Yep, we must have much time to try and not only nerf everyting. This is still a CB, ok. But we actually need expansions if we really need something, not only nerf things I think. Just to work better on Decks. And, we will can have better options and opinions...
Pure gold. Force is 100% right in everything he said (except maybe when he said that Blizz knows better when it comes to balance changes, which apparently is NOT the case, heh).
Force is pretty awesome. Been watching him a long time. =) Freeze nerfs were needed. Ive been playing mage, so I gotta find a way to work around the nerfs.
Good video, good points. However I think these particular Mage nerfs went overboard - they'll affect all Mage decks. Frost Nova and Ice Block nerf would've been better.
Still, Mage archetype is by far my favourite. Mage has been my main in WoW since late TBC and that's also the class I play 90% of the time in Hearthstone. I'll continue to play it despite the nerfs, but the nerfed cards will just be bad picks and the class loses lots of options.
The problem with mage is that it's not fun to play against. I didn't have any problem against the previous top decks because it was fun countering them. I do very well against mages right now, it's one of my easiest matchups but they are boring as F.
The problem I have with this video: He's speaking as if this game was not in beta.
Guess what? MTG has a beta process, and cards do indeed get changed before released to the public. The biggest thing he is complaining about is that a company is making changes to cards to balance things while it's in beta. The only difference here, right now, today, is that he is a part of a beta process that he was never privy to in any other TCG.
Changes in beta happen, it is the nature of the beast. Will they continue to happen post-beta? Possibly. Unless Blizzard adopts the MTG, where they just start banning cards and/or not allowing you to use cards from a certain cut-off period. Do you think WOTC would have loved to make slight changes to cards out in the world, post-release? Sure. Instead they only way they can deal with it is either banning or using cut-off periods. And if you think people whine now, imagine being told that their digital stuff they paid for suddenly became unusable forever.
He copies all the opinions of pro players like he does his decks for his deck videos
nothing he does is original, he's just a fake mash up of ideas and he knows that and he's good at it, people just come to him because he's a good hub of info
Good video, good points. However I think these particular Mage nerfs went overboard - they'll affect all Mage decks. Frost Nova and Ice Block nerf would've been better.
This was my first thought too, but how do you nerf ice block? It would have been fine if they just replaced frost nova with a different card, by removing this deck style they have removed the only use of frost nova anyway.
The problem I have with this video: He's speaking as if this game was not in beta.
Guess what? MTG has a beta process, and cards do indeed get changed before released to the public. The biggest thing he is complaining about is that a company is making changes to cards to balance things while it's in beta. The only difference here, right now, today, is that he is a part of a beta process that he was never privy to in any other TCG.
Changes in beta happen, it is the nature of the beast. Will they continue to happen post-beta? Possibly. Unless Blizzard adopts the MTG, where they just start banning cards and/or not allowing you to use cards from a certain cut-off period. Do you think WOTC would have loved to make slight changes to cards out in the world, post-release? Sure. Instead they only way they can deal with it is either banning or using cut-off periods. And if you think people whine now, imagine being told that their digital stuff they paid for suddenly became unusable forever.
I think it'd be perfectly acceptable to ban certain cards in ranked play, but still allow them to be used in casual; that's how most TCGs work anyways.
I was following Force back a couple years ago when he was focusing on SC2 and D3 content.
I sorta disagree with him here, though. Hearthstone is still in beta. I can imagine when M:tG was still in an unfinished state and the play testers were playing with full proxy decks, those cards went through several iterations themselves before they went live, and many still were errataed and had limits to how many you could put into a deck even back then.
If WotC had the ability to 'patch' cards, they would. Absolutely. Especially when their sets are still in testing (As Hearthstone is now.).
To summarize, I think Force is cool, but he's jumping on the anti-nerf bandwagon in this particular case. Once Hearthstone is live you can expect very few changes to be made to the basic and expert Hearthstone 1 sets, as by then the primary balancing focus will be on Adventure and Expansion content. THIS IS NO DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER CCG IN A TESTING PHASE.
