So its been four days since the launch of the Sunken City and I must admit, I had my hopes up that after the year of the Gryphon (combo) we would finally have interactive board based decks.
We ended up getting board based combo decks that can deal excess of 20 damage from hand using minions instead of spells on turn 7!
Ramp Druid is still the number one problem because aggressive strategies like Pirate warrior and Mech mage can be neutralized by good ol’ control decks (Warrior is pretty good at this right now). But how does a control deck beat Ramp druid? The class had a weakness of clearing boards for years and now that problem has been shored up by cards like Scale of Onyxia…
Here are my ideas on what nerfs could look like to help sort out this meta.
Raid the Docks: Make quest warrior stages 3/2/2 but UNIQUE PIRATES. This naturally slows the deck down and gives room for a reno or control pirate warrior which should be welcomed by the community. Nerfing Raid the Docks by requiring 9-12 pirates does not solve the inherent problem that an aggro deck has an infinite value win-condition…
Mecha-Shark: Remove the mech tag and change text to “play a mech” over summon a mech. Much like Pirate Warrior, mech mage has the ability to generate near-infinite resources with cards like Azsharan Sweeper and Amalgam of the Deep. These aggressive decks having access to massive damage from hand is further enabled by Seafloor Gateway and how it can be tutored by cards like Frostweave Dungeoneer.
Switcheroo: Switches mana costs and stats (Twin fin would be a 10 mana 12/12 rush that summons another 12/12 rush, deathwing 3 mana 1/1 powerful battlecry. Much better design and opens new ideas up for priests looking to cheat out impactful battlecries. This is more of an issue in the wild format than in standard but losing to a random highroll of 24/24 on turn 3-4 is a terrible gameplay experience (isn’t this why Edwin VanCleef was hall of famed?!!)
Kazakusan: Craft a custom deck of treasures for each dragon played this game (example: if you played 12 dragons, you get 12 cards/6 treasures and odd numbered of dragons played rounds down meaning 13 dragons played still crafts 12 cards). This card has already become stale for people because its just too good in a class like druid which draws their entire deck by turn 9-10 (while also having 20 mana) and can negate the problems a fast drawing deck might have in fatigue and turn it into an advantage with 10 broken treasures!! This change needs to happen. I have no problem with the treasures (I never see Book of the Dead nowadays) and welcome the card in a Control Warrior or Priest deck with it being used as a better Archivist Elysiana.
Quest Hunter: cap the hero power spam to 3 per turn (they have this mechanic in BGS and maybe it can be implemented in the standard format). Quest hunter is just frustrating to play against. This deck requires next to no thought to pilot and makes the old Raza priest look slow. Capping the number of times the hero power can be spammed is the only feasible change outside of changing the quest stage making the hero power cost 1 and not 0.
Wildheart Guff: Dont give full mana crystals (rn guff is basically 4 mana and the ramp option of the hero power is one mana) and make the card cost 7 to begin with. Make druids choose between Scale and Guff. It also makes a new curve for the class with Wild Growth>>Nourish>>Wildheart Guff + hero power.
Last but not least, Mr. Smite. One of the most polarizing cards ever printed in hearthstone and one that seems too powerful and enables pirate strategies to close out games. My change is not one of the popular ones like “give your OTHER pirates charge” or Rush. I would much rather the card have the pirate tag removed and given rush. This means he will not have charge and can be used to clear taunts etc to allow other pirates to go face. Smite not being a pirate means he does not get the charge effect and cannot be randomly summoned from the juggernaut. This imo is the best change you can do to this card without killing it altogether.
Going down the list of metastats.net best legend archetypes:
Quest Warrior/Pirate Rogue - While Quest Warrior is by far the stronger deck, both are top tier. I'd probably nerf Mr. Smite as well as some of the Warrior Pirates.
Mech Mage/Mech Paladin - Both top tier decks that are strong mainly due to their constant hand refill that allow for constant high pressure. I'd target Seafloor Savior and Gorillabot.
Ramp Druid/Control Warrior - Both rely on Kazakusan, which I think should be nerfed.
Token DH - A very strong deck, but mainly because it beats other aggro decks. With other aggro decks nerfed and seeing less play there may not be a need to nerf this deck, since it loses to most decks with decent board clears.
Quest Hunter - Another strong slower deck that would only get better if aggro is nerfed, so I'd bump it down a notch too. Making the quest harder to complete seems like a decent solution.
Burn Shaman - Quite strong but I don't think it needs a nerf since Smothering Starfish already exists a very strong counter.
They should should change switcheroo. I don’t think it is op, involves luck(can’t draw minions, need to draw switcheroo early or enemy will draw an answer), but double 12/12 on turn 2 or 3 is opposite of fun.
