Apologies if this is redundant, I'm on and off with the forums but my latest run-ins with Hearthstone have led to me wonder what the community thinks. So here we go...
In short: there is simply too much card draw.
The argument for aggro is a short one. If you are a low range aggro deck you should run out of resources when you play 10 cards in 5 turns. The goal is to get in and out early, and there shouldn't be a reward in the way of card draw to empty your hand while doing mostly non-countered damage to the opponent. Cheap fast aggro used to be cornered specifically by Druid and Warlock. Druid had the ability to refill boards through token/spell means, and would buff once they suspected the counters to be exhausted. Warlock had lifetap, and that pioneered the aggro we see today. They would live in the 1-3 mana position with a few higher end 5s or so to close out the game. Was it balanced? Yeah I feel it was. You could play hard control and you did have a very positive win-rate pushing hard aggro down. Rng had its place on both sides of the field, and sometimes Warlock or Druid just got there because the cards aligned. That's Hearthstone in it's purest form: A handful of competitive classes, some hard-set counters to keep ladder fresh, and somewhat telegraphed gameplay with a HINT of random generation/mechanics so every game didn't go the same way. (not another rng thread, just an example)
Now that the game has expanded, we see combo decks that can draw 20+ cards before 10 mana. The skeleton of what combo was has shifted... imo in the wrong direction. Combo used to be pretty synonymous with control. You needed to hold the board for a VERY long time to pop off your OTK or win set-up. This on average in the Druids, Warriors, Priests, etc of the past generally took 10-15 turns. In all reasonability, fatigue control was an auto loss and aggro needed to run into the wall enough times to crack it. While those pillars haven't changed entirely, card draw has enabled the current combo decks to formulate their plan within 10 turns, if not by turn 10 at the latest in most cases. This pushes the opportunity to combat it down to very specific lines. Lines like combo disruption- which is class specific and otherwise not really present in the game- and aggro that draws better than its opponent while simultaneously drawing a good curve to close the game within 5-6 turns. Is combo broken? No. The card draw is broken. Tuning the draw back to force combo to enact its plan 3-5 turns later is what will healthily contain mage, demon hunter, and other OTK opportunities to pulling off the combo 50% of the time or less, and getting the rest of their lacking win-rate through alternative gameplans- which creates a LIVING strategy/experience.
I haven't had too many situations of control getting out of hand with card draw other than Tickatus Warlock. I feel that card specifically is a different conversation. Full fatigue control seems inexistent for now, but the game has a flow of bringing it back so we will see how the control conversation changes across the next year. I may be overlooking card draw issues in Control, but I hope some of you will point out the other culprits outside of Warlock.
Otherwise, how do you all feel? Is card draw the problem, or are the cards/classes themselves the real problem?
Pretty much fully agree. Card draw right now is insane, even aggro never runs out of resources and gas anymore with how much card draw exists. Mages have 0 mana draw 2, Hunter's have deal damage + draw, warlock apart from hero power has multiple draw cards, rogue can draw infinitely but then again rogue was known always for drawing faster than others so for rogue at least it makes some sense. Card draw and card generation has gotten too good in hearthstone.
Card draw on its own is fine in my opinion, I don't mind if there is "too much" of it. It's always the worst feeling when you are in topdeck mode and the opponent isn't, and if one class that isn't warlock can draw their entire deck with ease, then all classes should be able to.
My concern is the distribution, it's very unbalanced and classes like Mage, Rogue, DH, Warlock, Warrior can pretty much draw their entire deck by turn 10, classes like Hunter, Paladin, Druid have more "fair" card draw but still a lot of it, while Shaman and Priest have pretty much nothing and need to rely on very weak neutral cards or random card generators.
It used to be a class identity thing, way back in the days when classes and archetypes were more closely tied together, but now it just seems like a very artificial way to push up or down winrates.
My other concern is tempo or snowball card draw. Cards like Refreshing Spring Water or Swindle, while very powerful, and a very clear attempt to artificially boost the class winrate, do nothing else than drawing cards, and a card that has no impact on the board has a real cost to your deck, it means your entire deck contains less value and friction overall. That's why control warlock always feels natural, because all 30 cards can have an impact on the game and you can still draw cards efficiently.
On the other hand, cards like Sparkjoy Cheat, Greyheart Sage, Field Contact, Primordial Protector, Consume Magic, Stiltstepper, Twilight Runner, Stonemaul Anchorman, Outrider's Axe, while maybe more balanced in a given meta than pure card draw cards, I think have a much more negative impact on the game overall, because they reward drawing cards with strong impact on the board for free, like everyone is a warlock now, I think that completely breaks hearthstone's dynamic, now you don't need to draw your win condition, your win condition IS drawing as much as you can into more tempo cards that draw more tempo cards that draw more tempo cards.
