And to all you smart ones who keep saying "play around it"...try it sometime.
Try holding back playing many minions when you're playing an aggro deck....
That's just what the druid wants you to do...sit around holding back on going face while he collects his entire deck, stacks on 20+ armor, and then plays his finishing combo cards to mop you up with.
And to all you smart ones who keep saying "play around it"...try it sometime.
Try holding back playing many minions when you're playing an aggro deck....
That's just what the druid wants you to do...sit around holding back on going face while he collects his entire deck, stacks on 20+ armor, and then plays his finishing combo cards to mop you up with.
Be a thinker!
How about the ones who say "Why are you demanding to be able to win with an aggro deck against a card specifically made to stop aggro?"
Decks are designed to counter archetypes. If you insist on playing that archetype, you're being countered. It'll take luck and effective abuse of said luck to win since, by default, you lose. That's a feature, not a bug.
And yes, we know druid also has hyper ramp, hyper card draw, hyper defense, and hyper finishers. Druid having EVERYTHING is a problem.
But Aggro losing to an anti-aggro card is a feature, not a bug. Just like Aggro beating out greedy decks like Quest Rogue
I think the problem is druid is very hard to read. So if it's taunt / dragon druid, and I'm playing even shaman, the correct play is to go wide. However, if it's any other, the correct play is to stick to three or so minions. It's like a penalty shootout in soccer. If you go the wrong way, you're dead. Occasionally I'm holding buffs or direct damage, and they play plague without also killing 1 to 3 of your board with spellstones, malfurion attacks, etc. You can often tear down the wall without too much damage in those situations in like 2 turns. But yeah, it's often a game ender and very demoralizing.
How about not overcomitting to a wide board and completely playing into plague?
What do I know though? I just started this game in vanilla and learned not to overextend into things like Flamestrike & Holy Nova. Must be hard being a modern player who never learned that lesson when going face.
Blizzard should make a special stream lessons or youtube videos in which they explain the the only way hs should be played is with supa dupa 1000 IQ control/combo homebrewed decks and 30 minutes long match is a minimum time period that proves you're not braindead blah blah something etc.
How about not overcomitting to a wide board and completely playing into plague?
What do I know though? I just started this game in vanilla and learned not to overextend into things like Flamestrike & Holy Nova. Must be hard being a modern player who never learned that lesson when going face.
Me play aggro, me no think about enemy cards
Then you are playing aggro very bad. :D
That's also true. There's a reason why we never bothered to update the Face Song. Mindless Face decks haven't really been a thing since Patches got nerfed. Aggro decks now are, at worst, zoo in style which still focuses on putting the right cards down and knowing when to trade and when to face (No it's not "always face"). True, if the opponent is bad or running a deck weak to aggro (or just bad) you can tear through them. But that's more on the weak opponent.
Fast decks that want to have a chance in this meta will have to be more versatile than Ye old Face Hunter 2014. That means figuring out how to put tech cards in your deck. Or at least being able to analyze your meta enough to ask whether you face enough Odd Rogues to warrant accepting the occasional Spreading Plague loss.
So, many people have posted on how OP spreading plague is. While there are some decent techs against it, even after those techs it does a significant amount of dmg to your board.
In this thread I'm going to assume that most decks who are really wanting to counter spreading plague are aggro/midrange.
Example 1: Mossy Horror: This card utterly destroys spreading plague. However, in an aggro deck, how often will you have a large board left after destroying all your 2 or less attack minions?
Example 2: Void Ripper: This card effectively turns your opponent's taunt wall into a magma rager wall, making them a lot easier to kill. However, in clearing the board of their magma ragers, you end up dealing 5 dmg to all your minions. What aggro deck will have any real board after that?
Has anyone found any like strong counters to it?
Not playing Aggro.
