I'd like to see them return somehow to combo decks that require maths and can execute in the mid game, rather than stalling forever until the 4 or 5 special cards are in hand and then dumped at once.
They've got to try and return to something like patron warrior.
Day 1 witchwood shudderwock decks were hardly refined.
True, and technical play of the deck was far from optimal for most players. Still worked. I just abused knowledge of the Shudderwock mechanics that I guess the opponent's didn't have. Though to be honest, day 1 Shudderwock was a much more interesting plan than the Keleseth crap. Day 1 were proper Combo decks that were looking for the full OTK guaranteed win, while Keleseth ones are just hoping to get lucky with the order, while playing what is mostly a Midrange deck.
Not to mention, Shudderwock decks were mid tier decks before the Cubelock nerfs.
It is curious that all while the OTK decks get all the hate, the old fast snowball decks are the ones which win the most games... If Control decks can just kill all of those, an occational loss OTKs should not hurt as much.
The new design philosophy appears to be give every control deck a win condition other than fatigue.
The problem is these win conditions are good enough that you can just switch out the control for draw cards and have a better combo deck. Just keep the 1 or 2 overpowered stall cards Blizzard made for your class and you're golden against most decks.
Agree with robert_fanr we're currently in this pickle because the defensive options are too strong. Only giving Warlock a counterplay card was a huge mistake.
As Control Warrior, you have exactly 0% chance to win against Mecha'thun Priest. The few games you win are basically because the opponent messes up and overdraws his Mecha'thun, but this is an unforced mistake.
Such one sided match-ups shouldn't be in the game. Whalen is an asshole. Every class needs something to have at least 30-40% chance against anything.
I'm getting tired of these 90%-10% matchups, makes the game so frustrating.
Yes. this. Warrior is at around 4.6 percent representation. To put that in perspective, zoo has about 11 percent representation with warlock hovering around 30 percent. Warrior suffers in this meta because they do not have a good otk combo and also lack an effective aggro deck. In this current meta warrior has so many unwinnable matchups, particularly control, which has maybe a 10 percent winrate against mechathun and other combo decks which you have no control over. I've played since closed beta, have 2000 wins on warrior and have played 300 games with warrior just this expansion but if blizz is happy with the state of the game and, warrior, then I doubt I'll continue playing. There is clearly a problem with warrior and there has been for a long time. I'm complaining about warrior in particular because warrior represents the quintessential control deck and its worthless in this meta and the ones predating it. I am quickly losing hope that blizzard actually does extensive testing or care all that much about balance before they release an expansion
The other problem is blizz can hide behind their balance schedule because they can say... "oh we are 2 expansions ahead" but that is shitty and doesn't make any sense because the game in its current state should be the priority. Completely stupid.
OPS problem is my success, Kingsbane rogue has a place in this meta, countering most combo decks with the right tech and I've been enjoying it a great deal.
The thing is, the only reason you play a competitive OTK deck is to beat a control deck. It's part of the cycle of power.
I made a stupid simple little chart to help me explain.
While the arrows are meant to suggest a dominant win-rate over the next deck archetype, there are many, many variations of types of decks and the chart would be more of a circle than a triangle if I were to include all of them.
Examples of my labels would be Zoolock for Aggro/Burn, Malygos Druid (or Rogue) for OTK/Burst, and Control Warlock (or Mage, or Warrior) for Control/Fatigue. While each deck can add tech cards to their list to increase average win-rate, like a Control Warlock player adding in Skulking Geist or Demonic Project to try to tamper with an opponent's combo, or Zoolock playing The Black Knight to counter a late game taunt minion they may be struggling with.
I understand it would be nice to have a tech option for your favorite control deck, but if everyone could easily disrupt combos, Mecha'thun could not have been printed as his unique effect would have never seen the light of day. So the only thing I can tell anyone who is still reading is to try to add more tempo plays to your control deck so you can at least try to beat your opponent up before they get their combo off.
