Backtrack: TGT was just announced, and I was excited reading the new cards. All this talk of how the meta would change inspired me to the point where I would just think of combos that noone else would early so I could dominate my meta. This was exciting and I looked forward to playing hearthstone like I never played it before.
TGT Released: I literally deleted all my decks, and started approaching the new cards under a new perspective. I started using cards that I had to see in play myself to see if they fit my playstyle, and were competitive enough. As a 6-time legend player, I do enjoy the competition aspect of this game. I was trying to figure out that card or two that would propel me to legend with relative ease.
My Meta Changed?: I was between Ranks 2-4 when TGT was released. On the first days, people were using all the new cards trying to figure out cool and interesting tactics to play around. Now that TGT has been out for 5 days, my meta turned into the following(keep in mind im on NA server)
• Standard Non Mech Rush Mage, that will not even use any of the new cards(sometimes 1 copy of Effigy)
• Standard Cancer Hunter that will not even use any of the new cards(sometimes King Elekk but these decks I have found easier to beat)
• Standard Control Warrior that will only use the new Varian Wrynn
• The occasional totem Shaman which I have found very inconsistent.
My Thoughts?: So far I am extremely disappointed with the new deck archetypes. Everytime I see a class outside of Warlock, I know with 100% certainty of just about every card in my opponents decks. What happened to diversity?
TGT is going to slow the game down and bring the comeback of slower/control decks?: Out of my last 65 games, 58 of them were agro rush decks. That is a whopping 89%
Overall I am extremely disappointed with what the meta has turned into. Although I love the new cards, I feel they have done very little to shape the meta in a positive way.
What are your thoughts on the new meta with TGT released?
I think you are for the most part correct. Although I still have seen some people playing around with new interesting decks still at rank 5, for the most part it's a lot of the same old crap. I have seen a new warlock deck that I really liked that actually seemed somewhat viable- the dreadsteed deck. It was hilarious to play against.
I think the main reason things won't change much are Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom. That and the fact that the majority of new Joust and Inspire cards are too weak, but part of that is from them not nerfing Shredd and Boom. If they did, the new cards would be better. They need to be nerfed.
Kripp's latest video talks about how everyone has gone back to pre-TGT decks at the highest ranks. True that it might be in part due to end of season madness, and once the season reset hapens we will see a bit more experimenting again. There may be a few decks that are decent for a month, and one or two might be good long term, but most stuff looks like it won't work. Why is this?
Joust is a Failure
Initially it looked cool, but in practice it is far too unreliable. The cards needed to be better in the losing scenario since it happens so often, less importance put on the Joust. Either that or ties go to the Jouster.
At first I thought Tuskarr Jouster was ok but not great. I thought it should have been heal for 3-4 and Joust for 4 more health, that way you don't get completely wrecked if you lose the Joust. After everyone said it was amazing, I started to think it was a bit better, but after playing it, it should have had the heal split and only half of it relyling on the Joust. In the decks that you use healing cards, you can't afford to miss the heal. It's not like armor where you can store it up. You have to wait til you are dying to heal in the first place, so if you miss the heal, as Reynad would say, "you eat a dick." Even in a deck with 10/20 minions at 5 mana or more, and no 1 mana minions, I still seem to lose the Joust far more than I win it. Even against an aggro deck, you can draw a Shielded Minibot or Ironbeak Owl and still get wrecked. The RNG is terrible on the Jousts, there may be only 2 outcomes, but one of them you get screwed. Piloted Shredder RNG is a much different beast. They use the RNG as a reason for why it can be stronger, but it is an RNG that is pratically always good. It's not like Joust where you can just be left with nothing. Sure there might be more outcomes for the Deathrattle drop, but when the majority of the outcomes are good to great, and only <5% of the time it is negative, it's not really that much RNG looking at it from a meta(big picture) perspective. Joust minions needed to be better.
