Hearthpwn

Quote from Plattypus >>

People have been hating on priest forever but the only viable deck the class currently has is basically pure value. It does nothing broken early (see Druid), doesn't OTK, doesn't curve out and doesn't spam the board with tokens.

The truth is it sucks to lose to a class which disrupts your game plan or uses it against you. That's fair. But deleting a class because you don't like losing to it is a bit much.

I hate aggro decks that ignore the board and just go face. I find them inherently boring and totally unfun but they're a legitimate play style and I wouldn't want to delete hunter or rogue because face hunter and stealth aggro rogue suck balls. 

Every class does annoying shit and most do more powerful annoying shit than priest. Mage = RNG fiesta box or turn 4 massive giants. Druid = 30-40 mana turns as early as 3/4 (hopefully now countered by nerf). Rogue was draw your deck and play cheap shit combined with limitless lackey value and is now play minions you can't interact with and smash face. Warrior is spunk bombs in your deck or hit you on the face with weapons (seriously is there a more boring way of playing). Warlock is vomit random garbage on the board or remove remove remove and spam a win with Highlander cards they technically shouldn't really be playing. Demon Hunter - well fuck me its another smorc me go face deck. Hunter can curve out so fast there is no counter and then there is Face Hunter which is essentially having a massive wank instead of interacting with your partner. Paladin is just play dumb shit sticky annoying minions each turn. Shaman, well shaman is just pretty terrible right now but it sucks to lose to totems on turn 5 so let's go with that.

Basically every class can be annoying if you choose to view it that way. Priest is no more annoying than the rest so get over it bitches and join the Anduin Army!

 I first just want to say I really liked your post. What I'm going to try to do is give a little food for thought, and try to explain why some people (including myself) hate playing against priest. 

To begin, I'm going to start by explaining the two most frustrating feelings (for me) in hearthstone. These are: 1) my opponent isn't dying and 2) my opponent keeps playing cards. 

I'm going to start with explaining point 2, without mentioning priest. In this current meta, what made Kael'thas unfun to play against was the feeling that your opponent was just doing too much stuff. Whenever I play against druid and they start going off with Kael'thas, there is a constant feeling of "shouldn't you be done now?". The druid starts by going Kael into Guardian Animals and you think, okay, I can deal with this. Then they draw 2 more cards, one of which is Overflow. Which then draws more cards which do more things. And throughout that entire process I'm just thinking "okay, stop." 

Another example of this is playing against Rogue with Secret Passage. Your Rogue opponent has 3 cards in hand, but then they play 1 mana draw 5 into another 1 mana draw 5, and suddenly they magically turned 3 cards into two Sinister Strike and two Eviscerate for a lethal they had no business getting. 

To explain this experience, we have the feeling that when your opponent is out of cards or mana they shouldn't be able to do a lot. And when your opponent can, it often is extremely frustrating to play against. 

The other extremely frustrating feeling in hearthstone is "my opponent isn't dying." When you have lethal set up, all you want is for your opponent to just pass their turn over to you so you can kill them. There is often an extremely strong feeling of "please die now" when playing Hearthstone. 

To still stay away from priest, I often get this feeling against druid when I'm trying to kill them and they roll taunt from Teacher's Pet or use their last mana to heal out of lethal with Crystal Power. This is frustrating because you think "You really should be dead right now." You also might feel this against warlock when you build a board to kill them but then they play 2 invokes, Sacrificial Pact and Plague of Flames. 

And now to why priest is the class that I hate the most:

When playing against priest, you very often feel both of these feelings. Priest almost always plays removal based control, meaning that they win by removing your stuff. This creates an environment where you often threaten lethal, and the priest often plays the removal and survives. When you build board after board and they all get removed, you start thinking "just die already." This feeling also often arises due to healing, which priest is known for. You are often in a situation where you win if your opponent can't heal (besides the hero power), but they just play Renew or Penance and you're left blueballed. 

