Well it's been almost a year since the Standard rotation started and definitely had an impact on the overall Hearthstone meta (even though it eventually turned to Shamanstone). With the Year of the Mammoth around the corner, what did you think of the year of the Kraken and how was your experience with it?
Started great then went down to shithole :/ ,Wotg meta even with smorc shaman was the best meta since patron/vanilla hearthstone.It had malygod druid and rogue which were my favourite post handlock decks and a variety of control decks.What followed afterwards....yeah we all know it.
I hope shaman only receive garbage cards because with already have is enough to be tier 1 for next rotation, if get more broken cards will be tier 0 again, enough of this shit.
Wotg: Meta became Aggro shaman, was okay and control decks were fine, compared to the meta now its good, but compared to past metas it was meh.
Karazhan: This did nothing to help Priest who saw zero play for 9 months. Shaman continued to dominate. From a flavor perspective this adventure was bad, and added more RNG to the game which no one wanted.
Gadgetzan: Terrible for the game as control died to Jade, Reno beat Pirates and Pirates beat Jade. Making this a rock paper scissors meta where you pretty much should concede on the spot as the matches aren't close. At least before standard a bad match-up was a 30-70 not a 5-95.
Getting sick of pirates and the nerfs weren't enough. Pirates loses only 1 card from their deck in the rotation and reno is gone so unless we get Sludge Belcher levels of taunt and Antique Healbot levels of heal, I don't think I'll bother buying a pack of the new set as pirates will still be tier 0.
This has been the least amount of Hearthstone in a year I have ever played, the least amount of different decks I have played, and the worst year to date.
Well I think the Old gods were absolutely great. A lot of variety and different experiences but then they broke the game beyond repair. For me the year of the kraken stands for a giant reduction in game variety and pleasure. I have been playing for over two years and the last 6 months is just incredibly lame. I really enjoy wild but since nowadays you can just lift a standard deck without any wild cards over there and be competitive just goes to show how terrible the presence of OP aggro decks can be. I have no problems with old school aggro but I went to wild cause I like games to last for more than 4 turns.
We have to face another year of Shaman having excess to the best early game removal and superb midrange cards that will not rotate out. Also the Jade presence will keep control decks in a though spot since after turn 10 you basically need a board clear every turn. Druid is of course the biggest offender but shamans have excellent jade curves and rogues have much potential with Nzoth in a slower meta. The only way they could ever counter this problem is by printing OP cards, which is a bad solution, or rework the Jade mechanic which I don't see happening.
So yeah, the only thing I see happening is fast decks to counter Jades in revived face hunters or something like that. a dreadful outlook if you ask me. I think the legendary quest cards are a great idea but I dont see room for them to shine. But still, I am hopeful that I am wrong and the year of the mammoth will crush the year of the kraken.
It was a year were te game got worse and worse by bad decision making from Ben & friends. Now theire on the Edge to lose most pro player scene to Gwent.
However I doubt that ungoro fixes the game in a skill oriented way. The classes are just way to similar so its just who vomits most curve fastest on board which is no fun in add the bgame is full of bad RNG cards that turn the game into a coinflip.
I inda get that Team 5 wants to keep casuals over the ambitious players but i think they underestimate the siphon efect thatll be created by so many famous players switching to another game.
By now the list Blizz woud have to change to make hearthstone compete with gwent has gotten terrible long.
1. Reward system...come on double legendary is the most punishing thing for new players casuals possible! They insta lose 1200 Dust. Gwent solved that by making at least 1 rarety card draftable 1 out of 3.
2. The whole console of hearthstone is just horrible...after so long they didnt even manage to implement a better way to sort your decks...and everything is ...BROWN...yeah freaking brown with some bege. Who made this??? and why its still like this after so long????
3. The classes basically do all the same there is 0 diversity by default.... play as much as possible onto the board = win.
4. Half of the game is RNG cards that coinflip from turn 1-10...some RNG is not the problem but when the whole thing fills up more than half of the cards in the game there is no wonder it gets so frustrating.
5. Toxic comment function while playing you can flame the enemy with "hello" "that was a mistake" that also is realy bad implemented. in gwent you can give the oponent 5 gold or dust after the game as a well played and thats it, no toxity at all.
I could go on but its just like this: hearthstone has become Gwents older but sadly retarded brother. Gwent is in closed beta but the game plays imo better than hearthstone ever did at least to me, ill procede to enyoy my beta key thx to curse net.
