I have to say I do not like the current state of Hearthstone. Many cards are overtuned, both in Standard and Wild. That it should feel balanced because you have a chance to win does not sit well with me when card powerlevel is high and deck archetypes are heavily polarized.
Regarding deck diversity, we are in a very good spot to be fair. Many classes are viable and win rates are pretty close. No complaint there. But the fact remains some cards skew creativity because they're simply so strong. I feel deck flexibility was higher in the past. You could be more liberal with how you made your deck and it could still work. These days, if you don't optimize you don't have a chance.
So yes, while the number of deck types is nice, I feel there's less flexibility in how you can make a deck. Lowering the general powerlevel would be appreciated.
every deck is viable atm which is incredible but dont expect much more than 50,5% from them except for those 3 or 4 that dominate the ladder which u encounter like 75% of the time having around 55% which is a huge difference when climbing the ladder
There’s gotta be a better use of you time then lecturing people who don’t give a shit. It’s like when I tell my students that statistics is actually useful and is something we use on a daily occurrence. Do they give a rat’s ass? Nope. So these long posts, while accurate for the most part, are likely not read In It’s entirety because it’s too much.
It is balanced for the most part, but polarizing matchups are complete bullshit, because even OP decks can have a 1/10 chance of winning such polarization. The game is great, it’s the players that INSIST on ruinin it by manipulating the loopholes and having zero creativity. TL;DR: the game is balanced, but players’ mindsets are not.
Of course there is better stuff to do, when it is time to do stuff with the family/friends, work, other stuff during down time like actual Netflix and chill, hobbies, etc, but there are times when none of that is happening or I'm on here while doing some of the less intensive stuff as well. Though it is obvious we all have a little downtime at some point or we wouldn't be geeking out on a fan forum for a video game :P
And if people didn't care they wouldn't keep responding to me and/or other posters. *Shrugs*
In what shape or form did I say I am entitled wins for throwing a deck together? In fact, I specifically said I was totally fine with playing decks with low overall winrates and did exactly this in previous metagames. I do not care how bad some decks or classes are, only that the top archtypes available for serious play have polarized matchups. The difference between 50/50 matchups and 90/10 matchups is that the better player wins more often, and if that's not a major goal of a cardgame, I don't know what is
One trick ponies is exactly the issue but it extends beyond the decks you mentioned. Even cubelock has their winrate slashed by geist and weapon removal; Inner fire priest can't win if their inner fires get geisted; Tog druid loses to weapon removal in standard and rats in wild. These aren't documented in matchup winrate because any deck can run these tech cards. So much of winning and losing these days is whether or not your opponent teched for your deck if their archetype doesn't counter you already and if they draw said tech
And yes, I do think it's T5's responsibility. As the saying goes, don't hate the player; hate the game. One trick ponies in witchwood have very, very high power levels. We can't expect others to not play the top decks because we don't like them. They effectively told us to make these decks by printing the powerful cards that build them
Yes, in a nutshell. About as balanced as it has ever been, though Odd Pally still has a pretty insanely high win-rate. Every class has at least one deck that does well... and it's not even a rock-paper-scissors meta! So yeah, good job Team 5.
It's "balanced" in the sense that auto-win matchups are balanced out by auto-lose matchups. Its just a stupid situation caused by the greedy and gimmicky decks in this meta.
Why does everyone care if the Metas balanced. A “Balanced” Meta is not good for the game it’s not what you want from a realistic standpoint. Sick of seeing these posts like serious if you have a balanced meta you’re going to have an extremely unpredictable boring time.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
-Those who do not understand true pain, can never understand true peace.-
Why does everyone care if the Metas balanced. A “Balanced” Meta is not good for the game it’s not what you want from a realistic standpoint. Sick of seeing these posts like serious if you have a balanced meta you’re going to have an extremely unpredictable boring time.
You raise a fair point.
I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind, but I see completely 'balanced' metas as being unpredictable as far as there are no decks or classes you particularly counter, and even if you do counter them you still may lose anyway if both players are at the same skill ceiling.
In a meta like that win streaks would also be less, which is a non-issue for repeating legend players since they start at rank 4 anyway, but with all of the complaints I see about how long it takes some players to grind out legend I can't see how a balanced meta with fewer win streaks would alleviate these players' concerns.
Why does everyone care if the Metas balanced. A “Balanced” Meta is not good for the game it’s not what you want from a realistic standpoint. Sick of seeing these posts like serious if you have a balanced meta you’re going to have an extremely unpredictable boring time.
