Polarization is a thing, but I think too many players nowadays equate natural "bad match-ups" as being "polarized" unhealthy match-ups.
For example, even in wild there are tons of complaints with control decks losing to OTK decks despite there being things like Dirty Rat or Demonic Project. Or Odd Rogue beating many control decks since that is how the archtype (aggro) has always been designed from the start (ie to punish slow decks and close the game out soon). In most of these situations it is the playstyle working as intended; certain playstyles are supposed to lose more games to an evenly skilled player with the stronger playstyle.
You then get other polarized match-ups that are actual polarized match-ups because players paint themselves into a corner as far as their win condition goes; a win condition that wasn't pushed by T5 but was invented by the community. Two great examples of this are Taunt Druid and Token Druid. Neither of these decks were pushed by T5 like how Mech Control Warrior or the C'Thun decks were pushed. Players realized that Haddronox worked great as a one-of beast when Witching Hour was released and Whispering Woods was intended for 'Hand Druid', not the Token Druid we've had. However, Taunt Druid almost always instantly loses to mages with Polymorph and slow shaman decks with Hex or Devolve.
Taunt Druid players created their own polarization by restricting themselves to such a limited win condition knowing that transform effects were a thing and chose not to build in an alternate win condition similar to how Big Druid uses Haddronox AND big mana cheese tempo swings. Similar thing with Token Druid. Players created their win condition knowing that things like Defile and Psychic Scream were a thing. Players sometimes restrict their own win conditions so narrowly and that is more of a reflection on how players build decks than it does suggest about T5's deckbuilding limitations.
This report is what happens when non statisticians try to do stastics.
“Polarity Metric” is not a standard statistic. Statistics need to have certain properties to be useful. For example, if we are estimating the win rate of a certain matchup, we use the sample average. This statistic is unbiased, consistent, sufficient, and most likely (things that mean something to a mathematician). I’m not convinced any of these apply to PM.
For starters, as deck diversity increases, the frequency of mirrors decreases, and this might result in an artificially high PM. The article didn’t detail how mirrors were handled, so I’m not sure whether or not this is a flaw.
I also am skeptical of some of the tabular data presented. Specifically, the table for the Witchwood. Why are only 11 archetypes listed? Why is Odd Paladin omitted? When we sum the percentages in the right hand column, why do we get something significantly less than 100%?
TL/DR - the math sucks.
The author team has multiple statistics PHDs.
Usually (the vs metadata report is long running) they list the top x decks by percentage played. But they have frequent posted saying they don't remove any games (the unlisted matchups are still part of the numbers).
Not sure why they have listed less decks for witchwood.
The numbers for witchwood are pre-patch when not many people played odd paladin. So I would imagine odd Paladin would have a pretty low play rate, and the deck has pretty polarised match-ups so wouldn't change the overall narrative.
Regarding mirror matchups. Not sure if they "corrected" for it. But Witchwood is the meta most dominated by a couple of decks (even paladin + cube lock) and it is still one of the most polarised.
This a great post. It's obvious that deck polarization is a huge issue, but it's very informative to see it something that has steadily been getting worse. It's a terribly feeling is that your decision making just doesn't matter, and that the luck of the match up is dictating everything.
Heartstone is way too simple game for its own good. It was designed as a casual game (competitive HS is my a**). Starting with only three card is a joke. It means that you have to be lucky to win. The simplicity of this game (destroy your opponent's health) seriously limiting design space. Game was basically designed as RnGstone. Most of the games are won or lost based on your mulligan, first four draws and your opponent class (rock-paper-scissors). This meta is too polarised almost every game is a flipping a coin.
It might be impossible to have diversity but avoid polarity. At least it hasn't happened yet if I am not mistaken.
A: Players complain about meeting the same decks all the time, or that the most powerful decks are purging the metagame.
B: Players complain that what you cue into matters more than how you play, as every deck feels helpless in certain matchups.
Or both at once!
Pick your poison!
Are these two things correlated though? I don't believe we ever had a metagame where we had high diversity and low polarity but that doesn't mean such a meta can't exist. As far as I can tell, diversity shouldn't cause more polarization or vice versa. Or is there some logic here that I'm missing?
With 9 different classes, 5+ "deck speeds" and a myriad of archetypes, I am pretty convinced it could be proved mathematically!
