Just a little quick background of myself before I get started.
I have been playing Hearthstone since June of 2014, right before Naxx dropped. I was a longtime World of Warcraft arena player and found my first card game in Hearthstone. One of the reasons I made the transition to Hearthstone almost exclusively was that I could play competitively by myself without having to be on other peoples schedules.
As far as achievements go, I have made it to Legend numerous times in both Standard and Wild and even taken my own created decks to Legend. I have quit here and there but always seem to find my way back to Hearthstone. My last hiatus was a year long break which led me back in November of 2022, which I hit Legend November with Secret Mage and Murloc Paladin, in December with a custom Odd Silver-hand recruit deck, and again in January with Reno Paladin and Totem Shaman.
In my three months of being back, playing the game in wild mode, this is what I have found.
1 - many classes aren't being played. 2 - if a class is being played, it usually has only one or two archetypes being utilized. 3- many cards which are extremely over-powered are pushing people to play only the decks that include them
In no way to I think the Wild Hearthstone meta is at its worst point, I also know it isn't at it's best. Here is the solution of a long time experienced player on how I would make the mode more competitive and fun.
I propose a 16 card ban list from ladder that would rotate monthly. All 11 classes would have one card that would not be able to be added to ladder decks. In addition 5 neutral cards would also be on the list. As an example.
This would be an example of a month of banned cards. I think something like this (not saying the idea is perfect) would shake up the meta and force people to play new decks. At the very least it would make the climb on ladder a lot less repetitive.
I think the idea of constantly having that many cards banned from Wild kind of defeats the purpose of the game mode. Bans should be used sparingly against cards that break the game mode and create unfun/uninteractive gameplay. It sounds like you want an entirely different experience than what has been offered since Wild was introduced.
I think this idea would be a lot more acceptable if this was introduced in Standard and Wild but as separate game modes. Ranked, Ranked Rotation or something, and Casual. At that point though, there may be too many options and it may become a little too convoluted.
On a sidenote, I really would like a 3rd game mode where it consists of the Core Set and 3-4 random sets. We had a tavern brawl a few years ago that basically tested this, but we haven't seen anything like it since. That would definitely be a breath of fresh air in my opinion.
I agree with Screwjank, Wild is meant to be a mode that allows you to use pretty much any card that has been released throughout the history of Hearthstone. As much as we'd want balance, Wild is really not the place that should be focused on for that purpose. It's meant to be all-out and crazy stuff in comparison to the tamer and much more controlled Standard mode.
The Ban is reserved for cards that become way too powerful or create outrageous gameplans with little drawback thanks to the support of other cards in the Wild pool. The recent Ban for Tome Tampering is a good example of a card that deserved to be banned. It provided Discardlock too much insane synergy and powercrept the hell out of other cards like Cataclysm. It gave the player an excellent way of discarding all their cards with discard effects, effectively providing tons of mana cheat and burst in a single turn for cheap. Not only that but it nullified the weakness of Discardlock, which is them running out of cards to play quickly due to the Discard effect, through reshuffling the cards into the deck with a steep mana reduction to 1.
Though a regular Ban List might not be so bad depending on what Team 5 plans to release in the future.
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Was friends with Paladin, now Death Knights are my homies.
I've said this before but I'm of the opinion that having a banlist *at all* in Wild runs counter to the goals of the game mode.
The devs (specifically, Dean Alaya) have said that one of the underlying goals of Wild is that players are able to play their old Standard decks even after they've rotated - the individual cards may be buffed or nerfed, and the decks may lose viabiity over time as a consequence of those buffs/nerfs and overall power creep, but the core functionality of those decks will be preserved.
A lot of the "card is functionally changed forever" things they've done in Wild were for dealing with things that were never possible in Standard, and didn't disrupt any of the combos that actually saw play in those Standard decks (for example, the Echo nerf), or were reverting changes that ruined a previous Standard decks core gameplay (Warsong Commander +1 attack).
Banning a card from wild - even for a week - just flat out contradicts that goal, since it means for however long that card is banned, you aren't able to play that historic deck. Just think about the people who want to play Patron Warrior who just *couldn't* because Death Knight had an infinite combo that ate players turn timers? It sucks, and I'm glad they can play their deck again (even if it isn't viable)
Yes. I know they've banned a *bunch* of cards from Wild since for power level reasons: I think that doing so in the first place is fundamentally contrary to the purpose of the format and only raises questions of what other format goals are being actively disregarded because it's inconvenient.
