WARNING: this Is a VERY general discussion so don't be that guy saying:"Hey but this One deck..." Because this Is not about your single example,it's about a decktype in general
Now:
Is very common to find this misconception of aggro decks requiring no skill at all to play and i can understand where that comes from,After all from the opponent's prospective It looks like a 3 step program:
1)flood the board with as much stuff as possibile,repeat if cleared
2)hit the enemy's face and kill all that attempts to stop you from doing so
3)either kill the opponent as soon as possible or concede
Sounds Easy enough doesn't It?
Well,here lies the problem and what gave birth to this misconception:
⚡ Is a good aggro player,he Will trade smartly when he needs to ,play around possible boardclears and try to Plan his turns to the best of his abilities
🌵 Is a bad aggro player,he go face,he hate taunt,he SMORC,he smart
Now:
An aggro deck piloted by ⚡ Will probably have a VERY High winrate,Will be able to overcome bad matchups and bad draws (to an extent),Will climb steadily and consistently until ⚡ gets to a High enough rank that people of similar skill Will slow his climb down (or stop It)
Same aggro deck piloted by 🌵 Will have a lower WR, lose if he finds a counter or of he draws badly BUT he Will still manage to keep a borderline decent WR that lets him climb (albiet more slowly and maybe to a slightly lower rank than ⚡)
Why Is that? Well it's because of aggro's low skill floor and (depends on the deck of course) medium/High skill ceiling,you see,if Your opponent doesn't have a Quick answer to your super early threats, he's Just going to lose no matter what his deck was and that can be accomplished (to a relatively similar extent) by both ⚡ and 🌵 since,no matter how you play,you Will have a good chance to """cheese""" (idk if you noticed the QUOTE ON QUOTE) out a win with your opponent being unable to stop you
By nature this Is impossible to have happen with any other archetype Simply because of how they play (aside from the flavor of the month tier 1 deck vs a tier 6/7 One) and that Is what irritates people
Now i personally don't enjoy either playing as or against aggro but i Felt like saying that, Just because
A "good aggro player" is a glorious control master race player in disguise taking a break of your normal stuff, the others are the usual dirty aggro peasants. :P
Aggro is always the same, if you know one you can play them all:
play on curve
Trade efficiently
Choose when to go face, and then go face
Other archetypes tend to have more decisions and also more options per decision. On top of that, these choices and decisions vary vastly per deck, so you have to figure out how each deck actually works.
Playing aggro is harder than control unless it's a control vs. control mirror match (or similar control matchup).
As aggro, much of the time there is only one path to lethal before your opponent can stabilize. It's not simply playing minion a/b/c; it's more about creating awkward board states vs. the particular class/deck you're facing. It's about knowing when to start pushing damage to face, which targets to trade with and finding which path maximizes your face damage. It's not that easy (unless of course you use odd paladin).
Aggro is always the same, if you know one you can play them all:
play on curve
Trade efficiently
Choose when to go face, and then go face
Other archetypes tend to have more decisions and also more options per decision. On top of that, these choices and decisions vary vastly per deck, so you have to figure out how each deck actually works.
Same with other type of decks. And to be honest missplays with aggro are worst then in control. Cuz if you make one bad trade you can lose, Control decks let you do more mistakes.
He states it well. Poor players will still get wins with aggro decks, cuz of the power level and ease of use. Pretty simple to play on curve and go face.
Poor players playing control decks or midrange dont get away with bad play as easily. A smart player plays around cards, plays to there outs etc, whreas a poor player just plays whats in front of them, and then scratches their head wondering why they lost.
From my experience I have found aggro (and aggressive midrange) generally easier to learn and a lot easier to teach newer players to play correctly. That's not to say that all of them are easier to play, but in general I have found it much easier to get a player to legend by teaching them an aggressive deck than a more control style deck. I have found every style to have some skill to them, so I wouldn't call any of them completely skill-less.
Depends on how you play it. If you just play whatever minion you have and go face then yes it is a no skill self piloting deck.