That's why Refreshing Spring Water will, I think, never be nerfed. Because it literally does nothing (and rewards different deck building in a more elegant and interesting way than Apexis Blast / Font of Power). It will never be the cause of any balance issue, only the symptom, It's entirely dependant on the 28 cards around it, unlike tempo card draw that can absolutely break the game by itself.
Different classes are good at different things, that's the whole point of it. Rogue might have better draw than Priest, but Priest has better boardclears that rogue for example.
The concept of aggro going all in and running out of resources and control being on the back foot all game until finally stabilizing is outdated and boring. Even MtG has moved away from it.
The more cards players draw, the more choices they will have to make, making the game potentially much more dynamic.
As a tradeoff, most control decks now have access to either early counterplay, absurd amounts of healing or both.
The biggest downside of taking the game into overdrive like that is that balancing cards is now harder than ever and any slight imbalance can snowball out of control.
Card draw on its own is fine in my opinion, I don't mind if there is "too much" of it. It's always the worst feeling when you are in topdeck mode and the opponent isn't, and if one class that isn't warlock can draw their entire deck with ease, then all classes should be able to.
Yeah but you need to look at this from a balance perspective. Its not funny when Hunter or Demon Hunter or Paladin go into top deck mode and they pretty much lose because of that (pretty rare situation btw). But...that is supposed to be the weakness of decks that go into hard aggresive mode. If you can hold infinite resources in your hand (like paladin) or just draw 2 cards into 1 card into 3 cards (like Demon Hunter) them...what is the point of playing to outlast them? cofcoformagebutidontwanttotalkaboutmageinthistopiccofcof . Like...that is how you beat those decks if your finishers are not comming or they are not fast enough? Its kinda hard for other classes like Warrior or Shaman to beat Demon hunter for example, when that class can get 10 Hero Attack damage with a 2 card hand and also draw cards in the process. Sometimes play big taunts seems like really pointless in this cases.
Card draw on its own is fine in my opinion, I don't mind if there is "too much" of it. It's always the worst feeling when you are in topdeck mode and the opponent isn't, and if one class that isn't warlock can draw their entire deck with ease, then all classes should be able to.
Yeah but you need to look at this from a balance perspective. Its not funny when Hunter or Demon Hunter or Paladin go into top deck mode and they pretty much lose because of that (pretty rare situation btw). But...that is supposed to be the weakness of decks that go into hard aggresive mode. If you can hold infinite resources in your hand (like paladin) or just draw 2 cards into 1 card into 3 cards (like Demon Hunter) them...what is the point of playing to outlast them? cofcoformagebutidontwanttotalkaboutmageinthistopiccofcof . Like...that is how you beat those decks if your finishers are not comming or they are not fast enough? Its kinda hard for other classes like Warrior or Shaman to beat Demon hunter for example, when that class can get 10 Hero Attack damage with a 2 card hand and also draw cards in the process. Sometimes play big taunts seems like really pointless in this cases.
Well, isn't that exactly what I said ? I'm sorry for the confusion I'm not a native english speaker.
My whole point was to give more card draw to shaman and priest to get them in line with the other classes, because card draw is no longer a weakness of aggro archetypes, it's a weakness of classes specifically. (I strongly disagree about Warrior lacking card draw). How is card draw a weakness of aggro decks if aggro DH can draw everything and aggro shaman can draw nothing ?
If some classes can go aggro and draw their entire decks (Rogue, DH), or go control and draw their entire decks (warlock, warrior), it is extremely unfair for classes that can't (Priest, Shaman, Paladin), regardless of class identity and other strengths or weaknesses.
I understand that at some point card draw was supposed to be a weakness for some classes and a strength for others to keep everything balanced, but the game's dynamic has shifted a long time ago and now having more card draw just means being able to build more archetypes and more powerful decks, and shaman is just left behind with very little room for experimentation or diversity, while priest can get away with ridiculous RNG value cards.
To me card draw now just seems like a tools used by the devs to push classes in and out of favor. Of course at any given point a class that lacks card draw can get away with some other bullshit I'm not saying it's not possible to win games as shaman or priest, it just feels like I'm playing a different game than my opponents.
The main problem with the very quick combo decks and explosive "control" decks is that decks with mid-range and tempo game plans can't exist. You either play defensively and go off on turn 5-7, or you kill your opponent on turn 4-7 despite counterplay.