The oposite of a polarized meta would be 2-3 very strong and popular decks having fair matchups against eachother, but pushing other decks away. Right now, there are extremely few close matchups! Even 40-60 is condsidered close now, but is really pretty polarized! That does open up for more decks, though, as they become viable through their good matchups, and the most popular decks are kept in check by hard counters.
Polarisation makes more of each aggro/tempo/midrange/control/otk/mill type to be viable too, as they have a natural rock/paper scissors system built into it. We have had both aggro (pirate warrior) tempo (kelrogue) midrange (combo druid) and control (jade druid) being dominant before, and it ruins diveristy.
Are these two things correlated though? I don't believe we ever had a metagame where we had high diversity and low polarity but that doesn't mean such a meta can't exist. As far as I can tell, diversity shouldn't cause more polarization or vice versa. Or is there some logic here that I'm missing?
With 9 different classes, 5+ "deck speeds" and a myriad of archetypes, I am pretty convinced it could be proved mathematically!
I don't think a meta is created on just mathematical properties. If a deck is showcased by a popular streamer or someone reaching rank 1 legend with it or does well at a tournament, a lot of people start playing it, more than the strength of the deck accounts for. Also fun is a factor in deck selection: for some people it's very important and for some it's marginal, but I think very few players don't consider their personal preferences at all when selecting which deck to ladder with. Then there is also deck difficulty: a deck that is easy to play will have a higher representation on ladder than a deck that has a high win rate only in the hands of an expert player.
The oposite of a polarized meta would be 2-3 very strong and popular decks having fair matchups against eachother, but pushing other decks away. Right now, there are extremely few close matchups! Even 40-60 is condsidered close now, but is really pretty polarized! That does open up for more decks, though, as they become viable through their good matchups, and the most popular decks are kept in check by hard counters.
That's one example of a non-polarized meta, but why couldn't a diverse non-polarized meta exist? I mean in theory: it may be very difficult to design cards to actually get such a meta, especially if you want the cards to be interesting as well.
That might be one of the causes of the polarization, by the way: Blizzard wants to design new and exciting mechanics, but the more out there a card is, the more likely it is to polarize matchups.
Polarisation makes more of each aggro/tempo/midrange/control/otk/mill type to be viable too, as they have a natural rock/paper scissors system built into it. We have had both aggro (pirate warrior) tempo (kelrogue) midrange (combo druid) and control (jade druid) being dominant before, and it ruins diveristy.
In comparison to WOG, the MSoG meta was more polarized, yet a lot less diverse. So if anything, that is a counter-argument for the theory that polarization and diversity go hand in hand.
One card that wasn't mentioned in the article, because it wouldn't show up in those statistics, is Prince Keleseth. It is something that as an opponent you have no control over, but makes a huge difference in your chances of winning the matchup. If you'd count a match that draws Keleseth early and a match that draws Keleseth late or never as separate decks, the meta would show to be even more polarized.
Whispers of the old gods had a fair number. Of different viable decks (although this included about 5 different warrior decks) and was the low point of polarisation. So high diversity and low polarisation has already happened.
One card that wasn't mentioned in the article, because it wouldn't show up in those statistics, is Prince Keleseth. It is something that as an opponent you have no control over, but makes a huge difference in your chances of winning the matchup. If you'd count a match that draws Keleseth early and a match that draws Keleseth late or never as separate decks, the meta would show to be even more polarized.
Now WHY would we count PK deck that didn't draw Keleseth as a DIFFERENT ARCHETYPE has PK deck that played it on curve?
Making silly arguments to advance your agenda is a sure sign you have no valid argument to begin with.
A common theme I see in these posts is that newb players are equating "polarized" match ups with unwinnable match ups. They are not the same.
If you watch top players stream, they often win bad match ups because they outplay their opponents. For example, I have recently seen Thijs beat Quest Rogue with both Big-Spell Mage and Odd Control Warrior - both really BAD match ups. In both cases the QR player made at least one dubious decision. But this is what we want. If making mistakes costs you the game, or even raises the probability of you losing a game, we have a game where player's decisions matter.
