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?
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.
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.
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.
Come on! Share it already! :D
Anyhow, OP has a point it is a little harder to climb on Wild Ladder now. Usually I reached ranked 10 on first week with Reno Decks or Pirates. Now kinda stuck at 12-14th. I don't blame the Brawl though. Maybe people are starting to realize how wonderful Wild format is.
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.
It's odd that you blame Blizzard for this. Players (perhaps not you but others) have been braying to Blizzard about getting some recognition and attention for Wild. Now they have in some small way and now it's their fault for doing what the community wanted. Why not blame the people that brought all this attention onto Wild?
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.
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... ^^'
I have 2 decades of CCG experience and was on R&D for several of them, it's not difficult to realize that Patches the Pirate is the worst designed card in Hearthstone because of how he makes Pirates the best possible drops for their mana cost and how Golaka Crawler is the worst possible solution to Pirates because the tempo, card advantage and board position it provides ends the game immediately. You have Blizzard printing a card they knew was bad for the game (see Ship's Cannon) and then nerfing Smalltime Buccaneer (which is worse than both Flame Imp and Cogmaster) instead of addressing their design flaws, because a card that generates free card advantage, tempo and board position just for being in your deck but if drawn ends the game immediately is clearly balanced ... Freeze Mage, Ice Block and Mad Scientist are the same problem, you have Mad Scientist serving as card advantage, tempo and board position in a single card, which searches for Ice Block that gives no means of interaction to the opponent and then they just either Alexstraza for an 8/8 Charge, Windfury and kill you on the following turn or they Malygos/Evolved Kobold you from 30 to 0.
Wild is the format where bad design decisions are exacerbated by the card pool available, and you have to either nerf or delete them if you want to promote Wild as a format this year. People may not be willing to admit it, but Freeze Mage OTK meets all of the same criteria as Patron Warrior, Worgen Warrior and Leeroy Jenkins did for a nerf and N'Zoth is either just as if not more so game breaking as Yogg Saaron was when played. The game needs a balance pass, because anyone who thinks Paper, Scissors, Rock is the definition of balance doesn't really understand how to design card games, as any time you have polarized win percentages between archetypes you've failed at creating a fun, interactive game and have to rely on things like Golaka Crawler or Kezan Mystic to bandaid your mistakes.
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?
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... ^^'
I agree. I would enjoy Hearthstone much less if Blizzard did 'balance checks' in wild because it would most likely completely destroy many of the different types of decks that I play (such as combo decks for a variety of classes). You don't want a card game that goes out of its way to literally destroy decks, but one that has at least some mode that allows for a free for all with expected and unexpected decks.
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.
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 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.
I do not think freeze mage is a problem at all. Ragnaros the Firelord hits when frozen, cards like Piloted Shredder survive AOE, and there is even anti-secret tech and control warrior with Justicar Trueheart if the archetype should become dominant.
As for the control-shaman, I played a slightly teched tempomage and won 100% vs them. For the pirate warrior, I played midrange shaman and got maybe 60-70%, matching their earlygame tempo, and screwing them over with taunts later.
I do not think wild is rock-scissor-papers yet, but the brawl certainly made improvements to the best decks, and made sure everybody now know which they are. It has gotten harder for sure, last season, I saw a lot of pure standard-decks at rank 5-4, that will probably not happen this season...
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?
Yes, just because a threat has a counter doesn't mean that threat is good for the game, you'll notice every control deck either can or does play N'zoth because it more often than not wins the game when you resolve it. Because of the interaction with Deathrattle, even a board wipe can leave behind a random legendary, random 2 mana minions, 1/2 taunts, take control of a random enemy minion, heal you for 8 health, give you a 5/3 weapon, give you random cards from your enemy's deck, give you random spells, draw you cards etc. so the best answer to an N'zoth is another N'zoth. The card warps the whole control matchup, because you're sitting on your Kazakus Potion and Golden Monkey until the question of N'zoth is resolved. Or I'll put it another way, if you recur a Tyrion Fordring, a Sylvanas Windrunner, 2 Sludge Belchers, 2 Piloted Shredders, what other card gives you 6+8+6+5+5+4+4= 38 mana of value and +6 card advantage? Even a single Piloted Shredder means you break even on N'zoth, the only thing that's close to that value is old Yogg Saaron and even it wasn't a proactive play.
The card is bonkers, it will either never be replaced as a win condition in control or always an option for a win condition in control (you'll have odd decks like Quest Warrior or RenoMage who will use the Quest or Alexstraza and Antonidas instead, but honestly why not N'zoth too?)
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.
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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.
Death to all who oppose the Horde!
How is this unexpected? It seems rather the opposite i.e. a natural, inevitable progression.
Member of Fever Clan | Battle tag: sparkis#1748 | Discord: sparkis#5613
Member of Fever Clan | Battle tag: sparkis#1748 | Discord: sparkis#5613
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.
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.
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.
I do not think freeze mage is a problem at all. Ragnaros the Firelord hits when frozen, cards like Piloted Shredder survive AOE, and there is even anti-secret tech and control warrior with Justicar Trueheart if the archetype should become dominant.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
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.