Zeddy is the most salty/toxic dude out there. All he does is complain. Hes a bottom tier HS streamer whos only relevance is when he complains.If he is the white knight for the HS community, then I dont want to belong to that clique, so give me trolls and goblins all day rather than that virtue signalling dweeb. He was also responsible for getting Zalae banned from GM for a year, the day before the big tournament was about to start...all over unproven claims from Zalaes ex girlfriend. He went on a social medie storm calling for Zalae's head all based on 1 persons claim!! It became a modern day witch burning, and I lost all respect for Zeddy after that episode.
And by the way, hes not the only guy trying to make HS a better game. In fact, many streamers, players and pros tweet, suggest very frequently, trying to make the game we all love better.
1
FWIW - I'm a Hunter and Rogue main. From what I see, everyone seems a bit tilted that "their" class has been gutted. Lots of folks complaining about Mage and Druid on the subreddit, for example. The power level of most classes seems a good deal lower when compared to the current evergreen sets.
On the positive side, Headhunter's Hatchet was good enough to see play during Rastakhan, and it might be a serviceable replacement for Eaglehorn Bow going forward. Bearshark isn't bad as the Animal Companion replacement, and Quickshot isn't terrible as the Kill Command replacement.
On the negative side - it's disappointing to see the same Secrets. I had hoped to see Wandering Monster, Cat Trick or something else from Wild. If I'm not mistaken, the only Hunter card that was buffed is likely still unplayable (Lock and Load requires a spell-heavy build, and lots of mana - but Hunter typically doesn't want the game to go long enough for L&L to be worth playing.) The new card (2-mana 1/1) is likely the weakest among the batch of 29. Highmane hasn't seen play since Kathreena was in Standard. Same with King Krush. Hyena sees play for a few weeks every year or two. Same with Deadly Shot. Arcane Shot isn't good enough to currently see play in Face Hunter. Dire Frenzy likely won't be worth it without some kind of card draw, and some kind of Charge (Tundra Rhino is gone, and so is the Wolf - but Trampling Rhino might work, I suppose, especially if "trampling" becomes a new class pseudo-ability, possessed by other new playable minions.)
It seems pretty bad - but lots of folks are saying the same thing about other classes. I'm open-minded, at any rate.
edit - I just noticed that Tracking has been changed to "Discover a card . . ." rather than draw a card and discard two others. That's a pretty big change, to be honest - the current version of the card has seen a respectable amount of play over the years, and currently sees play in everything other than Face Hunter.
2
One of the reasons few people are complaining about the current meta-game is likely because there isn't much to complain about. Judging by the numbers on HSReplays, we are currently enjoying the widest and flattest meta-game since Un'Goro. Twenty-nine different decks are in the green, each class has at least one viable deck, and each archetype has multiple viable options to choose from. Since the most popular deck has a play-rate only slightly above 5%, it's unlikely that you'll ever queue into your "least favourite" match-up very often - in my own experience, for example, I've only queued against Ramp Paladin nine times in 131 games played in Feb, and none since the nerf.
2
FWIW - your own definition of the term seems far too restrictive. Lots of cards can be "good" without seeing any play at all - Sparkjoy Cheat is an excellent example. The card is clearly good, though there isn't currently a deck that plays the card - a few other Rogue decks are simply much better than Secret Rogue.
In addition - you are the only person using a merely "operational" definition of the term. For you, "playable" means "actually seeing play right now" and nothing else. Rotnest Drake currently isn't seeing much play - but the card isn't "bad" or "unplayable". Indeed, judging by the HSReplays numbers, Rotnest is simply underplayed, enjoying one of the highest "played win-rates" of any 5-drop in the game. But if playable only means "seeing play right now" there isn't much room for discussing most of what is interesting about card games - how best to leverage advantages against the top decks in the meta-game by testing under-played but over-performing cards.
etc, etc . . .
GLHF.
