Completely shutting down one of the games basic archetypes (control) threw the deckbuilding experience in the dumpster then set fire on it. Thats probably why this expansion has been so polarizing:
People who enjoy deckbuilding got the fattest middle finger (sorry Kibler), while the ones who dont care about it and just netdeck everything are having a blast with super fun, powerful decks who win fast and with style.
So in MtG terms: pure Johnnies got kicked in the balls, while pure Timmies got multiple orgasm jerkoffs. Spikes never care, they just play whats good anyways.
I don't really enjoy it either. I feel design team did a great job creating new archetypes but the balance team totally screwed up everything. And since they are in charge of balancing, I don't expect any major changes in the coming patchnotes.
I have played since the launch of 1.0, so I've experienced a lot of different broken metas. But most of them were due to 1/2 problematic decks, and the meta was still way slower than UiS. Now every class have at least one busted deck. I guess for some people it's a good sign, but to me it's just frustrating to have no real space to experiment.
/rant.I am just auto conceding every warlock I see. What's the point? You can't beat them nearly enough to make it worth your time. I, too, have played since 1.0 and I'm to the point where I don't log in every day anymore, I just clear a quest or two so they don't backlog. Nothing is fun to play, nothing is fun to play against. I have every legendary from every expansion (except those I strategically dusted). I don't know how much longer I'll bother playing because this simply isn't at all fun. My last 10 games, 7 were warlock, 1 DH 1 Mage and 1 paladin. Much fun. Lost every game. I'll just accept D5 as my 'top' this season and probably skip the next xpac or quit all together. It is a damn shame you can't sell your stupid account./rant
I feel like ever is a strong word. It's absolutely been worse than this. Trust me lol.
REMEMBER jade Druid.
Remember DH day 1.
Jade druid interacted with the board. This is the most trash and solitaire meta ever. Like 4 decks being played on ladder that are 100% uninteractive. Whoever says this meta is the best or that is good is a clown!!!!
What is so infuriating about the state of the meta is that Team 5 pretends like nothing's wrong. There seems to be no rush to fix things, and no admission that the last round nerfs was woefully inadequate. They should all be fired. They're so bad at their jobs, and just don't give a crap. But Iksar tweets a lot at people!!!! Wow, what a hero.
The meta seems to be everyone rushing to complete whatever simple or elaborate kill plan they have, to even the discouragement of using any minions that are not part of said scheme.
Quest shamans rushing to get double cast so they can burn with attack spells or summon multiple 10-cost minions each turn. Elemental shamans going for otk with doomhammer or just barrage of face damage battlecries/spells.
Quest mages rushing to complete and get spell damage to burn down in a turn or two with remaining spells.
Quest warlocks mashing their hero power and self-harming quick as they can so they can kill with fatigue or dropping free 8/8s on turn 4 (which still happens even after the nerf).
Rogues rushing to shuffle their cards around ND discount them to then try and burst burn in a turn or two by drawing through their deck and hitting garrotes and other face damage spells (ideally with spell damage).
Demon hunters drawing as fast as they can, either to plop down (auto-summoning) big minions, or lots of fel spells.
Paladins piling all the minions they can into the field with every turn to either megabuff the ones they haven't put down yet, or otk with battlemaster and attack boost for anything that isn't immediately wiped.
Hunters going face with even more spells now and less reliance on minions.
Priests rushing in shadow form to kill with nicks and cuts. Or quest priests as possibly the only class that tries to stall for as long as possible to complete the quest and then draw out the insta-kill card. (I think giving an insta-kill to a class that has specialized in dragging out matches is bad too though, and still gives the sense of rushing to complete an ultimate weapon).
Warriors rushing out pirates to get that ship.
Druids sitting until they can double-summon 8-cost minions and armor (optionally resetting your mana before/after so you can't do anything), or spam the field with summoned minions and hope you don't have an aoe spell to respond with so they can otk.
Druids were nerfed before the latest expansion explicitly to reduce the frequency of 'non-games' where it doesn't matter what their opponent does/the opponent can't do anything, but now it seems like most classes are essentially hoping for the same thing. Prep your killer combo first, with thanks to lucky rng, and pay only the minimal required attention to what the opponent is doing.
Many games have the sense of it being clear who is going to win by around turn 5 now (sometimes earlier), with the crappy part being that it's clear there was nothing you (or they) could have done to prevent it, based on rng.