Suppose we had a really polarized meta game where every match up was 75-25. Furthermore, assume that a good player wins 80% of his good match ups and 30% of the bad ones. That player winds up winning 55% of the time and can climb to whatever Legend rank they desire to.
HS is not chess. It's a card game. RNG is a big factor. It is a feature, not a weakness of the game. Poker has proved that games of skill AND luck can be popular because even the worst player has a chance to win. Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP ME, but he would never even come close to winning the World Championship of chess.
I wonder for how long people will still complain about the meta. I'm playing HS since day one and the game never had such amount of playable decks as today.
Are these two things correlated though? I don't believe we ever had a metagame where we had high diversity and low polarity but that doesn't mean such a meta can't exist. As far as I can tell, diversity shouldn't cause more polarization or vice versa. Or is there some logic here that I'm missing?
With 9 different classes, 5+ "deck speeds" and a myriad of archetypes, I am pretty convinced it could be proved mathematically!
I don't think a meta is created on just mathematical properties. If a deck is showcased by a popular streamer or someone reaching rank 1 legend with it or does well at a tournament, a lot of people start playing it, more than the strength of the deck accounts for. Also fun is a factor in deck selection: for some people it's very important and for some it's marginal, but I think very few players don't consider their personal preferences at all when selecting which deck to ladder with. Then there is also deck difficulty: a deck that is easy to play will have a higher representation on ladder than a deck that has a high win rate only in the hands of an expert player.
The oposite of a polarized meta would be 2-3 very strong and popular decks having fair matchups against eachother, but pushing other decks away. Right now, there are extremely few close matchups! Even 40-60 is condsidered close now, but is really pretty polarized! That does open up for more decks, though, as they become viable through their good matchups, and the most popular decks are kept in check by hard counters.
That's one example of a non-polarized meta, but why couldn't a diverse non-polarized meta exist? I mean in theory: it may be very difficult to design cards to actually get such a meta, especially if you want the cards to be interesting as well.
That might be one of the causes of the polarization, by the way: Blizzard wants to design new and exciting mechanics, but the more out there a card is, the more likely it is to polarize matchups.
Polarisation makes more of each aggro/tempo/midrange/control/otk/mill type to be viable too, as they have a natural rock/paper scissors system built into it. We have had both aggro (pirate warrior) tempo (kelrogue) midrange (combo druid) and control (jade druid) being dominant before, and it ruins diveristy.
In comparison to WOG, the MSoG meta was more polarized, yet a lot less diverse. So if anything, that is a counter-argument for the theory that polarization and diversity go hand in hand.
One card that wasn't mentioned in the article, because it wouldn't show up in those statistics, is Prince Keleseth. It is something that as an opponent you have no control over, but makes a huge difference in your chances of winning the matchup. If you'd count a match that draws Keleseth early and a match that draws Keleseth late or never as separate decks, the meta would show to be even more polarized.
Yes, I agree that polarizing cards are a big the problem. Even close matchups can still feel polarized if they depend too much on a specific card being drawn. MSOG was just a very imbalanced expansion, and probably the biggest jump in powercreep so far. At least it brought a metagame shakeup and new archetypes...
I believe a class diverse but non polarized meta would be one based around strong neutral card "packages." We have had a number of these already, both for aggro, midrange and control decks. I am not sure if that is desireable either. I can't see how you can have a class diverse, archetype diverse non polarized meta.
While I certainly concede that the current meta-game is often polarizing, VS decision to only present data from Legend ranks certainly skews their analysis. Their own data suggests that the play-rates for the three most-polarizing decks are much lower from ranks 20-10 than at Legend - Odd Warrior and Togg Druid are half as popular on the main ladder, while Quest Rogue is less than one-third as popular as it is at Legend. They suggest that "differences across ranks are marginal" - but it would have been better to simply present the overall numbers.
There are also remedies to playing in a polarized meta-game - play the decks that don't have many polarized match-ups. Deathrattle Hunter doesn't have a match-up worse than 40-60 until it queues into the 16th most-played deck on ladder (Odd Paladin.) Zoo has two match-ups worse than 40-60 among the twenty most-played decks on ladder (against the 8th and 19th most-popular decks), and so on . . .
