I am sure many of you remember Pirate Warrior and why it was nerfed. Everyone played it as it was a guaranteed win. Very few decks could counter it so it grew very popular and for the popularity and lack of counter decks it was nerfed to the ground. It wasn't interactive. It was warrior playing a single player game.
Now rogue isn't as bad as why it wasn't nerfed to the ground and still viable.
Rogue is the most popular deck played as of right now. It has ONE counter and that is control warrior and the only deck that consistently can beat Rogue. That isn't a balanced deck.
A balanced meta means looking at each deck individually not the overall meta. A balanced meta means that you take a deck and examine what it wins against. What is loses against and what decks it plays against that can go either way. A balanced deck will be strong against 2 or 3 other decks/classes. It will have 2 or 2 counters and the rest of the classes will be neutral - match can go either way depending on skill, rng, and card draw.
For example let's take control warrior; Very weak against hunter and mage right now. Those are the counters. A well played Murloc deck can out value Warrior but murloc players are usually dumb so point goes to Warrior. Mech Paladin has an advantage over Control Warrior but not a guaranteed win. Poorly played or card draw can put Warrior on top. Control warrior is strong against Rogue and Priest. 98% of the time it is a guaranteed win. Druid can go either way. Control Shaman can go either way.
That is a balanced deck. Rogue did not have that. It had one counter and was strong against all other classes and decks as why it became the most popular deck on ladder and casual. The nerfs came and needed to come. Rogue isn't dead now. The same deck can still be played but will be balanced as it will have more counters and still strong against some decks and some decks will be a toss up on who wins as they are equal in power, value, and potential.
It is important to remember that you won't win every game. A 50ish% overall win rate is great and means the deck is balanced and the meta is in a good place. When you play Hearthstone and you play against a varied assortment of classes and decks then the meta is in a good place. Playing mainly against rogues is a bad thing for the health of the game.
Your definition of "balanced" seems to be what Blizzard is operating on, but it shouldn't be. I don't know what a win rate needs to look like in order for you to consider a deck "countering" another, but that's a stupid subjective metric anyway. Anytime you see someone achieving materially-higher-than-50% win rates against the deck in question, it warrants notice in these discussions.
If you take a look at the individual decks in HSReplay, you will find that players have found ways to achieve materially-higher-than-50% winrates against rogue in several classes. For example:
Run of the mill Token Druids hitting 55%-59%
Secret Hunters at high fifties, low sixties win rate
Those two didn't surprise me. What DID surprise me were the Mages who were holding their own. The common understanding on this forum is that mages roll over to rogues. Turns out, you can run the Mana Cyclone package, or the dragon package, and still beat rogue handily if you just put in Rabble Bouncers. If mage can break 60%, I refuse to believe anything else, except perhaps priest, cannot be teched accordingly.
Again, I'm not arguing with you as far as why Blizzard is changing things. I just continue to maintain that it's a ridiculous reason. If they are looking at a player base that largely refuses to alter their decks to address the most popular archetype of opponent, BUT they are also seeing many individuals demonstrate it can be done, they can no longer hide behind "balance".
If you want to change because of "polarization" or "staleness" or "I really don't like Shudderwock" (all three being synonyms), that's perfectly fine. Don't talk to me about balance, Blizzard.
And of course, you know for certain that balance is NOT the reason these changes were being made. If balance were the motivating factor, they wouldn't execute three nerfs against one deck at the same time. There is NO possibility they have calculated how this will effect the meta's balance; they simply want the frequency of rogue greatly reduced. And they have certainly succeeded in that goal.
None of the above should be read to mean the nerfs were a bad idea. I would just very much like to dispense with the notion that balance is the goal. Ever since Flametongue joined the 3-mana club, that whole concept has been a farce.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
I am sure many of you remember Pirate Warrior and why it was nerfed. Everyone played it as it was a guaranteed win. Very few decks could counter it so it grew very popular and for the popularity and lack of counter decks it was nerfed to the ground. It wasn't interactive. It was warrior playing a single player game.
Pirate Warrior didn't break past 50% win rate.
This is extremely important to remember as it was the entire reason why Blizzard waited until February to make changes, why they were praising the meta in the early days of mean streets while everyone else screamed about it, and why their entire mentality of why they make nerfs changed, which lead to them actually nerfing quest rogue at a decent time.
Pirate warrior was not a dominating deck. It FELT like it was since when it won it did so without a chance to recover. But the metrics actually showed it at around 50% for its win rate. This caused Blizzard, which was only looking at win rates at the time, to believe the meta was fine and that players were going to move away from the deck any..minute..now.
Then months went by, nothing changed, the public went into a rage, and Blizzard realized they can't just look at their data sheets. This is also when 'polarization' came into the lexicon of this community.
