Unfortunately unfairness will not stop devs from printing cards like these. Not only for midrange decks problematic, control also suffers. For now I settle for the observation that Zeph. is mainly used in aggro/aggressive decks and most likely as such devised to keep the meta aggressive, control in check.
If you run with your aggro deck into problems against a control archetype, just play Zeph. cleverly. Problem likely solved.
Please elaborate on these points. Zephrys sees play across the board in terms of archetypes. Highlander Hunter is an aggressive midrange deck, Highlander Mage is a slow midrange deck. Quest Druid has variations of tempo builds and combo builds. Murloc Paladin and Highlander Warlock are aggro decks, while Holy Wrath Paladin is strictly a combo deck. Control Warrior has also been known to splash Zephrys when the meta is slow enough. It certainly doesn't seem to appear "mainly" in aggressive decks.
Additionally, I have certainly not found a single copy of Zephrys to be a problem when dealing with aggro decks while using their natural counter - a control deck. They can steal a win from time to time when you don't consider Zephrys > Savage Roar when they have a wide board, but your job as a control deck is to keep the aggro player off the board, which a control deck is extremely efficient at doing.
I'd be interested to see more data on this but as far as control decks struggling with Zephrys goes, according to Vicious Syndicate's last report (released 22/08/2019) Control Warrior was favoured against every single deck that contained Zephrys except for Highlander Mage and Hunter (43% and 42% win rates against them, respectively), both of which are anti-control strategies with key cards that give Control Warrior a very hard time (Luna's Pocket Galaxy, Conjurer's Calling, Zul'Jin, Brann), with Zephrys not really being a key player in either matchup, like it is playing against Control Warrior as Quest Druid, for example (which is unfavoured against Control Warrior, or at least was before the last patch).
Any data that suggests that cramming Zephrys into a poorly optimised aggro deck gives you an edge against Control strategies would be most appreciated.
Cards like this cause many players to quit the game. This is one explanation why Savij , the most proeminent player of this game quit and many others too. The games are so shitty, with shitty cards like this everysingletime that make a normal guy go crazy, specially when u do everything right and still lose. Link Below why savij quit the game https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/9kjwm4/savjz_explains_why_he_quit_hearthstone/
This is a list of various decks (across numerous archetypes) that play Zephrys and their respective win %s. It doesn't give any information about how Zephrys affects the aggro vs control matchup, and it supports my argument that Zephrys is not strictly an aggressive card.
I won't argue against Zephry's being a crazy powerful card, but suggesting that it was printed to make aggro the dominant archetype and "keep control in check" doesn't make any sense, as it is just as efficient at denying tempo as it is at creating it. It can be used proactively by an aggro deck to generate tempo, of course, but it can equally be used by a control deck either reactively to deny tempo, or preemptively to set up their own tempo play before the aggro deck has taken hold of the board.
In addition to the above, "control decks" as a concept literally exist to keep aggro in check, it doesn't matter what classic or basic card you slip into an aggro deck, it is still going to get hosed by control 60%-70% of the time (with these number increasing at higher ranks due to players having a deeper understanding of control strategies). I have pulled some stats from vS Data Reaper report 22/08/2019 (link below) and it shows that at the time of the report, Control Warrior was favoured against every deck that would be classed as aggro* that appeared on the report (Mech Hunter, Aggro Rogue, Aggro Warrior, Murloc Shaman, Murloc Paladin, Zoo Warlock (decks in bold usually include Zephrys)). And while it is true that 2 of the 3 matchups Control Warrior is weak in do play Zephrys, as I mentioned previously, they are anti-control strategies by default irrespective of Zephrys' inclusion because they play things like Luna's Pocket Galaxy and Dinotamer Brann, which already give control decks a lot of trouble.
It also makes sense to ask ourselves, is it even true that aggro is dominating control and keeping it in check? Well if we look at HSReplay, it would suggest that the aggressive Murloc Paladin and Murloc Shaman sit alone in tier 1, which on the surface looks promising (although this is highly likely inflated by the data not being filtered to ranks of a reasonable standard of gameplay). Interestingly enough however, Murloc Paladin in particular punishes greedy, inconsistent and highly popular Highlander decks, with both also able to destroy experimental new decks that have come about as a result of the balance patch. Meanwhile both Murloc aggro decks get utterly dominated by Control Warrior, which has declined in popularity since the patch. In conclusion we can see that aggro is indeed doing well, but it isn't pushing control out, it is simply taking advantage of a meta full of super greedy and/or experimental decks and fewer Control Warriors. These stats will prompt people to play more aggressive decks, which will present an opening for control decks to step in and punish an aggressive meta until the hyper greed takes over again and the experiments become refined.
This is a list of various decks (across numerous archetypes) that play Zephrys and their respective win %s. It doesn't give any information about how Zephrys affects the aggro vs control matchup, and it supports my argument that Zephrys is not strictly an aggressive card.
I won't argue against Zephry's being a crazy powerful card, but suggesting that it was printed to make aggro the dominant archetype and "keep control in check" doesn't make any sense, as it is just as efficient at denying tempo as it is at creating it. It can be used proactively by an aggro deck to generate tempo, of course, but it can equally be used by a control deck either reactively to deny tempo, or preemptively to set up their own tempo play before the aggro deck has taken hold of the board.
In addition to the above, "control decks" as a concept literally exist to keep aggro in check, it doesn't matter what classic or basic card you slip into an aggro deck, it is still going to get hosed by control 60%-70% of the time (with these number increasing at higher ranks due to players having a deeper understanding of control strategies). I have pulled some stats from vS Data Reaper report 22/08/2019 (link below) and it shows that at the time of the report, Control Warrior was favoured against every deck that would be classed as aggro* that appeared on the report (Mech Hunter, Aggro Rogue, Aggro Warrior, Murloc Shaman, Murloc Paladin, Zoo Warlock (decks in bold usually include Zephrys)). And while it is true that 2 of the 3 matchups Control Warrior is weak in do play Zephrys, as I mentioned previously, they are anti-control strategies by default irrespective of Zephrys' inclusion because they play things like Luna's Pocket Galaxy and Dinotamer Brann, which already give control decks a lot of trouble.
It also makes sense to ask ourselves, is it even true that aggro is dominating control and keeping it in check? Well if we look at HSReplay, it would suggest that the aggressive Murloc Paladin and Murloc Shaman sit alone in tier 1, which on the surface looks promising (although this is highly likely inflated by the data not being filtered to ranks of a reasonable standard of gameplay). Interestingly enough however, Murloc Paladin in particular punishes greedy, inconsistent and highly popular Highlander decks, with both also able to destroy experimental new decks that have come about as a result of the balance patch. Meanwhile both Murloc aggro decks get utterly dominated by Control Warrior, which has declined in popularity since the patch. In conclusion we can see that aggro is indeed doing well, but it isn't pushing control out, it is simply taking advantage of a meta full of super greedy and/or experimental decks and fewer Control Warriors. These stats will prompt people to play more aggressive decks, which will present an opening for control decks to step in and punish an aggressive meta until the hyper greed takes over again and the experiments become refined.
