After all of the nerf token druid posts the deck is essentially relegated to the trash heap. It was decent to good at the start because of the lack of deck optimization going around. Now that decks are being tweaked we now see the full effect of the nerfs and rotation on the druid class as a whole. The deck still has some power but it's so prone to bad draws that it lacks any semblance of consistency now. RIP Druid until the next expansion. Also RIP nerf druid threads lol.
I argued against the nerf threads even before it became clear to the community that token druid is pretty easy to counter. Finally, reality caught up with the crowd.
Of course, it will still see some decent success when the meta stops countering it, but it is absolutely NOT worthy of any nerfs. As I'm currently finding at the start of this month, by the way. Token druid was a big climber for me at the beginning of RoS, and the meta seems a bit more favorable now than it was for the past 2 weeks. Could be an OK deck presently.
But even still, it's not overpowered and it's not worthy of nerfs. It's a reasonable deck that can be explosive, but it's nothing special.
Next expansion Druid will get new ramp cards. Weird that Blizz, talking about class identity, has deliberately left Druid with no significant ramp cards for the first quarter of the year.
Meh, I clearly doubt that the power level of token druid has "declined that much to become trash" or that "more optimized decks" have been created.
To base my point, according to hsreplay, the top tier1/tier2 decks, are decks that have negative win rates against token druid.
The reason that token druid is played less now, is because HS community (the majority of it) is netdeckers, and since Mech aggro hunter seem more powerful right now, they have moved from token druid to it. (well, this deck has also the issue of card draw and so on like token druid. and it loses to token druid). So if I guess the cycle of life will repeat itself: Nerf threads about Mech aggro hunter, counter decks to it, threads that prove that it's trash level and so on...
Where are you getting your info? I thought token druid was still considered tier 1.
Repeatedly refilling the board with the threat of an instant kill if 3-4 minions are left in play is a pretty brutal strategy that simply exhausts most control decks. It's a bit of a one trick pony though, and if it loses the board against a deck that can beat it up quickly, it's pretty dead.
I'd like to see playable druid ramp come back too, but not as an auto-include in every druid deck.
Where are you getting your info? I thought token druid was still considered tier 1.
Repeatedly refilling the board with the threat of an instant kill if 3-4 minions are left in play is a pretty brutal strategy that simply exhausts most control decks. It's a bit of a one trick pony though, and if it loses the board against a deck that can beat it up quickly, it's pretty dead.
I'd like to see playable druid ramp come back too, but not as an auto-include in every druid deck.
Temostorm has relegated the deck to Tier 3. This coincides with it's lack of presence on the ladder, at least as far as I've noticed. You also saw it in the HTC Championchip, there weren't a lot of druid decks for a reason. The problem with Token druid right now is often times you're stuck with a hand full of buffs and nothing to buff. It's also very weak to Tempo Rogue which is top dog right now. The deck is just missing something right now to make it consistent.
My biggest issue is that I feel they really went overboard with the Druid nerfs. Naturalize was used in combo decks and it was getting abused, but simply raising the cost to 2 mana could have kept it in Standard and still give Druid a way to remove large minions. I think all classes should have some sort of removal package, even if its random or really hard to use.
Druid also lost their Ramp identity with all the nerfs to those cards too. Wild Growth and Nourish means that there is no reason to really play the ramp cards unless you are an OTK combo deck and want to get to 10 mana and draw combo pieces quickly.
Token Druid is ok, but I still do not see the 8 mana spell being really that impressive to me. I think in Arena, its is probably really oppressive because you get to refill the board twice with 1 card because of twinspell. In Standard, the card is far too slow for what Token Druids really want to be doing. Again, the refill is nice if your board gets cleared, but Token Druid should be winning by turn 8, not building a new board. That is why they are not tier 1 anymore.
Players and decks have packed so much token druid and aggro hate, that now its just a playable and fair deck to play. Without Firefly, and a few other large health low cost minions, the deck suffers greatly. I am never threatened when they summon 2 2/2 treants on turn 3. I am like, ok, so I trade and then your buffs do nothing.
I think Token Druid MIGHT get better if they release more aggressive minions in future expansions. And possibly better Treant synergy cards. The ones they have right now are downright too slow or terrible.
For example, a buff spell that reads: 5 mana. Costs 1 less for each Treant that died this game. Give all your minions +1 attack and Rush. (this card may be wildly bad or unbalanced. this was just a quick example).
Can we just admit the Ancient of Lore and Keeper of the Grove nerfs from years ago weren't justified by today's power creep levels and would be perfectly balanced in the current game state?
I don't like the druid class, as a whole. My daily quest this morning was the "play 30 warrior class cards", and I just about pissed my pants when I queued up my control warrior into a token druid. Nice, long game, full of board clears multiple times. One game quest fulfillment.