This is a joke, right? The oppressive nature of the previous meta was absolutely stifling.
Why does everyone care if the Metas balanced. A “Balanced” Meta is not good for the game it’s not what you want from a realistic standpoint. Sick of seeing these posts like serious if you have a balanced meta you’re going to have an extremely unpredictable boring time.
This is a joke, right? The oppressive nature of the previous meta was absolutely stifling.
Asking for balanced metas, whatever that really means, is a double-edged sword. People tend not to think of the more subtle negative outcomes of such a meta.
For example, in a balanced meta somebody might say that means that every class is roughly equally represented. If every class is equally represented then the effectiveness of all tech cards go way down since you're way less likely to queue into a particular class. Wouldn't it also be stifling if you never could reliably tech against something? We don't have a sideboard system afterall.
While I claim no psychic powers something tells me that complaints asking for class bans in ranked and casual would arise if such an impossible balancing act occurred. In general it seems players don't like it when they can't reliably counter anything and just get surprised by their games most of the time.
Another thing people don't consider is that in a balanced meta you have more decks that can roll any particular archtype. While I personally don't think this a bad thing there would certainly be players who would complain that the pool of aggro players were no longer limited to paladin, but also could include shaman, rogue, warrior, and druid (for just a hypothetical) or the opposite if an aggro player hated going against so many control decks and suddenly found that a third to half of the classes spontaneously had viable control decks to bully their aggro decks.
There is no world where you can have a 'balanced meta' and not still have some unpleasant side effect for the community as a whole.
Why does everyone care if the Metas balanced. A “Balanced” Meta is not good for the game it’s not what you want from a realistic standpoint. Sick of seeing these posts like serious if you have a balanced meta you’re going to have an extremely unpredictable boring time.
This is a joke, right? The oppressive nature of the previous meta was absolutely stifling.
Asking for balanced metas, whatever that really means, is a double-edged sword. People tend not to think of the more subtle negative outcomes of such a meta.
For example, in a balanced meta somebody might say that means that every class is roughly equally represented. If every class is equally represented then the effectiveness of all tech cards go way down since you're way less likely to queue into a particular class. Wouldn't it also be stifling if you never could reliably tech against something? We don't have a sideboard system afterall.
While I claim no psychic powers something tells me that complaints asking for class bans in ranked and casual would arise if such an impossible balancing act occurred. In general it seems players don't like it when they can't reliably counter anything and just get surprised by their games most of the time.
Another thing people don't consider is that in a balanced meta you have more decks that can roll any particular archtype. While I personally don't think this a bad thing there would certainly be players who would complain that the pool of aggro players were no longer limited to paladin, but also could include shaman, rogue, warrior, and druid (for just a hypothetical) or the opposite if an aggro player hated going against so many control decks and suddenly found that a third to half of the classes spontaneously had viable control decks to bully their aggro decks.
There is no world where you can have a 'balanced meta' and not still have some unpleasant side effect for the community as a whole.
I'm still not seeing an issue here.
Tech cards aren't necessarily meant to synergize with the average deck, rather; they're a response to the meta. This is troubling when you consider that the best decks in the game are never the ones that counter the meta, they're always the ones that made the meta; decks that focus entirely on synergy. Unfortunately, the metas we have experienced in the past have some similar traits in that only one or two decks are allowed to focus on synergy, while the rest are forced to compete through the use of mandatory tech cards. For example, Cubelock and Aggro Pally set the meta for some time, creating a situation where if you weren't playing those decks or a deck that counters those decks, you'd have a high potential for failure; this is extremely unhealthy to the game. If mandatory techs were required less, we'd see a meta where all decks are similar in design to Cubelock and Aggro Pally; decks that rely on synergy rather than mandatory teching. This would allow for a meta to exist where all decks can focus on synergy, which allows for a diverse array of creative and viable decks to exist. Furthermore, I'd even argue that if all decks were built on deck synergy, the skill floor required to do well in the meta would rise. All in all, this leads to a healthy and enjoyable meta.
I honestly find it completely ridiculous that anyone would be against a meta where all classes are viable. Perhaps, they just prefer being able to beat casuals with their cheap decks that have a low skill floor?
I have to say I do not like the current state of Hearthstone. Many cards are overtuned, both in Standard and Wild. That it should feel balanced because you have a chance to win does not sit well with me when card powerlevel is high and deck archetypes are heavily polarized.
Regarding deck diversity, we are in a very good spot to be fair. Many classes are viable and win rates are pretty close. No complaint there. But the fact remains some cards skew creativity because they're simply so strong. I feel deck flexibility was higher in the past. You could be more liberal with how you made your deck and it could still work. These days, if you don't optimize you don't have a chance.
