Nerfing Patches wasn't enough. Remove it. Any time a pirate deck is meta he will break wild again.
The second is Dinotamer Brann. As with any highlander decks, absolute RNG fiesta but this deck was the worst. Either you get your synergies or don't, either you get brann or not, zero skill involved. There still were decks that rely on drawing the OP card after this, but this was the most RNG unplayable awful deck which should never have been meta.
Today's meta is actually fine compared to all this. I don't hate anything in particular.
I know what you're thinking and it's none of those reasons... here me out:
I blame this card for the idiotic shift in design the game has shown ever since...Outland really with the Raza the Chained un-nerf.
You see back in the day HS used to be a game played by 2 people in a 1v1, where no "I win lol" buttons existed (meaning there was counterplay that could be played AFTER your opponent's attempts at winning and counterplay to said counterplay) and the few that did exist were either meme tier or nerfed...this card was printed in that era and I beileve it is what caused its end:
On top of being inherently toxic in its design (the fact that in a healthy meta this is a win button vs specific decks while in a meta like today this is worse than useless means it can never find a place to exist without being either toxic or useless), this card was also printed at a very unfortunate time where all decks exept control warrior specifically had lost A LOT of power because of the "normal" standard rotation AND the Genn Greymane / Baku the Mooneater early rotation.
This meant that CW held a pretty fat chuck of the viability cake, meaning control mirrors would not be all that rare...the problem is that (because of this stupid card and NOTHING else) they were also unbearably long and stupid due to their ability to add 20 cards to each deck, meaning fatigue (the single best mechanic in HS, fight me) was a non factor and the game would be decided by the best discovers after like 50 minutes. (sometimes, it could also end in an hour long tie)
A not-completely-stupid-person's takeaway would be: "fatigue delay needs to be EXTREMELY limited but we can keep doing what we've always been doing" ....the problem is that the design team's takeaway was "obviously the problem is with defensive play so we will remove it completely by doing everything in our power to make sure winconditions become wincertainties after they are played and we will make it technically balanced by adding cards that win or lose the game on the spot through the amazingly fun mechanic of randomly discarding from hand and deck (a.k.a. disruption) so that one player plays solitaire while the other plays conflip simulator"
The timeline also works since by the time they realized this they would have had the entire rest of the year's expasions almost ready so they would have to start from the next one, which I personally like to call the "transition year"....A.k.a. the Outland(testing the waters by un-nerfing Raza the Chained in wild, where disruption still existed)-Scholomance(introducing extremely powerful synergies that could OTK you to next week+possibly the strongest disruption ever in Mindrender Illucia)-Darkmoon(do I even need to tell you what type of stupid bullshit came out that expansion?) year that, to me, marked the end of the era where Heartstone could be considered a 2 player game, after that year it would only OCCASIONALLY be a 2 player game depending on what deck you ended up playing as and against.
Also I find it both hilarious and depressing that people would ever hate Shudderwock and Ice Block when the first one is one of the most fun cards ever designed that got a bad reputation because of VERY few stupid interactions that should have been fixed and the second one is only problematic in the decks that are already toxic without it (any form of OTK) because they basically say "kill me THIS TURN or you instalose no matter what you do...oh wait...you can't" while any other deck simply says "you have to kill me 2/3 times, hard but you are not under extreme time constraints so it's annoying but doable". I'd say it's easy to see that the problem is the archetype, NOT the card
Unpopular opinion incoming : Hands down, the worst and most uninspiring card ever made has to be the original C'Thun when it first came out. Was the most boring and overused finisher for me - forced the meta at the time to be 100% C'thun decks with little variation and almost ended my enjoyment of Hearthstone right there. Fortunately it was saved by the arrival of the next expansion (G&G I think it might have been)
My second best pick has to be Wrenchcalibur . I mean looking back at those days, mech warrior was truly one of the most infuriating decks I had to face. But bomb mech warrior? Even worse.
Unpopular opinion incoming : Hands down, the worst and most uninspiring card ever made has to be the original C'Thun when it first came out. Was the most boring and overused finisher for me - forced the meta at the time to be 100% C'thun decks with little variation and almost ended my enjoyment of Hearthstone right there. Fortunately it was saved by the arrival of the next expansion (G&G I think it might have been)
Maybe I am remembering this wrongly, but was OG C'thun even played a lot? I remember especially druids and slower ctrl decks using it but I also remember that the Old Gods meta was pretty good with other potential finishers like N'Zoth that were more popular at the time. I could be wrong though
Unpopular opinion incoming : Hands down, the worst and most uninspiring card ever made has to be the original C'Thun when it first came out. Was the most boring and overused finisher for me - forced the meta at the time to be 100% C'thun decks with little variation and almost ended my enjoyment of Hearthstone right there. Fortunately it was saved by the arrival of the next expansion (G&G I think it might have been)
Maybe I am remembering this wrongly, but was OG C'thun even played a lot? I remember especially druids and slower ctrl decks using it but I also remember that the Old Gods meta was pretty good with other potential finishers like N'Zoth that were more popular at the time. I could be wrong though
It was almost every deck I faced. You literally couldn't get away from it at the time, lol
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Shudderwock, or pre-nerf Patches the Pirate.
