Greetings HS community,
I am Talaria. I have been following HS since open beta with a break that bridged naxx and got me back in near the release of GvG. I have placed high legend last season so that I'm not a terribly bad player and I'd like you to listen to me for a bit (I don't main secret paladin Kappa).
With Standard we are losing Naxxramas and GvG. Both will be available in Wild mode which I will begin to discuss.
Wild mode is colored dust on the eyes of the HS community. — The way they have introduced it to you is as a legit way to play with your whole collection with a ranked ladder of its own. The first clue that this is not so is that you will not be able to purchase Naxx and GvG anymore — they want newcomers playing Standard — but then they say that official tournaments will be held in Standard, thus shifting the focus of the whole community to Standard (streamers will focus on Standard and major events will be held in Standard and these two factors define the focus of the community). Hence Wild ranked ladder will be "playing against the stream with benefits" — the benefits being having the same rewards as Standard ladder — but ultimately it will be a lower competitive scene in which players with a high rank cannot claim much because Standard ladder is the place where the real action is happening.
Standard ultimately impoverishes Hearthstone. — Assuming old cards are not coming back under new designs and considering the last expansion Hearthstone didn't make a turn for the best and beautiful cards from Naxx and GvG like Voidcaller, Loatheb and Mad Scientist and the great decks they made possible will be buried with Standard. Cards are beautiful in two ways: they make great plays possible or they make great decks possible. Now some decks are so powerful on their own that they can lock the metagame — like Secret Paladin — and some decks are so powerful in the right hands that they can lock competitive play — like old Patron Warrior. At these two points the HS team failed to keep up with the HS community. They nerfed Patron Warrior into the ground. Now they will nerf Secret Paladin by taking out core cards like Dr. Boom and Shielded Minibot. They know this to be a problem and they seem to be taking out two birds with one stone.—
Standard only makes sense as a business model. — At some point after TGT Ben Brode walked into Dragon's Den and made a deal with Kevin. It went something like this:
— "Hello dragons. We have a great board game going on." - Ben Brode
— "You need to set it on fire." - Kevin O'Leary
— "But its online and its making millions of dollars."
— "Keep talking."
— "Our current business model prevents us from acquiring new customers."
— "Well then change it."
— "We could change it to model B but we would impoverish the game and make our loyal customers very unhappy."
— "Who cares? You will be making more money! I will only invest in it you if you change it."
— "Alright Kevin we have a deal."
Or somewhere along these lines. But the truth is this is a poor solution to the problem of a locked metagame and a great solution to the sustainability and scalability of Hearthstone as a business. You will have to invest less to buy yourself into the game and the metagame will change more often so that people will remain interested but at the same time many beautiful decks will die and many more beautiful decks will never come to be.
Are you with me?
Update: I have come to understand that rotations are a healthy path for Hearthstone but I strongly believe Standard is not what we need. To put it bluntly, there is no reason why Nozdormu will be part of the foundational set and Loatheb or Emperor Thaurissan wont be. Following on the suggestion of ThisWasTheOnlyUsernameAvailable I recommend everyone to watch Brian Kibler's Thoughts On The New Standard Format.
3
They aggro better than hunters too.
1
So your problem with arena is that the RNG in the draft is no longer compensating so heavily for shitty play? Cry me river.
3
These are bots, they are being used to grind out a few cards/gold, then the account is sold. Because the world can afford to waste energy/resources like this right? Worse than crypto, it's enough to make you cry into your cornflakes.
2
Younglings don't remember the previous two Mega-hunter metas.
- Undertaker Hunter, tier S deck.
- Face Hunter, top of tier 1 deck.
Also there have been multiple metas where hybrid hunter and mid-range hunter have fluctuated from tier 1 to tier 2.
Personally I like deathrattle hunter...its the slowest successful hunter deck we've seen, it has some really cool combos and it's full of flavour.
Emerald spellstone though, that card is just poorly designed, the pay off too high and too early at turn 5 if you mulligan with luck. High roll cards that come into play too early suck for everyone, and reduce the skill in the game.
Aggro hunter is always bad for the game, but sadly its consistantly been hte deck blizzard seems to want new players to use, as its so cheap. Either that or some kind of aggro paladin. Pay-to-have-fun sucks.
1
Build something yourself...sub rank 10 almost anything I throw together works in wild - Mechwarrior with all the GvG card +boom was a laugh. Shaman with every good overload card + sepllstone and the overload unlockers. Beast druid with menagerie wardens for copying. Reno legendary warrior with 20/30 cards legendaries....the possibilities are endless.
The cool thing about wild is when a new exapansion comes out, you can take the bad cards from it that are waiting for stanard synergy and get it immediately with old cards to create some fun thats powerful enough to win plenty of games. Never dust anything and treat wild as the true casual/meme mode in the game. Don't worry about climbing too high, once you starting hitting all the try hard big priests and mill rogues it's time to go back to arena.
10
I don't really watch streamers though, I just play because I enjoy it. I don't really care about the pro scene either.