Nothing is nerfed. The miniset is soon. Even if they did nerf something it would be multiple decks; there are at least 5 to 8 archetypes that are good; you can filter the stats sites in ways that each and every one of them becomes the best archetype in some days (they’re all that good).
So you think mini set going fix the problem that is crazy the current new expansion did not even fix it. Warrior can still summon multiply zillax in one turn , druid ramp like crazy , and board deck are a thing of the past.
I guess this is as good a thread as any for this rant.
I’m not really paying attention to the meta anymore. And that’s because what I realized a handful of months ago fundamentally changed the way I’ll look at balance forever.
See, there was a moment in Standard, just before major nerfs to Warrior, where I realized that there was no good reason why Warrior was performing as well as it was. Hard counters were available, with high winrates, higher even than Control Warrior. If people would just play these decks, they’d do better than Control Warrior WHILE driving Control Warrior’s winrate into the dirt. The meta could have balance, without any need for Warrior nerfs.
But it never happened, because players at all ranks, even top Legend, were too stuck on what they were playing to change decks. Some wanted to be the Control Warrior, even if it meant a lot of draws. Almost all of the rest wanted to beat Control Warrior without changing off of a deck that was countered by Control Warrior.
They didn’t want to win against the deck. They wanted to win against the deck without adjusting anything that they were doing, without getting better. They wanted to win through nerfs and nerfs alone.
And so, no meta shift occurred, even though it was the rational move. Instead the meta remained stagnant until nerfs occurred.
It was that moment when I realized that the playerbase is not as rational as I had believed. I mean, I understood that they were a little bit irrational, but at least the top Legend players I thought were mostly rational. This is not the case. Players at all ranks would rather be loyal to their decks than win. In other words, all ranks were mostly irrational.
Because of this shift in perspective, I no longer consider CCG balance to be a solvable problem. I consider it permascrewed, if I can get away with saying that. You can’t even balance paper rock scissors if more than half of the playerbase are diehard rock mains who refuse to switch to anything else. The rationality of the playerbase is a fundamental assumption of balance, but that premise is itself false.
This, in turn, makes me sympathize more with Blizzard balance philosophy. Yes, I can see how cynical they are, putting out deliberately overpowered things just to shake up the meta later. Change for change’s sake, resetting the puzzle just to provide the brief illusion of balance. But cynical balance is the most that an irrational playerbase deserves. Even if you gave such a playerbase a more pristine balance — which Blizzard did — the playerbase will not take advantage of it. Balance patches are pearls thrown before swine.
So I have no particular will to even see balance anymore. I can’t say for sure that it isn’t what the community wants, but if it is what they want, then they won’t so much get out of their chairs to grab it off of a high shelf if it’s right in front of them. They expect it to be automatic — and if you ask me, that isn’t wanting it very much. They’re clearly more concerned with whatever they consider fun — as expressed in which deck they choose to play — and perhaps even more so with sheer laziness.
My faith in balance has been broken, and it wasn’t the devs that did it. It wasn’t even this forum community. It was the playerbase itself.
No, I don’t think that the miniset will fix anything. I don’t think that anything that will be done, or anything that could be done, will fix anything. I think balance is fundamentally impossible. A false hope.
I wish I could have a Ketheric avatar.
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I’m not saying the minisett will fix anything. I mean the miniset will shuffle the balancing all over the place so it’s not very relevant to balance anything before then.
Right now there is no brutal imbalance anyway because there are at least 5 to 8 archetypes that daily switch between 1st place (depends on opponents).
Let me help you with that sudden defeatism xD well, not sure how much I can help, since it’s not on us to change the things, but I can at least offer some perspective shifts
When we speak about people being mainly “rational”, we’re speaking about “consumer behavior” (economics) or “investment portfolios” (finance) or “rational choice” (decision making systems).
What do all of these have in common? They can’t be analyzed without taking time into account.
Every adaptation goes through at least 2 steps, one being a temporary, unstable, reaction occuring in the mid-term, and the other being a long-lasting, stable reaction occuring in the long-term.
Obviously, how long one term lasts depends on the application.
The thing about Hearthstone adaptation is that there is no mid-term, and there is no long-term. Patches are every 2 weeks, and you never know how many changes they’ll bring. MT qualification season lasts for 2 months, but it still contains 3-4 patches during those 2 months, so every long-term potential which could be used in the course of 2 months now becomes a mid-term potential of less than 2 weeks.
This is why that matters - you don’t get to high legend with a deck you’ve played for 2 weeks tops. Well, maybe you do, but even I can’t do that. It took me 3-4 weeks to hit dumpster Legend when I returned to the game in November, and I only reached high legend after 3-4 months of playing.
