Hearthpwn

Overall class win-rates aren't indicative of the relative health of the classes - Zoo is fine, at the bottom of Tier 2, and the class win-rate for Warlock is being tanked by all the crappy decks people are choosing to play.

Another limitation of citing overall win-rates is that most folks who play the game are C-students, or worse. The relative health of a class often looks much different when considering the high-end meta-game - for example, Grandmasters routinely showcases Tier 3 HSReplays decks, because those are the best decks in the game when clever folks pilot them, while the Tier 1 HSReplays decks are often considered low-tier among better players.

Quote from Kalidanze >>

 Chi.na is not the "west". The concept of democracy is a (modern) concept of the west. Chin.as way is another way, and we have accept it. The "demonstrants" in Hon.gKo.ng doing riots and violents, da that in the U S A and you get a bullet from pol.ice officer.

"Communism" is a (modern) concept of the west. China's way is not another way - it's a European political philosophy, imposed with enormous violence upon the people of China. No one has to "accept" it.

Hmmm . . .

Maly+Faceless is a win-condition, and not really a tempo play - you only play the combo when you can also play a bunch of burn damage from hand on the same turn. Apparently, the OP didn't have any playable burn damage at all, but played the combo anyway. I suspect Zephrys didn't offer any burn damage because there simply isn't any burn damage that would have helped the OP win the game - the opponent was at 45 total Health. In general, it's best to hold off playing a win condition until it can actually contribute to winning the game, rather than simply playing it to board for tempo.

All things considered, there seem to be lots of misplays, rather than "not so great" offerings from Zephrys . . .

Quote from mortoz >>

Quote from Tzon_e >>

Stupid posts, are stupid. Admins please redirect this to the salt thread, this guy doesn't like the 60% of the decks out there, but still wants to play the game and go to Legend. @OP, take a break from the game, you need it.

 You get me wrong, i actually get a solid 40%  win against murloc decks and no highlander zephyr.

I just wondering where is the fun in those decks since i can't find it entertaining due to the coinflip winning situation or having huge help in a deck where you cheat the draw.

Seems like you play those, maybe you can give me that answer. What is enjoyable? The win and fast ladder? but it doesn't depends on you... isn't that important? 

I think all your answer (except the quest shaman one, that was neat ahah)  are way more salted than my question.

I have the legend card back and i am already lvl 3this season, i just play arena since is more fun now, so no really salted for the ladder. It was a honest question because I am just worried about  the game design direction, seems like they are looking for random new players giving them the chance to enjoy wins and spend more money.

 

Hmmm . . .

You already know the answer to your initial "question" - different people enjoy the game for different reasons. Often, some of those people will enjoy playing the game in a way that you don't enjoy. Apparently, folks who play Zephrys in an Aggro deck are enjoying the game in a way that makes you upset - you suggest that those folks "can't honestly enjoy playing skilfully," and demand that they defend themselves. It's an insulting suggestion, which was presumably the point, so your frequent claims that you are simply asking an "honest question" fall pretty flat - you've already framed your "honest question" in a way that only allows people to agree with you if they actually take the time to respond. Hence, most folks have been trolling you, or pointing you in the direction of the salt thread . . .

Presumably, the OP knows that Zephrys needs to be "helped" in order to influence his choices. If the OP had bothered trading into the enemy Taunt totem, and using his Hero Power before playing Z, he would have restricted Z's choices - with only 5-mana available, Z would have offered BGH instead of BK. The OP gave Z 7-mana to work with, despite knowing that there aren't any single-target removal options at 7-mana - so Z responded by giving him the most expensive option available, in order to make the most efficient use of the mana the OP gave him.

In general, it's simply pilot error to simply drop a blind Z, rather than help the fellow out - it's up to the OP to decide whether he wants to learn anything from it . . .

Hmmm . . .

I think the OP answered most of his own complaints regarding the card - it isn't really very problematic at all, and has rarely been anything other than a tech card for the past six years. Presumably, the devs are fine with otherwise low play-rate cards from the vanilla sets receiving play-rate spikes every so often.

