Hi, first time posting on the forum, even though I have been following the community for a couple of years.
Before you let all the salt in your body rush up to your head, let me explain why I believe the Un'goro set created one, if not the, healthiest meta Hearthstone has known. I'll put a TL:DR description at the bottom for the lazy ones. Also, I know a lot of people might not agree, so let's try to have an intelligent conversation about the subject for those who want to argue.
Every expansion/adventure release, there will be a ton of posts about how X card is so broken, how Blizzard should nerf cards, and that some other cards should have been rotated out, etc. The thing that people are complaining about are in fact first order optimal strategies (FOOS). A first optimal strategy is a strategy that lets you get the most results out of the least effort. There is a great video explaining this concept. In a videogame where the community is strong, like the HS one, the FOOS quickly becomes mainstream and all you seem to see one the ladder. We just have to go back to MSoG to see that there were two FOOSs quickly grasping the ladder, the Pirate Warrior and the Jade Druid/Shaman. They were low skill because in pirate warrior, all you had to do was dropping as much minion and weapons to go face, and in Jade all you had to do was drop bigger and bigger minions (I am simplifying here, but you get the point). The problem is not that there are FOOSs, because every game needs it to enable new players to be able to compete quickly. The problem with MSoG was that Pirate warrior and Jade became the meta defining decks. In a well-designed set, you have FOOSs to hook new players, but those strategies are supposed to be easily countered by higher skill players/decks. There was nothing more frustrating than seeing an aggro deck that you cannot even counter with a control deck, which is supposed to be its natural counter. By definition, a meta is supposed to stabilize after some time, but in the case of MSoG, it pretty much stabilized in the first week or so of its release, sucking much of the fun of deck design from the game.
Now comes Un’goro. In the first week, one FOOS was clearly dominating the meta: Quest Rogue. A lot of people were bashing Blizzard’s design team for not testing the quest, for making it too OP, etc. The funny thing is that it is a well-designed FOOS, since people quickly figured out how to counter it. Yes, it is still a pretty strong deck to play, but that’s the thing: In every meta, you will have stronger decks and weaker ones, that’s it. Quest rogue is strong, but can be countered. Pirate Warrior is still a strong deck, I agree, but at least Blizz gave us some tools to play against (i.e. the Golakka Crawler, of which I have seen quite a few, especially in Paladin). So, what I am trying to say is that even though some decks are stronger than others, for each one of these, you have ways to compete against them.
And my final point to support the fact that I believe Un’goro has the healthiest meta are all the decks that are viable right now. I am not saying that all those decks are tier 1, but you can at least climb the ladder quite high with those decks. Each class has at least one deck that is potent, with maybe the warlock being the weakest one.
Druid: Token & Jade (Jade is not really played atm, probably because it was played so much after the last expansion, but it is still a strong deck)
Hunter: Face & Midrange beast
Mage: Exodia, Secret & Freeze
Paladin: Aggro Murloc & Midrange (mostly with murlocs as well)
Priest: Control & Silence
Rogue: Quest & Miracle
Shaman: Elemental & Murloc
Warlock: Discolock
Warrior: Pirate & Quest
Once again, I am not saying all those decks are tier 1, just that they are viable on the ladder.
All those facts lead me to believe that we have a healthy meta atm, that lets a wide variety of decks be playable, all to our benefit.
TL:DR – We have a healthy meta because almost every deck can be countered and we can play different types of decks and still win on the ladder.
(English is not my first language, so if I made some sentence structure mistakes, sorry)
I dont think this is the healthiest meta ever. Its better than Gadgetzan..but not great.
the main classes are really just warrior vs Rogue (Pirate and quest)
Jade decks have died down which is good, but without any good neutral heals...most of the classes cant Handel the the aggro/combo classes (need a card like healbot or reno to give all classes a good/ok heal option)
still feels a bit rock paper scissors. Pirates beat quest rogue, quest rogue beats midrange, quest warrior tends to beat control. Mage, priest, shamans and hunter decks tend to do well depending on match up and luck.
But on the plus side midrange pally is alot better with the new steed spell.
