Hearthpwn

I think Tick is fine.  I understand that it feels bad to have cards in your deck messed with, cards you want to play or cards you might need.  It's a solid late game card that actually presents a threat to Control decks by denying them resources.  Control players don't like being told "no" by anything, be it successful aggro strategies or mill strategies, so it makes people really salty when they can't do what they want to.

There *needs* to be cards like this to give an option to counter combos and present a win condition against control matchups.

edit: alright now that I've read the whole thread I have more thoughts.

A lot of people I saw comparing Tickatus to Coldlight Oracle and there's a reason those two aren't the same, and Coldlight being HoF'd and Tick being printed is not hypocrisy.  Coldlight not only milled the opponent, but it also drew the Mill Player into answers because the draw effect was symmetrical.  A Mill player would then draw into more bounce enablers and defensive cards, and was extremely difficult to play against.  Tick just mills 5 cards the one time and is an 8/8 that provides no advantage when played.  Players often make more Tickituses (Tickiti?  Tickipeople?), but the amount of setup required to do so takes a long time and is easily punished via board presence.  There's no real comparison, it's apples to oranges.

And other people are saying they preferred Rin, the First Disciple over Tick.  Of course you did!  Rin is really, really bad compared to Tick.  First, Rin has to die.  Next, you need to invest how much mana?  20?  25?  In these mana sink cards that summoned dinky demons and ate board clears, then you played the big guy who ate the deck.  But the deck gets ate so late in the game that it only eats like, 8 cards.  Usually less.  Tick is a faster version of that, they do essentially the same thing.  What's nice about Rin is she gives you cards to play that aren't your precious board clears, so the mana sink is valuable, but the final effect, the talking point here, isn't good.  It wasn't even that good in K&C, where Death Knights and Voidlord were kings.

If you're losing to Tick, I don't know what to tell you.  Play more aggressively in the Control Matchup to threaten them and limit use of the button.  Don't give them room to play their stupid do-nothing card.  I don't usually play Control, I'm busy and work a lot during the day, so long control games are exhausting and unsatisfying to me.  We're getting big news tomorrow and big changes a month later.  Let's see where things go.

The Custom Lobby option for playing janky fun decks is probably the most workable one from a developer and player perspective, I can already imagine a UI working within Hearthstone for it.  Not only that, but Custom Game modes bring immense amounts of creative people and ideas into games and make them even better, see paper MTG and its community creating custom formats that go on to be so successful and popular that the company that makes the game supports them and makes them official

A Custom Lobby where people come up with their own new rules and restrictions for Hearthstone would not only solve the deck building problem, but it would also breathe new life into the game as a whole.

People are getting pretty aggressive and hostile in this thread right now.

I think a real problem here is that there isn't a real "casual" place to play decks.  People will play their high tier competitive ranked decks in casuals either to practice with the deck and learn new lines with it without losing ranks, or pubstomp for easy wins and feel good about themselves.  It's impossible to make that something people can't do so frankly the custom lobby option is the best one for avoiding that.

Another problem is classes aren't distinct enough in my opinion.  Very few classes have class-specific keywords, so some of the classes have no reason to be experimented with for a type of deck when another class with the same gimmick (Secrets for example) will either have stronger synergies or more options for deck building altogether.  In that way, Hunter and Paladin aren't worth considering for secret builds because Mage has stronger synergies, and Rogue is generally more fun to play and has more options for deckbuilding.  Also Paladin's secrets and secret synergies are bad, and Hunter's are second worst.

Rank isn't really relevant to the discussion because deckbuilding and deck diversity both contribute more to fun, which is a totally subjective thing.

I really like the discussion here.  I'm in a similar boat as some, I'd like it if Hunter had control options that didn't inherently stink because of Hunter's class design.  I've been a Hunter main since 2015, when i started playing.  I wasn't comfortable playing aggro when I was new because the content creator I'd been watching (Trump) was so control focused as a player, i would always trade because that's what he did lol.  I personally think Hunter needs a top-down rework of its mechanics.  From the ground up in makes sense, Hunter is aggressive and plays on curve.  But the advent of Demon Hunter really makes anything Hunter used to do seem laughable.

