Most balanced? I don’t agree that a deck that its player can dump their hand as soon as they draw cards without much thought or consideration, is balanced.
I played the deck. 18 games, 72% win rate. I barely think twice before playing a card on curve. The average player shouldn’t be rewarded with a win for playing cards mindlessly.
That doesn't really have anything to do with Balance per se, that's just a function of aggressive decks. Hunter is fair *because* it plays on curve. It doesn't cheat mana. It doesn't draw 4/5 cards a turn for no mana. It plays minions on board and occasionally points spells face, all of which are efficient from a damage/stats standpoint, but don't cycle or generate advantage the way other aggro decks do.
Just because you think a deck doesn't require much thought to play, whether or not that's true, doesn't really have anything to do with balance.
One player is thinking hard to come up with the most optimal play and think 5 turns ahead while his opponent turns on a fan that drops his card one by one. The former will lose despite the intense skill displaying he showed the latter wins by showing no clear skill or understanding of the game.
Current Hunter decks are some of the most balanced and fair decks I've seen in a while. They drop fairly costed minions combined with fairly costed spells and try to smorc the enemy hero because that is what Hunter is designed to do given his hero power and the complete lack of healing. There are two way to counter that: either (a) try to outheal their damage till they run out of gas (only Priest can do that well) or (b) try to remove their tempo while developing yours and kill them first (a deck like Rush Warrior can do that well for example). What you cannot do is sit back and play one removal spell at a time while they slowly chip down your HP total (what Warlock does)
I played the deck. 18 games, 72% win rate. I barely think twice before playing a card on curve. The average player shouldn’t be rewarded with a win for playing cards mindlessly.
The thing is, this is exactly what Blizzard wants. Contrary to what a lot of people on this board think, this game does not revolve around what players in top 200 legend are doing. The game has over 20 million active players monthly. Many of which, play this game very casually. They aren’t playing hours on end, & aiming for a top 16 finish each month. They play this game on their lunch breaks, or on the toilet, & need decks like face hunter, that they can do well with, without much thought involved. There have to be decks like this available in the game at all times. That’s what keeps players coming back & ultimately spending money on the game. It is a business after all.
I played the deck. 18 games, 72% win rate. I barely think twice before playing a card on curve. The average player shouldn’t be rewarded with a win for playing cards mindlessly.
The thing is, this is exactly what Blizzard wants. Contrary to what a lot of people on this board think, this game does not revolve around what players in top 200 legend are doing. The game has over 20 million active players monthly. Many of which, play this game very casually. They aren’t playing hours on end, & aiming for a top 16 finish each month. They play this game on their lunch breaks, or on the toilet, & need decks like face hunter, that they can do well with, without much thought involved. There have to be decks like this available in the game at all times. That’s what keeps players coming back & ultimately spending money on the game. It is a business after all.
This is why I refer to aggro, and more specifically Face Hunter, as "the People's Deck". It's accessible, it's easy, and it does well.
All things that infuriate a very vocal minority, apparently.
No deck is by default easy to play in a vacuum. There are some matchups where Hunters just have to drag the green card and keep sending everything face hoping they manage to kill the opponent in time and there are cases where a ton of potentially important micro-decisions are required. Do you go wide to play around Hysteria? Or do you hold back some resources to play around some AOE? Do you vomit your full hand or do you keep an 1/1 in your hand because your deck still has 2 copies of Piercing Shot and you want to have a guaranteed target? Furthermore the Hunter mirror (like most aggro mirrors, actually like most mirror matchups of any deck archetype) is a really tough match to play where high-skill play is rewarded a lot more than in most other matchups. P.S.: Thinking 5 turns ahead when facing a hunter is not a display of intense skill, but of a lack of touch with reality. In 5 turns the game will almost always be over one way or another
There have to be decks like this available in the game at all times. That’s what keeps players coming back & ultimately spending money on the game. It is a business after all.