I'm not being snarky. It's like a weapon based deck asking how to get around anti-weapon deck. You don't. The entire point to these cards is to make you change your strategy. If your opponents are punishing slow decks without a win condition you go play decks that work faster and have a strong pressure game. If your opponents are poised to kill all aggro, you go Tempo or Midrange. If they are anti-Combo you stop playing Combo.
If you are playing competitively, then you don't treat decks or classes like they were fighting game characters or waifus. Your decks are WEAPONS. You adapt them or swap them out as needed according to your opponent.
So yes, if all of your opponents are playing Spreading Plague, a card made to punish zooish board flooding decks, then you form a deck that's less board flood focused and/or can wield counter tech effectively. Then they can come over and say "How can a spreading plague druid fight against those decks that use Mossy Horror and don't flood the board."
To which we'll say: By not playing a druid that relies purely on spreading plague.
EDITSS!:
For the record, I play 80% meme decks/combo/control decks so I don't have this problem as often as you might think. I simply started this to try and address the problem, which is that druid doesn't deserve an effective board clear because it's one of its class weaknesses. All classes have them (Mages it's understatted minions, Warlock it's self damaging cards, Shaman it's overload, etc.) The problems with classes come when cards come in to address those problems and not just address them but make their weaknesses practically nonexistent.
That's a completely different issue. The problem isn't spreading plague itself. It's that it's Spreading Plague combined with spells to turn the 1/5s into powerhouses AND being able to refill from an empty hand AND ramp to avoid bad mana curves AND have strong finishing tools AND...
This should've been t
"If you are playing competitively, then you don't treat decks or classes like they were fighting game characters or waifus. Your decks are WEAPONS. You adapt them or swap them out as needed according to your opponent. "
Nicely done, sir. This comment turned my head about decks and why they are built. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the best deck architecture for your favorite class and stop experimenting with new (and old) tools. The best ones are the ones that almost everyone forgot, but just got stronger in the latest expansion.
"If you are playing competitively, then you don't treat decks or classes like they were fighting game characters or waifus. Your decks are WEAPONS. You adapt them or swap them out as needed according to your opponent. "
Nicely done, sir. This comment turned my head about decks and why they are built. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the best deck architecture for your favorite class and stop experimenting with new (and old) tools. The best ones are the ones that almost everyone forgot, but just got stronger in the latest expansion.
Thanks!
Thank you, though Diamond ended up explaining the concept better than I did.
To add a bit and help with illustrations, you can think of each game as two people rolling dice where the person with the higher number wins.
(insert massive attempt to turn a card game into an analogy using dice that has only a tangental link to the overall topic.)
The first question is what dice everyone is using, that is what numbers are being shown. Am I using a 1-6 sided die while you use a 20 sided one? that sort of thing:
The deck you use sets the initial average of the dice. This is where 'tier lists' come in. A Dollmaster Murloc Shaman made by a newbie would, for arbitrary example, be an average of a 3, while an Odd Rogue deck would be an 8. What determines a deck's raw strength is in how well it's structured: how powerful it's win condition is, for example. A LOT of decks are 'bad' because they do something cool..that doesn't actually win games. Like just about all Dollmaster decks.
The stability of the deck sets the actual number of sides. Thus you can have two decks with the same 'average', but one has a lot of random elements and relies on perfect draws while the other tends to always work. Thus an extremely stable deck like..wel... Odd Rogue, may be a 5 sided die (6, 7, 8, 9, 10) while something like Good Shaman, with all of it's evolve mechanics, would be a 12 sided die, with the ability to 'high roll' or fall apart. A LOT of 'creative' decks end up having a low average but a LOT of sides: a 50 sided die with an average of 5 can still roll a 30 on occasion).
The match up then 'shifts' the numbers HEAVILY similar to how games like fire emblem or pokemon give you a % boost to damage/defense. This is where the "aggro > Control > Combo" talk comes in. This can flat out overwhelm the first two numbers: A bad, unstable, deck facing a perfect matchup may have the advantage. That's WHY we keep saying that perfect balance is a 'rock paper scissors' style.
