Hearthpwn

Quote from Ghostwaker >>

Quote from emkarab >>

No, sorry, you just don't know how to play your deck. Why would you ever wait with Helya until he destroys his deck? You need to apply constant pressure and play Helya turn 4 as all DKs do, you have enough plague cards and plague cards generation to fill his deck right after he destroys it. With good pressure you may make him wheel his deck when he wasn't even able to draw symphony/reno or other cards that would slow you down. Obviously he cannot have any board advantage as you are able to destroy 4 1000000/1000000 cards with 2 cards combo anytime you want and you can do it twice, than you steal his best minions multiple times and you have unlimited card generation with acolyte.

 And since you seem to know so much can you suggest how I would have played it in this situation?

 

 Give your hero powered Ghoul Poisonous and trade the Snake Oil or play the hero card. You're probably not gonna win this one, but since you were asking. I would probably play the hero and go face here. The math probably won't check out if they heal or armor up with Reno, but face damage is likely your only out. Your hand is too weak for a board race.

For the plague deck, it's true that you usually have to play your plague cards early to apply pressure. But you also sometimes need to keep them in hand if you have similarly good plays that don't create plagues (if you can deal 3 with the Excavate spell instead of the Plague spell, for instance) when they are low because the late plagues are guaranteed damage. I have already won games by playing Kvaldir and killing it with the Plague Spell right after they destroyed their deck. You absolutely should play Helya early in plague DK, though, because every plague can turn into more than 2 damage and the Frost Plague can actually delay their gameplan. However, I have no idea if this is also true for rainbow. It seems like a tough one. I would also go for the early play most of the time. If they are damaged already and a Helya + additional plague cards are enough, I would always hold back obviously.

The Primus can also create a plague card btw, even a Helya.

Quote from lv426a11 >>

Quote from D_Lord >>

Quote from emkarab >>

Quote from D_Lord >>

Quote from emkarab >>

Quote from D_Lord >>

Quote from emkarab >>

Of course it is a problem. You cannot compete against Warrior as control deck even if you can win with aggro decks. Brann is simply too powerful. Yes, Shaman is also a problem, but Warrior is even more annoying.

 You cannot build ctrl decks because combo decks are too fast and popular. If priest had better tools and could go above 30 health more easily, it would also be good in this meta. If your biggest problem is singleton warrior, run Helya, The Primus and the rest of the plague package in a ctrl shell. You will lose against many other decks (like shaman and both rogues), but cancelling Brann is not that hard and the deck just loses on board afterwards

 You don't see the point. Yes, there is one class able to cancel Brann, DK and he does and so Rainbow DK is tier 2 deck and Plague DK is tier 3 deck at 1k legend and even better below. So their ability to cancel Brann is what makes them viable or semiviable. What other control decks are? Rainbow Mage (tier 2) and Wheellock (tier 3) who can end game fast enough with Sif and Wheel. And nothing else. Shaman Highlander is unplayable, Priest Highlander is unplayable, any other control deck is unplayable because of Brann, not aggro. Remove Brann and you will see a lot more control decks in meta.

 You need to read back on this, bro. I literally said that the multiple aggro decks aren't the problem but that the problem is that too many decks can quickly close out games (like combo decks, or we can call them OTK decks as well). Rainbow Mage and Wheel are OTK decks, too. You literally agree to me here:) Shaman and/or priest Highlander would be more playable if there were fewer OTKs and combos or if there were more cards that gain armor/counter the wheel deck in some way for them. Highlander warrior is not unbeatable by outvaluing them, but in the end, it also turns into a combo/OTK deck with the random 10 mana spells for 1 mana and the Ignis weapon. Other classes lack access to more finishers than Ignis. That's why other ctrl decks suck against warrior.

For the record, this equals 4-5 ctrl decks (depending whether you consider Odyn non-highlander a ctrl deck, which I don't). That's actually not too bad considering the power level of combo decks these days.

What I agree with is that Nature Shaman which can bring you from 30 to 0 turn 5 is a problem. Other OTKs are not, both Wheellock and Rainbow Mage need much more time and are more vulnerable. And Highlander Warrior is now much more popular deck than Nature Shaman (only at 1k legend Nature Shaman is more popular). So if there are 2 decks that you would not be able to beat as  any non-otk/non-dk control, I think the much more popular one is the more problematic one.