Not to mention, Shudderwock decks were mid tier decks before the Cubelock nerfs.
It is curious that all while the OTK decks get all the hate, the old fast snowball decks are the ones which win the most games... If Control decks can just kill all of those, an occational loss OTKs should not hurt as much.
Well, that is kind of because people want to win all games, against all playstyles, regardless of natural weaknesses of their own playstyle. People don't want to lose, and that is natural, no one likes to, but some people can't accept that they will always be unfavoured at one point or the other and have an extremely hard matchup they will probably not win. I just did a few games with a friend, I was playing Token Druid against his Control Warlock, he asked me to play that matchup. I won a game and lost the other two, when I'm expected to lose almost every single game. Obviously doesn't feel good to lose, but reality is, with an average draw, the class of both decks will always favour the Control Warlock, and if both play correctly, that is even more certain. Player decisions should influence the outcome of the game, but if we both play correctly, he will win.
I think people just don't want to accept that they can play a game correctly in an unfavourable matchup, and lose regardless. That should be a given, since if the opponent always plays correctly, they are favoured to win. It should only be frustrating when you lose playing properly and the opponent playing incorrectly, not when both play correctly.
You actually live in some kind of weird fantasy land - argue constantly by cherry picking, entirely avoid pain points in your arguments, constantly use anecdotal evidence to support your claims, wander off topic, and just slop on lazy arguments ad nauseam in each post. You very rarely get upvotes, which isn't a suprise, given how weak your logic generally is.
Nothing in your latest post describes me for instance. What a lazy argument!
Aside from Warlock (and in some cases Mage), no class has any way of disrupting these OTK strategies. The strategy against these OTK decks is almost always "kill them before they draw their entire deck", which is incredibly difficult for most Control decks to do.
This is completely different from every other strategy in Hearthstone, since they all have counters. AoE against swarm, healing against burn, silence against taunt and buffs, hard removal against big minions, etc. If you're struggling against most strategies, there are typically some cards you can include to greatly improve your matchup. Having a matchup that you literally can't improve your chances against is a terrible feeling that, at least to me, takes away a lot of the fun of both deckbuilding and gameplay.
I see a lot of people gave shit to the OP, but he's right about this, very right. There is still too much matchups which are better to concede for the losing archetype - too small a chance of winning. There should be more cards that improve weak matchups for a certain archetype.
I don't understand. Why are you complaing about druid when the decks have around a 50% winrate? If the decks were destroying with like 60% winrate or something I would understand but almost all classses have a 50% winrate against Magylos druid, so maybe add some tech cards to counter magylos as mentioned above and stop complaing. Blizzard said they have no plans of nerfing any druid cards.
You actually live in some kind of weird fantasy land - argue constantly by cherry picking, entirely avoid pain points in your arguments, constantly use anecdotal evidence to support your claims, wander off topic, and just slop on lazy arguments ad nauseam in each post. You very rarely get upvotes, which isn't a suprise, given how weak your logic generally is.
Nothing in your latest post describes me for instance. What a lazy argument!
I didn't avoid anything, I made quite a long post replying to your previous post, I don't know if you bother to read it, but picking my post directed to a different user which, being a parallel conversation, obviously deviates from the conversation we were having, might result in that post not containing the reply meant for you or our conversation...
You'd have to pay me good money to point out all the flaws in that vast bird-walk of a post. You have heart, but your logic meanders so much it's painful and dull to read. The discussion wasn't about skill, so you wasted your time and created another filler post.
