Hearthpwn

I was on my EU account, where I don't have many cards and I tried to create a deck with Prince Malchezaar in the hopes of getting some good wild legendaries. However what I got was cards like the new ones that have the Start of the Turn effect, which are useless in a deck not built around them. Of course with the frozen throne expansion, Malchezaar was made even worse with the inclusion of other princes that require your deck to not have cards that cost certain mana. 

That made me think, what are some of the non-basic cards that are getting worse with each expansion, preferably because of some reason like Malchezaar, where new cards make it useless or a burden to have a in a deck?

Quote from Pedrolo >>

I got one deck that I could continue to play in standard without changing ANY card, my Beast Priest deck I play to complete the Play X beasts cards. But with the expansion it got much better, now I can add a playable legendary, Chameleos!

Quote from Rapidosamurai >>

What is rotation?

When I came back to Hs after the rotation, every single one of my decks that I had created in the game was not eligible for the new Standard format. I am interested to know if anyone had a deck of theirs that was still eligible and what was that deck? I am sure the vast majority of didn't have one because of all the good cards from the old sets but you never know and I am really curious.

By this I mean literally your decks, in the game.

Quote from Lyra_Silvertongue >>

 

Quote from EmoGit >>

 

Quote from jeepers1704 >>

 

Quote from EmoGit >>

My best plan against warlock is usually murmuring + oracle on turn 5 to mill their best cards if it's a slower start for them.

 

You're playing a pile of jank friend. Sorry you had to hear it from an a-hole but I call em like I see em. Milling cards doesn't accomplish anything and putting oracles in your deck in wild against the entire field of decks is bad unless you're doing something super busted.

 

 I have fun with my deck and it's not bad against other decks, otherwise I wouldn't have made it to rank 13 so far. I don't know why you're even attacking my deck, kid. The issue is the Naga Sea Witch which can get a board full of 8/8s on turn 5 and there's not playing around that. 

Maybe not for shaman yet, but there most certainly are answers. I most frequently play control lock in wild ladder, preying on aggro paladins. Due to the fact that giant and Big Priest highrolling on turn 5 meaning an otherwise automatic loss for me I started running double Doomsayer and Treachery. Guess what? Since giant players know that Twisting Nether is still 3 turns away, and since they don't expect a warlock to answer an all-in giant board so early they don't play around a full board clear and they lose. 

Druids also have Poison Seeds, which is very effective. Paladins have always had access to Pyro + Equality. Warriors only need Brawl. Mages have nova + doomsayer, or just nova into pushing face. If the giant player doesn't highroll on turn 4/5 with giants then the available counters opens up even more with turn 6 and later (Light Bomb, Equality + Consecrate, Psychic Scream, increased highrolling with Big Priest into repeated statues/rags/etc). 

Quote from Maukiepaukie >>

This is why I think wild is a complete joke. Come at me, wild elitists. Wild is full of broken cards and broken combos that make the powerlevel completely absurd. Now that it is also home to the most cancerous archetype in the history of HS, jades, I don't visit it anymore.

Quote from Lyra_Silvertongue >>

 

Quote from EmoGit>> 

 There's a difference between a deck being annoying and a deck being broken and unbalanced. In what card game does it make sense that you can play 4 8/8s on turn 5 or 6 + whatever kabal lackey or weapon pulls out which is sure to be a 9 drop or a cheated out 5 drop? I understand the purpose of Wild and you're talking about those who get their decks nerfed giving up on the game. Well think of the people who get shafted by broken decks like these time after time and if you play Wild, the rate at which you face Naga Sea Witch decks goes up after rank 10. At some point, when your player base is getting bigger and more and more people flood to Wild because their favourite decks get moved there, you have to start thinking of them and how they don't want to face cheap and broken decks that are no fun to play against and against whom you will definitely lose if you fail to draw a card. Aggro decks are annoying, Naga Sea Withc decks are just broken.

The beauty, which is is so frequently missed, in card games is that you can create counters in new sets that serves to weaken older strong decks, and this can be accomplished without always needing to introduce more power creep and/or extremely specific 'crab counters' that feel bad to lose to if you're playing the countered deck and/or bad to use the counter when not facing the deck.

For example, say that we created a 4 mana minion that was something along the lines of a 3/3 with the battlecry of "Reduce all other minions' attack to 3." So more or less like a weaker Tarim, since you're not able to buff your own small minions to 3, but the card is very strong against a deck that seeks to highroll very big and threatening minions early on. The card could be made a neutral legendary, or even placed in one specific class' toolkit. Tri-class cards could even be introduced again, giving three classes the card. This is just one of probably many easy ideas for how to counter giants in a non-broken way. However, both game designers and players fail in many regards to either realize this or actually implement it.

I feel it is better to introduce counters that fit the above requirements in the first part of the post than to nerf things because people don't like them, in probably 95% of cases or more. Nerfing cards is often lazy design when you can have game designers be innovative and let both new and old cards be used in ingenious ways to push old decks down the totem pole. The problem occurs when designers are lazy and uninspired to create such counters and/or players are too damn impatient to wait for new sets because they insist on qqing to get decks they don't like to be pushed out instead of playing around them.

