Ben Brode On The Meta, Balance, and Shaman
Ben Brode has written down his thoughts about the current meta, the Shaman class and his balance considerations on the official Hearthstone forums today. There is a patch planned for the end of February and an announcement of balance changes will be made a week or so before that.
- The past two weeks, 30% of players were playing Shaman on the Legend ladder
- 17% of players were playing Shaman when all ranks are included
- This includes all types of Shaman decks
- The worst point in history, balance wise, was Undertaker Hunter where Hunter was being played by 35% of players across all ranks
- The 'pirate package' of Small-Time Buccaneer and Patches the Pirate is being played in rougly 50% of decks above rank 5
- The average win-rate for Aggro Shaman is 53%, which is currently the highest win-rate deck in the meta
- There has never been a 'best deck' with a lower win-rate than this
- It only has a 35% win-rate against Control Warrior that is tuned against it.
- For example this Control Warrior from Fibonacci works great!
- There will be a patch near the end of this month
- An announcement about balance changes will be made around a week or so before that
Quote from Ben BrodeHey everyone!I've been reading a lot of feedback on the state of the game, whether pirates are too good, and whether shaman is too good. I'm also seeing a lot of folks wondering what we are planning to do about some of the current issues.
I should start by saying that we truly appreciate all of your feedback. I think Hearthstone is at its best when the development team and the community discuss and share ideas back and forth. These are real issues, and hearing about your experiences has been helpful for us in determining next steps.
So today, I wanted to talk a bit about the meta, potential nerfs, and how we think about balance.
To get us started, I wanted to define some terms. These are common terms, so there may be no revelations here, but it's useful to make sure we're talking about the same things, and how these terms (which are common to all games) are specifically used in relation to Hearthstone.
About the Meta
The Meta is short for the 'metagame'. The game is what happens once you tap 'Play' and see the spinner. The metagame is what happens outside of the game. It's what deck you choose to play. It's what decks your opponents choose to play. Some people define 'metagame' as literally everything game-related, including chatting with friends about it, reading information about it online, or anticipating upcoming content. The Hearthstone community uses it more frequently as "all decks that everyone is using" and often more specifically as the "the top X decks". If there are 7 decks that all see enough play that you see them again and again while you play, you might say those decks are 'the meta'. If you're playing a deck that people don't see often, you are playing 'off meta'. If you build a deck specifically to beat the most popular deck then you are playing to counter the meta. It doesn't matter if a deck is good or bad, what affects the meta most is how frequently any one deck appears. It's important to note that bad decks can be part of 'the meta', and good decks might not be widely spread enough yet to have become part of 'the meta'.
About Balance
Balance can mean different things in different contexts. Sometimes we use it to describe the relative power level between things. Sometimes we use it to describe how often things are being used in relation to each other. And there is a complex relationship between these two metrics.
For example, a class might have a very high win rate, relative to others. That's not balanced. When that happens, more people tend to flock to that class, increasing the play rate. Eventually, that class will become played more than other classes. That's also not balanced, and it's the more worrying imbalance.
We believe, at its core, Hearthstone is more fun when you are having a variety of experiences. We randomize the order of cards in your decks, restrict you to 2 copies of each card, and limit your hand size and the amount 'card draw' we print to help make experiences different each game. We print cards with random effects partially for this reason. But one of the biggest ways to give you different experiences (and problems to solve) each game is to give you different opponents with different decks. We also release new cards, because even all of these things isn't quite enough to keep things variant over time.
There are games with less variety (like Chess), that are still very deep. But we believe that allowing creativity in deckbuilding, and giving players new and different problems to solve is really fun.
The value of Balance, then, is to keep giving players different experiences.
This is not to say that each card's role is to compete for a spot in a competitive deck. Some cards (like Majordomo Executus), are intended to be a lot of fun for players who like big splashy moments. Other cards are meant to be deckbuilding challenges to players who like to experiment with cards that others have deemed weak (Hobgoblin). Some are meant to be hooks for learning or comparison. ("This is like Chillwind Yeti, but better! That must be good!")
Statistics and the State of the Meta
I wanted to go through some stats about the current meta, and talk about how we analyze them.
Over the last two weeks, 30% of players are piloting Shaman at Legend. If you include all ranks, 17% of players are playing Shaman. This includes several decks: Aggro Shaman, Midrange Shaman, Control Shaman and Jade Shaman.