None of these nerfs have been about 'top decks' and have always been about 'goldfish decks'. With a lack of a response system, the game was already a little short on cross-player interactivity, and the top decks that have been nerfed have been Miracle Rogue (A Deck That Plays Itself And Is Unconcerned With The Performance Of The Opponent, henceforth known as 'ADTPIAIUWTPOTO' for short), Miracle Druid (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO), Shitty priest control (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO), Unleash Hunter (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO), Zerg Lock (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO), Frost Mage (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO).
Noticing a trend here? There were a lot of extremely powerful deck archetypes that remained untouched because they weren't fire-and-forget. Blizzard isn't caving to casuals, they're building the game they want to exist, and this is what it's going to take for them to realize their goal.
They could redesign Frost Nova completely. Instead of mass freeze for 2, something like a 4 mana spell to make opponent's minions unable to retaliate until the end of turn.
Ice Block could be altered to affect only your minions - when your minion is about to die, make him immune until the end of turn, Or even less powerful - if your minion receives fatal damage, prevent it and render him immune until the end of turn. That way removal like Assassinate still comes through.
He copies all the opinions of pro players like he does his decks for his deck videos
nothing he does is original, he's just a fake mash up of ideas and he knows that and he's good at it, people just come to him because he's a good hub of info
This criticism is really unfair. Yes, none of the decks that Force spotlights in his videos are HIS decks. But he's not a professional gamer, his niche is more of a caster/news content delivery man.
So if there is a popular deck being played, he spotlights that deck and lets everyone know about it. He gives proper attribution in all his videos when he spotlights a deck and never claimed them to be his own.
That said, I'll echo many of the people disagreeing with force here. The game is still in closed beta. The developers have stated that the closed beta state of the game is why they are willing to make changes. And, if you pay attention, the recent nerfs have been just as much about making the game "fun to play" as about balancing the classes. Mind control was ridiculously "un-fun" to play against. And despite priests not being all that powerful, MC was nerfed. Same with playing against OTK/perma-frost decks.
I love Force Strategy, he plays all decks wrong and makes tons of mistakes, it's almost impossible not to laugh, super entertainment material... ANYWAY!
Here's my 2 cents from someone that played many games professionally and was quite successful in many of them, including card games like Magic The Gathering which I used to play on a daily basis with the 2009 World Champion André Coimbra.
Underpowered is always better than overpowered... Should it have been addressed this way? Probably not. Are these cards the biggest reason Mage is so strong? Maybe not. But it's better being addressed "poorly", than NOT being addressed, Mage needed nerfs, period. Here's the nerfs.
Force is absolutely WRONG, Mage being the best class has nothing to do with being able to smash people left and right with little effort, sometimes with the "perfect cards", as in, no matter what you do, you lose. That reminds me of bullshit countertop decks or Jayce decks, you know what WoTC did? Well, they couldn't nerf the card, they outright banned it. There, fixed.
Did it ruin blue color? Fuck no, they're still the same annoying fuckers that make a 5 minute game last 30 minutes, but shit had to be done!
Another thing where he is wrong is "the meta fixes itself" or at least it did so far. Ranger got nerfed, it wasn't stabilized pre-nerf, let's get that much out of the way, but still, I think it would eventually, but OTK hunter? There's a term in card games called "hate cards", for example, let's say you run a deck that puts cards in your graveyard so you can bring them back on the board or use their special effects, you counter with "grave-hate" such as cards that remove the opponent graveyard.
Great Sable Stag was a great card in the T2 meta, almost in every Naya deck just to counter Jund decks, who were pretty much the kings at the moment, the top 8 had 7 Jund decks.
Priest? The 4 attack sweet spot creatures, that's Priest-hate. Cards that Priests hate facing. See a MO here? There's counters.
Mage walks into a bar, there's no counter. Sure, the Strazablast decks got ruined by a lot of armor and healing, bla bla bla, specially since Alesxtraza got "nerfed" or "fixed" or whatever it was. Point is, there's no anti tactics against mage, there's no self-dispell other than single target silences, I mean, Mage is hard to counter, and if you make a deck with the purpose of beating Mage, chances are, you're going to lose to everything else.
I don't agree with nerfing a class just because it's the current trend to play that class or a particular style of deck. I think the main problem with the game at the moment is that there is not enough card variety like there is in MTG and other card games, so the metagame keeps getting swamped with everyone running the same kinds of decks. Once they start releasing expansions and new cards on a regular basis I think the metagame for hearthstone will be much healthier.
