Go Figure, Druid is Popular! Dean Ayala Talks About Monitoring the Meta & Potential for Changes
Druid has been a very popular class recently thanks to some new additions handed to them during Frozen Throne. Unfortunately though when one class succeeds too well, the community won't stop asking questions and thankfully this time around, we've reeled in a response from Dean Ayala.
Below you'll find our recap of the important points and the full quote from Dean.
- It is not abnormal to see one archetype get popular early on; people latch onto powerful decks.
- Using short term statistics to say things like "more popular than Undertaker Hunter" isn't a good comparison. The two use different sets of data (biased publicly gathered vs all players via internal stats)
- Blizzard is always watching the meta.
- TL;DR: They are discussing possible Druid changes internally, but it's too early to say if anything will be changed.
Dean talked about some the cards being used by Druids and what they've been talking about internally.
Innervate, Swipe, Wild Growth
- Class defining cards are good, but auto-include cards into decks isn't their design goal.
- Internal discussions are weighing pros and cons about each card staying with Druid for eternity.
Ultimate Infestation
- They think changing it would only impact player sentiment and not play or win rate stats.
- It doesn't appear to be statistically responsible for Druid power or popularity.
- Player sentiment and the card's draw power not being a part of their class identity leave the card up for balance discussion.
Spreading Plague
- Druids have a vulnerability to swarms of minions. They liked this method to help them with that as it fit the flavor of the class.
- They'd like to only see it used during heavy swarm minion metas and not general inclusion in all Druid decks.
- The current meta shows a lot of swarm-style decks which is likely why we're seeing it played so much. Their eyes remain on this card.
Blue Post
Quote from Dean AyalaDruid surpasses in popularity the historic Undertaker Hunter
We cite internal statistics from time to time, but I tend to be cautious of that myself because it's very difficult to find any statistic that represents everyone. Given enough time and enough access I find that it's not difficult to display data to support almost any opinion about the metagame. At the end of the Un'Goro cycle, Hunter was actually the highest win rate class among all Hearthstone players. In fact, Hunter held the highest win rate for the a large portion of the expansion. Of course, I wouldn't say that in retrospect of Un'Goro that Hunter should have been less powerful, but that is what the data might suggest. With that in mind, here are some thoughts on some of the comments I've read in this thread.
- Druid surpasses in popularity the historic Undertaker Hunter.
The statistics being used for this post are for one rank over one day. The statistics we cite about Undertaker Hunter reference all Hearthstone players at all ranks over a time range of a week to a month. Druid is popular right now, but these statistics aren't comparable. If I had to guess what the most popular class within one rank of all time is, I would probably guess Mage at Rank 25 on an average day or Warrior at Legend during the Warsong Commander / Molten Giant era.
- Blizzard disappeared after the expansion.
As with every early metagame, we are monitoring play rates, win rates, and player sentiment on a daily basis. We hop in threads like this one fairly regularly to say exactly that, but people tend to want to know exactly whether we are or are not going to change something. We are discussing what potential changes we could make if Druid increases in popularity over time, but ~5 days of popularity is not enough to make that call at this time.
- The people want to know the status of a druid nerf.
We are looking at a number of Druid cards, but for a deck or archetype to reach this level of popularity this early on in an expansion is not abnormal. The population usually finds something powerful, latches onto it, then other decks that are powerful vs that archetype come onto the scene until one of them emerges as the new popular deck before the cycle continues. It's certainly possible that Druid is in fact so powerful that it prevents the normal metagame cycle from happening, but it's too early to tell. Here are some thoughts on current Druid cards. Keep in mind that these are some of the discussions we have internally, not a list of changes.
Innervate, Swipe, Wild Growth: When we changed Keeper of the Grove and Ancient of Lore, the goal was for Druids to have more interesting decisions to make when deckbuilding rather than a large group of cards to be automatically included. Even though those cards changed, there are still some other offenders of this such as Innervate or Swipe...and Wild Growth to a lesser degree. Having some powerful cards that help define what makes a class different can be good, but those cards in particular have spawned a number of internal conversations where we have been weighing the upside and downside to having each as a part of Druid for Hearthstone eternity.
