Ive been playing this game since before Nax and I can say that this is where Blizzard can make a new impression in terms of how they want their game to be for the next year since their making over 3 large Sets, but I think This is the tone that will say alot on how this game will live. Hearthstone at this point since Karazhan has become more and more of example of Blizzard hasnt learned to give different classes Tool to make them better instead of making the current top Decks in meta even stronger, IE Shaman, Warrior Etc . Clearly we have only seen less than 20 cards so we dont know what blizzard's vision will be for the new standard format. there are 2 things that I am begging Blizzard to address for the new format
1. make it so Jade decks keep control decks from being pushed out: I believe most people are thinking that once The new Format Comes about that Jade Decks will be the new form of Midranged that will Keep Control decks at bay current with Reno leaving the format. I pray that Blizzard is aware of this possibly and give us something that can make it so if you are playing a Slow Deck you dont get overrun by jade decks in general. One Suggestion I have is that you could make more board clears that hit a larger Group of minions; Lightbomb Would be a great card to Counter jades; So I think thats the direction in terms of Board clears.
2. DONT MAKE OVERPOWERED ONE DROPS: Blizzard hasnt seemed to learn this Design flaw. Am i saying that there shouldnt be aggro decks in the format? of course not, but Blizzard keeps overpowered 1 mana Cards that make it so that that class has an stupid early game, the fact that; undertaker, Spirit Claws and STB all have been nerfed over the fact they were format warping shows they dont understand how powerful they are. if youre gonna make 1 drops, make them have a dropback of Some kind. Flame imp is a perfect Card to compare; it is a powerful 1 drop but has a drawback to it.
At this point alot of players are tired of playing heartstone for the fact its been almost the exact same kind of format for the last year. The Rotation Will tell us alot about how Blizzard views their designs. I think it would be very disappointed if we saw the Exact same kind format where Jade Decks punish slow decks and Aggro is the way its always been.
Blizzard did add new decks to the game and also made some classes stronger then they were. Jade Shaman, yes it's midrange but different then the one played during Karazhan. Pirate Warrior (it's new!!). Dragon Priest and especially Reno got too strong. They should have made a Reno archtype for every class, not just Warlock, Priest and Mage. Huge mistake from their side to add an archtype on already existing archtype. But they went on gave the buff mechanics to Hunters, Paladins and Warriors, a completely new archtype. How do you expect a single archtype to compete with two archtypes in one (Reno+Kazakus). The archtype is too slow against Pirate Warrior and problem with Pirate Warrior is not just the Pirate theme, it is the weapons and weapons buffing theme. So once again, Buffs decks play against two archtypes in one. How do you expect a single archtype to compete with two in one archtype? Dragon Priest is just lame now. Its not just a dragon deck, but also a discover deck. Once again, two archtypes in one. Darknoid OP is probably one of the most broken cards ever, but it's ok. Priest didn't have a playable archtype for a couple of expansions, hence it's fine to give OP cards am I right?
They made a derp decision by adding to much pirate synergy, which they already said, to some extent, pushed pirates theme too much and hence a lame ass nerf to one of the cards (which didn't effect pirate Warrior at all).
Having too many board clears is another crap way to deal with board swarming and aggro decks. We saw this with Reno decks when most of the cards they play is AoE shitfest. Its annoying and requires no brain power to play a freacking AoE that clears the enemy board, and doing that over and over is what killed Hunters and Paladins. AoE should exist, but to the level current Reno decks are running. It fucking boring playing against those decks.
Blizzard already said they will not be making anymore OP 1-drops. But OP 1 drops existed since the start, they were not a new concept in recent expansions. So what about them? Do you remove them too?
WHERE IS THE THIRD POINT?
Overall MSoG was an extremely poor expansion in terms of constructed, it is good in terms of Arena as it pushed and made a lot of classes playable.
It is clear Blizzard worked on Reno decks too much, making them OP. Then came Jade, to counter them, but only Jade Druid can do it, Jade Shaman is weak and gets out-valued. And of course every meta should have an aggro deck to keep this decks in check. Their design philosophy behind MSoG to make already existing decks stronger is what killed the expansion. There was nothing new except for a couple of decks, and so people got bored really fast. Each and every deck that came out of MSoG is extremely broken because it was improvement over an already existing deck except for the Goons mechanic. Poor designing, I would personally fire the assholes who came up with cards like Kazakus, STB, Patches and thes decided it would be fun to give Warlocks tons of single target removal and AoE removal for every kind situation while giving Hunters single target buffs. And actually making a secret out them too.
