However, we’d still like to talk about the big picture that these Power Rankings show, so far. There are no new decks born in Rastakhan that have made a significant impact on the meta. You’ll soon find out from our analysis, as well as the class sections, that Rastakhan’s Rumble might be the least impactful set of cards we’ve ever seen.
My theory is simple. There are too many cards in Standard.
We have more cards in Standard than ever before. RR cards have to compete for deck slots with the Basic/Classic set as well as five other expansions. It's not that RR cards are inherently bad, its just that only the best of the best make it into Standard Constructed decks. They just don't make the cut. Highly touted cards like Master's Call and Revenge of the Wild see close to zero play - Hunter has far better tools to work with.
VS mentions the obvious - Cube/Odd/Even being too good. I don't disagree. But I suspect that there will always be a potential for expansions to have little impact whenever we have too many cards available to begin with. One of the five existing sets will usually have something broken in it that dominates the Meta, and unless the new expansion has a card/mechanic/whatever that is just as (or more) broken, it will have very little impact other than to beef up the already existing archetypes.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. There are a lot of cards, so only the most powerful ones will see play. Unfortunately, a lot of the most powerful ones come from Classic, Frozen Throne, and Kobolds. There's no escaping the fact that Death Knights, Cube, and Genn/Baku are the backbones of a great many of the best decks.
I will add that I'm disappointed in VS. Speaking as definitively as they did about a set that has only been out for 9 days feels very premature.
Yes, the old stuff is doing better than the new stuff...but how much of that is because the new stuff is still new and we're still figuring it out. The only class where they recognized this was priest, where they said
It would be wise to wait another week to evaluate Priest before making significant conclusions about its prospects because of the class’ current state of incredible jankiness...Control Priest also has potential to make it into the meta, but likely requires some time to adjust its build to whatever the meta evolves into.
I believe that this approach should be applied to most of the other classes as well. For them to basically say "Spirit of the Shark is trash...lul!" despite it reaching #2 legend reeks of hubris. (Spirit of the Shark may end up being bad, but again, 9 days in seems like too short a time for us to know anything definitively.)
There are new decks being explored every day, beast hunters, odd burn mages, rush warriors, etc.
TL;DR - VS is too full of themselves here. They have less data than they've had in the past, and the expansion isn't even 2 weeks old. Maybe they're right that only the old stuff is going to be good, but it's going to take more than 9 days to know with the sort of certainty they project in this report.
"We’re pretty confident that Even Paladin is almost as strong as Odd Paladin, and might become stronger should Spreading Plague become more popular. Its win rate made us double check that Call to Arms’ cost did not switch back to 4 mana. It’s a Meta Breaker waiting to happen"
Is this really true? I love this deck, but I don't find it is a "meta breaker" at all.
"We’re pretty confident that Even Paladin is almost as strong as Odd Paladin, and might become stronger should Spreading Plague become more popular. Its win rate made us double check that Call to Arms’ cost did not switch back to 4 mana. It’s a Meta Breaker waiting to happen"
Is this really true? I love this deck, but I don't find it is a "meta breaker" at all.
Yes, Even Paladin came back into the Meta at the end of the last expansion. It has more "game" to it than Odd Paladin. It has board clears - it can comeback. Tarim is just one of the best cards in the game, and Steed is still good.
The problem is that the year of the mammoth is one of the most powerful in hearthstone history. Blizzard is clearly trying to scale back the power level of the game but it may not really show until the rotation.
"We’re pretty confident that Even Paladin is almost as strong as Odd Paladin, and might become stronger should Spreading Plague become more popular. Its win rate made us double check that Call to Arms’ cost did not switch back to 4 mana. It’s a Meta Breaker waiting to happen"
Is this really true? I love this deck, but I don't find it is a "meta breaker" at all.
In my experience as someone who played a lot of Even Paladin the past two seasons, the deck has been hugely overlooked. Part of this has to do with people mulliganing for Odd Paladin, the other reasons are the Genn itself and the powerful even cost cards in the paladin set like spikeridge steed, Tarim, Tirion, Blessing of Kings, Valan'yr, the concecrate/equality combo and I can go on and on. Never underestimate the power of always having an okay turn 1 play and a 1 mana hero power is easier to squeeze in than a 2 mana one.
