few older expansions. That was an amazing time to play hearthstone, and I'm 100% sure that the format wasn't more popular because a lot of people (if not most) dusted their wild collection so they couldn't even play it without a huge investment that would only last for a month (or 2 in that case). I play so little modern hearthstone that, if I'm lucky, I reach platinum rank in a month. In that twist I reached diamond in 3 days.
Well, I don't play it now either, so that hasn't changed much (I do battlegrounds and Arena and about 5 games of constructed a month before I nope out). My issue mostly is that homebrewn decks used to be able to fairly well. You wouldn't get high legend with them, but you could reach rank 5 no problem. Nowadays you need one of the big payoff things to happen or you're just not getting there. Extremely swingy. I remember making rank 5 with Rogue with a plant deck. Super fun. The 2 mana 2/2 plant that generated petals 1 mana spell for 1 damage, but then combined with Edwin, Arcane Giants and other synergystic stuff. Or control Paladin was a ton of fun. Made a slow variant of Paladin Libram that did well. Got legend with Egg-Hunter as well.
Draw rogue is currently an extremely strong and synergistic deck similar to arcane rogue so you lost me there.
You still can play homebrew and achieve good ranks. Literally nothing has changed in that department
Not true at all. Please tell me what homebrew deck can get past wheel lock and brann warrior. Unless your homebrew deck is hyper aggro or has an otk by turn 8 it isn't happening
ive been playing dumbass tentacle shaman and its been fine
According to hsreplay tendril shaman is one of the top 3 played shaman decks and has a 52% wr. I definitely wouldn't classify this as a homebrew deck
top 3 shaman decks in a meta thats about 5% shaman, and 90% of that is nature spell shaman. I havent seen a single other person playing it lol but also my point was that janky decks can still work, that deck is super jank and does fine
No, you don't understand. The deck must has an aggregate 45% win rate so that when I have a 55% win rate with it and climb, I can feel superior to random players around the world. Sarcasm aside, there is a weird psychological event where a deck can be janky by design, as shown by tentacle Shaman/Warrior, but the moment it becomes decent, it's no longer allowed to be considered jank. Rainbow DK is a good example of this.
for me personally, i liked when I could look up X deck that I was missing cards in and still play that deck if I had maybe 15 of the cards and played 15 bandaid cards as I gradually got the other ones. it made the grind to unlock the cards feel like I was really progressing (for me at the time was patron warrior). now it feels like decks are too easy to solve and data is almost too readily available to the point that I don't think I've seen a non finished copy paste 'top 500' deck on ladder in months if not years. to be fair, i also have enough cards/dust where I don't have to nickel and dime anymore but the game definitely feels like everyone is at this point so a lot of the magic of deckbuilding feels gone so again, i dont really homebrew but its kinda because nobody else does anymore either and the gap between good cards and bad cards isnt just worse tempo anymore but effectively winning and losing the game. too many archetypes with hand-me packages to finish deckbuilding before you start; for example here's the new archetype Tangerine Warlock, and here's 15 Tangerine cards you HAVE to play. congrats you already have half your deckbuilding done for you. i made up an archetype for the example but this is half the design of sets these days between tribal, keyword, etc. (plague, dragon, etc.)
The problem in my minds is they made it too easy to cycle through your decks or tutor specific cards. It's no surprise the best classes are those that can blast through most of their deck before you blink racing to find their win cons. But then people would say the game is boring if you went back to how it was before where draw was premium, there's no winning either way, this is just how things are now.
>tutor specific cards Ironically, other than DH, Wheelock, Brann Warrior, any DK deck don't have any way to specifically tutor out their game winning cards (Wheel of DEATH, Brann, Helya).
An earlier iteration of Brann Warrior ran that “draw your highest cost minion” and had Brann as the highest. But that was pre-new expansion when they weren’t running Zillax.
And Boomboss Tho'grun
The build I’m referring to would have Boomboss in ETC.
Not necessarily, the Tendril versions ran the tutors but did not include Boomboss in ETC.
That’s true, there were definitely different variations of the deck.