Like I said, not all the decks I listed are tier 1, but if you look at this list by TempoStorm, you can see that Midrange & Aggro Paladin are now considered tier 1, and you have a lot of deck diversity in the tier 2 decks. A healthy meta does not mean all tier 1 decks, it means multiple deck archetypes can be played.
Healthy meta? There are 4 decks in T1 - Quest rogue, Miracle Rogue, Taunt warrior, Pirate warrior... That is not healthy!
All 4 of those decks, excluding Pirate warrior, have less than a 51% win rate, looking at VS. If anything, the deck that stands to be the meta tyrant is murloc paladin, as it only gets countered by pirate warrior. And one can tech against both of these decks with either crab, so honestly, this is probably the best meta, even counting WOTOG. On a sidenote, we finally have 8 classes in hearthstone! (Rip Warlock).
Still waiting for a meta where every class has a T1 deck or decks, seems there is always a class or class's that get screwed over. Hunter, Druid and Warlock this expansion. Mage? Never!
Still waiting for a meta where every class has a T1 deck or decks, seems there is always a class or class's that get screwed over. Hunter, Druid and Warlock this expansion. Mage? Never!
Token Druid and Midrange Hunter are both at least T2. I agree about warlock though.
I've played since GvG launch, and this is easily the best meta I've encountered.
At Ranks 5-1:
Pirate Warrior, Taunt Warrior, Quest Rogue, Miracle Rogue and Midrange Hunter have decently even shares of 60% of the meta. This means the most popular decks are an aggro deck, control, mid game combo, later game combo and midrange, which is a pretty decent variety.
Past that, Mage, Priest, Paly, Druid and Shaman have just under 10% of the meta a piece, with Warlock being the only one truly in the dumps. It's also worth noting that Mage, Paly and Priest exhibit a wide variety of viable decks. Hell, if you want to play Warlock, Zoolock is by no means weak.
I just feel that you can play whichever class you like, whatever style you like, homebrew or netdeck, and still have a fighting chance. The top decks feel less unbeatable than in previous metas, every class has a good balance of tools now. Overall, a really healthy meta.
Contrary to common opinion, I thought the secret pally meta was the best. It truly wasn't just secret pally, so many decks easily destroyed the deck that the meta was fairly balanced. IMHO nothing will be more cancer than 4 mana 7/7 shaman and pirate warrior. I feel the only reason it could be considered decent is because it is vastly better than the gadgetzan cancer meta.
Sure there's still some kinks that need to be worked out with the meta (like rotating friggin Ice Block to the Hall of Fame already), but overall things have been working out well enough for each class. I mean, Priest didn't get all the best things but nobody would have expected Purify Priest to get as strong as it has, plus Lyra Combo Priest has had success on the ladder. And no, Pirate Warrior is not the best Aggro deck right now, Stampede Hunter is. Even without the Quest my deck has crushed Pirate Warriors time and time again in the past-I don't even need Golakka Crawler in the deck, being able to dump out your entire hand in a single turn and get late game value off of it in an Aggro deck is broken enough. It also does well against Quest Rogue and Quest Mage-its only bad matchup currently is Taunt Warrior.
Interesting points being raised in this thread. I like your explanation of first order optimal strategies, that makes sense. I found this quote from a Data Reaper report on the Un'Goro meta which supports that idea that Cavern Rogue is a FOOP archetype:
Let’s talk about Rogue, and start with the most talked about deck in the game, which is the quest driven, Crystal Core Rogue. This archetype’s matchup spread looks like a board of checkers. It counters any control deck that doesn’t have the capability to pressure it in the early game, but gets utterly destroyed by aggressive decks that do just that, as well as several of the Mage archetypes that carry burn damage and Ice Block. The fact its matchup spread is so polarizing means it will always be relevant to some degree, especially in the tournament scene, and at high legends ranks where counter-queuing is common. However, the deck that defined the Meta in the early days of Un’Goro, is not dominating it. It has glaring weaknesses that can be exploited.
First order optimal strategies like you said are easy to learn but can be countered by experienced players and I think we're starting to see that reflected in the numbers.
Awesome meta, only thing missing is neutral healing and because of that a decent control warlock.
