The thing about hunter, is that its hero power power means it can very easily break Hearthstone if Blizzard gives it decent aggressive tools (See: Hearthstone's meta back in 2014). At the same time, the hero power also means that the class will always need to be "aggressive by default" in every deck build. Sure, midrange hunter is more of a tempo than an aggro deck, but you still rely on your hero power as that extra late game reach that you need in most games.
So basically, by creating steady shot, blizzard essentially made it necessary to walk the VERY FINE line between giving hunter good enough tools to be competitive, but not good enough to just break the game like it did in 2014. While they obviously need to do the same for other classes, hunter and rogue are arguably the most "dangerous" ones.
Warlock too. I am a warlock player myself and i really felt that renolock was really unbeatable just like razakus priest right now.
As someone who's favorite class is hunter I can tell you that it's still in a plenty good spot. I'm up in the high ranks of wild right now with the DK and Bearshark. Other notable cards of late would be Corpse Widow, Jeweled Macaw, and countless cards that improve the death knight. The cards already revealed for hunter so far introduce a promising archetype and that's only the beginning. So stop your complaining until the expansion has been out for a month and hunter is somehow proven to be useless.
Actually, i really hate hunter class. All you have to do with hunter is just smorc face what makes ruin fun for me so i'm sorry about to say this but f*ck huntards.
My two cents here. Hunter Hero Power pressures the opponent, but considering the viable decks for hunter there are two situations: 1) you play the tempo game -> can't waste mana to play hero power, mid game you play 2-3 drops with hp; 2) you play hero power on early game -> you have a shitty hand, can't play the tempo, lose board, end game.
Hero Power in used around turn 4-5 unless you have nothing to play, thus losing tempo. DK Alduin is a late game card, but the actual tools make their hero power a OP hunter with viable game ending tools. Give that hunter then the entire community freaks out.
Blizzard is afraid that hunter can become an aggressive control class with the proper tools: board clears (or neat board control) and hand fillers. They solved those problems for druid and priests and turned out to be pretty OP. Hunter can be far superior, they just don't want it. The play with hunter mains with just giving them an incomplete set of tools to play crap :(
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"There are bad ways to win-- and good ways to lose. What's interesting and troubling is that it's not always clear which is which. A flipped coin doesn't always land heads or tails. Sometimes it may never land at all..."
My two cents here. Hunter Hero Power pressures the opponent, but considering the viable decks for hunter there are two situations: 1) you play the tempo game -> can't waste mana to play hero power, mid game you play 2-3 drops with hp; 2) you play hero power on early game -> you have a shitty hand, can't play the tempo, lose board, end game.
Hero Power in used around turn 4-5 unless you have nothing to play, thus losing tempo.
FWIW - Donais was interviewed by Kibler and Firebat when Frozen Throne was released. He mentioned that the highest win-rate class in Standard during the Un'Goro meta-game was Hunter. At the time, each of the sites which tracked the game had Hunter as the #1 class from ranks 20-6 - however, the win-rate for the class tanked by about 4% once players started the grind to legend at rank 5. They had a nice discussion about the difficulty of balancing a class which posts high win-rates among less-skilled players, and low win-rates among high-skilled players. MR decks in general are the simplest to pilot, so less-skilled players tend to do best with them, particularly when paired against other less-skilled players. MR Hunter is also quite an aggressive MR build, so it tends to be quite forgiving when a pilot plays poorly - if you've done a bit of face damage, you always open the possibility of simply top-decking lethal if you lose the board through misplays. All of this matters much less when better players are consistently playing against equally good players at ranks 5+.
HSReplays tracks over one million games each day, and their data appears to be the most accurate of any tracking site - MR Hunter currently boasts the third-best win-rate in Standard, only about 1% behind Tempo Rogue. It's also third-best in Wild, though it lags far behind MR Paladin. Again, its performance drops off at high level play, but the class itself seems in a perfectly fine position, despite the community memes regarding its "obvious" weakness.