Rogue isn't unstoppable. But it IS polarizing. Shadow, you claim that Blizzard is viewing it from a balance standpoint. But if you look at their reasoning:
"After evaluating game data and working through internal and external feedback on the most popular decks currently in the meta, we’re looking to address the power level and overall pervasiveness of Rogue decks, alongside a specific interaction with Archivist Elysiana. Look for these changes in an update slated for May 22.
We chose to focus primarily on Rogue in this update due to seeing the meta stabilize around the class’s most popular decks. Currently, if you want to build a deck that is strong against Rogue, you have just one reasonable option: Warrior. If you compare Rogue to Warrior, however, you’ll find that the latter class has a wide variety of good and bad matchups, which makes it unlikely that it’ll overtake Rogue in popularity in the current meta."
That's not 'balance' talk. That's polarization talk. Rogue is forcing a polarizing meta which is making everyone play Rogue or Warrior. The meta is stablizing and going stale due to everyone focusing on those two decks. Thus
If you want to change because of "polarization" or "staleness" or "I really don't like Shudderwock" (all three being synonyms), that's perfectly fine.
They ARE changing due to polarization and staleness. And they didn't like Prep ("opens our design options up a little more"). The word balance doesn't even show up in the blog except for them talking about how annoying Prep was to deal with from a design standpoint.
Warrior is too popular because everyone is using it to beat Rogue. Despite HSreplay (which has been repeatedly marked in these forums as not always the best place to judge win rates as we've seen decks deemed Tier 4 to have over 50% at times), few are trusting to Mage, Druid, or Hunter as a reliable counter. Even if they did, it would be similar to the Warrior issue: no one wants to play the counter to the counter because Rogue will slaughter it. Thus you get Rogue with Warrior as the secondary, and a few Johnnies playing one of 3 alternatives, and anything else being Rogue chow. Opening up Rogue SHOULD put one of the four other classes on top, which opens many other decks as their counter.
Even if we could've technically solved the problem, the past 5 years have shown that we tend to not do so. We just stay stale, get angrier, and eventually riot until Blizzard swings the bat. So they stopped waiting and just swung it.
@iandakar: thanks for a good read. It's also true as it seems.
They really need to do something to their design in order to not allow the game ending up in the same place after every expansion. It's becoming tiresome to know that after every batch of new cards there will be a few nerfs.
It's like they don't want to get out of this stupid cycle. It's also one of the reasons why I don't care to play the game anymore (except for having fun with the single player content for a bit). Every expansion goes the same way every time. Same steps, same issues. Either the game is flawed by design, or they haven't found the solution yet.
Something needs to change...
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I am sure many of you remember Pirate Warrior and why it was nerfed. Everyone played it as it was a guaranteed win. Very few decks could counter it so it grew very popular and for the popularity and lack of counter decks it was nerfed to the ground. It wasn't interactive. It was warrior playing a single player game.
Now rogue isn't as bad as why it wasn't nerfed to the ground and still viable.
Rogue is the most popular deck played as of right now. It has ONE counter and that is control warrior and the only deck that consistently can beat Rogue. That isn't a balanced deck.
A balanced meta means looking at each deck individually not the overall meta. A balanced meta means that you take a deck and examine what it wins against. What is loses against and what decks it plays against that can go either way.
A balanced deck will be strong against 2 or 3 other decks/classes. It will have 2 or 2 counters and the rest of the classes will be neutral - match can go either way depending on skill, rng, and card draw.
For example let's take control warrior; Very weak against hunter and mage right now. Those are the counters. A well played Murloc deck can out value Warrior but murloc players are usually dumb so point goes to Warrior. Mech Paladin has an advantage over Control Warrior but not a guaranteed win. Poorly played or card draw can put Warrior on top.
Control warrior is strong against Rogue and Priest. 98% of the time it is a guaranteed win.
Druid can go either way. Control Shaman can go either way.
That is a balanced deck.
Rogue did not have that. It had one counter and was strong against all other classes and decks as why it became the most popular deck on ladder and casual.
The nerfs came and needed to come. Rogue isn't dead now. The same deck can still be played but will be balanced as it will have more counters and still strong against some decks and some decks will be a toss up on who wins as they are equal in power, value, and potential.
It is important to remember that you won't win every game. A 50ish% overall win rate is great and means the deck is balanced and the meta is in a good place. When you play Hearthstone and you play against a varied assortment of classes and decks then the meta is in a good place. Playing mainly against rogues is a bad thing for the health of the game.
Your definition of "balanced" seems to be what Blizzard is operating on, but it shouldn't be. I don't know what a win rate needs to look like in order for you to consider a deck "countering" another, but that's a stupid subjective metric anyway. Anytime you see someone achieving materially-higher-than-50% win rates against the deck in question, it warrants notice in these discussions.
