Mike Donais Slams Nonsense, Talks About Cubelock Power and Nerfs
Yesterday afternoon, Hearthstone's Principal Game Designer, Mike Donais, responded to a post on reddit which claimed they fought 17 Cubelock decks in a row and proved them wrong. Through internal statistics, Donais discovered that no one in all of Hearthstone fought that many Cubelock decks in a row that day and that there are indeed better decks than Cubelock.
Here's what Mike had to say about Cubelock's power level and nerfs in Hearthstone.
- Cubelock is currently ranked as the 12th best deck in their system.
- The deck will be stronger after the card nerfs arrive due to no cards within the deck being nerfed.
- Cubelock is challenging to play so it may improve more as players get better at it, though it may also get countered more if popularity increases.
- If Warlock is a big problem post-patch and players have had time to adjust to it, they'll evaluate it then.
- Win rate is not the only factor in deciding when cards get nerfed. How players feel about cards matters too.
Here are Mike's full posts which the above points were taken from.
Quote from Mike DonaisI just checked the data, and no one played 17 cubelocks in a row today.
If you are indeed having trouble with Cubelock there are several decks that beat it consistently right now. It is currently the 12th best deck.
I did enjoy the title of your post though. (Source)
A couple people asked why the stats I mentioned don't metch VS power ranking so I looked up VS 79 and across all rankings Control Warlock is the 10th best deck. I assume they mix control and cube warlock in their stats. We have decks broken out a bit more but 10th gives you the general idea.
Obviously after the nurfs it will be stronger since none of the cards in cubelock are being nurfed and that concerns me but it is a pretty challenging deck with a lot of opportunities to show off player skill. People will eventually get better at playing it, but people will also put in more weapon destruction or silence cards if it gets more popular.
I am excited to see what people figure out after the patch. If Warlock is a big problem after people have some time to adjust and tune the new decks then we will look into it. I have said many times before that win rate is not the most important factor in our nurf decisions. How people feel matters more, so we will listen to players and make decisions based on that, just like we did in the past with Quest Rogue and Patron Warrior. (Source)
We return to the problem of always
It does not matter how powerful or not some cards are but the frequency of adjustments
This game needs small monthly adjustments
I don't believe his post is mean spirited at all, some of you are reading far too much into it.
Sometimes hyperbole needs to be nipped in the bud to avoid complete fabrications being the norm. I mean just look at half the dumbass posts on the hearthpwn forum.
Blizz could certainly be more forthcoming with some stats, although he does tacitly show us that VS/HS RP are basically accurate at large.
So we all know that probably around rank 5+ Cubelock is a tier 1 deck and will generally be piloted semi-competently, if we believe the stats only roughly 2-3% of players hit that mark.
Blizz has to look at the collective in addition to top end, and although I don't necessarily agree with him in this instance I can understand it. There are:
1. Viable counters after nerf and
2. Incompetent pilots on all levels of ladder most most of which are concentrated less than rank 5
I personally prefer waiting for the meta to settle rather than gwent style nerfs which for my tastes happen way to often and I don't feel like they are actual cards rather on edge waiting for the next nerf bat.
anyway..my 3 cents
Honest question; what situations will that help?
Hearthstone has only have a very tiny amount of buffs in it's history and most of them were wayyyyy waaaaaaay back before the first expansion was even live. :P
I agree though, it would be cool to see some cards buffed. :) (although we probably won't see that because there's more profit in just releasing new cards)
Really funny blue post, I also like how they have to say "nurf" instead of Nerf to avoid copywrite infringement.
You made my day! I always used "nerf" but I never thought where it came from, thanks!
I'm just going to leave this here...
https://vimeo.com/31411314
(Parental advisory)
I wanna know the decks they think are more powerful than warlock. They said it’s #12 (before nerf).
just check metastats.net and you will see
Just taken from Hearthstone Meta Stats. Top 15 Decks:
(Last 4 Days)
Win Rate
Win Rate
I'm not the guy Mike is replying to, but i feel quite offended by his words. To me he says "STFU, commoner, cubelock is completely a regular deck. I'm in position of authority so I say it's a top 12th deck and can be easily countered" (aka "You think you do, but you don't")
Ok. I understand that Mike has access to much more info about things going on in Hearthstone, than I do. But I, just like a 17-warlock guy and other fellow HS-players, pretty much feel that cubelock is currently somewhere among the 3-4 tier-1 decks as tempostorm meta snapshot says.
Mike has some data which says it is not true. Could he be so kind to show even some of it to publicity?
Tempostorm meta snapshot was always clear and understandable to me. A lot of well-known players say it's show the real picture in the game to some extent. They even show some data, you know.
A lot of people now think that Mike is simply lying, and they have all the right to think so.
I, personally, think that the data he is speking about is gathered across all the ranks and all the servers and has nothing to do with real "power of the deck" no matter how you define it.
In the end of the day I feel, that people, who are in charge of a game with millions of people in audience just can't say "you are wrong, because I know things you all don't".
I agree entirely with your sentiment. As one of the developers of the game (or whatever, I don't know his actual role), it would do him a lot of good to speak in a more friendly manner to someone who was clearly just a little frustrated and very obviously exaggerating about 17 cubelocks in a row.
I just think he could have worded things a lot differently. Ben Brode, love him or hate him, at least always puts a positive spin on any of his posts.
(I reread the top and now see he's Principal Game Designer. Please don't tear me apart, internet people =D)
"Rogue Quest deck isn't a problem, not so great in winning percentage," -- Quest nerfed
"Pirate Warrior ..." -- STB nerf, axe nerf, patches nerf
"Razakus Priest ..." -- Raza nerf
According to https://hsreplay.net/meta/ Cubelock is indeed 11th (all rank I don’t have premium).
but to be fair 7 out of the 10 archetypes with higher win rate than Cubelock will be hit by the nerf namely (Aggro pally/Hunter/Druid tempo rogue/Druid pirate warrior and zoolock)
Murloc pally, spiteful priest and tempo secret mage will still be there!!
"nurf"
While I understand the argument of "other decks can adapt to fight Cubelock", there is a flipside to that coin: Cubelock can adapt to those decks, as it will not need to fight off decks that contain the nerfed cards anymore (which generally have a positive score against it at the mo).
Wow could he be more disingenuous? Of course Cubelock isn't the Best deck at this exact moment. Raza Priest still exists and patches still has charges and Creeper is still around so aggro has a high chance of beating Cubelock. The problem is that after the nerfs Cubelock with 150% certainty becomes tier 0 with no bad match ups. You would think intelligent people like Donais would understand this?