There are the ones who pilot aggro decks smartly and actually know when to trade when to hold off on playing a minion or when to go all in. A good example of this are the two Shaman murloc decks I see in Casual and Ladder. One is straight murlocs and they go face. Play whatever card they have and hope for a win. The other deck is a mix between tempo Shaman and murloc shaman. Takes skill to play. They trade. They don't just dump all their minions in the 1st three rounds and have answers to what their opponent plays. It is a mix of offensive and defensive cars.
Mostly we have the try-hards playing aggro as it is easy they just want mindless fun. But far more enjoyable to play against the ones who actually put some thought into how they play and as it should be in a CCG.
Playing aggro is harder than control unless it's a control vs. control mirror match (or similar control matchup).
As aggro, much of the time there is only one path to lethal before your opponent can stabilize. It's not simply playing minion a/b/c; it's more about creating awkward board states vs. the particular class/deck you're facing. It's about knowing when to start pushing damage to face, which targets to trade with and finding which path maximizes your face damage. It's not that easy (unless of course you use odd paladin).
THIS!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
Why would you ever give someone on a forum a single tiny bit of credit for knowing what a good player is?
Unless you have results (and I mean actual high-level wins in tournaments, not "I made legend a few months ago") to point to, I simply don't accept the premise that you'd know "correct" play if it slapped you in the face.
Don't get me wrong. Terrible play can easily be called out. But I love watching folks post replays talking about, "I played perfectly, but muh RNG!!!" It's a rare occasion where the replay doesn't contain multiple clear cut errors in play.
And for the record, I had a streak of over 2 years where I didn't finish below #200 legend, including multiple top 10 finishes on the ladder. I can count on one hand the number of games I've played that lasted over 7 turns in which I am certain I played optimally. It's just that some of us are self-aware enough to realize the grey areas.
As for the control vs. aggro argument, it's absurd on its face. The only reasonably quantifiable definition of "difficult to play" is
The larger the number of effectively differing lines of play presented by a deck, the more difficult the deck is to play.
In other words, the more choices you have to make, the more difficulty you face in selecting optimal choices.
That is a quantifiable measurement of difficulty, and it usually involves very similar numbers across all types of deck. Certainly, there are circumstances when aggro may be the "easier" deck to play, but if you actually crunched the numbers, those cases would be rare.
TL;DR: Aggro is not quantifiably easier than control, and most of you (including myself) don't have the ability to spot optimal play anyway.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Aggro has more moving parts than most people give it credit for. Aggro mirror match is actually very involved where correct trading become pivotal to the outcome.
I'm just sitting here kinda stunned by this thread. I never thought I would see the day when a genuine conversation about aggro would happen on hearthpwn, with actually well-thought and well-reasoned comments. Way to go, all the people who posted above me!
As all of them said, and as I try to say anytime it's relevant: every deck requires significant skill to play it well (though some require more skill than others). I have my own personal preferences, which are different from other people. And it always looks easy when your opponent plays the perfect cards in the perfect order to kill you. And you might think, "Well, that was easy for them - they must have no skill - they just got super lucky and drew "the nuts." A monkey could have beat me just as easily as they did."
But the thing is, you cannot see their cards to know what they chose NOT to do, and you can't see their mind to see if they were effectively guessing what you had available and then countering it on purpose. So even when a victory looks like it was easy and inevitable for your opponent, it rarely actually was.
Why would you ever give someone on a forum a single tiny bit of credit for knowing what a good player is?
Cause there are people who pay attention and actually can see when someone is a good player going by how they play and the decisions they make. Doesn't have anything to do with tournaments or streamers or who people say are good players. Going by your statement and you yourself being on a forum would mean that whatever you say is total nonsense as well.
Good players can play aggro well and good players can pilot a control deck well. Bad players can take any deck and play it badly. There are good players. There are bad players. There are mediocre players as there are in every single game out there.
BUT aggro is easier to play and can be self piloting. Get minion, play minion. Fill board with low cost minions and go face. It is easier to pilot than a control deck is as you do need to make decisions in a control as to when to remove minions or play removal spells. You need some experience in Hearthstone to play it effectively where an aggro deck can be played day one.. not played well but played to get wins at times.
I can't fix the double quote so have to live with it.