If you do the math you'll notice that Zeph. is played predemonantly in aggro/aggressive decks. Logically most effective.
I never stated that the card isn't used by non-aggressive archetypes. I implied that it is most effective in aggressive archetypes and as such an extra check on a strategic and skillfull gameplay. Control using it against aggro is less effective due to lesser survival time against anything aggressive. Do you think that e.g. control Priest has any regular advantage of Zeph. against some mindless hordes of Murlocs in Paladin/Shaman?
Burn - Buff - Chargers - Summon are the cornerstones of a mindless win condition. Zeph. as a minion has been added to that equation since the AI calls the shots based on the current boardstate. No skill, no strategy, just puzzling.
Zeph is desastrous against board oriented gameplay and as such an extra advantage for damage - out- of - hand - don't care - about - the - board - go face - win condition.
Conclusion: Zeph. makes a polarized meta even worse. But elsewhere I've already argued that card design = creating a sustained polarized meta. In the end Zeph. is about maintaining a dominant aggressive meta. Serving the target audience, who simply buys the most packs.
i dont think its a problem, that one card offers out of class things. its totally okay. u sacrifice duplicates and thats huge. well class identity not damaged much when u have one option for the perfect card.
I'm actually impressed with how strong zephyrs is, I'm shocked with how much I need the cards that pop up very frequently.
I think the main problem is his low cost. You could increase it with his stats, even make him high value like a 4/5 for 4, and keep the mechanic so it isnt so disruptive to late game play by himself. I've seen him played countless times with 9 or 10 mana followed up by the discovered card, which often costs 8 mana.
If you do the math you'll notice that Zeph. is played predemonantly in aggro/aggressive decks. Logically most effective.
I never stated that the card isn't used by non-aggressive archetypes. I implied that it is most effective in aggressive archetypes and as such an extra check on a strategic and skillfull gameplay. Control using it against aggro is less effective due to lesser survival time against anything aggressive. Do you think that e.g. control Priest has any regular advantage of Zeph. against some mindless hordes of Murlocs in Paladin/Shaman?
Burn - Buff - Chargers - Summon are the cornerstones of a mindless win condition. Zeph. as a minion has been added to that equation since the AI calls the shots based on the current boardstate. No skill, no strategy, just puzzling.
Zeph is desastrous against board oriented gameplay and as such an extra advantage for damage - out- of - hand - don't care - about - the - board - go face - win condition.
Conclusion: Zeph. makes a polarized meta even worse. But elsewhere I've already argued that card design = creating a sustained polarized meta. In the end Zeph. is about maintaining a dominant aggressive meta. Serving the target audience, who simply buys the most packs.
Aggro decks by design aim to consistently achieve a strong curve. As such, including 2 ofs in an aggro deck is generally superior to not including 2 ofs - you want your Flame Imp into your Knife Juggler etc and playing 2 copies of each ensures that a strong curve is more consistently achieved. If Highlander Warlock out-represents standard Zoo at Grandmasters or its win rate on ladder remains higher for a couple of weeks I will reconsider my opinion on this - but at the moment I believe the concept is a flash in the pan, and will soon fade away when people realise that consistent reliability is better than one above average 2 drop. Murloc Paladin is a slightly different creature, but its power lies in being able to play out 20 mana worth of cards as early as turn 5 (or 4 with coin). Ironically Zephrys > Shadowflame will answer this almost every time with the exception of Nightmare Amalgam or trading off a Bluegill Warrior to create board space and playing a Coldlight Seer. In any case, Zephrys in MOST aggro strategies is actually counter-intuative (with Hunter seeming to be an exception).
I don't think we are in full agreement over what comprises "strategic and skillful gameplay." I'm not entirely switched off to the fact that there is a skill set required for playing aggro correctly that is completely different to the skill set required to play control correctly. As a matter of fact in both cases, the skill factor is significantly greater when the hero deck and enemy deck are similar in strategy - aggro playing against control simply has to try and win as fast as possible, while avoiding potential AoE, while control playing against aggro simply has to preserve their life total until the aggro deck has run out of steam. Aggressive gameplay requires skill, however control decks do not allow aggro players to display their skill, because they are on a strict clock to win before the control deck stabilises and unless the control deck opens nutty with a lot of low drops, there are very few micro decisions for the aggro player to make outside of "how many minions is it safe to play into my opponent's brawl?" It is aggro vs aggro, and control vs control where you will see decisions matter significantly more. Zephrys serves a different function in a slow deck to a fast deck, and depending on the matchup - he isn't strictly better at one than the other.
Burn, buff, charge and summon, are the majority of win conditions available in Hearthstone and do not equate to mindless gameplay. All of the aforementioned have counter play - heal, remove, taunt, and trade - and make up the motions of a game of Hearthstone. Freeze Mage is widely regarded by many as one of the hardest decks to pilot since Hearthstone's inception. It a slow deck that relies almost entirely on burn to win the game. Is it mindless aggression? Vanilla Wallet Warrior relied on a 15 damage burn into a swing from Alex and Gorehowl to win games. Is that mindless aggression?
The majority of aggro decks since the start of Hearthstone have required the player to have a board in order to get the majority of their damage through. Take "Tempo" Mage from Gadgetzan - it would absolutely use burn cards to finish the game, but it had to get in a significant amount of minion chip damage before transitioning into a burn game plan. Even Face Hunter and Pirate Warrior, the purest forms of aggro Hearthstone has ever known, couldn't win unless they got in a few swings with their 1 and 2 drops.
Have you any data that proves or at least suggests a correlation between predominantly playing aggro and spending more money on packs? Certainly a counter-intuitive idea considering aggressive decks generally have a significantly lower dust cost than heavier ones trying to abuse big legendaries. For a personal anecdote - I buy a lot of packs. When a set comes out I'll usually make sure I have access to everything so I spend a decent amount on the game. I play just about every deck that has a reasonable win rate but tend to favour control and slower midrange strategies. In any case without any data there's an absolute non-argument with regard to Zephrys being designed to make aggressive gameplay dominant for financial reasons. I won't dismiss the idea as impossible (although I still disagree that Zephrys promotes aggressive gameplay in the first place) but without so much as a logical reason for the aggro player to be the supreme patron of Hearthstone, I cannot take this argument too seriously at this time.
If you do the math you'll notice that Zeph. is played predemonantly in aggro/aggressive decks. Logically most effective.