It's also worth recognizing that Quest Shaman itself currently enjoys an inflated play-rate - looking at the HSReplays numbers, the deck has only the 14th-best win-rate overall, despite being the most popular deck on ladder. It isn't even the best Shaman deck, with a win-rate about 3% worse than Murlocs. Quest Shaman only has three "green" match-ups against the ten most-played decks on ladder - that's a lot of red for a popular deck to navigate. All things considered, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to suggest that the deck might drop off in popularity over the next few weeks . . .

The devs have addressed the issue of trading a few times - in very early development, they allowed trading, but decided to go the route of crafting. Long before the game launched, in 2013, they posted their decision-making process on the HS homepage -

"In a trading system, it's very common for a dozen or so rare cards from any given set to contain most of the value and the rest are worth very little. People demand those high-end cards, and their value skyrockets. Can’t afford to buy all of the good rares? You better hope you’re lucky when you open your next pack. So in a trading-based card game, you may get a card that is “worth” something . . . but then you want to keep that card and not trade it away. So your only option is to purchase more packs until you get something worth trading, even if you may not actually want to part with it. That’s not particularly fun. It’s very frustrating, and new players are reluctant to become invested in a card game if they can’t manage to get those cards—in trade or for cash. Crafting allows you to get the cards you’re actually looking for without having to wait for random luck to shine your way, with no need to look for people that have a particular card you want to round out your deck."

Another way of putting it - in a trading-based system, you already need to have something worth trading in order to get the cards you want. But you probably want to keep most of the stuff that's actually worth trading - so you'll need duplicate copies of good Legendaries before you can begin trading, without "feeling bad" about losing a good card. Relatively few people have many duplicate copies of good Legendaries (or good Epics), so most of the people who trade cards will be "feeling bad" about swapping their Druid Quest for a Shaman Quest, for example. So we have dust, instead.

Needless to say, there are pros and cons to each approach . . .

Quote from ParkettbodenAUT >>

Wrong, I use other non-meta decks to climb up the ladder. There are so many control tools now to dominate the aggro decks.

This is true - the format has never been more wide open to deck-builders, and any half-decent player can pilot any half-decent home-brew to rank 5 and beyond. To be honest, that's been true since the format debuted, with only a few exceptions. I've been grinding 500 wins with Egg Priest for a couple months - Wretched Reclaimer was a huge buff for the deck, and I managed to get to Rank 3 from Rank 9 in only 88 games last season.

It might also be worth mentioning - the win-rate for Big Priest on HSReplays has dropped by nearly 3% since the nerf, while the play-rate of the deck has dropped to 4.4%. I suspect those are the lowest numbers for the deck since it became viable, over two years ago. One turn is an eternity in Wild.

In the future, it might be more helpful to the community if the folks running the site featured off-meta decks more often in these sorts of features - after all, it isn't exactly difficult to find deck lists for the most popular decks, but it can be difficult to find (for example) Dane's Armour Shaman or Armour Druid lists, since most folks don't even know that those decks exist . . .

Given the speed of Wild, the nerf to 5-mana is a really big deal - Big Priest already struggled against the fast decks which dominate the format, with VS win-rates ranging from 33%-45% against Odd Paladin, Mech Hunter, Murloc Shaman, Quest Mage, and everything else that can win the game before Big Priest could swing tempo with a busted res-effect. Realistically, pushing those swings back a full turn will likely cost the deck 5% or more in its worst match-ups, while making its good match-ups a point or two worse as well.

Quote from xanzan1 >>

Mage was barely alive to begin with. Deck wasn't tier 1, it didnt have the highest win rate. People just found it annoying to play against. 

If you take a look at the HSReplays numbers, Mage currently has the highest play-rate among all classes, with three different decks having win-rates above 53% near the top of Tier 2. The class also dominated tournament play as recently as last weekend's Masters Tour in Seoul.

All things considered, perhaps "barely alive" isn't the best choice of words . . .

FWIW - Expired Merchant is played in Renolock. In Standard, Expired Merchant doesn't have any good targets, and it's more difficult to kill it the turn you play it - in Wild, you generally only play it when you can kill it and guarantee an extra copy of N'Zoth, Gul'dan, Mal'ganis, or Voidlord, depending on the circumstances. As a result, the played win-rate of the card is about 20% higher in Wild compared to Standard, where it has a played win-rate of only 35%.