Other than that, mecha shark and pirate warrior. I would love to see mr. Smite or warrior questline nerfed, but they will probably try to nerf some other card, changing questline may kill the deck entirely and blizzard won’t do that since they clearly want pirate warrior in the meta considering all the support it got this expansion.
They should should change switcheroo. I don’t think it is op, involves luck(can’t draw minions, need to draw switcheroo early or enemy will draw an answer), but double 12/12 on turn 2 or 3 is opposite of fun.
Other than that, mecha shark and pirate warrior. I would love to see mr. Smite or warrior questline nerfed, but they will probably try to nerf some other card, changing questline may kill the deck entirely and blizzard won’t do that since they clearly want pirate warrior in the meta considering all the support it got this expansion.
What do you think about my proposed nerf of removing the pirate tag from smite?
Your ideas change the card to a way that you enjoy the game perspective and that will obviously kill the cards. And that's not how blizzard think u can't remove mecha shark from being mech that's stupid for the card but target minion is better cause its a fun card that's example
Your ideas change the card to a way that you enjoy the game perspective and that will obviously kill the cards. And that's not how blizzard think u can't remove mecha shark from being mech that's stupid for the card but target minion is better cause its a fun card that's example
Mecha Shark should not be discovered 20 times a game and get the discount from sea floor gateway. My proposal is better than nerfing the card so it only targets minions!
Pirate warrior is the only deck I see as a real problem; endless threats just outside of spell kill range, infinite value through quest, and seemingly infinite chip and board-clearing damage from on-hero-attack effects. I agree that the pirate quest can and should be nerfed now (as should all other quest lines) to either only summon very low-cost pirates, a slowed down quest chain, nerf the legendary reward’s stats/mana cost, or some combination of those is what I’m proposing. I’m liking the new cards but pirate warrior seems to leverage the small discover pool of mostly old pirate cards to generate Mr Smite and other extremely high-quality cards that all synergize with each other consistently. It is Hearthstones first Aggro-midrange-control-burst-chip-value-otk deck
Nerfing isn't only driven by stats, but by crappy play patterns. Barnes is a decent example, it wasn't even meta anymore when it got smacked down. And switcheroo makes for crappy games in standard and outright stupid games in wild.
Mr. Smite is one for the worst design decisions the devs ever made, not least because it came after they explicitly classified the "charge" mechanic as "being bad for the game". Imagine sending Leeroy Jenkins to the Hall of Fame, and then printing this?!
In Standard, Pirate Quest Warrior remains a huge issue. Like others have mentioned, there'd have to be a few little changes made all around to balance things out a bit, because if any one or two are bumped down, something else is primed to just take it's place.
Pirate Warrior > Ramp druid > then a tie for Mech Mage and Freeze Shaman for third. Token DH is creeping up in numbers, but I think if Ramp Druid was taken down a peg, control decks could reemerge and get that back in line.
Curiously enough, this is reflected directly in the numbers over at HSReplay.
I think nerfing the Juggernaut to make it a 10/10 (or something) with “can’t attack” would be interesting strategically. Give people a chance to remove it. Or give the warrior a chance to silence it.
I think nerfing the Juggernaut to make it a 10/10 (or something) with “can’t attack” would be interesting strategically. Give people a chance to remove it. Or give the warrior a chance to silence it.
That would be terrible. No other quest reward can be disrupted in that fashion.
Earthen Scales and Switcheroo are getting deleted next patch, guaranteed.
Its pretty much impossible to smorc down a ramp druid w/o perfect draws nowadays, that is unacceptable. Earthen Scales should never have been added to standard, period.
Switcheroo will die cuz of the dumb rush murloc/deathwing combo, which is a shame.. rly liked the card, but its too easy to abuse in its current state.
Its kinda bad when you start your post with ramp druid , forcing aggro , which can be beat by control but what does control do vs ramp druid ...
Shows how little you know or even care about the rock paper scissor aspect of HS , 1 deck cant beat them all ...Otherwise i wouldve read further but that just irked me enough to simply stop and reply right away , because if anything , the rest was base on the false concept that what beats aggro should also beat ramp druid ...
Does Blizzard stay true to class identities with this expansion?
They need to add potential huge amount of armor to strengths as druid.
Mage has a limitation "minion swarm". Is that true with mech mage? Can be discussed if its a swarm, but they do generate a big mech board pretty often.
Without Earthen Scales, Ramp Druid will easily fall to Tier 3-4 as many times Aggro decks could have won the game before the armor gain
Without Kazakusan, Ramp Druid will have to find alternative late-game values, such as the new Ambassador card to get the 3 Colossals. Otherwise, its only win condition will be the Elune combo for the Naga Giant & Ivus, the Forest Lord (more on defensive purposes).