High legend players are mostly one-trick ponies who master a deck or a class and then abuse it until it lasts, or until they’ve managed to get hooked on and mastered the other, so 2 weeks is definitely not long enough for high legend players to adapt and still remain high legend.
Obviously, some people are just from another planet and can, in fact, adjust and master a new deck so quickly, and they are creme de la creme, top of the top for a reason.
OK, that’s an excuse for high legend, but what with rest of the playerbase?
Well, the rest of the playerbase either isn’t competitive enough to care, or are even worse at adapting than High legend players (it takes them even longer to master a new deck).
All things considered, forget about the “rational choice theory”. In conditions we have here in this game, the theory’s main assumption is broken - there is not enough time for people to adapt.
They don’t want us rational. If we’re rational, we’re not impulsive, and we aren’t spending nearly as much as they want us to. Hence, this.
Maybe below the top 50. I haven’t seen a single top 20 and rarely a top 50 player who doesn’t rotate through multiple decks.
I think it’s related to the last “hard” skill in the game; knowing exactly how the opponent behaves; playing it is learning.
Do either of those have a good deck
Oh I guess there’s Zarimi priest. Is that still even good?
Norwis is rank 3 (EU) at the moment, playing only Nature Shaman for months
He’s been rank 1 with it for 90% of this month
He’s a streamer, but isn’t streaming at the moment.
Theo (EU) mostly plays only DK, and he’s rank 63 (he’s usually top 50 so I guess he’s lowrolling now), also a streamer and he’s streaming right now
Homi was taken (America), exclusively a Rogue player, streaming right now
Ins4ne (EU), also Rogue player, top 20 all the time, also a streamer
Photon (America) exclusively plays rogue, he was a participant on the MT the other day
Maxiebon rotates between Druid and Rogue on the ladder. He just won MT the other day.
How can you see them if you never watch streamers? If you did, you would have known some of those for sure
I’ve named only a few, but most of the top 20 players are like that. That’s why come MT time, we see them making stupid mistakes - they haven’t had enough time to practice the other decks in their lineup.
EDIT: Now that I think about it more, I can only name 2 players who use the rotation system on the ladder - ex world champion PocketTrain and one of the MT players McBanterFace
All the rest are known for their one-class piloting mastery, but of course most of them try other decks - they just don’t continue playing them after trying. I try 90% of the decks on the ladder but in the end, it’s just me and sludgelock forever.
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They have to bring 4 classes to MT and the matches I watched Priest and Rogue were usual bans so he would need to know all 4 of the decks he brought as rogue probably took a good many bans for him. Can’t just win MT putting zero time into a class/deck
Overheal priest is also a good deck, many MT bans maybe just good enough and unfun to play against but I’d say the same about the rogue list
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Yeah, I mostly agree. I did make 1 mistake in that post, and that’s precisely Maxiebon.
He’s also known to play Overheal Priest! So this meta was sort of made just for him, literally xD
So let’s call him an exception, although he’s closer to being a one-trick pony rather than not. Just because you used to play a deck archetype before, then stopped and then started again, it doesn’t mean you’re not a one-trick pony - you still play only 1 deck at a time for the most time.
That’s kinda false, because if they all lack time to prepare and practice the other decks, then noone has the advantage over the other due to experience, so someone will have to win with zero time into a class/deck
However, at least for this MT, a player most experienced on 3 out of 4 decks won the tournament, and that’s to be expected.
I have never liked the idea that you need to counter one class with another. I have always argued for a range of cards within each class so you have multiple playstyles that can serve that countering role. An example of this is the poor card design for hunter at the moment that has left it out of the meta currently. The tourist cards available for most classes is just weird and don’t blend well as dual class cards.
True
Isn’t it so already? And has always been? We always had aggro, tempo, control shaman. We always had aggro and midrange hunters
We always had aggro and greedy warlocks
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Well, yeah, it looks terribly unfun to me, even when it’s strong, it’s just boring to play, and too repetitive
if a class gets shut out of a meta because everyone is playing sticky minions and they don’t have access to their own sticky minions or the means to counter them - than no not all playstyles are available to each class.
A great example is Rogue which tends to get stuck with odd choices available to them. On paper pirate rogues makes a lot of sense. Demon hunter did it better which should have never been the case.
OK. I guess I don’t see them because they are the most boring. Some of them may rotate more when they stream and less when their games are recorded on trackers.
This was basically a questionable sales tactic on their part. You NEED the tourist cards to participate in the expansions theme. So by a play logic they should be at the rarest a rare card. Instead they are a legendary that forces players to either buy more packs in hopes of getting them or use dust they have saved up. Either way it was clearly designed to increase sales and keep them robust the entire expansion life.