The concept of aggro going all in and running out of resources and control being on the back foot all game until finally stabilizing is outdated and boring. Even MtG has moved away from it.
The more cards players draw, the more choices they will have to make, making the game potentially much more dynamic.
As a tradeoff, most control decks now have access to either early counterplay, absurd amounts of healing or both.
The biggest downside of taking the game into overdrive like that is that balancing cards is now harder than ever and any slight imbalance can snowball out of control.
The concept of making cards whic effects are literally: dealt direct damage and draw 1 card. Its also boring and a lot of games are moving on from that kind of aggro and divide Direct damage aggresive decks from wide-board aggro decks but not here for now. Which is a problem beacause that simple design reward straighfoward and very linear gameplan. In other hand healing and gain armor cards in this game do pretty little and are very inconsistent. Lets take Renew for example. Right now Priest dont have consistent AoE to dealt with the kind of boardstates that the game propose (right Defense stat minions with 3 to 4 attack for the most part of the game and only one of two minions with more than 5 attack. Condemn is a great card in a universe where your oponnent cant play 2 buffing spells before turn 5 in the same turn and push all the minions on board to 3 or 5 defense and 3 or 4 attack. But in this universe there is atleast 2 classes (hunter and Druid, specialy druid) that can do that which also plays around Hysteria cause playing Hysteria to kill 1 or 2 minions max, against aggro for 3 mana is kinda lose the game.
But you know what classes cant play around Hysteria and Condemn pretty well? Warrior and Priest. Which is hilarius and is one of the reasons why beat Warlock with this 2 is almost impossible even if you buff minions in the midgame (talking abot hysteria). Buut lets go back to the main topic.
So if aggro decks have efficient card draw and efficient straigfoward "push damage" cards. Control classes become useless. Cause Gaining HP is ALWAYS worse that push damage unless the oponent empty his hand. That is the main reason of the low cost of most healing spells in any card game. Healing is just delaying damage, dealt damage is winning the game. I could have an spell with the same effect than reno jackson without the body and it wont be broken, it would be bad in most cases unless the meta is really lacking of card draw, because 6 mana do nothing and restore all your HP is useless if my oponent still have 6 minions on board with 3 or 4 attack. So either you make super broken defensive cards or you keep on check the power of proactive cards. You cant have both: weak defensive tools and strong proactive tools; and said that "is good because it feels bad go into top decks"
The problem is that what you said is good but dont work like that in reality. Let me explain: if all the classes have very good card draw them defensive clases or the less proactive clases (like shaman) will be weak forever. Why? Well i explain this in the first half of the post. Defensive tools are by default weaker even when they can feel busted in some scenarios, than proactive tools. In any game where aggro dont run out of cards and neither control does, aggro will win more than 60% of the time. Always. Unless is really, really hopeless in the lategame which is not the case becas right now late game for aggro is not bad at all neither. Like for example i never run out of cards with my main decks (Warrior control and Priest control) but that is not the problem when i lose a game. The problem is that my gameplan of healing, create one or two big units, kill the enemy units and end the game when i get to that point wont work when Demon hunter (just for put a very obvius example in this meta) has a weapon that let him buff his attack to infinite, then play a minion with great stats and rush, clear my taunt, clear my big unit and then attack my face with his ultra buffed hero attack and them with his 8/8 minion all that on the same turn. What i do to keep that in control? I kill the unit, recover as much HP i can and them he plays skull of guldamn and process to do the same in one or two turns and...i lose. With big taunts, with 25 points of healing, with my wincondition on board. I just lose, because he never will run out of face damage or cards in hand.
The concept of aggro going all in and running out of resources and control being on the back foot all game until finally stabilizing is outdated and boring. Even MtG has moved away from it.
The more cards players draw, the more choices they will have to make, making the game potentially much more dynamic.
As a tradeoff, most control decks now have access to either early counterplay, absurd amounts of healing or both.
The biggest downside of taking the game into overdrive like that is that balancing cards is now harder than ever and any slight imbalance can snowball out of control.
This pretty much.
Most removals come attached with a tempo swing as well, like Prize Plunderer, Xyrella, Samuro, even previously with Skipper + Brute, Altruis turns or Brooms. Or super cheap like Cascading or Death that are cheap enough to allow development.
Probably the Zoolock of the previous exp had legit too much card draw (and Rogue now), and Zoo now it's a deck with so little it loses to the first board clear that is used. A never ending torrent of vomit is not fun, but auto losing to te first board clear played it's not fun or compelling gameplay either.