Additionally, priest also gets frustrating because they just keep playing cards. Priest doesn't cheat mana or draw like crazy, but when playing against priest you're often thinking "this is manageable if they don't have SW:D" or "This is winnable if they don't have Apotheosis" or "as long as they don't have Soul Mirror I should win." And it gets incredibly frustrating when the priest has 3 turns of what feel like perfect answers. It feels like the priest keeps pulling removals out of their ass when they keep removing minions turn after turn (or worse, when they play their 3rd generated Soul Mirror). 

Now, these things are what are frustrating to me because I learned to play hearthstone playing midrange shaman. I like playing for board, I like making minions, and I like killing my opponent. And priest does their very hardest to stop you from doing any of those things. 

This all being said, everyone likes (and hates) different things. As you rightly said, "Every class does annoying shit"  and nothing will ever change that. 

Personally if I have reach over the top I like to show it. Its not for the purpose of BM, just showing off your hand. 

Well to catch this thread up to speed, a few (4?) days ago people started realizing darkglare warlock is extremely extremely powerful. Since then, high legend has been pretty much exclusively darkglare, DMH, and reno priest. 

Why? Because darkglare has established itself as the deck to beat, and reno priest and DMH are the decks to beat it with. 

And yes, before someone starts telling me "but darkglare beats priest, I have X winrate against it," priest certainly isn't a hard counter. 

The prevalence of darkglare has people trying secret mage again, although I have my doubts as to if secret mage will stick around. 

Anyway, darkglare is really good, and the deck just keeps getting better. And if you're looking to netdeck, make sure you're getting a list posted TODAY. There has been so much refinement over the past few days that a list from say 3 days ago is pretty trash. 

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from parzival2345 >>

 Several times you state that you can achieve a "strict RPS model under the specific conditions I wrote, which Blizzard themselves can test". However, the point I was trying to make when talking about the issues of rigging draw order is that Blizzard cannot create these conditions. Sure, they can rig the draw order however they want. But that will not remove all randomness and preserve the original matchup favorability. When you muck with the draw order, you change the "natural outcome" of the matchup. 

I ask you to come up with some theoretical rigged draw order that would work. I am extremely confident that there is none. You cannot rig the draw in any way without affecting which strategy is favored. 

Blizzard testing is not magic. 

You later state that "With average draws, if a 40% winrate for a weak strategy existed, that would actually be a good indicator of imbalance. If we are still considering perfect technical play from both sides". This statement seems extremely misguided. For an example lets look at the matchup of stealth gala rogue VS tempo DH during AoO. This matchup was favorable for rogue, but by an extremely small margin. So although stealth gala rogue was the 'strong strategy' and tempo DH was the 'weak strategy', tempo DH still managed to win about 45% of the time. Is this a sign of imbalance? No, this just means the matchup was pretty even. 

To really sum of what I'm trying to say, there are NO conditions in which the RPS is strictly enforced. Its not only impossible under 'real world conditions', its also impossible under any sort of testing conditions you could come up with. 

With draw order, its kinda like the observer affect. If you look at or control draw order in an attempt to isolate matchup favorability, you change the matchup favorability in the process. 

 

 Blizzard actually can create these conditions. They can remove all randomness, the same way they decided to add the randomness. Blizzard decides which cards and effects are present when testing. They can remove every single random element from the game and test that way, if they wanted to.

But I get what you are trying to say, which is that when considering the current game state where these cards exist and strategies are made with them, yes, it makes it impossible to do this. This is why I stated in the first few posts that Blizzard themselves created the balance problem, because they themselves decided to add random effects, more and more as time went on.

They could completely balance the game, but it would require them to actually remove all these cards and effects from the game permanently, not solely for testing. This is the randomness that isn't part of card games that they themselves added. Card games will have card draw order and variance because of this, but that isn't something you can avoid, yet you can still rig card order to test balance. When it comes to a game with so much random effects, you cannot.

You rig the draw to the ideal order for each of the strategies in the matchup. (This is not for the condition in which random effects are present, we agree, that cannot be fixed as is)

Regarding the Gala vs DH example you gave, I am not sure which lists you are talking about, but I'm sure looking at both strategies for the decks, unless they are the same exact strategy, then one of them is favored, even if slightly. If it were possible to remove all randomness and perfect technical play, then yes, the favored strategy would always win. A deviation from this would mean imbalance.