What also seems very strong is the spirit of the tiger in the deck. It needs to be killed or you risk 1 minion being hugely buffed and a tiger with stats equal to the mana cost. Trust me, you don't want to deal with Spikeridged Steed and a 6/6 tiger.
I am also convinced that Giggling Inventor did not get nerfed to 6 mana because of the posibility of Even Paladin becoming very strong again.
I don't disagree with you here - it probably is too early to be making such sweeping statements. Thing is - sorry, bit of a rant here...
The staff at VS are hearthstone players too, and I think what we're seeing here is a lot of frustration which a whole lot of the community shares. It's the same frustration I personally feel - the prospect of yet another 4 months with the same decks dominating the meta, frustration that Genn and Baku are going to be in the meta for another 16 months (and limiting design space in ways I can't even imagine - I mean, how are you gonna design three more sets when you have to look sideways at every single card and consider how it might break the meta if it's present in an odd or even deck?). I mean yeah, good on Blizz for putting out three low impact sets - I'm not being sarcastic here - the power creep needed to stop, and I do think things will be fresher in April when the old broken cards rotate out - but it would have been a hell of a lot better if Year of the Mammoth didn't have so many broken cards in the first place. It would have been a hell of a lot better if they were bolder with their nerfs and balance changes, rather than doing what feels like the bare minimum to shut up the player base when they're unhappy. It would be better if we, the player base, didn't have to pay the price for their bad decisions.
I hope you're right - I hope this reaction is premature, and that the meta will come out with new and interesting decks once things settle. Sadly, I'm not optimistic. I think things will be better in April with the rotation, but Genn and Baku will still be in the meta, and the longer they're around the more I think Blizz have made a HUGE problem for themselves with these two cards.
It may be that they are as frustrated as we are. However, they need to hold themselves to a higher standard. If the reason VS believes it's better than Tempostorm or HSReplay is because of it's data analysis, they also need to recognize when that data isn't great data. 9 days into a metagame with corrupted data issues isn't a good time to make bold, sweeping statements.
Further, due in large part to the great work they've done in the past, their meta reports become self-fulfilling prophecies of a sort. When they make bold pronouncements with less data, they are also helping to create the situation they denounce.
Let's keep in mind that VS is not infallible. Even as recently as the last metagame, they didn't think you should put Myra's Unstable Element in Odd Rogue and they thought Cloning Gallery Priest was only a meme.
If this is true (you guys already gone into the issues with this early report) then I'm actually relieved.
The last expansion of the year being powerful enough to flood the meta is exactly how we got into the problem we have now, with Kobolds being just too strong. When I realized how soften Witchwood/Boomsday was, I realized that we were set to perform a power reset where instead of going for more power and more power we just let the high power cards rotate out then leave everyone with the weaker cards.
The best they could do with Rumble is to put out cards that synergize with last year's sets. Which seems to be happening: if anything is strong, it's due to the strength of last year.
I also knew that it would make a VERY "UGG" experience for many for the next few months. But beyond a mass nerf what was the alternative, a set that's STRONGER than Kobolds and Frozen Throne? Would you want a meta that overpowers those sets so that what happend with Cubelock would happen again?
Thus if the above is true then next spring will be an interesting experiment to see what we'll do when all we have are sets we scoffed as not worth our time before.
No new deck born in RR emerging after 9 days is the bare truth, and unlikely to change at this point. The meta could still change ofc, but new strong decks would have emerged already.
They also used "*might* be the least impactful set."
However, they should better elaborate "impactful", as a concept: afterall, an old deck being upgraded by new cards could still warp or shift the meta in a very impactful way. Kingsbane Rogue with Raiding Party is an example, made by themselves, but not valued as truly "impactful" in their general analysis. And I agree that such a view is not descriptive of the current situation in the meta, which is seeing a fair set of variations and innovations here and there.
