Hearthpwn

Some players' mentality is quite at fault. Yes.

Nerf hearthstone ! That's it ?

If all classes are "op" then the balancing works fine.

Hmm guess my opinion was too strong. Not including comments from 14 year olds about sucking at sucking and so on.

I could see a higher health total being a good idea as it would directly influence the unbalanced amount of aggro out there.

Also isn't it a little sad that making a unique deck means that it will be weaker than the rest?

Quote from Hearthswag jump

Hmm guess my opinion was too strong. Not including comments from 14 year olds about sucking at sucking and so on.

I could see a higher health total being a good idea as it would directly influence the unbalanced amount of aggro out there.

Also isn't it a little sad that making a unique deck means that it will be weaker than the rest?

Im sorry but thats life. If you build something yourself (be it a car, a table or whatever) it will most likely be worse than what the pros build. You can either accept it and play with your unique sub par deck or just netdeck, there is nothing wrong with that.

Also I dont believe the game to be unbalanced. Sure there are some decks that might currently be a bit stronger (patron, secretpala maybe) but its basically impossible to balance a game to the point were all decks on average have a 50% win chance. Every meta have some decks that are slightly stronger than the rest.

Increasing the life total may sound like a good strategy to weaken aggro and combo decks but at the same time it would make control decks much much stronger and only playing control match ups would get really boring quite fast (and I say that as someone basically only playing control). Blizzard also wants to keep the average game time relatively low so that it is something you can do in your free time, in the train/bus etc. Making games last half an hour would strongly go against this.

Game is fine.

Quote from LiangHuBBB jump

too many BMs, too many netdecks, too many unbalanced cards

still fun though :P

All the BMs, netdecks and unbalanced cards just adds to the fun of this game, in fact.

My conclusion of OP Post. OP sucks hard and he blame the game. Wow.

Just FYI, Trump, Noxious, and many other Pro player understand 1 thing you didn't understand.

For a deck to work competitively, it must have an Unfairness in it. Without that unfairness, your deck is mediocre deck (look at arena deck, and see how mediocre it is). That is how Constructed works even the beginning. You can choose your own card, go find something unfair and make it work.

• Patron and Frothing is terrible by itself, but you can make a whole deck dedicated to it to make it super strong, thus the unfairness.
• Twilight drake and Giant is also terrible by itself. But you can make the deck where you can abuse their power, thus handlock.
• Frostnova is terrible by itself, but combined with doomsayer, and other freeze, antonidas and alextrassza it became super strong, thus freeze mage.
• Doomguard also sucks by itself, but you can abuse it if you have no hand anyway, thus zoolock.
• Gadgetzan is terrible by itself, but you can combine with low mana spell to draw your whole deck, thus miracle rogue.

Every single deck from the start of the game until now revolves around creating an unfairness and abuse it to win. EVERY SINGLE ONE. If you decide to play a deck that is fair (nothing actually amazing), you will lost, simple as that.

TL, DR : learn to play

Eh. Thank you to the one or two that left comments relevant to the nature of this post. But it seems I should either 'learn to play' or quit HS. Having achieved top 5 ranked with both net decks and my own with generally not a lot of time to play I'm not sure how much more there is to learn... but sure, my apologies, the game is wonderful as it is. I'll go legend this month with my secret pally, or handlock and I'll tell myself well done. And believe it. Not

Quote from Hearthswag jump

Eh. Thank you to the one or two that left comments relevant to the nature of this post. But it seems I should either 'learn to play' or quit HS. Having achieved top 5 ranked with both net decks and my own with generally not a lot of time to play I'm not sure how much more there is to learn... but sure, my apologies, the game is wonderful as it is. I'll go legend this month with my secret pally, or handlock and I'll tell myself well done. And believe it. Not

Just a tip hearthswag, the nature of your OP seemed... Very whiny. I even came here to have a little fun, but then, you turned out to be serious about this. So, the best thing that can be done for people like you, is to have an actual game mode where such powerful cards aren't allowed, and don't polarize an entire meta in one way or another. But, I don't know when you can expect to see this, as Blizzard hasn't given to much indication lately about what there team is working on. (Not surprising, but maybe I've missed something).

blame the meta for finding and using only the most OP broken cards and throwing out the other 99% after every release. blame bliz for using OP cards to "balance" other OP cards. but most importantly dont bother flooding the forum with meta complaint threads. Your preaching to the choir, we already know how random and annoying this game is. 