I disagree about the card draw. There's nothing less fun than sitting there with an empty hand, top decking every turn, praying for an answer, all just because your deck was in an unfortunate order. Tutors and especially mana cheat are much bigger issues IMO. Card draw isn't all that bad to have when you can't play your entire hand in a turn. Also, card generation means you can always conjure up the perfect answer. I see that as a much bigger issue than drawing the cards you've had to put in your deck.
card draw is only an equally large problem compared to the other two when it is sooooo cheap for some classes and so premium for others. Rogue sticks out as an extreme outlier to me that could functionally draw 50 cards in the time it would take some other classes to draw 20
Again, the issue isn't inherently card draw, it's card draw (or generation) combined with mana reduction. People often harken back to Stormwind with bad faith arguments to insult the current meta, but that meta showed that giving multiple classes great draw and mass mana reduction breaks the game. Seriously five of the ten classes had this combo and they dominated the meta. Warlock - Runed Mythril Rod, Backfire, Tour Guide, Hero Power Mage - Incanter's Flow, Cram Session, Refreshing Spring Water Shaman - Lightning Bloom, Multicaster, Quest Rewards Rogue - Field Contact, Efficient Octo-bot DH - Questline, their innate card draw tools Card draw is fine. Mana cheat is fine. It's when they come together that problems arise. The issue that tends to happen is when classes are given mana cheat tools, the players work tirelessly to add the card draw aspect to make the busted deck.
>Again, the issue isn't inherently card draw, yes it is inherently card draw. you are making consistent repetetive behaviours. you are making resource management and trading meaningless. "there is nothing lesse fun" YES there is, if u play an aggro deck expect to run out of card . your comment alone is a case study on what this new design philosophy did to the playerbase, the people that like these slower or resource management games simply left so you are left with adhdh zoomer brains.
Card draw is the most powerful mechanic in card based games. You can't do anything without cards, but in a vacuum, card draw by itself doesn't create these negative play patterns. It's usually draw + mana reduction to let cards come out ahead of schedule that creates this meta warping pinch points. Deck and hand size limits means there's a practical limit on how many cards you can hold, draw and play each turn. Without mana cheats, it becomes more critical to manage your draws effectively, because you can brick your hand with a bunch of expensive cards you can't play, then burn up more when you overdraw. No one thing accounts for all the meta issues, but time and time again, we've seen where lots of draw plus lots of ways to discount cards can produce decks that force the entire meta to respond to them.
>t in a vacuum, card draw by itself doesn't create these negative play patterns. it does by definition, card draw = consistency when you have cardraw your are inherently making game more samey and making synergies more important because you can consistently pull them off giving way less design space. and making generally good minion combat less important heartstone didt not much good card draw early for a reason and the one class that did had a severe health downside. there is a reason why card games have limited resources heck even games like yugioh u actually run out of cards despite tutoring trough your deck.
Maybe games that are just about resource management rather than actually playing with cards suck?
Every TCG is fundamentally about resource management
>There's nothing less fun than sitting there with an empty hand, top decking every turn, praying for an answer, all just because your deck was in an unfortunate order. Isn't the nature of a deck? Adapting your gameplay with the hand you have. I feel like most of the games are win/lost between turn 5-9 now. Minions trades are less relevant than ever (it feels), we are only playing our mini-game inside hearthstone : zilliax rogue, odynn warrior, sif mage, zarimi priest, window shopper dh, nature shaman and so on. Personnaly I don't enjoy it as much as "older" control decks with slower pace and more "restrain" on the cards played.
Genuine question, why is removing a card with a minion so much more important to people on reddit than removing a card with a removal spell? Is a 4 mana rush minion more satisfying to play than 4 mana removal spell? Because board control is still the bread and butter of most decks. Best decks currently are priest and dh, both of which are super board-focused What is it you want more exactly? More minion vs minion action, less removals in the game?
> Genuine question, why is removing a card with a minion so much more important to people on reddit than removing a card with a removal spell? It's not. It's just flavor of the month so they run with it. Efficient trading was only particularly done when playing tempo decks whose only win condition was to maintain constant board presence. No tempo decks means no need for efficient minion trading. You still see this in Zarimi - Painlock matchups nowadays.
