Is it healthy for the game? All you have to do is hold it until you can either kill your opponent (silence taunt), or completely destroy a win condition that revolves around text or buffs like spikeridged steed or doomsayer. Lets talk about doomsayer a bit more. Doomsayer is such a well designed card for the fact that you need a setup for him like a taunt, a board clear, or some freezes. But what feels like 99% of the time doomsayer is played , he’s silenced immediately the next turn by spell breaker and Thats pretty much a lost the game at that point. It’s just too much of a tempo loss when you literally do nothing and your opponent develops a stronger board while also just killing you more. Cards like Polymorph and hex are fine because of they provide no tempo when used since it doesn’t come on a 4/3 stick. I remember a time when every deck ran double iron beak and then it finally got nerfed. Now, every deck runs double spell breaker... when’s his turn to get hit?
what are your opinions about spellbreaker or silence as a mechanic?
It's a core mechanic of the game that disrupts win conditions of some decks, just like AOE disrupts aggro decks. We saw the 5 mana 5/5 priest card that silenced minions see some play as well.
If anything, there's a lack of neutral AOE at the moment besides the 8 mana dragon, which explains the strenght of aggro
Silence is the problem, not spellbreaker. Hearthstone's evolved in a way that either we have silence or we have stupid buff combos and an unbreakable line of taunts, so silence ended up becoming a neccessary evil. A 4/3 body on turn 4 is pretty terrible if you ask me, and it's only used because that's how the game is.
Without Spellbreaker Warlock would have nearly a 100% win rate. It is pretty much only decks that can face down Warlock that is keeping their win rate in check right now. Those decks are gone if they can't get through a Voidlord.
Without Voidlord. You would see significantly less spell breakers.
I have heard people suggest Silence should be a one turn only effect, that could be a good way to do it.
i think its okay and definetely not a problematic card.
If there would be no silence, you wouldnt have a chance versus certain matchups like cubelock for example with their early void lords or cubes that haven't been popped yet. (Unless you're a rog with sap or vilespine)
The problematic is more the game state itself rather than the cards. High-value low cost cards/minions, first and second turn gamble, (only) 30 hp and so on.
Yeaaah let's remove silence from the game so that everyone can play their Voidlords on turn 6 without any drawback, completly removing aggro and midrange decks. And than you can complain about how slow the game is. How can you people complain about every single fucking card in the game? Will you ever fucking be pleased?
Spell Breaker is an auto-include in every deck ever as long as Voidlord exists in the meta. I wish it didn't, because it single-handedly destroyed Quest Paladin, but whatever.
Before this warlock bullshit begins only priest run silence, the 5/5 or the 0 mana spell for Lyra, Owl and Spellbreaker are very rare.
Now become a necessary evil, all decks must have x2 or suffer the consequences, the sad part of all this, in many games the silence tech don't do nothing vs the cursed warlocks but everyone running silences make good cards like VanCleef and Tirion unplayable.
There can be only so much silence in a deck before the deck becomes non-viable.
So during play, you need to plan for one or two of your minions to get silenced along the way. If your game plan cannot survive that, it's not a great game plan.
Learn to bait out the silence, learn to have a backup plan, learn to play your deck instead of letting your deck play you.
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"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Spellbreaker (or more specifically neutral silence) needs to exist. There needs to exist ways for you to answer your opponent's threats, and without silence a lot of classes would have little to no options.
Silence does in fact hurt the meme or fun decks out there. It also hurts the tier 3 or lower decks. Like Buff or Quest Paladin. I think the way the game has evolved and the power creep of cards, it is now a necessary evil. One that I would be glad to be rid of. The conflict is this though:
1. Taunt slows down aggro and allows the defender to 'trade' minions. Otherwise, if you dont have a taunt, aggro has no reason to trade into your 1 big dude sitting there. The game was designed to favor the attacker, hence taunt is a way to force trades.
2. If the game changed and did not have the attacker dictating the trades, then taunts would not be necessary and therefore silence would not be as much either.
3. Taunt minions now are so powerful, that the power creep almost dictates aggro and mid range to run spell breaker or owl.
I think a nice balance to make Silence tolerable, but not mandatory would be to have it last 1 turn only, as someone else suggested. Either way, until the power creep of taunt minions goes up, silence is here to stay.
Silence as a mechanic is needed in the game. Frankly, I wish every class had some kind of playable silence so we wern't seeing the same neutral options- un-nerfing Keeper of the Grove would be nice, but druid is already well-positioned so that seems unwise.
Silence is interactive and encourages counter play. There needs to be a way to punish decks that play 5 mana 2/2's and 9 mana 3/7's. If you pass the turn the with 2 Doomguards or 2 Giants inside a Cube it means you don't believe your opponent can't interact. The fact that answers for this exist makes the game more fun and makes your decisions count more. If you're sitting behind a Voidlord but dead on board to a silence then you deserve to lose, you didn't play around a card everyone plays. Just like if you dump a bunch of 3 health minions into the board vs dragon priest and they sweep them up with a Duskbreaker you deserve to lose.