Quote from ETF89 jump

Quote from Hearthswag jump

Hmm guess my opinion was too strong. Not including comments from 14 year olds about sucking at sucking and so on.

I could see a higher health total being a good idea as it would directly influence the unbalanced amount of aggro out there.

Also isn't it a little sad that making a unique deck means that it will be weaker than the rest?

Im sorry but thats life. If you build something yourself (be it a car, a table or whatever) it will most likely be worse than what the pros build. You can either accept it and play with your unique sub par deck or just netdeck, there is nothing wrong with that.

Also I dont believe the game to be unbalanced. Sure there are some decks that might currently be a bit stronger (patron, secretpala maybe) but its basically impossible to balance a game to the point were all decks on average have a 50% win chance. Every meta have some decks that are slightly stronger than the rest.

Increasing the life total may sound like a good strategy to weaken aggro and combo decks but at the same time it would make control decks much much stronger and only playing control match ups would get really boring quite fast (and I say that as someone basically only playing control). Blizzard also wants to keep the average game time relatively low so that it is something you can do in your free time, in the train/bus etc. Making games last half an hour would strongly go against this.

Game is fine.

Accepting imbalance in a game or even a life situation because it naturally happens is called a naturalistic fallacy, just because something is the way it is, doesn't mean it ought to be. It's fine to have a get back up off the horse attitude, but accepting gross problems or telling people to get good when mechanical game problems have been plague the game for a long time now really isn't helping the problem.

Although the statistics are based on incomplete data, the imbalance in the current game is huge. While personal accounts throughout several threads on hearthpwn have high lighted the problems of the mass paladin problems, paladin is current sitting on top of a 57.93% constructed win rate according to hearthstats, with the closest class being hunter at 55.79%. These percentages line up with the shear power, availability and ease of use of their top decks. Looking at other classes, rogue is at 46.82% win rate across constructed, with shaman barely touching the 50% margin at 50.76%. Most classes hover around the 52% win rate margin (showing a slight bias to uploading winning game information). However even with that bias shaman isn't doing so well and rogue is still heavily negative, that's over a 10% win rate margin according to a large data pool. While only Blizzard has the entirety of best usable data, they do not publicly share their information and this is the best we can offer to our resources. While being skeptical of the data in how representative it is, how random it is and how bias it is is a healthy criticism of the data, all out dismissing such a large pool of collected data as incomplete and just ignoring statics (the hard factor in determining balance) is dismissing objective balance in favor of subjective personal bias. Also note that these 2 bottom classes were mentioned by the OP as the "trash" classes, while he didn't explain why the data supports his answer as well as secret paladin being so powerful. The outlier in this situation is patron warriors incredible power boasting an average win rate of 52.88%, while one can assume the deck is balanced based on win rate here, a combination of data sources is needed to examine this. As stated before the other top decks are easily obtained and easy to play. Patron warrior requires multiple adventure cards such as grim patron and thaurisan with refined versions often running Grom as well (not even considering control warrior decks diluting the win rate). With the barrier to entry higher for warriors than paladins and hunters, there other factor attributed here would be the skill factor and overall decision making. While Patron warrior is widely considered over the top too powerful, it is a hard deck to play involving long games with large amounts of decision making in short periods of time, as well as multiple physical clicks, it's probably not the hardest deck ever but it has a high skill floor (barrier of entry to newer players of the deck). Also worth noting is look at the rank %s, Paladins make up ~27% of ranks 1-5 while warriors make up ~21% of rank 1-2... Shaman and rogues make up 2.4% of rank 1 and even less in ranks 2-3 near about 1%. The class diversity disparity directly correlated to class popularity is shown in the higher ranks, also worth noting is as you get lower in rank, there is a linear decrease in the number of paladins plated and a positive trend in terms with an increase of rogue play showing a huge boon at rank 20 (6.51%) and rank 21(8.52%) . Could it be people who play rogues just all happen to be rank 20 players in terms of quality (and the fact the classes is so unpopular in general)? Kind of hear to but that, warriors are an odd exception supporting the difficulty of entry though cards / skill floor as rank 20 houses ~20% warriors.