I think people that say having a ban list in Wild is counter productive have never played in Wild when it was dominated by one deck to the point where you could not even play anything else. Star Aligner Druid is a great example. There was a time when Druid was so strong if you queued anything else, you lost. Is that healthy for wild?
I think people that say having a ban list in Wild is counter productive have never played in Wild when it was dominated by one deck to the point where you could not even play anything else. Star Aligner Druid is a great example. There was a time when Druid was so strong if you queued anything else, you lost. Is that healthy for wild?
I play almost exclusively Wild and have for many years. I don't want bans at all. The whole point of it is to be able to play with whatever I want and the same for my opponents. I don't want to remake my decks or not be able to play the cards I want periodically. That's just an annoyance. It's Wild after all. And just so we're clear I'm not playing Priest, Druid, or Warlock decks in Wild.
Besides, it's not like they are stopping printing cards which will change the format. Your idea of what is healthy is not what it means for other players. If you want top have some semblance of that then that's what Standard is for.
open the waygate isnt the issue its the bird enabling it you nerf the bird to only cast the last spell that cost 6 or more and you will be fine the spell will disappear for the most part
raise dead is also fine yeah you get 2 cards back but the card isnt busted OP
now me being a huge reno fan as my user name suggests i hate to say it but the wild meta is to slow for reno if you do play reno decks your being forced to most times play him on turn 6 or die
brann has risen in popularity yes but i feel alota that is due to standard having him in core set normal brann combos you have to make it to turn 7+ wich as stated in the reno comment your usually dead by then
firemancer flurgl is only really good for that one field clear with toxifin unless your facing murloc shaman wich your dead by turn 6 most times
wildheart guff is gonna be addressed in the nerfs coming if its not then the developers are blind i love guff its a fun AF card to play but i wont deny its absolutely shattered levels of OP
defend the dwarven district is fine for the time being the real question is are they gonna revert the nerfs when it goes pure wild format
mutanus mana burn and loatheb are all also fine loatheb has existed since naxxramas and has always been fine as is yes its annoying in shudderwock decks but name one shudderwock deck that isnt annoying
prize plunderer divine favor ancharr bloodboil and mecha thun are all also fine
shadow essence is basically the whole class ID card behind rez priest and yes while rez priest is one of the most degenerate decks to face i feel blood of Ghuun is one of the real problem cards with it not shadow essence
Useless and ruin the fun of people playing the decks which have only ONE card one the list
And banning cards from already trash decks/class is useless like hunter quest never saw played again, warrior garbage, and others so many things are wrong in this post
I think people that say having a ban list in Wild is counter productive have never played in Wild when it was dominated by one deck to the point where you could not even play anything else. Star Aligner Druid is a great example. There was a time when Druid was so strong if you queued anything else, you lost. Is that healthy for wild?
Short term balance is not the same thing as long term health.
If you banned every deck except exactly Firebat Undertaker Hunter (circa 2015), you'd definitely have a balanced game mode since everybody would be playing the same cards, but that wouldn't be healthy for the game mode long term, since people would get bored/frustrated rather quickly and leave.
The same thing is about to happen in 3 months when half of Warlocks banned list is up for rotation: somebodies favorite card will just not be playable (either because the effects are wildly altered or they stay banned) because the effects themselves are unhealthy for Wild - numbers be damned. Then those players will get frustrated that they can't play the deck/card they want to, and leave.
Also, your example is terrible because Star Aligner druid didn't fall out of favor because of any bans - it fell out of favor because parts of the combo were nerfed into the ground. See again: nerfs retain the functionality of the card (even if the numbers change), where bans will unanimously require functionality changes.
Ban monthly a card it's a very bad idea.. First of all you ban like 15 cards and that's a lot.
Second its not the right way to deal with it... Wild now its not even unbalanced.. Its just wild and its a rock paper scissor game anyway.. In the sense were some decks are more consistent then others against certain archetypes. But I dont see any deck that is overused or too strong the others.
Right now im 500 legend and I see a good variety of decks.. Even dead man's hand warrior that is a deck we saw like many seasons ago.
Wild just need to touch some broken cards when they come out that's for sure.. For the rest I think it's in a good state.
WHAT REALLY NEEDS IS TOURNAMENT'S.. We want some nice wild tournaments.. It would be cool af
I don't play anymore (I gave up when they introduced Runestones), but I agree with the general consensus of the group here, that Wild shouldn't have any bans; if anything, it defeats the purpose of the game mode.