It has been said but the biggest problem is the limited amount of options that exist to counter OTK decks. For example if you want to counter aggro there are tons of options: board clear spells, minions with aoe type effects, healing, taunts, etc (you could prob list 30+ cards that each class could put in to their deck to combat aggro). Likewise, tons of options exist for each class to combat value classes: burn, win more cards, aggressive cards, etc)
Vs OTK decks though the options are super limited. Your options are: Demonic project (if Warlock), Mana Wraith, and a very, very limited set of other cards. The other response is generally "change to more aggressive decks." This is problematic because now you are basically saying "ok these huge amount of deck types are basically unwinnable so play something else"
Basically-Tons of cards can be added to a deck to improve chances vs Aggro
-Tons of cards can be added to a deck to improve chances vs Control
-Very, Very few cards can be added to a deck to improve chances vs OTK. (As a thought experiment, what cards would you add to Control Warrior to drastically improve chances vs the current OTK. Instead, almost all suggestions will be "Don't play that deck" or "just accept that it is an almost autolose matchup"
The issue isn't combo decks but rather noninteractive OTK decks. There is often a difference between the 2 but people like to try to lump them together because OTK has a much more negative Connotation than Combo.
Even in Wild we do not get many more tools. We get Dirty Rat/Deathlord and maybe Coldlight Oracle. It shows how few options exist. If I am missing 10-20 more viable options like exist to counter aggro then please let me know.
Doesn't Blizzard supposedly like interaction between players? I thought 1 reason for nerfs to Freeze Mage was due to how polarizing it was and how noninteractive it could be. Many decks/classes have basically no way to realistically interact in a meaningful way vs the OTK decks.
The issue isn't combo decks but rather noninteractive OTK decks. There is often a difference between the 2 but people like to try to lump them together because OTK has a much more negative Connotation than Combo.
Even in Wild we do not get many more tools. We get Dirty Rat/Deathlord and maybe Coldlight Oracle. It shows how few options exist. If I am missing 10-20 more viable options like exist to counter aggro then please let me know.
Doesn't Blizzard supposedly like interaction between players? I thought 1 reason for nerfs to Freeze Mage was due to how polarizing it was and how noninteractive it could be. Many decks/classes have basically no way to realistically interact in a meaningful way vs the OTK decks.
The reason why cards that interact with Combos are much fewer than with Aggro, is because their strategy is entirely different. The Combo playstyle, by it's own definition, being based on Combinations of cards, tends to work with combinations that can be used in the same turn. The entire premise of playing Combo is to be able to combine cards in the same turn together to get powerful outcomes. If your opponent can easily and constantly stop that from happening, your deck simply does not work. That is why they tend to be done with cards you can play in the same turn, it prevents your opponent from disrupting that.
It is the entire premise of that playstyle, lower interactivity. Aggro on the other hand, it also works by abusing lower interactivity, but in a different way. Aggro's strategy is to flood an try to kill the opponent fast, in a short window of the game. It lowers interactivity not because their play is hard to interact with, it is about as easy as it gets since most of the playstyle involves minions on board which are easily dealt with. It lowers interactivity because it tries to kill the opponent by hoping they do not draw into answers in the few cards they start the game with. You can have a deck with 20 answers for Aggro, if you draw from your remaining 10 in the first 4 turns, you are still dead, you cannot interact, even though you have the tools do to it.
All the effects that disrupt any aspect of the game outside of the game board, no matter what card game, always need to be carefully implemented and planned. Disrupting the opponent's hand, deck, graveyard and so on, those are extremely powerful mechanics and abundance of these effects easily renders entire playstyles, like Combo, completely unplayable.
Aggro decks don't depend on specific cards to have their strategy work. If you kill a Mana Wyrm, the Mage can still kill you with a myriad of other minions. If you destroy a win condition in a Combo deck, like Malygos for example, the majority of the times, the game is over. If Aggro decks depended on a couple of specific cards to win, and you could easily just destroy them, Aggro decks wouldn't work.
Also, Blizzard hasn't nerfed Freeze Mage since Alpha or Beta, can't remember what the stage was, when they changed all the Freezes and Pyroblast. And it had nothing to do with interactivity, it was simply because the deck was at an insane power level at that time.
Blizzard never had a problem with the deck existing and working well, polarized matchups are natural for a strategy that goes outside the basic, and the deck has always been interactive, with more and more tools to interact being added over the years, they just rotated cards to Wild because they wanted that deck to move there, they didn't want it in Standard forever.
