Hearthpwn

Before this week wild format was largely diverse, mostly because it wasn't known what the best decks were, but now after people have been releasing guides for the brawl the wild ladder is becoming much like the standard ladder, where you only really encounter around 3 decks.
A week ago i would encounter one of the top 3 (Reno, Pirates, Egg) every 5-6 games, and each game would actually offer something new, now its almost every-game.
Is anyone else having similar experiences on ladder after this Brawl?

I'll admit, its not unexpected at all.

It's only a bad thing from certain perspectives, some people may think its a good thing, but personally, i switched to wild to get away from a format where only the meta decks are played and to have a more fun experience, and i did, but after this week, wild is becoming less diverse and diversity is what made it great. 

But hey, even if pirates become the only deck you see, you can actually hard counter them in wild with Reno and Taunt Warrior, unlike standard.

One problem is the big difference in power level between cards.  There are many cards that are basically auto-includes in every class, such as removal package, and the best minions etc.   And then there are cards like Worgen Greaser which literally nobody would ever use.  And there are seriously only so many viable archetypes.  If you try to throw together random, unplayed cards, you will literally never win again.  And being creative is fun, but losing game after game is very discouraging.

I think the Brawl has shown how terrible the format is, you have Freeze Mage destroying everything that isn't designed to destroy it and then you have Control Shaman destroying anything that is designed to destroy Freeze Mage. What's even more stupid is how Blizzard "fixed" Pirate Warrior by nerfing Smalltime Buccanner and printing Golaka Crawler, because now Pirates are either the best one drops in the game, the game ends on T2 when they Golaka Crawler you, you lose if you draw Patches the Pirate in your opening hand or you win if you play a Ship's Cannon and a 1 man Pirate.

So in short, Pirates is the best/only aggro deck in the format because of their speed and board control, but at the same time Pirates is the easiest deck to hate out of the format because Golaka Crawler ends the game immediately. Freeze Mage gained too much survivability between Arcanologist and Primordial Glyph to lose to aggro now, Shaman gained too much board control with Volcano to lose to aggro now, there is no aggro alternative to Pirates unless you're playing the Bloodsail Corsair, Patches the Pirate and Golaka Crawler package at which point you're just a worse deck vs Freeze Mage or Control Shaman.

You would think Control Warrior could deal with this nonsense, but you still have Jade being an unneeded mechanic that invalidates control and it loses the N'zoth battles to Devolve and Kazakus so you're only left with Quest Warrior as a meta solution. If you play any other control deck than Warrior you just lose to Freeze Mage's OTK or Jades so you had better play Loatheb and Eater of Secrets in your 30 and be prepared to play the beatdown roll.

I think the Brawl will have been a positive experience if Blizzard learns anything from it, hopefully they'll nerf Alexstraza, Iceblock, N'zoth and Patches the Pirate so games suck less.

Quote from Deftmove >>

I think the Brawl has shown how terrible the format is, you have Freeze Mage destroying everything that isn't designed to destroy it and then you have Control Shaman destroying anything that is designed to destroy Freeze Mage. What's even more stupid is how Blizzard "fixed" Pirate Warrior by nerfing Smalltime Buccanner and printing Golaka Crawler, because now Pirates are either the best one drops in the game, the game ends on T2 when they Golaka Crawler you, you lose if you draw Patches the Pirate in your opening hand or you win if you play a Ship's Cannon and a 1 man Pirate.

So in short, Pirates is the best/only aggro deck in the format because of their speed and board control, but at the same time Pirates is the easiest deck to hate out of the format because Golaka Crawler ends the game immediately. Freeze Mage gained too much survivability between Arcanologist and Primordial Glyph to lose to aggro now, Shaman gained too much board control with Volcano to lose to aggro now, there is no aggro alternative to Pirates unless you're playing the Bloodsail Corsair, Patches the Pirate and Golaka Crawler package at which point you're just a worse deck vs Freeze Mage or Control Shaman.