Won't argue about the first part of your post (the one in the spoiler), with which I agree. But I'm dubious about the latter, since can't really confirm that third-best win-rate for MR Hunter. Don't know if it's because I'm a non-Premium user, maybe you have access to more / different data? Anyway:
The page closer to support your claim seems to be https://hsreplay.net/meta/#tab=archetypes. Here there's indeed a Hunter archetype which is 3rd-4th by WR (on par with Secret Mage). But it's not MR Hunter, it's what HSReplay guys call Beast Hunter. Let alone that Beast doesn't look that different from MR, since they share many core cards. The issue is that the games played with this Beast Hunter are just a little over 1% of total Hunter games. With relatively few games played, there's also higher (statistical) uncertainty on the value of the "true" WR. Anyhow, it doesn't look so representative of the state of the class. If you computed the different archetypes' WRs average, weighted by popularity, the resulting figure would push Hunter much lower than 3rd place. Or, if we go check specifically MR Hunter WR against all others, there are like 10 other archetypes which are better.
People seem to have already forgotten Secret Hunter
What is there to forget? A tier 2 deck that never had an impact on the meta?
Except for the fact that it dominated during kharazan and was brought by a lot of people to the world championships. It actually had so much of an impact on the meta that they nerfed it. They nerfed call of the wild invade you forgot again.
They nerfed COTW because of mid-range Hunter not secret Hunter. COTW was nerfed during Old Gods... not Karazhan.
Hunter is the least visited forum on hearthpwn, why? Because the class is garbage. Is anyone actually a fan of Druid? Do people really identify themselves as druid players? Druid is like Hunter only with less personality, but everyone plays them because they want to win and they have the most broken cards.
This got to be the most nonsensical piece of opinion disguised as fact I read in those forums.
What makes you assume that everyone who plays Druid does because he is stronger? What makes you assume he is "hunter with less personality"? Druid, for anyone who played tabletop rpgs like Dungeons and Dragons (to which this expansion makes an homage, mind you) is based on the cool, mythical celtic priests. Druids channel the power of nature itself and transform thenselves into animals, talk with plants, make vines trap their foes. Please tell when this is Hunter with "less personality". Hunter is a dude that hunts, and if he is a cool hunter, he might walk with some animal companions. And that's it, it's nowhere as bitchin as a druid is.
But perhaps you're talking about the mechanic aspect in Hearthstone, in which case you're likely dead wrong as well. Druid is one of the most unique classes. He monopolizes ramping and, most important, posses the "choose one" mechanic.
What hunters have? Weapons? Other 4 classes have them as well. Secrets? Mages and Paladins have, and now, Rogues as well. Beast synergy? Used to have, but it isn't really that unique and now, druids also have that (which makes all sense in the world since druids are wardens of nature).
There are people, me including, who played with Druid all those years, without whinning about them not being Tier 1. I'm more of a Warlock players, but Druid is among my 4 classes that I love (Warlock, Shaman, Mage and Druid, roughly in that order). While we played Druid, Hunters dominated the ladder with cancerous decks like Undertaker Hunter or Face Hunter. People complain about the current meta, but no, current meta doesn't hold a candle to the cancer that the aformentioned hunter decks caused.
Ohh spaming 6-6 7-7 8-8 and so on for one mana is very "nature" thing to do. I bet wardens of the forests just spammed the some golems on the intruders. Oh and also drawing 5 card gaining 5 armor dealing 5 damage and summoning 5-5 ghoul is very "unique". And of course ramping without a single tempo loss is unheard and very original!
This comment is just pure salt with no substance to it.
Sorry, but I just love hunter salt. Those players ruined the ladder with cancer braindead decks, and now that they taste a bit of that cancer on other class they complain about it on the forums.
Blizzard is trying to transform hunter into more than the smorc bot the most dominating hunter decks used to be. We might see a solid tempo hunter in the near future. Wouldn't hurt to see viable hunter decks that demand more than doing face damage.