The worst point of imbalance in our history was Undertaker Hunter, where Hunter was played by 35% of players across all ranks.
The Pirate 'package' of Small-Time Buccaneer and Patches the Pirate is played in about 50% of all decks at rank 5 and above.
The average win rate of the best deck in the meta is 53%. Historically, there has never been a 'best deck' with a lower win-rate. Put another way, this is the worst 'best deck' in Hearthstone's history. The win rate is consistent across all ranks, though individual players have wildly variant individual experiences. We don't include mirror matches in our calculations.
The highest win rate of all time was Undertaker Hunter around 60%.
When evaluating balance, we look at the win rate of decks and classes, compare them to the impossible ideal (50%), and to the worst case (60%). Knowing that 50% is impossible, we just want it to be "close". This isn't a science, but for us, that has traditionally been between 53% and 56%. This isn't the most important metric, though. If a deck has a 70% win rate, but only a handful of players are playing it, that's great. It doesn't cause the issues of non-variant gameplay... yet. Traditionally when a deck has a very high win rate, people begin to copy it, and it becomes a larger and larger part of the meta. Another important consideration for us at that point is 'Counters'.
When a deck loses to specific cards or other decks, players can be rewarded for playing those counters as that deck rises in popularity. If a deck ever became 60% of the meta, but there was a deck that handily beat it, then you could have a 60% win rate by playing that deck, and it would become the new best deck in the meta. This phenomenon causes metas to change over time. We've seen that so far since the release of Gadgetzan – Pirate Warrior hit peaks of 30%, but shrank to as low as 10% over time. There were also a few days in which Reno Warlock was the dominant deck and which Rogue was the dominant deck at very high skill levels. When the meta is still changing, we don't like to make changes to cards.
Right now, Aggro Shaman is one of our highest win-rate deck, but has a 35% win rate vs Control Warrior decks that are tuned to beat them. Reno Mage is also a bad match up for them. Does this mean that it has become 'correct' to play Control Warrior? It depends on the other decks in the meta, and whether Aggro Shaman continues to become more popular. Fibonacci recently took advantage of the predictable meta and built a Control Warrior deck that did very well against Aggro Shaman.
We believe that it's important to let good players recognize shifts in the meta, and capitalize on their knowledge before the meta shifts and the 'solution' changes. This is one of biggest reasons why we don't nerf cards very frequently. When metas stagnate for too long; When there are no good counters; When the best decks aren't fun to play or lose to; these are all reasons we have made balance adjustments in the past. If a deck is popular for a few weeks, that isn't a reason to make a nerf on its own. We'd have to be concerned about the fun, not be seeing any emerging counter-strategies, or be far enough away from a new content release to be worried about stagnation for a long time.
So that brings us to today. Another consideration for making a balance adjustment is planning around a client patch for each of our platforms. We are working on the ability to stream balance adjustments (and other content) directly to players' devices, but until we have that ability, we need to release a client patch to make a change to a card. Our next patch is planned for around the end of this month. You can expect an announcement from us regarding balance changes either way in the week or so leading up to that date.
Fibonacci's Anti-Shaman Control Warrior
Want to check out that Warrior deck Ben was talking about? We have it right here!
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Wouldn't be that bad to make small-time buccaneer just for rogue? :V
Believed on that too, but no way.
Miracle Rogue's counters are no more no less than the aggro decks running those same pirates, because they just burst all the HP down before the miracle can happen.
And Rogue is already favorite against the rest of the meta.
Sorry, but that would create a new monster.
They're nerfing Small-Time Buccaneer and/or Patches the Pirate for sure. That's a nerf to all three classes.
I don't miss those priest matchups. Damn Priests always entombing my legendaries...
kappa of course
I don't miss those control priest matchups. Damn priests always entombing my Grommash Hellscream...
Where do i apply to work with the hearthstone devs? You guys seem to have it good! Release an expansion with some overpowered dumb cards (aka that ONE aggro card that fucks the whole meta) then take a 2-3 month vacation before you decide to nerf it
How did they not see this coming? Why has it taken so long to address?