I never stated that the card isn't used by non-aggressive archetypes. I implied that it is most effective in aggressive archetypes and as such an extra check on a strategic and skillfull gameplay. Control using it against aggro is less effective due to lesser survival time against anything aggressive. Do you think that e.g. control Priest has any regular advantage of Zeph. against some mindless hordes of Murlocs in Paladin/Shaman?
Burn - Buff - Chargers - Summon are the cornerstones of a mindless win condition. Zeph. as a minion has been added to that equation since the AI calls the shots based on the current boardstate. No skill, no strategy, just puzzling.
Zeph is desastrous against board oriented gameplay and as such an extra advantage for damage - out- of - hand - don't care - about - the - board - go face - win condition.
Conclusion: Zeph. makes a polarized meta even worse. But elsewhere I've already argued that card design = creating a sustained polarized meta. In the end Zeph. is about maintaining a dominant aggressive meta. Serving the target audience, who simply buys the most packs.
Aggro decks by design aim to consistently achieve a strong curve. As such, including 2 ofs in an aggro deck is generally superior to not including 2 ofs - you want your Flame Imp into your Knife Juggler etc and playing 2 copies of each ensures that a strong curve is more consistently achieved. If Highlander Warlock out-represents standard Zoo at Grandmasters or its win rate on ladder remains higher for a couple of weeks I will reconsider my opinion on this - but at the moment I believe the concept is a flash in the pan, and will soon fade away when people realise that consistent reliability is better than one above average 2 drop. Murloc Paladin is a slightly different creature, but its power lies in being able to play out 20 mana worth of cards as early as turn 5 (or 4 with coin). Ironically Zephrys > Shadowflame will answer this almost every time with the exception of Nightmare Amalgam or trading off a Bluegill Warrior to create board space and playing a Coldlight Seer. In any case, Zephrys in MOST aggro strategies is actually counter-intuative (with Hunter seeming to be an exception).
I don't think we are in full agreement over what comprises "strategic and skillful gameplay." I'm not entirely switched off to the fact that there is a skill set required for playing aggro correctly that is completely different to the skill set required to play control correctly. As a matter of fact in both cases, the skill factor is significantly greater when the hero deck and enemy deck are similar in strategy - aggro playing against control simply has to try and win as fast as possible, while avoiding potential AoE, while control playing against aggro simply has to preserve their life total until the aggro deck has run out of steam. Aggressive gameplay requires skill, however control decks do not allow aggro players to display their skill, because they are on a strict clock to win before the control deck stabilises and unless the control deck opens nutty with a lot of low drops, there are very few micro decisions for the aggro player to make outside of "how many minions is it safe to play into my opponent's brawl?" It is aggro vs aggro, and control vs control where you will see decisions matter significantly more. Zephrys serves a different function in a slow deck to a fast deck, and depending on the matchup - he isn't strictly better at one than the other.
Burn, buff, charge and summon, are the majority of win conditions available in Hearthstone and do not equate to mindless gameplay. All of the aforementioned have counter play - heal, remove, taunt, and trade - and make up the motions of a game of Hearthstone. Freeze Mage is widely regarded by many as one of the hardest decks to pilot since Hearthstone's inception. It a slow deck that relies almost entirely on burn to win the game. Is it mindless aggression? Vanilla Wallet Warrior relied on a 15 damage burn into a swing from Alex and Gorehowl to win games. Is that mindless aggression?
The majority of aggro decks since the start of Hearthstone have required the player to have a board in order to get the majority of their damage through. Take "Tempo" Mage from Gadgetzan - it would absolutely use burn cards to finish the game, but it had to get in a significant amount of minion chip damage before transitioning into a burn game plan. Even Face Hunter and Pirate Warrior, the purest forms of aggro Hearthstone has ever known, couldn't win unless they got in a few swings with their 1 and 2 drops.
Have you any data that proves or at least suggests a correlation between predominantly playing aggro and spending more money on packs? Certainly a counter-intuitive idea considering aggressive decks generally have a significantly lower dust cost than heavier ones trying to abuse big legendaries. For a personal anecdote - I buy a lot of packs. When a set comes out I'll usually make sure I have access to everything so I spend a decent amount on the game. I play just about every deck that has a reasonable win rate but tend to favour control and slower midrange strategies. In any case without any data there's an absolute non-argument with regard to Zephrys being designed to make aggressive gameplay dominant for financial reasons. I won't dismiss the idea as impossible (although I still disagree that Zephrys promotes aggressive gameplay in the first place) but without so much as a logical reason for the aggro player to be the supreme patron of Hearthstone, I cannot take this argument too seriously at this time.
You constantly ask for 'data' young apprentice, whilst you must know data is scarce. Well hidden and mask from the investigative eye. Courtesy of Blizzard. Yes there's HS-replay and VS, but these pale against what lies behind closed doors.
More than once people ask for data if they want to defend, or believe in the good intentions of developers. Knowing data acces is limited case closed. Hiding behind 'no proof' so everything is fine. Well Is it?
These are the gullible ones. Who stand ready to throw 'conspiracy theory' in your face. Fellow travelers and bandwagon commentators, doing Blizzards bidding without any proof either.
There's a lot to see with the naked eye. If you want to see it.
I wanted to comment on how some say that the deck building limitations of Zephrys to justify the power level of the card and possibly allow for classes to get around their weaknesses by using this card. And how Zephrys is not easy to simple to throw into any deck.
This premise that having a 1 of in your deck limits your consistency is usually true. But when you have a larger card pool and you have redundant cards to fill similar roles, then having 1 ofs any card does not matter. Highlander decks in general succeed because of said redundancy as well as value cards, whether in drawing them or producing cards through discover effects.
Zephrys is NOT hard to throw into ANY deck. Zephrys is NOT hard to activate in aggro. If you are winning the game with an Aggro deck, you DON'T NEED Zephrys. You can treat the card as another 2 drop with 3/2 stats. In the case of Aggro decks, your weakness is cards in hand to play, card draw, big taunts or healing. You usually run out of steam and have no 'reach' damage to push for the win. In an aggro style deck, board control and minions is how you do your damage. Zephrys allows you to Discover reach cards to stick that final damage to win. The disadvantage of Aggro decks is that they SHOULD ALWAYS LOSE if the game goes past turn 10.
Regardless if you agree or not, this card is so powerful, you can treat it as a generic 2 drop with 3/2 stats. And if it happens to trigger for you anytime during the game, it gets around the whole point of it's implied deck building weakness.
How many decks play Acidic Swamp Ooze in their decks? What if you are facing one of the classes that doesn't have weapons or even play with them anymore? It's a dead 2 drop. It has zero value other than fighting for board control early on. Or making your opponent use removal on it. Late game, the card has even LESS value. But you play with it because you MIGHT need it against weapon classes.