Aha, I think a lot of bad Aggro players don't go face enough. When I started to get competitive, I watched Firebat play some Aggro, and he SMOrc'ed the hell out of the game xd
The larger the number of effectively differing lines of play presented by a deck, the more difficult the deck is to play.
In other words, the more choices you have to make, the more difficulty you face in selecting optimal choices.
Cut the self glorification in this post and you get a very good comment! Chosing the best out of 3 1-drops is not that easy compared to eternium rover on turn 1.
I guess in the end, the point is not what is the most difficult deck (even less at high legend) but why is aggro percieved as a low skill archtype. And i would say it‘s because of the all-or-nothing nature of its matchups at low ranks. A bad play is obvious when you fill the bord turn 5 against a warrior. You lose against Brawl, end of Story. On the other hand, a warrior playing his warpath to early is allmost equally bad but not easily percieved as a bad play because the game goes on for a couple more turn.
The larger the number of effectively differing lines of play presented by a deck, the more difficult the deck is to play.
In other words, the more choices you have to make, the more difficulty you face in selecting optimal choices.
Cut the self glorification in this post
I guess in the end, the point is not what is the most difficult deck (even less at high legend) but why is aggro percieved as a low skill archtype. And i would say it‘s because of the all-or-nothing nature of its matchups at low ranks. A bad play is obvious when you fill the bord turn 5 against a warrior. You lose against Brawl, end of Story. On the other hand, a warrior playing his warpath to early is allmost equally bad but not easily percieved as a bad play because the game goes on for a couple more turn.
Why do people like to say "aggro" requires no skill?
Because of the common "argumentative strategy" to discredit anyone on a personal level you disagree with. I'd make a joke about American debate culture here, but in all honesty, it's likely a phenomenon that occurs everywhere.
Don't like someone playing a fast deck? Say they lack the skill for "real" decks and are stupid/retarded/braindead/whatever. Just the term "aggro" has this dirty feeling to it by now, as it is commonly used pejoratively, in conjunction with insults or to frame it as something negative. You call people "aggro players", and that they are "just playing mindless aggro decks". You don't even go the extra mile to explain what you mean. Is it a deck that plays a lot of minions? Does it rely on burn spells? Is it a deck that doesn't want to trade, or is it a deck that generates a lot of pressure with early threats? Nevermind, just call it "aggro" and everyone knows what they need to know - that it's "wrong".
This kind of discourse disqualifies aggressive playstyle to be considered as an actual strategy - it is branded as undesirable, shameful, despicable. If you play an "aggro" deck, you should feel ashamed of yourself, you deserve the hatred of others. That's the message some people like to spread, and it worked to a point some people even refuse to play such decks, whether it strategically makes sense or not. They say they only want to play decks that are skillfull, they don't want to "degrade" themselves by playing "aggro". And naturally, they'll react with anger and hostility should they ever meet someone who's not on their side.
Many people probably don't even mean it negatively when they speak of "aggro" decks - they just use it, because it's established lingo, a term other people playing the game would recognize. You'll see it appear in relatively neutral articles and comments too. But as it has that negative connotation, it WILL agitate some readers. It is, in my opinion at least, a word that should be dropped from discourse entirely.
Now, one point people do have is that Hearthstone is a game that favors an aggressive playstyle, because unlike in MTG (for example), you cannot force your opponent to trade, and due to the progressing mana system, cheaper cards have the advantage of the initiave over more expensive cards. For a long time, most cards that costed more than 5 or 6 were deemed unplayable because of that, and many still have that problem that they are not impactful enough - simply because you are at too much of a disadvantage if your opponent can play cheaper cards on all the previous turns. The "going first" issue also contributes to this. That makes it somewhat understandable why people call aggressive decks cheap and unfair - because they make use of being favored by the game system.
However, regardless of what "skill" they do or do not require, aggressive strategies are part of the game, and they are necessary for the game balance. Competitive games are more interesting when they offer different approaches and strategies, and it's a relatively simple idea to establish that when Player A has an insurmountable advantage in the lategame, it should be an option for Player B to try to end the game beforehand. Whether or not they are too easy to play or too cheap or too effective or whatever is the developers' responsibility, and does not warrant this kind of hostility against other players who made the perfectly reasonable decision to play a deck that wins games.
