Hearthpwn

Instead of changing / banning a single card from tournaments they pick single elimination as a solution; qualifiers were already a roulette, now they will be a roulette with a single chance, win or out.

Blizzard has stated already that the card is fine cause the hero power is random. Kappa.

Quote from wg15 >>

And in the end in the HCT this weekend the Control Shaman was the deciding factor in most of the games for hunterace. What does it mean?
That there is no difference between ladder and tournaments, most people tend to play highest winrate, in tournaments and ladder.

Then someone very intelligent thinking beyond the meta is coming with a nice deck and is ruling them all. And boy, his deck was criticised the whole tournament but it was so goddamn perfect.

You will NEVER have a balanced ratio, this is nothing blizz can change in any form. There will be always some stronger decks, even when it is just a difference of 0,2%, these decks will always present the majority.

HCT was based on Conquest format, bring 4 different decks with the option to ban one for your opponent, so it's a completely different scenario.

In Specialist the only variable is a small sidebar, switching up to 5 cards in order to adjust your strategy according to you opponent, and that's clearly not enough at the moment.

I agree that perfect balance is a chimera and we'll never see it, but the gap between top tier decks/classes and the weakest should be limited, right now you have like 0 chance of competing in Specialist with some of them.

Over 200 events to qualify for Las Vegas were played in the last 2 months, let's look at the stats of class distribution in the top 8:

• Rogue 40.2 %
• Warrior 32.1 %
• Hunter 12.5 %
• Mage 9.3 %
• Druid 3.6 %
• Priest 0.9 %
• Shaman 0.9 %
• Paladin 0.4 %
• Warlock 0.2 %

Source.

There's not much to say about it, numbers speak for themeselves, if Blizzard doesn't balance classes this format is going to be the most boring thing ever.

It's not only about nerf this or that card, is about giving each of the 9 classes a fair amount of chance to compete with others in a format, Specialist, where you are supposed to pick one and stick with it from the start to the end.

Game balancing is not my job so I won't call out any nerf, but developers are clearly not very good at it at the moment.

4 mana 4/5 dealing 10 damage to a minion starting turn 10 is already good by his own, add the discover mechanic which allows you to play more of 2 copies in a single match and the auto rush effect from Boom and you have something objectively broken.

Don't like to be mean to devs but this didn't require any testing tbh...

Assuming you have a board a turn 5 play with this + Grim Rally could be something, or drawed with Betrug in play, but already too many IF for a 4 mana 2/2...

Forsaken = Sylvanas, for priest, summoned by this (or another) minion. 

Recycling is strong in this expansion.

Hahahaha, evil genius!

They just made much more easy to find the weapon and draw it again, so what do we want to tech against?

Some minor adjustament could be tried to make it more balanced tho.

For instance, from what I can see one of the most OP cards in this archetype is Doomerang: for 1 mana you throw your weapon to whatever minion you want at 1 durability and it comes back to your hand ready to be equipped again. Really? Destroy the weapon and shuffle it into the deck, that could be a good starting point.

IMPressive @Leos04 ^^

I'm pretty sure that's IMPossible.

Quote from LordPikachuStarscream >>

I gotchu OP. I gotchu. 

2 mana 2/3 beast, battlecry: destroy the enemy hero and gain +1/+1. 

Now we have tech for every deck in the meta. BOOM! No thanks are necessary. If there are any Blizzard people reading this thread, make sure to credit me if you use my idea. ;) 

Quote from LoboBR >>

Tech your dick, he's hiding behind your ass...

 Why so toxic replys for a simple and relevant question? If we don't discuss HearthStone cards here then what we do? Candy recipes?

When pirate deck became way strong and overused Blizzard release a good tech vs them.

We need the same now for mechs? Looks overused to me at this point.

I feel like mech hunter is going to be really busted and Warlock got no help

Brewmaster is not a bad card on its own, it can bounce Zilliax and friends vs other matchups. And not only does it help vs the mirror, it helps vs Control Shaman as well. And even if you go first, It also creates situations where Elysiana acts as a psuedo-taunt where the opponent is like "Do I have to remove Elysiana now in fear of Brewmaster or do people not run it anymore?". But honestly, it depends a lot on the upcoming meta.

How about buffing some shitty cards for a change? At least make some legendaries like Hir'eek, the Bat Duskfallen Aviana Dr. Morrigan playable somehow.

So I was doing the math behind all the value Dr. Boom, Mad Genius can give in a single match and it is pretty crazy if you stop to think about it, here is an average of all it has to offer:
5 Turns = Summon 3 1/1 mech minions with rush, causes 3 damage, discover 1 mech minion, gain 14 armor, deal 1 damage to all enemies
10 Turns = Summon 6 1/1 mech minions with rush, causes 6 damage, discover 2 mech minions, gain 21 armor, deal 2 damage to all enemies
20 Turns = Summon 12 1/1 mech minions with rush, causes 12 damage, discover 4 mech minions, gain 35 armor, deal 4 damage to all enemies
30 Turns = Summon 18 1/1 mech minions with rush, causes 18 damage, discover 6 mech minions, gain 49 armor, deal 6 damage to all enemies

Some considerations:
- The card still has the rush aura which is exactly what warrior needs to respond to everything the enemy does.
- Discovering class cards has a bigger % and we have Omega Devastator, The Boom Reaver and Dyn-o-matic which is crazy good.