Also note that this means if you are 'an aggro player' or a 'control player', this means you are always vulnerable to this critical part of the calculation. You are basically always playing Rock and trying to win against paper. Thankfully that CAN happen.. but you get the picture of the issue.
Note that tech cards and card choices also come into play here and ONE card can make a big shift (see spreadig plague vs aggro). Do note,though, that tech cards also make your deck less stable, so in many cases adding a tech card, while removing a card normally helping your deck, improves your dice against certain matchups but also adds more sides vs ALL matchups.
Another shift happens with skill level and it can be at the same rate. Your knowledge of the deck provides a negative boost: perfectly running the deck simply brings it to its full potential while not knowing the deck means you are screwing it up. Your knowledge of your opponent (the matchup, what to mulligan, card tracking, probabilities so on) provides a boost.
So it's not that skill doesn't matter with the game. It's just that through 95% of your play experience, you will face a similarly skilled opponent so it won't matter much.
Skill is a modifier, not the base requirement here. If you do are close to the same skill, the modifier is 0 and what matters is the other factors.
Put them all together and you get a hearthstone match.
For example, I could, say, make an Odd Warrior deck. The deck is a fatigue deck that doesn't actually have a win condition, so it's base average strength is weak, say, a 4.
It's extremely stable, however, as it relies on a hero power that is ALWAYS available and just about all of its cards are made for the same purpose: drag the game out and stall. So it's a 3 sided die (3-5).
It's trick is that it HEAVILY techs itself against aggro and decks with a limited amount of damage (including some combo decks like Maly Druid). Against such matchups, the sheer number of cards to support this generate an insane modifier, say 400% against such decks.
So we have a deck that, against aggro and some combo decks, it's an extremely powerful and stable (12-14) die. However, if it's not against those matchups, the modifier isn't there, leaving it back to it's original 3-5 setting. And thus you have a polarizing deck.
HOWEVER, someone decided to add in tech cards to help it against other matchups, like Dr. Boom and Omega Assembly. These cards are more anti-control as they generate a ton of value that overwhelms control decks. Dr. Boom is a win condition in himself. This allows it to improve its modifier. But now the cards make the deck less stable: pull Dr. Boom early, or against hyper aggro and you are screwed. Those cards are also naturally random and can give you minions and hero powers that won't help you at all. So now the deck is a (4-10) against bad matchups and a (8-14) against good matchups.
From there, if you just picked up the deck, you suck at it, so drop the numbers another 50%. If you are good at adapting to odd situations, know the hidden mechanics, know the matchup, and what not, add 50%. Note that both can occur (you know the game but not know the deck).
So now we have these stats on the deck:
base dice used: 4-10.
With a bad matchup and a bad player, you can drop that to 2-5 while giving your opponent a boost appropriate to their deck.
With a good matchup a pro player, and lots of mastery of the deck, you can get it up to a 18-21. Note that most of that comes from the matchup.
(note that all of those numbers are proof of concept, not ACTUAL numbers of how Odd Warrior would work as dice)
How about not overcomitting to a wide board and completely playing into plague?
What do I know though? I just started this game in vanilla and learned not to overextend into things like Flamestrike & Holy Nova. Must be hard being a modern player who never learned that lesson when going face.
I hate this argument. Spreading Plague is so much worse than AoE. You can "overcommit" against druid as Shaman or Paladin just by hero powering, or playing your one-drop on curve, which isn't true for AoE. Druid is the class that is 95% composed of decks that need to be pressured in the early game, but if you do that they can turn it around on you by ignoring your board and then playing SP while they gather their combo and gain armor. It takes druid's one weakness and turns it around with a single card. Fuck Spreading Plague
If Spreading Plague comes out once you might get a win (although your chances are seriously diminished).
If SP comes out twice... I've lost every time. 100% chance of losing so far. I guess I'll have to include Moss in all my decks until they nerf it.