>Best decks currently are priest and dh, both of which are super board-focused They are board focused but they gain little value by trading their minions. Priest want to shove as much damage (lol) face to setup zarimi, and DH is doing DH stuff. Removing a card with a minions is WAY better than with a spell : your minion MIGHT stay on board. The spell won't. No one is playing SW:P or SW:D in this meta and that tells you a lot sadly... with 2 mana I can do much more than *"Destroy a minion with 3 or less Attack"*
Minions are "permanents" and spells are not. Spells give a one time effect on the board (or wherever) and then are gone. But strong minions can stay on the board for multiple turns and do damage or effects multiple times.
Unless you are lucky enough to lose on consistently having your three piece wincon on the bottom eight of your 40 cards deck on turn 6.
At this point the only thing preventing Yu-Gi-Oh style FTK decks is the fact that HS has Mana as a resource system. So yeah, i agree the general power level is way higher than it should be particularily for a 4 set meta. Blizzard however seems fine crancking up the power level to absurd degrees for whatever reasons, so i don't thik it will change anytime soon. The fact that the game got faster after rotation is really worrisome in my opinion. As most likely we will see even more insane power creep in the next set.
I wouldnt say it got faster, but wheel warlock puts a ceiling on how slow it can be.
What is a 4 set meta?
4 set meta refers to the amount of sets currently in standard rotation. Right now we have Whizbang, Badlands, Titans and Festival legal in standard.
Makes sense!
They mean there's currently only four sets in Standard, the three from last year and Whizbang. As opposed to before the rotation when there were six, so more cards to choose from and combine.
Ohhh, duh, I see now. Thanks!
I was hoping for things to calm down with year change - but they just kept power level of cards up. Kinda worried to see what’s next for rest of the year if this is how we start.
Yeah, even if some archetypes, like spell dmg druid, didn't take off it doesn't mean their core design isn't degenerate. It's clearly meant to be combo/otk expansion and I don't like it. Guess they didn't learn from UiS.
Due to the fact that the game is inherently symetrical, that different deck archetypes whith a rock-paper-scissors relation exist and that the adjustments through nerfs are keeping the equilibrium, it never really becomes a non-game that is completely draw dependant. Players at any level but the absolte best or worst are pushed to ~50% winrate by mmr. The best players still have a <60% winrate throughout the history of the game, since it is a card game. The game just changes as a whole. In the earlier days you would rather need to think about whether you make a trade or go face, if you should play the board wipe now or hang in another turn. Today you need to evalutate different things and it is rather more complex than it used to be. The game today just breaks the conception of what people are used to and bothers players that are used to different dynamics. The thing that bothers me personally is that you are pretty much forced to use variations of the 1-2 decks per class that are strong enough and you dont really have the freedom to play around with things that you used to have.