I was playing token Druid because it was the most fun I've had in a while. Mirror matches and matches against zoolock are full of tough decisions, minion trading, etc. Every play matters every turn. It's the reason I loved HS in the first place. But as others have said, other decks have gotten too good. Warrior has SO MUCH removal, it's nearly impossible to beat them unless they get super unlucky. Lackey Rogue simply ignores your board and goes face, and unless you get lucky with a Roar, you're not going to win. Even mage is now teching in Pyro, making that matchup less favorable. So i've stopped playing the deck, since half my matches (ranks 3-5) are against Rogue and Warrior
It goes positive win rate vs hunter, mage, paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, and warrior, all winrates are below 65% and average out to roughly 53%.
In a meta that averages no higher than 54% for top meta decks, that's really good.
Our meta right now is extremely dependent on RNG, be it draw, discover, or pure (like lackey random spells). We could use some tempering for rogue, druid, hunter, warrior, and the RNG accessible to everyone right now. I'm personally tired of rogue pulling druid spells like Bite for gigantic swings at my face.
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Rage quitting: the best way to ensure your opponent knows they beat a giant baby.
It will bounce back after other stuff gets nerfed.
And if other stuff doesn't get nerfed, Blizzard will be in for another bad year in terms of sales.
They've lost so many influencers already, and they really can't afford to let this stale three-class meta continue much longer. Streamers can't keep it interesting if the game itself is boring af.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Can we just admit the Ancient of Lore and Keeper of the Grove nerfs from years ago weren't justified by today's power creep levels and would be perfectly balanced in the current game state?
It was completely justified because Blizzard's point about it wasn't that it was too strong but rather that 2 copies of each was run in every single Druid deck since HS's release. Blizzard was clear that they wanted the class to feel different as the years went on and they kept printing new draw cards for Druid but nobody would ever play anything other than Lore, thus the card either had to be nerfed or HoF'ed. As for Keeper, Blizzard was trying to entice players to play big legendaries and buffs with high cost and high rewards but Keeper and Owl was being "anti-fun" would just shut down anything wacky like that, thus both cards really did have to be nerfed. Those are changes that should remain as they are. Druid may not be a top class right now but reversing those 2 cards is really not the answer.
Also, I really don't buy into the idea that Druid is a BAD class right now. It's has powerful token decks, it's just being countered in the meta, that's how metas are supposed to work. We only have a problem when something can't reasonably be countered (and right now that looks to be Ctrl Warrior and Tempo Rogue).
After all of the nerf token druid posts the deck is essentially relegated to the trash heap. It was decent to good at the start because of the lack of deck optimization going around. Now that decks are being tweaked we now see the full effect of the nerfs and rotation on the druid class as a whole. The deck still has some power but it's so prone to bad draws that it lacks any semblance of consistency now. RIP Druid until the next expansion. Also RIP nerf druid threads lol.
Oh noooo, it was so much fun playing vs Togwaggle / Malygos / Mechathun Druid (sarcasm)
Just as I said it would. It feels good to be right..
4/3/19 RIP Keith Flint. 😔
I argued against the nerf threads even before it became clear to the community that token druid is pretty easy to counter. Finally, reality caught up with the crowd.
Of course, it will still see some decent success when the meta stops countering it, but it is absolutely NOT worthy of any nerfs. As I'm currently finding at the start of this month, by the way. Token druid was a big climber for me at the beginning of RoS, and the meta seems a bit more favorable now than it was for the past 2 weeks. Could be an OK deck presently.
But even still, it's not overpowered and it's not worthy of nerfs. It's a reasonable deck that can be explosive, but it's nothing special.
Next expansion Druid will get new ramp cards. Weird that Blizz, talking about class identity, has deliberately left Druid with no significant ramp cards for the first quarter of the year.
Meh, I clearly doubt that the power level of token druid has "declined that much to become trash" or that "more optimized decks" have been created.
To base my point, according to hsreplay, the top tier1/tier2 decks, are decks that have negative win rates against token druid.
The reason that token druid is played less now, is because HS community (the majority of it) is netdeckers, and since Mech aggro hunter seem more powerful right now, they have moved from token druid to it. (well, this deck has also the issue of card draw and so on like token druid. and it loses to token druid). So if I guess the cycle of life will repeat itself: Nerf threads about Mech aggro hunter, counter decks to it, threads that prove that it's trash level and so on...
Where are you getting your info? I thought token druid was still considered tier 1.
Repeatedly refilling the board with the threat of an instant kill if 3-4 minions are left in play is a pretty brutal strategy that simply exhausts most control decks. It's a bit of a one trick pony though, and if it loses the board against a deck that can beat it up quickly, it's pretty dead.
I'd like to see playable druid ramp come back too, but not as an auto-include in every druid deck.
don't you know.
After Team 5 breaks a class, 1-3 expansions later they get OP cards. Look at Warrior and Warlock. And When Druid lost Force-Roar.
All decks are weak to bad draws. Token druid is very good.