Correct, most classes decks cannot directly disrupt OTK decks, Warlock can, Mage can sometimes. Otherwise, players are limited to actually interacting by forcing the opponent into hard positions or forcing them to either Combo or waste Combo resources before they want to. That is still interacting, it is just not the direct, easy disruption that cards like Dirty Rat provide.
-You seem to not address the main point of what I said despite typing so much. it is actually pretty impressive. I have nothing against Combo decks. For example, if someone builds a Combo deck built around Lyra and getting tons of value off of the combo of her + cheap spells then I have absolutely 0 problem with that.
The problem is win noninteractive OTK decks. Imagine if Lyra had text that said "If you cast 4 spells in the same turn while she is on the field, you Auto Win. Now THAT would be a problem. Most people decide to play vs other players because they actually like to interact with the opponent. Having decks that allow for minimal to no interaction goes against this. There is a reason Freeze Mage has been 1 of the most hated decks to play against in HS history.
-Being able to interact with cards in your opponents hand or whatever does not mean the death of combo decks. What it might slow down rather is OTK decks that need exact cards. You can build combo decks that have 3-5 strong different combos in them. It is almost impossible to stop all combos from going off, what can be stopped are OTK's that suddenly become unplayable if even 1 card required gets messed with.
-If more cards existed to interact with OTK builds, then it would make the game more strategic. For example, why do Mecathun and other OTK decks hate demonic project, cuz often it is easy to hit the key cards because the players greedily sacrifice counters to demonic project instead for more draw or whatever.
-Do you love playing against Warlock all the time??? Right now if players want to counter OTK they almost are forced to play Warlock because Warlock was given Demonic project and also has Gnomferatu. Great design having 9 classes but only giving 1 good OTK breaking potential. Yay for Class diversity
-There is a reason why multiple Freeze Mage cards were nerfed over time, and it wasn't just due to future design concerns. If Blizz didn't hate polarized matchups then why has the Rogue quest been nerfed 2 different times despite not having an amazing win rate?
I agree that more combo disruptive cards should be in standard. But it is a core part of card games such as Hearthstone that combo and OTK is meant to beat control while control is meant to beat aggro and aggro meant to beat combo.
i dont know if you mean standard, or wild, but if you are talking about wild than the reason is easy, and the solution is impossible.
cards will stack up in wild only opening for new combos, for example, aviana>kun combo was printed... well 2 expansions apart, but also adding togwaggle and the soul thief was over 7 expansions, and blizzard can not monitor every card ever printed to avoid these combos comming up in wild. so sorry, but you can not take OTK decks out of wild.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
Why is everyone here talking about combo, control and aggro... but not about (true) midrange? Is this archetype really so dead at the moment as it looks like?
Blizzard should make a special stream lessons or youtube videos in which they explain the the only way hs should be played is with supa dupa 1000 IQ control/combo homebrewed decks and 30 minutes long match is a minimum time period that proves you're not braindead blah blah something etc.
I'd like to see them return somehow to combo decks that require maths and can execute in the mid game, rather than stalling forever until the 4 or 5 special cards are in hand and then dumped at once.
They've got to try and return to something like patron warrior.
Not to mention, Shudderwock decks were mid tier decks before the Cubelock nerfs.
It is curious that all while the OTK decks get all the hate, the old fast snowball decks are the ones which win the most games... If Control decks can just kill all of those, an occational loss OTKs should not hurt as much.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
The new design philosophy appears to be give every control deck a win condition other than fatigue.
The problem is these win conditions are good enough that you can just switch out the control for draw cards and have a better combo deck. Just keep the 1 or 2 overpowered stall cards Blizzard made for your class and you're golden against most decks.
Agree with robert_fanr we're currently in this pickle because the defensive options are too strong. Only giving Warlock a counterplay card was a huge mistake.
Why not have otk decks it adds more flavor to the game. If there were just agro and control fat would be boring and repetitive.