However, considering I doubt those decks don't have random effects, this even perfecting both draw order and technical play would not show you imbalance because there is still the random effects to account for.

When you remove all the factors we have discussed, no matter how small the advantage is for one of the strategies, you would always get the same result, because the card order would always be the same and the moves in the game would always be the same, leading to the exact same result every time.

It is possible for testing, just not something that would translate to real world conditions, because one of the conditions for proper testing, removal of all randomness, implies at least one condition that can never coincide with real world, which is the random effects. Blizzard would need to remove them from the game entirely.

 "Blizzard actually can create these conditions."

But they can't. There is no way to rig draw order in a way that does not affect the matchup. 

I've ignored random effects in hearthstone until now essentially to give your method a chance. Yes I understand that random effects screw up the model. Yes I understand blizzard can test without them. 

"You rig the draw to the ideal order for each of the strategies in the matchup."  

We already went over why you can't do this. Decks like FTK druid suddenly start winning every game. 

For another example, raza priest in wild should be extremely favored against token druid. However, if token druid draws the absolute nuts they can kill the priest before the priest has a chance to do anything, no matter their hand. 

"When you remove all the factors we have discussed, no matter how small the advantage is for one of the strategies, you would always get the same result, because the card order would always be the same and the moves in the game would always be the same, leading to the exact same result every time."  

I understand what you're saying and this almost works in theory. But again with gala rogue VS DH, gala rogue going first has Spymistress on 1 a little under half the time if they hard mulligan for it. How do you account for that? If you give them it on 1 every game you significantly change the matchup. If they never have it you significantly change the matchup. And if you give it to them a little less than half the time, the card order is NOT the same and the moves are NOT the same, so the result will NOT be the same every time. 

On a somewhat related note, I personally hate losing to what I consider to be bad decks. So at the start of AoO when people were still experimenting with spell only mage, it was really frustrating to lose to it. Is there really such a difference between losing to a deck with around 48 percent winrate (like spell mage) than a deck with a 52 percent winrate? No, but I always feel kinda cheated when I lose to a tier 4 deck. 

But thats just a psychological issue, so I digress. 

As far as no minion mage goes, it isn't particularly focused on randomness. Sure one of the power cards generates a random 5 mana minion, but thats just a random hunk of stats. Sure you can highroll or lowroll, but most of the time you just get a or the like 5/5. Much more impactful is if they have Incanter's Flow on curve. 

Yogg box on the other hand is a terrible kind of RNG, but I'm not sure if its even a good card in no minion mage. 

Anyway, blizzard does NOT rig the results in any way, people play these decks because they want to. 

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from parzival2345 >>

 First a question: how do you cleanly get rid of previously quoted statements?      EDIT: I appear to have figured that out :)

As for the topic at hand, I did in fact read the original post (that I quoted), and I appreciate that you have chosen to clarify what you meant. To reiterate your definition of balance in my own words, you believe that the game is imbalanced when a weak strategy is capable of beating what should be the 'favored' strategy (e.g. paper beating scissors). 

This has logic, and is a reasonable enough definition. You then proceed to defend your claim. 

Your premise is that there are 3 factors that affect any given game of hearthstone: randomness, player skill, and matchup favorability. This is also reasonable. 

However, after this point the logic falls apart. Even in our theoretical world, there is no way to isolate 'matchup favorability' as you have attempted to do. Although it is acceptable that you can remove the factor of player skill, you cannot remove randomness. Even if there were no 'random' cards in the game, it is impossible to discount draw RNG.