I saw another comment about the neutral healing, and if I remember correctly, one of the developers said in a blue post on Heartpwn that we won't see neutral healing, or at least big neutral healing like Healbot and Reno, soon since it goes against the true nature of some classes or something like that.
Contrary to common opinion, I thought the secret pally meta was the best. It truly wasn't just secret pally, so many decks easily destroyed the deck that the meta was fairly balanced. IMHO nothing will be more cancer than 4 mana 7/7 shaman and pirate warrior. I feel the only reason it could be considered decent is because it is vastly better than the gadgetzan cancer meta.
I think the best meta was about a month before TGT came out.
Hi, first time posting on the forum, even though I have been following the community for a couple of years.
Before you let all the salt in your body rush up to your head, let me explain why I believe the Un'goro set created one, if not the, healthiest meta Hearthstone has known. I'll put a TL:DR description at the bottom for the lazy ones. Also, I know a lot of people might not agree, so let's try to have an intelligent conversation about the subject for those who want to argue.
Every expansion/adventure release, there will be a ton of posts about how X card is so broken, how Blizzard should nerf cards, and that some other cards should have been rotated out, etc. The thing that people are complaining about are in fact first order optimal strategies (FOOS). A first optimal strategy is a strategy that lets you get the most results out of the least effort. There is a great video explaining this concept. In a videogame where the community is strong, like the HS one, the FOOS quickly becomes mainstream and all you seem to see one the ladder. We just have to go back to MSoG to see that there were two FOOSs quickly grasping the ladder, the Pirate Warrior and the Jade Druid/Shaman. They were low skill because in pirate warrior, all you had to do was dropping as much minion and weapons to go face, and in Jade all you had to do was drop bigger and bigger minions (I am simplifying here, but you get the point). The problem is not that there are FOOSs, because every game needs it to enable new players to be able to compete quickly. The problem with MSoG was that Pirate warrior and Jade became the meta defining decks. In a well-designed set, you have FOOSs to hook new players, but those strategies are supposed to be easily countered by higher skill players/decks. There was nothing more frustrating than seeing an aggro deck that you cannot even counter with a control deck, which is supposed to be its natural counter. By definition, a meta is supposed to stabilize after some time, but in the case of MSoG, it pretty much stabilized in the first week or so of its release, sucking much of the fun of deck design from the game.
Now comes Un’goro. In the first week, one FOOS was clearly dominating the meta: Quest Rogue. A lot of people were bashing Blizzard’s design team for not testing the quest, for making it too OP, etc. The funny thing is that it is a well-designed FOOS, since people quickly figured out how to counter it. Yes, it is still a pretty strong deck to play, but that’s the thing: In every meta, you will have stronger decks and weaker ones, that’s it. Quest rogue is strong, but can be countered. Pirate Warrior is still a strong deck, I agree, but at least Blizz gave us some tools to play against (i.e. the Golakka Crawler, of which I have seen quite a few, especially in Paladin). So, what I am trying to say is that even though some decks are stronger than others, for each one of these, you have ways to compete against them.
And my final point to support the fact that I believe Un’goro has the healthiest meta are all the decks that are viable right now. I am not saying that all those decks are tier 1, but you can at least climb the ladder quite high with those decks. Each class has at least one deck that is potent, with maybe the warlock being the weakest one.
Druid: Token & Jade (Jade is not really played atm, probably because it was played so much after the last expansion, but it is still a strong deck)
Hunter: Face & Midrange beast
Mage: Exodia, Secret & Freeze
Paladin: Aggro Murloc & Midrange (mostly with murlocs as well)
Priest: Control & Silence
Rogue: Quest & Miracle
Shaman: Elemental & Murloc
Warlock: Discolock
Warrior: Pirate & Quest
Once again, I am not saying all those decks are tier 1, just that they are viable on the ladder.
All those facts lead me to believe that we have a healthy meta atm, that lets a wide variety of decks be playable, all to our benefit.
TL:DR – We have a healthy meta because almost every deck can be countered and we can play different types of decks and still win on the ladder.
(English is not my first language, so if I made some sentence structure mistakes, sorry)
Healthy meta?