Blizzard has been doing great up until WotOG, they started fucking up in Karazhan when they thought it was fun to Shamans a 1 mana 3/3 weapon. I would fire those assholes too.
I hope Un'goro is a good expansion and brings in new archtypes. I'm sick of the miracle rogues, freeze mages, control warlocks, dragon priests, midrange shamans, aggro warriors, control warriors. These archtypes have existed for too long, we have played them far too much. Just remove them already. Good thing, most of them are going away.
Fully agree on the one drops problems. Something is wrong when by turn 2 your opponent has almost a full board and a buffed weapon that you simply cannot deal with. Or, mana worm into coin, into whatever. Tunnel trogg into coin into feral spirit. Game over if you can't deal with that and most of the time you can't. Some of these are going away soon but it's still a huge problem that games are won or lost simply because player A was able to get their one drops out and player B couldn't or whatever. Fucking stupid.
Jade decks are a huge problem too. You have no way to possibly clear the board that many times since they just keep spewing them out there. Even two equality/consecrates wouldn't do a damned thing for you. Next turn they just flood again. Most other aoe cards don't do enough damage. Lightning storm, holy nova, excavated evil, etc can't touch minions with 9 health....geezus! And, Jade Druid has just enough removal and armor boost to keep themselves alive until the onslaught begins. It's a stupid deck. Totally stupid.
They just have to make the game so their are more options as far as decks go. If you want to even have a chance you must use one of the cancer decks. That sucks. Deckbuliders get punished badly. Shouldn't be that way. It also makes a large percentage of the card oil utterly useless. Cmon....
Pirate Warrior, Aggro Shaman, Midrange Shaman, Anyfin Paladin, Miracle Rogue, Jade Druid, Combo Druid, Reno Mage, Tempo Mage, Reno Warlock, Reno Priest, Dragon Priest, off the top of my head.
That's 12 different decks, almost all of which either didn't exist or were just bad before this set. The only decks that were really strong before and got even more useful cards are the two Shaman decks and Reno Warlock, three out of twelve!
Being burned out so long after the last set release is natural, but blaming a set of being bad based on false assessments will only serve as an excuse for salty players, waiting to misinterpret a view like this and explain their own failures.
I agree with OP. Plain and simple this expansion is make or break for me. Been playing since the very beginning and the game is just so inconsistent right now it's unenjoyable more often than not.
I really hope some type of real decision making creeps back into game play. Maybe 1/10 games right now i feel as if the decisions I made or the plays my opponent made impacted the outcome of a match. Because pirates curving, jade ramping, Reno Renoing is all so pivotal decision making... It's almost like hearthstone needs some back to basics.
The flaw is deep in the game. Its not the Expansion. As long as we only get 3 cards on the starting hand the game is rangefiesta and decided in the early game.
Whiners will whine, leavers will leave, HS WONT DIE. Evry game has people who aint satisfied. And most of them are on forums when the satisfied people arent mostly on forums.
This expansion will be make or brake for me too. Although Wild is really a great fun, the Standard mode is just unenjoyable and full of non- interactive decks. In general this game is shuffering from way too simple cards, bad content release shedule, terrible ladder system and Blizzard's "we won't nerf or buff the unbalanced cards" policy.
This expansion will be make or brake for me too. Although Wild is really a great fun, the Standard mode is just unenjoyable and full of non- interactive decks. In general this game is shuffering from way too simple cards, bad content release shedule, terrible ladder system and Blizzard's "we won't nerf or buff the unbalanced cards" policy.
why dont you just play wild then? The new standard will be even more uninteractive with the new card type
Pirate Warrior, Aggro Shaman, Midrange Shaman, Anyfin Paladin, Miracle Rogue, Jade Druid, Combo Druid, Reno Mage, Tempo Mage, Reno Warlock, Reno Priest, Dragon Priest, off the top of my head.
That's 12 different decks, almost all of which either didn't exist or were just bad before this set. The only decks that were really strong before and got even more useful cards are the two Shaman decks and Reno Warlock, three out of twelve!
Being burned out so long after the last set release is natural, but blaming a set of being bad based on false assessments will only serve as an excuse for salty players, waiting to misinterpret a view like this and explain their own failures.
I rarely find the need to write something on these forums, but this one of the worst posts I have ever seen around here.
Let me break your list down: First of all, there is no way in hell you can reach legend with any of these decks (I mean, you COULD, but perhaps 1 in 200 who try will do it, I wouldn't call that good odds) - Anyfin Paladin, Combo Druid, Reno Mage, Reno Priest.