Inspire also has a similar problem
Most of them are just too weak. It's like they balanced them based on the absolute optimal secnario that could ever happen and made that be playable, but anything less than the stars lining up, and you are left with something much weaker than pre-TGT minions. Like many pros have said, the dream secnario where you get a Garrison Commander, Maiden of the Lake, and Inspire minions all on board at the same time, and then hero power, well it's just not going to happen. And yet the minions are weak if it doesn't happen. There are some support cards that help out your Inspire cards, but you only have so much room in you deck, and to have combo cards have to be combo'd only to establish a board(in the case of Paladin/Shaman), and then still be weak to board clears, not an easy secnario. They needed to make the minions plus it's Inspire text be worth 1 more mana than the cost of the card, because to use the card you have to hero power and that gives negative tempo, you get ~1 mana of value but it costs 2 mana. The Inspire should have made up for the lost value of a Hero power, so that hero powers were useable and compareable to tempo plays. It's like the devs thought, "oh no, if they Inspire more than once it will get Insane exponential value," but this is just not true, and hugely restricted by turns. It not like a Flamewaker, where you can store cards and get like 4-5 activations in one turn, you can only get 1 or 2 at most. Most of the good Inspire minions simply make the hero power equal its mana cost, if you use it multple times, it doesn't really get ramping value it just stays on par. Look at Silver Hand Regent for an example. Each time you Inspire you simply make 2 dudes instead of 1. Which is still probably weaker than tempo play with a card. If Summoning recruits was a card, it would be 3 for 2 mana, so it is still weaker than tempo even as is. And Silver Hand Regent is one of the most playable ones, and shes just breaking even, many of the rest of the Inspire minions are even weaker, not sure what the devs were thinking.
And how does Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom tie into all of this?
These cards are the greatest limitation to creativity in this game. How cards are valued are partly in relation to each other. If Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom were nerfed, every other card in the game would be slightly better. And it would allow for much more creativity amongst the deck builders. Currently one of the problems with Inspire is the need for so many support cards, cause like we've discussed, alone, Inspire is just not strong enough. But you only have so many deck slots and Shredder and Boom take the place of many of the support cards, or even the "core" cards of Inspire decks. I hate these guys.
Deck Building
When I build decks I first start out pretending they don't exist. You can make some really awesome decks. But in my experience, almost every deck is better if you take out 3 cards and replace them with Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom, and that really sucks. And it can really KILL alot of decks. For example, I built a token Paladin deck, but it isn't as midrange or tempo as most of the Paladin decks out there. It is based on an old heavy control, heavy heal build I had. So I built it and it looked great, but then at the end you come to the part where you gotta ask yourself, "would it be better with Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom?" And the answer is inevitabley yes. So then you have to cut some cards to make room, but what can you cut. Really the only thing that I can take out for Piloted Shredder is the Maiden of the Lake or Murloc Knight, but those are core to the new deck, so then the whole thing starts to fall apart. Then you have to put Dr. Boom in, well to do that you probably have to cut Eadric the Pure, but if you do that then you have to add the second Aldor Peacekeeper and lose a Silver Hand Regent, and at this point the whole deck is falling apart, and just becomming midrange Paladin again.
Boom
Aren't class cards supposed to be strong than neutrals? And Paladin is minion class, presumably they should be able to compare right? Not even close. Look at Eadric the Pure compared to Dr. Boom. Is it a joke? When I saw Eadric I thought for sure it was a sign Dr. Boom would be nerfed, how can you release a Class Legendary of the same cost, and have it be that much weaker than Dr. Boom. Even Tirion Fordring gets wrecked by Dr. Boom, and Tirion costs 1 mana more. Can't play him after Dr. Boom, his Boom Bots alone will eat up Tirion and still leave a 7/7 on the field. And you can't play Tirion before since he costs more. The only way Tirion wins is if they don't draw Dr. Boom. Pretty crazy that the once strongest class Legendary, is now easily handled by a neutral that casts 1 less.
P Shredd
And Piloted Shredder is even worse than Dr. Boom. We all know Sludge Belcher is amazing, pretty much since it's release it has been the king of Taunts, one of the most commonly seen cards in the game. Piloted Shredder has even more value than Sludge Belcher and it cost 1 mana less. WTF? Just look at the stats, Shredder has 7 to Belchers 8, and each point is worth about 0.5 mana but Belcher summons a 1 mana minion and Shredder summons a 2 mana minion. So just in pure value, Shredder wins by 0.5 mana, and it costs 1 mana less. It esentially is 1.5 mana more valuable than Sludge Belcher. It's just disgusting, even more so than Dr. Boom and we all know how insane that is. And the RNG of the drop isn't significant. When the majority are good to great and <5% are negative, it's not really that much RNG. Plus you almost always get something. Not even close to how terrible the RNG is on Jousts where even if you have a deck build around Jousting, you still get ABSOLUTLY NOTHING a good portion of the time.