So its been four days since the launch of the Sunken City and I must admit, I had my hopes up that after the year of the Gryphon (combo) we would finally have interactive board based decks.
We ended up getting board based combo decks that can deal excess of 20 damage from hand using minions instead of spells on turn 7!
Ramp Druid is still the number one problem because aggressive strategies like Pirate warrior and Mech mage can be neutralized by good ol’ control decks (Warrior is pretty good at this right now). But how does a control deck beat Ramp druid? The class had a weakness of clearing boards for years and now that problem has been shored up by cards like Scale of Onyxia…
Here are my ideas on what nerfs could look like to help sort out this meta.
Raid the Docks: Make quest warrior stages 3/2/2 but UNIQUE PIRATES. This naturally slows the deck down and gives room for a reno or control pirate warrior which should be welcomed by the community. Nerfing Raid the Docks by requiring 9-12 pirates does not solve the inherent problem that an aggro deck has an infinite value win-condition…
Mecha-Shark: Remove the mech tag and change text to “play a mech” over summon a mech. Much like Pirate Warrior, mech mage has the ability to generate near-infinite resources with cards like Azsharan Sweeper and Amalgam of the Deep. These aggressive decks having access to massive damage from hand is further enabled by Seafloor Gateway and how it can be tutored by cards like Frostweave Dungeoneer.
Switcheroo: Switches mana costs and stats (Twin fin would be a 10 mana 12/12 rush that summons another 12/12 rush, deathwing 3 mana 1/1 powerful battlecry. Much better design and opens new ideas up for priests looking to cheat out impactful battlecries. This is more of an issue in the wild format than in standard but losing to a random highroll of 24/24 on turn 3-4 is a terrible gameplay experience (isn’t this why Edwin VanCleef was hall of famed?!!)
Kazakusan: Craft a custom deck of treasures for each dragon played this game (example: if you played 12 dragons, you get 12 cards/6 treasures and odd numbered of dragons played rounds down meaning 13 dragons played still crafts 12 cards). This card has already become stale for people because its just too good in a class like druid which draws their entire deck by turn 9-10 (while also having 20 mana) and can negate the problems a fast drawing deck might have in fatigue and turn it into an advantage with 10 broken treasures!! This change needs to happen. I have no problem with the treasures (I never see Book of the Dead nowadays) and welcome the card in a Control Warrior or Priest deck with it being used as a better Archivist Elysiana.
Quest Hunter: cap the hero power spam to 3 per turn (they have this mechanic in BGS and maybe it can be implemented in the standard format). Quest hunter is just frustrating to play against. This deck requires next to no thought to pilot and makes the old Raza priest look slow. Capping the number of times the hero power can be spammed is the only feasible change outside of changing the quest stage making the hero power cost 1 and not 0.
Wildheart Guff: Dont give full mana crystals (rn guff is basically 4 mana and the ramp option of the hero power is one mana) and make the card cost 7 to begin with. Make druids choose between Scale and Guff. It also makes a new curve for the class with Wild Growth>>Nourish>>Wildheart Guff + hero power.
Last but not least, Mr. Smite. One of the most polarizing cards ever printed in hearthstone and one that seems too powerful and enables pirate strategies to close out games. My change is not one of the popular ones like “give your OTHER pirates charge” or Rush. I would much rather the card have the pirate tag removed and given rush. This means he will not have charge and can be used to clear taunts etc to allow other pirates to go face. Smite not being a pirate means he does not get the charge effect and cannot be randomly summoned from the juggernaut. This imo is the best change you can do to this card without killing it altogether.
Do let me know what you guys think of my ideas!!
:)
https://hsreplay.net/replay/27u2NJTZZJgToJ6k6n5BTM
I also want to keep an eye on Snowfall Guardian because it’s incredibly powerful against any board strategy.
:)
https://hsreplay.net/replay/27u2NJTZZJgToJ6k6n5BTM
Going down the list of metastats.net best legend archetypes:
Quest Warrior/Pirate Rogue - While Quest Warrior is by far the stronger deck, both are top tier. I'd probably nerf Mr. Smite as well as some of the Warrior Pirates.
Mech Mage/Mech Paladin - Both top tier decks that are strong mainly due to their constant hand refill that allow for constant high pressure. I'd target Seafloor Savior and Gorillabot.
Ramp Druid/Control Warrior - Both rely on Kazakusan, which I think should be nerfed.
Token DH - A very strong deck, but mainly because it beats other aggro decks. With other aggro decks nerfed and seeing less play there may not be a need to nerf this deck, since it loses to most decks with decent board clears.
Quest Hunter - Another strong slower deck that would only get better if aggro is nerfed, so I'd bump it down a notch too. Making the quest harder to complete seems like a decent solution.
Burn Shaman - Quite strong but I don't think it needs a nerf since Smothering Starfish already exists a very strong counter.