Dude, have you ever played MTG? There are literally decks which just win on turn 1. Not "oh no, this deck counters mine, i cant possibly ever win", nooo. Literally. Turn 1. And Artifact is not even ready, lul. Also what about Gwent? Too hard? Shadowwerse? TES? Not enough hype for you to know about them?
Even when the pirates, Reno Jackson and Jade Golems were duking it out, there was a better chance of you not being bullied out of the game just for the deck you decided to play, and your in game actions actually meant something more than they do now. Control warrior right now is just as unhealthy as pirate warrior ever was if not more so because it has been taken much more extreme in the other direction. Think about that. The only reason more people aren't complaining is because it's not an aggro deck. The bias is real.
Talking about bias here, wow. Pirate Warrior had to be nerfed at least 3 times and you know what? Its still very good in Wild, yikes. Jade idol is the 2nd worst designed card in all of HS (after hunter DK, ofc), so much it had its own counter (hello Skulking Geist) , and getting Reno'd as an aggro deck was pretty much hopeless most of the time.
Strawman is so real in here, i cant even. The data lies, its a fact. Patron Warrior had sub 50%WR. Raza Prest was called a tier 3 deck. Hunter somehow isnt Tier 1, despite having Rexxar (bail me free outta any jail card). Majority of the data is gathered from ranks 5-9, and you can get to 5 with ANYTHING. Also can we aknowledge the fact that much, MUCH more people are netdecking and using deck trackers now (and therefore contributing data) than in WOTG, for example?
Yes, meta is not ideal. Odd warrior and Quest rogue(that one tough kukaracha if u ask me) are too much. The important distinction to make is that YOU have to be skilled/teched enough to outplay them, since their decks are fairly consistent (unlike before, where you HOPE that priest wont draw Raza or cubelock wont found the skull, or pirate warr wont draw... well, anything, tbh) and thats just FEELS bettter to play against. Thats all.
Dude, have you ever played MTG? There are literally decks which just win on turn 1. Not "oh no, this deck counters mine, i cant possibly ever win", nooo. Literally. Turn 1. And Artifact is not even ready, lul. Also what about Gwent? Too hard? Shadowwerse? TES? Not enough hype for you to know about them?
Why did you even bother responding to that hype-boy? People like him have no idea what are they talking about,
P.S. I'm playing MTG aswell a bit and the only good thing about it is no board RNG interaction. Except that, HS mechanics are way better both for copetetive and casual play.
One card that wasn't mentioned in the article, because it wouldn't show up in those statistics, is Prince Keleseth. It is something that as an opponent you have no control over, but makes a huge difference in your chances of winning the matchup. If you'd count a match that draws Keleseth early and a match that draws Keleseth late or never as separate decks, the meta would show to be even more polarized.
Now WHY would we count PK deck that didn't draw Keleseth as a DIFFERENT ARCHETYPE has PK deck that played it on curve?
Because it leads to the same feeling for the player that polarized matchups do: that whether they win or lose is predetermined, rather than due to how they play.
And yes, I do understand that unfavored doesn't mean you'll always lose, but if you do lose in an unfavored matchup (which happens more than winning it, or it wouldn't be unfavored), it can make you feel powerless, which is not good gaming experience.
Making silly arguments to advance your agenda is a sure sign you have no valid argument to begin with.
Why did you feel the need to throw that in there?
I'm not even sure what my agenda is here. I like the current meta a lot better than some of the low-diversity metas in the past, but I can't deny that it is polarized and I think it would be more fun if it wasn't so polarized.
I believe a class diverse but non polarized meta would be one based around strong neutral card "packages." We have had a number of these already, both for aggro, midrange and control decks. I am not sure if that is desireable either. I can't see how you can have a class diverse, archetype diverse non polarized meta.
During KFT almost every midrange deck had Cobalt Scalebane and Bonemare in them. You get high class diversity, but at the cost of every class feeling the same. Not an ideal solution either.
With Witchwood and Boomsday having a relatively low power level and a focus on minions, I thought we would get another midrange-heavy meta. But it didn't work out that way at all: I think only Even Warlock and the Hunter decks could be considered midrange. Is it because Druid can just ramp past the mid-game completely? Most of its key cards were already available in KFT though. Or because Giggling Inventor rules the mid-game? But that doesn't explain the Witchwood meta. Some other reason?