Temostorm has relegated the deck to Tier 3. This coincides with it's lack of presence on the ladder, at least as far as I've noticed. You also saw it in the HTC Championchip, there weren't a lot of druid decks for a reason. The problem with Token druid right now is often times you're stuck with a hand full of buffs and nothing to buff. It's also very weak to Tempo Rogue which is top dog right now. The deck is just missing something right now to make it consistent.
My biggest issue is that I feel they really went overboard with the Druid nerfs. Naturalize was used in combo decks and it was getting abused, but simply raising the cost to 2 mana could have kept it in Standard and still give Druid a way to remove large minions. I think all classes should have some sort of removal package, even if its random or really hard to use.
Druid also lost their Ramp identity with all the nerfs to those cards too. Wild Growth and Nourish means that there is no reason to really play the ramp cards unless you are an OTK combo deck and want to get to 10 mana and draw combo pieces quickly.
Token Druid is ok, but I still do not see the 8 mana spell being really that impressive to me. I think in Arena, its is probably really oppressive because you get to refill the board twice with 1 card because of twinspell. In Standard, the card is far too slow for what Token Druids really want to be doing. Again, the refill is nice if your board gets cleared, but Token Druid should be winning by turn 8, not building a new board. That is why they are not tier 1 anymore.
Players and decks have packed so much token druid and aggro hate, that now its just a playable and fair deck to play. Without Firefly, and a few other large health low cost minions, the deck suffers greatly. I am never threatened when they summon 2 2/2 treants on turn 3. I am like, ok, so I trade and then your buffs do nothing.
I think Token Druid MIGHT get better if they release more aggressive minions in future expansions. And possibly better Treant synergy cards. The ones they have right now are downright too slow or terrible.
For example, a buff spell that reads: 5 mana. Costs 1 less for each Treant that died this game. Give all your minions +1 attack and Rush. (this card may be wildly bad or unbalanced. this was just a quick example).
1 card counters the whole archetype in token druid, I figured it out day 1 of RoS. That 1 card is the dreaded, feared Wild Pyromancer!!
Can we just admit the Ancient of Lore and Keeper of the Grove nerfs from years ago weren't justified by today's power creep levels and would be perfectly balanced in the current game state?
I don't like the druid class, as a whole. My daily quest this morning was the "play 30 warrior class cards", and I just about pissed my pants when I queued up my control warrior into a token druid. Nice, long game, full of board clears multiple times. One game quest fulfillment.
But I digress. My main point is #SCREWDROODS
I wouldn't call token druid trash, they are still hard to beat even when you tech against them, and people are starting to tech less against them now.
But yes, Blizzard should give druid some love, just with a different archetype.
I was playing token Druid because it was the most fun I've had in a while. Mirror matches and matches against zoolock are full of tough decisions, minion trading, etc. Every play matters every turn. It's the reason I loved HS in the first place. But as others have said, other decks have gotten too good. Warrior has SO MUCH removal, it's nearly impossible to beat them unless they get super unlucky. Lackey Rogue simply ignores your board and goes face, and unless you get lucky with a Roar, you're not going to win. Even mage is now teching in Pyro, making that matchup less favorable. So i've stopped playing the deck, since half my matches (ranks 3-5) are against Rogue and Warrior
It goes positive win rate vs hunter, mage, paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, and warrior, all winrates are below 65% and average out to roughly 53%.
In a meta that averages no higher than 54% for top meta decks, that's really good.
Our meta right now is extremely dependent on RNG, be it draw, discover, or pure (like lackey random spells). We could use some tempering for rogue, druid, hunter, warrior, and the RNG accessible to everyone right now. I'm personally tired of rogue pulling druid spells like Bite for gigantic swings at my face.
Rage quitting: the best way to ensure your opponent knows they beat a giant baby.
deck sucks... but ive hit legend with it twice now.
It will bounce back after other stuff gets nerfed.
And if other stuff doesn't get nerfed, Blizzard will be in for another bad year in terms of sales.
They've lost so many influencers already, and they really can't afford to let this stale three-class meta continue much longer. Streamers can't keep it interesting if the game itself is boring af.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
It was completely justified because Blizzard's point about it wasn't that it was too strong but rather that 2 copies of each was run in every single Druid deck since HS's release. Blizzard was clear that they wanted the class to feel different as the years went on and they kept printing new draw cards for Druid but nobody would ever play anything other than Lore, thus the card either had to be nerfed or HoF'ed. As for Keeper, Blizzard was trying to entice players to play big legendaries and buffs with high cost and high rewards but Keeper and Owl was being "anti-fun" would just shut down anything wacky like that, thus both cards really did have to be nerfed. Those are changes that should remain as they are. Druid may not be a top class right now but reversing those 2 cards is really not the answer.
Also, I really don't buy into the idea that Druid is a BAD class right now. It's has powerful token decks, it's just being countered in the meta, that's how metas are supposed to work. We only have a problem when something can't reasonably be countered (and right now that looks to be Ctrl Warrior and Tempo Rogue).