Okay, okay... we all know that aggro decks are cheap and accessible for the average player. Sooooo, if decks are cheap to make? What these average players are buying packs for then? If cheap aggro decks is their go to every expansion then again, what are they buying packs for?
There have to be decks like this available in the game at all times. That’s what keeps players coming back & ultimately spending money on the game. It is a business after all.
Okay, okay... we all know that aggro decks are cheap and accessible for the average player. Sooooo, if decks are cheap to make? What these average players are buying packs for then? If cheap aggro decks is their go to every expansion then again, what are they buying packs for?
Have you seen the most recent lists? There are tons of new cards, especially because of the rotation. Also, just because cheap decks are, well, cheap, doesn't mean they don't get old. Even if a player plays only a certain cheap aggro deck he will eventually want to try OTHER cheap aggro decks, and for that he needs dust, and thus, packs. He'll probably have the necessary gold for it anyway, so why shouldn't he spend it?
Playing agains Face Hunter is a blessing compared to Stealth Rogue and Aggro DH of the last expansion.
I don’t mind losing by turn 5 to an aggro deck, but losing by turn 12 after clearing their board and weapons a half dozen times was slightly aggravating.
I’ve honestly never understood the hate Face Hunter gets, we need hyper aggro decks and the alternatives we get are usually always a lot worse.
There have to be decks like this available in the game at all times. That’s what keeps players coming back & ultimately spending money on the game. It is a business after all.
Okay, okay... we all know that aggro decks are cheap and accessible for the average player. Sooooo, if decks are cheap to make? What these average players are buying packs for then? If cheap aggro decks is their go to every expansion then again, what are they buying packs for?
I don't understand your point here. Also, what's up with this automatic assumption that the average player is sinking money into Hearthstone to buy packs?
Also, aggro decks update every expansion. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. They buy packs to get cards and dust to upgrade their decks.
Sometimes they want to open packs because opening packs is fun.
Not everybody buys packs. Not everybody who does buy packs buys preorders and other huge amounts at once. Not everybody who buys packs and does buy a lot at once enjoys or has the time to play control/combo.
There have to be decks like this available in the game at all times. That’s what keeps players coming back & ultimately spending money on the game. It is a business after all.
Okay, okay... we all know that aggro decks are cheap and accessible for the average player. Sooooo, if decks are cheap to make? What these average players are buying packs for then? If cheap aggro decks is their go to every expansion then again, what are they buying packs for?
I don't understand your point here. Also, what's up with this automatic assumption that the average player is sinking money into Hearthstone to buy packs?
Also, aggro decks update every expansion. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. They buy packs to get cards and dust to upgrade their decks.
Sometimes they want to open packs because opening packs is fun.
Not everybody buys packs. Not everybody who does buy packs buys preorders and other huge amounts at once. Not everybody who buys packs and does buy a lot at once enjoys or has the time to play control/combo.
The game gives you enough gold and free packs as you progress naturally. Enough gold to update the cheap aggro decks. Then, why buy packs? The game profits can’t possibly come only from whales and top legend players. So, the money must come from the average player. The average player doesn’t have time to sink time into the game so they play cheap auto play aggro decks. Then again, why are they buying packs? Who buys something only to end up using a small fraction of it? The only logical explanation is that either Hearthstone is another predatory practice that feeds on vulnerable people or those people are too dumb and shouldn’t be trusted with their own money.
It's fine, we just need more healing available to control decks other than Priest.
And the Trampling Rhino/hero power combo is a fairly boring mechanic for classes that don't have spell-based card draw. You essentially spend the entire game top-decking because you can't play low health minions to draw/generate, and eventually the hero power and burn from hand trumps whatever healing you manage to draw naturally.
There have to be decks like this available in the game at all times. That’s what keeps players coming back & ultimately spending money on the game. It is a business after all.
