Ben Brode On The Meta, Balance, and Shaman
Ben Brode has written down his thoughts about the current meta, the Shaman class and his balance considerations on the official Hearthstone forums today. There is a patch planned for the end of February and an announcement of balance changes will be made a week or so before that.
- The past two weeks, 30% of players were playing Shaman on the Legend ladder
- 17% of players were playing Shaman when all ranks are included
- This includes all types of Shaman decks
- The worst point in history, balance wise, was Undertaker Hunter where Hunter was being played by 35% of players across all ranks
- The 'pirate package' of Small-Time Buccaneer and Patches the Pirate is being played in rougly 50% of decks above rank 5
- The average win-rate for Aggro Shaman is 53%, which is currently the highest win-rate deck in the meta
- There has never been a 'best deck' with a lower win-rate than this
- It only has a 35% win-rate against Control Warrior that is tuned against it.
- For example this Control Warrior from Fibonacci works great!
- There will be a patch near the end of this month
- An announcement about balance changes will be made around a week or so before that
Quote from Ben BrodeHey everyone!I've been reading a lot of feedback on the state of the game, whether pirates are too good, and whether shaman is too good. I'm also seeing a lot of folks wondering what we are planning to do about some of the current issues.
I should start by saying that we truly appreciate all of your feedback. I think Hearthstone is at its best when the development team and the community discuss and share ideas back and forth. These are real issues, and hearing about your experiences has been helpful for us in determining next steps.
So today, I wanted to talk a bit about the meta, potential nerfs, and how we think about balance.
To get us started, I wanted to define some terms. These are common terms, so there may be no revelations here, but it's useful to make sure we're talking about the same things, and how these terms (which are common to all games) are specifically used in relation to Hearthstone.
About the Meta
The Meta is short for the 'metagame'. The game is what happens once you tap 'Play' and see the spinner. The metagame is what happens outside of the game. It's what deck you choose to play. It's what decks your opponents choose to play. Some people define 'metagame' as literally everything game-related, including chatting with friends about it, reading information about it online, or anticipating upcoming content. The Hearthstone community uses it more frequently as "all decks that everyone is using" and often more specifically as the "the top X decks". If there are 7 decks that all see enough play that you see them again and again while you play, you might say those decks are 'the meta'. If you're playing a deck that people don't see often, you are playing 'off meta'. If you build a deck specifically to beat the most popular deck then you are playing to counter the meta. It doesn't matter if a deck is good or bad, what affects the meta most is how frequently any one deck appears. It's important to note that bad decks can be part of 'the meta', and good decks might not be widely spread enough yet to have become part of 'the meta'.
About Balance
Balance can mean different things in different contexts. Sometimes we use it to describe the relative power level between things. Sometimes we use it to describe how often things are being used in relation to each other. And there is a complex relationship between these two metrics.
For example, a class might have a very high win rate, relative to others. That's not balanced. When that happens, more people tend to flock to that class, increasing the play rate. Eventually, that class will become played more than other classes. That's also not balanced, and it's the more worrying imbalance.
We believe, at its core, Hearthstone is more fun when you are having a variety of experiences. We randomize the order of cards in your decks, restrict you to 2 copies of each card, and limit your hand size and the amount 'card draw' we print to help make experiences different each game. We print cards with random effects partially for this reason. But one of the biggest ways to give you different experiences (and problems to solve) each game is to give you different opponents with different decks. We also release new cards, because even all of these things isn't quite enough to keep things variant over time.
There are games with less variety (like Chess), that are still very deep. But we believe that allowing creativity in deckbuilding, and giving players new and different problems to solve is really fun.
The value of Balance, then, is to keep giving players different experiences.
This is not to say that each card's role is to compete for a spot in a competitive deck. Some cards (like Majordomo Executus), are intended to be a lot of fun for players who like big splashy moments. Other cards are meant to be deckbuilding challenges to players who like to experiment with cards that others have deemed weak (Hobgoblin). Some are meant to be hooks for learning or comparison. ("This is like Chillwind Yeti, but better! That must be good!")
Statistics and the State of the Meta
I wanted to go through some stats about the current meta, and talk about how we analyze them.