Backtrack: TGT was just announced, and I was excited reading the new cards. All this talk of how the meta would change inspired me to the point where I would just think of combos that noone else would early so I could dominate my meta. This was exciting and I looked forward to playing hearthstone like I never played it before.
TGT Released: I literally deleted all my decks, and started approaching the new cards under a new perspective. I started using cards that I had to see in play myself to see if they fit my playstyle, and were competitive enough. As a 6-time legend player, I do enjoy the competition aspect of this game. I was trying to figure out that card or two that would propel me to legend with relative ease.
My Meta Changed?: I was between Ranks 2-4 when TGT was released. On the first days, people were using all the new cards trying to figure out cool and interesting tactics to play around. Now that TGT has been out for 5 days, my meta turned into the following(keep in mind im on NA server)
• The secret Paladin that uses standard Pally rush with Mysterious Challenger
• Standard Non Mech Rush Mage, that will not even use any of the new cards(sometimes 1 copy of Effigy)
• Standard Cancer Hunter that will not even use any of the new cards(sometimes King Elekk but these decks I have found easier to beat)
• Standard Control Warrior that will only use the new Varian Wrynn
• The occasional totem Shaman which I have found very inconsistent.
My Thoughts?: So far I am extremely disappointed with the new deck archetypes. Everytime I see a class outside of Warlock, I know with 100% certainty of just about every card in my opponents decks. What happened to diversity?
TGT is going to slow the game down and bring the comeback of slower/control decks?: Out of my last 65 games, 58 of them were agro rush decks. That is a whopping 89%
Overall I am extremely disappointed with what the meta has turned into. Although I love the new cards, I feel they have done very little to shape the meta in a positive way.
What are your thoughts on the new meta with TGT released?
I think you are for the most part correct. Although I still have seen some people playing around with new interesting decks still at rank 5, for the most part it's a lot of the same old crap. I have seen a new warlock deck that I really liked that actually seemed somewhat viable- the dreadsteed deck. It was hilarious to play against.
I think the main reason things won't change much are Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom. That and the fact that the majority of new Joust and Inspire cards are too weak, but part of that is from them not nerfing Shredd and Boom. If they did, the new cards would be better. They need to be nerfed.
Kripp's latest video talks about how everyone has gone back to pre-TGT decks at the highest ranks. True that it might be in part due to end of season madness, and once the season reset hapens we will see a bit more experimenting again. There may be a few decks that are decent for a month, and one or two might be good long term, but most stuff looks like it won't work. Why is this?
Joust is a Failure
Initially it looked cool, but in practice it is far too unreliable. The cards needed to be better in the losing scenario since it happens so often, less importance put on the Joust. Either that or ties go to the Jouster.
At first I thought Tuskarr Jouster was ok but not great. I thought it should have been heal for 3-4 and Joust for 4 more health, that way you don't get completely wrecked if you lose the Joust. After everyone said it was amazing, I started to think it was a bit better, but after playing it, it should have had the heal split and only half of it relyling on the Joust. In the decks that you use healing cards, you can't afford to miss the heal. It's not like armor where you can store it up. You have to wait til you are dying to heal in the first place, so if you miss the heal, as Reynad would say, "you eat a dick." Even in a deck with 10/20 minions at 5 mana or more, and no 1 mana minions, I still seem to lose the Joust far more than I win it. Even against an aggro deck, you can draw a Shielded Minibot or Ironbeak Owl and still get wrecked. The RNG is terrible on the Jousts, there may be only 2 outcomes, but one of them you get screwed. Piloted Shredder RNG is a much different beast. They use the RNG as a reason for why it can be stronger, but it is an RNG that is pratically always good. It's not like Joust where you can just be left with nothing. Sure there might be more outcomes for the Deathrattle drop, but when the majority of the outcomes are good to great, and only <5% of the time it is negative, it's not really that much RNG looking at it from a meta(big picture) perspective. Joust minions needed to be better.