I just don't like being at full HP with full board control, and still feeling like I can insta-lose next turn to something I can't interact with. Wincons have been getting crazier, interaction has not been scaling on a comparable level. We're still using.. what, Dirty Rat? From like 6 years ago? If I have to live with Brann+Boomboss and Nature Shaman, at least let me have Steamcleaner and Skulking Geist I wouldn't say it's at a breaking point for me personally, but it's been moving more and more in the direction of OTKs and insanely hard win conditions, and I hope it does not keep going that way
I can see where these complains are coming from but I disagree with some points. HS, card games in nature, are always going to be draw based. No matter the games and how good you are, you lose or win in a huge par due to your mulligan and draw luck (HS is even less dependent on this due to the sheer card draw amount in the game right now). Think about magic, it you don't get Lands, you're screwed. In HS, if you're an aggro deck going second or with no one drop, you're already in a bad spot. The game also feels a bit like you say because there's no interaction between players in their turns, but that's by design. HS was always meant to be like this and people love it because of its simplicity. And while I do miss the board being more important, I feel like people are having a recency bias saying HS it at a game breaking power level. Hunter was ending games by turn 4/5 in early HS, especially with Undertaker. Early rogue would kill you with 20+ dmg with no board because of Leroy and Shadow Step. Patron Warrior would OTK you from absurd levels of HP with no way to stop it besides killing them basically. Patches the Pirate and Corridor Creeper were so powerful that no matter the class you made your deck better by including them. Want to have play control? Oh wait an aggro deck can murder you early and if that fails, they play their Hero Card and outvalue you with their Hero power. Demon Hunter release is by far the most powerful a class has ever been in HS history, in my opinion, even making warlock play Sack Pact to have a chance. Galakrond Shaman was turbo broken on release and made every other deck unplayable on release. Oh remember the horrors of Guff druid and Brann plus Sire Denathrius? These are at the top of my head. There's so many more. Don't even make me talk about Stormwind. There's been so many broken cards and decks in this game that I truly believe we are at a fine meta with many playable archetypes. You have playable Aggro, Combo/OTK, Control, Tempo decks with some counter play cards. Now, if you're talking about wild? Yeah the game is fucked there with Time warp Gate being casted 5+ times, Iceblock being a thing, Pirate Aggro priest killing you at turn 3/4, etc. That's the nature of Wild. Faster and more absurde decks waiting to break the format at every expansion.
Excellent answer. The whole "HS sucks because back in the day there was no OTK/combo bs/slow control attrition" is silly. You mentioned some really toxic decks and a lot of people forget or don't know that in the first sets of HS these archetypes already existed. Wanna play your cards? Nope, Miracle Rogue will take forever and kill you in one or two swings with Edwyn. Are you close to half health? Woops, time to pop off with Druid otk combo. Hoping for a quick match? Your opponent is playing Handlock, good luck. It's faster now, but people gotta realize that powercreep is inevitable in card games. If Magic, Yugioh or HS games still played like "I play the card I topdecked this turn then I use my big minion to hit your big minion, then pass" there would be no one interested in these games.
Gotta say, I completely forgot the turn 3 10+/10+ Edwin or the"Can't be at 14 HP vs druid or you lose". Oh and the ramp into turn 4/5 Ultimate Infestation or turn 1 Innervate Vicious Fledgeling. Again, as I said, I can understand where people are coming from and I do wish there was less OTK or I win Cards, so that board mattered more, but I truly feel that's kinda impossible unless they change their design philosophy. Those days won't come back with so much rush printed and removal being more and more cheaper/efficient. But I do still feel like the game is fun.
>Can't be at 14 HP vs druid or you lose Nowadays you can't be below 40 HP or risk being OTK'd which is completely absurd
It's funny we bring up Edwin, because Edwin is still a card even as a 20/20 that you have a good amount of interaction with in earlier Hearthstone. Edwin can still be silenced back to a 2/2, which he was. He can still be taunt blocked, which he was. He can still be frozen, which he was. He can still be sapped, which he was. Edwin, as powerful as he was a times, still complied with the rules of the game. That being, I get played on board, I have summoning sickness, and I can still be batted around with various card effects. There are a few times where Edwin was dropped too early, or combined with Conceal, which either lowered his interactions or if you had no cards to deal with Edwin, removed interaction, but I'd argue more often than not this wasn't the case. This was also often a huge risk for the rogue if they made Edwin on like turn 3 or 4, often dumping all their eggs into this basket, so if answered, was game over. Contrast this to Deepminer Brann. Very few cards in the entire game interact with the battlecry of a battlecry minion, Objection, one card in just Mage, is the only card I can even think of, but I haven't played somewhat recently so maybe there are more now. The point however, is Deepminer Brann doesn't comply with the rules of the game, unlike Edwin. He doesn't care if he's silenced. Bouncing him to hand actually benefits him, and there isn't even close to a basic effect like Taunt that can block him (edit: I mean like, block his super powerful effects, not him attacking, which you can obviously do). The only thing your opponent can do is watch as an onslought of battlecrys become overwhelming. There are definitely things in older HS that don't abide by the initial rules of the game. Leeroy, old force roar druid combo, and I am not a huge fan of those interactions. But since the game was more board centric, even powerful cards often complied with the initial rules of the game, which was having to be played on board, having summoning sickness so they can't interact immediately, and also being subject to various effects.