The concept of aggro going all in and running out of resources and control being on the back foot all game until finally stabilizing is outdated and boring. Even MtG has moved away from it.
The more cards players draw, the more choices they will have to make, making the game potentially much more dynamic.
As a tradeoff, most control decks now have access to either early counterplay, absurd amounts of healing or both.
The biggest downside of taking the game into overdrive like that is that balancing cards is now harder than ever and any slight imbalance can snowball out of control.
This pretty much.
Most removals come attached with a tempo swing as well, like Prize Plunderer, Xyrella, Samuro, even previously with Skipper + Brute, Altruis turns or Brooms. Or super cheap like Cascading or Death that are cheap enough to allow development.
Probably the Zoolock of the previous exp had legit too much card draw (and Rogue now), and Zoo now it's a deck with so little it loses to the first board clear that is used. A never ending torrent of vomit is not fun, but auto losing to te first board clear played it's not fun or compelling gameplay either.
of this 3 only Samuro retains varely 50% winrate. Which means that they are not great anymore and is not a suprise. Xyrella was honestly pretty good the first weeks when people was not playing the M deck (i am not going to talk about the M class in this topic) or Paladin that much. Paladin was kind of weak to Xyrella and still is but lets see...at this point Desperate Prayers, the card that makes Xyrella work really well against aggro and high roll decks, is cut from most Priest decks (because it does nothing anymore). Xyrella is a very hard to set-up card and very obvius too. If on turn 3 you are hitting priest in the face pretty hand and he dont uses his hero power is obviusly because he is holding Xyrella and he needs to heal for more than 3 (cause Xyrella dont count over healing). Samuro is too slow in Warrior and Priest now, is mostly use in Paladin to counter Hunter because paladin has 0 cost buff without any set-up.
They can throw samuro in any turn and Prize Plunderer is not that good on the rogue decks even when penflinger is "ultra nerf" you can do the same damage with pen most of the times but you can hold the card in your hand so you can use it for multiple problems without wasting yours Shadowsteps. Funny enough removal cards attached to great offensive stats are doing pretty well because you know offensive stats win games when you never runout of cards in your hand.
of this 3 only Samuro retains varely 50% winrate. Which means that they are not great anymore and is not a suprise. Xyrella was honestly pretty good the first weeks when people was not playing the M deck (i am not going to talk about the M class in this topic) or Paladin that much. Paladin was kind of weak to Xyrella and still is but lets see...at this point Desperate Prayers, the card that makes Xyrella work really well against aggro and high roll decks, is cut from most Priest decks (because it does nothing anymore). Xyrella is a very hard to set-up card and very obvius too. If on turn 3 you are hitting priest in the face pretty hand and he dont uses his hero power is obviusly because he is holding Xyrella and he needs to heal for more than 3 (cause Xyrella dont count over healing). Samuro is too slow in Warrior and Priest now, is mostly use in Paladin to counter Hunter because paladin has 0 cost buff without any set-up.
They can throw samuro in any turn and Prize Plunderer is not that good on the rogue decks even when penflinger is "ultra nerf" you can do the same damage with pen most of the times but you can hold the card in your hand so you can use it for multiple problems without wasting yours Shadowsteps. Funny enough removal cards attached to great offensive stats are doing pretty well because you know offensive stats win games when you never runout of cards in your hand.
The problem however is not the concept of these cards, but their current iteration. Priest needs a little push to become competitive against aggro decks and then we can have games with a lot of back and forth and plenty of meaningful decisions.
You can already see that happen in tournaments where players have to bring more than two classes, so we get to see more evenly matched decks fight.
I prefer that to the times of mech mage, or the original Secret Paladin, when every game was just 6-7 turns of immense pressure and then "gg, go next".
of this 3 only Samuro retains varely 50% winrate. Which means that they are not great anymore and is not a suprise.
Idk what you're looking at. Xyrella is literally the best mulligan, drawn and played winrate card of Control Priest, in Legend and Top 1k Legend at least (which is where it matters for me):
Even at Bronze-Gold she's at least a top 4 winrate card.
I have to agree here. Ive been playing the game for a while and Ive never seen card draw in such a state. My goodness.... it never ends. I just played a Mage in Wild that literally drew almost their entire deck by turn 4(had coin). Then, they drop Apprentice/Flamewaker - you know the rest. Instant Concede. What the heck? Its not just Mage though.