Supporting the analysis of the quantitative data, we can use Tempo Storms analysis of the current meta and statistics. While you may dislike or disprove of reynad, he has his current psotion for a reason, he is good at the game objectively and provides a website and team that offer an authority elite perspective at the game, he's probably one of the several sources that offer top end analysis of the game. Currently the top decks are Patron warrior, Secret Paladin, Mech Mage and Dragon Priest, common decks i'm sure everyone has faced on ladder. The description on their tier 1 tags says they are top level decks closest to full optimization   and give the feeling of being "unfair" or "overpowered". It's pretty obvious rogue harbors some pretty horrific decks with 1 at the bottom of tier 3 (a pre-TGT deck) and the other barely even worth mentioning. Mid-Range hunter is tier 2 so there is some merrit to saying losing to hunters could be a factor of player skill as the overall win rate doesn't seam to reflect how strong the deck is, but ignoring the shear power of Secret Paladin at the least (with grim patron also being a contender but less obvious) is really being too optimistic of the current lack luster game balance.

Also while plenty of others have stated, your deck needs to be unfair in constructed and that is true to an extent, unfair advantages still need balancing. Getting a 50% win ratio across all decks is a fantasy but the ideal goal should be to get them as close as possible. As experienced game designers relying on health of the game state improving game balance and features should be one of their top priorities, with no card changes since the under taker nerf post GVG plenty of strategies have gotten out of hand. Star Craft itself was praised for it's good balance while offering asymmetric game play, it wasn't the first game to offer asymmetric game play but when others create such large balance problems people wouldn't catch on as the game becomes boring and repetitive (if one faction wins 80% of the time in some of those failed RTS games, saying oh well life isn't fair you can't balance 50 50 perfectly could be worse isn't a mantra a large corporation selling you a high quality product should do, that's the attitude of an apprentice or young student). Since perfect balance can never truly be achieved and only becomes asymptotically closer to that line, perhaps increasing the degree of proximity to perfect balance is a goal that Blizzard can always improve on.

While not all decks posted by the OP would be considered OP (his freeze mage comment related to the unfun aspects of the deck and non interactivity, not the strength of the deck which is true) there are plenty of truths involved. Not all of the decks need changes but saying the game is currently balanced and "get good" is the solution s a subjective comment that doesn't answer the current problems. The mentality itself is noble but isn't logical sometimes or used in absurd situations. A metaphor would to this would be if in a competition say 2 people competing for strength or speed in a race, one person has a 5 KG weight attached to them while the other has a 30 KG weight to them. While objectively one has a clear advantage and will win more often if they are evenly matched, instead of losing the imbalance in the competition of the weights you simply say no it's fine just train more get stronger when a quantifiable measurement is provided contradicting that statement that there is an advantage at hand, that argument doesn't hold up.

I'm sorry if you disagree and would be very welcome to a counter point but please try to take not just this OP, but the myriad of similar posts on the general hearthpwn forums as a signal that perhaps this could possible be a signal of something wrong. And to others in the thread, your opinion is just as important to this website as the OP, however committing ad hominem and bashing him for his skill is an irrelevant factor here when discussing the balance of the game. It is worth noting however that the OP could be a little less emotional and construct his argument better for future reference, but his point is still reasonably valid in terms of balance problems (although not everything he mentioned really needs to be nerfed). Thank you for taking the time to read this post and please keep this conversation civil.

*Edit* This isn't even addressing the gross arena problems. While weaker constructed classes like shaman and rogue shine more in arena (shaman is still worse than paladin and rogue is a counter pick) warrior has an abysmal performance, paladin again tops the charts in arena with a 62.71% win rate, that's absurd. Arena balance is also important, highly experienced arena players such as Ratsmah and Kripparian have advocated numerous times that paladins are now the strongest class by quite a margin, even topping rogue (Kripp used to think mages were top but swapped opinions) as well as support warrior being by far the weakest. ADWCTA another highly rated arena player and co-runner of the site "HearthArena" has a campaign #arenawarriosmatter due to their very poor performance. In addition to poor expansion card rarity releases and poor hero power not altering the board there are plenty of reasons warrior are so poor in arena atm, Kripaprian alone has several videos in this exact topic (a recent prominent one provided in the source links).