Damn gotta wait till the end of the month.
the main problem there is the patches vs reno meta - in the past there has been aggro vs control as well, but a control priest would differ from a control mage or control warlock. Now they all feel the same, Reno decks, sure over 20 cards are different, but the games play the same, ubiquitous (mass) removal, as many sources of healing as you can fit in, and wait for as many turns as possible to get brann-kazakus. Same with Pirates, there's really little difference between a turn 2 jade claws and a turn 2 fiery war axe, the only differences seem things like 4 damage being a bit more powerful against Shamans.
Note that i'm fine with Gadgetzan as an expansion, it was a nice thing to try, but apparently the tri-class reno/pirate approach turned out stale quite quickly.
The flaw in this approach is that the number of good players is actually pretty small. So by tuning your game according to their schedule, you are making the game worse for a majority of your player base.
I'm not saying it's the wrong approach from a sportsmanship perspective, but it's definitely not the one that's going to make you popular.
And don't forget to do something about this
http://secretagentcomingthrough.com
this is the best.
Blizzard's reluctance to nerf AND buff, as well as the slow speed of introducing new content (heroes for example) has finally made my husband throw in the towel. He's fed up of waiting and killing time with the same problems this game has had since inception - a lack of balance and reactiveness.
Guess I'll be playing on my own now.
Hah, I guess I did make it sound like divorce is on the cards!
Edit: pun was totally by accident
Eazy:
1. Small-Time Buccaneer -> 2 mana cost
2. Spirit Claws -> same 1/3 with bonus +1
Nerf completed.
Totem Golem and Tunnel Trogg will rotate soon so no worry for them..
Why? There are a lot of 1-mana pirates but only 1 2-mana pirate (Bloodsail Raider)
If Small-Time Buccaneer is 2 mana 1/3 it will be balanced and another 2 mana pirate option.
But.. i noticed that these cards are nearly same so I don't know how blizzard will handle it, and I can't wait.
"Easy" *proceeds to list two mindless nerfs that render both cards utterly unplayable, then boasts about the quickness of the nerf*
These nerfs are almost at the level of Warsong Commander in terms of subtlety. Difference is, Warsong Commander nerf was intended to actually eliminate a mechanic that the Blizzard team wisely didn't want to have in the game anymore. Your nerf just kills two cards completely for no real reason.
If you want to actually balance the cards to make them playable but not OP, then the real solution is keeping the reason they are played in the first place intact, and nerfing some other aspect of them. Small-Time Buccaneer is strong because it is an early, well-statted minion that can go unchallenged for a long time. If you nerf it in mana cost, then it is no longer early and well-statted enough to do anything, and will be challenged (and handily beaten without a weapon already equipped) by every single two-drop in the game. A CONDITIONAL 2 mana 3/2 is trash-tier. The logical way to nerf it without killing it is:
1) reducing its health to 1, which will still make it a problem for some decks but allows 3 classes to just kill it with their hero power. That will mean the card is less attractive against those classes, to the point of making the deck considerably lower in win-rate simply because Reno Mage alone utterly shits on that card and makes the matchup nearly unwinnable. As a result, many will opt out of using the card, and may abandon the deck entirely, and it will make it harder to rank with it simply because of how disadvantageous the card is againt Mage, Rogue and Druid.
2) reducing its attack bonus to +1. A conditional 1 mana 2/3 without the downside of Zombie Chow is still very well suited for aggro play, but does not challenge most 2 drops on its own anymore and will do considerably less damage over the course of the game if left unchecked.
As for Spirit Claws, again its strength lies in the conditional high attack this early on which allows better board control. Even without bonus attack, 1/3 weapon is borderline acceptable as long as Small-Time Buccaneer is being played. Nerfing its attack bonus makes it an equally awkward version of Stormforged Axe: it does not have the mana cost and the overload, but it only becomes a 2/3 with Spell Damage and fits into a mana cost that doesn't flow well with anything (a Stormforged Axe follows up Small-Time better than Spirit Claws if all you want is a 2/3 weapon on turn 2, plus Axe at least does not require Spell Damage and synergises with Tunnel Trogg). The logical solution is to make Spirit Claw's durability 2. It becomes a conditional 1 mana War Axe which is utterly trash without spell power, allows the early board control which made Spirit Claws popular, but does not stick around FOREVER and deal 9 to your face for 1 mana if unchallenged.