What has to go away are zero cost cards. Shadowstep is a Rogue thing and thats the only card that should cost zero. Maybe Backstab too. Thats it though. We cant have this much synergy with spells and other things and have zero cost cards. 1 Mana should be the minimum cost for any card that used to be 2 or more mana. That would help right there, IMO.
I have to agree here. Ive been playing the game for a while and Ive never seen card draw in such a state. My goodness.... it never ends. I just played a Mage in Wild that literally drew almost their entire deck by turn 4(had coin). Then, they drop Apprentice/Flamewaker - you know the rest. Instant Concede. What the heck? Its not just Mage though.
What has to go away are zero cost cards. Shadowstep is a Rogue thing and thats the only card that should cost zero. Maybe Backstab too. Thats it though. We cant have this much synergy with spells and other things and have zero cost cards. 1 Mana should be the minimum cost for any card that used to be 2 or more mana. That would help right there, IMO.
The problem however is not the concept of these cards, but their current iteration. Priest needs a little push to become competitive against aggro decks and then we can have games with a lot of back and forth and plenty of meaningful decisions.
You can already see that happen in tournaments where players have to bring more than two classes, so we get to see more evenly matched decks fight.
I prefer that to the times of mech mage, or the original Secret Paladin, when every game was just 6-7 turns of immense pressure and then "gg, go next".
That is not the point. Warrior is as hopeless as priest in control terms. Where was the last time where you see a read midrange or control deck on ladder? No slow combo decks, not tempo decks with low curve, not decks that try to go all-in or go into the next match as the new rush warrior. A real get value on curve deck or a real control deck. Sinse...ah galakrond decks? they the were pretty lackluster. So its not a problem that can be solve just "pushing a little" some archtypes its about REALLY fix a lot of stuff that is being overpushed in this last 2 expansion (ignoring madness that really do nothing except tickatus).
Funny that this topic comes up shortly after the debut of the Classic format. One of the more powerful archetypes in classic is old school Miracle Rogue complete with Concealed double-Cold Blooded Auctioneers on turn 6.
It was an interesting experience to take the old Miracle Rogue into a competitive environment, because you were constantly barely clinging to life against aggro waiting for one more mana so you could safely initiate the draw sequence. I never had much problem with that sort of thing, but you compare that process to the current mage situation packing 4 cards drawn for free (Spring Water), 4 cards drawn straight up (Arcane Int), and X cards drawn based on how many Studies you managed to draw first (Cram Session). You frequently find yourself in the final 6-10 cards of your deck with very little investment involved.
Que sera, though. I'm not a fan of strangling out combo types, and the way Hearthstone goes with only 1 or 2 copies of a card, a lot of draw is usually involved.
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Apologies if this is redundant, I'm on and off with the forums but my latest run-ins with Hearthstone have led to me wonder what the community thinks. So here we go...
In short: there is simply too much card draw.
The argument for aggro is a short one. If you are a low range aggro deck you should run out of resources when you play 10 cards in 5 turns. The goal is to get in and out early, and there shouldn't be a reward in the way of card draw to empty your hand while doing mostly non-countered damage to the opponent. Cheap fast aggro used to be cornered specifically by Druid and Warlock. Druid had the ability to refill boards through token/spell means, and would buff once they suspected the counters to be exhausted. Warlock had lifetap, and that pioneered the aggro we see today. They would live in the 1-3 mana position with a few higher end 5s or so to close out the game. Was it balanced? Yeah I feel it was. You could play hard control and you did have a very positive win-rate pushing hard aggro down. Rng had its place on both sides of the field, and sometimes Warlock or Druid just got there because the cards aligned. That's Hearthstone in it's purest form: A handful of competitive classes, some hard-set counters to keep ladder fresh, and somewhat telegraphed gameplay with a HINT of random generation/mechanics so every game didn't go the same way. (not another rng thread, just an example)
Now that the game has expanded, we see combo decks that can draw 20+ cards before 10 mana. The skeleton of what combo was has shifted... imo in the wrong direction. Combo used to be pretty synonymous with control. You needed to hold the board for a VERY long time to pop off your OTK or win set-up. This on average in the Druids, Warriors, Priests, etc of the past generally took 10-15 turns. In all reasonability, fatigue control was an auto loss and aggro needed to run into the wall enough times to crack it. While those pillars haven't changed entirely, card draw has enabled the current combo decks to formulate their plan within 10 turns, if not by turn 10 at the latest in most cases. This pushes the opportunity to combat it down to very specific lines. Lines like combo disruption- which is class specific and otherwise not really present in the game- and aggro that draws better than its opponent while simultaneously drawing a good curve to close the game within 5-6 turns. Is combo broken? No. The card draw is broken. Tuning the draw back to force combo to enact its plan 3-5 turns later is what will healthily contain mage, demon hunter, and other OTK opportunities to pulling off the combo 50% of the time or less, and getting the rest of their lacking win-rate through alternative gameplans- which creates a LIVING strategy/experience.