Parts of Hearthstone's community are very toxic and seek to establish some weird elitism where only the "right" people are accepted. Excluding "aggro" is a part of that.
It just doesn't take nearly as much skill to OPERATE them relative to other decks. Way more skill is needed for finely tuning them and knowing which meta picks are the most likely to improve your winrates.
In my experience, most players who play aggro do not have skill at piloting their decks, and rely on the deckbuilding skills of other, better players at the deckbuilding phase, which is occassionally just enough skill to pull a 51% winrate with or without good play - that is not the player winning, that is the deck winning.
WARNING: this Is a VERY general discussion so don't be that guy saying:"Hey but this One deck..." Because this Is not about your single example,it's about a decktype in general
Now:
Is very common to find this misconception of aggro decks requiring no skill at all to play and i can understand where that comes from,After all from the opponent's prospective It looks like a 3 step program:
1)flood the board with as much stuff as possibile,repeat if cleared
2)hit the enemy's face and kill all that attempts to stop you from doing so
3)either kill the opponent as soon as possible or concede
Sounds Easy enough doesn't It?
Well,here lies the problem and what gave birth to this misconception:
⚡ Is a good aggro player,he Will trade smartly when he needs to ,play around possible boardclears and try to Plan his turns to the best of his abilities
🌵 Is a bad aggro player,he go face,he hate taunt,he SMORC,he smart
Now:
An aggro deck piloted by ⚡ Will probably have a VERY High winrate,Will be able to overcome bad matchups and bad draws (to an extent),Will climb steadily and consistently until ⚡ gets to a High enough rank that people of similar skill Will slow his climb down (or stop It)
Same aggro deck piloted by 🌵 Will have a lower WR, lose if he finds a counter or of he draws badly BUT he Will still manage to keep a borderline decent WR that lets him climb (albiet more slowly and maybe to a slightly lower rank than ⚡)
Why Is that? Well it's because of aggro's low skill floor and (depends on the deck of course) medium/High skill ceiling,you see,if Your opponent doesn't have a Quick answer to your super early threats, he's Just going to lose no matter what his deck was and that can be accomplished (to a relatively similar extent) by both ⚡ and 🌵 since,no matter how you play,you Will have a good chance to """cheese""" (idk if you noticed the QUOTE ON QUOTE) out a win with your opponent being unable to stop you
By nature this Is impossible to have happen with any other archetype Simply because of how they play (aside from the flavor of the month tier 1 deck vs a tier 6/7 One) and that Is what irritates people
Now i personally don't enjoy either playing as or against aggro but i Felt like saying that, Just because
Honestly some of the current versions of warrior are easier to play than classic zoolock
A "good aggro player" is a glorious control master race player in disguise taking a break of your normal stuff, the others are the usual dirty aggro peasants. :P
Aggro is always the same, if you know one you can play them all:
Other archetypes tend to have more decisions and also more options per decision. On top of that, these choices and decisions vary vastly per deck, so you have to figure out how each deck actually works.
Playing aggro is harder than control unless it's a control vs. control mirror match (or similar control matchup).
As aggro, much of the time there is only one path to lethal before your opponent can stabilize. It's not simply playing minion a/b/c; it's more about creating awkward board states vs. the particular class/deck you're facing. It's about knowing when to start pushing damage to face, which targets to trade with and finding which path maximizes your face damage. It's not that easy (unless of course you use odd paladin).
Same with other type of decks. And to be honest missplays with aggro are worst then in control. Cuz if you make one bad trade you can lose, Control decks let you do more mistakes.
He states it well. Poor players will still get wins with aggro decks, cuz of the power level and ease of use. Pretty simple to play on curve and go face.
Poor players playing control decks or midrange dont get away with bad play as easily. A smart player plays around cards, plays to there outs etc, whreas a poor player just plays whats in front of them, and then scratches their head wondering why they lost.
Good post dude!!!
From my experience I have found aggro (and aggressive midrange) generally easier to learn and a lot easier to teach newer players to play correctly. That's not to say that all of them are easier to play, but in general I have found it much easier to get a player to legend by teaching them an aggressive deck than a more control style deck. I have found every style to have some skill to them, so I wouldn't call any of them completely skill-less.