Zephrys has the opposite effect. For a 2 drop to go UP in value the longer the game goes on, is what is fundamentally wrong with the card.
As I said, I love the design and digital space it occupies. I think it requires a balance of skill and some luck to play properly. Those are not the problem with the card.
I really wish the card ONLY discovered basic and class cards from your class and neutral ones. That would still make it a very flexible card late game but could potentially give you a game winning card FROM YOUR CLASS ONLY. That would be balanced and fair. It would maintain class identity but still allowing you to get a card you would not normally put into your deck. Or allow you a 3rd copy of a card if you already play with 2 of them.
I would really love to have a conversation about Class Identity in a new thread and talk about how other games have tried to tackle this and the mistakes those games made and have tried to fix it over the years. And I am not just talking about Magic the Gathering. I played all sorts of CCGs and TCGs over the years. Sometimes the design team makes a mistake. Sometimes they say hey, wouldn't it be neat if Red had good unconditional card draw? The answer is usually No. No, do not give specific classes, color pies or factions card draw. Why? Because that was the initial weakness of that class, color or faction. Can you do it occasionally or make it conditional? Sure, but you have to be very careful in doing so.
As a quick example...in MTG, the color Red has no ability to remove enchantments. In general, this is true, but there are a few really conditional ways for it to happen, but they cannot as a general rule. They ARE however one of the best colors to remove artifacts (along with green and white). Giving Red a way to remove enchantments would be a HUGE mistake. You want them to have an inherit weakness. If you like playing Red, but want the ability to remove enchantments, you would play Green or White as your second color.
Blue, is the king of counterspells. Almost every set ever released, blue will always get some sort of ability to negate another spell in some capacity. They are terrible at dealing with creature threats on a permanent basis though. Sure, they can Unsummon (Sap equivalent) a creature and bounce it back to your hand, but the creature will keep coming until you counter spell it or win the game. Giving Blue a way to KILL creatures is fundamentally AGAINST the color of Blue.
Take these 2 examples above and apply it to Hearthstone classes. Druids are terrible at dealing with Big minion threats and Wide boards that have more than 2 toughness. They are however great at gaining armor/life, making their own Wide boards and card draw. Now imagine the class that is terrible at dealing with wide boards is given Flamestrike. That is the problem with Zephrys.
Zephrys gives Druid Flamestrike. Zephrys does not need to be in a highlander version of Druid. They can play Elise, along with Zephrys, draw their whole deck and have answers to anything they need at the end of the game. And get multiple copies of those cards. This is the same as giving Red decks in MTG the ability to destroy enchantments.
Anyhow, I see how this thread is going and not only are minds not going to be changed, they are barely listening.
You constantly ask for 'data' young apprentice, whilst you must know data is scarce. Well hidden and mask from the investigative eye. Courtesy of Blizzard. Yes there's HS-replay and VS, but these pale against what lies behind closed doors.
More than once people ask for data if they want to defend, or believe in the good intentions of developers. Knowing data acces is limited case closed. Hiding behind 'no proof' so everything is fine. Well Is it?
These are the gullible ones. Who stand ready to throw 'conspiracy theory' in your face. Fellow travelers and bandwagon commentators, doing Blizzards bidding without any proof either.
There's a lot to see with the naked eye. If you want to see it.
Data that proves your case beyond reasonable doubt is what you need if you want to make an allegation. At the very least a logical argument could spark a debate, but there doesn't appear to be either in this circumstance. Blizzard can and should put profit at the forefront of their actions, since they are a business and the purpose of a business is to generate revenue, however there is no financial gain to be made by keeping aggro as the dominant archetype, or by rigging games based on how much the players have spent on the product. Keeping one dominant archetype (this isn't actually the case as you will see if you review the available data on vS and HSR, which use sample sizes more than great enough to determine trends and provide accurate matchup win rates) would only serve to make the majority of consumers bored and less likely to spend money on the product. It makes more sense for strong archetypes to rotate, which incidentally happens all by itself on a weekly basis anyway due to the Aggro-Control-Combo trifecta in TCGs/CCGs warping the metagame on a regular basis. Match/RNG rigging makes no sense from a business standpoint for two reasons - Firstly if you reward the player who has spent more on your product with better RNG and higher win rates, you drive away the casual player - still a valued prospect - who may spend money on packs at any given moment (but not so much if they feel like they are out-lucked all the time and have a horrible gaming experience). And secondly, Hearthstone is a young game in the grand scheme of things, it has had plenty of predecessors in the TGC/CCG world. Many professional players from other card games play Hearthstone. Among these are brilliant-minded mathematicians and statisticians - with the sheer volume of these people that are playing Blizzards game, match rigging would be sniffed out quite quickly.
My intention is not to defend Blizzard or believe that they have good intentions, but rather seek proof or sound logic suggesting that they have bad intentions. I imagine their intentions are strictly business oriented, but that certainly does not suggest that they are going around rigging matches against ftp players and making it so that decks with a low skill floor are the most powerful (again the data suggests that at the latter of these two is not the case anyway). Regarding the question "is it fine?" well that depends on your parameters for defining "fine." Is Hearthstone the pinnacle of skill in which a Grandmaster will beat a lesser opponent 100% of the time through superior play? Absolutely not. Is Hearthstone a complete RNG fiesta in which a three year old child can win 50% of their games by clicking randomly and dribbling on their keyboard? Again, absolutely not. Hearthstone is somewhere on the scale between these two. Is it perfectly balanced on that scale? Probably not, I think most of us would appreciate a game that favours the skilled player a little more, but Hearthstone is not, and has never been marketed as that, so in terms of "doing what it says on the tin," Hearthstone is indeed "fine."
I haven't seen anyone on here mention conspiracy theories, so I'll go ahead and breeze past that one... Without data on match rigging and RNG favouring the patron, and data that conflicts with the theory that aggro is ever dominant, we can only go by our own gaming experiences if we want to make a case against Blizzard - in my case, my gaming experience very much agrees with the data provided by vS. Control generally dominates aggro, aggro generally dominates combo, and combo generally dominates control. These numbers hold up whichever side of the board I am playing on and I don't feel that I suffer from unfair loss streaks at the hands of rigged matchmaking/RNG or low-skilled players beating me with "brainless" decks.
"There's a lot to see with the naked eye. If you want to see it." - As someone who is fact/data oriented, I'm not looking for what I want to see. I am looking for what is there.
You constantly ask for 'data' young apprentice, whilst you must know data is scarce. Well hidden and mask from the investigative eye. Courtesy of Blizzard. Yes there's HS-replay and VS, but these pale against what lies behind closed doors.
More than once people ask for data if they want to defend, or believe in the good intentions of developers. Knowing data acces is limited case closed. Hiding behind 'no proof' so everything is fine. Well Is it?