Also SB is a 4 mana 4/3, and when your opponent plays Call to Arms or Spreading Plague it's pretty dead, so there's a real deck building cost to including it or an owl. Sap is also a similar effect. It's technically card disadvantage but has the power to win games if not played around properly.
Silence is necessary in the game. It's been in the game forever, but only sparingly used (mainly aggro) until most recently. This is because of Kabal Lackey, Carnivorous Cube and Voidlord. Call it power creep, call it whatever, but without silence decks could become incredibly greedy. Yes, it hurts lesser or meme decks like quest paladin. However, it's not silence that is to blame, it's the power level of the other cards that requires silence to be put in decks that is to blame.
I think a nice balance to make Silence tolerable, but not mandatory would be to have it last 1 turn only, as someone else suggested. Either way, until the power creep of taunt minions goes up, silence is here to stay.
It's funny you only look at silence as a way to deal with taunt. Must be an aggro player. Control decks put silence in their decks too, and it's not to remove taunt.
I'd make it a 2/4. I think the less aggressive stat line would bring it's power into line with cards like Owl, BGH, Black Knight, ect... That power being very good vs. certain decks but crap otherwise. Right now the 4/3 line is just good enough that there isn't much penalty to playing it.
As a 2/4 with Silence it would compare very well with one version of Grove Keeper prior to the nerf. And that card was about a 2x auto include in most Druid decks. I think it wouldn't be such a draconian nerf to stop it from seeing play. And it would still function exactly the same in removing taunts/silencing lackeys, etc...
Before this warlock bullshit begins only priest run silence, the 5/5 or the 0 mana spell for Lyra, Owl and Spellbreaker are very rare.
Now become a necessary evil, all decks must have x2 or suffer the consequences, the sad part of all this, in many games the silence tech don't do nothing vs the cursed warlocks but everyone running silences make good cards like VanCleef and Tirion unplayable.
While I agree with most of your post, I'm pretty sure Baku decks would also be running at least one own if cubelock didn't exist.
But yeah, Spellbreaker and Silence effects in general aren't unhealthy for the game at all, they are simply tech cards that allow you to counter specific decks. The reason you see a very unhealthy amount of silence right now is because there's a deck around that you simply can't beat if you don't have it.
Spellbreaker is as healthy as the targets it's typically used for.
Baku paladin effectively uses Owl, so the point is that it doesn't really matter, silence is just so much needed to have chances in otgerwise sealed games.
So the best way to balance this would be something like either reduce the power level of taunts, or make silence a one turn effect only. I love both of these suggestions. And to be frank there’s only really one insanely huge broken taunt that that’s void daddy. Even more broken because of guldan. In other words, nerfing cubelock nerfs/fixes silence basically.
Is it healthy for the game? All you have to do is hold it until you can either kill your opponent (silence taunt), or completely destroy a win condition that revolves around text or buffs like spikeridged steed or doomsayer. Lets talk about doomsayer a bit more. Doomsayer is such a well designed card for the fact that you need a setup for him like a taunt, a board clear, or some freezes. But what feels like 99% of the time doomsayer is played , he’s silenced immediately the next turn by spell breaker and Thats pretty much a lost the game at that point. It’s just too much of a tempo loss when you literally do nothing and your opponent develops a stronger board while also just killing you more. Cards like Polymorph and hex are fine because of they provide no tempo when used since it doesn’t come on a 4/3 stick. I remember a time when every deck ran double iron beak and then it finally got nerfed. Now, every deck runs double spell breaker... when’s his turn to get hit?
what are your opinions about spellbreaker or silence as a mechanic?
It's a core mechanic of the game that disrupts win conditions of some decks, just like AOE disrupts aggro decks. We saw the 5 mana 5/5 priest card that silenced minions see some play as well.
If anything, there's a lack of neutral AOE at the moment besides the 8 mana dragon, which explains the strenght of aggro
Silence is the problem, not spellbreaker. Hearthstone's evolved in a way that either we have silence or we have stupid buff combos and an unbreakable line of taunts, so silence ended up becoming a neccessary evil. A 4/3 body on turn 4 is pretty terrible if you ask me, and it's only used because that's how the game is.
Without Spellbreaker Warlock would have nearly a 100% win rate. It is pretty much only decks that can face down Warlock that is keeping their win rate in check right now. Those decks are gone if they can't get through a Voidlord.
Without Voidlord. You would see significantly less spell breakers.
I have heard people suggest Silence should be a one turn only effect, that could be a good way to do it.
i think its okay and definetely not a problematic card.
If there would be no silence, you wouldnt have a chance versus certain matchups like cubelock for example with their early void lords or cubes that haven't been popped yet. (Unless you're a rog with sap or vilespine)
The problematic is more the game state itself rather than the cards. High-value low cost cards/minions, first and second turn gamble, (only) 30 hp and so on.