The game gives you enough gold and free packs as you progress naturally. Enough gold to update the cheap aggro decks. Then, why buy packs? The game profits can’t possibly come only from whales and top legend players. So, the money must come from the average player. The average player doesn’t have time to sink time into the game so they play cheap auto play aggro decks. Then again, why are they buying packs? Who buys something only to end up using a small fraction of it? The only logical explanation is that either Hearthstone is another predatory practice that feeds on vulnerable people or those people are too dumb and shouldn’t be trusted with their own money.
As kind as I try to be to the actual developers and designers of Hearthstone, Blizzard-Activision is a corporation at the end of the day. So yeah, they're predatory and use gambling tactics to get people to pay money for stuff they don't need. Pack opening is, essentially, gambling, and there's no real 2-ways about it. That's why its so heavily regulated in countries outside the US. You're right about that.
I prefer not to assume things about people's intelligence. It's a bad look and a bad faith stance to take to just assume a massive amount of people are so dumb they shouldn't be trusted with their money.
While yeah the average player will get enough Gold from packs to keep themselves afloat if they just want to play and update their one aggro deck they play, they might sometimes buy cosmetics and other things that are now being introduced into the game. The Battle Pass costs money, and rewards a lot of cosmetics. Skins cost money, they always have. In the beforetimes, rewards weren't as good, so they probably spent money to buy Adventure Wings, and a couple packs from a new expansion because they don't play often enough to have accrued ~100 packs worth of gold.
Whales are a huge portion of Hearthstones income. Or at least is a substantial amount of it. There's also collectors who want to have every card, even if they themselves aren't that dedicated to the game, or even that good. There's dorks like me who spend probably too much money, not because they want a full collection, but because they want Golden cards for the select classes they play. Back when I was just getting into Hearthstone I spent some money on the game for packs and stuff. I was in High School and didn't have enough time to play it and earn all that Gold. When I worked as a cart attendant I pre-ordered every expansion because Hearthstone was a very important mental escape from how awful my job was.
There's 20 MILLION active players monthly according to Blizzard stats. That playerbase is not a monolith of unified thoughts and reasons they do things. Even subsections like Casual Players, "Average" Players, Dedicated Ladder Climbers, Professionals, Collectors, etc. - none of them are monoliths either. Individual members of each group live individual lives and do things for reasons only they know. It's not possible to boil down groups like that to a single mode of thought. Or productive.
There have to be decks like this available in the game at all times. That’s what keeps players coming back & ultimately spending money on the game. It is a business after all.
Okay, okay... we all know that aggro decks are cheap and accessible for the average player. Sooooo, if decks are cheap to make? What these average players are buying packs for then? If cheap aggro decks is their go to every expansion then again, what are they buying packs for?
I don't understand your point here. Also, what's up with this automatic assumption that the average player is sinking money into Hearthstone to buy packs?
Also, aggro decks update every expansion. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. They buy packs to get cards and dust to upgrade their decks.
Sometimes they want to open packs because opening packs is fun.
Not everybody buys packs. Not everybody who does buy packs buys preorders and other huge amounts at once. Not everybody who buys packs and does buy a lot at once enjoys or has the time to play control/combo.
Some good points here and in the post a few above.
I also imagine that they know full well not everyone will buy packs. The hope will be that they can engage people enough that as many end up paying money but I doubt they are naive enough to think this will be every player.
The f2p model is supported and has been gently getting better for a while now. Whales will help carry a lot of free players and that will be a market they know they can get to. People who must have every card, must have every expansion day one etc. These guys will sink enough into the game to carry a good amount of f2p players.
It's fine, we just need more healing available to control decks other than Priest.
And the Trampling Rhino/hero power combo is a fairly boring mechanic for classes that don't have spell-based card draw. You essentially spend the entire game top-decking because you can't play low health minions to draw/generate, and eventually the hero power and burn from hand trumps whatever healing you manage to draw naturally.
More healing options would nerf hunter indirectly, its fine the way it is
Most balanced? I don’t agree that a deck that its player can dump their hand as soon as they draw cards without much thought or consideration, is balanced.