That's a given, but Mage is not "FOTM", Mage is downright obnoxious and a pain to play against, Blue Counterspell deck MTG style. I didn't agree with the Hunter nerfs, I did agree with the Mind Control.
The problem with Priest and Hunter is... Not that one cards was stolen, but that the whole kit, without THAT ONE specific card, feels weak, with nerfing, some buffing might have to be done in compensation, and I think it was addressed incorrectly.
Pyroblast should be removed from the game and give place to something else, Ice Block mechanic would be ok if you had a draw back as in, you live one turn but next turn (after it has been popped, not played) you only have half the mana, something along those lines.
I think Hunter is a very cool class, unfortunately the Beasts and the REALLY late game, leave the Hunter lacking "a bit", there's no valid mid~late game beasts sadly.
Why is being obnoxious a problem, and not a play style, anyway?
Nerfing the freeze so bad like that... I could even agree with your suggestion of Pyroblast and Ice Block, but even without those, we had an alternative way to play the game, to win, that did not involve minion spam, and variety of strategies is always a good thing. Now we have to minion spam like everyone else.
And like I said, I don't agree with the away the nerf was handed to the Mages, but a nerf was necessary. The class was nerfed too hard and the wrong way and didn't address the issue, which is the two overpowered cards...
...But it did have to be nerfed, making the class almost unplayable (like Hunter) is still better than making people concede as soon as they see a mage most of the times. Hopefully Blizzard understands this and makes the correct changes and Un-nerfs the freeze. Blizzard should cost 4 and deal 2 damage across the board without a freeze, that way the other freeze cards could keep their status.
Sure my suggestions are probably not the best, but I had 10 seconds to think if it, not weeks like Blizzard developers.
And like I said, I don't agree with the away the nerf was handed to the Mages, but a nerf was necessary. The class was nerfed too hard and the wrong way and didn't address the issue, which is the two overpowered cards...
...But it did have to be nerfed, making the class almost unplayable (like Hunter) is still better than making people concede as soon as they see a mage most of the times. Hopefully Blizzard understands this and makes the correct changes and Un-nerfs the freeze. Blizzard should cost 4 and deal 2 damage across the board without a freeze, that way the other freeze cards could keep their status.
Sure my suggestions are probably not the best, but I had 10 seconds to think if it, not weeks like Blizzard developers.
Nerfing Blizzard that way would just make it a worst version of consecrate (because consecrate hits heroes). And because mages are the wambam power casters, it wouldn't make any sense to have one of their spells be inferrior to those of a paladin, especially considering how manna efficient pyro and fireball are.
Besides, Blizzard not freezing would just be odd to explain, lore-wise.
Yep, we must have much time to try and not only nerf everyting. This is still a CB, ok. But we actually need expansions if we really need something, not only nerf things I think. Just to work better on Decks. And, we will can have better options and opinions...
Hope you understand me...
...Too young to die, too drunk to live...
Pure gold. Force is 100% right in everything he said (except maybe when he said that Blizz knows better when it comes to balance changes, which apparently is NOT the case, heh).
Force is pretty awesome. Been watching him a long time. =) Freeze nerfs were needed. Ive been playing mage, so I gotta find a way to work around the nerfs.
Good video. These knee jerk reactions to the flood of tears on the Blizz HS forums need to stop.
Good video, good points. However I think these particular Mage nerfs went overboard - they'll affect all Mage decks. Frost Nova and Ice Block nerf would've been better.
Still, Mage archetype is by far my favourite. Mage has been my main in WoW since late TBC and that's also the class I play 90% of the time in Hearthstone. I'll continue to play it despite the nerfs, but the nerfed cards will just be bad picks and the class loses lots of options.
The problem with mage is that it's not fun to play against. I didn't have any problem against the previous top decks because it was fun countering them. I do very well against mages right now, it's one of my easiest matchups but they are boring as F.
Arena Tips
The problem I have with this video: He's speaking as if this game was not in beta.
Guess what? MTG has a beta process, and cards do indeed get changed before released to the public. The biggest thing he is complaining about is that a company is making changes to cards to balance things while it's in beta. The only difference here, right now, today, is that he is a part of a beta process that he was never privy to in any other TCG.