Second: The decks that existed and were strong before the release, were Midrange Shaman, Miracle Rogue and Tempo Mage. Aggro shaman was non-existent for a month, Reno Warlock was very bad.
This leaves us with Dragon Priest, Jade Druid - these two are cool in my book - and Pirate Warrior and Aggro Shaman as viable newly appeared decks. And the last two are proving the point of the OP, since their main engine are ridiculous one drops. Furthermore, Blizzard even admitted that they released STB in its pre-nerf state without much testing, since they decided on it three days or so before the release. Sooo, use some facts next time, please!
Miracle Rogue and Midrange Shaman though are VERY different decks than before this set and Tempo Mage hasn't been strong since Standard was introduced.
As for the viability of the other decks, that is debatable.
The onedrop problem was fixed with the latest patch, leading to the current, healthy metagame. So what is the problem of the game right now? Why is this considered a failed set?
Eh. I'm in a nice position in Hearthstone, in that I'm in my 40s and have effectively limitless disable income for the game. But I also have a full time job and busy kids, so I don't have time to climb the ladder into legendary rank. Basically, I know I will never be able to get into those competitive ranks, nor do I have time to endlessly grind gold to buy packs.
So I just dump the dough into the game to play for fun, usually hit around rank 15-14, sometimes down in the 12 range, and just mess around with decks, play, have fun, get excited about new content. And based on what Hearthstone tells me at end of month, I'm usually in around the top third of players. That means the majority of the Hearthstone player base either doesn't do ladder at all (e.g. Arena rats) or is worse than me at it.
The complaining about the game seems to come from two sources: the very small minority of highly competitive players who don't feel like Blizzard is kowtowing to them enough; and a group of very vocal players who seem to want Hearthstone to be something it isn't and never has been. What that specific thing is, depends on the person. Some want a more "adult" game, whatever that means. I assume it means more adult themes (violence, nudity, sexuality, darker tone, I don't know), something Blizzard has never really done in any of its products.
But by far the #1 thing I see people complain that they want is a more dynamic meta. Basically, how things were before Secret Paladin. Since Secret Paladin, we've consistently had 1-3 top decks and they don't really drop out of the meta absent some action from Blizzard (nerf, new cards, or rotating old cards out). This suggests a lack of innovation in deck building among the players, as I've had tremendous success on the ladder playing tier 3 and tier 4 decks and in some cases, decks NOBODY was playing.
I got my Golden Shaman just before Old Gods, so I haven't really wanted to play Shaman on the ladder since. Instead, I've been working on getting my Golden Priest, and I've been playing Dragon Priest on the ladder for the last year in about 50-70% of my games. Including before Drakonid Operative and Netherspite Historian and so forth. I didn't do any better or worse than with Aggro Shaman or MidRange Shaman or Totem Shaman or any other kind of Shaman I played. I consistently got to rank 15, often pushed below, but couldn't ever reach 10.
But Dragon Priest was WAY out side of the top of the meta and has only recently become "good." I've been running two Dragon Priests since Gadget, one with the new cards, plus my old deck, and my old deck does better. Just hit Golden Priest Hero, so now I'm off to something else. Probably Druid or Mage, I don't know yet.
My point is that the people complaining about the meta seem to be mostly complaining that they are sick of losing to the top tier decks, and the best counter-decks lose to basically anything else. So the only way to win consistently is play a tier 1 deck.
That just hasn't been my experience. I've had the most luck making my own deck and just running that. Sure it takes a week or two to tune it but once you do, nobody knows how to play against it because they don't know what you have. I ran a Rogue Divine Shield/blood knight deck last summer that I went 14-2 with at one point. I only stopped playing it because Karazan came out and I wanted to go back to leveling up priest towards Golden.
I ran a Witchdoctor/totem deck last fall (59% win rate), and then it suddenly got popular in the last few months for some reason.
I had a pre-Gadgetzhan Reno Control Priest that I called my "Swiss Army Knife" deck, it was basicalloy a buttload of removal and situational cards so that no matter what my opponent played, I had a good chance of having SOMETHING in my deck capable of countering it. Seen Big Game Hunter lately? I had him. Took care of those damn Facelesses. The idea was to choke my opponent out on cards and then drop some big stuff to finish. Ragnoros + Volajz. Malygos + mind blast. If all that didn't work, there was some heal to fatigue them out. I could consistently out-fatigue a fatigue warrior with that deck. Entombing their Reno or C'thun helped.