While I certainly concede that the current meta-game is often polarizing, VS decision to only present data from Legend ranks certainly skews their analysis. Their own data suggests that the play-rates for the three most-polarizing decks are much lower from ranks 20-10 than at Legend - Odd Warrior and Togg Druid are half as popular on the main ladder, while Quest Rogue is less than one-third as popular as it is at Legend. They suggest that "differences across ranks are marginal" - but it would have been better to simply present the overall numbers.
There are also remedies to playing in a polarized meta-game - play the decks that don't have many polarized match-ups. Deathrattle Hunter doesn't have a match-up worse than 40-60 until it queues into the 16th most-played deck on ladder (Odd Paladin.) Zoo has two match-ups worse than 40-60 among the twenty most-played decks on ladder (against the 8th and 19th most-popular decks), and so on . . .
They went with legend because it makes sense. All of these netdecks trickle down from legend and are usually optimized at legend level. People make changes when top players make changes and dont even know why they do it until VS has to explain whats going on. Those decks are optimized to climb and have the best matchups vs unfavorables. Why would they use anything other than that? That 90% playerbase outside L are just using the old tech choices decks that are good to get to 5 ect.. Also yeah Idk why DR hunter doesnt get mentioned for low polarity, I mean we both see all that green right lol.
Polarization is a thing, but I think too many players nowadays equate natural "bad match-ups" as being "polarized" unhealthy match-ups.
For example, even in wild there are tons of complaints with control decks losing to OTK decks despite there being things like Dirty Rat or Demonic Project. Or Odd Rogue beating many control decks since that is how the archtype (aggro) has always been designed from the start (ie to punish slow decks and close the game out soon). In most of these situations it is the playstyle working as intended; certain playstyles are supposed to lose more games to an evenly skilled player with the stronger playstyle.
You then get other polarized match-ups that are actual polarized match-ups because players paint themselves into a corner as far as their win condition goes; a win condition that wasn't pushed by T5 but was invented by the community. Two great examples of this are Taunt Druid and Token Druid. Neither of these decks were pushed by T5 like how Mech Control Warrior or the C'Thun decks were pushed. Players realized that Haddronox worked great as a one-of beast when Witching Hour was released and Whispering Woods was intended for 'Hand Druid', not the Token Druid we've had. However, Taunt Druid almost always instantly loses to mages with Polymorph and slow shaman decks with Hex or Devolve.
Taunt Druid players created their own polarization by restricting themselves to such a limited win condition knowing that transform effects were a thing and chose not to build in an alternate win condition similar to how Big Druid uses Haddronox AND big mana cheese tempo swings. Similar thing with Token Druid. Players created their win condition knowing that things like Defile and Psychic Scream were a thing. Players sometimes restrict their own win conditions so narrowly and that is more of a reflection on how players build decks than it does suggest about T5's deckbuilding limitations.
The author team has multiple statistics PHDs.
Usually (the vs metadata report is long running) they list the top x decks by percentage played. But they have frequent posted saying they don't remove any games (the unlisted matchups are still part of the numbers).
Not sure why they have listed less decks for witchwood.
The numbers for witchwood are pre-patch when not many people played odd paladin. So I would imagine odd Paladin would have a pretty low play rate, and the deck has pretty polarised match-ups so wouldn't change the overall narrative.
Regarding mirror matchups. Not sure if they "corrected" for it. But Witchwood is the meta most dominated by a couple of decks (even paladin + cube lock) and it is still one of the most polarised.
This a great post. It's obvious that deck polarization is a huge issue, but it's very informative to see it something that has steadily been getting worse. It's a terribly feeling is that your decision making just doesn't matter, and that the luck of the match up is dictating everything.
Heartstone is way too simple game for its own good. It was designed as a casual game (competitive HS is my a**). Starting with only three card is a joke. It means that you have to be lucky to win. The simplicity of this game (destroy your opponent's health) seriously limiting design space. Game was basically designed as RnGstone. Most of the games are won or lost based on your mulligan, first four draws and your opponent class (rock-paper-scissors). This meta is too polarised almost every game is a flipping a coin.
Dead but dreaming
With 9 different classes, 5+ "deck speeds" and a myriad of archetypes, I am pretty convinced it could be proved mathematically!