Sources Used:

Hearthstats:  https://hearthstats.net/

Tempo Storm:  https://tempostorm.com/hearthstone/meta-snapshot/meta-snapshot-29-hey-its-me-again

Kripparian's input on Blizzard's arena negligence / imbalance (pertaining mostly to warrior, all chat no game play):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drPz6Pwe2Kc

Thanks to this thread I now know what BS means (I'm not a native English speaker).

I know it's off topic, but that really made my day.

Apart from that, everything on that subject has already done a lot of times. My thoughts are that 1 turn-combo and aggro decks will always be difficult to balance in Hearthstone because of the game mechanics (it's possible to go face directly, which is much harder to do in a game like Magic for example). But I really think that the current state of the game is just fine, almost all classes have at least 1 option.

Dude, there is no way that you are complaining about almost every good deck, wether it be agro or not. Are you actually that stupid? So if all of that is OP, what isn't? Random decks? F2P stuff? 

I'd say it's most of all the community that's wrong with Hearthstone.

I agree with OP. I have mostly all the cards in the game, and can net deck many of the top tier decks. But that just isn't fun or innovative, and its too difficult to compete with these decks unless you play another net deck to directly counter it.

Quote from DarkTycon jump

Quote from ETF89 jump

Quote from Hearthswag jump

Hmm guess my opinion was too strong. Not including comments from 14 year olds about sucking at sucking and so on.

I could see a higher health total being a good idea as it would directly influence the unbalanced amount of aggro out there.

Also isn't it a little sad that making a unique deck means that it will be weaker than the rest?

Im sorry but thats life. If you build something yourself (be it a car, a table or whatever) it will most likely be worse than what the pros build. You can either accept it and play with your unique sub par deck or just netdeck, there is nothing wrong with that.

Accepting imbalance in a game or even a life situation because it naturally happens is called a naturalistic fallacy, just because something is the way it is, doesn't mean it ought to be. It's fine to have a get back up off the horse attitude, but accepting gross problems or telling people to get good when mechanical game problems have been plague the game for a long time now really isn't helping the problem.

 

Thanks dude, you get it. And you make your point with fact and statistics.

I really don't get 90% of the replies here - I'm arguing intrinsic game mechanics/trends - so therefore I must learn to play better?  I've played card games for years, would like to think I know what I am talking about. Or is the majority of the hearthstone community hormonal emotional pre-teens?

Quote from DarkTycon jump

Quote from ETF89 jump

Quote from Hearthswag jump

Hmm guess my opinion was too strong. Not including comments from 14 year olds about sucking at sucking and so on.

I could see a higher health total being a good idea as it would directly influence the unbalanced amount of aggro out there.

Also isn't it a little sad that making a unique deck means that it will be weaker than the rest?

Im sorry but thats life. If you build something yourself (be it a car, a table or whatever) it will most likely be worse than what the pros build. You can either accept it and play with your unique sub par deck or just netdeck, there is nothing wrong with that.

Also I dont believe the game to be unbalanced. Sure there are some decks that might currently be a bit stronger (patron, secretpala maybe) but its basically impossible to balance a game to the point were all decks on average have a 50% win chance. Every meta have some decks that are slightly stronger than the rest.

Increasing the life total may sound like a good strategy to weaken aggro and combo decks but at the same time it would make control decks much much stronger and only playing control match ups would get really boring quite fast (and I say that as someone basically only playing control). Blizzard also wants to keep the average game time relatively low so that it is something you can do in your free time, in the train/bus etc. Making games last half an hour would strongly go against this.

Game is fine.

Accepting imbalance in a game or even a life situation because it naturally happens is called a naturalistic fallacy, just because something is the way it is, doesn't mean it ought to be. It's fine to have a get back up off the horse attitude, but accepting gross problems or telling people to get good when mechanical game problems have been plague the game for a long time now really isn't helping the problem.