I played the deck. 18 games, 72% win rate. I barely think twice before playing a card on curve. The average player shouldn’t be rewarded with a win for playing cards mindlessly.
That doesn't really have anything to do with Balance per se, that's just a function of aggressive decks. Hunter is fair *because* it plays on curve. It doesn't cheat mana. It doesn't draw 4/5 cards a turn for no mana. It plays minions on board and occasionally points spells face, all of which are efficient from a damage/stats standpoint, but don't cycle or generate advantage the way other aggro decks do.
Just because you think a deck doesn't require much thought to play, whether or not that's true, doesn't really have anything to do with balance.
One player is thinking hard to come up with the most optimal play and think 5 turns ahead while his opponent turns on a fan that drops his card one by one. The former will lose despite the intense skill displaying he showed the latter wins by showing no clear skill or understanding of the game.
Ya, the level of effort required isn’t balanced.
The games go quicker as the hunter so the few choices you make have a bigger overall impact, mistakes made when you have few options or turns means bigger draw backs. Id argue face hunter is one of the harder decks to play, not grim patron hard but somewhat close
One player is thinking hard to come up with the most optimal play and think 5 turns ahead while his opponent turns on a fan that drops his card one by one. The former will lose despite the intense skill displaying he showed the latter wins by showing no clear skill or understanding of the game.
Ya, the level of effort required isn’t balanced.
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The thing is, this is exactly what Blizzard wants. Contrary to what a lot of people on this board think, this game does not revolve around what players in top 200 legend are doing. The game has over 20 million active players monthly. Many of which, play this game very casually. They aren’t playing hours on end, & aiming for a top 16 finish each month. They play this game on their lunch breaks, or on the toilet, & need decks like face hunter, that they can do well with, without much thought involved. There have to be decks like this available in the game at all times. That’s what keeps players coming back & ultimately spending money on the game. It is a business after all.
This is why I refer to aggro, and more specifically Face Hunter, as "the People's Deck". It's accessible, it's easy, and it does well.
All things that infuriate a very vocal minority, apparently.
please don't bully my son
ITT: Control players mad because their IQ is too high for the game.
I love you Dreadsteed, I will never disenchant you!
No deck is by default easy to play in a vacuum. There are some matchups where Hunters just have to drag the green card and keep sending everything face hoping they manage to kill the opponent in time and there are cases where a ton of potentially important micro-decisions are required. Do you go wide to play around Hysteria? Or do you hold back some resources to play around some AOE? Do you vomit your full hand or do you keep an 1/1 in your hand because your deck still has 2 copies of Piercing Shot and you want to have a guaranteed target? Furthermore the Hunter mirror (like most aggro mirrors, actually like most mirror matchups of any deck archetype) is a really tough match to play where high-skill play is rewarded a lot more than in most other matchups.
P.S.: Thinking 5 turns ahead when facing a hunter is not a display of intense skill, but of a lack of touch with reality. In 5 turns the game will almost always be over one way or another
Okay, okay... we all know that aggro decks are cheap and accessible for the average player. Sooooo, if decks are cheap to make? What these average players are buying packs for then? If cheap aggro decks is their go to every expansion then again, what are they buying packs for?
Sign Here
Have you seen the most recent lists? There are tons of new cards, especially because of the rotation. Also, just because cheap decks are, well, cheap, doesn't mean they don't get old. Even if a player plays only a certain cheap aggro deck he will eventually want to try OTHER cheap aggro decks, and for that he needs dust, and thus, packs. He'll probably have the necessary gold for it anyway, so why shouldn't he spend it?
What are you even trying to prove here?
I love you Dreadsteed, I will never disenchant you!
Playing agains Face Hunter is a blessing compared to Stealth Rogue and Aggro DH of the last expansion.
I don’t mind losing by turn 5 to an aggro deck, but losing by turn 12 after clearing their board and weapons a half dozen times was slightly aggravating.
I’ve honestly never understood the hate Face Hunter gets, we need hyper aggro decks and the alternatives we get are usually always a lot worse.