Ultimate Infestation: Changing a card like Ultimate Infestation we think would have a bigger impact on player sentiment than actual play rate or win rate statistics. It's a big, flashy, cool design but it hasn't appeared to be statistically responsible for Druid power or popularity. Power level aside, having such a powerful card draw effect in Druid is something we are wary of in Druid because we wouldn't consider it part of their identity as a class. Partially for that reason and for sentiment reasons it is still part of discussions in terms of what to do with Druid should population and power level continue to rise.
Spreading Plague: Part of what keeps Druid vulnerable is their weakness to minion swarms due to a lack of powerful AoE. While we think plague is a soft version of AoE that fits the Druid flavor kit, it might shore up one of points of vulnerability more than we would have originally intended. Ideally Spreading Plague is used in heavy minion swarm metas and less so as a general inclusion in any Druid deck. Token Druid, Token Shaman, and Murloc Paladin are all showing high population in the current metagame so it's possible the meta for plague just happens to be now, but it's a card we're continuing to keep a close eye on going forward.
Swipe is too good, while Meteor isn't.
Only card that is mentioned that could be nerfed Innervate. Nerfing the rest will either change nothing or make druid ded (if swipe gets nerfed).
Also hey, the plan is working guys, play druid a whole lot and changes are bound to show up.
On a side note,...just nerf the dam Jade Idol.
I understand Blizzard's feelings about Ultimate Infestation.
Still, I want to know how it's possible this card has been created after Ancient of Lore's nerf. (yes I get UI costs 3 more than lore and blablabla)
"the goal was for Druids to have more interesting decisions to make when deckbuilding" sure, like Vicious Fledgling
*Cough* Coin Frostbolt
*Cough* Coin SWP
*Cough* Coin Backstab + Dagger
I think the problem is mainly from the windfury option of vicious fledglind. If they remove the windfury adaption just for fledgling it will be a balanced play. That card also hurts arena a lot even with 50% less chance to draw.
Zeus' comment is saying that it's innervate that's the problem. Innervate is what made jade capable of reaching end game thanks to innervate+auctioneer, innervate/innervate/fendral, or some combination of innervate+wild grown to quickly get 4-6 drops down by turn 1-3.
or, again, if they pushed innervate to wild would vicious fledgling sill be op?
Simply boring to play. You try to experiment with new type of decks, you face ramp Druid - you loose. You got death knight from the pack, you tube your deck for him, looks nice, go to ladder, you face jade Druid - you loose. You try to give a chance to your slightly modified old type deck, you face Aggro Druid - you loose. You are pissed off, taking pirate warrior, you face any other class besides Druid - you win. Repeat, you face Druid again and you loose. It's on rank 5 btw. Not playing this shit till September, hope something will change...
whatever you do, DO NOT NERF MEGA RAMP BIG DRUID, ive played this deck since vanilla 1600+ wins with ramp druid no other golden hero, and we suffer the most from other decks nerfs ,we got hit when you tryied to balance force+combo, now we are going to get hit because of jades or tokens or taunts, Its a fair archetype and its the first seasson its tier 2, it can loose to everything and it can win everything so i consider it fair please blizzard its not our fault jades are infinite our minions are not
aggro deals tons of dmg we dont
we usually dont have anything on the board because of ramp
3*3/4 minions can solo a ramp big druid, because we cant clear and its fine
big druid cannot run 2 infestations because we have limited ammo
its a control deck that ramps into big threats(loosing the board in the proccess, and having no way to clear) and we all know that big threats can be countered, tries to win with big 8+ mana minions so i consider it balanced and fair.. for gods sake a black knight can win a big ramp on one turn
i dont know what else to say if you or the people think its tier 1 or cancern or broken i dare them try it at its best... it was always a tier 3 deck now its tier 2 so please leave us there winning by minions like ysera/deathwing/yhasaarjlich king its the most fun we "real ramp lovers" enjoy in this game and we dont bother anyone since we can be countered by aggro,OTK,midrange,swarm/zoo ... god even the oldschool midrange hunter is a bad matchup, please play it smart blizz and dont nerf us like the old keeper nerf witch was needed for this kind of deck and didnt won you the game instantly
i hope im not the only one in this ....