Although the statistics are based on incomplete data, the imbalance in the current game is huge. While personal accounts throughout several threads on hearthpwn have high lighted the problems of the mass paladin problems, paladin is current sitting on top of a 57.93% constructed win rate according to hearthstats, with the closest class being hunter at 55.79%. These percentages line up with the shear power, availability and ease of use of their top decks. Looking at other classes, rogue is at 46.82% win rate across constructed, with shaman barely touching the 50% margin at 50.76%. Most classes hover around the 52% win rate margin (showing a slight bias to uploading winning game information). However even with that bias shaman isn't doing so well and rogue is still heavily negative, that's over a 10% win rate margin according to a large data pool. While only Blizzard has the entirety of best usable data, they do not publicly share their information and this is the best we can offer to our resources. While being skeptical of the data in how representative it is, how random it is and how bias it is is a healthy criticism of the data, all out dismissing such a large pool of collected data as incomplete and just ignoring statics (the hard factor in determining balance) is dismissing objective balance in favor of subjective personal bias. Also note that these 2 bottom classes were mentioned by the OP as the "trash" classes, while he didn't explain why the data supports his answer as well as secret paladin being so powerful. The outlier in this situation is patron warriors incredible power boasting an average win rate of 52.88%, while one can assume the deck is balanced based on win rate here, a combination of data sources is needed to examine this. As stated before the other top decks are easily obtained and easy to play. Patron warrior requires multiple adventure cards such as grim patron and thaurisan with refined versions often running Grom as well (not even considering control warrior decks diluting the win rate). With the barrier to entry higher for warriors than paladins and hunters, there other factor attributed here would be the skill factor and overall decision making. While Patron warrior is widely considered over the top too powerful, it is a hard deck to play involving long games with large amounts of decision making in short periods of time, as well as multiple physical clicks, it's probably not the hardest deck ever but it has a high skill floor (barrier of entry to newer players of the deck). Also worth noting is look at the rank %s, Paladins make up ~27% of ranks 1-5 while warriors make up ~21% of rank 1-2... Shaman and rogues make up 2.4% of rank 1 and even less in ranks 2-3 near about 1%. The class diversity disparity directly correlated to class popularity is shown in the higher ranks, also worth noting is as you get lower in rank, there is a linear decrease in the number of paladins plated and a positive trend in terms with an increase of rogue play showing a huge boon at rank 20 (6.51%) and rank 21(8.52%) . Could it be people who play rogues just all happen to be rank 20 players in terms of quality (and the fact the classes is so unpopular in general)? Kind of hear to but that, warriors are an odd exception supporting the difficulty of entry though cards / skill floor as rank 20 houses ~20% warriors.

Supporting the analysis of the quantitative data, we can use Tempo Storms analysis of the current meta and statistics. While you may dislike or disprove of reynad, he has his current psotion for a reason, he is good at the game objectively and provides a website and team that offer an authority elite perspective at the game, he's probably one of the several sources that offer top end analysis of the game. Currently the top decks are Patron warrior, Secret Paladin, Mech Mage and Dragon Priest, common decks i'm sure everyone has faced on ladder. The description on their tier 1 tags says they are top level decks closest to full optimization   and give the feeling of being "unfair" or "overpowered". It's pretty obvious rogue harbors some pretty horrific decks with 1 at the bottom of tier 3 (a pre-TGT deck) and the other barely even worth mentioning. Mid-Range hunter is tier 2 so there is some merrit to saying losing to hunters could be a factor of player skill as the overall win rate doesn't seam to reflect how strong the deck is, but ignoring the shear power of Secret Paladin at the least (with grim patron also being a contender but less obvious) is really being too optimistic of the current lack luster game balance.

Also while plenty of others have stated, your deck needs to be unfair in constructed and that is true to an extent, unfair advantages still need balancing. Getting a 50% win ratio across all decks is a fantasy but the ideal goal should be to get them as close as possible. As experienced game designers relying on health of the game state improving game balance and features should be one of their top priorities, with no card changes since the under taker nerf post GVG plenty of strategies have gotten out of hand. Star Craft itself was praised for it's good balance while offering asymmetric game play, it wasn't the first game to offer asymmetric game play but when others create such large balance problems people wouldn't catch on as the game becomes boring and repetitive (if one faction wins 80% of the time in some of those failed RTS games, saying oh well life isn't fair you can't balance 50 50 perfectly could be worse isn't a mantra a large corporation selling you a high quality product should do, that's the attitude of an apprentice or young student). Since perfect balance can never truly be achieved and only becomes asymptotically closer to that line, perhaps increasing the degree of proximity to perfect balance is a goal that Blizzard can always improve on.