This post sums it up well: There are multiple viable archetypes, the meta is very diverse, every deck has a gameplan and tries to play accordingly instead of just preventing the opponent from executing theirs. Sounds great overall. Would it make you feel better about the meta if all decks were running some vanilla 3-mana 3/4s with the goal of trading on the opponents' vanilla 2-mana 2/3s?
I feel like ever is a strong word. It's absolutely been worse than this. Trust me lol.
REMEMBER jade Druid.
Remember DH day 1.
Jade druid interacted with the board. This is the most trash and solitaire meta ever. Like 4 decks being played on ladder that are 100% uninteractive. Whoever says this meta is the best or that is good is a clown!!!!
If Solitaire is the thing for this people have way better options than HS. >.<
They did a round of nerfs, nerfed the wrong cards, and the meta got worse as a result of a balance patch because blizz won't acknowledge that questlines are a cancerous concept, just like any quest that is good is cancerous.
They did a round of nerfs, nerfed the wrong cards, and the meta got worse as a result of a balance patch because blizz won't acknowledge that questlines are a cancerous concept, just like any quest that is good is cancerous.
They won't admit the problems and try to do minimal nerfs on the new expansion cards.... at least until the next or two expansions later.... when people are more salty on the newer cards and forgot their saltiness on the previous cards... typical Blizz marketing strategy.
The issue isn’t spells v boardstate, it is directly tied to intentional game design. They want faster games, everyone complained there were no wincons in warlock and priest in barrens… this is what we asked for. Is this worse than rez priest or boomsday warrior? That’s what we traded.
Stormwind was designed long before the community ever saw Barrens or had any chance to complain about it.
But thank you for bringing up Boomsday Warrior, because that dismal memory makes me feel MUCH better about the current meta.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
They did a round of nerfs, nerfed the wrong cards, and the meta got worse as a result of a balance patch because blizz won't acknowledge that questlines are a cancerous concept, just like any quest that is good is cancerous.
They won't admit the problems and try to do minimal nerfs on the new expansion cards.... at least until the next or two expansions later.... when people are more salty on the newer cards and forgot their saltiness on the previous cards... typical Blizz marketing strategy.
Seems like such a distant memory. Here were all were, making countless threads about how much Tickatus was ruining the game. So many in fact that the mods even made a Tickatus discussion thread so everyone could come to one place to complain.
And yet... the people continued to make their own personal salt threads.
It was never ending.
Until... this happened.
THE. WORST. META. EVER.
Truly and honestly. This is the one guys. This one tops it all. We'll never recover from it. And there will never be another meta as bad as this one again.
The meta seems to be everyone rushing to complete whatever simple or elaborate kill plan they have, to even the discouragement of using any minions that are not part of said scheme.
Quest shamans rushing to get double cast so they can burn with attack spells or summon multiple 10-cost minions each turn. Elemental shamans going for otk with doomhammer or just barrage of face damage battlecries/spells.
Quest mages rushing to complete and get spell damage to burn down in a turn or two with remaining spells.
Quest warlocks mashing their hero power and self-harming quick as they can so they can kill with fatigue or dropping free 8/8s on turn 4 (which still happens even after the nerf).
Rogues rushing to shuffle their cards around ND discount them to then try and burst burn in a turn or two by drawing through their deck and hitting garrotes and other face damage spells (ideally with spell damage).
Demon hunters drawing as fast as they can, either to plop down (auto-summoning) big minions, or lots of fel spells.
Paladins piling all the minions they can into the field with every turn to either megabuff the ones they haven't put down yet, or otk with battlemaster and attack boost for anything that isn't immediately wiped.
Hunters going face with even more spells now and less reliance on minions.
Priests rushing in shadow form to kill with nicks and cuts. Or quest priests as possibly the only class that tries to stall for as long as possible to complete the quest and then draw out the insta-kill card. (I think giving an insta-kill to a class that has specialized in dragging out matches is bad too though, and still gives the sense of rushing to complete an ultimate weapon).
Warriors rushing out pirates to get that ship.
Druids sitting until they can double-summon 8-cost minions and armor (optionally resetting your mana before/after so you can't do anything), or spam the field with summoned minions and hope you don't have an aoe spell to respond with so they can otk.
Druids were nerfed before the latest expansion explicitly to reduce the frequency of 'non-games' where it doesn't matter what their opponent does/the opponent can't do anything, but now it seems like most classes are essentially hoping for the same thing. Prep your killer combo first, with thanks to lucky rng, and pay only the minimal required attention to what the opponent is doing.