Yes. this. Warrior is at around 4.6 percent representation. To put that in perspective, zoo has about 11 percent representation with warlock hovering around 30 percent. Warrior suffers in this meta because they do not have a good otk combo and also lack an effective aggro deck. In this current meta warrior has so many unwinnable matchups, particularly control, which has maybe a 10 percent winrate against mechathun and other combo decks which you have no control over. I've played since closed beta, have 2000 wins on warrior and have played 300 games with warrior just this expansion but if blizz is happy with the state of the game and, warrior, then I doubt I'll continue playing. There is clearly a problem with warrior and there has been for a long time. I'm complaining about warrior in particular because warrior represents the quintessential control deck and its worthless in this meta and the ones predating it. I am quickly losing hope that blizzard actually does extensive testing or care all that much about balance before they release an expansion
The other problem is blizz can hide behind their balance schedule because they can say... "oh we are 2 expansions ahead" but that is shitty and doesn't make any sense because the game in its current state should be the priority. Completely stupid.
OPS problem is my success, Kingsbane rogue has a place in this meta, countering most combo decks with the right tech and I've been enjoying it a great deal.
In other words, play the meta.
The thing is, the only reason you play a competitive OTK deck is to beat a control deck. It's part of the cycle of power.
I made a stupid simple little chart to help me explain.
While the arrows are meant to suggest a dominant win-rate over the next deck archetype, there are many, many variations of types of decks and the chart would be more of a circle than a triangle if I were to include all of them.
Examples of my labels would be Zoolock for Aggro/Burn, Malygos Druid (or Rogue) for OTK/Burst, and Control Warlock (or Mage, or Warrior) for Control/Fatigue. While each deck can add tech cards to their list to increase average win-rate, like a Control Warlock player adding in Skulking Geist or Demonic Project to try to tamper with an opponent's combo, or Zoolock playing The Black Knight to counter a late game taunt minion they may be struggling with.
I understand it would be nice to have a tech option for your favorite control deck, but if everyone could easily disrupt combos, Mecha'thun could not have been printed as his unique effect would have never seen the light of day. So the only thing I can tell anyone who is still reading is to try to add more tempo plays to your control deck so you can at least try to beat your opponent up before they get their combo off.
This space is intentionally blank.
You actually live in some kind of weird fantasy land - argue constantly by cherry picking, entirely avoid pain points in your arguments, constantly use anecdotal evidence to support your claims, wander off topic, and just slop on lazy arguments ad nauseam in each post. You very rarely get upvotes, which isn't a suprise, given how weak your logic generally is.
Nothing in your latest post describes me for instance. What a lazy argument!
Skulking Geist, Mossy Horror, Tinkmaster Overspark(if hadronox is still popular) maybe King Mukla (mill them, what would they even do with the bananas?)
Those are a few options against druid. Against shaman Azalina Soulthief + Lifedrinker
against Rogue maly combo.. it's inconsistent AF so you just need to pressure them, it isn't really a scary OTK deck yet.
Mechathun priest have 40% win rate.
TopSy TurVy is a meme combo that takes too much planning and APM to execute correctly.
I don't understand. Why are you complaing about druid when the decks have around a 50% winrate? If the decks were destroying with like 60% winrate or something I would understand but almost all classses have a 50% winrate against Magylos druid, so maybe add some tech cards to counter magylos as mentioned above and stop complaing. Blizzard said they have no plans of nerfing any druid cards.
You'd have to pay me good money to point out all the flaws in that vast bird-walk of a post. You have heart, but your logic meanders so much it's painful and dull to read. The discussion wasn't about skill, so you wasted your time and created another filler post.