Currently Lady S'theno and the paladin weapons but notable mentions to:
Shudderwock
Pirate Quest
Pre-nerf Patches
Pre-nerf mage parrot
Gagdetzan was soulcrushing.
Nerfing Patches wasn't enough. Remove it. Any time a pirate deck is meta he will break wild again.
The second is Dinotamer Brann. As with any highlander decks, absolute RNG fiesta but this deck was the worst. Either you get your synergies or don't, either you get brann or not, zero skill involved. There still were decks that rely on drawing the OP card after this, but this was the most RNG unplayable awful deck which should never have been meta.
Today's meta is actually fine compared to all this. I don't hate anything in particular.
Paladin....
I really really hated all the Librams when they were around, woof. And currently I have an abject hatred for Lady S'theno -_-
AH! And who could forget pre-nerf The Caverns Below -________-
This is my answer. No other card made me instantly concede turn 1 dozens of times because it would not be an enjoyable game.
Quest: Play solitaire.
Reward: Win the game.
CCGing since '98.
Time Warp, because you know the game gonna be uninteractive af and the whole archetype of your deck means nothing when your opponent plays this turn 1
Nothing could ever tilt me more than Tickatus . I developed queue anxiety thanks to this.
Also two honorable mentions to Cascading Disaster and Hysteria
Came to say this card...
I was destroying shudderwock shamans with gnomeferatu lol
This may be surprising but... Archivist Elysiana
I know what you're thinking and it's none of those reasons... here me out:
I blame this card for the idiotic shift in design the game has shown ever since...Outland really with the Raza the Chained un-nerf.
You see back in the day HS used to be a game played by 2 people in a 1v1, where no "I win lol" buttons existed (meaning there was counterplay that could be played AFTER your opponent's attempts at winning and counterplay to said counterplay) and the few that did exist were either meme tier or nerfed...this card was printed in that era and I beileve it is what caused its end:
On top of being inherently toxic in its design (the fact that in a healthy meta this is a win button vs specific decks while in a meta like today this is worse than useless means it can never find a place to exist without being either toxic or useless), this card was also printed at a very unfortunate time where all decks exept control warrior specifically had lost A LOT of power because of the "normal" standard rotation AND the Genn Greymane / Baku the Mooneater early rotation.
This meant that CW held a pretty fat chuck of the viability cake, meaning control mirrors would not be all that rare...the problem is that (because of this stupid card and NOTHING else) they were also unbearably long and stupid due to their ability to add 20 cards to each deck, meaning fatigue (the single best mechanic in HS, fight me) was a non factor and the game would be decided by the best discovers after like 50 minutes. (sometimes, it could also end in an hour long tie)
A not-completely-stupid-person's takeaway would be: "fatigue delay needs to be EXTREMELY limited but we can keep doing what we've always been doing" ....the problem is that the design team's takeaway was "obviously the problem is with defensive play so we will remove it completely by doing everything in our power to make sure winconditions become wincertainties after they are played and we will make it technically balanced by adding cards that win or lose the game on the spot through the amazingly fun mechanic of randomly discarding from hand and deck (a.k.a. disruption) so that one player plays solitaire while the other plays conflip simulator"
The timeline also works since by the time they realized this they would have had the entire rest of the year's expasions almost ready so they would have to start from the next one, which I personally like to call the "transition year"....A.k.a. the Outland(testing the waters by un-nerfing Raza the Chained in wild, where disruption still existed)-Scholomance(introducing extremely powerful synergies that could OTK you to next week+possibly the strongest disruption ever in Mindrender Illucia)-Darkmoon(do I even need to tell you what type of stupid bullshit came out that expansion?) year that, to me, marked the end of the era where Heartstone could be considered a 2 player game, after that year it would only OCCASIONALLY be a 2 player game depending on what deck you ended up playing as and against.
Also I find it both hilarious and depressing that people would ever hate Shudderwock and Ice Block when the first one is one of the most fun cards ever designed that got a bad reputation because of VERY few stupid interactions that should have been fixed and the second one is only problematic in the decks that are already toxic without it (any form of OTK) because they basically say "kill me THIS TURN or you instalose no matter what you do...oh wait...you can't" while any other deck simply says "you have to kill me 2/3 times, hard but you are not under extreme time constraints so it's annoying but doable". I'd say it's easy to see that the problem is the archetype, NOT the card
tie between shudder and time warp
Unpopular opinion incoming :
Hands down, the worst and most uninspiring card ever made has to be the original C'Thun when it first came out.
Was the most boring and overused finisher for me - forced the meta at the time to be 100% C'thun decks with little variation and almost ended my enjoyment of Hearthstone right there.
Fortunately it was saved by the arrival of the next expansion (G&G I think it might have been)
I am incredibly surprised how no one wrote this.
Jade Idol of course! They even printed out Skulking Geist to counter it.
My second best pick has to be Wrenchcalibur . I mean looking back at those days, mech warrior was truly one of the most infuriating decks I had to face. But bomb mech warrior? Even worse.
Ice Block. Hate the decks that built around it. Just made it feel like there is nothing I can do.
Maybe I am remembering this wrongly, but was OG C'thun even played a lot? I remember especially druids and slower ctrl decks using it but I also remember that the Old Gods meta was pretty good with other potential finishers like N'Zoth that were more popular at the time. I could be wrong though
It was almost every deck I faced. You literally couldn't get away from it at the time, lol