Hearthpwn

The answer you seek is, believe it or not, in the main text of the blue post you took the time to comment on!

Everyone bitching about standard arena, not realizing magic only uses the most current set for sealed formats (think arena) and has been basically since inception. With the limited cardpool for hearthstone standard arena doesn't really work, but I think a cube style system where blizzard creates a custom draft environment for each expansion release would work wonders. Of course this would take a ton of work, and I have serious doubts blizzard is capable of making a fun, dynamic, and balanced draft pool.

The problem as it is now leaves arena feeling a lot lower skill than it should be. You can't rely on drafting synergies, and basically just have to curve out better than your opponent and pray for no board clear. As the game goes on this will only become worse as there will be so many cards in the arena environment, the problems of no synergy, and having to playing curvestone will be magnified. It also makes arena more unapproachable for new players, as you essentially have to be familiar with every card in the game, and how well they perform in arena.

Quote from jim1608 >>

 

They are basically saying "we will nerf this, but not because it's broken, but it's because used so much that's making the game stale and boring. It's warping the meta too much even if it's not with a crazy win rate".

 

Ladies and gentlemen set your faces to palm

Some key points I wanted to touch on

"The Pirate 'package' of Small-Time Buccaneer and Patches the Pirate is played in about 50% of all decks at rank 5 and above."

the fact that half of your competitive players are abusing the pirate package, and the other half are building their decks with patches in their sights should be a clear indicator the game has completely warped around these cards. That Team 5 doesn't come out and and plainly admit that this is a huge problem is disturbing. Saying aggro shaman isn't as broken as the most busted deck in the game's history doesn't tell us a damn thing. The problem isn't aggro shaman's winrate. Its player's perception of ladder efficiency for grinding to legend (which aggro shaman is great for), which leads to shaman's over representation. All that stems from a much deeper problem within the ladder system rewarding faster decks, which is a topic for a different conversation.

"When a deck loses to specific cards or other decks, players can be rewarded for playing those counters as that deck rises in popularity........ .....When metas stagnate for too long; When there are no good counters; When the best decks aren't fun to play or lose to; these are all reasons we have made balance adjustments in the past. If a deck is popular for a few weeks, that isn't a reason to make a nerf on its own. We'd have to be concerned about the fun, not be seeing any emerging counter-strategies, or be far enough away from a new content release to be worried about stagnation for a long time."

Its been 2 months dude... aggro shaman, and pirate warrior have been running rampant after the first week of release. The meta has been settled for the last month or more. I'd hardly call the fact that one of the best control warrior players in the world was able to pilot his deck to a positive winrate 'counterplay'. CW also typically struggles against dragon priest, reno decks, and completely loses to druid. Sure you get your free wins against shaman, but lose to almost everything else. Because every set is so riddled with bullshit unplayable cards, the few playable ones leave almost no room for creative deckbuilding or counterplay.

I understand not listening to a vocal minority, and rely on a more statistical approach when evaluating nerfs. However, 30% of legend players as shaman? FFS there are supposed to be 9 classes in the game (7 for standard).

a cursory google search would've given you your answer and not pushed actual discussions about the post further down the page

*edited

how have you been a member of hearthpwn for almost 2 years yet you honestly can't answer your own question? Blizzard has given a full dust refund on all cards changed, This will be no different.

losing reno and brann will likely be the death knell for those decks as they are now. Priest gets hurt least with their innate healing ability, but you still rely on Brann to drive so much of the value in the deck, that I honestly don't see it working out.

But it's pretty much impossible to say without seeing new cards. 

Well put, thanks for the response

Quote from sighchoticnick >>

 

 

 I completely disagree, I don't think one card for one class should have a winrate that close to 100% against the wide variety of control decks

Control has had a hard time basically every meta, it didn't need a hard counter

Quote from sighchoticnick >>

It's not like there was a huge public outcry about the card when the card was revealed before the expansion :P 

Whilst it is a strong synergy, I believe its the redundancy of most control decks by Jade Idol(A true Blizz facepalm card) that truly makes this card annoying (and pirate decks in general)

you answered your own question....Why would they when its a statistically minuscule portion of their playerbase? People don't realize that hearthpwn and reddit make up less than 1% of their users. As long as their bottom line doesn't see an impact, and the game keeps increasing in sales growth nothing will change. What motivation does blizzard have catering to a vocal minority that accounts for 1% of their revenue?

Great well thought out response. Agree with everything you said. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, very insightful.

Quote from Ace1a  Shredder is 4 mana, not 5 so you could run both. Many people did run azure drake over sludge belcher and loatheb. Healbot didn't see much play outside renolock and many renolocks in wild, including mine have cut healbot out. Several people are calling for Ooze's nerf and rightfully so. A vanilla 3/2 body with a huge upside for 2 mana is OP, sorry to say. Also Blizzard wants to keep the meta fresh so they are going to nerf overused classic/basic cards. Ooze will still be fine as a 2/2 as a tech card with a real downside

Quote from sampoin >>

good idea to finally settle which region is the second best Kappa

of course oversights will happen, but to not thoroughly test a card so clearly over the typical power level seems downright incompetent. There is literally no argument against more rigorous playtesting of cards. Blizzard could hire 500 playtesters, and it would be a drop in the bucket compared to what they make off this game. You can't test a card for a week or so and draw any conclusive evidence from your testing. These things need to be tested for a year or more. MTG designs their cards 2 years out from release, this not only gives them time to test the cards, but have a clearer understanding of how they will impact the standard meta which can last close to 2 years at a time.

you can disagree with me all you want, but at the end of the day to deny that standard and wild have completely warped around STB and patches is dishonest at best. More than 1/3 of the decks seen on ladder intend to abuse the pirate package , and the other 2/3 have to build their decks to beat it, which isn't healthy for the game. Further illustrating the problem is that patches decks have the highest winrate against the rest of the meta. To claim you'd rather have a game be released 2 weeks early rather than have a balanced, thoroughly tested meta speaks volumes of your opinions in regards to balance and design.

They tested previous designs for months on end. The fact that they put such a clearly powerful, undertested card into the game at the last minute is highly disturbing. So because they overlooked the powerlevel of the card, we should just accept it as is?  Re-read the quote in my original post, this was coming from a company that had over a decade in card design experience up to that point. They made a last minute change to a card, which seemed to lower its overall power, but ended up being completely busted, and warped an entire standard meta around it. Regardless of how much they tested the card in previous iterations, they didn't test this one enough, and in most use cases is just as powerful as the permanent buff.

to paraphrase

Your deck has to either have STB or have STB in its crosshairs—a definitive case of a card “warping the metagame."