 I generally agree because shaman is too fast but it doesn't really matter for slow, grindy ctrl decks whether you get killed by a combo on turn 5, 12 or whatever Sif is doing. The real problem is the lack of counterplay to combo decks in standard right now. You can delay with a Stomper and sure, that might work if you apply enough counter pressure. But there is nothing that can reliably prevent combos or at least delay some win conditions in a meaningful way. Like you should be able to delay by 3 turns at least or to gain enough health/armor to avoid getting one-shot by random card generators and/or insane spell damage amounts. Nobody plays Zola and that Celestial guy just to be able to play Stompers for 4 turns in a row with a coin on turn 5 (although this sounds lika a lot of fun against shaman).

I really hope for a mini set with a meaningful neutral card that counters these things more efficiently and some decent control tools for several classes that don't work right now

The problem with "counter cards" is that they either kill entire decks on their own, or they're not universally strong enough to matter.  Even if they are good enough it becomes a race to see who can draw X card first.   Speaker Stomper wrecks nature shaman and you can pretty much time it to perfection because they have to play flash of lightning the turn before.  Problem is, it's not very good against most other decks so you don't generally include it. 

The bigger issue for me is that I dont think OTK decks really belong in Hearthstone at all.  It's not like MTG where you can counter your opponents cards and do things on their turn.  Classic Hearthstone had no OTK's (that I can think of), and the original design philosophy definitely went against these existing (they even nerfed the classic "force of nature/savage roar" because it was too uninteractive).  The general game rules still follow that existing design though.  I know there were quite a few TTK with Alex, but even then there was more of an opportunity to do something (excluding ice block...), and assembliny the correct components was much more difficult.  These were nearly all 10 mana combos.

As for control tools - it won't matter imo.  As long as Wheel of Death exists, control cant.  Unless they make it unplayable, no classic control/value type decks can ever succeed because that one card will always defeat them. Control decks by their very design cant be fast fast enough to apply enough pressure, and board based pressure is very easy for Warlocks to deal with. 

 I mean you could rather easily counter Wheel if hand destruction was a thing or if there was a card that just swarms their deck with damage cards like the plagues. You wait for the wheel turn and remove it from their hand or add like 10 "casts when drawn" cards to their deck that deal 2-3 each with some garbage card that you have in your ETC for that matchup. By no means perfect and the "race to draw card X" still exists, but hey, better than nothing. Ctrl priest could add something like that. Warlock might still win the game because they can produce a lot of stats on the board, so it's not an auto-win, but chances to win go down by a lot. Of course, the current state of the game is not good and the fact that you have to suggest such cards is a clear indicator of that.

We should, however, stop with these classic HS comparisons. Like HS will never come back to that, all the buffs to past meta-relevant cards that clearly didn't need these buffs indicate this. I have been suggesting a reduction of power level a couple years ago through power reduction in the core set. In reality, this is rather hard to do, simply because new sets need to sell, so they have to have a rather high power level. You cannot just print weaker cards for a year and then reduce the overall power level with the next core set and rotation. We kinda need another format for that. We kinda need another format anyway. And we also need less rng for arena rewards but I am going off topic here

Quote from emkarab >>

Quote from D_Lord >>

Quote from emkarab >>

Quote from D_Lord >>

Quote from emkarab >>

Of course it is a problem. You cannot compete against Warrior as control deck even if you can win with aggro decks. Brann is simply too powerful. Yes, Shaman is also a problem, but Warrior is even more annoying.

 You cannot build ctrl decks because combo decks are too fast and popular. If priest had better tools and could go above 30 health more easily, it would also be good in this meta. If your biggest problem is singleton warrior, run Helya, The Primus and the rest of the plague package in a ctrl shell. You will lose against many other decks (like shaman and both rogues), but cancelling Brann is not that hard and the deck just loses on board afterwards

 You don't see the point. Yes, there is one class able to cancel Brann, DK and he does and so Rainbow DK is tier 2 deck and Plague DK is tier 3 deck at 1k legend and even better below. So their ability to cancel Brann is what makes them viable or semiviable. What other control decks are? Rainbow Mage (tier 2) and Wheellock (tier 3) who can end game fast enough with Sif and Wheel. And nothing else. Shaman Highlander is unplayable, Priest Highlander is unplayable, any other control deck is unplayable because of Brann, not aggro. Remove Brann and you will see a lot more control decks in meta.

 You need to read back on this, bro. I literally said that the multiple aggro decks aren't the problem but that the problem is that too many decks can quickly close out games (like combo decks, or we can call them OTK decks as well). Rainbow Mage and Wheel are OTK decks, too. You literally agree to me here:) Shaman and/or priest Highlander would be more playable if there were fewer OTKs and combos or if there were more cards that gain armor/counter the wheel deck in some way for them. Highlander warrior is not unbeatable by outvaluing them, but in the end, it also turns into a combo/OTK deck with the random 10 mana spells for 1 mana and the Ignis weapon. Other classes lack access to more finishers than Ignis. That's why other ctrl decks suck against warrior.