You would think Control Warrior could deal with this nonsense, but you still have Jade being an unneeded mechanic that invalidates control and it loses the N'zoth battles to Devolve and Kazakus so you're only left with Quest Warrior as a meta solution. If you play any other control deck than Warrior you just lose to Freeze Mage's OTK or Jades so you had better play Loatheb and Eater of Secrets in your 30 and be prepared to play the beatdown roll.

I think the Brawl will have been a positive experience if Blizzard learns anything from it, hopefully they'll nerf Alexstraza, Iceblock, N'zoth and Patches the Pirate so games suck less.

 

Quote from Saltplank >>

I think you guys might be overcomplaining. When I noticed the Pirate Swarm after the brawl, I just tried to build a Deck that would 90% win vs aggro and have some good tools vs control. Results? The deck almost always beats Pirate and Egg, has a good match-up vs Freeze and a reasonable, even if not the easiest, winrate vs Control Shaman and CW. Only problem can be Paladin with the right hand.
What Wild lacks is not moderation, is inventive.
PS: I'm sharing the deck once I get to a decent rank, rank 6 atm.

How is this unexpected? It seems rather the opposite i.e. a natural, inevitable progression.

Quote from CyberWarrior1337 >>

Its really a pitty that blizzard destroys the last fun place by making it "competitive". Tournaments in wild (and brawl is just a small tournament) will destroy all diversity again and we will end with top 3 decks all over again.

 

I've played 76 games so far this season, and I'm currently rank 8. My deck tracker tells me I've played against 24 different decks - Secret Mage 10 times and Pirate Warrior six times. Everything else is four games or less. All the sites which track Standard also track Wild - the meta-game in the format currently appears to be the most diverse it has ever been. The play-rate for PW is at its lowest since it took over the format - about 13%. Renolock is a little over 3%, and Egg Druid is about 5%. I imagine the OP probably just had a run of bad luck, and queued into the same decks a few times.

More people are playing Wild this month - VS is tracking about three times as many games as last month. Presumably, the TB and the tournament announcement have brought lots of new players to the format. It's difficult to see how that could be a bad thing.

Even with the brawl, i expect diversity to return, as soon as people start playing with counter-strategies.

It is like at the beginning of Ungoro, when QR was screwing the meta, then PW soon after, and then diversity kicked in.

The only real problem in Wild is that tech cards are too situational, and you can hardly afford dead cards in your hand. This is a problem for Standard too, but more acute in Wild where the power level is higher.

Consequence is that some matchups are screwed just after mulligan, and no action can give you any chance. And that's no fun.

Quote from ArgentumEmperio >>

Quote from HybriddShadow >>

Quote from Deftmove >>

I think the Brawl has shown how terrible the format is, you have Freeze Mage destroying everything that isn't designed to destroy it and then you have Control Shaman destroying anything that is designed to destroy Freeze Mage. What's even more stupid is how Blizzard "fixed" Pirate Warrior by nerfing Smalltime Buccanner and printing Golaka Crawler, because now Pirates are either the best one drops in the game, the game ends on T2 when they Golaka Crawler you, you lose if you draw Patches the Pirate in your opening hand or you win if you play a Ship's Cannon and a 1 man Pirate.

So in short, Pirates is the best/only aggro deck in the format because of their speed and board control, but at the same time Pirates is the easiest deck to hate out of the format because Golaka Crawler ends the game immediately. Freeze Mage gained too much survivability between Arcanologist and Primordial Glyph to lose to aggro now, Shaman gained too much board control with Volcano to lose to aggro now, there is no aggro alternative to Pirates unless you're playing the Bloodsail Corsair, Patches the Pirate and Golaka Crawler package at which point you're just a worse deck vs Freeze Mage or Control Shaman.

You would think Control Warrior could deal with this nonsense, but you still have Jade being an unneeded mechanic that invalidates control and it loses the N'zoth battles to Devolve and Kazakus so you're only left with Quest Warrior as a meta solution. If you play any other control deck than Warrior you just lose to Freeze Mage's OTK or Jades so you had better play Loatheb and Eater of Secrets in your 30 and be prepared to play the beatdown roll.

