Patron warped the metagame around it so hardly that it was diminished mostly as patron warrior and the 2 decks that had a 60+% wr against it. Secret Pally is nowhere around it.
That doesn't mean Mysterious Challenger isn't overpowered...
Patron had around a general winrate that is ~10% higher than Secret Paladin nowadays. There are also MULTIPLE decks that can counter Secret Paladin HARD or at least quite good:
Midrange Paladin Control Priest Druid Combo + especially Aggro Freeze Mage Face Shaman
While Patron counterdeck was: Handlock
And even there Patron had a winrate around 30-40%. A good Patron Warrior had a winrate around 60-70% or more in general, that's insane.
Sorry, Secret Paladin is maybe one of the strongest decks out there, but compared to Patron pre-nerf he's nothing.
Wow.... you just completely missed the point didn't you?
Did I ever, EVER, say that Mysterious Challenger is more overpowered than Patron was? No, I didn't.
Just because Patron was more overpowered than Secret Pally (as you claim), doesn't mean that Mysterious Challenger is not an overpowered card. That's like saying Saturn isn't big because it's not as big as Jupiter.
You guys whine about every freaking card made. This community just keeps getting worse. Learn how to counter these cards or stop whining and take a break from the game if it really bothers you that much. There is no reason to keep creating threads every time you lose a game or if you don't feel like playing around a card *cough* BGH *Cough*
Still though that doesn't change the fact that these clowns keep creating nerf threads because A) They don't want to play around cards, B) They don't want to improve but instead blame everything else instead of adjusting to the meta.
These threads are just as bad as the nerf threads. Basically you are telling people to nerf the nerf threads. See the problem?
Also, @the people protecting Secret Paladin: Saying it isn't as broken as Patron is a pretty bad argument. Miracle Rogue wasn't as broken as Patron was either, yet it got nerfed. Just like Buzzard or Undertaker. What people don't seem to understand is that "a little less good than Patron" isn't the same as "balanced". If Patron was murder and Secret Paladin was aggrevated battery, both should be punished. Aggrevated battery being less awful than murder doesn't make it okay.
Undertaker was by far more broken than Patron, at least according to Ben Brode. He listed that as the #1 broken thing in 1 of the interviews.
Anyways, the reason why people are calling for nerfs for Savage Roar, and to a lesser extent Ancient of Lore, is because they are in the classic set. No one would bat an eye about it if it was in say GvG, or even TGT, since they aren't so powerful that they are broken. They are merely very powerful.
I agree that people call for nerfs way to often, but if you don't think that MC is overpowered you are just wrong.
unbalanced cards make for a stale and boring meta (Dr. Boom) in every deck? But at least it is a neutral so everyone can play it.
The problem is that people think that Mysterious Challenger is the reason Secret deck is so strong.
He is not. He's merely the icing on the cake, you can take any Secret variant out there, be it aggro or midrange and swap "none of your business" dude with something else - you can get consistent win rates as well.
Then it's like a normal midrange Paladin which is already absurdly strong, but with the fun twist you could do, e.g. Redemption your Tirion Fordring or any other late-game biggie.
Again, Mysterious Challenger is NOT the real problem. If you drop him on the empty board, he's useless. If you play some secrets before, he's useless. Not to mention running two of them doesn't make sense pretty much at all, wondering why people still seem to do that.
Also, people totally know how to play around Secrets at this point, you always aim for triggering Noble Sacrifice into Redemption. Playing Mysterious Challenger and getting both of those secrets kinda fucks up the latter one's potential.
There's no need to nerf MC because paladin is getting rekt with the new Standard format.
No Avenge, which was the best secret in pally, no minibot and no mustard. It's such a shame that blizzard decided to kill the only paladin deck that had a chance in standard-Murloc pally.
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This disclaimer Will cleanse any sense of innuendo or sarcasm From the comments that might actually make you think And will also insult your intelligence at the same time. So, if it sounds sarcastic, don't take it seriously. If it sounds dangerous, Do not try this at home or at all. And if it offends you, just don't read it.
The absolute number of nerf threads is out of control; but there are some cards that deserve to be considered for a nerf.