Tl;dr: VS last analysis is probably exceedingly blunt, but saying they are full of themselves is plain wrong. Unless one wants to be a Blizz fanboy at all costs.
As for the issue per se, Standard Rotations are made exactly to fix 3rd expansions saturation. It's not even a bad thing if a 3rd set provides the least number of new meta decks.
Btw, without Genn and Baku, deckbuilding during the whole year of the Raven would have been incredibly frustrating. They implemented new synergies, but gave nearly none of them fair meta viability. Freeze Shaman is just the most obvious example. I don't understand this policy...
Btw, without Genn and Baku, deckbuilding during the whole year of the Raven would have been incredibly frustrating. They implemented new synergies, but gave nearly none of them fair meta viability. Freeze Shaman is just the most obvious example. I don't understand this policy...
Conspiracy theory time!
They basically had most of the year planned out by the time Witchwood came out and tend to have a handle on what works and what doesn't (I'm pretty sure they knew freeze shaman would've been crap :P). If the goal of this set really was to do a reset, then there's the problem of giving players a year's worth of non-content made to pay off later.
While Genn/Baku might've gotten out of their control, what if the overall goal was for Genn/Baku to do what you suggest: cover over a low power situation. Instead of having nothing but old decks to play with, we would have Even/Odd decks to plan out. It would still mean a year of just even/odd decks but it's better than a year of nothing but Knights/Kobolds cards. It means they have to watch what cards they put out for the next year but Rumble shows that they seem willing to do that.
So yah, what if they KNEW this year was going to be weak, that Genn/Baku would dominate this year, and, from the start, felt that this was a better short-term pain but long-term solution than not having Genn/Baku or just going high power creep?
Also a good chance that they didn't plan for that, but that's the time line we're currently in. And, again, I feel there's much MUCH darker timelines out there.
Yeah, it could very well be that Genn and Bamu were meant to fill the void. But they could have done that by being slightly more daring with synergies support. Freeze Shaman was doomed because they never gave it proper support, in like 6 expansions.
I actually love Genn and Baku (Genn much more, because his benefit is more subtle). Even decks are the decks I like the most in my whole HS history.
I just dislike that they stopped there with serious innovations. It feels lazy on their side, and frustrating on ours...
Highly touted cards like Master's Call and Revenge of the Wild see close to zero play - Hunter has far better tools to work with.
Can I assume you've not seen the recent Beast Hunter deck that has been sweeping the ranks at 5-legend? Of Brian Kibler's design; it is crazy strong and relies heavily on Master's Call.
Highly touted cards like Master's Call and Revenge of the Wild see close to zero play - Hunter has far better tools to work with.
Can I assume you've not seen the recent Beast Hunter deck that has been sweeping the ranks at 5-legend? Of Brian Kibler's design; it is crazy strong and relies heavily on Master's Call.
I've seen it. Brian plays it much better than others. Many good plays make high legend, even #1, with sub optimal decks.
Midrange Hunter is a very "fair" deck. It's not broken enough for competitive play.
i love vicsious but agree with the opinions that it's too early to paint an accurate desciption of the Meta, usually they would go on hiatus 2 weeks after ane xpansion to let things settle, well i guess some impatient people kept bugging them to do it
From https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-114/
My theory is simple. There are too many cards in Standard.
We have more cards in Standard than ever before. RR cards have to compete for deck slots with the Basic/Classic set as well as five other expansions. It's not that RR cards are inherently bad, its just that only the best of the best make it into Standard Constructed decks. They just don't make the cut. Highly touted cards like Master's Call and Revenge of the Wild see close to zero play - Hunter has far better tools to work with.
VS mentions the obvious - Cube/Odd/Even being too good. I don't disagree. But I suspect that there will always be a potential for expansions to have little impact whenever we have too many cards available to begin with. One of the five existing sets will usually have something broken in it that dominates the Meta, and unless the new expansion has a card/mechanic/whatever that is just as (or more) broken, it will have very little impact other than to beef up the already existing archetypes.