Man i've won after 3 spreading plagues in wild after guy discovered a 3rd he was using Jade rogue while i was using a wild odd pally you should learn to get around things better with your board wait a turn or two if needed but it is indeed something hard to come back and win but it can be done
i think the correct way to play around spreading plague as an aggressive deck is to go all in and pray they dont have spreading plague , put yourself in a position where spreading plague is the only thing that can save the druid , since trying to play around will cost you to lose most of the time , i hate the fcking card but u can tech a void ripper or a mossy in i guess
There really isn't one, you either get lucky or just lose the match. Like others have pointed out, it's a game of averages. The best players find ways to maximize this. When I queue up the hunter and it's a druid, I just wait for a few turns to make sure that they didn't get a crap draw, or are a complete idiot, and if not I save time by conceding - how's that for a solution?
How about not overcomitting to a wide board and completely playing into plague?
What do I know though? I just started this game in vanilla and learned not to overextend into things like Flamestrike & Holy Nova. Must be hard being a modern player who never learned that lesson when going face.
favorite class: druid. hahaha.
In all seriousness, the correct play vs druid is actually to dump your hand and NOT play around plague because every druid deck wins by default when they draw their deck (which only takes like 12 turns because druid has the dumbest card draw), and they can only have 2 plagues out of 30 cards. That's how stupid druid is now. Card is so busted that you just have to hope they don't have it...
How about not overcomitting to a wide board and completely playing into plague?
What do I know though? I just started this game in vanilla and learned not to overextend into things like Flamestrike & Holy Nova. Must be hard being a modern player who never learned that lesson when going face.
favorite class: druid. hahaha.
In all seriousness, the correct play vs druid is actually to dump your hand and NOT play around plague because every druid deck wins by default when they draw their deck (which only takes like 12 turns because druid has the dumbest card draw), and they can only have 2 plagues out of 30 cards. That's how stupid druid is now. Card is so busted that you just have to hope they don't have it...
This.
I really can't understand why people keep defending broken cards, it is horrible for the game, everyone is forced to play the card or hope for the opponent don't draw it.
I like a lot play with rogue but I will hate if Blizzard release a 5/5 charge for 1 mana and every match be rogue.
And to all you smart ones who keep saying "play around it"...try it sometime.
Try holding back playing many minions when you're playing an aggro deck....
That's just what the druid wants you to do...sit around holding back on going face while he collects his entire deck, stacks on 20+ armor, and then plays his finishing combo cards to mop you up with.
Be a thinker!
How about the ones who say "Why are you demanding to be able to win with an aggro deck against a card specifically made to stop aggro?"
Decks are designed to counter archetypes. If you insist on playing that archetype, you're being countered. It'll take luck and effective abuse of said luck to win since, by default, you lose. That's a feature, not a bug.
And yes, we know druid also has hyper ramp, hyper card draw, hyper defense, and hyper finishers. Druid having EVERYTHING is a problem.
But Aggro losing to an anti-aggro card is a feature, not a bug. Just like Aggro beating out greedy decks like Quest Rogue
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
The way to counter it is to not overextent - simple as that - hard for aggro, but easy for control.
I think the problem is druid is very hard to read. So if it's taunt / dragon druid, and I'm playing even shaman, the correct play is to go wide. However, if it's any other, the correct play is to stick to three or so minions. It's like a penalty shootout in soccer. If you go the wrong way, you're dead. Occasionally I'm holding buffs or direct damage, and they play plague without also killing 1 to 3 of your board with spellstones, malfurion attacks, etc. You can often tear down the wall without too much damage in those situations in like 2 turns. But yeah, it's often a game ender and very demoralizing.
Uninstall hearthstone. Vote with your wallet.
Then you are playing aggro very bad. :D
That's also true. There's a reason why we never bothered to update the Face Song. Mindless Face decks haven't really been a thing since Patches got nerfed. Aggro decks now are, at worst, zoo in style which still focuses on putting the right cards down and knowing when to trade and when to face (No it's not "always face"). True, if the opponent is bad or running a deck weak to aggro (or just bad) you can tear through them. But that's more on the weak opponent.