I haven't had too many situations of control getting out of hand with card draw other than Tickatus Warlock. I feel that card specifically is a different conversation. Full fatigue control seems inexistent for now, but the game has a flow of bringing it back so we will see how the control conversation changes across the next year. I may be overlooking card draw issues in Control, but I hope some of you will point out the other culprits outside of Warlock.
Otherwise, how do you all feel? Is card draw the problem, or are the cards/classes themselves the real problem?
Pretty much fully agree. Card draw right now is insane, even aggro never runs out of resources and gas anymore with how much card draw exists.
Mages have 0 mana draw 2, Hunter's have deal damage + draw, warlock apart from hero power has multiple draw cards, rogue can draw infinitely but then again rogue was known always for drawing faster than others so for rogue at least it makes some sense.
Card draw and card generation has gotten too good in hearthstone.
Card draw on its own is fine in my opinion, I don't mind if there is "too much" of it. It's always the worst feeling when you are in topdeck mode and the opponent isn't, and if one class that isn't warlock can draw their entire deck with ease, then all classes should be able to.
My concern is the distribution, it's very unbalanced and classes like Mage, Rogue, DH, Warlock, Warrior can pretty much draw their entire deck by turn 10, classes like Hunter, Paladin, Druid have more "fair" card draw but still a lot of it, while Shaman and Priest have pretty much nothing and need to rely on very weak neutral cards or random card generators.
It used to be a class identity thing, way back in the days when classes and archetypes were more closely tied together, but now it just seems like a very artificial way to push up or down winrates.
My other concern is tempo or snowball card draw. Cards like Refreshing Spring Water or Swindle, while very powerful, and a very clear attempt to artificially boost the class winrate, do nothing else than drawing cards, and a card that has no impact on the board has a real cost to your deck, it means your entire deck contains less value and friction overall. That's why control warlock always feels natural, because all 30 cards can have an impact on the game and you can still draw cards efficiently.
On the other hand, cards like Sparkjoy Cheat, Greyheart Sage, Field Contact, Primordial Protector, Consume Magic, Stiltstepper, Twilight Runner, Stonemaul Anchorman, Outrider's Axe, while maybe more balanced in a given meta than pure card draw cards, I think have a much more negative impact on the game overall, because they reward drawing cards with strong impact on the board for free, like everyone is a warlock now, I think that completely breaks hearthstone's dynamic, now you don't need to draw your win condition, your win condition IS drawing as much as you can into more tempo cards that draw more tempo cards that draw more tempo cards.
That's why Refreshing Spring Water will, I think, never be nerfed. Because it literally does nothing (and rewards different deck building in a more elegant and interesting way than Apexis Blast / Font of Power). It will never be the cause of any balance issue, only the symptom, It's entirely dependant on the 28 cards around it, unlike tempo card draw that can absolutely break the game by itself.
Different classes are good at different things, that's the whole point of it. Rogue might have better draw than Priest, but Priest has better boardclears that rogue for example.
NERF priest card draw NOW!
Hall of Fame priest NOW!!!!!
The concept of aggro going all in and running out of resources and control being on the back foot all game until finally stabilizing is outdated and boring. Even MtG has moved away from it.
The more cards players draw, the more choices they will have to make, making the game potentially much more dynamic.
As a tradeoff, most control decks now have access to either early counterplay, absurd amounts of healing or both.
The biggest downside of taking the game into overdrive like that is that balancing cards is now harder than ever and any slight imbalance can snowball out of control.
Yeah but you need to look at this from a balance perspective. Its not funny when Hunter or Demon Hunter or Paladin go into top deck mode and they pretty much lose because of that (pretty rare situation btw). But...that is supposed to be the weakness of decks that go into hard aggresive mode. If you can hold infinite resources in your hand (like paladin) or just draw 2 cards into 1 card into 3 cards (like Demon Hunter) them...what is the point of playing to outlast them? cofcoformagebutidontwanttotalkaboutmageinthistopiccofcof . Like...that is how you beat those decks if your finishers are not comming or they are not fast enough? Its kinda hard for other classes like Warrior or Shaman to beat Demon hunter for example, when that class can get 10 Hero Attack damage with a 2 card hand and also draw cards in the process. Sometimes play big taunts seems like really pointless in this cases.