I'll end this post with a little shifting of gears to prove a point. Say T5 wanted to "save wild" from the powerhouse decks that were introduced with the last handful of standard expansions (recognizing that yes these decks were also playable in wild at that point as well) and decided to massively lay the nerf hammer on all of these decks that would eventually only rotate to wild. What do you think the response of the players who liked these decks would end up being? Would they be as keen to go to wild if frequent nerfs happened in the wild format? I can't but help picture of a very memey image of; "You get a neutered deck, you get a neutered deck, EVERYONE gets a neutered deck!!"

 

Quote from jeepers1704 >>

 

Quote from EmoGit >>

My best plan against warlock is usually murmuring + oracle on turn 5 to mill their best cards if it's a slower start for them.

 

You're playing a pile of jank friend. Sorry you had to hear it from an a-hole but I call em like I see em. Milling cards doesn't accomplish anything and putting oracles in your deck in wild against the entire field of decks is bad unless you're doing something super busted.

Quote from jeepers1704 >>

Hey just curious, you're upset that this happened on turn 5 but could your deck beat that on turn 8 or turn 12? Your deck seems underpowered in general and games can be lost during deck building.

Quote from Lyra_Silvertongue >>

 

Quote from EmoGit>> 

 

The fact of the matter is that more and more people prefer wild after each rotation, since their favourite decks are in wild. They should start caring about it, especially after rotations. I know there's no point in saying that lol but it's just annoying.

Whose decks get to stay as functioning decks due to not being nerfed, or even obliterated by being made unplayable in every format, and which decks are nerfed?

People seem to have this grossly incorrect stance that most players only want the game to be a control-ruled trade based attrition game, or a game where games are over in five minutes. There are scores of people who love combo/OTK decks, control decks, aggro decks, midrange decks, etc. If you are going to appease the general playerbase as a whole then you're going to have to leave at least some annoying things from all of those archtypes to retain as big a playerbase as you can. You can't realistically have everything that annoys anybody to be nerfed and removed from the format every single time. Let that sink in for a minute.

I also think that those players who have never played a physical card game fail to realize that the wild format in Hearthstone is the digital version of non-banned list formats in physical card games. Many card games don't make balance checks on that format because the format is intentionally left alone so you can often do whatever you want in the format with the cards you own. The problem with a digital card game and asking for balance checks is not just breaking this traditional practice of leaving the format alone, but it also poses the issue of completely removing some decks from the game in any format (depending on how nerfs are implemented in wild), even to the point that you can't even play those decks in isolation just against your friends because the cards no longer work the way they used to. Do you really think T5 is excited about essentially deleting decks from some of their playerbase's deck lists. If I were a game designer I know I would be quite hesitant about disrupting my potential customer's collections in such a permanent fashion. 

 

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

First, this is Wild, Blizzard focus their balance efforts in Standard and even then a good few problems arise there.

Second, they made this change last year, it was a stupid change to Naga Sea Witch which allowed this situation to happen, a situation that is in my opinion, completely illogical. Only a few classes can actually deal with a board like that on turn 4 with the coin and that means it shouldn't be in the game. Forcing people to use classes to be able to answer something like that that early in the game is not a good thing for the game. Unfortunately, I'm not sure when it will be happening.

That is... If they ever decide to change it. Yes, Aggro can obliterage these decks, but we are back to the same issue as Quest Rogue. Control decks cannot handle that ever unless they are of specific classes, meaning it will build the possibilities of deck creation around it. The Naga deck likely has an acceptable winrate, but it forces players to go into Aggro decks with most classes because that is the only option to handle them due to lack of tools to handle that kind of board that early in the game.

Just like very few tools existed to handle multiple 1 mana Charging 5/5 minions on turn 5. You either played Aggro, or you lost as Control. Without having any cards available in the game to use in case you wanted to be able to answer them.

I'm in favour of having as many strategies in the game as possible. AS LONG AS we also have tools to deal with them. I don't mind if my opponent makes that board on turn 5 IF I can play any class in the game and have an option to go to my collection and Tech any deck I want to be able to deal with that. As it stands, that is not the case.

Quote from jeepers1704 >>

It's balanced in the sense that Naga Giants has a pretty bad win rate and gets murdered by paladins before it can go off a good chunk of the time. Sorry about your one loss though, good luck getting your star back with jank midrange shaman.

Quote from Lyra_Silvertongue >>

 

Quote from EmoGit >>

 

Quote from Pinkle_Dadandy >>

I'm sure blizz will fix this one dayyyyyyyyy

It's fun to poison seed warlocks with druid when this happens but that requires timely luck

 

 I can imagine but they usually have a board full of giants by turn 6, so if you fail to draw a very specific card by then, you lose, which just makes Wild not fun at all at a certain point

This may seem like a really bad thing that is only unique in match-ups against giant decks in wild, but this is the case in other match-ups as well (the needing of a specific answer in your deck or you lose). 

Take Spiteful Priest for an example. If you don't draw Duskbreaker, or discover one, by turn 4 or 5 you lose against any hyper aggressive deck.

So many decks also lose to Big Priest by turn 3-6ish if they don't draw a specific answer either.

I'm sure there are other examples if I really thought of them, but what I'm getting at is how is the giant issue requiring the opponent to have a specific answer to win really anything that is unique that doesn't already exist in wild?

Quote from Pinkle_Dadandy >>

I'm sure blizz will fix this one dayyyyyyyyy

It's fun to poison seed warlocks with druid when this happens but that requires timely luck

Quote from DominusP >>

 

Quote from Odin1Eye >>

So he got lucky and you got unlucky. Are you running devolve, volcano?

 

 I don't think transforming them into arcane giants would help