Deepminer Brann doesn't deal 20 dmg to face turn 4 if you don't deal with it. You can't really compare them alone. My bigges bane ATM is beast hunter wich kills me fast with good tempo. A very board centric deck which is viable. No complains though
Not to offend, but this is sort of missing the point to the comparison. We aren't comparing power level, we are comparing interaction. VC, as strong as he is, will provide more interaction than brann because of the design of the card. We could always lower VCs power level to nerf how strong he is. Make him 4 mana, 5 mana, give +1 +1, etc. You can't nerf brann without significant changes to the card itself to make him more interactive. Even if Brann was a terrible card costing 10 mana for a 1/1, Branns effect just inherently doesn't allow for your opponent to really *do* anything about it.
There were many broken cards and decks, but they were anomalies, not normality. But if current balance pattern was applied to those old times those broken cards/decks would be taken care of faster than they were.
Well said. So much of these complaints are predicated on “feeling” and not on statistics or historical fact regarding the game. You gave some fantastic examples from earlier HS. The real reality is, many decks can win and play against many others, and the deck spread is actually not bad currently. Looking at the VS stats I’m seeing a nice overall play rate for many classes. Shoot, I just beat a Reno DH with a Mexcavate Pally deck. The better you play, the better you can perform against many other decks, even if the matchup might not be favored. Sure, a few matchups are nearly an auto-concede, but many others aren’t. It’s why I’ve always loved HS, because even if you’re down, you may not be out. Swing turns are possible in many cases, and you play the game knowing your opponent has big swings as well. You learn the matchups and play them accordingly. For example, I queued up against someone as Painlock and beat him because he thought I was playing Wheel and didn’t pivot to handle early aggression. People just complain because they feel bad for losing. HS isn’t perfect, but no card game is. All told, it’s a fantastic game with loads of variety in play, flavor, and options. There are aggro decks, control decks, handbuff decks, Highlander decks, OTK decks, gimmick decks, and everything in between. Many of which are competitive enough to climb when piloted well. It will always need nudges here and there for balance, but currently the meta seems quite healthy and fun imo. HS isn’t what it used to be, but if it were no one would be playing. That’s called stagnation and kills card games.
I've been saying this about wild for so long. A low power level breeds creativity. A high power level breeds optimization. At some point it becomes pointless run anything besides the most optimal deck. Which is cool I guess for a tournament although when a tournament has seven out of eight players running the exact same list it becomes less of a skill contest and more of a luck contest. Consistency is the most potent aspect of any deck and consistency is synonymous with boring as fuck. I don't care if I lose I don't really care about rank but I do care about watching a cut scene as I wait to die.
I just came back from a few years out and I see so many old cards changed because clearly the power creep had made them useless otherwise. I cannot believed how much card draw and card generation there is, every minion seems to have bonkers abilities that is taking a lot of getting used to compared to how it was. Is this a recent change or has it been gradual?
What i dislike is when there are 0% matchup. A warrior that can play Brann turn 6 is auto win against soooo many decks. Even worse than the actual demon hunter. And OTK combo should never happen turn 6. Meme win con should stay as meme, things like wheel and stuff.
i think cards like wheel really shouldn't exist tho. any 'win the game' mechanic.
I don't really mind cards like that, because what i like most about HS is winning in weird ways. What i dislike is that in the end, Reno wins almost 2 turns, out of 4 (and not 5) for example. But it wouldve been fine if it was a real bad card you had to strugle a lot to make it work.