Fast decks that want to have a chance in this meta will have to be more versatile than Ye old Face Hunter 2014. That means figuring out how to put tech cards in your deck. Or at least being able to analyze your meta enough to ask whether you face enough Odd Rogues to warrant accepting the occasional Spreading Plague loss.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
"If you are playing competitively, then you don't treat decks or classes like they were fighting game characters or waifus. Your decks are WEAPONS. You adapt them or swap them out as needed according to your opponent. "
Nicely done, sir. This comment turned my head about decks and why they are built. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the best deck architecture for your favorite class and stop experimenting with new (and old) tools. The best ones are the ones that almost everyone forgot, but just got stronger in the latest expansion.
Thanks!
Thank you, though Diamond ended up explaining the concept better than I did.
To add a bit and help with illustrations, you can think of each game as two people rolling dice where the person with the higher number wins.
(insert massive attempt to turn a card game into an analogy using dice that has only a tangental link to the overall topic.)
The first question is what dice everyone is using, that is what numbers are being shown. Am I using a 1-6 sided die while you use a 20 sided one? that sort of thing:
The deck you use sets the initial average of the dice. This is where 'tier lists' come in. A Dollmaster Murloc Shaman made by a newbie would, for arbitrary example, be an average of a 3, while an Odd Rogue deck would be an 8. What determines a deck's raw strength is in how well it's structured: how powerful it's win condition is, for example. A LOT of decks are 'bad' because they do something cool..that doesn't actually win games. Like just about all Dollmaster decks.
The stability of the deck sets the actual number of sides. Thus you can have two decks with the same 'average', but one has a lot of random elements and relies on perfect draws while the other tends to always work. Thus an extremely stable deck like..wel... Odd Rogue, may be a 5 sided die (6, 7, 8, 9, 10) while something like Good Shaman, with all of it's evolve mechanics, would be a 12 sided die, with the ability to 'high roll' or fall apart. A LOT of 'creative' decks end up having a low average but a LOT of sides: a 50 sided die with an average of 5 can still roll a 30 on occasion).
The match up then 'shifts' the numbers HEAVILY similar to how games like fire emblem or pokemon give you a % boost to damage/defense. This is where the "aggro > Control > Combo" talk comes in. This can flat out overwhelm the first two numbers: A bad, unstable, deck facing a perfect matchup may have the advantage. That's WHY we keep saying that perfect balance is a 'rock paper scissors' style.
Also note that this means if you are 'an aggro player' or a 'control player', this means you are always vulnerable to this critical part of the calculation. You are basically always playing Rock and trying to win against paper. Thankfully that CAN happen.. but you get the picture of the issue.
Note that tech cards and card choices also come into play here and ONE card can make a big shift (see spreadig plague vs aggro). Do note,though, that tech cards also make your deck less stable, so in many cases adding a tech card, while removing a card normally helping your deck, improves your dice against certain matchups but also adds more sides vs ALL matchups.
Another shift happens with skill level and it can be at the same rate. Your knowledge of the deck provides a negative boost: perfectly running the deck simply brings it to its full potential while not knowing the deck means you are screwing it up. Your knowledge of your opponent (the matchup, what to mulligan, card tracking, probabilities so on) provides a boost.
So it's not that skill doesn't matter with the game. It's just that through 95% of your play experience, you will face a similarly skilled opponent so it won't matter much.
Skill is a modifier, not the base requirement here. If you do are close to the same skill, the modifier is 0 and what matters is the other factors.
Put them all together and you get a hearthstone match.
For example, I could, say, make an Odd Warrior deck. The deck is a fatigue deck that doesn't actually have a win condition, so it's base average strength is weak, say, a 4.
It's extremely stable, however, as it relies on a hero power that is ALWAYS available and just about all of its cards are made for the same purpose: drag the game out and stall. So it's a 3 sided die (3-5).