Many games have the sense of it being clear who is going to win by around turn 5 now (sometimes earlier), with the crappy part being that it's clear there was nothing you (or they) could have done to prevent it, based on rng.
This post sums it up well: There are multiple viable archetypes, the meta is very diverse, every deck has a gameplan and tries to play accordingly instead of just preventing the opponent from executing theirs. Sounds great overall. Would it make you feel better about the meta if all decks were running some vanilla 3-mana 3/4s with the goal of trading on the opponents' vanilla 2-mana 2/3s?
The amount of viable decks is the single dumbest argument and metric that exists for evaluating the health of a meta and OCG/TCG as a whole, and should be entirely disregarded. It is absolute nonsense. In fact, in trying to use it as your metric, you have instead just made an attempt to counter an ACTUAL argument and metric for the health of the game: How much variability is there.
Right now, the game has only 2 different decks. I give 0 shits about whether or not the deck is a priest, a hunter, a paladin, mage, warlock or whatever. That's arbitrary, and it doesn't matter at all. In standard right now, there are 2 decks: Extreme aggro, or OTK combo. The reason for this, is ENTIRELY because of the strength of the combo strategies, and NOT of the strength of the aggro strategies. The extreme aggro exists solely as a countermeasure to the combo decks, because they ARE the only thing that can compete, let alone survive, against combo.
Hearthstone, right now, is fundamentally at a point where it has to make a decision - and only one of those decisions is right: Does it want the game to continue along this trajectory, effectively eliminating every single other deck in the game from ever having a remote chance, OR
Is it going to allow players to interact in more key fashions, in order for any sort of slower deck to have options to curtail the strength of combo decks.
Its been worse during Tempo Mage/Burn Shaman double-o-meta. IT may have been worse during some Patches primetime or Unleash the hounds early state.
Nevertheless it is incredibly weird time and I do fear for the future of HS with quests being in game for like what, 2 more years ? Keep in mind the moment Meta slows down a little bit, perhaps giving some space for decks like control Warrior, there is always a priest questline that completely destroys eny control.
As I said in other threads, HS is going through a gigantic transition right now: Team 5 wants faster games AND wants control to have faster wincons.
The problem is, achieving BOTH those objectives in a single expansion was simply impossible, they had to choose one to go with now and we all know which one they chose first.
I believe the mini-set is going to give control tools to survive longer/finish games faster, since they know any card game needs all three archetypes to have SOME level of representation to be healthy.
The meta right now is super unhealthy rn cuz its incomplete. We have 2/3 of a game, and the miniset will give us the missing third, thats what I think/hope.
Transitions are always difficult, they knew people would lose their shit, but if they believe its something the game needs going forward, I dont judge them.
Still believe the Warlock Quest needs a nerf though, it completely craps on the whole point of Wild being a place with more variety, that mode has only one deck now.
I don't really enjoy it either. I feel design team did a great job creating new archetypes but the balance team totally screwed up everything. And since they are in charge of balancing, I don't expect any major changes in the coming patchnotes.
I have played since the launch of 1.0, so I've experienced a lot of different broken metas. But most of them were due to 1/2 problematic decks, and the meta was still way slower than UiS. Now every class have at least one busted deck. I guess for some people it's a good sign, but to me it's just frustrating to have no real space to experiment.
/rant.I am just auto conceding every warlock I see. What's the point? You can't beat them nearly enough to make it worth your time. I, too, have played since 1.0 and I'm to the point where I don't log in every day anymore, I just clear a quest or two so they don't backlog. Nothing is fun to play, nothing is fun to play against. I have every legendary from every expansion (except those I strategically dusted). I don't know how much longer I'll bother playing because this simply isn't at all fun. My last 10 games, 7 were warlock, 1 DH 1 Mage and 1 paladin. Much fun. Lost every game. I'll just accept D5 as my 'top' this season and probably skip the next xpac or quit all together. It is a damn shame you can't sell your stupid account./rant
10000% agree
Hahahahahahahahahahah yea ok….
Jade druid interacted with the board. This is the most trash and solitaire meta ever. Like 4 decks being played on ladder that are 100% uninteractive. Whoever says this meta is the best or that is good is a clown!!!!
