Undertaker Hunter Was Once 25% of the Meta
Hearthstone Game Designer, August Dean Ayala, shared some interesting numbers on reddit today.
Quote from August Dean Ayala
- Undertaker Hunter at one point was around 25% of the meta.
- Undertaker Hunter at its peak has a winrate of 55-57%. (If remembered correctly)
- Currently the most popular Shaman archetype is less than half of what Undertaker Hunter was in its prime.
- The highest class win rate Dean ever saw was Druid at 57%.
- Highest Single Player in Legend win rate (minimum 50-70 games) was around 75%.
- The Highest Single Player in Legend win rate is normally about 70%.
Nifty
You are SOO wrong. They did not "get rid" of GVG because of randomness but because of power creep and design limitations. Some cards were too strong and were seen in every deck. After they released TGT they realized that new cards will never see much play if they are not stronger than the previous ones, which is not a good design path. They want the meta to shake up from time to time, so instead of balance patches, they opted for rotating-out limited format, which is open for adjustments in the future (maybe they will add/remove cards to the basic/classic set).
This is why Blizzard Should never ever ever ever ever EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR print insane 1 Drops , but then again they didnt learn their learn after undertaker because then they made Tunnel Trogg >.>
Well Tunnel Trogg is somewhat weaker than undertakes was. Tunnel trogg only gets attack, it can be played in only one class, and the pool of cards that syngergize with it is smaller.
It may be, but not solely because of Tunnel Trogg. Why are you jumping to conclusions? I was only comparing Tunnel Trogg to the old Undertaker before the nerf.
i hope blizzard increase his stats to 1/3 like tunnel trogg or mana wyrm
Sooo, about Undertaker... They knew that 25% of all decks being played were Undertaker Hunters, and the other 75% were about to quit the game because of that one card.
Yet it took them something like, a year or something to nerf it? Blizz pls : [
Undertaker was released in August 2014. No one played Huntertaker until October, after the nerfs to Combo Hunter at the end of September. Its "Reign of Terror" lasted about three months - not quite "a year or something." Prior to Huntertaker, the card was included in Priest and Zoo decks - it wasn't a problematic card in a meta-game dominated by Combo Hunter.
RIP
"Currently the most popular Shaman archetype is less than half of what Undertaker Hunter was in its prime."
I feel like this is a miserable attempt at trying to cleanwash the failure they made with Shamans. Both the face and midrange Shaman decklists share almost identical setups except a few cards, and both are extremely powerful. What I've observed over hundreds of games is that their numbers are almost equal, meaning that if we add them together, we are almost at the level of undertaker hunter. That's what experience shows as well, I've had days where 50% of the players I faced ran Shaman, but deffinitely around 25% overal, at least on higher rankings, which should be their guideline regarding the balance of competitive scene. Even 25% is extremely high..
I disagree. When Grand Tournament goes away, Shaman is going to be vastly different then today. So I'm not really upset that Shaman got strong for awhile, a class getting buffed for a few months is healthy.
Obviously, if you take away all the extremely powerful cards from Shamans, they (or at least this aggro/"midrange" versions) will struggle again unless future expansion save this brainless autoplay archetype (which we can assume they will anyway).
So what you are saying is we should suffer through a year thanks to retarded card-designing, just because it will go away in a year, instead of balancing the classes properly with each expansion. Fantastic logic, Brode should hire you. Making a class ridiculously overpowered isn't called "buffing".
Sorry, not trying to attack you, I just don't get how this thinking could be healthy for a game that wants to be taken seriously on a competitive scene.
In the latest VS report, Shaman has a play-rate of about 22%, 4% of which is Control or Evolve Shaman. MR is about 11%, and Aggro is about 7%. The decks aren't "almost identical, except a few cards" - they share about half, and have completely different game-plans.
Oh, and also, just today I have met 5 shamans out of 9 opponents (not a big sample size, but this is the general tendendy all the time). RNG must be really hating me every day because no matter how hard I try to calculate, 22% just doesn't add up.
Every single shaman had perfect curve, I lost all those games and half of them were emoting through the entire game. This is the meta, no matter how they try to make it look better.
Blizzard's Team 5 is mostly concerned with ranks 20-10 where 70% of players are located. Balancing cards based on the top 5% (Rank 5 - Legend) sounds ideal cause that is where the most broken cards are consistently abused. However, Blizzard tends to ignore that part of it audience b/c they know that is their hardcore base that will continue playing its game no matter what. Whereas the 75-80% that play more casually represent the greatest profit margins. Once that group of players feel threatened by the meta, they lose incentive to play easily, as was the case with undertaker and even patrons to some extent, then blizzard steps in. Also Blizzard loses a lot of money if people keep dusting cards for full value if they keep balancing them.
In conclusion Blizzard says suck it up and wait for expansions or uninstall us if you dare.
What about wild?
Even Undertaker Priest was a Tier 1 deck in those "golden" days and the strongest Priest deck up to date.