The oposite of a polarized meta would be 2-3 very strong and popular decks having fair matchups against eachother, but pushing other decks away. Right now, there are extremely few close matchups! Even 40-60 is condsidered close now, but is really pretty polarized! That does open up for more decks, though, as they become viable through their good matchups, and the most popular decks are kept in check by hard counters.
Polarisation makes more of each aggro/tempo/midrange/control/otk/mill type to be viable too, as they have a natural rock/paper scissors system built into it. We have had both aggro (pirate warrior) tempo (kelrogue) midrange (combo druid) and control (jade druid) being dominant before, and it ruins diveristy.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
so
new report VS polarity report
who won ?
Absolutely agree with the report. Boomsday is way hard to get the fun of.
The goal of all life is death.
I don't think a meta is created on just mathematical properties. If a deck is showcased by a popular streamer or someone reaching rank 1 legend with it or does well at a tournament, a lot of people start playing it, more than the strength of the deck accounts for. Also fun is a factor in deck selection: for some people it's very important and for some it's marginal, but I think very few players don't consider their personal preferences at all when selecting which deck to ladder with. Then there is also deck difficulty: a deck that is easy to play will have a higher representation on ladder than a deck that has a high win rate only in the hands of an expert player.
That's one example of a non-polarized meta, but why couldn't a diverse non-polarized meta exist? I mean in theory: it may be very difficult to design cards to actually get such a meta, especially if you want the cards to be interesting as well.
That might be one of the causes of the polarization, by the way: Blizzard wants to design new and exciting mechanics, but the more out there a card is, the more likely it is to polarize matchups.
In comparison to WOG, the MSoG meta was more polarized, yet a lot less diverse. So if anything, that is a counter-argument for the theory that polarization and diversity go hand in hand.
One card that wasn't mentioned in the article, because it wouldn't show up in those statistics, is Prince Keleseth. It is something that as an opponent you have no control over, but makes a huge difference in your chances of winning the matchup. If you'd count a match that draws Keleseth early and a match that draws Keleseth late or never as separate decks, the meta would show to be even more polarized.
Whispers of the old gods had a fair number. Of different viable decks (although this included about 5 different warrior decks) and was the low point of polarisation. So high diversity and low polarisation has already happened.
Now WHY would we count PK deck that didn't draw Keleseth as a DIFFERENT ARCHETYPE has PK deck that played it on curve?
Making silly arguments to advance your agenda is a sure sign you have no valid argument to begin with.
A common theme I see in these posts is that newb players are equating "polarized" match ups with unwinnable match ups. They are not the same.
If you watch top players stream, they often win bad match ups because they outplay their opponents. For example, I have recently seen Thijs beat Quest Rogue with both Big-Spell Mage and Odd Control Warrior - both really BAD match ups. In both cases the QR player made at least one dubious decision. But this is what we want. If making mistakes costs you the game, or even raises the probability of you losing a game, we have a game where player's decisions matter.
Suppose we had a really polarized meta game where every match up was 75-25. Furthermore, assume that a good player wins 80% of his good match ups and 30% of the bad ones. That player winds up winning 55% of the time and can climb to whatever Legend rank they desire to.
HS is not chess. It's a card game. RNG is a big factor. It is a feature, not a weakness of the game. Poker has proved that games of skill AND luck can be popular because even the worst player has a chance to win. Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP ME, but he would never even come close to winning the World Championship of chess.
I wonder for how long people will still complain about the meta. I'm playing HS since day one and the game never had such amount of playable decks as today.
Yes, I agree that polarizing cards are a big the problem. Even close matchups can still feel polarized if they depend too much on a specific card being drawn. MSOG was just a very imbalanced expansion, and probably the biggest jump in powercreep so far. At least it brought a metagame shakeup and new archetypes...
I believe a class diverse but non polarized meta would be one based around strong neutral card "packages." We have had a number of these already, both for aggro, midrange and control decks. I am not sure if that is desireable either. I can't see how you can have a class diverse, archetype diverse non polarized meta.
Editor of the Heartpwn Legendary Crafting Guide:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide
While I certainly concede that the current meta-game is often polarizing, VS decision to only present data from Legend ranks certainly skews their analysis. Their own data suggests that the play-rates for the three most-polarizing decks are much lower from ranks 20-10 than at Legend - Odd Warrior and Togg Druid are half as popular on the main ladder, while Quest Rogue is less than one-third as popular as it is at Legend. They suggest that "differences across ranks are marginal" - but it would have been better to simply present the overall numbers.