Changes in beta happen, it is the nature of the beast. Will they continue to happen post-beta? Possibly. Unless Blizzard adopts the MTG, where they just start banning cards and/or not allowing you to use cards from a certain cut-off period. Do you think WOTC would have loved to make slight changes to cards out in the world, post-release? Sure. Instead they only way they can deal with it is either banning or using cut-off periods. And if you think people whine now, imagine being told that their digital stuff they paid for suddenly became unusable forever.
He copies all the opinions of pro players like he does his decks for his deck videos
nothing he does is original, he's just a fake mash up of ideas and he knows that and he's good at it, people just come to him because he's a good hub of info
This was my first thought too, but how do you nerf ice block? It would have been fine if they just replaced frost nova with a different card, by removing this deck style they have removed the only use of frost nova anyway.
I think it'd be perfectly acceptable to ban certain cards in ranked play, but still allow them to be used in casual; that's how most TCGs work anyways.
I was following Force back a couple years ago when he was focusing on SC2 and D3 content.
I sorta disagree with him here, though. Hearthstone is still in beta. I can imagine when M:tG was still in an unfinished state and the play testers were playing with full proxy decks, those cards went through several iterations themselves before they went live, and many still were errataed and had limits to how many you could put into a deck even back then.
If WotC had the ability to 'patch' cards, they would. Absolutely. Especially when their sets are still in testing (As Hearthstone is now.).
To summarize, I think Force is cool, but he's jumping on the anti-nerf bandwagon in this particular case. Once Hearthstone is live you can expect very few changes to be made to the basic and expert Hearthstone 1 sets, as by then the primary balancing focus will be on Adventure and Expansion content. THIS IS NO DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER CCG IN A TESTING PHASE.
None of these nerfs have been about 'top decks' and have always been about 'goldfish decks'. With a lack of a response system, the game was already a little short on cross-player interactivity, and the top decks that have been nerfed have been Miracle Rogue (A Deck That Plays Itself And Is Unconcerned With The Performance Of The Opponent, henceforth known as 'ADTPIAIUWTPOTO' for short), Miracle Druid (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO), Shitty priest control (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO), Unleash Hunter (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO), Zerg Lock (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO), Frost Mage (ADTPIAIUWTPOTO).
Noticing a trend here? There were a lot of extremely powerful deck archetypes that remained untouched because they weren't fire-and-forget. Blizzard isn't caving to casuals, they're building the game they want to exist, and this is what it's going to take for them to realize their goal.
They could redesign Frost Nova completely. Instead of mass freeze for 2, something like a 4 mana spell to make opponent's minions unable to retaliate until the end of turn.
Ice Block could be altered to affect only your minions - when your minion is about to die, make him immune until the end of turn, Or even less powerful - if your minion receives fatal damage, prevent it and render him immune until the end of turn. That way removal like Assassinate still comes through.
This criticism is really unfair. Yes, none of the decks that Force spotlights in his videos are HIS decks. But he's not a professional gamer, his niche is more of a caster/news content delivery man.
So if there is a popular deck being played, he spotlights that deck and lets everyone know about it. He gives proper attribution in all his videos when he spotlights a deck and never claimed them to be his own.
That said, I'll echo many of the people disagreeing with force here. The game is still in closed beta. The developers have stated that the closed beta state of the game is why they are willing to make changes. And, if you pay attention, the recent nerfs have been just as much about making the game "fun to play" as about balancing the classes. Mind control was ridiculously "un-fun" to play against. And despite priests not being all that powerful, MC was nerfed. Same with playing against OTK/perma-frost decks.
I love Force Strategy, he plays all decks wrong and makes tons of mistakes, it's almost impossible not to laugh, super entertainment material... ANYWAY!
Here's my 2 cents from someone that played many games professionally and was quite successful in many of them, including card games like Magic The Gathering which I used to play on a daily basis with the 2009 World Champion André Coimbra.
Underpowered is always better than overpowered... Should it have been addressed this way? Probably not. Are these cards the biggest reason Mage is so strong? Maybe not. But it's better being addressed "poorly", than NOT being addressed, Mage needed nerfs, period. Here's the nerfs.