And now I've been playing C'thun warrior, which I'm also doing well with, I hit rank 14 in February off mostly C'thun warrior and a post-Gadgetzhan variation of the above-mentioned Reno control priest.
I'm not a good player, but if you're hating Hearthstone, try NOT playing a net deck for a month and see what happens. Most of the decks you make will be terrible (I've tried to get Purify Priest to work so many times....) but you'll be shocked at how many games you win anyway because your opponents badly misread your deck, and play around cards you don't have, which in turn causes them to play into the cards you do.
HS has many problems right now, but the biggest problem is the complete annilihation of midrange type decks.
There have always been Aggro decks (FaceHunter for example) or Control/Fatigue decks (Warrior, Lock etc.) but blizz stopped the midrange support. Nowdays it's Aggro oder Jade mechanics. Yeah i know, Mage/Warlock and Priest use Reno and i know it's satisfiying to drop Reno in round 6 and see the enemy concede, but after a day of reno-laddering is kind of feel bad. It all comes down to one card... doesn't feel right in my opinion.
Another thing mentioned here is the lack? of AOE:
Druid: Swipe (4 Mana), Starfall (5 Mana)
Hunter: Explosive Trap (2 Mana, needs to be triggered by the enemy and doens't secure your minions), Dreadscale (3 Mana, leaves soon and hits your own minions), Acidmaw (7 Mana, leaves soon almost everytime kills your own board)
Mage: Arcane Explosion (2 Mana, and 1 damge to all enemy minions), Frost Nova (3 Mana, no damage, but great synergy with doomsayer etc.), Volcanic Potion (3 Mana, 2 damage to all enemy minions), Blizzard (6 Mana, 2 Damage and freeze effect to the enemy minions) and Flamestrike (7 Mana, 4 Damage to all enemy minions)
Paladin: Equality (2 Mana, change the health of all minions to 1, strong combination with Consecration or Wild Pyromancer), Consecration (4 Mana, deal 2 Damage to all enemy minions) and Enter the Coliseum (6 Mana, will soon be gone)
Priest: Circle of healing (0 Mana, 4 Damage if combined with embrace the Shadows (2Mana) or Auchenai Soulpriest (4Mana)), Shadow Word: Horror (4 Mana, destroy all minions with 2 or less attack), Excavated Evil (5 Mana, 3 Damage to all minions, soon be gone), Holy Nova (5 Mana, 2 Damage to the enemy, restore 2 health to all friendly characters, soon be gone), and Dragonfire Potions (6 Mana, deal 5 damage to all minions except dragons)
Rogue: Fan of knives (3 Mana deal 1 damage to all enemy minions+draw a card), Blade Flury (4 Mana, destroy your weapon and deal it's damage to the enemy minions), !?!?Vanish?!? (6 Mana, return all minions to thair owner's hand)
Shaman: Devolve (2 Mana, transform all enemy minions into minions that cost 1 less), Maelstrom Portal (2 Mana, deal 1 damage to all enemy minions+ get one 1 Mana minion), Elemental Destruction (3 Mana, deal 4-5 damage to every minion on the board+ 5 overload, soon gone), Lightning Storm (deal 2-3 damage to every enemy minion - 3 overload)
Warlock: Demonwrath (3 Mana, deal 2 damage to every nondemon, soon gone), Spreading Madness (3 Mana, deal 9 damage split among all characters), Heallfire (4 Mana, deal 3 Damage to all characters), Shadowflame (4 Mana, destroy a friendly minion, deal damage equal to it's attack to the enemy board), Twisting Nether (8 Mana, clear the entire board), DOOM (10 Mana, clear the entire board, draw a card for each minion)
Warrior: Whirlwind (1 Mana, deal 1 damage to all minions), Revenge ( 3 Mana, deal 1 damage to all minions, if you have 12 or less health deal 3 damage to all minions, soon be gone), Sleep with the fishes (2 Mana, deal 3 Damage to all damaged minions), Brawl (5 Mana, destroy all minions except one)
If you compare every class in terms of AOE, and every AOE on the same Manaslot you can see one of the biggest problems:
For example: Druid has 2 real AOE, both can be considered weak when compared to Mage with 5 possible AOE.
Or let us compare Fan of Knives with Elemental Destruction/Lightning Storm. 1 Damage compared to 4-5/2-3.
I know every class has it's own forte, but in my opinion there are way too big differences, especially if you consider that overload effects nowdays aren't a minus point when paired with cards such as (Lava Shock, Eternal Sentinel, etc). Some classes suffer from their own AOE more than others.