There are also remedies to playing in a polarized meta-game - play the decks that don't have many polarized match-ups. Deathrattle Hunter doesn't have a match-up worse than 40-60 until it queues into the 16th most-played deck on ladder (Odd Paladin.) Zoo has two match-ups worse than 40-60 among the twenty most-played decks on ladder (against the 8th and 19th most-popular decks), and so on . . .
Well, yes, thats how humans work, you are getting tired from repeating things.
NO U
Dude, have you ever played MTG? There are literally decks which just win on turn 1. Not "oh no, this deck counters mine, i cant possibly ever win", nooo. Literally. Turn 1. And Artifact is not even ready, lul. Also what about Gwent? Too hard? Shadowwerse? TES? Not enough hype for you to know about them?
Talking about bias here, wow. Pirate Warrior had to be nerfed at least 3 times and you know what? Its still very good in Wild, yikes. Jade idol is the 2nd worst designed card in all of HS (after hunter DK, ofc), so much it had its own counter (hello Skulking Geist) , and getting Reno'd as an aggro deck was pretty much hopeless most of the time.
Strawman is so real in here, i cant even. The data lies, its a fact. Patron Warrior had sub 50%WR. Raza Prest was called a tier 3 deck. Hunter somehow isnt Tier 1, despite having Rexxar (bail me free outta any jail card). Majority of the data is gathered from ranks 5-9, and you can get to 5 with ANYTHING. Also can we aknowledge the fact that much, MUCH more people are netdecking and using deck trackers now (and therefore contributing data) than in WOTG, for example?
Yes, meta is not ideal. Odd warrior and Quest rogue(that one tough kukaracha if u ask me) are too much. The important distinction to make is that YOU have to be skilled/teched enough to outplay them, since their decks are fairly consistent (unlike before, where you HOPE that priest wont draw Raza or cubelock wont found the skull, or pirate warr wont draw... well, anything, tbh) and thats just FEELS bettter to play against. Thats all.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why did you even bother responding to that hype-boy? People like him have no idea what are they talking about,
P.S. I'm playing MTG aswell a bit and the only good thing about it is no board RNG interaction. Except that, HS mechanics are way better both for copetetive and casual play.
Because it leads to the same feeling for the player that polarized matchups do: that whether they win or lose is predetermined, rather than due to how they play.
And yes, I do understand that unfavored doesn't mean you'll always lose, but if you do lose in an unfavored matchup (which happens more than winning it, or it wouldn't be unfavored), it can make you feel powerless, which is not good gaming experience.
Why did you feel the need to throw that in there?
I'm not even sure what my agenda is here. I like the current meta a lot better than some of the low-diversity metas in the past, but I can't deny that it is polarized and I think it would be more fun if it wasn't so polarized.
During KFT almost every midrange deck had Cobalt Scalebane and Bonemare in them. You get high class diversity, but at the cost of every class feeling the same. Not an ideal solution either.
With Witchwood and Boomsday having a relatively low power level and a focus on minions, I thought we would get another midrange-heavy meta. But it didn't work out that way at all: I think only Even Warlock and the Hunter decks could be considered midrange. Is it because Druid can just ramp past the mid-game completely? Most of its key cards were already available in KFT though. Or because Giggling Inventor rules the mid-game? But that doesn't explain the Witchwood meta. Some other reason?
They went with legend because it makes sense. All of these netdecks trickle down from legend and are usually optimized at legend level. People make changes when top players make changes and dont even know why they do it until VS has to explain whats going on. Those decks are optimized to climb and have the best matchups vs unfavorables. Why would they use anything other than that? That 90% playerbase outside L are just using the old tech choices decks that are good to get to 5 ect.. Also yeah Idk why DR hunter doesnt get mentioned for low polarity, I mean we both see all that green right lol.
Mike's answer is really obnoxious though. When your player base is moaning, rightfully or not, you just don't answer the way he did.
And thanks VS for trying to identify the issue and support the anger with numbers. Sometimes it feels a way but numbers show differently.