Being a player that mostly played wild in my last year of playing, I would say that I do think that It deserves a little more attention in terms of balancing however since they very rarely touch any of the cards despite different combinations becoming more and more powerful as additional synergies emerge from new card sets that are added. An example would be Illuminate and Shadow Essence, which is a combination that can allow broken turns on as early as turn 2 with the coin. I am not saying that particular combination needs to be fixed, it's more an example of how two cards that are fine in a vacuum can become a problem together.
The recent nerfs in standard shook up the meta quite a lot, it would be nice for wild to have a shake-up like that every now and again, by reducing the power levels of some of the dominant decks that polarize wild, but without actually destroying those decks in the process.
Wild should have minimum banned cards (ideally zero).
What wild needs is good tech cards. The problem is that Blizzard prints cards only with standard in mind... Let's say a secret mage is rampant in wild. Blizzard WILL NOT print a good anti-secret tech card in a set with no secret theme in some class(es). Even if there is such a theme, like when they introduce new cards for an existing wild archetype... they won't print tech cards good enough for the wild. Why? Because they will be unfair and demolish the standard version of the archetype. Same for tech cards against decks that cheat big minions in play or against tribal decks or against hero cards or against quests or...
'd love to see something similar to Modern Horizons set in MTG, not legal in standard sets aimed at wild. It can include tech cards, support for old parasitic archetypes (like print a cycle of OG c'thun cards for death knight, creating a new wild deck or new jade cards for rogue), etc. But with Blizzard's wild treatment chance of that is ZERO
Just a little quick background of myself before I get started.
I have been playing Hearthstone since June of 2014, right before Naxx dropped. I was a longtime World of Warcraft arena player and found my first card game in Hearthstone. One of the reasons I made the transition to Hearthstone almost exclusively was that I could play competitively by myself without having to be on other peoples schedules.
As far as achievements go, I have made it to Legend numerous times in both Standard and Wild and even taken my own created decks to Legend. I have quit here and there but always seem to find my way back to Hearthstone. My last hiatus was a year long break which led me back in November of 2022, which I hit Legend November with Secret Mage and Murloc Paladin, in December with a custom Odd Silver-hand recruit deck, and again in January with Reno Paladin and Totem Shaman.
In my three months of being back, playing the game in wild mode, this is what I have found.
1 - many classes aren't being played. 2 - if a class is being played, it usually has only one or two archetypes being utilized. 3- many cards which are extremely over-powered are pushing people to play only the decks that include them
In no way to I think the Wild Hearthstone meta is at its worst point, I also know it isn't at it's best. Here is the solution of a long time experienced player on how I would make the mode more competitive and fun.
I propose a 16 card ban list from ladder that would rotate monthly. All 11 classes would have one card that would not be able to be added to ladder decks. In addition 5 neutral cards would also be on the list. As an example.
This would be an example of a month of banned cards. I think something like this (not saying the idea is perfect) would shake up the meta and force people to play new decks. At the very least it would make the climb on ladder a lot less repetitive.
What about the people who spent money or dust to get those cards and then they can't use them for a month? Tough luck bud your enjoyment of the game is less important than mine?
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Just a little quick background of myself before I get started.
I have been playing Hearthstone since June of 2014, right before Naxx dropped. I was a longtime World of Warcraft arena player and found my first card game in Hearthstone. One of the reasons I made the transition to Hearthstone almost exclusively was that I could play competitively by myself without having to be on other peoples schedules.
As far as achievements go, I have made it to Legend numerous times in both Standard and Wild and even taken my own created decks to Legend. I have quit here and there but always seem to find my way back to Hearthstone. My last hiatus was a year long break which led me back in November of 2022, which I hit Legend November with Secret Mage and Murloc Paladin, in December with a custom Odd Silver-hand recruit deck, and again in January with Reno Paladin and Totem Shaman.
In my three months of being back, playing the game in wild mode, this is what I have found.
1 - many classes aren't being played.
2 - if a class is being played, it usually has only one or two archetypes being utilized.
3- many cards which are extremely over-powered are pushing people to play only the decks that include them
In no way to I think the Wild Hearthstone meta is at its worst point, I also know it isn't at it's best. Here is the solution of a long time experienced player on how I would make the mode more competitive and fun.
I propose a 16 card ban list from ladder that would rotate monthly. All 11 classes would have one card that would not be able to be added to ladder decks. In addition 5 neutral cards would also be on the list. As an example.
Death Knight - Blood Boil
Demon Hunter - Mana Burn
Druid - Wildheart Guff
Hunter - Defend the Dwarven District
Mage - Open the Waygate
Paladin - Divine Favor
Priest - Shadow Essence
Rogue - Prize Plunderer
Shaman - Firemancer Flurgl
Warlock - Raise Dead
Warrior - Ancharrr
Neutral
Brann Bronzebeard
Reno Jackson
Loatheb
Mecha'thun
Mutanus the Devourer
This would be an example of a month of banned cards. I think something like this (not saying the idea is perfect) would shake up the meta and force people to play new decks. At the very least it would make the climb on ladder a lot less repetitive.