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and then the jade mechanic... especially jade druid with it's infinite loop... be patient, sit the game out till fati... oh wait... which fatigue do you mean? Round 25 and Druid drops his 12th 1 Mana Creature, this time a 12/12 (just an example), no wonder the ladder get's swarmed with Aggro-Decks. Who want's to see every round the same creature, just more powerfull for the same amount of mana?!?!?
I really hope blizzard will be able to change their mind in therms of deckbuilding. A healthy Meta has to be more than Aggro/Jade-Druid/1Card (Reno) Decks.
As a collector and someone who loves to play many different decks+cards i really, really hope so.
Ive been playing this game since before Nax and I can say that this is where Blizzard can make a new impression in terms of how they want their game to be for the next year since their making over 3 large Sets, but I think This is the tone that will say alot on how this game will live. Hearthstone at this point since Karazhan has become more and more of example of Blizzard hasnt learned to give different classes Tool to make them better instead of making the current top Decks in meta even stronger, IE Shaman, Warrior Etc . Clearly we have only seen less than 20 cards so we dont know what blizzard's vision will be for the new standard format. there are 2 things that I am begging Blizzard to address for the new format
1. make it so Jade decks keep control decks from being pushed out: I believe most people are thinking that once The new Format Comes about that Jade Decks will be the new form of Midranged that will Keep Control decks at bay current with Reno leaving the format. I pray that Blizzard is aware of this possibly and give us something that can make it so if you are playing a Slow Deck you dont get overrun by jade decks in general. One Suggestion I have is that you could make more board clears that hit a larger Group of minions; Lightbomb Would be a great card to Counter jades; So I think thats the direction in terms of Board clears.
2. DONT MAKE OVERPOWERED ONE DROPS: Blizzard hasnt seemed to learn this Design flaw. Am i saying that there shouldnt be aggro decks in the format? of course not, but Blizzard keeps overpowered 1 mana Cards that make it so that that class has an stupid early game, the fact that; undertaker, Spirit Claws and STB all have been nerfed over the fact they were format warping shows they dont understand how powerful they are. if youre gonna make 1 drops, make them have a dropback of Some kind. Flame imp is a perfect Card to compare; it is a powerful 1 drop but has a drawback to it.
At this point alot of players are tired of playing heartstone for the fact its been almost the exact same kind of format for the last year. The Rotation Will tell us alot about how Blizzard views their designs. I think it would be very disappointed if we saw the Exact same kind format where Jade Decks punish slow decks and Aggro is the way its always been.
Let me know your thoughts.
Hearthstone is a game of "copy and pasting"
Blizzard did add new decks to the game and also made some classes stronger then they were. Jade Shaman, yes it's midrange but different then the one played during Karazhan. Pirate Warrior (it's new!!). Dragon Priest and especially Reno got too strong. They should have made a Reno archtype for every class, not just Warlock, Priest and Mage. Huge mistake from their side to add an archtype on already existing archtype. But they went on gave the buff mechanics to Hunters, Paladins and Warriors, a completely new archtype. How do you expect a single archtype to compete with two archtypes in one (Reno+Kazakus). The archtype is too slow against Pirate Warrior and problem with Pirate Warrior is not just the Pirate theme, it is the weapons and weapons buffing theme. So once again, Buffs decks play against two archtypes in one. How do you expect a single archtype to compete with two in one archtype? Dragon Priest is just lame now. Its not just a dragon deck, but also a discover deck. Once again, two archtypes in one. Darknoid OP is probably one of the most broken cards ever, but it's ok. Priest didn't have a playable archtype for a couple of expansions, hence it's fine to give OP cards am I right?
They made a derp decision by adding to much pirate synergy, which they already said, to some extent, pushed pirates theme too much and hence a lame ass nerf to one of the cards (which didn't effect pirate Warrior at all).
Having too many board clears is another crap way to deal with board swarming and aggro decks. We saw this with Reno decks when most of the cards they play is AoE shitfest. Its annoying and requires no brain power to play a freacking AoE that clears the enemy board, and doing that over and over is what killed Hunters and Paladins. AoE should exist, but to the level current Reno decks are running. It fucking boring playing against those decks.
Blizzard already said they will not be making anymore OP 1-drops. But OP 1 drops existed since the start, they were not a new concept in recent expansions. So what about them? Do you remove them too?
WHERE IS THE THIRD POINT?
Overall MSoG was an extremely poor expansion in terms of constructed, it is good in terms of Arena as it pushed and made a lot of classes playable.