I don't understand your point here. Also, what's up with this automatic assumption that the average player is sinking money into Hearthstone to buy packs?
Also, aggro decks update every expansion. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. They buy packs to get cards and dust to upgrade their decks.
Sometimes they want to open packs because opening packs is fun.
Not everybody buys packs. Not everybody who does buy packs buys preorders and other huge amounts at once. Not everybody who buys packs and does buy a lot at once enjoys or has the time to play control/combo.
please don't bully my son
The game gives you enough gold and free packs as you progress naturally. Enough gold to update the cheap aggro decks. Then, why buy packs? The game profits can’t possibly come only from whales and top legend players. So, the money must come from the average player. The average player doesn’t have time to sink time into the game so they play cheap auto play aggro decks. Then again, why are they buying packs? Who buys something only to end up using a small fraction of it? The only logical explanation is that either Hearthstone is another predatory practice that feeds on vulnerable people or those people are too dumb and shouldn’t be trusted with their own money.
Sign Here
It's fine, we just need more healing available to control decks other than Priest.
And the Trampling Rhino/hero power combo is a fairly boring mechanic for classes that don't have spell-based card draw. You essentially spend the entire game top-decking because you can't play low health minions to draw/generate, and eventually the hero power and burn from hand trumps whatever healing you manage to draw naturally.
As kind as I try to be to the actual developers and designers of Hearthstone, Blizzard-Activision is a corporation at the end of the day. So yeah, they're predatory and use gambling tactics to get people to pay money for stuff they don't need. Pack opening is, essentially, gambling, and there's no real 2-ways about it. That's why its so heavily regulated in countries outside the US. You're right about that.
I prefer not to assume things about people's intelligence. It's a bad look and a bad faith stance to take to just assume a massive amount of people are so dumb they shouldn't be trusted with their money.
While yeah the average player will get enough Gold from packs to keep themselves afloat if they just want to play and update their one aggro deck they play, they might sometimes buy cosmetics and other things that are now being introduced into the game. The Battle Pass costs money, and rewards a lot of cosmetics. Skins cost money, they always have. In the beforetimes, rewards weren't as good, so they probably spent money to buy Adventure Wings, and a couple packs from a new expansion because they don't play often enough to have accrued ~100 packs worth of gold.
Whales are a huge portion of Hearthstones income. Or at least is a substantial amount of it. There's also collectors who want to have every card, even if they themselves aren't that dedicated to the game, or even that good. There's dorks like me who spend probably too much money, not because they want a full collection, but because they want Golden cards for the select classes they play. Back when I was just getting into Hearthstone I spent some money on the game for packs and stuff. I was in High School and didn't have enough time to play it and earn all that Gold. When I worked as a cart attendant I pre-ordered every expansion because Hearthstone was a very important mental escape from how awful my job was.
There's 20 MILLION active players monthly according to Blizzard stats. That playerbase is not a monolith of unified thoughts and reasons they do things. Even subsections like Casual Players, "Average" Players, Dedicated Ladder Climbers, Professionals, Collectors, etc. - none of them are monoliths either. Individual members of each group live individual lives and do things for reasons only they know. It's not possible to boil down groups like that to a single mode of thought. Or productive.
please don't bully my son
Some good points here and in the post a few above.
I also imagine that they know full well not everyone will buy packs. The hope will be that they can engage people enough that as many end up paying money but I doubt they are naive enough to think this will be every player.
The f2p model is supported and has been gently getting better for a while now. Whales will help carry a lot of free players and that will be a market they know they can get to. People who must have every card, must have every expansion day one etc. These guys will sink enough into the game to carry a good amount of f2p players.
More healing options would nerf hunter indirectly, its fine the way it is
The games go quicker as the hunter so the few choices you make have a bigger overall impact, mistakes made when you have few options or turns means bigger draw backs. Id argue face hunter is one of the harder decks to play, not grim patron hard but somewhat close