The hunter forums are empty because hunter players have the whole class's strategy figured out already. There's nothing to add to playing on curve and going face when a minion with more than 3 attack is alive.
And if someone is actually playing hunter in a different way, it's not like the smorc players will have much to contribute anyway.
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Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
The hunter forums are empty because hunter players have the whole class's strategy figured out already. There's nothing to add to playing on curve and going face when a minion with more than 3 attack is alive.
And if someone is actually playing hunter in a different way, it's not like the smorc players will have much to contribute anyway.
Are you one of those who suffered during the Undertaker era, by chance?
The hunter forums are empty because hunter players have the whole class's strategy figured out already. There's nothing to add to playing on curve and going face when a minion with more than 3 attack is alive.
And if someone is actually playing hunter in a different way, it's not like the smorc players will have much to contribute anyway.
Are you one of those who suffered during the Undertaker era, by chance?
Actually, I'm not. I'm only sad/pissed off because of how many awesome cards are wasted on a class with so little innovation about it, Lock and Load being the best example of this.
The foundations are there for people to actually make something new, even if it's just stupid fun, but Hunter players are terrified of playing a single game with a tier-3 deck that does something other than damage. And when Blizzard actually keeps giving them cool toys so they feel more tempted to do anything other than what they've done from the beginning, they instead complain about not getting more Tier-S cards to smorc with.
Of course, this makes me roll my eyes when I see more complaints about Blizzard hating hunter.
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Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
You also have players who hate hunter because of what blizzard made it. If blizzard did not pigeon hole hunter into playing only one type of deck, aggressive decks due to its hero power, then there would be more people also lamenting about how unbalanced hunter is. There is such a small chance of there being control hunter because of the aggro hero power and their solution to this problem is in the form of hero power changing cards like the dk. However, if you don't draw the dk or dinomancy as another example, you have a "control" hunter deck that can't play controlling very well yet. Its a shame cause hunter is fun but all you'll here is "fuck huntards" and "remember hunter taker".
For all those saying the class is automatically destined to be an aggro class because of hero power, needs to look at the various options Blizz has introduced to change hero power during the game's history. Is it really that difficult to make a decent card to change the Hunter hero power into control?
Priest can become a fucking machine gunner, but Hunter cannot get a control oriented hero power. Oh no! It will give Hunter a different play style! How fuck can that be allowed in HS? Fuck Hunters, because I still remember Undertaker Hunter and Face Hunter, what 2 years ago? or more? Sir Finley Mrrgglton can turn any class into aggro, but the opposite cannot be allowed!
Just design a decent card to change the hero power. DKRex is awesome in doing that, make a low cost card to allow a more control oriented hero power for Hunter. Surely the Hallows Arena taught Blizz a lot. Blizz Hunters non-face board control cards, PROPER ONES! And it will have more playstyles. But nope. It shows Blizz's lack in game design and the communities lack of interest in game diversity.
Really the problem with control hunter is twofold (and yes, because of their hero power);
1 - If you print good aggro cards then Hunter, more than any other class, becomes amazing at smorcing and everyone cries cancer. 2 - If you print good control cards, well, nothing happens, because it's counterintuitive to their base set and their hero power.
Changing the hero power is all well and good but basing an entire expansion or twos archetype over one card that changes your hero power doesn't seem smart to me. You could of course print a couple of expansions worth of very good control cards, something Hunter has never quite had, but the problem is... they rotate, and now until the end of time you have to keep printing incredible control cards for Hunter or they'll simply fail to keep up.
Only long term viable solution is to change the hero power permanently, in my opinion. Or for people to give up on the control Hunter dream and Blizzard can focus entirely on aggro/midrange. (which should be fine, not every class needs every archetype - there's no aggro Priests)
Priest can become a fucking machine gunner, but Hunter cannot get a control oriented hero power. Oh no! It will give Hunter a different play style! How fuck can that be allowed in HS? Fuck Hunters, because I still remember Undertaker Hunter and Face Hunter, what 2 years ago? or more? Sir Finley Mrrgglton can turn any class into aggro, but the opposite cannot be allowed
Entirely contradicting yourself here. Hunter got a control orientated hero power in literally the same expansion that Priest became a machine gunner... so of course they can give it to Hunter, because they did? The problem is the rest of the set not supporting it, not the hero power itself.