1
To be fair - you don't speak for the community, and no one else does . . .
In any event, there are 24 million of us, and it's a pretty heterogeneous bunch. Presumably, a very small portion of those people care about cosmetics, and an even smaller portion enjoy complaining about cosmetics on casual gaming fan-sites. Presumably, you don't belong to first group, but do belong to the second. There is a third group - folks who don't mind spending money on the game in order to purchase some cosmetics. Lots of folks in the second group like to complain about them - it's a free country, and they ought to complain if they feel like it. But you'll also have to concede - that doesn't mean their complaints have any merit.
GLHF.
2
A couple weeks ago, the folks who make the Firestone app tweeted a graph of play-mode play-rates, and posted it on the subreddit - Standard is about twice as popular as BG, and everything else (Arena, Wild, TBs, Duels, PvE content) is about one-third as popular as BG, though Duels is played slightly more than the others.
The take-away is that millions of people play each play-mode every day, and a couple of those modes are more popular than others. If "failure" means "not as popular as Standard or BG" then everything aside from those two modes is a failure. If it means "not played millions of times each day" then none of the modes is a failure - despite all the community shit-posting to the contrary. I suspect Classic Mode will not be as popular as Standard or BG, but it will be as popular as everything else - i.e. millions of games will be played every day, instead of tens of millions.
0
I don't think Glide is "just waiting" for the meta-game to slow down. Judging by the HSReplays numbers, the card has among the lowest played win-rates in Standard at 31%. Magma Rager is 34%. Nor is it much better against the slow decks it is presumably meant to punish (39% against Highlander Mage and Ticklock.) Presumably, aggressive decks are better off simply playing cards that kill their opponent, rather than cards that try to mess up their hand. In most cases, Glide is like a 4-mana Secret Passage in a class that already has plenty of much better card draw options. As it is, 1-mana Secret Passage only has a 50% played win-rate.
1
FWIW - during Scholomance, most of the Wild streamers and podcasters were agreed that Wild was in its best state since the format split in 2016. The current meta-game isn't too far removed from that. There are diminishing returns to nerfing stuff in Eternal formats, given that the gap between top-tier decks and not top-tier decks is generally a lot wider - folks will be playing Reno decks, Odd decks, Secret decks, Big decks, etc, ten years from now, regardless of what gets nerfed today . . .
1
Looking at the HSReplays numbers, 83 cards above 4-mana currently possess play-rates above 2%. Of those cards, 64 are meant to be hard-casted, while the rest either enter play at a reduced cost, or allow other cards to enter play at a reduced cost. I didn't count expensive value-generators, like Queen Alex, or Y'sharrj, which generate cheap stuff, but have to be hard-casted themselves (hard-casting those expensive cards is essentially the opportunity cost that has to be paid, in order to get the cheap stuff.)
To answer the OP's question - yes.
The 64 hard-casted cards above 4-mana serve a wide variety of roles in the game. Some of them (9) are big Taunts, while others (13) are either AoE or targeted removal. Some of them (typically more expensive) are single-card win-cons, like the Galakronds, Old Gods and Alex, while others (18) simply generate lots of cards in hand, in deck, or directly onto the board. Since the OP's bar was set so low, many (11) of the cheaper cards, like Faceless Corruptor or Krastinov, simply see play because 5-mana isn't too much to pay. A few tech-cards (3), like Stickyfinger, also make the cut.
2
Welcome back.
There are currently some very fun & competitive Rogue decks in Standard. Here are some links -
Trump's Secret Rogue-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYQnf2fNTao
Dekkster's Weapon Rogue-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azDrGnl1Kbw&t=121s
Regis' Burgle Rogue-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FG2Wes3q7M&t=757s
5
You earn over 15,000 XP each week - more than 500 gold. Assuming the next expansion launches in mid-April, about twelve weeks from now, your "incentive" to play the game is sixty free packs.
"...little to no gold..."