I am of the unpopular opinion that they're doing a fairly decent job. I can't point my finger to many times in HS history when all classes had good competitive decks, but since Un'goro we're in one of those times. And we should cherish that fact, because it's not an easy task doing this. It's not like you can go into a blizz pc and type in "make every playable", older players will know how bad it used to be.
That said, I always get ticked off when they say "cards aren't designed to be auto-include". That is not a good argument at all, all classes have auto-include cards. Are you going to nerf arcane intelect, Animal Companion, Kill Command, Truesilver Champion, Northshire Cleric, Power Word: Shield, Backstab and Fiery War axe? No, right? Good. So don't tell me card X is auto include and therefore must be looked at. Tell me that card X poses a threat to the game because Y,Z and X and therefore it is reasonable to do something about it.
my words exactly with the "auto-include" thing i hate it when they say it, it was the same with keeper and lore the problem was the combo not lore or keeper witch could benefit other archetypes like big ramp, they did the exact opossite from what they wanted to do "roar decks" survived and big ramp got even worse and it was never a tier 1 deck to begin with
6 primary archetypes is not balance.
It's not one card. It's the combination that plays it out. Druid can play cards with abandon waiting for Ultimate Infestation to equalize the board, come back, or put it to a win more situation.
My biggest issue with this is that druid is just so far ahead of other classes in the amount of different tools it has access to that any one single nerf would not be enough.
They just have crazy taunts, board floods, heals, insane draw, insane tempo tools, mana ramp, etc etc.
The one thing it doesn't have good enough tools for is removal. Hard Removal and repeatable boardclears.
But as far as Board Clears go stuff like Spreading Plague and Primordial Drake just fixed the issue. They still don't have hard removal but they now get some access to Poisonous minions that they can hind behind a bunch of taunts and just set you back too much on your game plan.
It goes to show how Hearthstone's class design got so asymmetrical with time. Some classes that have a good Core set get busted when they get good expansions, others are useless unless they get a few broken cards on the sets and even then they can't compete with the Core classes like Druid, Mage, Warrior, etc...
Some mechanics become really unfair when a class doesn't have tools to counter them. Warlock without healing and non-self destroying removal, hunter without aoe, removal, draw and strong early minions, priest without strong early turn plays, shaman with... well shaman with everything.
They just need to rework the core set to have some equality between classes. Shaman is gonna be so freaking useless next year when they lose Old Gods and Jades.
I am currently facing over 60% Jade Druids at R7. Considering that we have 9 heroes to choose from, I would say that this meta is fairly unbalanced. Not to mention that jades are probably the most boring mechanic in HS. I have played this game for 2 years and will continue to play, but I really hope that we don't have to deal with Jade domination for the next several months. Slightly disappointing that the devs came up with an entirely new expansion just for people to end up playing something that has already existed for a long time. I know the new meta is still developing and things could change but as of right now I dont see jade druid going anywhere.
Discussing changes about certain cards that have been existing in Druid since the beginning of Hearthstone when the problem has been a 1 cost spell that has been limiting design space since Mean Streets of Gadgetzan... what a major oversight...
Just change that one single card and you won't be seeing as much druid...No reason to turn more cards into Ancient of Lore power level.
Even in the Undertaker days, there weren't four completely different Hunter archetypes dominating the meta. That's what is happening with Druid right now, and that's why it's so obvious to pretty much everyone that there's a serious problem. It's supremely frustrating that Blizzard can't admit it.
The real answer isn't "It's too soon to tell." It's "We fucked up in so many different ways, we don't even know where to begin to fix it."