I think Hearthstone players have long memories and aren't very forgiving, and that's rubbed off on the Devs a bit.  There's still people out there who remember Undertaker Hunter being strong and haven't let that go in terms of how they perceive the class.  And now with Iksar admitting they weren't giving Hunter strong/unique buildaround cards on purpose because Hunter would then *play* those cards in their *one* good deck, I've got a sour taste in my mouth.  The class needs to be revisited.

Just gathering some data.  I know generally the vocal part of the player base is pretty anti-Hunter, so I wanna do a quick poll to get the gist of what people think about it and why.

Sure makes me cranky that Priest is the only class Blizz seems to focus on when it comes to their class identity when Hunter literally doesn't have one.  Scratch that, Hunter is the class where they aren't allowed to do anything fun or interesting.  Or Draw.  Or Heal.
But yeah we gotta make sure Priest players can enjoy their shadow priest fantasies.

I support tentative Wild nerfs to address the most powerful decks in Wild, but I think a lot of people want a large number of changes, when that's just not necessary.

Problem Deck - Raza Priest:  Change either Raza to set the cost to (1), no other part of that card is relevant.  That, or change the Hero Power on the Priest DK to be completely different, that design was a mistake anyway.  Or delete Priest from the game

Problem Deck - Secret Mage: They shouldn't have access to free secrets, imo.  Kabal Lackey should reduce the cost to (1) for that secret and become a turn 2 play instead of a turn 1 play.  Kirin-Tor Mage should have the same text.  Cloudprince should either deal less damage or not damage face.

Problem Deck - Odd Paladin: Simply changing the cost of some overpowered synergies to be even so the deck can't play them.  To be honest I don't see Odd Paly so much, and it doesn't evoke as hateful a reaction from me so I don't remember much of their deck.

Ultimately what I want out of Blizzard isn't nerfs and card changes (aside from addressing Priest), I want meaningfully powerful cards and counterplay printed for other classes.  If every class had a deck in Wild that was as powerful as these, it would be less of an issue.  We need more powerful Secret hate, we need effective silence.  Something.  It's a digital card game, there's more ways to change a meta than nerfs and buffs.

I will say that the "revamp" or whatever has been soft-confirmed on a twitter AMA with Iksar, where somebody asked him to tease what the changes were and he said "Some old cards coming in, some new cards coming in, and some old cards changing" or something like that.  So a change is coming, but the details are light.  We'll probably learn more "at" Blizzcon next week.  I won't link the whole twitter thread but here is the specific question that he answered. 

It's a bit sad that Wild, the format that the game itself advertises is "Wild!" has had no changes over the past 2 years.  Standard, however, changes constantly, even in within expansions as new decks rise and fall.   I don't want to project or make assumptions about the design or balance teams, but it looks like they just don't really care about Wild much.

Don't play much Standard, my only exposure to it is through content creators and occasionally being here.

On a per-card basis, Evolve Shaman is already looking to be totally crushed by rotation, losing several Uldum cards that make its plays work.  Not only that, but depending on what cards are included in the upcoming mini-set, it could get worse by having weaker matchups against new cards, as well as having worse rolls into new cards.  I do think it should be nerfed, so that the community can be angry about something else, but I'm not sure how.  I'd be interested in seeing them pursue changes that aren't strictly mana-cost related, like actual words on the card maybe, but ever since Warsong Commander completely embarrassed them they've been hesitant to do that.

Rogue is only strong because Swindle and Foxy Fraud exist.  Whirlkick Master would have remained irrelevant until its rotation if these cards weren't made, so I suspect the cards to change would be them.  Swindle should cost more, and Foxy Fraud should discount less.  Maybe one of those, maybe both.  If only one change I'd point it to Swindle, because it synergizes stronger with Whirlkick.

Not really aware of any other relevant, hated decks atm other than them.  I hope changes come soon so people can relax a bit, and when another deck becomes the best deck in the meta people will complain about that.  But if it's a control deck, they won't be so mad, so I'm rooting for ETC Warrior.  Odds are it'll be Warlock if that happens though, Tickatus being the absolute BEAST that he is.