For the record, this equals 4-5 ctrl decks (depending whether you consider Odyn non-highlander a ctrl deck, which I don't). That's actually not too bad considering the power level of combo decks these days.

What I agree with is that Nature Shaman which can bring you from 30 to 0 turn 5 is a problem. Other OTKs are not, both Wheellock and Rainbow Mage need much more time and are more vulnerable. And Highlander Warrior is now much more popular deck than Nature Shaman (only at 1k legend Nature Shaman is more popular). So if there are 2 decks that you would not be able to beat as  any non-otk/non-dk control, I think the much more popular one is the more problematic one.

 I generally agree because shaman is too fast but it doesn't really matter for slow, grindy ctrl decks whether you get killed by a combo on turn 5, 12 or whatever Sif is doing. The real problem is the lack of counterplay to combo decks in standard right now. You can delay with a Stomper and sure, that might work if you apply enough counter pressure. But there is nothing that can reliably prevent combos or at least delay some win conditions in a meaningful way. Like you should be able to delay by 3 turns at least or to gain enough health/armor to avoid getting one-shot by random card generators and/or insane spell damage amounts. Nobody plays Zola and that Celestial guy just to be able to play Stompers for 4 turns in a row with a coin on turn 5 (although this sounds lika a lot of fun against shaman).

I really hope for a mini set with a meaningful neutral card that counters these things more efficiently and some decent control tools for several classes that don't work right now

Done

Quote from lv426a11 >>

My intention with this isn't to gut any one deck, but instead to try and make more decks viable and slightly slow down the game while also giving you a sense that there is something you could actually do to increase your chance to win. At the moment certain match-ups are basically un-winable for certain decks and that's not great game design.  I haven't proposed any changes to nature shaman because there are already very effective tech cards which people can put in their decks - they work especially well against this deck due to the requirement to anounce that you are going all in next turn.

If I was to try and fix the meta I would change the following...

1) Highlander - "start of game" effect rather than current deck.  Stops entire deck types being countered by one class and makes the highlander limitation impact all decks.  (i.e. you cant just draw your deck super quick then get the benefit of highlander).  Having to play highlander is already a huge limitation and it's just not fun to know that you've probably lost just because the opponent is a death knight. 

2) Brann - "your first battlecry each turn triggers twice".   Wouldn't kill boomboss (or the deck imo) but would slow down some of the bullshit.  The impact might be pretty minimal.

3) Wheel of Death - triggers at the start of your turn instead of the end (effectively giving yout opponent one more turn, as it should have been in the first place).  You could just change the number but then the animation wouldn't fit.  Warlock probably needs some other adjustments too, but I'm not sure what I would target.  Probably location to 4 mana.

4) Steamcleaner, Demolition renovator and Starfish back in core. I know steamcleaner and demolition renovator are objectively bad, but at least having them in core gives you the feeling of being able to do something about Helya, Symphony and locations.  Similarly a neutral non-targeted silence feels like it would be a good fit right now too.

5) Jungle gym - 2 charges.  It puts out a huge amount of damage for 2 mana.

6) Timewinder Zarimi - maybe increase by 2 mana to lessen the cards that can be played alongside it. Not much point tweaking the requirement, because it's already very easy to fullfil it.  It will still be pretty busted imo.

7) Dunno what you do about rogue - the problem (as always) is shadowstep (and now Breakdance).  

No doubt people will disagree, but I have tried to be reasonable about my proposed changes.

 I agree to 1-3, also to the Forge of Wills suggestion, even though I think it's needed against aggro right now.

Adding Steamcleaner would be a lot less needed if the Highlander rule gets changed as you suggested in 1, but sure, why not. We have ETC to find it.

5 Jungle Gym should go to 3 mana instead because the 2nd charge is usually enough and we need to slow Hunter down. Also, Saddle up, or whatever that 3 mana spell is called, should get nerfed to unplayable levels. Or at least "Give the Deathrattle to one minion and its neighbours." Getting 7 Deathrattles for 3 mana is way too strong and can prevent some ctrl decks from doing anything. More silence would also help here, Or the new Animal Companion spell could only reduce your next companion to 2 mana? It draws 3 cards for 2 mana after all.

