It is still the most played card. It is ruining deck identity. It’s bad enough every deck has rampant discovery. Many decks have rampant mana steal and card steal/copy. Every deck plays Atalor. Blizzard claims Shadowstep can’t be nerfed because it’s their core identity. Breaking combos, basically. Now they have Breakdance too! Shadowstep isn’t Identity. Rogue’s Identity is that they cheat core mechanics better than anyone else. Their identity is they have no core identity. And more and more classes are slipping into this trend. Demon Hunter and Death Knight, the newest classes, are the only ones that feel at all unique. Classes feel so watered down. Their core identity is just a tiny piece of their deck now. Everything is trying to emulate Rogue. Who is the best at being a Rogue or dealing face damage? Playing for field barely exists. Fatigue decks are gone. Value decks are gone. Attrition/control decks are scarse. Agro decks are scarse. What deck cheats the best as Rogue, but has a little something extra? Well, it doesn’t matter, because Rogue copies Astalor best, and can steal cards, copy cards, discover cards, and mana cheat.
I’m not saying Rogue is the problem. I’m saying instead of making unique decks where some counter Rogue to try and balance it, most decks are emulating Rogue.
Yeah, but so what? There’s a lot of problem cards besides astalor. He isn’t even on my radar as a problem card anymore compared to what else is being played at the moment.
I´m not sure if this thread is complaining about Astalor or complaining about Rogue. Bouncing stuff multiple times and playing lots of cheap cards in a single turn for a certain payoff is rogue’s identity. I don’t think that’s necessarily problematic at all, and Astalor is a card with a 10 mana manathirst. Any bouncing of Astalor is a win condition that will only start occuring from turn 10 onwards; which is a space where a lot of heavy stuff is happening in every match, not just in rogue or with Astalor. I think you’re exaggerating the problem a little bit.
Unfortunately Astalor is a necessary card to close out games on control decks. Without it there’s not a whole lot of burst available to aggro decks outside of a few class specific cards.
The REAL problem is that they left Shadowstep in the core set. Remove that card and most of the abusive plays of Astalor go away.
It also works as one of the few win conditions overload/big shaman currently has. They can play multiple copies and can also steal opponent copies if there’s hasn’t shown up yet.
But Rogue only has one competitive deck right now, miracle rogue. And it is only really present and being played optimally in high MMR ranks, where it isn’t really being a problem at all. Every tier 1 deck in ladder right now is not even running Astalor. Paladin doesn’t run it and it isn’t doing anything remotely similar to rogue. Frost DK doesn’t run it and isn’t doing anything similar to rogue. Totem shaman, same thing. Undead priest, same thing.
I think you are just annoyed at miracle rogue’s playstyle and you’re trying to read the entire game with that in mind. But I think that is not really what is going on with the meta right now.
I’ve seen a lot of games being closed out with multiple Astalors on both sides of the board. The win comes down to who has more Astalors. You know, that LEGENDARY we can only run one copy of! I’m still not sure how I feel about it all. My wife gets tilted by it.
I certainly appreciate your input and your opinion!