Where this tactic fails is the new player who just gives up before even spending money in hopes of getting the tourist card they want. They could have approached this a bit better but letting each player choose a Tourist of their choice as their free legendary on the rewards track instead of it being random.
If they did not want the cards to be legendary than they would have had to create a new keyword: unique. May only have one of in a deck. possibly may not be discovered. Which actually might be a good thing.
I wish discover cards in general took into account common, uncommon and rare varieties. The one rogue card is the only exception. But it would be nice if they all worked that way. Discover 1 common card etc.
EDIT: I love how the new griftah card uses this.
It could have easily been some new keyword. They add them all the time. Wouldn’t have been a big deal.
I think theres a large problem when mentioning balance and looking at winrate only. Sure people could adapt to control warrior, but control warrior is a stale deck - in that its boring to play against. It runs the same boring game plan of removal/removal/a couple of late game I win cards. Win or lose the games end up not being satisfying because they all end up being non games. Either you got under their removal and killed them before reno/killiax/resummon killiax or whatever it was back then or they dropped the i win cards and called it a day. The biggest problem of course was that it was I think at one point a 30% playrate deck (at its height before the most recent expansion).
Now I’m not in the game industry but I imagine player engagement is an important metric and I can imagine warrior was lowering player engagement with how incredibly dull it was. If it was as I remember a near 30% playrate then they had to do something or the players would go somewhere else and the game would die (a bit exaggerated of course). Thus you get “sentiment” nerfs for decks that arent a problem but can be perceived by the company as lowering player engagement for one reason or another.
While players look at the game in terms of a spreadsheet with things like win% and what not… the company that actually makes the changes looks at it from a financial spreadsheet with things I’d imagine as player engagement/hours played and need to make changes if theres a drastic negative spike.
I think theres a large problem when mentioning balance and looking at winrate only. Sure people could adapt to OTK, agro, mid decks, but they all are stale decks - in that its boring to play against. It runs the same boring game plan of play green cards for 6 turns straight to win. Win or lose the games end up not being satisfying because they all end up being non games. Either you got killed on 6th turn or killed on 5th turn or 7th turn. The biggest problem of course was that it was I think at one point a 70% playrate decks (at its height before the most recent expansion).
Imagine having 60% wr druid otk deck that costs 0 dust not being nurfed to death, while hearthstone now has only 10 classes like in the good old days (joke, there were 9 classes). Just nothing else changed except there is no class anymore. Oh that’s not fun to play vs zilliax? I had no fun playing against dk ruining my “UnKiLaBlE” combo with infinite ice plagues, I had no fun playing against 6th turn otk druid. Well, that’s my fault that I was not spamming at forum that I was offended by other players :(((
I just daily trying to build new warrior deck that would have more than 50% wr but all of them just die before I can do something. 6th turn lethal by dk via 4 mana 10 dmg zombies, 4 mana 15 dmg ship, infinite half-fireballs. 8-9-10th turn lethal by mage with lamps. Fatigue warlock healing up by 30 hp in 1 turn and doing 30 dmg in next turn. And so on. And they nerfed warrior, cool, nice, thank you. Hope all the ZOOmers are happy with playing their green cards every turn when effectively that is a coin toss for win by 5 minutes or so.
I just want to play control decks, I want to play 1 game for 20 minutes straight thinking about my resources and survivability.
But haven’t we always known this? That’s why we get nerfs based on popularity as well as power.
Streamers have an immense impact on what the other playerbase is playing.
If the streamers are playing Jank Rogue 4.0, their viewers go and play Jank Rogue 4.0 driving up the play rate
I see this in game all the time without even knowing it happened.
“What the heck is this new deck I’m seeing out of nowhere?” Oh, some streamer just played it for 6 hours yesterday. Happens so often.
And if deck X is countering deck Y in a top legend, deck X trickles down to the other ranks.
But what you will barely see ever is a streamer at top legend playing aggro. Their viewers don’t want to see that. They want to see something new. Something not brain dead boring.
This is why you see some aggro deck at top legend be the #1 deck, but it’s not the streamers playing it, and it’s not popular, it’s the other players trying to rank up without having to please a viewer base.
Thus, if aggro deck Y beats meta tyrant highlander warrior, don’t expect to see aggro deck Y being played at high legend much, and thus not trickle down. The player base SHOULD be playing it, but they aren’t because a streamer isn’t.
I think people highly underestimate the effect these streamers have.
I mean, look what it did for the arena black market. That’s all because of streamers. They impact the game that much.