These are the gullible ones. Who stand ready to throw 'conspiracy theory' in your face. Fellow travelers and bandwagon commentators, doing Blizzards bidding without any proof either.
There's a lot to see with the naked eye. If you want to see it.
Data that proves your case beyond reasonable doubt is what you need if you want to make an allegation. At the very least a logical argument could spark a debate, but there doesn't appear to be either in this circumstance. Blizzard can and should put profit at the forefront of their actions, since they are a business and the purpose of a business is to generate revenue, however there is no financial gain to be made by keeping aggro as the dominant archetype, or by rigging games based on how much the players have spent on the product. Keeping one dominant archetype (this isn't actually the case as you will see if you review the available data on vS and HSR, which use sample sizes more than great enough to determine trends and provide accurate matchup win rates) would only serve to make the majority of consumers bored and less likely to spend money on the product. It makes more sense for strong archetypes to rotate, which incidentally happens all by itself on a weekly basis anyway due to the Aggro-Control-Combo trifecta in TCGs/CCGs warping the metagame on a regular basis. Match/RNG rigging makes no sense from a business standpoint for two reasons - Firstly if you reward the player who has spent more on your product with better RNG and higher win rates, you drive away the casual player - still a valued prospect - who may spend money on packs at any given moment (but not so much if they feel like they are out-lucked all the time and have a horrible gaming experience). And secondly, Hearthstone is a young game in the grand scheme of things, it has had plenty of predecessors in the TGC/CCG world. Many professional players from other card games play Hearthstone. Among these are brilliant-minded mathematicians and statisticians - with the sheer volume of these people that are playing Blizzards game, match rigging would be sniffed out quite quickly.
My intention is not to defend Blizzard or believe that they have good intentions, but rather seek proof or sound logic suggesting that they have bad intentions. I imagine their intentions are strictly business oriented, but that certainly does not suggest that they are going around rigging matches against ftp players and making it so that decks with a low skill floor are the most powerful (again the data suggests that at the latter of these two is not the case anyway). Regarding the question "is it fine?" well that depends on your parameters for defining "fine." Is Hearthstone the pinnacle of skill in which a Grandmaster will beat a lesser opponent 100% of the time through superior play? Absolutely not. Is Hearthstone a complete RNG fiesta in which a three year old child can win 50% of their games by clicking randomly and dribbling on their keyboard? Again, absolutely not. Hearthstone is somewhere on the scale between these two. Is it perfectly balanced on that scale? Probably not, I think most of us would appreciate a game that favours the skilled player a little more, but Hearthstone is not, and has never been marketed as that, so in terms of "doing what it says on the tin," Hearthstone is indeed "fine."
I haven't seen anyone on here mention conspiracy theories, so I'll go ahead and breeze past that one... Without data on match rigging and RNG favouring the patron, and data that conflicts with the theory that aggro is ever dominant, we can only go by our own gaming experiences if we want to make a case against Blizzard - in my case, my gaming experience very much agrees with the data provided by vS. Control generally dominates aggro, aggro generally dominates combo, and combo generally dominates control. These numbers hold up whichever side of the board I am playing on and I don't feel that I suffer from unfair loss streaks at the hands of rigged matchmaking/RNG or low-skilled players beating me with "brainless" decks.
"There's a lot to see with the naked eye. If you want to see it." - As someone who is fact/data oriented, I'm not looking for what I want to see. I am looking for what is there.
I will recommend you to the High Council of Blizzards Defense Committee. Much to learn and less to argue.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
It's like we're not allowed to have good cards in the game. Maybe Zephrys is a bit too good. So what? Good cards are what promotes pack sales. And more pack sales, means more money and more money mean more luxurious holidays for the Blizzard employees, and some experiences are shown in the new card sets. The last art changes has shown us what beautiful country China is.
Hearth stone is a card game, with a part fo skill based componetn (create the deck and plan which card playing reading the opponents moves) and rng + luck component (draw the right card + or the rng situations).
I guess the average deck and game is around 35% skills and 65% luck, (with stupid deck like paladin murlock only based on luck)
anyway this card is cancer just because is out of the game as it always been. It's not a skill card. No deck at all is build around this card. Lot of people put in the deck wit double cards just waiting for a lifesaver late in the game. So no Skill at all, zero, nada, rien, niente.
and it's not rng driven. It' s a (pretty smart) AI help. you don't win for your intelligence, or luck, or strategy, you win because they give you a card that you don't even put in your deck,
It's like playing Poker, i have a pair of 10 against a pair of aces, but wait... i can ask the dealer to give me another 10. Cool, i am so strong.
so whoever designed this card: Fuck you. put this shit in casual only and give it free to people to learn how cards can work.
And whoever decided to approve this card; fuck you. you should be fired.
I couldnt agree more with you. Zephrys is a Problem and it Needs to be adressed. Beeing able to create any Card you Need for any cenario as any class is just way to good. And dont anyone argue "but you Need a Highlander deck to Play it" - no, no you dont. Results Show that Zephrys does very well in non Highlander decks aswell and more and more decks / Players are catching up to that ( also, with every new Expansion Zephrys / Highlander decks just becomes better and better since there will be more good Cards, more Cards to go full Highlander if you want ). Zephrys also creates this bad world were you cant Play some decks because once your Opponent gets Zephrys your whole plan can be ruined. Two examples: Lord Jaraxxus - get Sacrifical Pact and win easy. Lucentbark? Mass Dispel and the army you worked for is all of a sudden dead ( one deck i would really love to Play yet cant because of the existence of one freaking Card ). Dont get me wrong, i like the idea behind Zephrys, they did a great Job with that, but in my opinion its Options are way to much ( especialy with Blizzards shared thoughts About class identity in mind ).
I think Zephrys should / Needs to be nerfed to class and neutral Cards only. Zephrys would still be a very good Card but not as ridiculous as it is now.
This is so true. Zephrys is included in more and more decks. Mostly aggro.
Yesterday I played a rogue that played Myras into Zephrys into lethal via fireball. It's just ridiculous.
And in wild weapon removal for every class without having the downside to put an in other matchup useless ooze or Harrison into your deck just is not fun.
You just have to identify the opponents win condition and zephrys can easily cripple it. That is not for the good of the game.
This card makes nearly every deck much better and eradicates its weaknesses that are normally defined by the deck building or the ''class identity lol''.
Giving every class brawl, bloodlust, SW: death, tirion, MCT, weapon removal, cabal, fireball, flamestrike etc all in one card? How could that POSSIBLY be a bad idea?
It's like we're not allowed to have good cards in the game. Maybe Zephrys is a bit too good. So what? Good cards are what promotes pack sales. And more pack sales, means more money and more money mean more luxurious holidays for the Blizzard employees, and some experiences are shown in the new card sets. The last art changes has shown us what beautiful country China is.