I dont really know about Standard, since I last time I played any was 2 months ago, but it's not too bad in Wild Casual. Reno is more common and fun, more cards means more possible gimmick decks, the new quests ( play 30 Rogue Cards/50 Warlock cards/30 Murlocs/20 Divine Shield) let you get gold without having to win, all in all, I like it. Karazhan wasn't as good single-player content wise as the other 3 adventures (which were amazing) but I really liked Gadgetzan's "story" and Old Gods was interesting in it's own way too.
All in all, it was more content. The lack of balance doesn't really impact Wild that much (Turns out Turn 1: Zombie Chow Turn 2: Annoy-o-Tron, Turn 3: Deathlord and the Pirate Warriors/Shamans concede) and Jade is still far from overpowering (N'zoth/C'thun/Ysharj can simply swing and finish it before the 1 mana 7/7, 8/8 and 9/9 become an issue) and I have absolutely no problem with 30 different card decks becoming the norm over 15 to 20 card decks. Far more interesting.
Gadgetzan: Terrible for the game as control died to Jade, Reno beat Pirates and Pirates beat Jade. Making this a rock paper scissors meta where you pretty much should concede on the spot as the matches aren't close. At least before standard a bad match-up was a 30-70 not a 5-95.
This is the problem though... it isn't a rock paper scissors meta. Reno barely beats aggro. It's more like 50:50 against it, so aggro is just outright amazing.
Rotations aside, control suffered a huge blow when WoToG came out, because of Shaman's sudden rise to power. Still, with new Old Gods and plenty of big legendaries, it wasn't all that bad, and we could see a few interesting decks. Plus Yogg made it so that games weren't exactly settled until the end, which is a huge problem with HS.
Then came Karazhan, AKA the filler adventure, in my eyes. Basically, that's when the game went downhill. Three crappy legendaries, one okay legendary that didn't shape the meta, and one that was either utterly broken or useless. Very few control cards and a few more buffs to shaman even we were able to tell were bad ideas from the moment we saw them. It was about this time I switched to Wild permanently, BTW.
And then, the most promising one, lead to the final nail in this terrible mess. Gadgetzan not only broke Standard in half, but spilled part of the cancer to Wild as well. Until now, all the crapfest that had been taking place in Standard (C'Thun, Shaman being shaman...) could at least suffer greatly when pinned up against the Wild powerhouses. This wasn't the case. Patches was and still is nearly everywhere, pirate warrior gave "fast" a whole new meaning, and jade idol ends any control game it gets shuffled in. Reno stopped being janky (the way I liked him) and became meta defining. Dragons finally took that last turn to "another cookie-cutter tempo deck" instead of a "survive until your powerhouses come out deck", and the meta is a hot mess ever since. At least hunter stopped showing up, but the alternatives this far have been as creative as every hunter deck ever, so its pretty bad. Oh, yeah, and Shaman got the anti-control jade mechanic too, coupled with aggro cards, for whatever reason.
So, after this rant, I can conclude this year was a downhill mess.
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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
Old Gods was a fantastic set, and the meta was fairly enjoyable. Karazhan had some really interesting cards, though way too much high-variance randomness and mid-Shaman was way too overbearing. Gadgetzan...well, I'd eat my investment in it and still come out happy if they'd just put it into Wild now...or better yet, delete it entirely. Polarizing, oppressive archetypes and completely uninteresting design.
The think that makes me sad is that they don't take risks and they don't listen to the community. team 5 reminds me of Riot Games. they would come and bullshit you with nonsensical arguments but at the end of the day you would know that they don't give a fucK.
When you go in hearthpwn's custom cards section you see amazing FULL classes and expansions made by non-paid players.
This game has been launched 3 years ago, where is ICC and Arthas ? Where are the new classes ? If they even hinted that they are ready to do something new and create a SINGLE new class I would be amazed at this point.
Beginning of year was promissing even tho I disliked how they mrginalized normal hearthstone into "wild" and created their artificial money grab format. But then Karazhan was useless and Meme streets was horrible for the game.
Bah, as last year, next year will be more aggrostone, more pirates and more bullshiting. Ben Brode is a S+ class professional sellsman. He could probably sell a dead cat for its weight in gold. But he is garbage game designer.
two things i didn't like about this year were the nerfs to Molten Giant and Execute. those were super unneeded and caused aggro to dominate in two different ways, warrior not being able to properly run execute just went the aggro route and a nerfed execute left free reign for the aggro decks of other classes, plus Molten giants being nerfed meant that a wall of giants punishing a face deck was no longer possible.