Yeaaah let's remove silence from the game so that everyone can play their Voidlords on turn 6 without any drawback, completly removing aggro and midrange decks. And than you can complain about how slow the game is.
How can you people complain about every single fucking card in the game? Will you ever fucking be pleased?
Spell Breaker is an auto-include in every deck ever as long as Voidlord exists in the meta. I wish it didn't, because it single-handedly destroyed Quest Paladin, but whatever.
Unpopular opinion: Rogue is OP
It should be nerfed because it is used in decks.
Before this warlock bullshit begins only priest run silence, the 5/5 or the 0 mana spell for Lyra, Owl and Spellbreaker are very rare.
Now become a necessary evil, all decks must have x2 or suffer the consequences, the sad part of all this, in many games the silence tech don't do nothing vs the cursed warlocks but everyone running silences make good cards like VanCleef and Tirion unplayable.
There can be only so much silence in a deck before the deck becomes non-viable.
So during play, you need to plan for one or two of your minions to get silenced along the way. If your game plan cannot survive that, it's not a great game plan.
Learn to bait out the silence, learn to have a backup plan, learn to play your deck instead of letting your deck play you.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Spellbreaker (or more specifically neutral silence) needs to exist. There needs to exist ways for you to answer your opponent's threats, and without silence a lot of classes would have little to no options.
Silence does in fact hurt the meme or fun decks out there. It also hurts the tier 3 or lower decks. Like Buff or Quest Paladin. I think the way the game has evolved and the power creep of cards, it is now a necessary evil. One that I would be glad to be rid of. The conflict is this though:
1. Taunt slows down aggro and allows the defender to 'trade' minions. Otherwise, if you dont have a taunt, aggro has no reason to trade into your 1 big dude sitting there. The game was designed to favor the attacker, hence taunt is a way to force trades.
2. If the game changed and did not have the attacker dictating the trades, then taunts would not be necessary and therefore silence would not be as much either.
3. Taunt minions now are so powerful, that the power creep almost dictates aggro and mid range to run spell breaker or owl.
I think a nice balance to make Silence tolerable, but not mandatory would be to have it last 1 turn only, as someone else suggested. Either way, until the power creep of taunt minions goes up, silence is here to stay.
Silence as a mechanic is needed in the game. Frankly, I wish every class had some kind of playable silence so we wern't seeing the same neutral options- un-nerfing Keeper of the Grove would be nice, but druid is already well-positioned so that seems unwise.
Silence is interactive and encourages counter play. There needs to be a way to punish decks that play 5 mana 2/2's and 9 mana 3/7's. If you pass the turn the with 2 Doomguards or 2 Giants inside a Cube it means you don't believe your opponent can't interact. The fact that answers for this exist makes the game more fun and makes your decisions count more. If you're sitting behind a Voidlord but dead on board to a silence then you deserve to lose, you didn't play around a card everyone plays. Just like if you dump a bunch of 3 health minions into the board vs dragon priest and they sweep them up with a Duskbreaker you deserve to lose.
Also SB is a 4 mana 4/3, and when your opponent plays Call to Arms or Spreading Plague it's pretty dead, so there's a real deck building cost to including it or an owl. Sap is also a similar effect. It's technically card disadvantage but has the power to win games if not played around properly.
Without silence people buff cards would be insane. Silence has to exist to counter crazy buffs and deathrattles.
Silence is necessary in the game. It's been in the game forever, but only sparingly used (mainly aggro) until most recently. This is because of Kabal Lackey, Carnivorous Cube and Voidlord. Call it power creep, call it whatever, but without silence decks could become incredibly greedy. Yes, it hurts lesser or meme decks like quest paladin. However, it's not silence that is to blame, it's the power level of the other cards that requires silence to be put in decks that is to blame.
I'd make it a 2/4. I think the less aggressive stat line would bring it's power into line with cards like Owl, BGH, Black Knight, ect... That power being very good vs. certain decks but crap otherwise. Right now the 4/3 line is just good enough that there isn't much penalty to playing it.
As a 2/4 with Silence it would compare very well with one version of Grove Keeper prior to the nerf. And that card was about a 2x auto include in most Druid decks. I think it wouldn't be such a draconian nerf to stop it from seeing play. And it would still function exactly the same in removing taunts/silencing lackeys, etc...
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Spellbreaker is as healthy as the targets it's typically used for.
Baku paladin effectively uses Owl, so the point is that it doesn't really matter, silence is just so much needed to have chances in otgerwise sealed games.
So the best way to balance this would be something like either reduce the power level of taunts, or make silence a one turn effect only. I love both of these suggestions. And to be frank there’s only really one insanely huge broken taunt that that’s void daddy. Even more broken because of guldan. In other words, nerfing cubelock nerfs/fixes silence basically.