Hunter is the one class Team 5 has no clue what to do with. The class has been slammed with bad spells that no one is running, poorly stated minions with most seeing no play & awkward death rattle synergy cards that are usually just flat out really bad. The class constantly gets shafted on new mechanics or deck types. It took them over a year just to give the class a discover card! lol It's hard NOT to think that they want Hunter to suck because they are for damn sure not doing much to make the class better. It should also be noted that it's been over a week since the last hunter class card was revealed :P.
The hunter forums are empty because hunter players have the whole class's strategy figured out already. There's nothing to add to playing on curve and going face when a minion with more than 3 attack is alive.
And if someone is actually playing hunter in a different way, it's not like the smorc players will have much to contribute anyway.
Are you one of those who suffered during the Undertaker era, by chance?
Actually, I'm not. I'm only sad/pissed off because of how many awesome cards are wasted on a class with so little innovation about it, Lock and Load being the best example of this.
The foundations are there for people to actually make something new, even if it's just stupid fun, but Hunter players are terrified of playing a single game with a tier-3 deck that does something other than damage. And when Blizzard actually keeps giving them cool toys so they feel more tempted to do anything other than what they've done from the beginning, they instead complain about not getting more Tier-S cards to smorc with.
Of course, this makes me roll my eyes when I see more complaints about Blizzard hating hunter.
Cool ideas need support in order to work. It doesn't have to be tier-S decks, it just needs enough support that its not a sub 40% win-rate. Lock and load was an awesome card that was given to class that is so limited in spell choice that it could never work. Most hunter spells are strictly situational (Flare, unleash, hunters mark, deadly shot, multi-shot) or secrets. All of them rely on the board state being optimal or the opponent playing poorly to work. Thus most of them are trash, you get flare against a druid, unleash against a slow control deck, hunters mark\deadly shot against aggro decks. The hunter spells are the least fun in the game simply because of how little control they give you when you play them. You can't run a spell hunter deck without spell hunter getting some good spells to actually play.
Without spells all you can do is play an aggressive minion focused game, which is lost the moment you lose the board.
Really the problem with control hunter is twofold (and yes, because of their hero power);
1 - If you print good aggro cards then Hunter, more than any other class, becomes amazing at smorcing and everyone cries cancer. 2 - If you print good control cards, well, nothing happens, because it's counterintuitive to their base set and their hero power.
Changing the hero power is all well and good but basing an entire expansion or twos archetype over one card that changes your hero power doesn't seem smart to me. You could of course print a couple of expansions worth of very good control cards, something Hunter has never quite had, but the problem is... they rotate, and now until the end of time you have to keep printing incredible control cards for Hunter or they'll simply fail to keep up.
Only long term viable solution is to change the hero power permanently, in my opinion. Or for people to give up on the control Hunter dream and Blizzard can focus entirely on aggro/midrange. (which should be fine, not every class needs every archetype - there's no aggro Priests)
Priest can become a fucking machine gunner, but Hunter cannot get a control oriented hero power. Oh no! It will give Hunter a different play style! How fuck can that be allowed in HS? Fuck Hunters, because I still remember Undertaker Hunter and Face Hunter, what 2 years ago? or more? Sir Finley Mrrgglton can turn any class into aggro, but the opposite cannot be allowed
Entirely contradicting yourself here. Hunter got a control orientated hero power in literally the same expansion that Priest became a machine gunner... so of course they can give it to Hunter, because they did? The problem is the rest of the set not supporting it, not the hero power itself.
Hunter did not get a control oriented hero power, it's a value hero power, allowing you to generate cards which is designed to overcome Hunter's lack of draw. And control hero power is Warrior, Priest even mage.