Rigging the draw order for 'optimal draw' is absolutely not the solution, because some decks care more about draw order than others. In your first post you said that "you actively rig it for optimal draw order, what you get is a game in which, if both players play perfectly, the strategy that has an advantage in the matchup will win every single time." This is false. As the most stark example, in wild it is possible for a druid player to OTK their opponent on turn 1 going first. By your metric, that deck is the very definition of imbalanced because it will beat ALL other strategies. However, that deck is utter garbage, and I struggle to accept any metric that declares a deck with a poor winrate imbalanced. As such, we cannot use 'optimal draw' to remove the factor of randomness. 

I will now move on to 'average draw' as a metric. If you believe 'optimal draw' is still workable we can come back to that, but to me that feels like a waste of time. Anyway, 'average draw' is indeed a theoretical way to offset the affects of randomness. However, 'average draw' will yield statistics like average win rates and win percentages. Are those good things to work with? Well, they could be, but unfortunately that means abandoning (or at least heavily adapting) the theory that the RPS model is what we should be working with to determine balance. Why? Because Rock Paper Scissors has only clean, 100% winrates. 

Lets now begin to adapt the RPS model. Still with 'average draw', scissors will beat rock lets say 40% of the time. Is that a problem? Maybe, but not if rock also beats paper 40% of the time (and paper scissors 40% of the time). Paper beating scissors sometimes is not ALONE cause for concern, nor is it a sign of imbalance. Now that we have done our best to eliminate the affects or randomness by looking at averages, has scissors become "capable of overcoming it's weakness under these conditions" and as such become imbalanced? No, it hasn't. 

What is really the fatal flaw of using Rock Paper Scissors is that in hearthstone, strategy and decks are adaptable. Lets say you're a rock player, and you get really really tired of losing to paper. So you adapt, become a little thinner and a little sharper, and start to give paper a run for its money. Now you might think you just became imbalanced, but that isn't the case. Because as you adapted to be better against paper, you start to lose a little more to fellow rocks than you remembered, and even scissors who you used to bully starts to feel like they have a fighting chance against you. So even though rock is managing to beat paper, it sacrificed itself in other matchups. 

And even with everything I've said previously notwithstanding its incorrect to say 'look this aggro deck beats this control deck, the game is imbalanced.' Favorable matchups are favorable matchups, and if the aggro deck is winning that means that it has the optimal strategy. Maybe its because aggro is overtuned. But its also possible that the control deck got greedy, started to try and bully fellow rocks, and slipped up against scissors. At that point, rock has moved a little too close to paper (midrange/combo) to be good against the aggro decks. This isn't always the case, but it certainly is sometimes, and so it is in fact wrong to define imbalance in hearthstone as being when paper manages to beat scissors. Sometimes it is a cause of imbalance, sometimes a symptom, and sometimes unrelated. 

To be clear, I think that the RPS model has a lot of value. And although I've just spent a bunch of paragraphs bringing up its weaknesses, I could write at least as much if not more defending the value and importance of the Rock Paper Scissors model. But to declare it to be "the objective principle" is at best incorrect and at worst intellectually dishonest and incorrect. And for the record, I still feel like this was a deep dive into an ever widening rabbit hole. 

If I have in some way misinterpreted either of your posts I do apologize, feel free to clarify anything that you feel I misunderstood or misrepresented. If you feel like I missed a crucial point, feel free to bring that to my attention.

 The game is unbalanced if that happens in the conditions I wrote. It's not a matter of having a strict RPS model under normal game circumstances, it's a matter of having strict RPS model under the specific conditions I wrote, which Blizzard themselves can test.

To be more accurate, matchups have a natural outcome. Any two strategies have a specific way in which they interact, where there is a natural outcome given the way both strategies interact.

Then you have three factors that can change this natural outcome, the ones I stated.

It is indeed possible to remove all randomness. Blizzard can rig draw order, they even have done so in the past for Brawls and Adventures. But they need only do this for testing. We don't want them to rig normal games, they should rig it when testing balance themselves, not for users.

That Druid is an FTK deck with rigged draw order, and that is how it works for any FTK deck, you always win no matter what you face, because FTK decks win against any deck if they have a good enough draw order and are played correctly. This doesn't represent a power imbalance, because what balances this precise strategy is exactly what you cannot control, the draw order. When you rig it, you are supposed to get a deck that cannot be stopped. This will always happen in an FTK. Don't forget, an FTK strategy will not be interacted with by other strategies, they are by design uninteractive, the true meaning of the term.