Depends on how you play it. If you just play whatever minion you have and go face then yes it is a no skill self piloting deck.
There are the ones who pilot aggro decks smartly and actually know when to trade when to hold off on playing a minion or when to go all in.
A good example of this are the two Shaman murloc decks I see in Casual and Ladder.
One is straight murlocs and they go face. Play whatever card they have and hope for a win.
The other deck is a mix between tempo Shaman and murloc shaman. Takes skill to play. They trade. They don't just dump all their minions in the 1st three rounds and have answers to what their opponent plays. It is a mix of offensive and defensive cars.
Mostly we have the try-hards playing aggro as it is easy they just want mindless fun. But far more enjoyable to play against the ones who actually put some thought into how they play and as it should be in a CCG.
THIS!
Rejoice, for even in death, you have become children of Thanos.
Why would you ever give someone on a forum a single tiny bit of credit for knowing what a good player is?
Unless you have results (and I mean actual high-level wins in tournaments, not "I made legend a few months ago") to point to, I simply don't accept the premise that you'd know "correct" play if it slapped you in the face.
Don't get me wrong. Terrible play can easily be called out. But I love watching folks post replays talking about, "I played perfectly, but muh RNG!!!" It's a rare occasion where the replay doesn't contain multiple clear cut errors in play.
And for the record, I had a streak of over 2 years where I didn't finish below #200 legend, including multiple top 10 finishes on the ladder. I can count on one hand the number of games I've played that lasted over 7 turns in which I am certain I played optimally. It's just that some of us are self-aware enough to realize the grey areas.
As for the control vs. aggro argument, it's absurd on its face. The only reasonably quantifiable definition of "difficult to play" is
The larger the number of effectively differing lines of play presented by a deck, the more difficult the deck is to play.
In other words, the more choices you have to make, the more difficulty you face in selecting optimal choices.
That is a quantifiable measurement of difficulty, and it usually involves very similar numbers across all types of deck. Certainly, there are circumstances when aggro may be the "easier" deck to play, but if you actually crunched the numbers, those cases would be rare.
TL;DR: Aggro is not quantifiably easier than control, and most of you (including myself) don't have the ability to spot optimal play anyway.
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.
Aggro has more moving parts than most people give it credit for. Aggro mirror match is actually very involved where correct trading become pivotal to the outcome.
I'm just sitting here kinda stunned by this thread. I never thought I would see the day when a genuine conversation about aggro would happen on hearthpwn, with actually well-thought and well-reasoned comments. Way to go, all the people who posted above me!
As all of them said, and as I try to say anytime it's relevant: every deck requires significant skill to play it well (though some require more skill than others). I have my own personal preferences, which are different from other people. And it always looks easy when your opponent plays the perfect cards in the perfect order to kill you. And you might think, "Well, that was easy for them - they must have no skill - they just got super lucky and drew "the nuts." A monkey could have beat me just as easily as they did."
But the thing is, you cannot see their cards to know what they chose NOT to do, and you can't see their mind to see if they were effectively guessing what you had available and then countering it on purpose. So even when a victory looks like it was easy and inevitable for your opponent, it rarely actually was.
Cause there are people who pay attention and actually can see when someone is a good player going by how they play and the decisions they make. Doesn't have anything to do with tournaments or streamers or who people say are good players.
Going by your statement and you yourself being on a forum would mean that whatever you say is total nonsense as well.
Good players can play aggro well and good players can pilot a control deck well. Bad players can take any deck and play it badly.
There are good players. There are bad players. There are mediocre players as there are in every single game out there.
BUT aggro is easier to play and can be self piloting. Get minion, play minion. Fill board with low cost minions and go face. It is easier to pilot than a control deck is as you do need to make decisions in a control as to when to remove minions or play removal spells. You need some experience in Hearthstone to play it effectively where an aggro deck can be played day one.. not played well but played to get wins at times.
I can't fix the double quote so have to live with it.