It is clear Blizzard worked on Reno decks too much, making them OP. Then came Jade, to counter them, but only Jade Druid can do it, Jade Shaman is weak and gets out-valued. And of course every meta should have an aggro deck to keep this decks in check. Their design philosophy behind MSoG to make already existing decks stronger is what killed the expansion. There was nothing new except for a couple of decks, and so people got bored really fast. Each and every deck that came out of MSoG is extremely broken because it was improvement over an already existing deck except for the Goons mechanic. Poor designing, I would personally fire the assholes who came up with cards like Kazakus, STB, Patches and thes decided it would be fun to give Warlocks tons of single target removal and AoE removal for every kind situation while giving Hunters single target buffs. And actually making a secret out them too.
Blizzard has been doing great up until WotOG, they started fucking up in Karazhan when they thought it was fun to Shamans a 1 mana 3/3 weapon. I would fire those assholes too.
I hope Un'goro is a good expansion and brings in new archtypes. I'm sick of the miracle rogues, freeze mages, control warlocks, dragon priests, midrange shamans, aggro warriors, control warriors. These archtypes have existed for too long, we have played them far too much. Just remove them already. Good thing, most of them are going away.
Fully agree on the one drops problems. Something is wrong when by turn 2 your opponent has almost a full board and a buffed weapon that you simply cannot deal with. Or, mana worm into coin, into whatever. Tunnel trogg into coin into feral spirit. Game over if you can't deal with that and most of the time you can't. Some of these are going away soon but it's still a huge problem that games are won or lost simply because player A was able to get their one drops out and player B couldn't or whatever. Fucking stupid.
Jade decks are a huge problem too. You have no way to possibly clear the board that many times since they just keep spewing them out there. Even two equality/consecrates wouldn't do a damned thing for you. Next turn they just flood again. Most other aoe cards don't do enough damage. Lightning storm, holy nova, excavated evil, etc can't touch minions with 9 health....geezus! And, Jade Druid has just enough removal and armor boost to keep themselves alive until the onslaught begins. It's a stupid deck. Totally stupid.
They just have to make the game so their are more options as far as decks go. If you want to even have a chance you must use one of the cancer decks. That sucks. Deckbuliders get punished badly. Shouldn't be that way. It also makes a large percentage of the card oil utterly useless. Cmon....
I win due to skill and lose due to bad RNG. :D
In the current meta you can hit legend with:
Pirate Warrior, Aggro Shaman, Midrange Shaman, Anyfin Paladin, Miracle Rogue, Jade Druid, Combo Druid, Reno Mage, Tempo Mage, Reno Warlock, Reno Priest, Dragon Priest, off the top of my head.
That's 12 different decks, almost all of which either didn't exist or were just bad before this set. The only decks that were really strong before and got even more useful cards are the two Shaman decks and Reno Warlock, three out of twelve!
Being burned out so long after the last set release is natural, but blaming a set of being bad based on false assessments will only serve as an excuse for salty players, waiting to misinterpret a view like this and explain their own failures.
I've pre-ordered on the faith that Peter Whalen (Dream Quest, love it) knows what he's doing.
If this turns into a repeat of previous quickly stale aggro-centric metas then my time and $ will go elsewhere.
I agree this is a pivotal expansion for people who have been playing a while.
People really think that HS might die huh.... If it was going to die it would have already done considering the shit state it was in a bit ago.
Though the game might get less popular it's just has too many good things going for it to completely die...
(also they said during one of the Q&A's that they're going to be really careful with 1-drops in the future, because the player-base hates them)
I agree with OP. Plain and simple this expansion is make or break for me. Been playing since the very beginning and the game is just so inconsistent right now it's unenjoyable more often than not.
I really hope some type of real decision making creeps back into game play. Maybe 1/10 games right now i feel as if the decisions I made or the plays my opponent made impacted the outcome of a match. Because pirates curving, jade ramping, Reno Renoing is all so pivotal decision making... It's almost like hearthstone needs some back to basics.
The flaw is deep in the game. Its not the Expansion. As long as we only get 3 cards on the starting hand the game is rangefiesta and decided in the early game.
Whiners will whine, leavers will leave, HS WONT DIE. Evry game has people who aint satisfied. And most of them are on forums when the satisfied people arent mostly on forums.