What are your thoughts or ideas?
Maybe even 2 cards per class and 10 neutral cards
I think the idea of constantly having that many cards banned from Wild kind of defeats the purpose of the game mode. Bans should be used sparingly against cards that break the game mode and create unfun/uninteractive gameplay. It sounds like you want an entirely different experience than what has been offered since Wild was introduced.
I think this idea would be a lot more acceptable if this was introduced in Standard and Wild but as separate game modes. Ranked, Ranked Rotation or something, and Casual. At that point though, there may be too many options and it may become a little too convoluted.
On a sidenote, I really would like a 3rd game mode where it consists of the Core Set and 3-4 random sets. We had a tavern brawl a few years ago that basically tested this, but we haven't seen anything like it since. That would definitely be a breath of fresh air in my opinion.
I agree with Screwjank, Wild is meant to be a mode that allows you to use pretty much any card that has been released throughout the history of Hearthstone. As much as we'd want balance, Wild is really not the place that should be focused on for that purpose. It's meant to be all-out and crazy stuff in comparison to the tamer and much more controlled Standard mode.
The Ban is reserved for cards that become way too powerful or create outrageous gameplans with little drawback thanks to the support of other cards in the Wild pool. The recent Ban for Tome Tampering is a good example of a card that deserved to be banned. It provided Discardlock too much insane synergy and powercrept the hell out of other cards like Cataclysm. It gave the player an excellent way of discarding all their cards with discard effects, effectively providing tons of mana cheat and burst in a single turn for cheap. Not only that but it nullified the weakness of Discardlock, which is them running out of cards to play quickly due to the Discard effect, through reshuffling the cards into the deck with a steep mana reduction to 1.
Though a regular Ban List might not be so bad depending on what Team 5 plans to release in the future.
Was friends with Paladin, now Death Knights are my homies.
I've said this before but I'm of the opinion that having a banlist *at all* in Wild runs counter to the goals of the game mode.
The devs (specifically, Dean Alaya) have said that one of the underlying goals of Wild is that players are able to play their old Standard decks even after they've rotated - the individual cards may be buffed or nerfed, and the decks may lose viabiity over time as a consequence of those buffs/nerfs and overall power creep, but the core functionality of those decks will be preserved.
A lot of the "card is functionally changed forever" things they've done in Wild were for dealing with things that were never possible in Standard, and didn't disrupt any of the combos that actually saw play in those Standard decks (for example, the Echo nerf), or were reverting changes that ruined a previous Standard decks core gameplay (Warsong Commander +1 attack).
Banning a card from wild - even for a week - just flat out contradicts that goal, since it means for however long that card is banned, you aren't able to play that historic deck. Just think about the people who want to play Patron Warrior who just *couldn't* because Death Knight had an infinite combo that ate players turn timers? It sucks, and I'm glad they can play their deck again (even if it isn't viable)
Yes. I know they've banned a *bunch* of cards from Wild since for power level reasons: I think that doing so in the first place is fundamentally contrary to the purpose of the format and only raises questions of what other format goals are being actively disregarded because it's inconvenient.
I think people that say having a ban list in Wild is counter productive have never played in Wild when it was dominated by one deck to the point where you could not even play anything else. Star Aligner Druid is a great example. There was a time when Druid was so strong if you queued anything else, you lost. Is that healthy for wild?
I play almost exclusively Wild and have for many years. I don't want bans at all. The whole point of it is to be able to play with whatever I want and the same for my opponents. I don't want to remake my decks or not be able to play the cards I want periodically. That's just an annoyance. It's Wild after all. And just so we're clear I'm not playing Priest, Druid, or Warlock decks in Wild.