Opinions ...
I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. There are a lot of cards, so only the most powerful ones will see play. Unfortunately, a lot of the most powerful ones come from Classic, Frozen Throne, and Kobolds. There's no escaping the fact that Death Knights, Cube, and Genn/Baku are the backbones of a great many of the best decks.
I will add that I'm disappointed in VS. Speaking as definitively as they did about a set that has only been out for 9 days feels very premature.
Yes, the old stuff is doing better than the new stuff...but how much of that is because the new stuff is still new and we're still figuring it out. The only class where they recognized this was priest, where they said
I believe that this approach should be applied to most of the other classes as well. For them to basically say "Spirit of the Shark is trash...lul!" despite it reaching #2 legend reeks of hubris. (Spirit of the Shark may end up being bad, but again, 9 days in seems like too short a time for us to know anything definitively.)
There are new decks being explored every day, beast hunters, odd burn mages, rush warriors, etc.
TL;DR - VS is too full of themselves here. They have less data than they've had in the past, and the expansion isn't even 2 weeks old. Maybe they're right that only the old stuff is going to be good, but it's going to take more than 9 days to know with the sort of certainty they project in this report.
"We’re pretty confident that Even Paladin is almost as strong as Odd Paladin, and might become stronger should Spreading Plague become more popular. Its win rate made us double check that Call to Arms’ cost did not switch back to 4 mana. It’s a Meta Breaker waiting to happen"
Is this really true? I love this deck, but I don't find it is a "meta breaker" at all.
Yes, Even Paladin came back into the Meta at the end of the last expansion. It has more "game" to it than Odd Paladin. It has board clears - it can comeback. Tarim is just one of the best cards in the game, and Steed is still good.
The problem is that the year of the mammoth is one of the most powerful in hearthstone history. Blizzard is clearly trying to scale back the power level of the game but it may not really show until the rotation.
In my experience as someone who played a lot of Even Paladin the past two seasons, the deck has been hugely overlooked. Part of this has to do with people mulliganing for Odd Paladin, the other reasons are the Genn itself and the powerful even cost cards in the paladin set like spikeridge steed, Tarim, Tirion, Blessing of Kings, Valan'yr, the concecrate/equality combo and I can go on and on. Never underestimate the power of always having an okay turn 1 play and a 1 mana hero power is easier to squeeze in than a 2 mana one.
What also seems very strong is the spirit of the tiger in the deck. It needs to be killed or you risk 1 minion being hugely buffed and a tiger with stats equal to the mana cost. Trust me, you don't want to deal with Spikeridged Steed and a 6/6 tiger.
I am also convinced that Giggling Inventor did not get nerfed to 6 mana because of the posibility of Even Paladin becoming very strong again.
It may be that they are as frustrated as we are. However, they need to hold themselves to a higher standard. If the reason VS believes it's better than Tempostorm or HSReplay is because of it's data analysis, they also need to recognize when that data isn't great data. 9 days into a metagame with corrupted data issues isn't a good time to make bold, sweeping statements.
Further, due in large part to the great work they've done in the past, their meta reports become self-fulfilling prophecies of a sort. When they make bold pronouncements with less data, they are also helping to create the situation they denounce.
Let's keep in mind that VS is not infallible. Even as recently as the last metagame, they didn't think you should put Myra's Unstable Element in Odd Rogue and they thought Cloning Gallery Priest was only a meme.
If this is true (you guys already gone into the issues with this early report) then I'm actually relieved.
The last expansion of the year being powerful enough to flood the meta is exactly how we got into the problem we have now, with Kobolds being just too strong. When I realized how soften Witchwood/Boomsday was, I realized that we were set to perform a power reset where instead of going for more power and more power we just let the high power cards rotate out then leave everyone with the weaker cards.
The best they could do with Rumble is to put out cards that synergize with last year's sets. Which seems to be happening: if anything is strong, it's due to the strength of last year.