The Druid FTK doesn't work in reality however, where animations exist and you cannot perform the FTK even if you draw with the draw order you want.

If you take average draw orders, you cannot get strict RPS, obviously. You will get very close to it, but not absolute. You need to use rigged draw order to achieve the result. This doesn't detract from what I wrote. I said average draw, I should have made it more explicit that they should actively do so with rigged draw order, to achieve the proper result. That was my fault for not making it explicit.

With average draws, if a 40% winrate for a weak strategy existed, that would actually be a good indicator of imbalance. If we are still considering perfect technical play from both sides. By average I mean not having either side have an extraordinarily good draw, which will lead to an extremely small percentage of wins for the weak strategy. You would see something closer to 15%, 20% at the most, and that is being generous.

We are talking without Random Element, at least I am, meaning no generation, no effect that target or output random outcomes.

I'm not going to address the part about adaptation, as I already said, we are talking about perfect technical play on both sides, that means they are playing the game perfectly adapted to the path needed to win the matchup. You're never going to have RPS in real world conditions, we are talking adjusted conditions to test balance.

Yes, I do think you didn't focus on the important aspect I tried to state. As I try to explain in the above paragraphs, the objective measurement of balance is indeed possible, but it is never to be done in real world conditions. You cannot observe this under such conditions.

You need to be able to control for the variables, the factors I identified as affecting the outcome of a matchup. 

Two strategies will clash in a specific manner. One is favored against the other. Then the other factors can vary and affect the outcome. If we remove these factors, by removing all randomness, rigging draw order, having the strategies be played perfectly, we remove the factors that aren't imbalance.

We cannot do this, we cannot remove the factors, only Blizzard can, and it is their job to do such testing. They will not do so, but they could. That is the only point. It is possible to do, objectively verify the balance, provided you follow these conditions.

Whenever the draw order isn't perfect, or the technical play from the player isn't perfect, it's not really possible to test balance because these two factors are going to interfere.

 Several times you state that you can achieve a "strict RPS model under the specific conditions I wrote, which Blizzard themselves can test". However, the point I was trying to make when talking about the issues of rigging draw order is that Blizzard cannot create these conditions. Sure, they can rig the draw order however they want. But that will not remove all randomness and preserve the original matchup favorability. When you muck with the draw order, you change the "natural outcome" of the matchup. 

I ask you to come up with some theoretical rigged draw order that would work. I am extremely confident that there is none. You cannot rig the draw in any way without affecting which strategy is favored. 

Blizzard testing is not magic. 

You later state that "With average draws, if a 40% winrate for a weak strategy existed, that would actually be a good indicator of imbalance. If we are still considering perfect technical play from both sides". This statement seems extremely misguided. For an example lets look at the matchup of stealth gala rogue VS tempo DH during AoO. This matchup was favorable for rogue, but by an extremely small margin. So although stealth gala rogue was the 'strong strategy' and tempo DH was the 'weak strategy', tempo DH still managed to win about 45% of the time. Is this a sign of imbalance? No, this just means the matchup was pretty even. 

To really sum of what I'm trying to say, there are NO conditions in which the RPS is strictly enforced. Its not only impossible under 'real world conditions', its also impossible under any sort of testing conditions you could come up with. 

With draw order, its kinda like the observer affect. If you look at or control draw order in an attempt to isolate matchup favorability, you change the matchup favorability in the process. 

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

If you read the post, it tells you what balance in Hearthstone means and why it means that. If you did read it and found the answer but didn't like it, I can't really do much to help, it is the objective principle to achieve perfect balance. It is the way to ensure no strategy is being favored compared to others by having unfair conditions on weak matchups.

In a very simple manner, if you apply the condition I wrote before, and you find that the Rock-Paper-Scissors is not working strictly, if you find one playstyle, for some reason, is capable of overcoming it's weakness under these conditions, that means there is an imbalance of power in it's favor.