Besides, it's not like they are stopping printing cards which will change the format. Your idea of what is healthy is not what it means for other players. If you want top have some semblance of that then that's what Standard is for.
open the waygate isnt the issue its the bird enabling it you nerf the bird to only cast the last spell that cost 6 or more and you will be fine the spell will disappear for the most part
raise dead is also fine yeah you get 2 cards back but the card isnt busted OP
now me being a huge reno fan as my user name suggests i hate to say it but the wild meta is to slow for reno if you do play reno decks your being forced to most times play him on turn 6 or die
brann has risen in popularity yes but i feel alota that is due to standard having him in core set normal brann combos you have to make it to turn 7+ wich as stated in the reno comment your usually dead by then
firemancer flurgl is only really good for that one field clear with toxifin unless your facing murloc shaman wich your dead by turn 6 most times
wildheart guff is gonna be addressed in the nerfs coming if its not then the developers are blind i love guff its a fun AF card to play but i wont deny its absolutely shattered levels of OP
defend the dwarven district is fine for the time being the real question is are they gonna revert the nerfs when it goes pure wild format
mutanus mana burn and loatheb are all also fine loatheb has existed since naxxramas and has always been fine as is yes its annoying in shudderwock decks but name one shudderwock deck that isnt annoying
prize plunderer divine favor ancharr bloodboil and mecha thun are all also fine
shadow essence is basically the whole class ID card behind rez priest and yes while rez priest is one of the most degenerate decks to face i feel blood of Ghuun is one of the real problem cards with it not shadow essence
Useless and ruin the fun of people playing the decks which have only ONE card one the list
And banning cards from already trash decks/class is useless like hunter quest never saw played again, warrior garbage, and others so many things are wrong in this post
Hunter questline doesn't need buffs
DJ
Short term balance is not the same thing as long term health.
If you banned every deck except exactly Firebat Undertaker Hunter (circa 2015), you'd definitely have a balanced game mode since everybody would be playing the same cards, but that wouldn't be healthy for the game mode long term, since people would get bored/frustrated rather quickly and leave.
The same thing is about to happen in 3 months when half of Warlocks banned list is up for rotation: somebodies favorite card will just not be playable (either because the effects are wildly altered or they stay banned) because the effects themselves are unhealthy for Wild - numbers be damned. Then those players will get frustrated that they can't play the deck/card they want to, and leave.
Also, your example is terrible because Star Aligner druid didn't fall out of favor because of any bans - it fell out of favor because parts of the combo were nerfed into the ground. See again: nerfs retain the functionality of the card (even if the numbers change), where bans will unanimously require functionality changes.
Ban monthly a card it's a very bad idea.. First of all you ban like 15 cards and that's a lot.
Second its not the right way to deal with it... Wild now its not even unbalanced.. Its just wild and its a rock paper scissor game anyway.. In the sense were some decks are more consistent then others against certain archetypes. But I dont see any deck that is overused or too strong the others.
Right now im 500 legend and I see a good variety of decks.. Even dead man's hand warrior that is a deck we saw like many seasons ago.
Wild just need to touch some broken cards when they come out that's for sure.. For the rest I think it's in a good state.
WHAT REALLY NEEDS IS TOURNAMENT'S.. We want some nice wild tournaments.. It would be cool af
PRIEST
I don't play anymore (I gave up when they introduced Runestones), but I agree with the general consensus of the group here, that Wild shouldn't have any bans; if anything, it defeats the purpose of the game mode.
Being a player that mostly played wild in my last year of playing, I would say that I do think that It deserves a little more attention in terms of balancing however since they very rarely touch any of the cards despite different combinations becoming more and more powerful as additional synergies emerge from new card sets that are added. An example would be Illuminate and Shadow Essence, which is a combination that can allow broken turns on as early as turn 2 with the coin. I am not saying that particular combination needs to be fixed, it's more an example of how two cards that are fine in a vacuum can become a problem together.
The recent nerfs in standard shook up the meta quite a lot, it would be nice for wild to have a shake-up like that every now and again, by reducing the power levels of some of the dominant decks that polarize wild, but without actually destroying those decks in the process.
Wild should have minimum banned cards (ideally zero).
What wild needs is good tech cards. The problem is that Blizzard prints cards only with standard in mind... Let's say a secret mage is rampant in wild. Blizzard WILL NOT print a good anti-secret tech card in a set with no secret theme in some class(es). Even if there is such a theme, like when they introduce new cards for an existing wild archetype... they won't print tech cards good enough for the wild. Why? Because they will be unfair and demolish the standard version of the archetype. Same for tech cards against decks that cheat big minions in play or against tribal decks or against hero cards or against quests or...
'd love to see something similar to Modern Horizons set in MTG, not legal in standard sets aimed at wild. It can include tech cards, support for old parasitic archetypes (like print a cycle of OG c'thun cards for death knight, creating a new wild deck or new jade cards for rogue), etc. But with Blizzard's wild treatment chance of that is ZERO
I like it 👍 it might slow things down a bit.
What about the people who spent money or dust to get those cards and then they can't use them for a month? Tough luck bud your enjoyment of the game is less important than mine?