I think the Brawl will have been a positive experience if Blizzard learns anything from it, hopefully they'll nerf Alexstraza, Iceblock, N'zoth and Patches the Pirate so games suck less.

 

 How do you nerf patches or ice block?

 You don't.

That's really the simple answer to this question... the Wild format is the collection of all collections. That means that cards that decks will be optimized to the point where folks start to hate on random things. That's really the full extent of why folks dislike Patches the Pirate and cards like Ice Block.

Don't listen too much in regards to posts like the one you replied to as well... all cardgames are good for a very rock-paper-scizzor behaviour as it will push people to design the next <object that needs to be countered by another object> and hating on that... Well... its the primary means that means that cardgames even can be competitive to begin with so...

Eh, all I am saying - don't read into rage posts that belong in the mega salty thread... ^^'

Well, now that there is a tempo storm page about "best decks", you can say goodbye to deck diversity.

You've misquoted me, I never said Patron Warrior and Worgen Warrior needed to be nerfed, I said Patron Warrior and Worgen Warrior were nerfed for being OTK combo decks and that Blizzard should nerf Freeze Mage for being an OTK combo deck as well because they've established a design precedent for what is and isn't allowable in their game aren't applying that precedent to Freeze Mage because they removed Ice Lance from Standard and don't balance for Wild currently.

I agree Golaka Crawler is much closer to Big Game Hunter than Kezan Mystic or Eater of Secrets is, the problem with Kezan Mystic or Easter of Secrets is that even tho' they're effective at what they do they don't have the statlines or the utility to justify them so cards like Ice Block are effectively unchecked. These two groups of cards fall along the paradigms of too good at what they do or not good enough at what they do compared to the third group of Acidic Swamp Ooze or Gluttonous Ooze which have good stats for cost and fair utility across classes and game impact.

I'm not certain what  cards you're referring to in Magic so let's just say Necropotence or Yawgmoth's Will, the difference here between Magic and Hearthstone is that Magic has player interaction on the opponent's turn, counter spells and discard to stop those cards from resolving and they're restricted to 1 per deck because they do win the game as soon as they resolve. That doesn't mean that the cards were well designed or that Magic is a model worth following, Copernicus may have made his Heliocentric observation for other scientists to build upon but I wouldn't refer to him on matters of modern space navigation.

Rock, Paper, Scissors is NOT a model for CCGs, in fact it was a test question for AEG beta testers and those who said it was were disqualified from R&D, because even tho' Rock, Paper, Scissors represents a balanced toy game it has polarized win percentage where Rock beats Scissors 100% of the time, Scissors beats Paper 100% of the time and Paper beats Rock 100% of the time. If you look at another model for CCGs like Chess, you'll see it's a balanced toy game that has depolarized win percentages of 50% when two players of equal skill play each other and is a much better model for CCGs to follow. If I rememer the questions it was "which game would be the best model for a TCG and why, Rock, Paper, Scissors, Backgammon, Chess or Poker?" RPS was a disqualification, Backgammon was a pass based on the explanation for why you would apply RNG to a game and Chess was a pass based on the explanation for why a game needs multiple solutions to reach equilibrium points, and Poker was a pass baed on the explanation for why a game needs imperfect information to increase the relative skill gap between players.

Returning to Hearthstone, I think the game has done a lot of things right at its core like implementing the intellectual property and the user interface, but the card design has been horrific because Team 5's R&D are a bunch of incompetents who have ridden to success on the coat tails of World of Warcraft and tech support.

Quote from Deftmove >>I think the Brawl will have been a positive experience if Blizzard learns anything from it, hopefully they'll nerf Alexstraza, Iceblock, N'zoth and Patches the Pirate so games suck less.

 You just provided two direct counters to things like N'Zoth and you want Blizzard to nerf it?