Overall, tbh this is Blizzard's first time with a tcg and a standard rotation so we shouldn't be too harsh on them. In fact it was a very productive year for Blizzard, they realized that without AoE players would resort to the next best option: pre nerf Yogg-Saron, Hope's End, this gap between medicore AoE and a highly situational card they made for <just for fun> decks was a wake-up call for Blizzard to actually make worthwile AoE, they also realized that 1 drops should just be a 1/1 with an extra effect, and for higher statted 1 drops they should come with a catch, Babbling Book, Swashburglar [/card] and [card]mistress of mixtures showing exactly this "new" line of thinking (new as in mtg realized this circa 2010), sure they did a little bit of a mishap with Small-Time Buccaneer with they actually corrected making him to be more in line with the new 1 drop philosophy. they also introduced deck directing cards that need sinergy among and between them like the old gods themselves and the MSG gangs which actually prevents players from just sticking the best cards of each class plus staple neutrals in a deck and calling it a day making the whole game look samey; anyone remembers Piloted ShredderSludge BelcherDr. Boom, LoathebAntique Healbot shells?
They thought they were fixing the game, but since their main goal was always to fleece their customers, they ended up destroying it to the point that only drastic measures would actually fix it.
Msg was the nail in the coffin. You can't adopt rotation because of powercreep, and then powercreep almost immediately after the rotation. It's a disgrace.
Druid: great year for him, never fell into bottom 3 classes. Druid was viable throughout the year with Yogg / Spell / Maly Druid -> Jade Druid
Hunter: terrible year as the class is going down from being the top 3 classes to the worst class right now, Midrange Hunter --> Secret Hunter -> nothing left.
Mage: good year in general, the class is not overpowered and definitely not in the bottom 3 at any time, but the class lacks of diversity. Temp / Freeze Mage -> RenoMage
Paladin: average year, and it could be worse. Control/MR Paladin was okay for the first few months of OldGods, then we see Aggro Bubble Paladin here and there, but looking back the whole year, Anyfin Paladin seems to be the only memorable and viable Paladin deck of 2016.
Priest: average year with Paladin. The class is forgotten and unviable for half of the year. Fortunately, MSG, which turns out to be not terrible overall, gave this class some tools to be competitive for the last 3-4 months of Kraken. Well, at least we can remember Dragon / Reno Priest existed.
Rogue: good year in general, along with Mage but could be worse. At least, Rogue was more viable than Hunter/Paladin/Priest overall. However, Rogue is the class that went through the most chaos and up/down hills interchangeably to adapt to the meta when it gets slower or faster. Also same with Mage, the class lacks of diversity. We saw N'Zoth / C'Thun Rogue, Aggro Rogue, Mill Rogue, but the only memorable Rogue deck of 2016 is Miracle (Pirate) Rogue. The Aggro Water Rogue was discovered too late that it doesn't feel belong much to the year of the Kraken.
Shaman: enough said, it's the year of Shaman, the class has been constantly competitive and popular throughout the year without much withdrawal. We saw the rise and the fall of Aggro Shaman as it got the hammer nerf twice. Everytime Aggro Shaman falls, we have MR Shaman as the back-up. In addition, the class has good diversity with Control & Murloc Shaman here and there. (Im just stating the fact and not putting negative opinions here).
Warlock: great year overall, the class remains in the top 3-4 classes throughout the year for sure. For the first half of Kraken, ZooLock was viable and very competitive. For the second half, we have RenoLock. Even though the class lacks of diversity, its two memorable decks: ZooLock and RenoLock are definitely not overpowered for the majority to complain much about.
Warrior: the class that has drastically changed the most though out the year with its most 3 competitive decks, from Control Warrior (OldGods) -> MR Dragon Warrior (Karazhan) -> Aggro Pirate Warrior (MSG). The class has not disappointed its fans, but pretty much upset every other non-Warrior players at the end of the year for sure. The score of this class is the co-existence of a variety of Warrior decks that one could play in a meta.
Top 3 classes of the year: 1- Shaman, 2- Warrior, 3- Druid
Middle-tier: 4- Warlock, 5- Mage, 6- Rogue
Bottom 3 classes of the year: 7- Priest, 8- Paladin, 9- Hunter
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Well it's been almost a year since the Standard rotation started and definitely had an impact on the overall Hearthstone meta (even though it eventually turned to Shamanstone). With the Year of the Mammoth around the corner, what did you think of the year of the Kraken and how was your experience with it?