Dont mind these topics lol
AJAX AMSTERDAM
This expansion will be make or brake for me too. Although Wild is really a great fun, the Standard mode is just unenjoyable and full of non- interactive decks. In general this game is shuffering from way too simple cards, bad content release shedule, terrible ladder system and Blizzard's "we won't nerf or buff the unbalanced cards" policy.
Take a look at my card creations here in vojza's mini expansion topic.
Eh. I'm in a nice position in Hearthstone, in that I'm in my 40s and have effectively limitless disable income for the game. But I also have a full time job and busy kids, so I don't have time to climb the ladder into legendary rank. Basically, I know I will never be able to get into those competitive ranks, nor do I have time to endlessly grind gold to buy packs.
So I just dump the dough into the game to play for fun, usually hit around rank 15-14, sometimes down in the 12 range, and just mess around with decks, play, have fun, get excited about new content. And based on what Hearthstone tells me at end of month, I'm usually in around the top third of players. That means the majority of the Hearthstone player base either doesn't do ladder at all (e.g. Arena rats) or is worse than me at it.
The complaining about the game seems to come from two sources: the very small minority of highly competitive players who don't feel like Blizzard is kowtowing to them enough; and a group of very vocal players who seem to want Hearthstone to be something it isn't and never has been. What that specific thing is, depends on the person. Some want a more "adult" game, whatever that means. I assume it means more adult themes (violence, nudity, sexuality, darker tone, I don't know), something Blizzard has never really done in any of its products.
But by far the #1 thing I see people complain that they want is a more dynamic meta. Basically, how things were before Secret Paladin. Since Secret Paladin, we've consistently had 1-3 top decks and they don't really drop out of the meta absent some action from Blizzard (nerf, new cards, or rotating old cards out). This suggests a lack of innovation in deck building among the players, as I've had tremendous success on the ladder playing tier 3 and tier 4 decks and in some cases, decks NOBODY was playing.
I got my Golden Shaman just before Old Gods, so I haven't really wanted to play Shaman on the ladder since. Instead, I've been working on getting my Golden Priest, and I've been playing Dragon Priest on the ladder for the last year in about 50-70% of my games. Including before Drakonid Operative and Netherspite Historian and so forth. I didn't do any better or worse than with Aggro Shaman or MidRange Shaman or Totem Shaman or any other kind of Shaman I played. I consistently got to rank 15, often pushed below, but couldn't ever reach 10.
But Dragon Priest was WAY out side of the top of the meta and has only recently become "good." I've been running two Dragon Priests since Gadget, one with the new cards, plus my old deck, and my old deck does better. Just hit Golden Priest Hero, so now I'm off to something else. Probably Druid or Mage, I don't know yet.
My point is that the people complaining about the meta seem to be mostly complaining that they are sick of losing to the top tier decks, and the best counter-decks lose to basically anything else. So the only way to win consistently is play a tier 1 deck.
That just hasn't been my experience. I've had the most luck making my own deck and just running that. Sure it takes a week or two to tune it but once you do, nobody knows how to play against it because they don't know what you have. I ran a Rogue Divine Shield/blood knight deck last summer that I went 14-2 with at one point. I only stopped playing it because Karazan came out and I wanted to go back to leveling up priest towards Golden.
I ran a Witchdoctor/totem deck last fall (59% win rate), and then it suddenly got popular in the last few months for some reason.
I had a pre-Gadgetzhan Reno Control Priest that I called my "Swiss Army Knife" deck, it was basicalloy a buttload of removal and situational cards so that no matter what my opponent played, I had a good chance of having SOMETHING in my deck capable of countering it. Seen Big Game Hunter lately? I had him. Took care of those damn Facelesses. The idea was to choke my opponent out on cards and then drop some big stuff to finish. Ragnoros + Volajz. Malygos + mind blast. If all that didn't work, there was some heal to fatigue them out. I could consistently out-fatigue a fatigue warrior with that deck. Entombing their Reno or C'thun helped.
And now I've been playing C'thun warrior, which I'm also doing well with, I hit rank 14 in February off mostly C'thun warrior and a post-Gadgetzhan variation of the above-mentioned Reno control priest.
I'm not a good player, but if you're hating Hearthstone, try NOT playing a net deck for a month and see what happens. Most of the decks you make will be terrible (I've tried to get Purify Priest to work so many times....) but you'll be shocked at how many games you win anyway because your opponents badly misread your deck, and play around cards you don't have, which in turn causes them to play into the cards you do.
Try it.
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HS has many problems right now, but the biggest problem is the complete annilihation of midrange type decks.