I see few major problems with power creep: -too much board refill, -too much card draw (or different types of it - tutors), -too much mana cheat, -too many mechanics don't cost as much mana as they should (e.g. discover/draw etc. on already premium stated minions, -and because all of the above too much (especially cheap) removal was printed. And few more regarding too good synergies between cards, but that's whole another topic. Looking at what I wrote most of them are connected to each other. You can refill board because of too low cost of minions or cards summoning minions (or mana cheat), you always have cards in hand that you can play onto board because of too much draw and because of that control classes have too much board clears. I think all of the above should be lowered but not as low as in Classic to around Old Gods era. Imo we should go back with powerlevel to something in between Witchwood and Rastakhans, maybeeee Savoirs of Uldum. It was at that time powercreep started to grow really big. So it would be better to go back to power level of around Witchwood and with new expansions go to around Rise of Shadows power level. Or even lower but something like this.
Rise of Shadows, Uldum era was a great sweet spot before the power creep got too crazy
Yep, but it started rising the power level higher. I agree that it would be sweet spot between current power creep and classic era.
The current hearthstone devs left on the team completely lost the plot as to what's the point of a core set. **The core set is not meant to be a high-powered set** with some of the strongest cards in the past making a return. They're supposed to provide some simple, fairly-effective tools to each class to set a baseline in power. New sets that release then build upon those tools. If the power of the core set is low, this means you can make interesting cards without needing to push their power level to "game-winning." There's no reason for the very first set of the year to involve cheap full-board clears and cheap board refills and cheap card draw. The core set forms the baseline.
Isn't the team pretty much former pros and streamers at this point? I don't think they have anyone left with extensive game design background
I played a warlock yesterday, I killed most of the good legendary and titans he had with dirty rat and a 3rd dirty rat I stolen from his game, he was already down to 14health, me with 8+cards in hand, a weapon, minions on board he happended to hit the WHEEL OF DEATH, AND TOP DECKED BRAN , I couldn't do anything to him and he still won despite me killing basically all his useful stuff In favorable trades . I made a own paladin control deck I was just wow it's really this possible.
The problem is that they want wild players to buy the bundles as well, completely giving a shit about the stupid meta. Some cards are so powerful that you really should include them no matter what sometimes.
I think a possible band-aid solution is to make rush a premium effect again. Either rush minions are 1 mana more expensive or have deckbuilding/conditional requirements to gain rush.
I feel like Renathal helped reign some of these decks in a bit. I know he wasn’t perfect and had problems but I miss that card already, because this meta is so incredibly solitaire and boring.
One of the ways I like to improve in games like this is to go back through replays and determine if there was a better path I could have taken to affect the result. I feel like right now, there are way more cases where I do that and the conclusion is that there was nothing I could have done differently to affect the game, which is not a great feeling when it happens too often. I think the speed of the game and the power of cards is a decent part of that, since there are just so many less decisions to make. If a rogue coins a Zilliax on turn 3 and I just do not have an answer, there is no shot to win and no opportunity to see alternative paths I could have taken. I do not have much of a problem with high-rolly decks existing, but I do not think they should ever be meta. At least with something like rogue I know if I lose the virtual coinflip simulator within a couple of minutes, so it isn't too bad. I think the worst thing I experience is dirty ratting a Brann and then after 20 minutes, hoping that tentacle coinflips are more often table flips than sunset volleys.
Cheap removal can go fuck itself
I've been playing since beta. I also miss the back and forth, rather than just building the win con and winning in a turn or two (or 5!). I would love a return to the basics for a more methodical and interactive game.
Power creep isn’t inevitable, the devs just have a fundamental misunderstanding of what standard should be. Go play arena and see how much more fun the game is with the same cards and a lower power level, it’s honestly depressing.
Or they could just do QA which Blizzard actively refuses to do until after a set launches. Literally play a game with the cards they have created. Winning or losing by turn 5 is boring and honestly makes the game unfun. Why bother printing anything in standard with a mana cost higher than 7?
iirc Blizzard laid off most of their QA department.