You removed randomness, so that isn't the cause. You perfected technical play, so that isn't the cause either. You are left with an imbalance in the power level of whatever strategy you are testing. It is overcoming a matchup that it shouldn't overcome.

A matchup that is favored towards one strategy can only be overcome by a few factor. Random elements outside of player control that determine the outcome. Improper technical play which allows the weak strategy to take advantage and punish the mistakes. Power imbalance and allows it to overcome a natural weakness. If you remove the two first factors, you isolate the third factor, meaning if it happens, this is the cause of the problem.

It's not a rabbit hole. Blizzard themselves are capable of setting up these conditions for testing and balancing. We aren't, but they are.

 First a question: how do you cleanly get rid of previously quoted statements?      EDIT: I appear to have figured that out :)

As for the topic at hand, I did in fact read the original post (that I quoted), and I appreciate that you have chosen to clarify what you meant. To reiterate your definition of balance in my own words, you believe that the game is imbalanced when a weak strategy is capable of beating what should be the 'favored' strategy (e.g. paper beating scissors). 

This has logic, and is a reasonable enough definition. You then proceed to defend your claim. 

Your premise is that there are 3 factors that affect any given game of hearthstone: randomness, player skill, and matchup favorability. This is also reasonable. 

However, after this point the logic falls apart. Even in our theoretical world, there is no way to isolate 'matchup favorability' as you have attempted to do. Although it is acceptable that you can remove the factor of player skill, you cannot remove randomness. Even if there were no 'random' cards in the game, it is impossible to discount draw RNG.

Rigging the draw order for 'optimal draw' is absolutely not the solution, because some decks care more about draw order than others. In your first post you said that "you actively rig it for optimal draw order, what you get is a game in which, if both players play perfectly, the strategy that has an advantage in the matchup will win every single time." This is false. As the most stark example, in wild it is possible for a druid player to OTK their opponent on turn 1 going first. By your metric, that deck is the very definition of imbalanced because it will beat ALL other strategies. However, that deck is utter garbage, and I struggle to accept any metric that declares a deck with a poor winrate imbalanced. As such, we cannot use 'optimal draw' to remove the factor of randomness. 

I will now move on to 'average draw' as a metric. If you believe 'optimal draw' is still workable we can come back to that, but to me that feels like a waste of time. Anyway, 'average draw' is indeed a theoretical way to offset the affects of randomness. However, 'average draw' will yield statistics like average win rates and win percentages. Are those good things to work with? Well, they could be, but unfortunately that means abandoning (or at least heavily adapting) the theory that the RPS model is what we should be working with to determine balance. Why? Because Rock Paper Scissors has only clean, 100% winrates. 

Lets now begin to adapt the RPS model. Still with 'average draw', scissors will beat rock lets say 40% of the time. Is that a problem? Maybe, but not if rock also beats paper 40% of the time (and paper scissors 40% of the time). Paper beating scissors sometimes is not ALONE cause for concern, nor is it a sign of imbalance. Now that we have done our best to eliminate the affects or randomness by looking at averages, has scissors become "capable of overcoming it's weakness under these conditions" and as such become imbalanced? No, it hasn't. 

What is really the fatal flaw of using Rock Paper Scissors is that in hearthstone, strategy and decks are adaptable. Lets say you're a rock player, and you get really really tired of losing to paper. So you adapt, become a little thinner and a little sharper, and start to give paper a run for its money. Now you might think you just became imbalanced, but that isn't the case. Because as you adapted to be better against paper, you start to lose a little more to fellow rocks than you remembered, and even scissors who you used to bully starts to feel like they have a fighting chance against you. So even though rock is managing to beat paper, it sacrificed itself in other matchups. 