Mysterious Challenger is a blatantly OP card that is simply not defensible. A one stat discount for "draw and play 3-5 cards" is not balanced, even if we allow that class cards can be 0.5-1.0 mana overcosted without breaking the game. There are solutions to an MC play; but they are so predicated on drawing perfectly that acting like a decent player can be in a position to consistently have viable counterplay is completely disingenuous. For those saying Secret Pally doesn't warp the meta, consider that no other midrange deck is competitively viable (Midrange Druid is a combo deck built around sticky midrange minions, not the same thing).
Druid combo defines the entire class. There is no point designing a card that won't fit in the combo deck. If Druid is ever going to do anything interesting, the combo has to be nerfed. I hope it isn't nerfed into oblivion like Warsong though.
There is a clear difference between these cards and cards like Justicar, Shield Slam, Entomb, Execute, etc., that are very strong and can feel situationally unfair but have clearly viable counterplay and are not obscenely under-costed. I say this as someone who hasn't played Warrior since the Warsong nerf since I am primarily a FTP player and have just not collected enough Warrior cards from packs for it to be worthwhile to craft all the other expensive cards in the class. People do need to quit complaining and begging for nerfs every time a card is a clear counter to their preferred strategy; but that doesn't mean every card in Hearthstone is fine as-is.
Piloted Shredder is so good that everyone (almost) is putting a couple in the deck as a solid turn 4. ==> it limits the design space on 4 drops, where they would need to be better than shredder to be played competitively. Not only it's annoying because it kills diversity, but it kills the game at a whole on the long term, if nothing changes. Because 4 drops have to be always better to be played, until they are just too good for the game.
I underlined the sentences I don't quite comprehend; I definitely agree with the rest of it.
But why the "better than" part? The issue lies in diversity, which you've also pointed out. We don't need power creep, we don't need a BETTER alternative for Piloted Shredder, we just need THE alternative. A minion which could compete with it depending on the type of deck/class/whatever. Then you could actually have a choice when designing a deck, whether you want a stickiness or a certain tech, tribe synergy, or maybe just a solid, rich-in-stats drop.
Right now the only 4-mana minions that could compete with Piloted Shredder are the class ones and that's the problem. Piloted Shredder is SO GOOD that the worst thing that could happen is designing another 4-drop that would be objectively better than it. That's power creep and we don't want that.
So, how to overcome the issue of being forced to release competitors of the comparable value to fight staples? Formats.
If the card is simply too good to be offset by the future releases of similar power, the better way is to introduce set rotation and gradual cycling out of the older expansions/adventures. This way you can keep the game fresh at all times and introduce new stuff without worrying whether it will live up to expected power level after some time or not, because you CAN'T estimate that in development only. Dr. Boom is a perfect example of this - pretty much no-one suspected it'll be THAT good, but everyone swooned over Troggzor the Earthinator. Look how that turned out after few weeks.
I agree that people call for nerfs way to often, but if you don't think that MC is overpowered you are just wrong.
unbalanced cards make for a stale and boring meta (Dr. Boom) in every deck? But at least it is a neutral so everyone can play it.
The problem is that people think that Mysterious Challenger is the reason Secret deck is so strong.
He is not. He's merely the icing on the cake, you can take any Secret variant out there, be it aggro or midrange and swap "none of your business" dude with something else - you can get consistent win rates as well.
Then it's like a normal midrange Paladin which is already absurdly strong, but with the fun twist you could do, e.g. Redemption your Tirion Fordring or any other late-game biggie.
Again, Mysterious Challenger is NOT the real problem. If you drop him on the empty board, he's useless. If you play some secrets before, he's useless. Not to mention running two of them doesn't make sense pretty much at all, wondering why people still seem to do that.
Also, people totally know how to play around Secrets at this point, you always aim for triggering Noble Sacrifice into Redemption. Playing Mysterious Challenger and getting both of those secrets kinda fucks up the latter one's potential.
What are you even on about?
It's completely fine for a deck to be able to "shred" the early game. And it's completely fine for a deck to be able to "shred" mid or late game. But being able to "shred" the early game, and having one card that makes you comparable to the ones that wants to "shred" the mid game, is down right broken.
If you want to make a paladin deck, that "shreds" early game, you should loose if someone succeeds in fending you off. Having a single drop that can outweigh that weakness, is broken, regardless of how it does it.
remove the challenger, and secret paladin becomes an agro deck as any other, with the strengths and weaknesses that comes with being an agro deck. That's the entire issue.