So, I am pretty sure that this card is a huge problem in this current meta, because there is no other classes that has something like that. And do not say that Hagatha is close to it because Hagatha has hand size issues, RNG with really bad spell cards, overload and you need to have minion in hand, which limits your deck.

Dr. Boom, Mad Genius - I do think the card is a bit unfair in a world without death knights. The rush mechs can win you any midrange board battle and the hero power is just extra value every singe turn. Not sure how to nerf him though...Can't change the mana cost or armor gain because of the flavor...removing the battlecry would be weird because every hero card has one. And nerfing any particular hero power doesn't have much effect because it's just one out of five.  Maybe we just have to accept that warrior and shaman ( because of Hagatha ) are going to be the best late game control classes until next rotation...or until another class gets a good hero card.

But from what I've seen the main reason warrior gets played this much is because it is the only class that can reliably beat rogue. So I think rogue is a bigger problem.

EVIL Miscreant is totally fine in my opinion. It's fun to play and I never feel bad when it gets played against me. The opponent just gets some resources and a body with 1 attack that can't really do too much. Obviously the card is good...but I feel like it never has a massive impact on the outcome of the game.

Edwin VanCleef - I never liked playing against this card. If it gets played in the late game whatever...by then you probably have an answer for a giant Edwin. But the reason it's played is because it can win games on the spot when played in the early game and that's no fun at all for the opponent. ,,Oh you had a good enough hand for a 10/10 Edwin turn 3 and I have no answer...I guess I lose,, What a great game that was. You can say ,,but it's risky! The rogue can lose instantly if you do have the answer,, but even that doesn't lead to fun gameplay... ,,Oh I was lucky enough to have this in the early game so I guess I win now,, . I think nerfing the combo effect to be +2/+1 for each card would be great because it would be easier to answer in the early game and it would still be playable.

Preparation - I've been playing hearthstone since beta and ever since standard became a thing and Innervate was nerfed...I was puzzled by Blizzard not HoFing or nerfing this design space limiting tempo monster. How many rogue spells up until now have been overcosted because this card exists? How many more years will we see miracle rogue crawl back into standard? How many Rogue spells get oppressive because they get cheated out for 3 mana less? I will tell you two of those that are in the meta right now. Raiding Party and Myra's Unstable Element . Both of those wouldn't be nearly as good if you had to actually lose tempo to play them.  How many times do I turn a game around and have lethal next against a rogue only for them to Prep + Myra's and then have tons of mana to turn the situation around with their high tempo cards. We can all agree that Wagglepick into Dread Corsair on turn 4 is really strong and Raiding Party fetching both of those is super good...but if the rogue had to work harder to combo the card and pay 3 mana, lose tempo and give you the chance to prepare yourself for such a big tempo swing it would be totally fine. Anyone remember Quest Rogue? The deck that almost everyone hated and was super polarizing? The main reason that deck functioned is because you could prep Vanish or prep the quest. Otherwise both of those cards would cost you the entire turn in the midgame and that would get you killed even against slower midrange decks.

It should get nerfed because even for Wild it's too strong. Probably make it give only a 2 mana reduction or maybe even 1. I know it would be a worse Counterfeit Coin...but it never rotates since it's classic so it shouldn't really have a high power lvl and I think at 2 mana it would probably still see almost as much play as today. I mean...they turned Fiery War Axe into a worse King's Defender so it's not unprecedented.

Barnes - Just make him a 6 mana 5/5 or something please. Loosing on turn 4 to a highroll Barnes from Big Priest stopped being fun after the first time it happened.

That's honestly what i feared when they announced the specialist format. The only reason we saw a diversity of deck in conquest is that you could use weaker decks to cover weaknesses of your main decks or target a really common deck. or exemple HunterAce's control shaman, or viper/hopper's zoo.

But without this, you either pick the deck that has the highest winrate, or the deck that counters the deck with the highest winrate. anything else is just pointless.

Also you definitely can't change a deck's dynamic and match-ups with a side deck that limited. You can barely make bomb warrior with a control warrior list 5 cards difference is not enough.
This feels inspired from yu-gi-ho, but yu-gi-ho's tech cards are insane. Cards like prohibition who straight up stops you from playing specific cards as long as it's on the board, or others that deny any special summoning. Hearthstone doesn't have that kind of flexibility, so you can't really turn over one bad match-up with the right techs. Freeze mage will lose to control warrior and no amount of techs (especialy not with just 5 cards) will change that.

I'm not saying side deck can't work in hearthstone, but for side decks to work, specific tech cards would have to be a lot more powerful than what they are now. 

I don't think nerfing anything will change that. What would happen is just the next best deck will take its place, and the best counter to it will be the next runner up. And if the next best deck has 2 counters that are even with each other, maybe we'd see a third class at most. the format just doesn't have the tools to work yet.