6 I expect Zarimi to go to 7 mana 4/4, also because of wild.

7  I would nerf Zilliax (not just for rogue) and change the Gaslighter to 4 mana. Not sure how to nerf Zilliax correctly to make it fair but not unplayable, but probably some mana and keyword tweaks. Shadowstep to mana reduction of 1 mana seems reasonable too imo, as much as I love rogue

Lightning Bolt should not be able to target face. 1 mana Spell Damage minions are a bad idea too. "Your next nature spell costs 1 less (also on the same turn or at a later turn)" for the 2 mana shaman draw spell?

Blood Treant should go to 4 mana and Horror to 10 mana.

I am happy for other suggestions.

Quote from emkarab >>

Quote from D_Lord >>

Quote from emkarab >>

Of course it is a problem. You cannot compete against Warrior as control deck even if you can win with aggro decks. Brann is simply too powerful. Yes, Shaman is also a problem, but Warrior is even more annoying.

 You cannot build ctrl decks because combo decks are too fast and popular. If priest had better tools and could go above 30 health more easily, it would also be good in this meta. If your biggest problem is singleton warrior, run Helya, The Primus and the rest of the plague package in a ctrl shell. You will lose against many other decks (like shaman and both rogues), but cancelling Brann is not that hard and the deck just loses on board afterwards

 You don't see the point. Yes, there is one class able to cancel Brann, DK and he does and so Rainbow DK is tier 2 deck and Plague DK is tier 3 deck at 1k legend and even better below. So their ability to cancel Brann is what makes them viable or semiviable. What other control decks are? Rainbow Mage (tier 2) and Wheellock (tier 3) who can end game fast enough with Sif and Wheel. And nothing else. Shaman Highlander is unplayable, Priest Highlander is unplayable, any other control deck is unplayable because of Brann, not aggro. Remove Brann and you will see a lot more control decks in meta.

 You need to read back on this, bro. I literally said that the multiple aggro decks aren't the problem but that the problem is that too many decks can quickly close out games (like combo decks, or we can call them OTK decks as well). Rainbow Mage and Wheel are OTK decks, too. You literally agree to me here:) Shaman and/or priest Highlander would be more playable if there were fewer OTKs and combos or if there were more cards that gain armor/counter the wheel deck in some way for them. Highlander warrior is not unbeatable by outvaluing them, but in the end, it also turns into a combo/OTK deck with the random 10 mana spells for 1 mana and the Ignis weapon. Other classes lack access to more finishers than Ignis. That's why other ctrl decks suck against warrior.

For the record, this equals 4-5 ctrl decks (depending whether you consider Odyn non-highlander a ctrl deck, which I don't). That's actually not too bad considering the power level of combo decks these days.

Quote from emkarab >>

Of course it is a problem. You cannot compete against Warrior as control deck even if you can win with aggro decks. Brann is simply too powerful. Yes, Shaman is also a problem, but Warrior is even more annoying.

 You cannot build ctrl decks because combo decks are too fast and popular. If priest had better tools and could go above 30 health more easily, it would also be good in this meta. If your biggest problem is singleton warrior, run Helya, The Primus and the rest of the plague package in a ctrl shell. You will lose against many other decks (like shaman and both rogues), but cancelling Brann is not that hard and the deck just loses on board afterwards

Quote from emkarab >>

Believe me, Rogue is not a problem in this meta. And even if it was, Ziliax is not the biggest problem in Rogue.

The problem is simple - you have multiple aggro decks and only 1 class that can play control game. That's all there is.

 It is not a big problem in exactly this meta because the meta is very fast, but it is non-interactive and limits design space. And it will inevitably become a problem if only 1 or 2 good additions get released.

The problem is not the aggro decks, the problem is that there are too many very easy ways to end games. If we only had a lot of aggro, you could easily build a good ctrl deck to counter them hard. The problem is that combo decks can also end as early as turn 4 (yes, it actually happened to me yesterday against a shaman)

Quote from Malfurious >>

This meta is atrocious. From untouchable magtheridon for 1 mana to wheel decks with WAY more than enough ways to lock down the board for 4 turns, to keeping Helya but removing Steamcleaner, and of course who doesn’t love double battlecry Warrior control?

They’ve done a terrible job balancing, and an even worse job of making games interactive.

 You even forgot the most problematic card and deck in the game (even if it's not the strongest deck). Zilliax and the rogue deck. Zilliax is an extremely stupid card that has way too many options to be broken in almost any deck. That's why it is played everywhere. The card alone needs a drastic nerf (and I crafted it yesterday). Stealth mech rogue is an uninteractive pile of garbage. If you know what kind of removal options your opponent has, can count to 30, and draw halfway decent, you can have a 100% winrate up to diamond easily. The situation is similar with nature shaman. And it makes no sense that Lightning Bolt can go face

These two decks alone will become stronger with every new standard set or limit the card design of new standard cards for 2 years. Like any good neutral or rogue mechs, any good coin generators for rogue, any good nature spell with face damage that is cheap, any spell damage for shaman...there are many things you basically can't print anymore for 2 years.