While not all decks posted by the OP would be considered OP (his freeze mage comment related to the unfun aspects of the deck and non interactivity, not the strength of the deck which is true) there are plenty of truths involved. Not all of the decks need changes but saying the game is currently balanced and "get good" is the solution s a subjective comment that doesn't answer the current problems. The mentality itself is noble but isn't logical sometimes or used in absurd situations. A metaphor would to this would be if in a competition say 2 people competing for strength or speed in a race, one person has a 5 KG weight attached to them while the other has a 30 KG weight to them. While objectively one has a clear advantage and will win more often if they are evenly matched, instead of losing the imbalance in the competition of the weights you simply say no it's fine just train more get stronger when a quantifiable measurement is provided contradicting that statement that there is an advantage at hand, that argument doesn't hold up.

I'm sorry if you disagree and would be very welcome to a counter point but please try to take not just this OP, but the myriad of similar posts on the general hearthpwn forums as a signal that perhaps this could possible be a signal of something wrong. And to others in the thread, your opinion is just as important to this website as the OP, however committing ad hominem and bashing him for his skill is an irrelevant factor here when discussing the balance of the game. It is worth noting however that the OP could be a little less emotional and construct his argument better for future reference, but his point is still reasonably valid in terms of balance problems (although not everything he mentioned really needs to be nerfed). Thank you for taking the time to read this post and please keep this conversation civil.

*Edit* This isn't even addressing the gross arena problems. While weaker constructed classes like shaman and rogue shine more in arena (shaman is still worse than paladin and rogue is a counter pick) warrior has an abysmal performance, paladin again tops the charts in arena with a 62.71% win rate, that's absurd. Arena balance is also important, highly experienced arena players such as Ratsmah and Kripparian have advocated numerous times that paladins are now the strongest class by quite a margin, even topping rogue (Kripp used to think mages were top but swapped opinions) as well as support warrior being by far the weakest. ADWCTA another highly rated arena player and co-runner of the site "HearthArena" has a campaign #arenawarriosmatter due to their very poor performance. In addition to poor expansion card rarity releases and poor hero power not altering the board there are plenty of reasons warrior are so poor in arena atm, Kripaprian alone has several videos in this exact topic (a recent prominent one provided in the source links).

Sources Used:

Hearthstats:  https://hearthstats.net/

Tempo Storm:  https://tempostorm.com/hearthstone/meta-snapshot/meta-snapshot-29-hey-its-me-again

Kripparian's input on Blizzard's arena negligence / imbalance (pertaining mostly to warrior, all chat no game play):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drPz6Pwe2Kc

This is a very lengthy post, and I would like to comment a bit on some of the points you mention.

1. Data usage: Especially using statistics in this way, one should be very careful. There are some quite powerful selection baises, especially concerning win rates. There is a large selection of decks over the various ranks, and many of the win rates might not actually reflect the highest winrate you can expect on average given perfect play, which should be the relevant data as that is the "maximum powerlevel" of the class.

2. Using Tempo Storm as a reference for power levels: Before commenting on this, I would actually like to know how they do their meta snapshot, because I haven't found any info on that.

3. "Getting a 50% win ratio across all decks is a fantasy but the ideal goal should be to get them as close as possible". This, I straight up disagree with. A large margin of the skill in Hearthstone lies within building/choosing the right deck and tech choices to skew win rates in your favor. The ideal situation is not 50% winrates across the board, but preferably that there exists no deck that always have >50% winrate against all other decks.

4. About arena, I totally agree. More balance plz. 

Edit: changed < to >

Quote from MrKruzan jump

This is a very lengthy post, and I would like to comment a bit on some of the points you mention.

1. Data usage: Especially using statistics in this way, one should be very careful. There are some quite powerful selection baises, especially concerning win rates. There is a large selection of decks over the various ranks, and many of the win rates might not actually reflect the highest winrate you can expect on average given perfect play, which should be the relevant data as that is the "maximum powerlevel" of the class.

