Y’know, every time someone has said this, except for one issue, I’ve always come to the conclusion that I was right in the first place.
That one issue was the extent of botting. And I admit I was way off on that. But we’re talking about ONE time.
I do find it tiresome though. Look, I don’t know why I continue to find analysis to be fun when I don’t feel like piloting is fun. I wish I understood that myself. But the point is, a lot can be told by analysis.
Which is exactly the way that the game should be. It should be unheard of for a game to go to fatigue. There is nothing about this which is a game design flaw.
That’s just cope. Most of those wincons you mentioned are one or two expansions old.
The analysis I tend to be looking at here is what play is actually winning the game. Right now the power level of the game winning cards in the later game FAR exceeds the ability for cards to respond to them.
Just looking at mage for example, because it’s the current meta story. It is not humanly possible to build a mage deck that out-survives, or responds to what big spell mage does.
You have to preempt the play, because mage does not have the tools to make responding to the play an interesting, or even fair game. So now mage is just about pulling off the early tsunami chain first.
Most slow decks can’t even outlast or respond to it, so they also get forced into a similar play pattern of just going for their ultra fast win con combo first.
So now, if you don’t want your games to be entirely determined by who draws the overpowered win condition card first, you play pirate DH so you don’t have to see the play in the first place.
This is a problem that has been continuously getting worse as cards are added. New decks entering the meta are just extra scam decks alongside the old ones. That’s how we have deck variety.
And that one extent was coming from me, if you recall. I’m not lying to you here. I’m telling you what the meta looks like when you play it.
How can you possibly know that turn 2 boards are bigger than ever before if you aren’t actively playing the game?
How can you argue they are not if you aren’t playing the game and see it?
It’s not like I’m trying to be mean, I’m trying to explain it to you so you can know what it looks like without actually playing the game.
Someone on Reddit earlier posted this image and I thought it was fairly accurate representation of what the meta feels like
They called it “Does my opponent have the good card? ahhh Meta”
It’s pretty spot on but it’s also missing like 15 more cards.
If I had to sum up the meta, I would sum it up like this:
“if everything is broken, nothing is broken”
And that’s pretty accurate imo. Things are doing things way better than ever before, faster, better and stronger, but if everyone is doing it, it’s balanced.
sorry my dumb dumb butt is beating your smarty pants today nerd
The combination of looking at a Pirate netdeck list, reading what the cards do, and thinking.
https://i.imgur.com/TPSHMi2.png
Then why are you oblivious to the fact that a turn 2 aggro deck is spitting out better boards than ever before as a norm and not a highroll?
Yep, this is the current design direction of hearthstone.
It’s balanced, it’s not fun for me. It’s feeling less and less like my decisions matter, more and more about if the good card gets drawn in time. That’s the majority of the games.
It’s just feeling like I’m playing a coin flip simulator to an extent.
Except it isn’t.
I haven’t played standard this week. I never do after card releases until after the first balance pass specifically so I don’t have to deal with exactly this sort of trash.
I can also look at the winrate for those same decks. Apparently, being able to summon a crazy board early and somewhat consistently does not a 60% winrate make. So something is finding a way to stop them. Like you said, good recovery tools. Implied by the data.
Now, do I have a clear mental image of this something? Admittedly, no not really. Just that it has to exist in some form.
And this is what I mean it’s hyper aggro or bust.
If you want to play a coin flip simulator, okay that’s fine, but that’s unreasonable behavior in my eyes.
So failing that, the only type of game play were you can feel your decisions matter somewhat is aggro so fast it can get under all that scam, and when you occasionally do get scammed you shrug your shoulders and move on.
Yes, so by looking at that data you would make a conclusion that aggro decks aren’t a problem. Correct.
But you would be unable to make the conclusion that aggro decks are very much power crept from before because everything else got power crept even more.
If aggro was rated on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the strongest and 1 being the weakest, and the same can be said for combo and other decks…
If aggro 3 months ago was a 6
and combo was a 5
and control was a 5
What we have now is aggro is an 8
combo is a 9
and control is an 8
So, yes, you would see “nothing wrong with aggro, looks fair in the meta!”
and the point that was made was that aggro has been super ramped up isn’t false, but you wouldn’t see that because all you see is the data
That’s the point.
The aggro is better
the combo is even better
The aggro is Hyper
and the combo is scammier
Both are true.
And again, if everything is broken, nothing is. That seems to be the philosophy they are going with.
And I’ll give you an example of a “scam” feel. This was me the other day playing BSM against a Spell Mage. Every once in awhile, a Spell Mage deck can mega highroll with the Elemental Summon spell and hit the perfect minion that allows them to play a few more spells. And if they just so happen to luck draw into more copy cards, they can high roll.
This is such a game. Go to turn 7 and watch what the enemy does. All of this is based on whether or not the mage gets “their good card” on the random summon and then getting “the other good card” with the draws and discovers.
https://replays.firestoneapp.com/?reviewId=608aa08a-652b-4396-aed9-c58e1558e68e&turn=14&action=0
That’s nonsense. It’s as easy as looking at an aggro list and thinking. I already said this.
It’s not hard at all to see that aggro is significantly stronger. Yet aggro is not a problem, according to winrate data. Therefore it’s implied by the data alone that aggro is an 8, combo is 8±1, and control is 8±1.
This is just looking at aggro netdecks. Control and combo lists are harder to just read like a book.
There is nothing wrong with aggro being an 8, combo being a 9 and control being an 8. Legitimately no major problem. I mean, a -1 to combo might be nice in that situation, but it’s a tweak, not a crisis.
It’s the correct philosophy.
This isn’t the argument though. The argument isn’t even that aggro is the best. At least, it’s not mine.
The argument for me is that aggro is faster, everything is faster and better, which is my defense on calling it hyper aggro.
It is hyper aggro.
It’s also scammier combo
Also greedier control
And all the other flashy words that need to be used.
It’s also balanced and diverse. For many people, it just doesn’t feel fun because lack of agency in actions mattering seem to have faded a bit. It doesn’t matter if you play perfect in many games. If the enemy high rolls, you lose. And if you high roll, you win.
I think that’s what people have an issue with.
Me, personally, I feel aggro is fine. You can build to counter it.
What you can’t build to counter is avoiding the scammier stuff.
I’d give up Overheal Priest in a second if we had a viable Thief Priest build
I tried some fun decks with the new cards yesterday and gotta say most were really entertaining and decently competitive - Cube is super buggy atm but also super hilarious when it’s working right. Then like 50% of Legend went to Mage scam silliness so I had to go back to Overheal which just destroys Mage but is less fun to play.
Yeah, I agree with you there. Over the years I haven’t hidden the fact that I prefer homebrew decks over meta ones because I hate mirror matches.
The reason I hate mirrors is that they had that coin flip simulator feel.
But now that feeling is kind of everywhere, and skill just slightly weights the coin toward one side regardless of what you are playing.
Or you play aggro…
I actually started trying Flamestrike in BSM for some of those matchups. I can’t say I’ve got some huge sample size to go off of but it felt very nice to stabilize against some of the board heavy decks and having it in GPO felt very satisfying.
Now you see what I have to go through every time I post my own experience from top levels, lol
You got these few people who don’t even play the game, or play in dumpster ranks, and they find it in themselves to correct us who play in top 200
And then they gang up on you and don’t stop at nothing to discredit you
Worst part of it is they pretend to follow what VS says, even though VS’s formula clearly says that “popularity = strength”, which they ignore
So they’re not only wrong, but also hypocritical
How would making coin not a spell hurt Rogue?