Started great then went down to shithole :/ ,Wotg meta even with smorc shaman was the best meta since patron/vanilla hearthstone.It had malygod druid and rogue which were my favourite post handlock decks and a variety of control decks.What followed afterwards....yeah we all know it.
I like to call it "Captain Cockmuncher's adventures in Bummed in the Gobland". Next year - I predict - Ghosts and Bummed in the Goblins.
I hope shaman only receive garbage cards because with already have is enough to be tier 1 for next rotation, if get more broken cards will be tier 0 again, enough of this shit.
fuck pirates
Wotg: Meta became Aggro shaman, was okay and control decks were fine, compared to the meta now its good, but compared to past metas it was meh.
Karazhan: This did nothing to help Priest who saw zero play for 9 months. Shaman continued to dominate. From a flavor perspective this adventure was bad, and added more RNG to the game which no one wanted.
Gadgetzan: Terrible for the game as control died to Jade, Reno beat Pirates and Pirates beat Jade. Making this a rock paper scissors meta where you pretty much should concede on the spot as the matches aren't close. At least before standard a bad match-up was a 30-70 not a 5-95.
Getting sick of pirates and the nerfs weren't enough. Pirates loses only 1 card from their deck in the rotation and reno is gone so unless we get Sludge Belcher levels of taunt and Antique Healbot levels of heal, I don't think I'll bother buying a pack of the new set as pirates will still be tier 0.
This has been the least amount of Hearthstone in a year I have ever played, the least amount of different decks I have played, and the worst year to date.
Well I think the Old gods were absolutely great. A lot of variety and different experiences but then they broke the game beyond repair. For me the year of the kraken stands for a giant reduction in game variety and pleasure. I have been playing for over two years and the last 6 months is just incredibly lame. I really enjoy wild but since nowadays you can just lift a standard deck without any wild cards over there and be competitive just goes to show how terrible the presence of OP aggro decks can be. I have no problems with old school aggro but I went to wild cause I like games to last for more than 4 turns.
We have to face another year of Shaman having excess to the best early game removal and superb midrange cards that will not rotate out. Also the Jade presence will keep control decks in a though spot since after turn 10 you basically need a board clear every turn. Druid is of course the biggest offender but shamans have excellent jade curves and rogues have much potential with Nzoth in a slower meta. The only way they could ever counter this problem is by printing OP cards, which is a bad solution, or rework the Jade mechanic which I don't see happening.
So yeah, the only thing I see happening is fast decks to counter Jades in revived face hunters or something like that. a dreadful outlook if you ask me. I think the legendary quest cards are a great idea but I dont see room for them to shine. But still, I am hopeful that I am wrong and the year of the mammoth will crush the year of the kraken.
Shamanstone, Shamanstone, and oh, more Shamanstone - with a nice serving of Piratestone to finish off the year.
It was a year were te game got worse and worse by bad decision making from Ben & friends. Now theire on the Edge to lose most pro player scene to Gwent.
However I doubt that ungoro fixes the game in a skill oriented way. The classes are just way to similar so its just who vomits most curve fastest on board which is no fun in add the bgame is full of bad RNG cards that turn the game into a coinflip.
I inda get that Team 5 wants to keep casuals over the ambitious players but i think they underestimate the siphon efect thatll be created by so many famous players switching to another game.
By now the list Blizz woud have to change to make hearthstone compete with gwent has gotten terrible long.
1. Reward system...come on double legendary is the most punishing thing for new players casuals possible! They insta lose 1200 Dust. Gwent solved that by making at least 1 rarety card draftable 1 out of 3.
2. The whole console of hearthstone is just horrible...after so long they didnt even manage to implement a better way to sort your decks...and everything is ...BROWN...yeah freaking brown with some bege. Who made this??? and why its still like this after so long????
3. The classes basically do all the same there is 0 diversity by default.... play as much as possible onto the board = win.
4. Half of the game is RNG cards that coinflip from turn 1-10...some RNG is not the problem but when the whole thing fills up more than half of the cards in the game there is no wonder it gets so frustrating.
5. Toxic comment function while playing you can flame the enemy with "hello" "that was a mistake" that also is realy bad implemented. in gwent you can give the oponent 5 gold or dust after the game as a well played and thats it, no toxity at all.