Don't feel bad about complaining.  Everybody gets grouchy about things, especially when something you like or care about starts being kinda shit.

I see what you're saying.  As a Wild player mainly, my view of Standard is only from the lens of the content creators I watch.  So it's interesting to hear what's going on from the perspective of people who experience it.  Although I will say, the apparent sleeper deck according Dean Ayala (who has all the numbers I assume, could be wrong about that) Highlander Hunter was the highest performing deck before its nerfs, thus why it was nerfed instead of say, Bogspine Knuckles and Tickatus.  It was much less frequent on ladder, is my guess as to why people weren't complaining about it so much.

I think of the "I just want to play my cards" thing a lot, and it's probably my favorite defense of control heavy metas.  With an economy as bad as Hearthstone's, of course a lot of people want to play slowly.  Gotta get their money's worth.

I see people all over the place who think hyper aggro metas are boring, seeing nothing but Demon Hunter over and over again is exhausting and not fun.  I'm more or less inclined to agree, but this does raise a question from me.

What is everybody's ideal meta?  I'll be throwing in a poll to get numbers from but I'd love to hear what people specifically really want.  I personally don't mind aggro, but I loathe the idea of a control-only format where games take 20 minutes and turns go by with nothing happening.  I also don't really care for the idea of a combo heavy meta, where you're locked in this "if you can't win soon enough you automatically lose" situation.

I really enjoy when the meta is balanced for all three deck types.  Aggro beats out combo consistently, combo beats control consistently, and control beats out aggro consistently.  That's the natural rock-paper-scissors of most tcgs like Hearthstone, and that's what I think it should look like.  But maybe there's something I'm not considering.  Let me know!

lmao, i haven't explored the achievement section much so I missed that.  cool we have the art though.

I understand the pessimism, but all of the YouTubers and Streamers I've seen have been playing Midrange/Controlling decks and seeing success with them.  It's easy to forget that you're a single person who experiences things from a single perspective, when there's "100 Million" (So I'd say maybe closer to 50 Million who log in and play daily, probably less) players in Hearthstone since 2018.  There's simply too many people for a single person's experiences in this game to really elaborate on the shape of the meta.  Heck, don't different regions have different metas too?

Every expansion has a meta cycle contained within it, like somebody already said, in the beginning aggro decks prosper because people haven't streamlined their slower decks to respond to what's needed yet.  Later on in the expansion, the more late game decks can do well.  Even now Control/ETC Warrior is doing extremely well, as Warrior has a lot of efficient anti-aggro.  Priest still has "Greetings fellow humans" and infinite ways to revive it, so bad start aggro and midrange still have that to contend with.  Mage has Flame Ward and draws it as reliably as Huffer gets summoned off of Animal Companion, along with efficient Discover and resource generation to slow down aggro matchups.  Or hell, go aggro itself because it's Mage.  Shaman has plenty of killer anti-aggro tools, so does Warlock, and Paladin.

It's just a matter of patience.  I'm personally cool with whatever, I play Wild anyway and consider all forms of gameplay valid, aggro, control, and combo.  Aggro is important because it's inexpensive to make aggro decks, and people with less time to play can use aggro to enjoy Hearthstone with what time they have.  Combo and Control decks tend to be rather expensive and time consuming to play, so people with better luck/more money and more time can enjoy those.  It's all a balance, and all a part of what makes card games what they are.  And if you're especially worried, taking a break and waiting for the rotation couldn't hurt, since many classes (barring DH who's still only 1 year old) will lose a lot of their power cards, and things will generally even out.  Heck, maybe I'll play Standard again once Hunter has more viable decks beyond the 2 it's had for 2 straight years!

Long post short, control isn't going anywhere it hasn't gone before.  K&K was my fav expansion season as well, and I'm sure eventually we'll see a return to that format.  In the meantime, it's always possible to make due with what you have and play the way you want to.  And if not, you can take a break!  It's really good for mental health, I take breaks from Hearthstone constantly.

Blizzard hasn't officially confirmed it, but check out the Hero section of the Collection and zoom all the way to the back and you'll see Nagrand Garrosh.  He's lookin' pretty hot for a war criminal.