Well, isn't that exactly what I said ? I'm sorry for the confusion I'm not a native english speaker.
My whole point was to give more card draw to shaman and priest to get them in line with the other classes, because card draw is no longer a weakness of aggro archetypes, it's a weakness of classes specifically. (I strongly disagree about Warrior lacking card draw). How is card draw a weakness of aggro decks if aggro DH can draw everything and aggro shaman can draw nothing ?
If some classes can go aggro and draw their entire decks (Rogue, DH), or go control and draw their entire decks (warlock, warrior), it is extremely unfair for classes that can't (Priest, Shaman, Paladin), regardless of class identity and other strengths or weaknesses.
I understand that at some point card draw was supposed to be a weakness for some classes and a strength for others to keep everything balanced, but the game's dynamic has shifted a long time ago and now having more card draw just means being able to build more archetypes and more powerful decks, and shaman is just left behind with very little room for experimentation or diversity, while priest can get away with ridiculous RNG value cards.
To me card draw now just seems like a tools used by the devs to push classes in and out of favor. Of course at any given point a class that lacks card draw can get away with some other bullshit I'm not saying it's not possible to win games as shaman or priest, it just feels like I'm playing a different game than my opponents.
The main problem with the very quick combo decks and explosive "control" decks is that decks with mid-range and tempo game plans can't exist. You either play defensively and go off on turn 5-7, or you kill your opponent on turn 4-7 despite counterplay.
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The concept of making cards whic effects are literally: dealt direct damage and draw 1 card. Its also boring and a lot of games are moving on from that kind of aggro and divide Direct damage aggresive decks from wide-board aggro decks but not here for now. Which is a problem beacause that simple design reward straighfoward and very linear gameplan. In other hand healing and gain armor cards in this game do pretty little and are very inconsistent. Lets take Renew for example. Right now Priest dont have consistent AoE to dealt with the kind of boardstates that the game propose (right Defense stat minions with 3 to 4 attack for the most part of the game and only one of two minions with more than 5 attack. Condemn is a great card in a universe where your oponnent cant play 2 buffing spells before turn 5 in the same turn and push all the minions on board to 3 or 5 defense and 3 or 4 attack. But in this universe there is atleast 2 classes (hunter and Druid, specialy druid) that can do that which also plays around Hysteria cause playing Hysteria to kill 1 or 2 minions max, against aggro for 3 mana is kinda lose the game.
But you know what classes cant play around Hysteria and Condemn pretty well? Warrior and Priest. Which is hilarius and is one of the reasons why beat Warlock with this 2 is almost impossible even if you buff minions in the midgame (talking abot hysteria). Buut lets go back to the main topic.
So if aggro decks have efficient card draw and efficient straigfoward "push damage" cards. Control classes become useless. Cause Gaining HP is ALWAYS worse that push damage unless the oponent empty his hand. That is the main reason of the low cost of most healing spells in any card game. Healing is just delaying damage, dealt damage is winning the game. I could have an spell with the same effect than reno jackson without the body and it wont be broken, it would be bad in most cases unless the meta is really lacking of card draw, because 6 mana do nothing and restore all your HP is useless if my oponent still have 6 minions on board with 3 or 4 attack. So either you make super broken defensive cards or you keep on check the power of proactive cards. You cant have both: weak defensive tools and strong proactive tools; and said that "is good because it feels bad go into top decks"
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@PetiteMouche
The problem is that what you said is good but dont work like that in reality. Let me explain: if all the classes have very good card draw them defensive clases or the less proactive clases (like shaman) will be weak forever. Why? Well i explain this in the first half of the post. Defensive tools are by default weaker even when they can feel busted in some scenarios, than proactive tools. In any game where aggro dont run out of cards and neither control does, aggro will win more than 60% of the time. Always. Unless is really, really hopeless in the lategame which is not the case becas right now late game for aggro is not bad at all neither. Like for example i never run out of cards with my main decks (Warrior control and Priest control) but that is not the problem when i lose a game. The problem is that my gameplan of healing, create one or two big units, kill the enemy units and end the game when i get to that point wont work when Demon hunter (just for put a very obvius example in this meta) has a weapon that let him buff his attack to infinite, then play a minion with great stats and rush, clear my taunt, clear my big unit and then attack my face with his ultra buffed hero attack and them with his 8/8 minion all that on the same turn. What i do to keep that in control? I kill the unit, recover as much HP i can and them he plays skull of guldamn and process to do the same in one or two turns and...i lose. With big taunts, with 25 points of healing, with my wincondition on board. I just lose, because he never will run out of face damage or cards in hand.