"more luxurious holidays for the Blizzard employees" Sure all shareholders and CEO. How else can they afford their mansions. Basic human needs, And dont dare to shittalk out glorious leader. Its not like they arent watching.
https://hsreplay.net/cards/53756/zephrys-the-great#tab=recommended-decks
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
Cards like this cause many players to quit the game. This is one explanation why Savij , the most proeminent player of this game quit and many others too. The games are so shitty, with shitty cards like this everysingletime that make a normal guy go crazy, specially when u do everything right and still lose.
Link Below why savij quit the game https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/9kjwm4/savjz_explains_why_he_quit_hearthstone/
This is a list of various decks (across numerous archetypes) that play Zephrys and their respective win %s. It doesn't give any information about how Zephrys affects the aggro vs control matchup, and it supports my argument that Zephrys is not strictly an aggressive card.
I won't argue against Zephry's being a crazy powerful card, but suggesting that it was printed to make aggro the dominant archetype and "keep control in check" doesn't make any sense, as it is just as efficient at denying tempo as it is at creating it. It can be used proactively by an aggro deck to generate tempo, of course, but it can equally be used by a control deck either reactively to deny tempo, or preemptively to set up their own tempo play before the aggro deck has taken hold of the board.
In addition to the above, "control decks" as a concept literally exist to keep aggro in check, it doesn't matter what classic or basic card you slip into an aggro deck, it is still going to get hosed by control 60%-70% of the time (with these number increasing at higher ranks due to players having a deeper understanding of control strategies). I have pulled some stats from vS Data Reaper report 22/08/2019 (link below) and it shows that at the time of the report, Control Warrior was favoured against every deck that would be classed as aggro* that appeared on the report (Mech Hunter, Aggro Rogue, Aggro Warrior, Murloc Shaman, Murloc Paladin, Zoo Warlock (decks in bold usually include Zephrys)). And while it is true that 2 of the 3 matchups Control Warrior is weak in do play Zephrys, as I mentioned previously, they are anti-control strategies by default irrespective of Zephrys' inclusion because they play things like Luna's Pocket Galaxy and Dinotamer Brann, which already give control decks a lot of trouble.
It also makes sense to ask ourselves, is it even true that aggro is dominating control and keeping it in check? Well if we look at HSReplay, it would suggest that the aggressive Murloc Paladin and Murloc Shaman sit alone in tier 1, which on the surface looks promising (although this is highly likely inflated by the data not being filtered to ranks of a reasonable standard of gameplay). Interestingly enough however, Murloc Paladin in particular punishes greedy, inconsistent and highly popular Highlander decks, with both also able to destroy experimental new decks that have come about as a result of the balance patch. Meanwhile both Murloc aggro decks get utterly dominated by Control Warrior, which has declined in popularity since the patch. In conclusion we can see that aggro is indeed doing well, but it isn't pushing control out, it is simply taking advantage of a meta full of super greedy and/or experimental decks and fewer Control Warriors. These stats will prompt people to play more aggressive decks, which will present an opening for control decks to step in and punish an aggressive meta until the hyper greed takes over again and the experiments become refined.
*Aggro referring to a deck that prioritises face damage over playing for board and aims to achieve victory before the late game.
vS Data Reaper Report - https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/drr/matchup-chart-data-reaper-report/
If you do the math you'll notice that Zeph. is played predemonantly in aggro/aggressive decks. Logically most effective.
I never stated that the card isn't used by non-aggressive archetypes. I implied that it is most effective in aggressive archetypes and as such an extra check on a strategic and skillfull gameplay. Control using it against aggro is less effective due to lesser survival time against anything aggressive. Do you think that e.g. control Priest has any regular advantage of Zeph. against some mindless hordes of Murlocs in Paladin/Shaman?
Burn - Buff - Chargers - Summon are the cornerstones of a mindless win condition. Zeph. as a minion has been added to that equation since the AI calls the shots based on the current boardstate. No skill, no strategy, just puzzling.
Zeph is desastrous against board oriented gameplay and as such an extra advantage for damage - out- of - hand - don't care - about - the - board - go face - win condition.
Conclusion: Zeph. makes a polarized meta even worse. But elsewhere I've already argued that card design = creating a sustained polarized meta. In the end Zeph. is about maintaining a dominant aggressive meta. Serving the target audience, who simply buys the most packs.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
i dont think its a problem, that one card offers out of class things. its totally okay. u sacrifice duplicates and thats huge. well class identity not damaged much when u have one option for the perfect card.
I'm actually impressed with how strong zephyrs is, I'm shocked with how much I need the cards that pop up very frequently.
I think the main problem is his low cost. You could increase it with his stats, even make him high value like a 4/5 for 4, and keep the mechanic so it isnt so disruptive to late game play by himself. I've seen him played countless times with 9 or 10 mana followed up by the discovered card, which often costs 8 mana.
Aggro decks by design aim to consistently achieve a strong curve. As such, including 2 ofs in an aggro deck is generally superior to not including 2 ofs - you want your Flame Imp into your Knife Juggler etc and playing 2 copies of each ensures that a strong curve is more consistently achieved. If Highlander Warlock out-represents standard Zoo at Grandmasters or its win rate on ladder remains higher for a couple of weeks I will reconsider my opinion on this - but at the moment I believe the concept is a flash in the pan, and will soon fade away when people realise that consistent reliability is better than one above average 2 drop. Murloc Paladin is a slightly different creature, but its power lies in being able to play out 20 mana worth of cards as early as turn 5 (or 4 with coin). Ironically Zephrys > Shadowflame will answer this almost every time with the exception of Nightmare Amalgam or trading off a Bluegill Warrior to create board space and playing a Coldlight Seer. In any case, Zephrys in MOST aggro strategies is actually counter-intuative (with Hunter seeming to be an exception).
I don't think we are in full agreement over what comprises "strategic and skillful gameplay." I'm not entirely switched off to the fact that there is a skill set required for playing aggro correctly that is completely different to the skill set required to play control correctly. As a matter of fact in both cases, the skill factor is significantly greater when the hero deck and enemy deck are similar in strategy - aggro playing against control simply has to try and win as fast as possible, while avoiding potential AoE, while control playing against aggro simply has to preserve their life total until the aggro deck has run out of steam. Aggressive gameplay requires skill, however control decks do not allow aggro players to display their skill, because they are on a strict clock to win before the control deck stabilises and unless the control deck opens nutty with a lot of low drops, there are very few micro decisions for the aggro player to make outside of "how many minions is it safe to play into my opponent's brawl?" It is aggro vs aggro, and control vs control where you will see decisions matter significantly more. Zephrys serves a different function in a slow deck to a fast deck, and depending on the matchup - he isn't strictly better at one than the other.