Over the last two weeks, 30% of players are piloting Shaman at Legend. If you include all ranks, 17% of players are playing Shaman. This includes several decks: Aggro Shaman, Midrange Shaman, Control Shaman and Jade Shaman.
The worst point of imbalance in our history was Undertaker Hunter, where Hunter was played by 35% of players across all ranks.
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 average win rate of the best deck in the meta is 53%. Historically, there has never been a 'best deck' with a lower win-rate. Put another way, this is the worst 'best deck' in Hearthstone's history. The win rate is consistent across all ranks, though individual players have wildly variant individual experiences. We don't include mirror matches in our calculations.
The highest win rate of all time was Undertaker Hunter around 60%.
When evaluating balance, we look at the win rate of decks and classes, compare them to the impossible ideal (50%), and to the worst case (60%). Knowing that 50% is impossible, we just want it to be "close". This isn't a science, but for us, that has traditionally been between 53% and 56%. This isn't the most important metric, though. If a deck has a 70% win rate, but only a handful of players are playing it, that's great. It doesn't cause the issues of non-variant gameplay... yet. Traditionally when a deck has a very high win rate, people begin to copy it, and it becomes a larger and larger part of the meta. Another important consideration for us at that point is 'Counters'.
When a deck loses to specific cards or other decks, players can be rewarded for playing those counters as that deck rises in popularity. If a deck ever became 60% of the meta, but there was a deck that handily beat it, then you could have a 60% win rate by playing that deck, and it would become the new best deck in the meta. This phenomenon causes metas to change over time. We've seen that so far since the release of Gadgetzan – Pirate Warrior hit peaks of 30%, but shrank to as low as 10% over time. There were also a few days in which Reno Warlock was the dominant deck and which Rogue was the dominant deck at very high skill levels. When the meta is still changing, we don't like to make changes to cards.
Right now, Aggro Shaman is one of our highest win-rate deck, but has a 35% win rate vs Control Warrior decks that are tuned to beat them. Reno Mage is also a bad match up for them. Does this mean that it has become 'correct' to play Control Warrior? It depends on the other decks in the meta, and whether Aggro Shaman continues to become more popular. Fibonacci recently took advantage of the predictable meta and built a Control Warrior deck that did very well against Aggro Shaman.
We believe that it's important to let good players recognize shifts in the meta, and capitalize on their knowledge before the meta shifts and the 'solution' changes. This is one of biggest reasons why we don't nerf cards very frequently. 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.
So that brings us to today. Another consideration for making a balance adjustment is planning around a client patch for each of our platforms. We are working on the ability to stream balance adjustments (and other content) directly to players' devices, but until we have that ability, we need to release a client patch to make a change to a card. Our next patch is planned for around the end of this month. You can expect an announcement from us regarding balance changes either way in the week or so leading up to that date.
Fibonacci's Anti-Shaman Control Warrior
Want to check out that Warrior deck Ben was talking about? We have it right here!
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I really don't think that Shaman will be bad class. But even if it happened, don't you think shaman was the best class for far too long? I think it's time to change it a bit.
Oh totally, right now I'm waiting for Pally to become the next big thing. Hopefully not too big like Shamstone became.
I've learned one thing after playing Hearthstone since somewhere in mid beta. Folks will never ever be happy about anything. Ever. Which can only lead me to one of two conclusions. The majority don't know what they really want from this game, Or they don't know what they're talking about. ;) I'm sure most of you can and will add to this in very clever and colorful ways.
Same questions; same answers; different cards. This conversation will continue after the next release and the next and the next...
At it's core, I don't believe the pool of cards or the # of card types (Minions, Weapons, and Spells) is large enough for player's to properly counter anything. You either play what's hot or you lose.
Folks have been asking for a slower meta since forever, since Undertaker days, since Face Hunter days, since Secret Paladin days, and since Aggro Shaman. That has been around 2 years since beta. How could the majority be happy when they never solve the problem to begin with?
The only folks that Blizz has catered to make them happy is the Aggro players. By the end of the day, if they ever complain about anything, they are the ones that don't know what they want from this game.