Quote from ArgentumEmperio >>

Quote from HybriddShadow >>

Quote from Deftmove >>

I think the Brawl has shown how terrible the format is, you have Freeze Mage destroying everything that isn't designed to destroy it and then you have Control Shaman destroying anything that is designed to destroy Freeze Mage. What's even more stupid is how Blizzard "fixed" Pirate Warrior by nerfing Smalltime Buccanner and printing Golaka Crawler, because now Pirates are either the best one drops in the game, the game ends on T2 when they Golaka Crawler you, you lose if you draw Patches the Pirate in your opening hand or you win if you play a Ship's Cannon and a 1 man Pirate.

So in short, Pirates is the best/only aggro deck in the format because of their speed and board control, but at the same time Pirates is the easiest deck to hate out of the format because Golaka Crawler ends the game immediately. Freeze Mage gained too much survivability between Arcanologist and Primordial Glyph to lose to aggro now, Shaman gained too much board control with Volcano to lose to aggro now, there is no aggro alternative to Pirates unless you're playing the Bloodsail Corsair, Patches the Pirate and Golaka Crawler package at which point you're just a worse deck vs Freeze Mage or Control Shaman.

You would think Control Warrior could deal with this nonsense, but you still have Jade being an unneeded mechanic that invalidates control and it loses the N'zoth battles to Devolve and Kazakus so you're only left with Quest Warrior as a meta solution. If you play any other control deck than Warrior you just lose to Freeze Mage's OTK or Jades so you had better play Loatheb and Eater of Secrets in your 30 and be prepared to play the beatdown roll.

I think the Brawl will have been a positive experience if Blizzard learns anything from it, hopefully they'll nerf Alexstraza, Iceblock, N'zoth and Patches the Pirate so games suck less.

 

 How do you nerf patches or ice block?

 You don't.

That's really the simple answer to this question... the Wild format is the collection of all collections. That means that cards that decks will be optimized to the point where folks start to hate on random things. That's really the full extent of why folks dislike Patches the Pirate and cards like Ice Block.

Don't listen too much in regards to posts like the one you replied to as well... all cardgames are good for a very rock-paper-scizzor behaviour as it will push people to design the next <object that needs to be countered by another object> and hating on that... Well... its the primary means that means that cardgames even can be competitive to begin with so...

Eh, all I am saying - don't read into rage posts that belong in the mega salty thread... ^^'

When I noticed the Pirate Swarm after the brawl

Wild was already swarmed by PW - at least at the higher ranks. In April I reached Legend in Wild and the overall percent of PW I faced that month was 34% - at Rank 1 it was even 52%!

Nearly the hole meta was PW vs Anti-PW-Decks - and some Secret-Palas and Rogues, which got eaten alive by PW nearly every time. *nom, nom*

@Token-Pala: Yes, Strifecro got 12 Wins with this deck, but I think, it should be heavily unfavoured against PW and therefore not be overall good in the Ladder. Most of the time this deck should be overrun by PW easily, because of no Anti-PW-cards, no early- or midgame-heals and only Stonehill Defender as early game taunt. Yes, spikeridged steed can win you the game against PW by itself - but this doesn't matter if PW kills you in round 5.

Quote from Lyra_Silvertongue >>

Quote from Deftmove >>I think the Brawl will have been a positive experience if Blizzard learns anything from it, hopefully they'll nerf Alexstraza, Iceblock, N'zoth and Patches the Pirate so games suck less.

 You just provided two direct counters to things like N'Zoth and you want Blizzard to nerf it?

 

For wild at least, Patches can be "nerfed" by changing the wording of Ship's Cannon to read "Anytime you PLAY a pirate, deal 2 damage to a random enemy." For standard, I'd nerf it by removing the pirate tag from N'zoth's First Mate so that your turn 1 options are to either play a 2/1 deckhand without charge to get patches from your deck, or play a 1/1 for the 1/3 weapon, not both. Ice Block is trickier, I haven't thought much about how to change it to be fair. Right now we have some anti-secret tech in Eater of Secrets, it's just not good enough to run on its own. A nerf to Ice Block would probably have to be a +1/+1 buff to Eater.