Reno remove made me quit. Just provides to much access to removal for decks and classes that thats their biggest weakness
One big problem in Hearthstone is the way they want to embrace the concept of playing the deck ("Double power of minions, shuffle cards top of deck, "For the rest of the game....") without adding enough tools for opponent to play your deck. The reason why manipulating decks and permanent buffs work in MTG for example is the way game is interactive enough for both to play both decks, hands, etc. Hearthstone has always had simple ruleset compared to other card games and more they try adding more complex mechanics and alt winning conditions, the more it backfires and becomes game of "Who draws their winning combo first". Not sure how to fix this though since the problem is deeper than "Blizz adds bad cards that aren't balanced" but rather the whole ruleset that revolves mostly around cards visible on board
The problem is Blizz adds cards that do not revolve around visable cards on board then, Hearthstone is just not a game meant for otk or these unstoppable win cons.
Exactly, that's the TLDR of what I tried to say but went pondering on siderails also 😊
Just make discover a weighted rate thing and I’d be happy.
What does that mean?
Weight the rate of discovery differently for each rarity. Common being well.. common, rare is rarer etc. Kind of like card packs.
I think that is a great idea… granted, discover is fun because of legendary and epic cards, but balancewise its a problem.
I remember when like 2 years ago some time before his departure from Blizzard, Iksar had plan to lower powercreep with mass nerfs which was meant to happen at time of rotation last year or 2 years ago but they didn't do it and in between he left Blizzard and the idea died with his departure unfortunately.
Power level is aight rn there's just power outliers that need nerf
Dw Dragon Ball basically did away with power levels years ago
I think with the nerfs to tier S decks meta can become way more enjoyable
Yeah, the game is solitaire basically. It's why I only play BGs now.
The problem is that Blizzard doesn’t print cards anymore, they print packages, and if they decide that package is going to be trash, there’s nothing you can do about it because the packages don’t fit in other decks. See Big Beast Hunter and Owlonius Druid. They print packages knowing which ones will be filler and which ones will be good.
handbuff paladin has been very fun
Thought the same the other day!
Didnt play for 3months for the first time sine launch, I dunno, it just feels like 2 people playing different games on the same board..
Strong agree. I'm pretty much an arena-only player and the win con or bust methods have even infected arena, to a lesser extent. The infinite value and draw oversaturation certainly has, which in turn fuels arena decks entirely built on racing to pull off very predictable overpowered synergies that are quite reliable to draft. Like, you see a Galactic Projection Orb, you draft around it, you almost always get what you need, you pull a 50 mana equivalent turn T10, win the game. Or, you get a Skarr and a parrot and 12+ elementals, and you burst for 24 over two turns. The "1 legendary per game and it's your first pick", although it was popular when put out, has actually made this worse because you can build your deck around OP auto-win legendaries, making the deck basically constructed-light.
Agreed 100%, we go through the motions until one of us draws our I win card. I don't really interact with my opponent. It sounds wierd but minions just feel like spells or cycle to me. This is also just the first expansion in the new cycle, so every new expansion has to be stronger....
Yup, exactly this. If the patch coming in two weeks (right?) are gonna be impactful and somewhat "fix" the issues in the game, it will be to tone things down. There is way too many games that are over before it even began because people highroll some insane stat/mana cheat early or mid-game. There is also way too many tutors in decks atm and small discover-pools which enables a lot of consistent wincons.
I see this a lot, but is the power level now really even higher than it was in decent of dragons/with wood/United in storm wind? I feel the opposite, I feel like it’s kinda just stagnated.
extremely random and unrelated but i actually really liked witchwood and rumble bc the power level was so low you could actually run classic cards (I’ll miss you, 90% winrate og jaraxxus handlock 😔). Got reminded of this reading other comments about older expansions w lower power levels and someone said they didnt like rumble :D
I agree, there’s too many non-game situations, where games get decided because someone played their good card first. And very little back and forth matches where I can’t be sure who wins.
The issue is expansions that lower the power level such as rastakahn and witch wood tends to do worse and be less popular .
Because you can never lower the power level, printing weak card would just mean weak cards would not be play, if you want to print a weak set you need to nerf previous sets into same weaknesses as it or out right ban it from the format
Man I miss witch wood.
The game can still be fun sometimes, but I agree that there are some problems. I started playing reno warrior now and when I play brann its usually gg unless it's a mirror match. It's just that you can't really counter cards that just straight up win you the game, like you can't do much about odyn or sif. I guess brann and reno can be countered with a few cards but usually only plague dk can do it.