This pretty much.
Most removals come attached with a tempo swing as well, like Prize Plunderer, Xyrella, Samuro, even previously with Skipper + Brute, Altruis turns or Brooms. Or super cheap like Cascading or Death that are cheap enough to allow development.
Probably the Zoolock of the previous exp had legit too much card draw (and Rogue now), and Zoo now it's a deck with so little it loses to the first board clear that is used. A never ending torrent of vomit is not fun, but auto losing to te first board clear played it's not fun or compelling gameplay either.
of this 3 only Samuro retains varely 50% winrate. Which means that they are not great anymore and is not a suprise. Xyrella was honestly pretty good the first weeks when people was not playing the M deck (i am not going to talk about the M class in this topic) or Paladin that much. Paladin was kind of weak to Xyrella and still is but lets see...at this point Desperate Prayers, the card that makes Xyrella work really well against aggro and high roll decks, is cut from most Priest decks (because it does nothing anymore). Xyrella is a very hard to set-up card and very obvius too. If on turn 3 you are hitting priest in the face pretty hand and he dont uses his hero power is obviusly because he is holding Xyrella and he needs to heal for more than 3 (cause Xyrella dont count over healing). Samuro is too slow in Warrior and Priest now, is mostly use in Paladin to counter Hunter because paladin has 0 cost buff without any set-up.
They can throw samuro in any turn and Prize Plunderer is not that good on the rogue decks even when penflinger is "ultra nerf" you can do the same damage with pen most of the times but you can hold the card in your hand so you can use it for multiple problems without wasting yours Shadowsteps. Funny enough removal cards attached to great offensive stats are doing pretty well because you know offensive stats win games when you never runout of cards in your hand.
The problem however is not the concept of these cards, but their current iteration. Priest needs a little push to become competitive against aggro decks and then we can have games with a lot of back and forth and plenty of meaningful decisions.
You can already see that happen in tournaments where players have to bring more than two classes, so we get to see more evenly matched decks fight.
I prefer that to the times of mech mage, or the original Secret Paladin, when every game was just 6-7 turns of immense pressure and then "gg, go next".
Idk what you're looking at. Xyrella is literally the best mulligan, drawn and played winrate card of Control Priest, in Legend and Top 1k Legend at least (which is where it matters for me):
Even at Bronze-Gold she's at least a top 4 winrate card.
I have to agree here. Ive been playing the game for a while and Ive never seen card draw in such a state. My goodness.... it never ends. I just played a Mage in Wild that literally drew almost their entire deck by turn 4(had coin). Then, they drop Apprentice/Flamewaker - you know the rest. Instant Concede. What the heck? Its not just Mage though.
What has to go away are zero cost cards. Shadowstep is a Rogue thing and thats the only card that should cost zero. Maybe Backstab too. Thats it though. We cant have this much synergy with spells and other things and have zero cost cards. 1 Mana should be the minimum cost for any card that used to be 2 or more mana. That would help right there, IMO.
Some cards aren’t worth 1 mana, just saying.
I’m fine with card draw as it is as long as the continue with the trend of requiring specific deck setups.
That is not the point. Warrior is as hopeless as priest in control terms. Where was the last time where you see a read midrange or control deck on ladder? No slow combo decks, not tempo decks with low curve, not decks that try to go all-in or go into the next match as the new rush warrior. A real get value on curve deck or a real control deck. Sinse...ah galakrond decks? they the were pretty lackluster. So its not a problem that can be solve just "pushing a little" some archtypes its about REALLY fix a lot of stuff that is being overpushed in this last 2 expansion (ignoring madness that really do nothing except tickatus).
Funny that this topic comes up shortly after the debut of the Classic format. One of the more powerful archetypes in classic is old school Miracle Rogue complete with Concealed double-Cold Blooded Auctioneers on turn 6.
It was an interesting experience to take the old Miracle Rogue into a competitive environment, because you were constantly barely clinging to life against aggro waiting for one more mana so you could safely initiate the draw sequence. I never had much problem with that sort of thing, but you compare that process to the current mage situation packing 4 cards drawn for free (Spring Water), 4 cards drawn straight up (Arcane Int), and X cards drawn based on how many Studies you managed to draw first (Cram Session). You frequently find yourself in the final 6-10 cards of your deck with very little investment involved.
Que sera, though. I'm not a fan of strangling out combo types, and the way Hearthstone goes with only 1 or 2 copies of a card, a lot of draw is usually involved.
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