Aha, I think a lot of bad Aggro players don't go face enough. When I started to get competitive, I watched Firebat play some Aggro, and he SMOrc'ed the hell out of the game xd
https://outof.cards
Cut the self glorification in this post and you get a very good comment! Chosing the best out of 3 1-drops is not that easy compared to eternium rover on turn 1.
I guess in the end, the point is not what is the most difficult deck (even less at high legend) but why is aggro percieved as a low skill archtype. And i would say it‘s because of the all-or-nothing nature of its matchups at low ranks. A bad play is obvious when you fill the bord turn 5 against a warrior. You lose against Brawl, end of Story. On the other hand, a warrior playing his warpath to early is allmost equally bad but not easily percieved as a bad play because the game goes on for a couple more turn.
The poorest man screams he is the richest
Why do people like to say "aggro" requires no skill?
Because of the common "argumentative strategy" to discredit anyone on a personal level you disagree with. I'd make a joke about American debate culture here, but in all honesty, it's likely a phenomenon that occurs everywhere.
Don't like someone playing a fast deck? Say they lack the skill for "real" decks and are stupid/retarded/braindead/whatever. Just the term "aggro" has this dirty feeling to it by now, as it is commonly used pejoratively, in conjunction with insults or to frame it as something negative. You call people "aggro players", and that they are "just playing mindless aggro decks". You don't even go the extra mile to explain what you mean. Is it a deck that plays a lot of minions? Does it rely on burn spells? Is it a deck that doesn't want to trade, or is it a deck that generates a lot of pressure with early threats? Nevermind, just call it "aggro" and everyone knows what they need to know - that it's "wrong".
This kind of discourse disqualifies aggressive playstyle to be considered as an actual strategy - it is branded as undesirable, shameful, despicable. If you play an "aggro" deck, you should feel ashamed of yourself, you deserve the hatred of others. That's the message some people like to spread, and it worked to a point some people even refuse to play such decks, whether it strategically makes sense or not. They say they only want to play decks that are skillfull, they don't want to "degrade" themselves by playing "aggro". And naturally, they'll react with anger and hostility should they ever meet someone who's not on their side.
Many people probably don't even mean it negatively when they speak of "aggro" decks - they just use it, because it's established lingo, a term other people playing the game would recognize. You'll see it appear in relatively neutral articles and comments too. But as it has that negative connotation, it WILL agitate some readers. It is, in my opinion at least, a word that should be dropped from discourse entirely.
Now, one point people do have is that Hearthstone is a game that favors an aggressive playstyle, because unlike in MTG (for example), you cannot force your opponent to trade, and due to the progressing mana system, cheaper cards have the advantage of the initiave over more expensive cards. For a long time, most cards that costed more than 5 or 6 were deemed unplayable because of that, and many still have that problem that they are not impactful enough - simply because you are at too much of a disadvantage if your opponent can play cheaper cards on all the previous turns. The "going first" issue also contributes to this. That makes it somewhat understandable why people call aggressive decks cheap and unfair - because they make use of being favored by the game system.
However, regardless of what "skill" they do or do not require, aggressive strategies are part of the game, and they are necessary for the game balance. Competitive games are more interesting when they offer different approaches and strategies, and it's a relatively simple idea to establish that when Player A has an insurmountable advantage in the lategame, it should be an option for Player B to try to end the game beforehand. Whether or not they are too easy to play or too cheap or too effective or whatever is the developers' responsibility, and does not warrant this kind of hostility against other players who made the perfectly reasonable decision to play a deck that wins games.
Parts of Hearthstone's community are very toxic and seek to establish some weird elitism where only the "right" people are accepted. Excluding "aggro" is a part of that.
A good aggro player ABSOLUTELY takes skill.
It just doesn't take nearly as much skill to OPERATE them relative to other decks. Way more skill is needed for finely tuning them and knowing which meta picks are the most likely to improve your winrates.
In my experience, most players who play aggro do not have skill at piloting their decks, and rely on the deckbuilding skills of other, better players at the deckbuilding phase, which is occassionally just enough skill to pull a 51% winrate with or without good play - that is not the player winning, that is the deck winning.
What is more difficult, playing aggro-deck or control warrior who will always destroy everything you play?