Agree. heartpwn community know complain only. even weak card like ice bolt, fireball, azure drake also receive many complain and have more than 10 page salt threads.secret paladin is non aggro deck. combo deck like freeze mage, otk warrior also non aggro deck. also receive many complained.
i dk what deck they played. i only can guess they play ultra greedy deck and will complain everything that counter they greedy games plan. ie: get otk after drop 5 legendary in board. loses to perfect curve secret paladin, loses to top decks fireball etc.
just admit it you guy loses because you guy play gimmick deck or play the deck wrongly. Reno deck heavy tech aggro have 60-65% win rate vs aggro. and also can easy win vs otk deck. they just skip 10 turn by draw,hero power, setup otk without play any good minion.
they also heavy bias. otk deck like druid receive less complained due to having many legendary in deck while budget otk deck receive many complain. really cancerous pay to win mind set.
Some folks, not all of the HS players where asking for a control meta. Why people think that what they want is what the majority wants ?
I'm a main control player and I know for sure one thing: if all the meta will be control I'll be bored as fuck, no challenge, aggro decks are an absolute necessity for the health of this game.
If control will become prevalent people will inevitably start to counter it. And control is easiest archetype to counter.
To me the game is in a very good state right now. The only slight problem is that in the top-tier ranks there is so much Shaman, but the decks don't feel so broken to me. Though I must admit it's a little frustrating to lose to a totem roll or lightning storm roll etc. That side of Shaman isn't very satisfying to play against, but it feels otherwise fair to play against, and you have an okay chance to win the game.
Yes, Control Warrior does serve as a counter to Aggro Shaman. However, one must also take into account Control Warrior as a deck, and the factors which influence it's success.
1. Fibbonacci is known as a Control Warrior expert. The equivalent to Zetalot and Ryzen to their respective archetypes. As such, the ability to maximize the success of the deck is almost completely dependent on the pilot. For a mass majority of the playerbase, control warrior will be met with much disappointment and repeated failure; the deck just really is that hard to pilot. It's a lot like the post-Karazhan meta, where Freeze Mage was declared as the "counter" to the hated Midrange Shaman. The steep learning curve of the deck makes it not a viable option on ladder, and only in cases where Fibb is able to create a last-day masterpiece such as this one does it ever meet the levels of success that control warrior could ever hope to reach.
2. Aggro Shaman is the only good matchup for the deck. All three Reno decks, Midrange Shaman, Dragon Priest, Miracle Rogue, and Pirate Warrior with an amazing openings absolutely demolish this deck. This makes it impossible to play at lower ranks, where the representation of aggro shaman is skewed heavily to show under representation, while the reality of the matter is that the deck is seen way too much from ranks 5 to legend and beyond.
Finally meet honest guy admit they lack of skill to pilot the counter deck unlike other know complain only.
actually CW goods again
reno mage, win in fatigue (unless you vs greedy deck list that have extra 5 legendary minion)
pirates warrior, taunt & armor up (terrible hand)
miracle rogue. Brawl, armor up, taunt etc (crazy start like 10-10 turn 3. if unanswered then loses, but if you execute . auto win because they used all the resources. or they include extra legendary)
all the factor is more on RNG factor.
IMO Reno mage is pretty favored against current CW versions because of Brann + Kazakus + Manic Soulcaster. It just outvalues CW. The main option for CW to beat Reno Mage is to play Golden Monkey ASAP.
You're unfavored versus all the Reno decks. Your anti-aggro tools like Slam and Revenge are pretty much useless. If the other player understands the matchup and plays for value lines, then CW has a difficult time outvaluing them.
The announcement most likely will come on either Tuesday or Wednesday. They usually never post any news on Mon, Thu, or Fri, unless blog posts like this.
Considering the fact that people generally Dont play Control Warrior because of the Cliche saying of people dont like playing a match for more than 10 mins, i doubt suggesting that deck will help, plus it loses to every single Control deck
Announcement of announcement of a nerf. Blizzard surpasses itself.
Timely, as usual! Nerf a card a week before a new expansion so you can reprint the same stat distribution with new art, then deal with that "balanced card" a week before the next expansion. Team 5 is awful.
Who goes thar?!
I'm in charge!
Sooo bored of hearing this. That's my main problem with it. I don't even care if it's OP or not. It's just BORING!