If you take a look at the individual decks in HSReplay, you will find that players have found ways to achieve materially-higher-than-50% winrates against rogue in several classes. For example:
Run of the mill Token Druids hitting 55%-59%
Secret Hunters at high fifties, low sixties win rate
Those two didn't surprise me. What DID surprise me were the Mages who were holding their own. The common understanding on this forum is that mages roll over to rogues. Turns out, you can run the Mana Cyclone package, or the dragon package, and still beat rogue handily if you just put in Rabble Bouncers. If mage can break 60%, I refuse to believe anything else, except perhaps priest, cannot be teched accordingly.
Again, I'm not arguing with you as far as why Blizzard is changing things. I just continue to maintain that it's a ridiculous reason. If they are looking at a player base that largely refuses to alter their decks to address the most popular archetype of opponent, BUT they are also seeing many individuals demonstrate it can be done, they can no longer hide behind "balance".
If you want to change because of "polarization" or "staleness" or "I really don't like Shudderwock" (all three being synonyms), that's perfectly fine. Don't talk to me about balance, Blizzard.
And of course, you know for certain that balance is NOT the reason these changes were being made. If balance were the motivating factor, they wouldn't execute three nerfs against one deck at the same time. There is NO possibility they have calculated how this will effect the meta's balance; they simply want the frequency of rogue greatly reduced. And they have certainly succeeded in that goal.
None of the above should be read to mean the nerfs were a bad idea. I would just very much like to dispense with the notion that balance is the goal. Ever since Flametongue joined the 3-mana club, that whole concept has been a farce.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
Shadowrisen gets it.
Pirate Warrior didn't break past 50% win rate.
This is extremely important to remember as it was the entire reason why Blizzard waited until February to make changes, why they were praising the meta in the early days of mean streets while everyone else screamed about it, and why their entire mentality of why they make nerfs changed, which lead to them actually nerfing quest rogue at a decent time.
Pirate warrior was not a dominating deck. It FELT like it was since when it won it did so without a chance to recover. But the metrics actually showed it at around 50% for its win rate. This caused Blizzard, which was only looking at win rates at the time, to believe the meta was fine and that players were going to move away from the deck any..minute..now.
Then months went by, nothing changed, the public went into a rage, and Blizzard realized they can't just look at their data sheets. This is also when 'polarization' came into the lexicon of this community.
Rogue isn't unstoppable. But it IS polarizing. Shadow, you claim that Blizzard is viewing it from a balance standpoint. But if you look at their reasoning:
"After evaluating game data and working through internal and external feedback on the most popular decks currently in the meta, we’re looking to address the power level and overall pervasiveness of Rogue decks, alongside a specific interaction with Archivist Elysiana. Look for these changes in an update slated for May 22.
We chose to focus primarily on Rogue in this update due to seeing the meta stabilize around the class’s most popular decks. Currently, if you want to build a deck that is strong against Rogue, you have just one reasonable option: Warrior. If you compare Rogue to Warrior, however, you’ll find that the latter class has a wide variety of good and bad matchups, which makes it unlikely that it’ll overtake Rogue in popularity in the current meta."
That's not 'balance' talk. That's polarization talk. Rogue is forcing a polarizing meta which is making everyone play Rogue or Warrior. The meta is stablizing and going stale due to everyone focusing on those two decks. Thus
They ARE changing due to polarization and staleness. And they didn't like Prep ("opens our design options up a little more"). The word balance doesn't even show up in the blog except for them talking about how annoying Prep was to deal with from a design standpoint.
Warrior is too popular because everyone is using it to beat Rogue. Despite HSreplay (which has been repeatedly marked in these forums as not always the best place to judge win rates as we've seen decks deemed Tier 4 to have over 50% at times), few are trusting to Mage, Druid, or Hunter as a reliable counter. Even if they did, it would be similar to the Warrior issue: no one wants to play the counter to the counter because Rogue will slaughter it. Thus you get Rogue with Warrior as the secondary, and a few Johnnies playing one of 3 alternatives, and anything else being Rogue chow. Opening up Rogue SHOULD put one of the four other classes on top, which opens many other decks as their counter.
Even if we could've technically solved the problem, the past 5 years have shown that we tend to not do so. We just stay stale, get angrier, and eventually riot until Blizzard swings the bat. So they stopped waiting and just swung it.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
@iandakar: thanks for a good read. It's also true as it seems.
They really need to do something to their design in order to not allow the game ending up in the same place after every expansion. It's becoming tiresome to know that after every batch of new cards there will be a few nerfs.
It's like they don't want to get out of this stupid cycle. It's also one of the reasons why I don't care to play the game anymore (except for having fun with the single player content for a bit). Every expansion goes the same way every time. Same steps, same issues. Either the game is flawed by design, or they haven't found the solution yet.
Something needs to change...