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- DeadlyKittenMtl
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1
Vicious Syndicate data is based on serious players; Blizzard has the stats on all games, and they probably see much more balanced numbers.
Bad/new players are going to hop on the flavor of the month and drag down the aggregate win rate. This is why Blizzard is going to be less concerned than the community, and why they are patient about balancing.
However, the belief that we can have 9 balanced classes is mistaken. Blizzard has made fundamental design choices that makes Hearthstone an excellent casual game, as evidenced by the size of the player base. But those decisions make ranked play almost impossible to balance. Furthermore, we are not back in the early 1990s, when Magic players had to read about decks in monthly magazines; the meta settles out within a couple of weeks, and everyone gravitates towards the consensus best decks.
The only way to even things out is to add variance - the dreaded RNG that everyone rages about. Since there is no variance in the mana system, every deck is going to gravitate to playing the best spells/minions on curve (or stall until a high mana "combo" is assembled in hand - which can always be cast by a specific turn, or a specific sequence, like Blizzard-Flamestrike-Alextrasza(?)-<burn>, or Dr, 6, Dr. 7, Dr. 8.) In such an environment, there is no way that there will be 9 top tier decks; only a few will make the cut. The decks that have the highest odds of assembling their "combo" earlier is going to dominate less reliable, slower "combos".
You either need to play casually (my choice), or just accept that you need to play one of the three currently overpowered decks in the format, and that Blizzard will keep rotating which are the favored classes to keep the complaints under control. A player who is used to a particular deck than the top three might get a better win rate than the official matchup odds, but they are choosing to play with a handicap, which is not what you should be doing if you want to be competitive.
2
WiseAsPlato,
You talk about scientific evidence. Do you have any evidence that control cannot beat aggro in Standard? I pointed out the Tempo Storm rankings, which argued that many control decks were favoured against Aggro Shaman.
If people thought that aggro had an advantage, they would just tech in more anti-aggro cards. Since they see no need to do that, the people building those control decks think your theory is dead wrong.
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Short version
I do not think the competition around rank 20 is that bad for a new FTP deck. However, I found that the quality of decks at rank 18 was much higher than it was before rotation. I have not had much time to try ranking up this season, however.
Long version.
I just set up a new account after rotation so I could play challenge matches against my kids. The 13 free packs helped a lot; I got a Twin Emperor in them, so I have half decent C'Thun decks.
I found that the competition was somehwat stronger in ranks 25-20 than I remember. The free packs have allowed people to build decks with a finisher, which Basic cards could not do before. (Wild was particularly rough, which is not too surprising.) I used to be able to get up to rank 20 with just the Basic prebuilt decks, but that would be harder now.
Once I hit rank 20, it was much harder, but I did not see a lot of players that seemed to be farmers. The experienced players had decent decks, but not particularly overpowered. (The decks might scare a newer player, since they would be less familiar with the cards.) Casual had much better match ups, so I am now doing the quests there.
Since I was wasting a lot of time on that secondary account, I played very little on my main account this month, which has a fairly strong collection. I am finding that it has been much harder to rank up, I hit a wall of Control Warriors at Rank 18 last week. Since I was trying to learn how to play Freeze Mage, I did not get very far. Based on my experience, it would be a real fight to take a new F2P deck beyond rank 18 (although it may get easier closer to the end of the season).
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Another "why doesn't everyone play control?" thread?
I have not been playing too much Ranked this season, but around rank 18 North America are at least half control decks. I queued into 3 Control Warriors in a row the last time I played. Before rotation, I was running into tons of Control Priests.
Although you can say "who cares about rank 18?", that is where the bulk of the player base is, according to Blizzard's stats.
And what else are people going to play? Most homebrewed midrange decks are going to be crushed by all the people playing Control Warrior. Midrange threats are not enough to finish off greedy control decks. You have no choice but to play a highly efficient aggro/tempo deck if you want a chance to get past Rank 20, or else cut and paste the expensive Control Warrior (or Miracle Rogue) deck like everybody else.
From a design standpoint, I think midrange needs more powerful tools.
I would rather put someone out of their misery (or lose myself) in five minutes with Zoo, rather than take 20 minutes to do it with Control Warrior.
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The Innervate/Loatheb combo in this weeks " Top 2" Tavern Brawl was fun.
I am only planning on dusting Maexxna. (Feugen/Stalagg were used in my Renolock, so I will only disenchant then if I replace them.)
Even though I expect to mainly play Standard, Wild is probably going to be useful for getting quests done quickly. If I have overpowered decks and don't rank up in Wild, should have a win ratio much greater than 50% for quests that I do there. So keeping Dr. Boom is worth a lot more in frustration reduction than another Standard epic.
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Tribal synergy can liven up limited (Arena) games. In Magic limited, you can decide to go for a tribal synergy strategy, which means you may be drafting "inferior" cards that are from your chosen tribe. The limited tribal support in Hearthstone makes it hard to follow such a strategy (other than Beast Hunter), which is one reason why I tend to find Arena to be a relatively bland format.
Tribal decks will also make Wild more and more attractive over time for casual players.
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The 13 free Old Gods packs is probably enough at the beginning, unless you really want to build up a C'Thun deck.
Once you have built up your Classic collection, you might think about the first wing of LoE. It gives you Reno Jackson, which you could use to build a budget Warlock Reno Jackson deck. Since you will only have one copy of most of the rares and epics anyway, you will not lose much power by making your whole deck one copy of cards. (Warlock is the easiest for Reno Jackson decks, as you can more easily draw him with the hero power.) The wing also gives you some other useful cards.
I helped set up a new FTP account for my kids just after the launch of Old Gods, and I think I had enough Classic packs to start saving up for the first wing of LoE.
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Agree with the original post.
I created a new account after rotation, and C'Thun definitely made the experience better. In a new account with just a few packs opened, all you can do is build a midrange deck. (Even a face deck took time to build - you need to unlock some adventure wings to get a credible face deck.)
The problem with the beginner midrange decks before is that you had no finisher. You might be able to keep up in the early game, but you would be either be overwhelmed by the higher quality aggro, or the value cards in the strong decks. This is why everyone was desperate to craft Dr. Boom (or build a face deck).
C'Thun now gives you a finisher. This way you have a deck that has at least a chance against stronger decks. And perhaps there may be a greater diversity amongst new players. In a few months, they might not want to sink resources into the LoE wings needed for Aggro Shaman, since rotation will loom.
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I started up a new account after rotation, and rank 25 in Wild was brutal. (Wild was not actually locked for me, even without any Wild cards. Presumably because I unlocked Wild on my other account?)
I was up against experienced players with decent Wild decks who presumably had skipped playing ranked last month, and generally got wrecked. On the other hand, the rank 21-25 queue in Standard was much filled with new players, and the deck match ups were generally fair.
Although taking on the Wild decks with my Basic deck was an interesting challenge for me, I doubt that new players would enjoy the games. Locking the interface was the right decision; I could see a lot of people uninstalling if their first experience playing against other players resembled what I ran into. (Yay, Face Hunter with Mad Scientist and Haunted Creeper!)
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From the point of view of easy quests, being able to complete them in Wild around ranks 15-20 for classes you do not have strong Standard decks for will be useful. If I rank up with my strong decks, I can be in a position where I can't complete quests for some classes, without first losing tons of games in Casual (or being able to do it in the Tavern Brawl). So I think that keeping at least a couple viable Wild decks will be a good idea, even for a FTP account.