It's trick is that it HEAVILY techs itself against aggro and decks with a limited amount of damage (including some combo decks like Maly Druid). Against such matchups, the sheer number of cards to support this generate an insane modifier, say 400% against such decks.
So we have a deck that, against aggro and some combo decks, it's an extremely powerful and stable (12-14) die. However, if it's not against those matchups, the modifier isn't there, leaving it back to it's original 3-5 setting. And thus you have a polarizing deck.
HOWEVER, someone decided to add in tech cards to help it against other matchups, like Dr. Boom and Omega Assembly. These cards are more anti-control as they generate a ton of value that overwhelms control decks. Dr. Boom is a win condition in himself. This allows it to improve its modifier. But now the cards make the deck less stable: pull Dr. Boom early, or against hyper aggro and you are screwed. Those cards are also naturally random and can give you minions and hero powers that won't help you at all. So now the deck is a (4-10) against bad matchups and a (8-14) against good matchups.
From there, if you just picked up the deck, you suck at it, so drop the numbers another 50%. If you are good at adapting to odd situations, know the hidden mechanics, know the matchup, and what not, add 50%. Note that both can occur (you know the game but not know the deck).
So now we have these stats on the deck:
base dice used: 4-10.
With a bad matchup and a bad player, you can drop that to 2-5 while giving your opponent a boost appropriate to their deck.
With a good matchup a pro player, and lots of mastery of the deck, you can get it up to a 18-21. Note that most of that comes from the matchup.
(note that all of those numbers are proof of concept, not ACTUAL numbers of how Odd Warrior would work as dice)
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Do you like to play with fire?
I hate this argument. Spreading Plague is so much worse than AoE. You can "overcommit" against druid as Shaman or Paladin just by hero powering, or playing your one-drop on curve, which isn't true for AoE. Druid is the class that is 95% composed of decks that need to be pressured in the early game, but if you do that they can turn it around on you by ignoring your board and then playing SP while they gather their combo and gain armor. It takes druid's one weakness and turns it around with a single card. Fuck Spreading Plague
There are two ways to play around it:
1. Play OTK/Combo deck
2. Play only minions with 5+ attack.
That one spell can generate stats like only a 10-mana Old God or Deathknight can.
Man i've won after 3 spreading plagues in wild after guy discovered a 3rd he was using Jade rogue while i was using a wild odd pally you should learn to get around things better with your board wait a turn or two if needed but it is indeed something hard to come back and win but it can be done
i think the correct way to play around spreading plague as an aggressive deck is to go all in and pray they dont have spreading plague , put yourself in a position where spreading plague is the only thing that can save the druid , since trying to play around will cost you to lose most of the time , i hate the fcking card but u can tech a void ripper or a mossy in i guess
3.2.1 kill shot
So many ways to deal with spreading plague.
Brawl, vanish, physic scream, power ward death, excavated, mossy horror, void ripper, cataclysm, twisting nether, doom, pally combos, blah blah, blah...
play devolve.
i am sorry, but there is no other way.
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
There really isn't one, you either get lucky or just lose the match. Like others have pointed out, it's a game of averages. The best players find ways to maximize this. When I queue up the hunter and it's a druid, I just wait for a few turns to make sure that they didn't get a crap draw, or are a complete idiot, and if not I save time by conceding - how's that for a solution?
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
favorite class: druid. hahaha.
In all seriousness, the correct play vs druid is actually to dump your hand and NOT play around plague because every druid deck wins by default when they draw their deck (which only takes like 12 turns because druid has the dumbest card draw), and they can only have 2 plagues out of 30 cards. That's how stupid druid is now. Card is so busted that you just have to hope they don't have it...
This.
I really can't understand why people keep defending broken cards, it is horrible for the game, everyone is forced to play the card or hope for the opponent don't draw it.
I like a lot play with rogue but I will hate if Blizzard release a 5/5 charge for 1 mana and every match be rogue.
Secret hunters don't care about spreading plague.