That is literally the whole point of cards like Arcane Keysmith -- to make Secrets more viable by making them harder to play around. There is no point in calling it a Secret if everyone knows what it is and can easily play around it.
But this isn't just about Secrets -- this philosophy extends to all cards that create random cards. Part of their power (and this is included in the mana cost calculation) is that they give you a tiny scrap of hidden information in a game where everyone knows everyone else's decklist.
Knowing the meta is important, but it is not and should not be the only skill in Hearthstone. Being able to hedge against and react to a little surprise every now and then is often just as crucial.
3
To go into a little more detail on this, let’s compare Tickatus to a card that (quite rightly) got nerfed recently, Boggspine Knuckles. Since I’ve hailed “just use Elysiana” as a control counter to Tickatus, while I was vehemently against the argument “just use Stickyfinger” as a counter to Boggspine, it would be hypocritical if I didn’t explain my reasoning.
Boggspine warped the entire game around it and almost everything was forced to tech heavily against it with 1 (or more often 2) Stickyfingers to combat it, including at the top level of ladder play. This is the mark of an overpowered card. When you look at Tickatus in the same light, it isn’t remotely close to achieving this. Any deck with an “attack my opponent” win condition can crush Warlock before Tickatus is even relevant or apply enough pressure to make playing him impossible. What we are looking at is a narrow deck archetype that has an INHERENT WEAKNESS to having their cards milled. Given that control decks are inherently weak to mill, it is a perfectly reasonable solution to run anti-mill tech in these decks to (significantly) improve a miserable matchup. This it not the same as 80% of field being forced to run heavy weapon tech because a weapon is so oppressive that barely anything can breach a 45% win rate against it without doing so.
Improvements to combo decks to make them more Tickatus proof are already being explored. Combo decks do not have to be 1 dimensional OTKs reliant on single legendary cards. Take a look at the current ETC Warrior lists for example. Players have forgone the pure version of deck in favour of an Enrage/ETC hybrid. This deck has a number of damage dealing combos, including Kor’kron Elite combos ranging from 12 to 28 damage, and techs in an ETC combo capable of dealing up to 42 damage under the right conditions. This shift is happening because the standard ETC control warrior had all its eggs in one basket, and disrupting ETC or playing round it by leaving your board sufficiently empty to deny enough rush minion attacks was extremely easy for slow decks to accomplish, and completely denied their only win condition. The result of the shift is a multi dimensional deck that can apply pressure in the early game and has tons of reach with a variety of late game combo plays, making it both significantly more difficult to get into a comfortable position to even drop Tickatus against in the first place, and significantly more difficult to disrupt simply by fucking a few random cards into the bin.
Better deck building and better play will show Tickatus up as the very reasonable card it is as the format develops.
6
Control players are refusing to main deck Elysiana, so no, this is not unfair in the slightest. A direct card for card counter exists and players are not using it. I laddered to legend this month exclusively with a control Shaman list that had no win condition except for fatigue. If Tickatus missed my Elysiana (he’s effectively only 1 in 6 to hit her each time he’s played and I would keep her in the mulligan and play double far sight to get to her ASAP), they had absolutely no chance to win because I could clear every single board and had up to 4 heals for 20 per game. As my deck was -10 +10, they fatigued sooner due to offset from life tap. I was more than happy with a 70% win rate in this matchup.
Warlock cannot have a late game control deck unless it has this kind of option, because life tap is counterintuitive to the deck’s win condition so without cards like Azari and Tickatus, warlock is limited to one old, shitty and boring aggro concept that they’ve had since the dawn of hearthstone (since apparently devs won’t allow handlock or any other decent midrange warlock deck to happen again for some weird reason).
As far as beating combo decks goes, I have actually always loved combo breakers in hearthstone because there is such limited disruption available. I like that Tickatus has a pretty much even shot at disrupting a combo. When you actually run the numbers, he is a lot fairer than Mindrender Illucia, who gives you significantly more control over your opponent’s win condition, and a significantly higher chance to hit it (especially as most current combos have a required set up or conditions that must be met before they work, you often know exactly when to play her, while Tickatus is mostly just random, late game vs C’thun being a rare exception).
What I would like to see, rather than a nerf to Tickatus, is a skill-based counterplay card released when Elysiana rotates (something akin to Dirty Rat from MSoG) as I do think he will become a toxic presence once his hard negator is removed.
3
Unfortunately you can’t balance a game around the casual player base, because you will completely unbalance the game at a competitive/professional level. If a card appears overpowered, but is countered by more skilful play, nerfing it is not the correct decision.
Tickatus is an awkward card for some decks to deal with, but if you do the maths, it isn’t remotely favoured to cause an auto-win against most of the current combo decks. This is due to the fact that most of these decks are free to run multiple copies of the majority of their combo pieces, while hitting the key legendary (which you would absolutely keep in your mulligan against Warlock if you had it) is 1 in 3 at best assuming you can play Tickatus twice before 20 cards are drawn, which is not guaranteed.
If you’re laddering with a control deck that’s designed to win the game by grinding your opponent out, and Tickatus Warlocks are popular at your elo, PUT ELYSIANA IN THE DECK. Once again the Warlock is no better than 1 in 3 to mill her and she completely negates 2x Tickatus, so if your deck has an inherent weakness to having its cards milled, maybe fucking tech against it.
2
They did try something like this in tournaments before with specialist format, but it just created an extremely narrow Rock Paper Scissors meta. Week 1 of the first season of Grandmasters in 2019 was control Warrior mirror matches all week and it was excruciating. While I like the idea of being able to mitigate some of your poor matchups with a side deck, Hearthstone doesn’t feel like the right game for it given how effective the tech cards can be at dismantling entire strategies, which effectively squeezes a lot of decks out of the meta since everyone can just back pocket some hard tech against them.
1
Sounds like something a mouth breather would say 🧐
2
I’m interested in compiling the best and worst minion combinations you’ve seen come out of Jandice Barov.
I’ll kick things off with a game i was spectating yesterday, in which my friend’s Rogue opponent coined out Jandice on turn 4 on an empty board and rolled Twilight Runner and Tundra Rhino. Developed 9/8 worth of stats, sent 7 damage face and drew 2 cards for 5 mana.
What are some of your favourite Jandice RNG moments?
2
If you give control of Silas to the opponent when you play him, he doesn’t corrupt cards in your hand. Stupid interaction but that is how it works.
8
😂
2
This deck is really, really good. It can just absorb your opponent’s entire deck. Ashtongue OTK and Lifesteal DH are very tough but you can high roll with Hecklebot. Everything else feels very beatable.
1
I expect Blizzard have their eye on the deck, since it does seem like a glaring problem, but logically they need to wait to see if players can calculate a (reasonable) way to reduce its power level through deck building and gameplay decisions over the next couple of weeks before rushing to nerf the deck. By reasonable I mean finding a number of lists that have a good matchup against evolve Shaman, not sticking double weapon tech in every deck.
Blizzard are quite well known for this approach. In the early days of Starcraft 2, the Terran Marauder spam build was destroying everything on ladder. Rather than nerf it immediately, they waited for new strategies to evolve and for players to become more proficient at dealing with it. The trend they saw develop over time was that the build maintained a high win rate in bronze, but the higher you looked up the ladder, the lower it’s win rate became. They correctly deduced that the Marauder wasn’t an overpowered unit, it was simply countered by getting better at the game.
Currently this doesn’t look to be the case with Evolve Shaman. It has the highest play rate AND win rate at high legend, so I suspect it will receive a nerf before the end of January.