There have always been Aggro decks (FaceHunter for example) or Control/Fatigue decks (Warrior, Lock etc.) but blizz stopped the midrange support. Nowdays it's Aggro oder Jade mechanics. Yeah i know, Mage/Warlock and Priest use Reno and i know it's satisfiying to drop Reno in round 6 and see the enemy concede, but after a day of reno-laddering is kind of feel bad. It all comes down to one card... doesn't feel right in my opinion.
Another thing mentioned here is the lack? of AOE:
Druid: Swipe (4 Mana), Starfall (5 Mana)
Hunter: Explosive Trap (2 Mana, needs to be triggered by the enemy and doens't secure your minions), Dreadscale (3 Mana, leaves soon and hits your own minions), Acidmaw (7 Mana, leaves soon almost everytime kills your own board)
Mage: Arcane Explosion (2 Mana, and 1 damge to all enemy minions), Frost Nova (3 Mana, no damage, but great synergy with doomsayer etc.), Volcanic Potion (3 Mana, 2 damage to all enemy minions), Blizzard (6 Mana, 2 Damage and freeze effect to the enemy minions) and Flamestrike (7 Mana, 4 Damage to all enemy minions)
Paladin: Equality (2 Mana, change the health of all minions to 1, strong combination with Consecration or Wild Pyromancer), Consecration (4 Mana, deal 2 Damage to all enemy minions) and Enter the Coliseum (6 Mana, will soon be gone)
Priest: Circle of healing (0 Mana, 4 Damage if combined with embrace the Shadows (2Mana) or Auchenai Soulpriest (4Mana)), Shadow Word: Horror (4 Mana, destroy all minions with 2 or less attack), Excavated Evil (5 Mana, 3 Damage to all minions, soon be gone), Holy Nova (5 Mana, 2 Damage to the enemy, restore 2 health to all friendly characters, soon be gone), and Dragonfire Potions (6 Mana, deal 5 damage to all minions except dragons)
Rogue: Fan of knives (3 Mana deal 1 damage to all enemy minions+draw a card), Blade Flury (4 Mana, destroy your weapon and deal it's damage to the enemy minions), !?!?Vanish?!? (6 Mana, return all minions to thair owner's hand)
Shaman: Devolve (2 Mana, transform all enemy minions into minions that cost 1 less), Maelstrom Portal (2 Mana, deal 1 damage to all enemy minions+ get one 1 Mana minion), Elemental Destruction (3 Mana, deal 4-5 damage to every minion on the board+ 5 overload, soon gone), Lightning Storm (deal 2-3 damage to every enemy minion - 3 overload)
Warlock: Demonwrath (3 Mana, deal 2 damage to every nondemon, soon gone), Spreading Madness (3 Mana, deal 9 damage split among all characters), Heallfire (4 Mana, deal 3 Damage to all characters), Shadowflame (4 Mana, destroy a friendly minion, deal damage equal to it's attack to the enemy board), Twisting Nether (8 Mana, clear the entire board), DOOM (10 Mana, clear the entire board, draw a card for each minion)
Warrior: Whirlwind (1 Mana, deal 1 damage to all minions), Revenge ( 3 Mana, deal 1 damage to all minions, if you have 12 or less health deal 3 damage to all minions, soon be gone), Sleep with the fishes (2 Mana, deal 3 Damage to all damaged minions), Brawl (5 Mana, destroy all minions except one)
If you compare every class in terms of AOE, and every AOE on the same Manaslot you can see one of the biggest problems:
For example: Druid has 2 real AOE, both can be considered weak when compared to Mage with 5 possible AOE.
Or let us compare Fan of Knives with Elemental Destruction/Lightning Storm. 1 Damage compared to 4-5/2-3.
I know every class has it's own forte, but in my opinion there are way too big differences, especially if you consider that overload effects nowdays aren't a minus point when paired with cards such as (Lava Shock, Eternal Sentinel, etc). Some classes suffer from their own AOE more than others.
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and then the jade mechanic... especially jade druid with it's infinite loop... be patient, sit the game out till fati... oh wait... which fatigue do you mean? Round 25 and Druid drops his 12th 1 Mana Creature, this time a 12/12 (just an example), no wonder the ladder get's swarmed with Aggro-Decks. Who want's to see every round the same creature, just more powerfull for the same amount of mana?!?!?
I really hope blizzard will be able to change their mind in therms of deckbuilding. A healthy Meta has to be more than Aggro/Jade-Druid/1Card (Reno) Decks.
As a collector and someone who loves to play many different decks+cards i really, really hope so.
Sorry for my bad english btw.