So yes, while the number of deck types is nice, I feel there's less flexibility in how you can make a deck. Lowering the general powerlevel would be appreciated.
Now, all 9 classes are playable and have chances to win
Wrong. Now you have more chances to auto lose than ever. Want to play druid? You can pick between the one that loses to transform/beast techs, the one that loses to whirlwind effects or the one that loses to weapon removal. Want to play priest? Would you rather lose to druid armor, skulking giest or shaman OTK? Want to play control? Better not queue into any wok shamans. Want to play some kind of recruit combo deck to punish control? Better not queue into odd rogue or paladin
Winning and losing in queue rolette is absolutely not what any card game should be. With the exception of freeze mage, all decks used to have 50 ±10% chance of winning against everything else in the meta. Now there's 30s, 20s and 70% matchups all over the board. I rather play classes that are bad, even 45% vs everyone else and try to make up for the 5% in good plays than what is happening now. Because when you're 30% unfavored to a bad queue, no amount of skill is going to save you, only the opponent having the cards that make you unfavored in the bottom of the draw pile. When this happens, you opponent probably did nothing wrong to lose and you did nothing right to win; feels bad for all parties involved
What good are class choices to me when they all feel bad? Nothing is stopping me from making the choice of playing classes when they aren't tier 1 or 2 outside of this meta either. I did that all the time and called it a challenge
No, I don't believe every deck should be able to more or less be able to maintain a 50% win rate against everything. Never thought I'd see the mmo special snowflake and entitlement syndrome bleed into Hearthstone, but here we are. You are not owed wins just because you throw a deck together and like it. If T5 spent each month balancing every random odd and end, instead of the just the most important stuff, that is all that they would be doing all of the time, min maxing every single deck so that Tommy or Sally isn't offended that THEIR deck drops below 40% against something.
Now granted, in no way am I saying I like these 90/10 or 80/20 super polarized match-ups. I don't and I even made a thread discussing it recently, but there is a difference between getting rid of 90/10 match-ups and making it so that everyone's a winner half of the time.
On a side note, have you ever considered that some match-ups feel like auto losses because the deck is nothing but a one trick pony?
Token Druid - Its sole win condition, getting a board to stick to win with FoN Savage Roar 2.0. That's it.
Hadronnox Druid - Its sole win condition (against control), running the opponent out of resources and getting gradual chip damage in, all made possible by multiple Hadronnox resses.
Burn Mage - Its sole win condition, melting face with spells before Aluneth kills you.
Perhaps if these decks did not rely on such a niche win condition, and perhaps if players stopped mass netdecking them we would have less of a polarized meta in standard. This isn't on T5, it is on the players. T5 didn't tell people to build a deck solely around a win condition that can be singlehandedly dismantled by a transform effect, board clear, or massive armor gain. There is a reason decks like Cubelock, Spell Hunter, Inner Fire Priest, and Azaline Togwaggle Druid suffer fewer 90/10 polarizing match-ups and that is because if they lose their cubes, doomguards, combo, face smorcing/wolves, and mill potential they still have other solid means of pulling off a win. You want a less polarized meta? Play those decks and decks like them instead.
Shudderwok is just a boring and """controllable""" version of Yogg-Saron. Hadronox Druid is just about playing taunts and gaining armor (so awesome, OMG). Recruit Hunter has a lot of aspects similar to Cubelock (obviously) and I used to play a lot with this archetype in the past, so there is nothing new here. Elemental Minion Mage is just a deck were you play elemental after elemental, minion after minion, and sometimes some spells, so please tell me, what the f...k is so great about it? Murloc Mage is just another murloc deck (wow so much innovation, OMG).
Giving a class the possibility to play the same archetype as other classes in the past is not innovation, it's f...king lazy design and a way to kill class identity, Mr. Lyra_Silvertongue. Team 5 should be ashamed of the current state of the meta.
Clearly you aren't going to see innovation in any deck when you describe them in such bland generalized terms. I can imitate what you're doing and apply it to any major archtype and sub-archtype to make everything sound uninspired.
Wow, aggro, all you're doing is vomiting your hand, making only the most vital trades and going face. Wow, control, all you're doing is not committing much to the board, baiting out removal, stalling, and bullying classes that have fewer removal & threats than you. Wow, midrange, all you're doing is making on tempo plays early on and then smorcing face in the later turns. How droll! Wow, OTK, all you're doing is stalling forever behind taunts, armor, healing, and/or armor and then cycling to your combo later. Wow, 'infinite value', all you're doing is doing what standard control decks do and then grinding out the opponent with never ending minions or weapon swings.