Burn, buff, charge and summon, are the majority of win conditions available in Hearthstone and do not equate to mindless gameplay. All of the aforementioned have counter play - heal, remove, taunt, and trade - and make up the motions of a game of Hearthstone. Freeze Mage is widely regarded by many as one of the hardest decks to pilot since Hearthstone's inception. It a slow deck that relies almost entirely on burn to win the game. Is it mindless aggression? Vanilla Wallet Warrior relied on a 15 damage burn into a swing from Alex and Gorehowl to win games. Is that mindless aggression?
The majority of aggro decks since the start of Hearthstone have required the player to have a board in order to get the majority of their damage through. Take "Tempo" Mage from Gadgetzan - it would absolutely use burn cards to finish the game, but it had to get in a significant amount of minion chip damage before transitioning into a burn game plan. Even Face Hunter and Pirate Warrior, the purest forms of aggro Hearthstone has ever known, couldn't win unless they got in a few swings with their 1 and 2 drops.
Have you any data that proves or at least suggests a correlation between predominantly playing aggro and spending more money on packs? Certainly a counter-intuitive idea considering aggressive decks generally have a significantly lower dust cost than heavier ones trying to abuse big legendaries.
For a personal anecdote - I buy a lot of packs. When a set comes out I'll usually make sure I have access to everything so I spend a decent amount on the game. I play just about every deck that has a reasonable win rate but tend to favour control and slower midrange strategies.
In any case without any data there's an absolute non-argument with regard to Zephrys being designed to make aggressive gameplay dominant for financial reasons. I won't dismiss the idea as impossible (although I still disagree that Zephrys promotes aggressive gameplay in the first place) but without so much as a logical reason for the aggro player to be the supreme patron of Hearthstone, I cannot take this argument too seriously at this time.
You constantly ask for 'data' young apprentice, whilst you must know data is scarce. Well hidden and mask from the investigative eye. Courtesy of Blizzard. Yes there's HS-replay and VS, but these pale against what lies behind closed doors.
More than once people ask for data if they want to defend, or believe in the good intentions of developers. Knowing data acces is limited case closed. Hiding behind 'no proof' so everything is fine. Well Is it?
These are the gullible ones. Who stand ready to throw 'conspiracy theory' in your face. Fellow travelers and bandwagon commentators, doing Blizzards bidding without any proof either.
There's a lot to see with the naked eye. If you want to see it.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
I wanted to comment on how some say that the deck building limitations of Zephrys to justify the power level of the card and possibly allow for classes to get around their weaknesses by using this card. And how Zephrys is not easy to simple to throw into any deck.
This premise that having a 1 of in your deck limits your consistency is usually true. But when you have a larger card pool and you have redundant cards to fill similar roles, then having 1 ofs any card does not matter. Highlander decks in general succeed because of said redundancy as well as value cards, whether in drawing them or producing cards through discover effects.
Zephrys is NOT hard to throw into ANY deck. Zephrys is NOT hard to activate in aggro. If you are winning the game with an Aggro deck, you DON'T NEED Zephrys. You can treat the card as another 2 drop with 3/2 stats. In the case of Aggro decks, your weakness is cards in hand to play, card draw, big taunts or healing. You usually run out of steam and have no 'reach' damage to push for the win. In an aggro style deck, board control and minions is how you do your damage. Zephrys allows you to Discover reach cards to stick that final damage to win. The disadvantage of Aggro decks is that they SHOULD ALWAYS LOSE if the game goes past turn 10.
Regardless if you agree or not, this card is so powerful, you can treat it as a generic 2 drop with 3/2 stats. And if it happens to trigger for you anytime during the game, it gets around the whole point of it's implied deck building weakness.
How many decks play Acidic Swamp Ooze in their decks? What if you are facing one of the classes that doesn't have weapons or even play with them anymore? It's a dead 2 drop. It has zero value other than fighting for board control early on. Or making your opponent use removal on it. Late game, the card has even LESS value. But you play with it because you MIGHT need it against weapon classes.
Zephrys has the opposite effect. For a 2 drop to go UP in value the longer the game goes on, is what is fundamentally wrong with the card.
As I said, I love the design and digital space it occupies. I think it requires a balance of skill and some luck to play properly. Those are not the problem with the card.
I really wish the card ONLY discovered basic and class cards from your class and neutral ones. That would still make it a very flexible card late game but could potentially give you a game winning card FROM YOUR CLASS ONLY. That would be balanced and fair. It would maintain class identity but still allowing you to get a card you would not normally put into your deck. Or allow you a 3rd copy of a card if you already play with 2 of them.
I would really love to have a conversation about Class Identity in a new thread and talk about how other games have tried to tackle this and the mistakes those games made and have tried to fix it over the years. And I am not just talking about Magic the Gathering. I played all sorts of CCGs and TCGs over the years. Sometimes the design team makes a mistake. Sometimes they say hey, wouldn't it be neat if Red had good unconditional card draw? The answer is usually No. No, do not give specific classes, color pies or factions card draw. Why? Because that was the initial weakness of that class, color or faction. Can you do it occasionally or make it conditional? Sure, but you have to be very careful in doing so.
As a quick example...in MTG, the color Red has no ability to remove enchantments. In general, this is true, but there are a few really conditional ways for it to happen, but they cannot as a general rule. They ARE however one of the best colors to remove artifacts (along with green and white). Giving Red a way to remove enchantments would be a HUGE mistake. You want them to have an inherit weakness. If you like playing Red, but want the ability to remove enchantments, you would play Green or White as your second color.
Blue, is the king of counterspells. Almost every set ever released, blue will always get some sort of ability to negate another spell in some capacity. They are terrible at dealing with creature threats on a permanent basis though. Sure, they can Unsummon (Sap equivalent) a creature and bounce it back to your hand, but the creature will keep coming until you counter spell it or win the game. Giving Blue a way to KILL creatures is fundamentally AGAINST the color of Blue.
Take these 2 examples above and apply it to Hearthstone classes. Druids are terrible at dealing with Big minion threats and Wide boards that have more than 2 toughness. They are however great at gaining armor/life, making their own Wide boards and card draw. Now imagine the class that is terrible at dealing with wide boards is given Flamestrike. That is the problem with Zephrys.
Zephrys gives Druid Flamestrike. Zephrys does not need to be in a highlander version of Druid. They can play Elise, along with Zephrys, draw their whole deck and have answers to anything they need at the end of the game. And get multiple copies of those cards. This is the same as giving Red decks in MTG the ability to destroy enchantments.
Anyhow, I see how this thread is going and not only are minds not going to be changed, they are barely listening.