I could go on but its just like this: hearthstone has become Gwents older but sadly retarded brother. Gwent is in closed beta but the game plays imo better than hearthstone ever did at least to me, ill procede to enyoy my beta key thx to curse net.
im off
Full of spammed decks= shit (Cthun and then Pirates)
It was good until December.
I dont really know about Standard, since I last time I played any was 2 months ago, but it's not too bad in Wild Casual. Reno is more common and fun, more cards means more possible gimmick decks, the new quests ( play 30 Rogue Cards/50 Warlock cards/30 Murlocs/20 Divine Shield) let you get gold without having to win, all in all, I like it. Karazhan wasn't as good single-player content wise as the other 3 adventures (which were amazing) but I really liked Gadgetzan's "story" and Old Gods was interesting in it's own way too.
All in all, it was more content. The lack of balance doesn't really impact Wild that much (Turns out Turn 1: Zombie Chow Turn 2: Annoy-o-Tron, Turn 3: Deathlord and the Pirate Warriors/Shamans concede) and Jade is still far from overpowering (N'zoth/C'thun/Ysharj can simply swing and finish it before the 1 mana 7/7, 8/8 and 9/9 become an issue) and I have absolutely no problem with 30 different card decks becoming the norm over 15 to 20 card decks. Far more interesting.
Check out my OTK chargfury shaman deck.
Well i see Patches as a Kraken so i see Year of the Kraken as year of Patches :D
Curious about the Mammoth, maybe will see a Mammoth flavour card i guess.
Rotations aside, control suffered a huge blow when WoToG came out, because of Shaman's sudden rise to power. Still, with new Old Gods and plenty of big legendaries, it wasn't all that bad, and we could see a few interesting decks. Plus Yogg made it so that games weren't exactly settled until the end, which is a huge problem with HS.
Then came Karazhan, AKA the filler adventure, in my eyes. Basically, that's when the game went downhill. Three crappy legendaries, one okay legendary that didn't shape the meta, and one that was either utterly broken or useless. Very few control cards and a few more buffs to shaman even we were able to tell were bad ideas from the moment we saw them. It was about this time I switched to Wild permanently, BTW.
And then, the most promising one, lead to the final nail in this terrible mess. Gadgetzan not only broke Standard in half, but spilled part of the cancer to Wild as well. Until now, all the crapfest that had been taking place in Standard (C'Thun, Shaman being shaman...) could at least suffer greatly when pinned up against the Wild powerhouses. This wasn't the case. Patches was and still is nearly everywhere, pirate warrior gave "fast" a whole new meaning, and jade idol ends any control game it gets shuffled in. Reno stopped being janky (the way I liked him) and became meta defining. Dragons finally took that last turn to "another cookie-cutter tempo deck" instead of a "survive until your powerhouses come out deck", and the meta is a hot mess ever since. At least hunter stopped showing up, but the alternatives this far have been as creative as every hunter deck ever, so its pretty bad. Oh, yeah, and Shaman got the anti-control jade mechanic too, coupled with aggro cards, for whatever reason.
So, after this rant, I can conclude this year was a downhill mess.
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
Old Gods was a fantastic set, and the meta was fairly enjoyable. Karazhan had some really interesting cards, though way too much high-variance randomness and mid-Shaman was way too overbearing. Gadgetzan...well, I'd eat my investment in it and still come out happy if they'd just put it into Wild now...or better yet, delete it entirely. Polarizing, oppressive archetypes and completely uninteresting design.
CCGing since '98.
The think that makes me sad is that they don't take risks and they don't listen to the community. team 5 reminds me of Riot Games. they would come and bullshit you with nonsensical arguments but at the end of the day you would know that they don't give a fucK.
When you go in hearthpwn's custom cards section you see amazing FULL classes and expansions made by non-paid players.
This game has been launched 3 years ago, where is ICC and Arthas ? Where are the new classes ? If they even hinted that they are ready to do something new and create a SINGLE new class I would be amazed at this point.
Beginning of year was promissing even tho I disliked how they mrginalized normal hearthstone into "wild" and created their artificial money grab format. But then Karazhan was useless and Meme streets was horrible for the game.
Bah, as last year, next year will be more aggrostone, more pirates and more bullshiting. Ben Brode is a S+ class professional sellsman. He could probably sell a dead cat for its weight in gold. But he is garbage game designer.
two things i didn't like about this year were the nerfs to Molten Giant and Execute. those were super unneeded and caused aggro to dominate in two different ways, warrior not being able to properly run execute just went the aggro route and a nerfed execute left free reign for the aggro decks of other classes, plus Molten giants being nerfed meant that a wall of giants punishing a face deck was no longer possible.