^ If that is more or less how you're going to look at any deck then there is nothing any of us can tell you that will change your mind; with that attitude you've already quit the game, it is just a manner of when you actually do it.
And while I am split on what to do with class identity I don't feel that we should continue restricting classes to the identities they were given every expansion. All that accomplishes is ensuring that priest, warlock, and mage always win control matches because they always get the board clears, big value engines, and healing, while pallies, mages, and shaman always win the aggro match-ups because they always get the burn, glass cannon minions, cheap cycling.
I also noticed you provided no ideas for how to make the game more innovative (in a realistic way that makes sense for how the game was designed). It is easy to criticize a game and completely different when actually presenting ideas that most of us would like to see in the game.
I agree with you up to a point, but if we only saw decks like inner fire priest and togswaggle druid, I'd uninstall the game.
It seems very good now. And Witchwood synergizes/reenables lots of old classic and ungoro cards. All classes can build competative decks and there is even variance possible. Shure there are some cards like Rexxar you will always use.
The key is diversity and this goes hand in hand with balance. And while i currently meet all T1 and T2 decks bejond rank 10 there is varity possible. I myself play my own variant of taunt warrior and it holds very well. And balance means you won´t win all. If you can adapt then you will be over 50%. Just accept that there will be those games where you have a bad day :-).
I've played this game since open beta.
I have to say I do not like the current state of Hearthstone. Many cards are overtuned, both in Standard and Wild. That it should feel balanced because you have a chance to win does not sit well with me when card powerlevel is high and deck archetypes are heavily polarized.
Regarding deck diversity, we are in a very good spot to be fair. Many classes are viable and win rates are pretty close. No complaint there. But the fact remains some cards skew creativity because they're simply so strong. I feel deck flexibility was higher in the past. You could be more liberal with how you made your deck and it could still work. These days, if you don't optimize you don't have a chance.
So yes, while the number of deck types is nice, I feel there's less flexibility in how you can make a deck. Lowering the general powerlevel would be appreciated.
every deck is viable atm which is incredible but dont expect much more than 50,5% from them except for those 3 or 4 that dominate the ladder which u encounter like 75% of the time having around 55% which is a huge difference when climbing the ladder
Of course there is better stuff to do, when it is time to do stuff with the family/friends, work, other stuff during down time like actual Netflix and chill, hobbies, etc, but there are times when none of that is happening or I'm on here while doing some of the less intensive stuff as well. Though it is obvious we all have a little downtime at some point or we wouldn't be geeking out on a fan forum for a video game :P
And if people didn't care they wouldn't keep responding to me and/or other posters. *Shrugs*
In what shape or form did I say I am entitled wins for throwing a deck together? In fact, I specifically said I was totally fine with playing decks with low overall winrates and did exactly this in previous metagames. I do not care how bad some decks or classes are, only that the top archtypes available for serious play have polarized matchups. The difference between 50/50 matchups and 90/10 matchups is that the better player wins more often, and if that's not a major goal of a cardgame, I don't know what is
One trick ponies is exactly the issue but it extends beyond the decks you mentioned. Even cubelock has their winrate slashed by geist and weapon removal; Inner fire priest can't win if their inner fires get geisted; Tog druid loses to weapon removal in standard and rats in wild. These aren't documented in matchup winrate because any deck can run these tech cards. So much of winning and losing these days is whether or not your opponent teched for your deck if their archetype doesn't counter you already and if they draw said tech
And yes, I do think it's T5's responsibility. As the saying goes, don't hate the player; hate the game. One trick ponies in witchwood have very, very high power levels. We can't expect others to not play the top decks because we don't like them. They effectively told us to make these decks by printing the powerful cards that build them
Legend with : S65 Freeze Mage, S57 Maly Gonk Druid, S57 "Okay" Shaman, S53 Boom-zooka Hunter, S53 Maly Tog Druid, S52 Wild Tog Druid ft.Blingtron, S50 Quest Rogue, S49 Dead Man's Warrior, S41 Wild Clown Fiesta Druid, S41 Hadronox Jade Druid, S40 Wild OTK Dragon Druid, S35 SMOrc Shaman, S33 Jade Druid, S22 Control Priest, S19 Control Priest
Yes, in a nutshell. About as balanced as it has ever been, though Odd Pally still has a pretty insanely high win-rate. Every class has at least one deck that does well... and it's not even a rock-paper-scissors meta! So yeah, good job Team 5.