For all those saying the class is automatically destined to be an aggro class because of hero power, needs to look at the various options Blizz has introduced to change hero power during the game's history. Is it really that difficult to make a decent card to change the Hunter hero power into control?
Priest can become a fucking machine gunner, but Hunter cannot get a control oriented hero power. Oh no! It will give Hunter a different play style! How fuck can that be allowed in HS? Fuck Hunters, because I still remember Undertaker Hunter and Face Hunter, what 2 years ago? or more? Sir Finley Mrrgglton can turn any class into aggro, but the opposite cannot be allowed!
Just design a decent card to change the hero power. DKRex is awesome in doing that, make a low cost card to allow a more control oriented hero power for Hunter. Surely the Hallows Arena taught Blizz a lot. Blizz Hunters non-face board control cards, PROPER ONES! And it will have more playstyles. But nope. It shows Blizz's lack in game design and the communities lack of interest in game diversity.
The reason priests can 'machine gun' is because their particular set of card is very well suited for it. Look at all the cheap spells they have. Not cheap enough? How about radiant elemental? Running out of spells? Try Lyra the Sunshard. Slow early game? Pint Size Potion, Shadow Word: Pain, Potion of Madness etc.
Hunter has had a lot of cool concepts, Lock and Load being one of them. The problem is there aren't enough supporting cards to make them a viable deck. It will be interesting to see if control hunter becomes a think, but right now I don't think its there. So far the cards released for Kobolds seem pretty underwhelming. I actually think they'll have a greater impact in arena than in standard.
It would be nice to see them attempt to fix some of their deficiencies. Something with card draw would be nice, something that doesn't fit into a spot thats already filled (ie Seeping Oozeling competing with Savannah Highmane)
It would be nice if most classes had more than one viable deck right? Mid range hunter is fun, but so is changing it up.
Stop trying to make hunters martyrs. They're not in such a bad spot. IMO currently the class in worst overall position is warriror (well deserved after the pirate meta). Warr has only control DMH which is expensive and pretty hard to pilot properly.
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As someone who's favorite class is hunter I can tell you that it's still in a plenty good spot. I'm up in the high ranks of wild right now with the DK and Bearshark. Other notable cards of late would be Corpse Widow, Jeweled Macaw, and countless cards that improve the death knight. The cards already revealed for hunter so far introduce a promising archetype and that's only the beginning. So stop your complaining until the expansion has been out for a month and hunter is somehow proven to be useless.
Actually, i really hate hunter class. All you have to do with hunter is just smorc face what makes ruin fun for me so i'm sorry about to say this but f*ck huntards.
My two cents here. Hunter Hero Power pressures the opponent, but considering the viable decks for hunter there are two situations: 1) you play the tempo game -> can't waste mana to play hero power, mid game you play 2-3 drops with hp; 2) you play hero power on early game -> you have a shitty hand, can't play the tempo, lose board, end game.
Hero Power in used around turn 4-5 unless you have nothing to play, thus losing tempo. DK Alduin is a late game card, but the actual tools make their hero power a OP hunter with viable game ending tools. Give that hunter then the entire community freaks out.
Blizzard is afraid that hunter can become an aggressive control class with the proper tools: board clears (or neat board control) and hand fillers. They solved those problems for druid and priests and turned out to be pretty OP. Hunter can be far superior, they just don't want it. The play with hunter mains with just giving them an incomplete set of tools to play crap :(
"There are bad ways to win-- and good ways to lose. What's interesting and troubling is that it's not always clear which is which. A flipped coin doesn't always land heads or tails. Sometimes it may never land at all..."
The hunter forums are empty because hunter players have the whole class's strategy figured out already. There's nothing to add to playing on curve and going face when a minion with more than 3 attack is alive.
And if someone is actually playing hunter in a different way, it's not like the smorc players will have much to contribute anyway.