Overall, tbh this is Blizzard's first time with a tcg and a standard rotation so we shouldn't be too harsh on them. In fact it was a very productive year for Blizzard, they realized that without AoE players would resort to the next best option: pre nerf Yogg-Saron, Hope's End, this gap between medicore AoE and a highly situational card they made for <just for fun> decks was a wake-up call for Blizzard to actually make worthwile AoE, they also realized that 1 drops should just be a 1/1 with an extra effect, and for higher statted 1 drops they should come with a catch, Babbling Book, Swashburglar [/card] and [card]mistress of mixtures showing exactly this "new" line of thinking (new as in mtg realized this circa 2010), sure they did a little bit of a mishap with Small-Time Buccaneer with they actually corrected making him to be more in line with the new 1 drop philosophy. they also introduced deck directing cards that need sinergy among and between them like the old gods themselves and the MSG gangs which actually prevents players from just sticking the best cards of each class plus staple neutrals in a deck and calling it a day making the whole game look samey; anyone remembers Piloted Shredder Sludge Belcher Dr. Boom, Loatheb Antique Healbot shells?
They thought they were fixing the game, but since their main goal was always to fleece their customers, they ended up destroying it to the point that only drastic measures would actually fix it.
Msg was the nail in the coffin. You can't adopt rotation because of powercreep, and then powercreep almost immediately after the rotation. It's a disgrace.
Druid: great year for him, never fell into bottom 3 classes. Druid was viable throughout the year with Yogg / Spell / Maly Druid -> Jade Druid
Hunter: terrible year as the class is going down from being the top 3 classes to the worst class right now, Midrange Hunter --> Secret Hunter -> nothing left.
Mage: good year in general, the class is not overpowered and definitely not in the bottom 3 at any time, but the class lacks of diversity. Temp / Freeze Mage -> RenoMage
Paladin: average year, and it could be worse. Control/MR Paladin was okay for the first few months of OldGods, then we see Aggro Bubble Paladin here and there, but looking back the whole year, Anyfin Paladin seems to be the only memorable and viable Paladin deck of 2016.
Priest: average year with Paladin. The class is forgotten and unviable for half of the year. Fortunately, MSG, which turns out to be not terrible overall, gave this class some tools to be competitive for the last 3-4 months of Kraken. Well, at least we can remember Dragon / Reno Priest existed.
Rogue: good year in general, along with Mage but could be worse. At least, Rogue was more viable than Hunter/Paladin/Priest overall. However, Rogue is the class that went through the most chaos and up/down hills interchangeably to adapt to the meta when it gets slower or faster. Also same with Mage, the class lacks of diversity. We saw N'Zoth / C'Thun Rogue, Aggro Rogue, Mill Rogue, but the only memorable Rogue deck of 2016 is Miracle (Pirate) Rogue. The Aggro Water Rogue was discovered too late that it doesn't feel belong much to the year of the Kraken.
Shaman: enough said, it's the year of Shaman, the class has been constantly competitive and popular throughout the year without much withdrawal. We saw the rise and the fall of Aggro Shaman as it got the hammer nerf twice. Everytime Aggro Shaman falls, we have MR Shaman as the back-up. In addition, the class has good diversity with Control & Murloc Shaman here and there. (Im just stating the fact and not putting negative opinions here).
Warlock: great year overall, the class remains in the top 3-4 classes throughout the year for sure. For the first half of Kraken, ZooLock was viable and very competitive. For the second half, we have RenoLock. Even though the class lacks of diversity, its two memorable decks: ZooLock and RenoLock are definitely not overpowered for the majority to complain much about.
Warrior: the class that has drastically changed the most though out the year with its most 3 competitive decks, from Control Warrior (OldGods) -> MR Dragon Warrior (Karazhan) -> Aggro Pirate Warrior (MSG). The class has not disappointed its fans, but pretty much upset every other non-Warrior players at the end of the year for sure. The score of this class is the co-existence of a variety of Warrior decks that one could play in a meta.
Top 3 classes of the year: 1- Shaman, 2- Warrior, 3- Druid
Middle-tier: 4- Warlock, 5- Mage, 6- Rogue
Bottom 3 classes of the year: 7- Priest, 8- Paladin, 9- Hunter