2. Using Tempo Storm as a reference for power levels: Before commenting on this, I would actually like to know how they do their meta snapshot, because I haven't found any info on that.

3. "Getting a 50% win ratio across all decks is a fantasy but the ideal goal should be to get them as close as possible". This, I straight up disagree with. A large margin of the skill in Hearthstone lies within building/choosing the right deck and tech choices to skew win rates in your favor. The ideal situation is not 50% winrates across the board, but preferably that there exists no deck that always have <50% winrate against all other decks.

4. About arena, I totally agree. More balance plz. 

Thanks for the reply. I'll give a few thoughts about your opinions corresponding to the numbered order.

1.) This is a very valid point, not considering the use of other decks as there will be some portion of the player base that will use other decks or different decks (mainly a problem with mage as freezemage, tempo and mech are very common throughout that particular class). The best I can really say to defend my point is that high end players tend to gravitate towards certain cards and decks due to either intense strategy or just accumulation of win rate due to effective decks. These decks are then labeled as top decks, the fact that other decks exist would really only lower the overall win rate, unless somehow in the current digital age someone has found a secret neo meta deck and neither that person nor anyone who has faced that deck has brought any public information of such a decks existence. It's possible a new meta isn't discovered yet but with the amount of time already elapsed and the collective findings of such a large player base, people discover the ins and outs of games very quickly, hearthstone like other TCGs are no exception. About selective bias, I cannot lie there is going to be some bias in my approach here and perhaps in terms of patron since there is a big explanation of skewing data it could be apparent here, however classes like paladin directly correlate data wise to my testimony along with other posts. I still support patron being too strong of a deck but those conclusions are based on high end players analysis and explanation of data skewing, control warrior alone could skew this data. Assuming most people play the best decks they can use, apparent at higher ranks, you can still assume the other less refined decks weigh down or lower the actual win rate of the top decks. However patron strength could be by design of the OTK mechanic less so than the overall win rate.

2.) This is somewhat explained on the site itself in the deck explanations but I can't help but agree with you here. While someone skilled at this game being paid to make these lists with twitter references for each class is shown, their methods of obtaining exactly the best deck lists is either through trial and error, personal experience or secret methods. As the business of providing people with top end valuable information is lucrative in bringing site traffic for ad revenue and any advantage that gives one site better information than another could be the difference between survival and failure, I imagine their exact methods of determining the ranks are confidential. It's still worth taking the professional opinion from my point of view, but I could see why one would question them. They still offer results with multiple legend ranked players and tournament attendance.

3.) This I'm half way in accordance with you. I understand that mentality and agree, you can't expect any randomly thrown together deck with 20 6 drops to get a 50% win rate, refinement and play testing should refine a deck to a high win rate. Perhaps I mean to say like you, no deck should have all bad match ups, each deck should ideally have at least several good match ups and some of the current top decks have way to many good match ups as they offer so many strengths with little weaknesses in their design. It's acceptable to have a over 50% win rate refined deck but it should at least be contested by another class deck. I guess my point is expanding the possible meta deck list from a couple (tier 1 and tier 2 have only a handful of decks from not even all classes) to at least several decks for all classes. Mage is fine in this respect as probably the most balanced class as it seams to be the primary class Blizzard expected new players to play. However when classes just shutout other classes being so dominant and really don't have tech cards available to stop them it gets absurd. Tech cards in general should at least have some use as well when not countering a tech, kezan mystic is a nice example as you get a bad to acceptable body for the mana with the risk of effect. A 5 mana 1/1 that counters secrets would be a poorly designed card as rock paper scissoring the game too hard. Although BGH is a bit too strong as a tech card because the conditions are not only common/ relatively easy to meet but provides a good body 4/2 as not a huge draw back for taking a tech risk. The fantasy i suggest is the general top decks in respect to each other should average a win rate of near 50% even if they have strong and weak match ups to one another, but your distinction of that detail is well appreciated as I over looked it myself.

4.) Thank you, I imagine this was obvious and one of the most egregious examples of poor balance. Constructed is in better shape but not perfect yet. #arenawarrirosmatter