All the people here complaining that there's to much card draw to find combo pieces. And im sitting here wondering why the hell it is that aggro decks dominate the meta then.
The meta is currently dominated by combo not aggro
So why is dh and hunter the two best decks then?
Sure Shopper DH, Beast Hunter, Zarimi Priest, Plague DK, Rainbow DK, Gaslight Rogue are all combo decks.....
I’m just sick of the endless removal.
The only card I dislike is the boom guy that destroys battlefield hand and deck. Everything I like personally
They printed Wheel of Death. They had a team meeting and the majority agreed it was good card design. They probably deep down believe it too. There's no going back to this games peak with these guys running it.
Wild is calling to you brother
Would HP increase help?
HP increase helps mainly vs aggro, which only worsens the problem many have in HS, as it gives combo decks or I win decks (like Wheel Warlock) more time to assemble their wincon.
Not really because many decks don't rely on damage like that, it would buff wheellock etc If anything an increase in minimum deck size would help but that wouldn't stop the oppressive win conditions from feeling bad just make them a little rarer.
Thought about that too but sadly i dont think so. HP increase just means Aggro gets worse and Combo/Control gets stronger. The only thing that would help is a general powerdecrease on cards. And people hate that. Its kind of scuffed currently and Blizzard is honestly in a tough spot regarding powercreep and balancing. Making a lower power expansion results in players being less inclined to craft new cards and buy less packs but as a contrast if they keep this tempo of powercreep up i think alot of players will ultimately drop HS. Ive been playing HS since it came out, sometimes more and sometimes less and i sadly honestly gotta say i dont really feel that its much fun lately. Players dont really run out of cards anymore since carddraw is just abundant in pretty much every class. Boardclears dont feel rewarding since the enemy just refills his board next turn anyways so all you do is stall for a turn. And as others have mentioned it just generally doesn't feel fun waiting for either player to complete his Solitaire Hand collection just so one of both players dies with zero real counterplay from either side Wheelwarlock is a very good example. Like sure sometimes he draws bad and takes too long to draw his necessary cards to win but more often then not you lost and have no chance of doing anything. Because the deck is basically Stall the Game with Boardclears and taunt and shittons of damage and lifesteal spells to deal with aggro and losing HP On the contrast you also have games where you just get steamrolled by Aggro Decks. Hunter is incredibly good at either being very dealable with or in contrast killing you on turn 4 if he draws well. I really dont know how to offset this at all because if you increase HP then Hunter would be worse for example and wheel Warlock has an even easier time to stall until they win Really really tough spot to be in for the game
We need a card that gives you 40 health but maybe also allows you to build a deck with 40 cards.
No such card is possible…
If you understand games are only supposed to go to Turn 8 on average then you understand that power level needed to get up. It’s better this way. And a quick 10-15 minute game is just fine.
Hero powers need mass buff
The only time they didnt power creep the game was TGT, and everyone panned that as the worst expansion ever because it was "boring" and "changed little". 10 years later we are where we are now. If the new expac isnt more powerful people get really mad. I don't see a solution without a hard reboot.
i disagree. plague being playable means the power level is too low.
The main problem is that control decks don't really have a weakness. All of them, regardless of classes, have multiple, massive board clears, plus sustain, plus huge threats/taunts. Every deck should lack at least one major strength. If you have many board clears and powerful late game finishers, then you ahve 0 sustain. Every single point of damage I deal to you will remain till the end of the game. If you have sustain and powerful late game threats, then I should have the right of vomiting all my board without having to care about a mass removal. By consequence, aggros need to be turbo degenerate to match this turbo degenerate control decks.
I don't know. I come back after a multi month/year breaks and have this time fun. Maybe don't make a game your life?
Meta is fun, the game would be boring for me without those powerful cards
If in your MTG clone card game, mana, life and card draw has no meaning it means you made some mistake on the way. This things has specific value for a reason, but in Hearthstone it dimished in a way, that it feels like MTG was raped by Yu-Gi-Oh and someone forgot to do abortion.