Hearthpwn

Quote from Wurstfett >>

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?

 There are actually quite a few very strong midrange decks atm: even shaman, midrange shaman, spell hunter, and deathrattle hunter.  These are just in the tier 1-2 range too.  Not all of them are the classic 'play on curve' midrange maybe you're used to, but do fit the description of midrange.

Quote from Tequilaman >>

Easy solution: Make Dirty Rat Standard Again! 

 And Loatheb too! :D

Control Warlock and Odd Warrior look to be in pretty decent shape sitting in Tier 2. Odd Warrior has a good matchup against Malygos and can tech to beat Shudderwock (which looks like it's in bad shape). 

A lot of these other combo decks have bad win rates and will fade. Malygos/Floop will remain.

Floop is a really stupid card. 

Quote from m4k41 >>

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.

 Actually if you tech Marin the Fox you can swap that matchup in your favour. 

-The reason most people play online games instead of Solitaire is because they enjoy interacting/playing vs someone else.  Having popular decks that feature almost no interaction strongly go against this.  There is a reason why Exodia and Burn decks in other games are often wildly unpopular.  Yes they can have a place, but there is a HUGE difference between an Exodia deck occupying 5% of all matches played so people tolerate the occasional opponent with it vs if it is in 50% and it is every other match and are forced to play 1 or so specific decks to realistically counter it. Whether or not you enjoy that counter deck ends up not even mattering since you are forced in to playing it.  It also makes the game stale very quickly. You see the same decks over and over (OTK or counter OTK) and you cannot play what you want since they have almost a 0% win rate vs the OTK.

-I don't think Quest Rogue's main issue was finishing games too quickly. Almost all Aggro decks slaughtered it until they got the 2 mana life steal minion.  Many aggro decks were significantly faster than it. The problem was that it was basically Auto Lose vs Aggro, Auto Win vs Control and Control had basically no chance and was super uninteractive.

- I have FAR less of a problem with a Howlfiend combination. You can come back in a game even if Howlfiend discards your hand.  It is annoying and is definitely a setback but the game does not end regardless of board state if your opponent pulls it off.  Yes it is also not interactive BUT Not Interactive that doesn't disregard board state and doesn't end the game is Vastly different from noninteractive and game immediately ends no matter what you had done.  Just like Imagine if a card existed that couldn't be silenced, killed, transformed, or returned to hand. Yes it would be annoying if everytime it was buffed the opponent had to discard but would be far more annoying if after being buffed 3x the opponent auto lost.

-Moving Ice Block and Ice Lance from Standard  Wild were Nerfs to Freeze Mage and those happened AFTER Beta.  

-I fundamentally disagree if you think a game is in good shape if 95/5 matchups exist (obviously in regards to decks of moderate viability not a meta deck vs a silverback patriarch deck + gang up deck). Having such matchups adds a HUGE RNG element (Right opponent=Auto win, Wrong opponent=Auto loss) AND also makes the actual gameplay also meaningless (Basically instead of making decisions  during the game you are Choosing to play Glorified Rock, Paper, Scissors).

-I disagree about this idea regarding too many anti OTK cards making them unplayable:

1)If many of these cards came out, some would stop playing OTK decks which would then cause many people to stop using these anti OTK cards. They would still be very viable

2)Many OTK decks would still be very viable even if a few dirty rat type cards existed.  Right now, basically every OTK net decks the exact same list.  If there were more counters, suddenly it would require some creativity. Maybe a Druid OTK would have to add some 0 Mana Wisps or Snowflipper Penguins to the deck instead of a little card draw to have more protection vs the dirty rats or demonic pact type cards, etc.

-I don't think Quest Rogue was any more oppressive to Control than OTK is now. Yes Quest Rogue often ended games faster but current OTK has way, way, way, way, way better defensive tools.  Current OTK not only has plenty of healing/armor gain/defensive tools to easily handle the control opponents but also is far stronger against Aggro than Quest Rogue was. 

Quote from maroon5five >>

Quote from Lyra_Silvertongue >>

Control players really need to get out of this incremental advantage win condition when going against combo decks or those clowns will always scratch their heads wondering why they never win. 

Until Blizzard gives control decks the cards needed to do that, that's not really an option for them. They gave one to Warlock, but most other control decks don't have an option for win conditions against current combo decks.

 uhh not really, control decks from old were very proactive, in fact if memory serves right the whole point of beta/classic control decks was to keep your opponent's board as clear as possible so that you could land a ragnaros shot to the face at the end of every of your turns, ragnaros was a big win condition during those times, and in the case of control warrior you'd  also run Alexstrasza + Grommash Hellscream and  Cruel Taskmaster while having a gorehowl or a waraxe equipped so that you could kill he opponent over two turns. they didn't rely on fatiguing the opponent they had a proactive big win condition that required them to survive until they could play it, the current control decks that are never winning against combo are the ones that forgot that you can't win unless you proactively seek to win, that's the problem priest decks had during WOtg and Kara, sure they could stall the game forever, but then what? then notihng they couldn't close games if the ir life depended on it and at the end of the day would day to fatigue caused by themselves and let's oppose it to the other control deck of that epoque, C'thun warrior, it generated a bunch of armor, removed everything and stalled the game almost as much as priest, while growing c'thun by the sides but then C'Thun  came down raining doom on the opponent and if that wasn't enough the warrior would shield slam their own  C'Thunto prevent it being stolen or transformed to later in the game play Brann Bronzebeard+Doomcaller growing their C'Thun even more and shuffling 2 more into the deck finally sealing the deal with a trifecta of C'Thun, yes thye'd stall the game, but they'd also try to win the game, and this deck was actually good against combo, in fact it had a decent chance against both miracle rogue and Evolved Kobold freeze mage, which were the combo decks to beat during that time, and which were decks that just rained on the parade of priest because sicne priest was doing nothing to put a timer on them opposedly to c'thun warrior they'd have all the time of the world to sit in front of anduin assembling their own gameplan.