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
You also have players who hate hunter because of what blizzard made it. If blizzard did not pigeon hole hunter into playing only one type of deck, aggressive decks due to its hero power, then there would be more people also lamenting about how unbalanced hunter is. There is such a small chance of there being control hunter because of the aggro hero power and their solution to this problem is in the form of hero power changing cards like the dk. However, if you don't draw the dk or dinomancy as another example, you have a "control" hunter deck that can't play controlling very well yet. Its a shame cause hunter is fun but all you'll here is "fuck huntards" and "remember hunter taker".
For all those saying the class is automatically destined to be an aggro class because of hero power, needs to look at the various options Blizz has introduced to change hero power during the game's history. Is it really that difficult to make a decent card to change the Hunter hero power into control?
Priest can become a fucking machine gunner, but Hunter cannot get a control oriented hero power. Oh no! It will give Hunter a different play style! How fuck can that be allowed in HS? Fuck Hunters, because I still remember Undertaker Hunter and Face Hunter, what 2 years ago? or more? Sir Finley Mrrgglton can turn any class into aggro, but the opposite cannot be allowed!
Just design a decent card to change the hero power. DKRex is awesome in doing that, make a low cost card to allow a more control oriented hero power for Hunter. Surely the Hallows Arena taught Blizz a lot. Blizz Hunters non-face board control cards, PROPER ONES! And it will have more playstyles. But nope. It shows Blizz's lack in game design and the communities lack of interest in game diversity.
Really the problem with control hunter is twofold (and yes, because of their hero power);
1 - If you print good aggro cards then Hunter, more than any other class, becomes amazing at smorcing and everyone cries cancer.
2 - If you print good control cards, well, nothing happens, because it's counterintuitive to their base set and their hero power.
Changing the hero power is all well and good but basing an entire expansion or twos archetype over one card that changes your hero power doesn't seem smart to me. You could of course print a couple of expansions worth of very good control cards, something Hunter has never quite had, but the problem is... they rotate, and now until the end of time you have to keep printing incredible control cards for Hunter or they'll simply fail to keep up.
Only long term viable solution is to change the hero power permanently, in my opinion. Or for people to give up on the control Hunter dream and Blizzard can focus entirely on aggro/midrange. (which should be fine, not every class needs every archetype - there's no aggro Priests)
Edit : To add...
Hunter is the one class Team 5 has no clue what to do with. The class has been slammed with bad spells that no one is running, poorly stated minions with most seeing no play & awkward death rattle synergy cards that are usually just flat out really bad. The class constantly gets shafted on new mechanics or deck types. It took them over a year just to give the class a discover card! lol It's hard NOT to think that they want Hunter to suck because they are for damn sure not doing much to make the class better. It should also be noted that it's been over a week since the last hunter class card was revealed :P.
Without spells all you can do is play an aggressive minion focused game, which is lost the moment you lose the board.
For all those saying the class is automatically destined to be an aggro class because of hero power, needs to look at the various options Blizz has introduced to change hero power during the game's history. Is it really that difficult to make a decent card to change the Hunter hero power into control?
Priest can become a fucking machine gunner, but Hunter cannot get a control oriented hero power. Oh no! It will give Hunter a different play style! How fuck can that be allowed in HS? Fuck Hunters, because I still remember Undertaker Hunter and Face Hunter, what 2 years ago? or more? Sir Finley Mrrgglton can turn any class into aggro, but the opposite cannot be allowed!
Just design a decent card to change the hero power. DKRex is awesome in doing that, make a low cost card to allow a more control oriented hero power for Hunter. Surely the Hallows Arena taught Blizz a lot. Blizz Hunters non-face board control cards, PROPER ONES! And it will have more playstyles. But nope. It shows Blizz's lack in game design and the communities lack of interest in game diversity.
The new "to my side card" proves this point
Stop trying to make hunters martyrs. They're not in such a bad spot. IMO currently the class in worst overall position is warriror (well deserved after the pirate meta). Warr has only control DMH which is expensive and pretty hard to pilot properly.