What is so infuriating about the state of the meta is that Team 5 pretends like nothing's wrong. There seems to be no rush to fix things, and no admission that the last round nerfs was woefully inadequate. They should all be fired. They're so bad at their jobs, and just don't give a crap. But Iksar tweets a lot at people!!!! Wow, what a hero.
This post sums it up well: There are multiple viable archetypes, the meta is very diverse, every deck has a gameplan and tries to play accordingly instead of just preventing the opponent from executing theirs. Sounds great overall. Would it make you feel better about the meta if all decks were running some vanilla 3-mana 3/4s with the goal of trading on the opponents' vanilla 2-mana 2/3s?
If Solitaire is the thing for this people have way better options than HS. >.<
I play tier 1 GM broken decks in rank 20 and have 95% winrate, so im fine :)
They did a round of nerfs, nerfed the wrong cards, and the meta got worse as a result of a balance patch because blizz won't acknowledge that questlines are a cancerous concept, just like any quest that is good is cancerous.
They won't admit the problems and try to do minimal nerfs on the new expansion cards.... at least until the next or two expansions later.... when people are more salty on the newer cards and forgot their saltiness on the previous cards... typical Blizz marketing strategy.
I think Gadgetzan felt worse than this. Demon Hunter right as it was released was the worst point for me but it didn't last long thankfully.
Stormwind was designed long before the community ever saw Barrens or had any chance to complain about it.
But thank you for bringing up Boomsday Warrior, because that dismal memory makes me feel MUCH better about the current meta.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
Oh man, you 'memba Tickatus?
... I 'memba.
Seems like such a distant memory. Here were all were, making countless threads about how much Tickatus was ruining the game. So many in fact that the mods even made a Tickatus discussion thread so everyone could come to one place to complain.
And yet... the people continued to make their own personal salt threads.
It was never ending.
Until... this happened.
THE. WORST. META. EVER.
Truly and honestly. This is the one guys. This one tops it all. We'll never recover from it. And there will never be another meta as bad as this one again.
Until next expansion. Jesus F. Christ...
The amount of viable decks is the single dumbest argument and metric that exists for evaluating the health of a meta and OCG/TCG as a whole, and should be entirely disregarded. It is absolute nonsense. In fact, in trying to use it as your metric, you have instead just made an attempt to counter an ACTUAL argument and metric for the health of the game: How much variability is there.
Right now, the game has only 2 different decks. I give 0 shits about whether or not the deck is a priest, a hunter, a paladin, mage, warlock or whatever. That's arbitrary, and it doesn't matter at all. In standard right now, there are 2 decks: Extreme aggro, or OTK combo. The reason for this, is ENTIRELY because of the strength of the combo strategies, and NOT of the strength of the aggro strategies. The extreme aggro exists solely as a countermeasure to the combo decks, because they ARE the only thing that can compete, let alone survive, against combo.
Hearthstone, right now, is fundamentally at a point where it has to make a decision - and only one of those decisions is right: Does it want the game to continue along this trajectory, effectively eliminating every single other deck in the game from ever having a remote chance, OR
Is it going to allow players to interact in more key fashions, in order for any sort of slower deck to have options to curtail the strength of combo decks.
Its been worse during Tempo Mage/Burn Shaman double-o-meta. IT may have been worse during some Patches primetime or Unleash the hounds early state.
Nevertheless it is incredibly weird time and I do fear for the future of HS with quests being in game for like what, 2 more years ? Keep in mind the moment Meta slows down a little bit, perhaps giving some space for decks like control Warrior, there is always a priest questline that completely destroys eny control.
So you went to bgs which is also not fixed since it came out. Lol
As I said in other threads, HS is going through a gigantic transition right now: Team 5 wants faster games AND wants control to have faster wincons.
The problem is, achieving BOTH those objectives in a single expansion was simply impossible, they had to choose one to go with now and we all know which one they chose first.
I believe the mini-set is going to give control tools to survive longer/finish games faster, since they know any card game needs all three archetypes to have SOME level of representation to be healthy.
The meta right now is super unhealthy rn cuz its incomplete. We have 2/3 of a game, and the miniset will give us the missing third, thats what I think/hope.
Transitions are always difficult, they knew people would lose their shit, but if they believe its something the game needs going forward, I dont judge them.
Still believe the Warlock Quest needs a nerf though, it completely craps on the whole point of Wild being a place with more variety, that mode has only one deck now.
So nobody can have a different opinion? I like the meta too.