Ibn Fahd.
This is the first time all 9 classes have been viable so yeah it's pretty balanced
It's "balanced" in the sense that auto-win matchups are balanced out by auto-lose matchups. Its just a stupid situation caused by the greedy and gimmicky decks in this meta.
Maybe if you're horrible at the game.
But as a formal Realm First Alakir player I can tell you right now, Chase Myers from Baytown Texas as my witness, Its balanced now.
Why does everyone care if the Metas balanced. A “Balanced” Meta is not good for the game it’s not what you want from a realistic standpoint. Sick of seeing these posts like serious if you have a balanced meta you’re going to have an extremely unpredictable boring time.
-Those who do not understand true pain, can never understand true peace.-
You raise a fair point.
I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind, but I see completely 'balanced' metas as being unpredictable as far as there are no decks or classes you particularly counter, and even if you do counter them you still may lose anyway if both players are at the same skill ceiling.
In a meta like that win streaks would also be less, which is a non-issue for repeating legend players since they start at rank 4 anyway, but with all of the complaints I see about how long it takes some players to grind out legend I can't see how a balanced meta with fewer win streaks would alleviate these players' concerns.
This is a joke, right? The oppressive nature of the previous meta was absolutely stifling.
Asking for balanced metas, whatever that really means, is a double-edged sword. People tend not to think of the more subtle negative outcomes of such a meta.
For example, in a balanced meta somebody might say that means that every class is roughly equally represented. If every class is equally represented then the effectiveness of all tech cards go way down since you're way less likely to queue into a particular class. Wouldn't it also be stifling if you never could reliably tech against something? We don't have a sideboard system afterall.
While I claim no psychic powers something tells me that complaints asking for class bans in ranked and casual would arise if such an impossible balancing act occurred. In general it seems players don't like it when they can't reliably counter anything and just get surprised by their games most of the time.
Another thing people don't consider is that in a balanced meta you have more decks that can roll any particular archtype. While I personally don't think this a bad thing there would certainly be players who would complain that the pool of aggro players were no longer limited to paladin, but also could include shaman, rogue, warrior, and druid (for just a hypothetical) or the opposite if an aggro player hated going against so many control decks and suddenly found that a third to half of the classes spontaneously had viable control decks to bully their aggro decks.
There is no world where you can have a 'balanced meta' and not still have some unpleasant side effect for the community as a whole.
I'm still not seeing an issue here.
Tech cards aren't necessarily meant to synergize with the average deck, rather; they're a response to the meta. This is troubling when you consider that the best decks in the game are never the ones that counter the meta, they're always the ones that made the meta; decks that focus entirely on synergy. Unfortunately, the metas we have experienced in the past have some similar traits in that only one or two decks are allowed to focus on synergy, while the rest are forced to compete through the use of mandatory tech cards. For example, Cubelock and Aggro Pally set the meta for some time, creating a situation where if you weren't playing those decks or a deck that counters those decks, you'd have a high potential for failure; this is extremely unhealthy to the game. If mandatory techs were required less, we'd see a meta where all decks are similar in design to Cubelock and Aggro Pally; decks that rely on synergy rather than mandatory teching. This would allow for a meta to exist where all decks can focus on synergy, which allows for a diverse array of creative and viable decks to exist. Furthermore, I'd even argue that if all decks were built on deck synergy, the skill floor required to do well in the meta would rise. All in all, this leads to a healthy and enjoyable meta.
I honestly find it completely ridiculous that anyone would be against a meta where all classes are viable. Perhaps, they just prefer being able to beat casuals with their cheap decks that have a low skill floor?
I agree with you up to a point, but if we only saw decks like inner fire priest and togswaggle druid, I'd uninstall the game.
yes, it is very well balanced now
Dead but dreaming
Best meta ever....
Dead but dreaming
It seems very good now. And Witchwood synergizes/reenables lots of old classic and ungoro cards. All classes can build competative decks and there is even variance possible. Shure there are some cards like Rexxar you will always use.
The key is diversity and this goes hand in hand with balance. And while i currently meet all T1 and T2 decks bejond rank 10 there is varity possible. I myself play my own variant of taunt warrior and it holds very well. And balance means you won´t win all. If you can adapt then you will be over 50%. Just accept that there will be those games where you have a bad day :-).
I'm playing since GVG and cant even remember a more balanced meta. Does that answer your question?
i know, taunt druid is still a problem!
This game is about as balanced as Oprah Winfrey walking a tightrope.
Rob Dawg