I think we should get a 3 mana neutral aura spell that has the effect of Animated Armor for 3 turns. That alone could open up a lot of the meta

Of course, this went way too far because the rewards are definitely not worth it. However, I think this could be the start of some sort of reroll system that works for anyone. Like casual players could reroll this into the original quest and hardcore players could use the upgraded quest (but at like 10 wins for 4500 exp maybe). Tbh, if they adjusted the exp rewards in a more meaningful manner, I wouldn't have any problem with it. Like we just lost a gamemode, so I have more time playing ranked and I can easily grind low wild ranks if my deck sucks in standard. However, if you have an average 50 % wr, 15 wins is 30 games. That is like 4-5 games per day if you play daily. If you play every 3 days (like daily quests basically force you to), you need to play 10-15 games per gaming day. Idk but I don't feel like this is actually crazy high, given that decks like shaman can end games on turn 4 in standard these days and that ctrl is 95% dead in any format anyway.

The exp increase would be very valuable, so I am not generally against the idea of making quests more difficult. The weekly quests that make you play certain (in some cases legendary) cards are pretty stupid though.

Quote from Sableflame >>

Quote from Nightangel42 >>

overall i would be sad if it shut down...

 I would just go to the Wiki and copy off all the cards and make my own hard copy of the game... and fixing all the things I felt needed to be fixed.

... honestly, we should probably all just go do that anyway.

 I can say from personal experience that this is a great idea ON PAPER (get it?) because I did that with another card game (and still have almost the entire card sets of that game on my pc), but as soon as random card generation comes in, you will regret doing that. Unless you buff every card creator to only delivering a limited pool of cards, which then turns the game into boring card creation battles till someone dies.

Regarding game balancing, it wasn't until yesterday that I realised that OG Jaina DK is actually in the arena pool right now...Who the f..k thought that this is a good idea? Like wow...just wow

I have quit this game like 2 or 3 times already and came back with Whizbang, not knowing what I was getting myself into.

Regarding standard, I personally feel like the nerfs were decent overall, but that they missed the Window Shopper/stupid 3-mana weapon from DH combo and there is this 3 mana hunter spell (Saddle up, I think) that refills their board after you clear it. These cards need to be changed to allow for counterplay, but standard is honestly not in a bad state, especially given past metas and experiences and the short time this set is out now. In general, I would wish for a reduction in card strength for standard and Whizbang doesn't seem to be a strong set overall, but I would like to see more reduction. Maybe we should give up on the illusion that a return to old HS will ever happen. I like to finish achievements and that's getting more and more difficult in standard because games are often too short.

I can't say anything about wild but from what I heard, priest is pretty good there. It seems quite balanced, I guess? Also no idea YET about duels, but will try it.

Arena looks fairly low-balanced. The 1-legendary-per-deck rule is nice in theory but I think it should be around pick 10. Why? Because some legendaries are extremely synergistic and it should be a high-risk-high-rewards move to pick them during draft. Also, Harth Stonebrew should be removed from the pool tbh. The card creates toxic moments like freeze mage and unnerfed dh bomb hands that just get you back from any bad position you are in. I have had it work for and against me and it's crazy. In general, some classes are just way too good in arena compared to others (especially dh, hunter, and dk). You need to highroll like crazy during draft to make up for that.

Battleground is honestly more fun than it has ever been for me. I am only playing it casually, though.

Overall, I have seen MANY, MANY, MANY MUCH WORSE states of the game (Stormwind, Shamanstone, Druidstone,...). If anything, I would say that the last year expansions are more problematic than Whizbang. Plagues are annoying because they cancel all singleton cards (and I picked plagues as my loaner deck and will play it on ranked, still sad about how they work). But overall, I am not mad at the state of the game.

The end of exp farming in mercenaries makes me very sad because I actually enjoyed playing the mode and I have no incentive to do that anymore.

Quote from dasev >>

honestly, they should do away with OTK decks period, ruins the game

 No, because you need them in order to stop slow grindy healing control decks from winning every game in fatigue

Quote from HSam >>

Not touching Sonya Waterdancer seems like a mistake to me. Sonya+gift creating 20+ damage burst weapons is not okay.

 Sludge Warlock can deal 25 with one spell too. There is, however, counterplay to both strategies. I personally think that ruining every singleton deck with plagues is another story (not playing any since I don't have the cards)

Thank you for this. If I remember correctly, the paladin deck also has him.