As far as Expired Merchant "killing" N'Zoth - the inclusion of the new card has helped spike both the play-rate and win-rate of the deck (and N'Zoth, for that matter). The play-rate for Renolock has more than doubled since the expansion, and its win-rate is almost 4% higher, judging by the HSReplays numbers.

To be fair - Quest Druid is perfectly viable, with a win-rate fractionally below 50%. The deck's worst match-ups are against the decks which are most-likely to be nerfed (Control Warrior, and the various flavours of Galaxy/Conjurer Mage.) Unless the OP has reason to suspect that there won't be a balance patch for Uldum, it seems premature to complain about anyone's "shaft."

My two cents -

It seems likely that the devs will target "old" decks with high play-rates which don't use very many new cards. Judging by the HSReplays numbers, Control Warrior together with the various flavours of Galaxy/Conjurer Mage have combined play-rates of about 22%, and win-rates pretty uniformly above 53%. I'm guessing that the most likely candidates for nerfs will be Mad Genius, Galaxy and CC.

It's also worth considering which decks would emerge as front-runners, after those decks are nerfed. Murloc Paladin is already the top deck on HSReplays, and the decks which are most likely to be nerfed are among its worst match-ups. I suspect Prismatic Lens will get hit.

It seems likely that they won't target any of the other "good" decks - Secret Hunter, for example, has very good match-ups against the decks most likely to be nerfed, so it will suffer a concomitant "soft-nerf" when the play-rates of those decks decreases.

As far as guessing the actual nerfs - the devs like to keep it simple, so mana-costs are the most likely targets, apart from Mad Genius. If I were overlord of the universe, I suppose I'd make Galaxy cost 6-mana, and Conjurer's Calling cost 4-mana. Prismatic Lens might still be busted at 5-mana, so I wouldn't be surprised if the devs increase its cost to 6-mana.

I suspect that the Battlecry effect of Mad Genius might be changed to "Give all Mechs in your hand Rush." As it stands, Standard can't really deal with infinite value generation very well - the deck routinely manufactures 6+ Mechs out of thin air, and turns each of them into removal spells which often trade 2-for-1 or better. Restricting the Battlecry effect to Mechs which are actually in hand might also add some decision-making to the game, since playing Mad Genius on-curve is currently a no-brainer. It's slightly possible, though unlikely, that such a nerf would also open up enough space to see a genuine 20+ minion Mech Warrior deck - the flavours of Warrior which currently use Mad Genius play a handful of Mechs primarily because they are good cards, and only secondarily because they are Mechs. If Mad Genius were tweaked to favour dedicated Mech decks (which was likely the motivation for having made the card in the first place) we might actually see a Midrange Mech Warrior deck emerge from the post-nerf ruins.

In any evert, we'll see in a day or two, I suspect.

Hmmm . . . 

Is there any honest reason to suppose that there won't be a balance patch before the end of the month? Given the response from the balance team after the two most recent expansions, it seems likely that we'll have something announced this week. If so, complaints regarding the "direction" of HS simply seem pointless, since we know that many of the OP's complaints will soon be addressed.

In any event, there are currently twenty decks with win-rates above 50% on HSReplays - I suspect the only folks who can honestly complain about the "direction" of the game are all the precogs who know which of those twenty decks will actually survive ladder attrition over the next few weeks . . .

Quote from LaFlame3500 >>

So I was exploring the "sparse data" section of card win rates on HSReplay.net and I noticed Hemet Nessingwary has a 70% deck wr and a 60% played wr. Anyone know which deck he is used in? Is he worth crafting? My understanding was Hemet was a meme card but his win rates say otherwise

Hmmm . . .

There are 300,000 HSReplays users, and collectively they've played the card a total of 46 times over the past two weeks - presumably, one guy put him in a deck, and then won thirty games with it. You'll notice that Ancient Watcher is one of the highest played win-rate cards in Hunter - but the card has only hit the board 49 times over the past two weeks. Lots of cards have distorted numbers when they barely see play - that's why the site doesn't display them unless you filter the results.

All things considered, I don't think you are missing out if you don't have Hemet in your collection . . .