Why you would think playing a challenger on an empty board is useless is beyond me.. And playing him after any other secrets makes him useless as well? What game are you even playing?
Well, Aggro Secret Paladin isn't even the strongest variant, soo...
You still have Tirion Fordring, Quartermaster, Dr. Boom and other late-game drops if you choose the midrange way of playing Secret Pala. If you have all that, you can have the super-aggressive early game AND laid-back late game with an inclusion of secrets. If you're trying to quickly climb the ladder up to the rank of 5 or so, then yes, going all out on Secrets and MC is probably a good approach as any other rush deck, but onwards? MC drastically loses in value, Secret paladin isn't even close to be at the top of meta right now.
If it's moving the game forward, opening up the design space, and diversifying the meta, I'm all on board. Standard alone will accomplish some of that. Some nerfs will be necessary - it's been over two years of Druid being a one-trick pony, with every new card designed around Force Roar. MC will lose power and rotate out in a year, so it's probably ok unless they feel handcuffed when designing class cards in the next two expansions and adventure (which I don't think should be the case).
There must be some kind of genetic personality trait associated with the nerf/anti-nerf phenomenon in CCGs.
One player goes through the entire list of cards and proposes changes to 95% of cards in order to make them more balanced (both nerfs and buffs).
Another player thinks that whatever we have is what we have (I mean, we pay designers to think about this stuff so we don't have think about it, right?), so since you know it's there, it should just be easy to play around everything, darnit!
Of course there are cards that need to be nerfed. It's like lawmaking - you can never be sure of the effects of a law until it is put into practice. Likewise, you can never be sure about the effect a card will have on the game environment. Should a bad law stay on the books forever just because some people get used to it and get an advantage from it? (BTW, the answer is no.)
Fireballs don't scale as well with board control as FoN + SR.
This^2
FoN + SR potential increases with each additional body on the board, so stickiness is key. This is why Shade of Naxxramas and every possible token generator or 5-6 health minion are considered as such a value. Add the Innervate and Mana Crystal ramping into equation and you have a recipe for disaster, disaster that unfortunately lasted for waaaay too long.
Patron was a tournament issue. Secretpally is a ladder issue
Its fangs are in your flesh before its hiss leaves your ears.
Golden Heroes: Druid -> Rogue -> Shaman -> Hunter -> Warlock
Because people are bad and think that nerfing things will make them less bad.
You guys whine about every freaking card made. This community just keeps getting worse. Learn how to counter these cards or stop whining and take a break from the game if it really bothers you that much. There is no reason to keep creating threads every time you lose a game or if you don't feel like playing around a card *cough* BGH *Cough*
Still though that doesn't change the fact that these clowns keep creating nerf threads because A) They don't want to play around cards, B) They don't want to improve but instead blame everything else instead of adjusting to the meta.
These threads are just as bad as the nerf threads. Basically you are telling people to nerf the nerf threads. See the problem?
Also, @the people protecting Secret Paladin: Saying it isn't as broken as Patron is a pretty bad argument. Miracle Rogue wasn't as broken as Patron was either, yet it got nerfed. Just like Buzzard or Undertaker. What people don't seem to understand is that "a little less good than Patron" isn't the same as "balanced". If Patron was murder and Secret Paladin was aggrevated battery, both should be punished. Aggrevated battery being less awful than murder doesn't make it okay.
Dab
Undertaker was by far more broken than Patron, at least according to Ben Brode. He listed that as the #1 broken thing in 1 of the interviews.
Anyways, the reason why people are calling for nerfs for Savage Roar, and to a lesser extent Ancient of Lore, is because they are in the classic set. No one would bat an eye about it if it was in say GvG, or even TGT, since they aren't so powerful that they are broken. They are merely very powerful.
People who refuses to play aggro out of principle are even worse than people who play exclusively aggro.
One should seek to become a complete player and play all archetypes, including ones that he despises for whatever irrational reasons.
If you drop him on the empty board, he's useless.
If you play some secrets before, he's useless.
Not to mention running two of them doesn't make sense pretty much at all, wondering why people still seem to do that.
There's no need to nerf MC because paladin is getting rekt with the new Standard format.