And even with everything I've said previously notwithstanding its incorrect to say 'look this aggro deck beats this control deck, the game is imbalanced.' Favorable matchups are favorable matchups, and if the aggro deck is winning that means that it has the optimal strategy. Maybe its because aggro is overtuned. But its also possible that the control deck got greedy, started to try and bully fellow rocks, and slipped up against scissors. At that point, rock has moved a little too close to paper (midrange/combo) to be good against the aggro decks. This isn't always the case, but it certainly is sometimes, and so it is in fact wrong to define imbalance in hearthstone as being when paper manages to beat scissors. Sometimes it is a cause of imbalance, sometimes a symptom, and sometimes unrelated. 

To be clear, I think that the RPS model has a lot of value. And although I've just spent a bunch of paragraphs bringing up its weaknesses, I could write at least as much if not more defending the value and importance of the Rock Paper Scissors model. But to declare it to be "the objective principle" is at best incorrect and at worst intellectually dishonest and incorrect. And for the record, I still feel like this was a deep dive into an ever widening rabbit hole. 

If I have in some way misinterpreted either of your posts I do apologize, feel free to clarify anything that you feel I misunderstood or misrepresented. If you feel like I missed a crucial point, feel free to bring that to my attention. 

I could be wrong, but I feel fairly confident that 'generate themselves' only applies to cards that add cards to hand, not those that summon minions on the board. 

I would not expect Spiteful Summoner, Sneed's Old Shredder, Gravelsnout Knight, ect. to be affected

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from Daulphas >>

How do you define balance in a game like hearthstone?

 A game state where if you provide average draw order (or even optimal) and you perfect technical play, you have a strictly enforced Rock-Paper-Scissors model.

If the game is correctly balanced, and you remove any element that the player cannot control, or in the case of draw order, you actively rig it for optimal draw order, what you get is a game in which, if both players play perfectly, the strategy that has an advantage in the matchup will win every single time.

This happens because using these conditions, you remove any variable that would deliver outcomes based on anything except the strategies being played, so what you get is a state where the strategy that has an advantage in the matchup always win.

Obviously, even if you remove all randomness from Hearthstone, you will still have variance because of draw order and improper technical play, this is where the matchups lose the strict RPS model.

Anyway, it is not subjective.

 Bleh. 

I consider this an altogether poor answer to a pretty open ended question. Without getting too into this, the structure of your post should be something like "balance in hearthstone means ___, because ___". 

Instead we get into a rabbit hole of assuming perfect play and rigged draw order in an attempt to reduce variance or something. 

To try and be constructive, I like to define balance in hearthstone as occurring when a) all or at least most classes have at least one deck at tier 2 or higher, b) there is a level of parity in the frequency that you play against each class, and c) there is a level of parity in the frequency of aggro, midrange, control, and combo. 

This expansion seems to have shaken up the wild meta quite a bit, but to summarize the quest mages have gone away, the raza priests have returned, and people are making big kingsbanes 

Some people have touched on it, but I'd like to reiterate the most important point to be made: although Guardian Animals druid is not OP by conventional standards (it has a mediocre win rate), it is the most meta warping deck. Right now decks live and die by their ability to withstand druid.  

Ah but the beauty of a digital game is that the card just does what it does, you don't need to bother with what the text actually says. 

You misinterpreted the card when you first read it. But now you know how it works, you have learned the interaction, and can play accordingly. 

Hearthstone is well known for inconsistencies and misleading text, but its not really a problem because all you have to do is play the card a few times to figure it out. 

Wait for nerfs :)

In all seriousness, if you are f2p just chill and make do with the cards you currently have. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that the next netdeck will magically make you a better player or that you'll suddenly start winning more games. From my experience, even f2p players build their collection much faster than they actually get good at the game. 

If you're willing to spend money on hearthstone, then that's the quickest and easiest way to get dust. 

If you're impatient and f2p, dust your goldens. But be aware, dusting your collection now just makes more problems for the future. 

Classic case of random player gets stomped by mediocre deck and decides its broken. 

Jambre (gala evolve) shaman is a very recent development and is pretty okay, but certainly not OP and as far as I am aware has only been played by a select few people in high legend. 

Not that this post is exactly the place for this discussion, it would be a terrible mistake to let people ban classes/cards/decks or manipulate queue RNG in any way