I also knew that it would make a VERY "UGG" experience for many for the next few months. But beyond a mass nerf what was the alternative, a set that's STRONGER than Kobolds and Frozen Throne? Would you want a meta that overpowers those sets so that what happend with Cubelock would happen again?
Thus if the above is true then next spring will be an interesting experiment to see what we'll do when all we have are sets we scoffed as not worth our time before.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
No new deck born in RR emerging after 9 days is the bare truth, and unlikely to change at this point. The meta could still change ofc, but new strong decks would have emerged already.
They also used "*might* be the least impactful set."
However, they should better elaborate "impactful", as a concept: afterall, an old deck being upgraded by new cards could still warp or shift the meta in a very impactful way. Kingsbane Rogue with Raiding Party is an example, made by themselves, but not valued as truly "impactful" in their general analysis. And I agree that such a view is not descriptive of the current situation in the meta, which is seeing a fair set of variations and innovations here and there.
Tl;dr: VS last analysis is probably exceedingly blunt, but saying they are full of themselves is plain wrong. Unless one wants to be a Blizz fanboy at all costs.
As for the issue per se, Standard Rotations are made exactly to fix 3rd expansions saturation. It's not even a bad thing if a 3rd set provides the least number of new meta decks.
Btw, without Genn and Baku, deckbuilding during the whole year of the Raven would have been incredibly frustrating. They implemented new synergies, but gave nearly none of them fair meta viability. Freeze Shaman is just the most obvious example. I don't understand this policy...
Conspiracy theory time!
They basically had most of the year planned out by the time Witchwood came out and tend to have a handle on what works and what doesn't (I'm pretty sure they knew freeze shaman would've been crap :P). If the goal of this set really was to do a reset, then there's the problem of giving players a year's worth of non-content made to pay off later.
While Genn/Baku might've gotten out of their control, what if the overall goal was for Genn/Baku to do what you suggest: cover over a low power situation. Instead of having nothing but old decks to play with, we would have Even/Odd decks to plan out. It would still mean a year of just even/odd decks but it's better than a year of nothing but Knights/Kobolds cards. It means they have to watch what cards they put out for the next year but Rumble shows that they seem willing to do that.
So yah, what if they KNEW this year was going to be weak, that Genn/Baku would dominate this year, and, from the start, felt that this was a better short-term pain but long-term solution than not having Genn/Baku or just going high power creep?
Also a good chance that they didn't plan for that, but that's the time line we're currently in. And, again, I feel there's much MUCH darker timelines out there.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Yeah, it could very well be that Genn and Bamu were meant to fill the void. But they could have done that by being slightly more daring with synergies support. Freeze Shaman was doomed because they never gave it proper support, in like 6 expansions.
I actually love Genn and Baku (Genn much more, because his benefit is more subtle). Even decks are the decks I like the most in my whole HS history.
I just dislike that they stopped there with serious innovations. It feels lazy on their side, and frustrating on ours...
So disagreeing with VS's way too soon, way too little data, way too conclusive report = blizz fanboy?
seems like a good reason for the early introduction of baku and gen, they didn't want the whole year to suck cause year of the mammoth was so strong
Disagreeing with VS is not fanboyism.
Dismissing their report with a "too soon" and "VS is too full of themselves" sounds like a partisan position.
Can I assume you've not seen the recent Beast Hunter deck that has been sweeping the ranks at 5-legend?
Of Brian Kibler's design; it is crazy strong and relies heavily on Master's Call.
I've seen it. Brian plays it much better than others. Many good plays make high legend, even #1, with sub optimal decks.
Midrange Hunter is a very "fair" deck. It's not broken enough for competitive play.
i love vicsious but agree with the opinions that it's too early to paint an accurate desciption of the Meta, usually they would go on hiatus 2 weeks after ane xpansion to let things settle, well i guess some impatient people kept bugging them to do it
It's not when the disagreement stems from it being too soon.
When 95% of Hunter with win rate above 58% has either Zul'jin or Oondasta I'd have to disagree.
16% of player are playing Hunter.
These are signs that RR has shaped the Meta.
Not sure if hyped yet.