They should should change switcheroo. I don’t think it is op, involves luck(can’t draw minions, need to draw switcheroo early or enemy will draw an answer), but double 12/12 on turn 2 or 3 is opposite of fun.
Other than that, mecha shark and pirate warrior. I would love to see mr. Smite or warrior questline nerfed, but they will probably try to nerf some other card, changing questline may kill the deck entirely and blizzard won’t do that since they clearly want pirate warrior in the meta considering all the support it got this expansion.
What do you think about my proposed nerf of removing the pirate tag from smite?
:)
https://hsreplay.net/replay/27u2NJTZZJgToJ6k6n5BTM
Your ideas change the card to a way that you enjoy the game perspective and that will obviously kill the cards. And that's not how blizzard think u can't remove mecha shark from being mech that's stupid for the card but target minion is better cause its a fun card that's example
Mecha Shark should not be discovered 20 times a game and get the discount from sea floor gateway. My proposal is better than nerfing the card so it only targets minions!
:)
https://hsreplay.net/replay/27u2NJTZZJgToJ6k6n5BTM
Pirate warrior is the only deck I see as a real problem; endless threats just outside of spell kill range, infinite value through quest, and seemingly infinite chip and board-clearing damage from on-hero-attack effects. I agree that the pirate quest can and should be nerfed now (as should all other quest lines) to either only summon very low-cost pirates, a slowed down quest chain, nerf the legendary reward’s stats/mana cost, or some combination of those is what I’m proposing. I’m liking the new cards but pirate warrior seems to leverage the small discover pool of mostly old pirate cards to generate Mr Smite and other extremely high-quality cards that all synergize with each other consistently. It is Hearthstones first Aggro-midrange-control-burst-chip-value-otk deck
Below the ultimate list of nerfs required currently in standard:
why would they need to need switcheroo?
the decks win rate isn’t exactly amazing and it’s not consistent at all…all depends on drawing it early
Nerfing isn't only driven by stats, but by crappy play patterns. Barnes is a decent example, it wasn't even meta anymore when it got smacked down. And switcheroo makes for crappy games in standard and outright stupid games in wild.
Mr. Smite is one for the worst design decisions the devs ever made, not least because it came after they explicitly classified the "charge" mechanic as "being bad for the game". Imagine sending Leeroy Jenkins to the Hall of Fame, and then printing this?!
In Standard, Pirate Quest Warrior remains a huge issue. Like others have mentioned, there'd have to be a few little changes made all around to balance things out a bit, because if any one or two are bumped down, something else is primed to just take it's place.
Pirate Warrior > Ramp druid > then a tie for Mech Mage and Freeze Shaman for third. Token DH is creeping up in numbers, but I think if Ramp Druid was taken down a peg, control decks could reemerge and get that back in line.
Curiously enough, this is reflected directly in the numbers over at HSReplay.
Wild+horrible player experience
:)
https://hsreplay.net/replay/27u2NJTZZJgToJ6k6n5BTM
I think nerfing the Juggernaut to make it a 10/10 (or something) with “can’t attack” would be interesting strategically. Give people a chance to remove it. Or give the warrior a chance to silence it.
That would be terrible. No other quest reward can be disrupted in that fashion.
:)
https://hsreplay.net/replay/27u2NJTZZJgToJ6k6n5BTM
Earthen Scales and Switcheroo are getting deleted next patch, guaranteed.
Its pretty much impossible to smorc down a ramp druid w/o perfect draws nowadays, that is unacceptable. Earthen Scales should never have been added to standard, period.
Switcheroo will die cuz of the dumb rush murloc/deathwing combo, which is a shame.. rly liked the card, but its too easy to abuse in its current state.
Its kinda bad when you start your post with ramp druid , forcing aggro , which can be beat by control but what does control do vs ramp druid ...
Shows how little you know or even care about the rock paper scissor aspect of HS , 1 deck cant beat them all ...Otherwise i wouldve read further but that just irked me enough to simply stop and reply right away , because if anything , the rest was base on the false concept that what beats aggro should also beat ramp druid ...
https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/news/23014810
Does Blizzard stay true to class identities with this expansion?
They need to add potential huge amount of armor to strengths as druid.
Mage has a limitation "minion swarm". Is that true with mech mage? Can be discussed if its a swarm, but they do generate a big mech board pretty often.
Without Earthen Scales, Ramp Druid will easily fall to Tier 3-4 as many times Aggro decks could have won the game before the armor gain
Without Kazakusan, Ramp Druid will have to find alternative late-game values, such as the new Ambassador card to get the 3 Colossals. Otherwise, its only win condition will be the Elune combo for the Naga Giant & Ivus, the Forest Lord (more on defensive purposes).