Force is absolutely WRONG, Mage being the best class has nothing to do with being able to smash people left and right with little effort, sometimes with the "perfect cards", as in, no matter what you do, you lose. That reminds me of bullshit countertop decks or Jayce decks, you know what WoTC did? Well, they couldn't nerf the card, they outright banned it. There, fixed.
Did it ruin blue color? Fuck no, they're still the same annoying fuckers that make a 5 minute game last 30 minutes, but shit had to be done!
Another thing where he is wrong is "the meta fixes itself" or at least it did so far. Ranger got nerfed, it wasn't stabilized pre-nerf, let's get that much out of the way, but still, I think it would eventually, but OTK hunter? There's a term in card games called "hate cards", for example, let's say you run a deck that puts cards in your graveyard so you can bring them back on the board or use their special effects, you counter with "grave-hate" such as cards that remove the opponent graveyard.
Great Sable Stag was a great card in the T2 meta, almost in every Naya deck just to counter Jund decks, who were pretty much the kings at the moment, the top 8 had 7 Jund decks.
Priest? The 4 attack sweet spot creatures, that's Priest-hate. Cards that Priests hate facing. See a MO here? There's counters.
Mage walks into a bar, there's no counter. Sure, the Strazablast decks got ruined by a lot of armor and healing, bla bla bla, specially since Alesxtraza got "nerfed" or "fixed" or whatever it was. Point is, there's no anti tactics against mage, there's no self-dispell other than single target silences, I mean, Mage is hard to counter, and if you make a deck with the purpose of beating Mage, chances are, you're going to lose to everything else.
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Shaman Deck by Trump
I don't agree with nerfing a class just because it's the current trend to play that class or a particular style of deck. I think the main problem with the game at the moment is that there is not enough card variety like there is in MTG and other card games, so the metagame keeps getting swamped with everyone running the same kinds of decks. Once they start releasing expansions and new cards on a regular basis I think the metagame for hearthstone will be much healthier.
That's a given, but Mage is not "FOTM", Mage is downright obnoxious and a pain to play against, Blue Counterspell deck MTG style. I didn't agree with the Hunter nerfs, I did agree with the Mind Control.
The problem with Priest and Hunter is... Not that one cards was stolen, but that the whole kit, without THAT ONE specific card, feels weak, with nerfing, some buffing might have to be done in compensation, and I think it was addressed incorrectly.
Pyroblast should be removed from the game and give place to something else, Ice Block mechanic would be ok if you had a draw back as in, you live one turn but next turn (after it has been popped, not played) you only have half the mana, something along those lines.
I think Hunter is a very cool class, unfortunately the Beasts and the REALLY late game, leave the Hunter lacking "a bit", there's no valid mid~late game beasts sadly.
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Shaman Deck by Trump
Why is being obnoxious a problem, and not a play style, anyway?
Nerfing the freeze so bad like that... I could even agree with your suggestion of Pyroblast and Ice Block, but even without those, we had an alternative way to play the game, to win, that did not involve minion spam, and variety of strategies is always a good thing. Now we have to minion spam like everyone else.
And like I said, I don't agree with the away the nerf was handed to the Mages, but a nerf was necessary. The class was nerfed too hard and the wrong way and didn't address the issue, which is the two overpowered cards...
...But it did have to be nerfed, making the class almost unplayable (like Hunter) is still better than making people concede as soon as they see a mage most of the times. Hopefully Blizzard understands this and makes the correct changes and Un-nerfs the freeze. Blizzard should cost 4 and deal 2 damage across the board without a freeze, that way the other freeze cards could keep their status.
Sure my suggestions are probably not the best, but I had 10 seconds to think if it, not weeks like Blizzard developers.
Hearthstone 101 Guide: Everything you need to know to become an expert!
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Mage Deck by Trump
Achieve Legendary rank with F2P Shaman Deck by Trump
Nerfing Blizzard that way would just make it a worst version of consecrate (because consecrate hits heroes). And because mages are the wambam power casters, it wouldn't make any sense to have one of their spells be inferrior to those of a paladin, especially considering how manna efficient pyro and fireball are.
Besides, Blizzard not freezing would just be odd to explain, lore-wise.