Inspire also has a similar problem
Most of them are just too weak. It's like they balanced them based on the absolute optimal secnario that could ever happen and made that be playable, but anything less than the stars lining up, and you are left with something much weaker than pre-TGT minions. Like many pros have said, the dream secnario where you get a Garrison Commander, Maiden of the Lake, and Inspire minions all on board at the same time, and then hero power, well it's just not going to happen. And yet the minions are weak if it doesn't happen. There are some support cards that help out your Inspire cards, but you only have so much room in you deck, and to have combo cards have to be combo'd only to establish a board(in the case of Paladin/Shaman), and then still be weak to board clears, not an easy secnario. They needed to make the minions plus it's Inspire text be worth 1 more mana than the cost of the card, because to use the card you have to hero power and that gives negative tempo, you get ~1 mana of value but it costs 2 mana. The Inspire should have made up for the lost value of a Hero power, so that hero powers were useable and compareable to tempo plays. It's like the devs thought, "oh no, if they Inspire more than once it will get Insane exponential value," but this is just not true, and hugely restricted by turns. It not like a Flamewaker, where you can store cards and get like 4-5 activations in one turn, you can only get 1 or 2 at most. Most of the good Inspire minions simply make the hero power equal its mana cost, if you use it multple times, it doesn't really get ramping value it just stays on par. Look at Silver Hand Regent for an example. Each time you Inspire you simply make 2 dudes instead of 1. Which is still probably weaker than tempo play with a card. If Summoning recruits was a card, it would be 3 for 2 mana, so it is still weaker than tempo even as is. And Silver Hand Regent is one of the most playable ones, and shes just breaking even, many of the rest of the Inspire minions are even weaker, not sure what the devs were thinking.
And how does Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom tie into all of this?
These cards are the greatest limitation to creativity in this game. How cards are valued are partly in relation to each other. If Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom were nerfed, every other card in the game would be slightly better. And it would allow for much more creativity amongst the deck builders. Currently one of the problems with Inspire is the need for so many support cards, cause like we've discussed, alone, Inspire is just not strong enough. But you only have so many deck slots and Shredder and Boom take the place of many of the support cards, or even the "core" cards of Inspire decks. I hate these guys.
Deck Building
When I build decks I first start out pretending they don't exist. You can make some really awesome decks. But in my experience, almost every deck is better if you take out 3 cards and replace them with Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom, and that really sucks. And it can really KILL alot of decks. For example, I built a token Paladin deck, but it isn't as midrange or tempo as most of the Paladin decks out there. It is based on an old heavy control, heavy heal build I had. So I built it and it looked great, but then at the end you come to the part where you gotta ask yourself, "would it be better with Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom?" And the answer is inevitabley yes. So then you have to cut some cards to make room, but what can you cut. Really the only thing that I can take out for Piloted Shredder is the Maiden of the Lake or Murloc Knight, but those are core to the new deck, so then the whole thing starts to fall apart. Then you have to put Dr. Boom in, well to do that you probably have to cut Eadric the Pure, but if you do that then you have to add the second Aldor Peacekeeper and lose a Silver Hand Regent, and at this point the whole deck is falling apart, and just becomming midrange Paladin again.
Boom
Aren't class cards supposed to be strong than neutrals? And Paladin is minion class, presumably they should be able to compare right? Not even close. Look at Eadric the Pure compared to Dr. Boom. Is it a joke? When I saw Eadric I thought for sure it was a sign Dr. Boom would be nerfed, how can you release a Class Legendary of the same cost, and have it be that much weaker than Dr. Boom. Even Tirion Fordring gets wrecked by Dr. Boom, and Tirion costs 1 mana more. Can't play him after Dr. Boom, his Boom Bots alone will eat up Tirion and still leave a 7/7 on the field. And you can't play Tirion before since he costs more. The only way Tirion wins is if they don't draw Dr. Boom. Pretty crazy that the once strongest class Legendary, is now easily handled by a neutral that casts 1 less.
P Shredd
And Piloted Shredder is even worse than Dr. Boom. We all know Sludge Belcher is amazing, pretty much since it's release it has been the king of Taunts, one of the most commonly seen cards in the game. Piloted Shredder has even more value than Sludge Belcher and it cost 1 mana less. WTF? Just look at the stats, Shredder has 7 to Belchers 8, and each point is worth about 0.5 mana but Belcher summons a 1 mana minion and Shredder summons a 2 mana minion. So just in pure value, Shredder wins by 0.5 mana, and it costs 1 mana less. It esentially is 1.5 mana more valuable than Sludge Belcher. It's just disgusting, even more so than Dr. Boom and we all know how insane that is. And the RNG of the drop isn't significant. When the majority are good to great and <5% are negative, it's not really that much RNG. Plus you almost always get something. Not even close to how terrible the RNG is on Jousts where even if you have a deck build around Jousting, you still get ABSOLUTLY NOTHING a good portion of the time.
If they would just nerf Dr. Boom and Piloted Shredder already, and Warsong Commander or Frothing Berserker, it would open up so many possiblities for new deck types.