It has been said but the biggest problem is the limited amount of options that exist to counter OTK decks. For example if you want to counter aggro there are tons of options: board clear spells, minions with aoe type effects, healing, taunts, etc (you could prob list 30+ cards that each class could put in to their deck to combat aggro). Likewise, tons of options exist for each class to combat value classes: burn, win more cards, aggressive cards, etc)
Vs OTK decks though the options are super limited. Your options are: Demonic project (if Warlock), Mana Wraith, and a very, very limited set of other cards. The other response is generally "change to more aggressive decks." This is problematic because now you are basically saying "ok these huge amount of deck types are basically unwinnable so play something else"
Basically-Tons of cards can be added to a deck to improve chances vs Aggro
-Tons of cards can be added to a deck to improve chances vs Control
-Very, Very few cards can be added to a deck to improve chances vs OTK. (As a thought experiment, what cards would you add to Control Warrior to drastically improve chances vs the current OTK. Instead, almost all suggestions will be "Don't play that deck" or "just accept that it is an almost autolose matchup"
The issue isn't combo decks but rather noninteractive OTK decks. There is often a difference between the 2 but people like to try to lump them together because OTK has a much more negative Connotation than Combo.
Even in Wild we do not get many more tools. We get Dirty Rat/Deathlord and maybe Coldlight Oracle. It shows how few options exist. If I am missing 10-20 more viable options like exist to counter aggro then please let me know.
Doesn't Blizzard supposedly like interaction between players? I thought 1 reason for nerfs to Freeze Mage was due to how polarizing it was and how noninteractive it could be. Many decks/classes have basically no way to realistically interact in a meaningful way vs the OTK decks.
16 to 5 in 76 games, and you are complaining? Still pretty good, but I suppose you were expecting 16-5 in 30 games.
-You seem to not address the main point of what I said despite typing so much. it is actually pretty impressive. I have nothing against Combo decks. For example, if someone builds a Combo deck built around Lyra and getting tons of value off of the combo of her + cheap spells then I have absolutely 0 problem with that.
The problem is win noninteractive OTK decks. Imagine if Lyra had text that said "If you cast 4 spells in the same turn while she is on the field, you Auto Win. Now THAT would be a problem. Most people decide to play vs other players because they actually like to interact with the opponent. Having decks that allow for minimal to no interaction goes against this. There is a reason Freeze Mage has been 1 of the most hated decks to play against in HS history.
-Being able to interact with cards in your opponents hand or whatever does not mean the death of combo decks. What it might slow down rather is OTK decks that need exact cards. You can build combo decks that have 3-5 strong different combos in them. It is almost impossible to stop all combos from going off, what can be stopped are OTK's that suddenly become unplayable if even 1 card required gets messed with.
-If more cards existed to interact with OTK builds, then it would make the game more strategic. For example, why do Mecathun and other OTK decks hate demonic project, cuz often it is easy to hit the key cards because the players greedily sacrifice counters to demonic project instead for more draw or whatever.
-Do you love playing against Warlock all the time??? Right now if players want to counter OTK they almost are forced to play Warlock because Warlock was given Demonic project and also has Gnomferatu. Great design having 9 classes but only giving 1 good OTK breaking potential. Yay for Class diversity
-There is a reason why multiple Freeze Mage cards were nerfed over time, and it wasn't just due to future design concerns. If Blizz didn't hate polarized matchups then why has the Rogue quest been nerfed 2 different times despite not having an amazing win rate?
I agree that more combo disruptive cards should be in standard. But it is a core part of card games such as Hearthstone that combo and OTK is meant to beat control while control is meant to beat aggro and aggro meant to beat combo.
i dont know if you mean standard, or wild, but if you are talking about wild than the reason is easy, and the solution is impossible.
cards will stack up in wild only opening for new combos, for example, aviana>kun combo was printed... well 2 expansions apart, but also adding togwaggle and the soul thief was over 7 expansions, and blizzard can not monitor every card ever printed to avoid these combos comming up in wild. so sorry, but you can not take OTK decks out of wild.
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
i think you missed his point, like so much, like why is that what stuck with you, and what seemed interesting enough to post on?
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
Why is everyone here talking about combo, control and aggro... but not about (true) midrange? Is this archetype really so dead at the moment as it looks like?
Easy solution: Make Dirty Rat Standard Again!