There are 4 decks in T1 - Quest rogue, Miracle Rogue, Taunt warrior, Pirate warrior... That is not healthy!
I dont think this is the healthiest meta ever. Its better than Gadgetzan..but not great.
the main classes are really just warrior vs Rogue (Pirate and quest)
Jade decks have died down which is good, but without any good neutral heals...most of the classes cant Handel the the aggro/combo classes (need a card like healbot or reno to give all classes a good/ok heal option)
still feels a bit rock paper scissors. Pirates beat quest rogue, quest rogue beats midrange, quest warrior tends to beat control. Mage, priest, shamans and hunter decks tend to do well depending on match up and luck.
But on the plus side midrange pally is alot better with the new steed spell.
Like I said, not all the decks I listed are tier 1, but if you look at this list by TempoStorm, you can see that Midrange & Aggro Paladin are now considered tier 1, and you have a lot of deck diversity in the tier 2 decks. A healthy meta does not mean all tier 1 decks, it means multiple deck archetypes can be played.
Still waiting for a meta where every class has a T1 deck or decks, seems there is always a class or class's that get screwed over. Hunter, Druid and Warlock this expansion. Mage? Never!
I've played since GvG launch, and this is easily the best meta I've encountered.
At Ranks 5-1:
Pirate Warrior, Taunt Warrior, Quest Rogue, Miracle Rogue and Midrange Hunter have decently even shares of 60% of the meta. This means the most popular decks are an aggro deck, control, mid game combo, later game combo and midrange, which is a pretty decent variety.
Past that, Mage, Priest, Paly, Druid and Shaman have just under 10% of the meta a piece, with Warlock being the only one truly in the dumps. It's also worth noting that Mage, Paly and Priest exhibit a wide variety of viable decks. Hell, if you want to play Warlock, Zoolock is by no means weak.
I just feel that you can play whichever class you like, whatever style you like, homebrew or netdeck, and still have a fighting chance. The top decks feel less unbeatable than in previous metas, every class has a good balance of tools now. Overall, a really healthy meta.
Contrary to common opinion, I thought the secret pally meta was the best. It truly wasn't just secret pally, so many decks easily destroyed the deck that the meta was fairly balanced. IMHO nothing will be more cancer than 4 mana 7/7 shaman and pirate warrior. I feel the only reason it could be considered decent is because it is vastly better than the gadgetzan cancer meta.
Unstable portal -> Servant of Yogg-Saron -> Brawl -> Servant wins with opponent's board full. Never Lucky
Aggro -> Combo -> Control -> Aggro. We finally have the triforce of counters!
I'm refering to this triforce from magic (technically their triforce is now a quadforce but eh.):
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/ah-yes-very-standard-2012-08-10
Sure there's still some kinks that need to be worked out with the meta (like rotating friggin Ice Block to the Hall of Fame already), but overall things have been working out well enough for each class. I mean, Priest didn't get all the best things but nobody would have expected Purify Priest to get as strong as it has, plus Lyra Combo Priest has had success on the ladder. And no, Pirate Warrior is not the best Aggro deck right now, Stampede Hunter is. Even without the Quest my deck has crushed Pirate Warriors time and time again in the past-I don't even need Golakka Crawler in the deck, being able to dump out your entire hand in a single turn and get late game value off of it in an Aggro deck is broken enough. It also does well against Quest Rogue and Quest Mage-its only bad matchup currently is Taunt Warrior.
Interesting points being raised in this thread. I like your explanation of first order optimal strategies, that makes sense. I found this quote from a Data Reaper report on the Un'Goro meta which supports that idea that Cavern Rogue is a FOOP archetype:
Awesome meta, only thing missing is neutral healing and because of that a decent control warlock.
Meta right now is healthier than MSOG meta. That is for sure.
Death to all who oppose the Horde!
If they put cards like Ice Block, Equality and Brawl in the hall of fame, then I would definitely agree that the meta is healthy.
I don't think is healthy because every 10 matches I play, 9 is against aggro, quest rogue or freeze mage.
I hate murlocs.
Best was WOG. With the exception of Yogg decks that is.