Data that proves your case beyond reasonable doubt is what you need if you want to make an allegation. At the very least a logical argument could spark a debate, but there doesn't appear to be either in this circumstance. Blizzard can and should put profit at the forefront of their actions, since they are a business and the purpose of a business is to generate revenue, however there is no financial gain to be made by keeping aggro as the dominant archetype, or by rigging games based on how much the players have spent on the product.
Keeping one dominant archetype (this isn't actually the case as you will see if you review the available data on vS and HSR, which use sample sizes more than great enough to determine trends and provide accurate matchup win rates) would only serve to make the majority of consumers bored and less likely to spend money on the product. It makes more sense for strong archetypes to rotate, which incidentally happens all by itself on a weekly basis anyway due to the Aggro-Control-Combo trifecta in TCGs/CCGs warping the metagame on a regular basis.
Match/RNG rigging makes no sense from a business standpoint for two reasons - Firstly if you reward the player who has spent more on your product with better RNG and higher win rates, you drive away the casual player - still a valued prospect - who may spend money on packs at any given moment (but not so much if they feel like they are out-lucked all the time and have a horrible gaming experience). And secondly, Hearthstone is a young game in the grand scheme of things, it has had plenty of predecessors in the TGC/CCG world. Many professional players from other card games play Hearthstone. Among these are brilliant-minded mathematicians and statisticians - with the sheer volume of these people that are playing Blizzards game, match rigging would be sniffed out quite quickly.
My intention is not to defend Blizzard or believe that they have good intentions, but rather seek proof or sound logic suggesting that they have bad intentions. I imagine their intentions are strictly business oriented, but that certainly does not suggest that they are going around rigging matches against ftp players and making it so that decks with a low skill floor are the most powerful (again the data suggests that at the latter of these two is not the case anyway).
Regarding the question "is it fine?" well that depends on your parameters for defining "fine." Is Hearthstone the pinnacle of skill in which a Grandmaster will beat a lesser opponent 100% of the time through superior play? Absolutely not. Is Hearthstone a complete RNG fiesta in which a three year old child can win 50% of their games by clicking randomly and dribbling on their keyboard? Again, absolutely not. Hearthstone is somewhere on the scale between these two. Is it perfectly balanced on that scale? Probably not, I think most of us would appreciate a game that favours the skilled player a little more, but Hearthstone is not, and has never been marketed as that, so in terms of "doing what it says on the tin," Hearthstone is indeed "fine."
I haven't seen anyone on here mention conspiracy theories, so I'll go ahead and breeze past that one...
Without data on match rigging and RNG favouring the patron, and data that conflicts with the theory that aggro is ever dominant, we can only go by our own gaming experiences if we want to make a case against Blizzard - in my case, my gaming experience very much agrees with the data provided by vS. Control generally dominates aggro, aggro generally dominates combo, and combo generally dominates control. These numbers hold up whichever side of the board I am playing on and I don't feel that I suffer from unfair loss streaks at the hands of rigged matchmaking/RNG or low-skilled players beating me with "brainless" decks.
"There's a lot to see with the naked eye. If you want to see it." - As someone who is fact/data oriented, I'm not looking for what I want to see. I am looking for what is there.
I will recommend you to the High Council of Blizzards Defense Committee. Much to learn and less to argue.
We make our world significant through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.
I’ll await something with more substance.
It's like we're not allowed to have good cards in the game. Maybe Zephrys is a bit too good. So what? Good cards are what promotes pack sales. And more pack sales, means more money and more money mean more luxurious holidays for the Blizzard employees, and some experiences are shown in the new card sets. The last art changes has shown us what beautiful country China is.
This card has to go out.
Hearth stone is a card game, with a part fo skill based componetn (create the deck and plan which card playing reading the opponents moves) and rng + luck component (draw the right card + or the rng situations).
I guess the average deck and game is around 35% skills and 65% luck, (with stupid deck like paladin murlock only based on luck)
anyway this card is cancer just because is out of the game as it always been. It's not a skill card. No deck at all is build around this card. Lot of people put in the deck wit double cards just waiting for a lifesaver late in the game. So no Skill at all, zero, nada, rien, niente.
and it's not rng driven. It' s a (pretty smart) AI help. you don't win for your intelligence, or luck, or strategy, you win because they give you a card that you don't even put in your deck,
It's like playing Poker, i have a pair of 10 against a pair of aces, but wait... i can ask the dealer to give me another 10. Cool, i am so strong.
so whoever designed this card: Fuck you. put this shit in casual only and give it free to people to learn how cards can work.
And whoever decided to approve this card; fuck you. you should be fired.
The problem with zepphrys is its cost, with 2 mana makes kazakus look stupid..
I couldnt agree more with you. Zephrys is a Problem and it Needs to be adressed. Beeing able to create any Card you Need for any cenario as any class is just way to good. And dont anyone argue "but you Need a Highlander deck to Play it" - no, no you dont. Results Show that Zephrys does very well in non Highlander decks aswell and more and more decks / Players are catching up to that ( also, with every new Expansion Zephrys / Highlander decks just becomes better and better since there will be more good Cards, more Cards to go full Highlander if you want ). Zephrys also creates this bad world were you cant Play some decks because once your Opponent gets Zephrys your whole plan can be ruined. Two examples: Lord Jaraxxus - get Sacrifical Pact and win easy. Lucentbark? Mass Dispel and the army you worked for is all of a sudden dead ( one deck i would really love to Play yet cant because of the existence of one freaking Card ). Dont get me wrong, i like the idea behind Zephrys, they did a great Job with that, but in my opinion its Options are way to much ( especialy with Blizzards shared thoughts About class identity in mind ).
I think Zephrys should / Needs to be nerfed to class and neutral Cards only. Zephrys would still be a very good Card but not as ridiculous as it is now.
This is so true. Zephrys is included in more and more decks. Mostly aggro.
Yesterday I played a rogue that played Myras into Zephrys into lethal via fireball. It's just ridiculous.
And in wild weapon removal for every class without having the downside to put an in other matchup useless ooze or Harrison into your deck just is not fun.
You just have to identify the opponents win condition and zephrys can easily cripple it. That is not for the good of the game.
This card makes nearly every deck much better and eradicates its weaknesses that are normally defined by the deck building or the ''class identity lol''.
It should never have been printed.
Giving every class brawl, bloodlust, SW: death, tirion, MCT, weapon removal, cabal, fireball, flamestrike etc all in one card? How could that POSSIBLY be a bad idea?
Done, this is it.
I stop to play until this shit is Hof.
I go to play coin flip, it requires more skill and intelligence than facing retarded people that can not win without using this card.
Proud to never crafted this shit.
Have fun clicking around a screen without using your brain.
"more luxurious holidays for the Blizzard employees" Sure all shareholders and CEO. How else can they afford their mansions. Basic human needs, And dont dare to shittalk out glorious leader. Its not like they arent watching.