No Avenge, which was the best secret in pally, no minibot and no mustard. It's such a shame that blizzard decided to kill the only paladin deck that had a chance in standard-Murloc pally.
This disclaimer
Will cleanse any sense of innuendo or sarcasm
From the comments that might actually make you think
And will also insult your intelligence at the same time.
So, if it sounds sarcastic, don't take it seriously.
If it sounds dangerous,
Do not try this at home or at all.
And if it offends you, just don't read it.
The absolute number of nerf threads is out of control; but there are some cards that deserve to be considered for a nerf.
Mysterious Challenger is a blatantly OP card that is simply not defensible. A one stat discount for "draw and play 3-5 cards" is not balanced, even if we allow that class cards can be 0.5-1.0 mana overcosted without breaking the game. There are solutions to an MC play; but they are so predicated on drawing perfectly that acting like a decent player can be in a position to consistently have viable counterplay is completely disingenuous. For those saying Secret Pally doesn't warp the meta, consider that no other midrange deck is competitively viable (Midrange Druid is a combo deck built around sticky midrange minions, not the same thing).
Druid combo defines the entire class. There is no point designing a card that won't fit in the combo deck. If Druid is ever going to do anything interesting, the combo has to be nerfed. I hope it isn't nerfed into oblivion like Warsong though.
There is a clear difference between these cards and cards like Justicar, Shield Slam, Entomb, Execute, etc., that are very strong and can feel situationally unfair but have clearly viable counterplay and are not obscenely under-costed. I say this as someone who hasn't played Warrior since the Warsong nerf since I am primarily a FTP player and have just not collected enough Warrior cards from packs for it to be worthwhile to craft all the other expensive cards in the class. People do need to quit complaining and begging for nerfs every time a card is a clear counter to their preferred strategy; but that doesn't mean every card in Hearthstone is fine as-is.
Because I like dust.
I underlined the sentences I don't quite comprehend; I definitely agree with the rest of it.
But why the "better than" part? The issue lies in diversity, which you've also pointed out. We don't need power creep, we don't need a BETTER alternative for Piloted Shredder, we just need THE alternative. A minion which could compete with it depending on the type of deck/class/whatever. Then you could actually have a choice when designing a deck, whether you want a stickiness or a certain tech, tribe synergy, or maybe just a solid, rich-in-stats drop.
Right now the only 4-mana minions that could compete with Piloted Shredder are the class ones and that's the problem. Piloted Shredder is SO GOOD that the worst thing that could happen is designing another 4-drop that would be objectively better than it. That's power creep and we don't want that.
So, how to overcome the issue of being forced to release competitors of the comparable value to fight staples? Formats.
If the card is simply too good to be offset by the future releases of similar power, the better way is to introduce set rotation and gradual cycling out of the older expansions/adventures. This way you can keep the game fresh at all times and introduce new stuff without worrying whether it will live up to expected power level after some time or not, because you CAN'T estimate that in development only. Dr. Boom is a perfect example of this - pretty much no-one suspected it'll be THAT good, but everyone swooned over Troggzor the Earthinator. Look how that turned out after few weeks.
2 fireballs does the same at FoN + SR for 1 mana less and they go over taunts lol but let's neft druids.
If it's moving the game forward, opening up the design space, and diversifying the meta, I'm all on board. Standard alone will accomplish some of that. Some nerfs will be necessary - it's been over two years of Druid being a one-trick pony, with every new card designed around Force Roar. MC will lose power and rotate out in a year, so it's probably ok unless they feel handcuffed when designing class cards in the next two expansions and adventure (which I don't think should be the case).
CCGing since '98.
My question is: Why are people so against nerfs?
There must be some kind of genetic personality trait associated with the nerf/anti-nerf phenomenon in CCGs.
One player goes through the entire list of cards and proposes changes to 95% of cards in order to make them more balanced (both nerfs and buffs).
Another player thinks that whatever we have is what we have (I mean, we pay designers to think about this stuff so we don't have think about it, right?), so since you know it's there, it should just be easy to play around everything, darnit!
Of course there are cards that need to be nerfed. It's like lawmaking - you can never be sure of the effects of a law until it is put into practice. Likewise, you can never be sure about the effect a card will have on the game environment. Should a bad law stay on the books forever just because some people get used to it and get an advantage from it? (BTW, the answer is no.)