Hearthpwn

Skill factors in differently depending on which deck you play. The more options you have at any given time, the harder the deck is to play.

Even the most straightforward aggro decks have choices that affect the outcome. Things like when to go face and when to trade, when to optimize total damage (weave Hunter hero power) vs. bursting them down as quickly as possible, and knowing how likely it is that a taunt will be dropped next turn. These choices may only swing your win percentage by a little bit, but that can be enough to go from a 45% winrate to 55%, and from rank 20 to legend, given enough games.

That said, Hearthstone is and has always been a highly RNG dependent game, for better and worse. You can play perfectly and still go zero wins in a tournament where, given enough games, you would have been the top player. You can also manage to squeeze a win out of a normally unwinnable matchup, which can feel awesome.

This comes up time and time again.

This is a card game. There is luck and varience. I expect that any reasonable player would have a 'chance' of beating any top player in the world. If the matchup is in your favour, if you get a good opening hand/draw and if you curve out well and the other guy/girl doesn't, you'll probably beat them.

HOWEVER, there is also skill. The difference between a top player and a not player is a top player will always (nearly) make the best choices which are available, in terms of mulligans and plays. That might make only a small difference, but it the long run, it will make the difference.

If you want a skill only based game, go play chess.

Hearthstone requires no skills anymore (at least for now in Standard).

but back in the old days when control priest was a thing (before Standard), that type of deck required skills!

Personally: I don't like to play Tier1-meta-decks (midrange shaman) and I don't like to play aggro-decks and I don't like to play boring-decks, so I don't have many options there in the ladder.
so I'm having fun atm with renolocks and rogues ;)

Skill in this game (in my opinion) is very similar to skill in Poker.

I know, many of you are immediately thinking how dissimilar these two games are but lets break this down a bit. What do you need to be "successful" in poker? Obviously if you get lucky every time you are simply unbeatable, right? There's one similarity to HS-the random number generator that almost everyone hates but almost nobody thanks. Another point of success is your ability to conceal and hide what your hand is and make bets accordingly. In HS this translates to trading minions, playing spells at specific times (mainly board clears for control and buffs/spell damage for aggro finishers) and trying to figure out what resources your opponent has. This is sooooo underrated because if you know what your opponent has (or even if you have the slightest idea) you will typically play your cards a bit differently.

Many amateur HS players (myself included!) look at their hand, look at the board, look at the mana curve and play accordingly. I know this because I USED to fill my board up after a mage played Blizzard and I would think- yes, the game is in my hands, look at all my fresh new minions that are going to destroy--wha?? oh yeah. Flamestrike

 Don't get me wrong, I understand that sometimes there really is just no strategic thinking in HS and that's often what arena comes down to...both players have no minions and no cards in hand so whoever gets the better top decks wins.

BUT USUALLY If you don't think really think about about what your opponent has every turn you won't ever be relatively competitive in this game. And some people are okay with that, more power to you. This again is just my opinion.

Quote from Hearthole >>

When you're 14 or older you'll stop talking "skill" and use the word "experience".

Quote from Hearthole >>

 

And don't draw conclusions, I reach legend every month.

Other than that the posts have been pretty on-point, well done HP community. I'm proud of you.

Quote from Milk_Monk >>

Quote from Solitare >>

If you want a skill only based game, go play chess.

just a fun fact - in the recent World Chess Champion match, the current match score is 6-6, and that is after 11 games -> 9 draws, 1 win for each player. These two super-GMs are on a such skill level, that games are super even.

One can compare car driving with HS and it would have about the same information value as the comparison with chess. HS is simply much closer to poker than chess.

I also thought about asking this question in a thread.

I think that people mean different things when they talk about skill.  Some people ONLY mean your ability to make good decisions during a game.

However, deckbuilding is also an essential skill.  Deckbuilding includes understanding the meta and the ability to judge and edit netdecks.  Those "top-skilled" people have to understand how to choose a deck.  For those of us without complete collections, it's also a very big deal.    

When you talk about sorting people according to skill level, you can't just mean skill at playing, since good playing will only take you so far if your deck is not competitive.