I like his take because it really digs in and doesn’t just tunnel vision on win-rates, tier lists, or deck performance.
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Excellent point. I think his points about analyzing it by winrates alone might not be the best. Well perhaps at least for standard vs wild. There may be twenty flavors of decks, but if all those twenty flavors are aggro, it feels almost the same as like one of those shops where your options are to have purple aggro, green aggro, white themed green aggro, more aggro, and handbuff pally and mages. it just kinda points out the flaw.
Winrates of a deck don’t always entirely hide problems. Say, for instance, pirate warrior, control warrior, midrange druid and jade druid.
Jade druid wasn’t a strongest deck, but it’s winrate in a fatigue matchup vs a control warrior was like 70-80%. Control decks were given cards that could be powerful in their decks statwise like Varian 1, a draw and play card that summoned minions he drew onto the battlefield. But a big problem of the control vs aggro matchup was that you needed answers, otherwise you would die. You needed to constantly keep up, and you did want to play answers, but it just didn’t help your win rate and all.
Fatigue wasn’t always chosen as a system of ideal nature for either player, it was just the only way you could build a deck that could reasonably have it’s best chance at survival, drawing clear, and playing things.
Now at first a couple years, you want to win, you want a deck to play. People played what won. i remember for years playing pirate warrior, midrange shaman, zoo decks and burn, and for the longest time, i would also play and pilot. Most of the time i went for diamond 5 pack grind, only going to about legend 4-5x for a pack. When i did, it would either since A: a deck i hated had a good winrate and might as well use it. or B: A deck i loved playing was really fun to play.
A big part of why i really really like to play my raza homebrew deck that i piloted to wild legend and played about 3x as much as any of my other classes, even when i could maybe say, pilot a 66% hsreplay wr burn mage to 78% [22 win: 6 loss], and a homebrew raza to say, 50% early versions to 66% final iterations in wild high legend facing other reno decks, then have it literally drop from a almost legend or fun deck over the weeks to a dead 30% winrate overnight is. the broken power levels of the new warlock interactions in wild are literally 6 mana interactions that can create 40-50 vanilla mana worth of value. Such as dealing 6 damage while healing 6 from the quest alone is worth almost at least 4-6 total mana alone with say, with turn six combos with the draw the warlock has. (1 mana, draw 3. b. heropower, draw 2, c. 2x more 3 mana draw 3 deal 3 damage, etc. d. 1 mana 2/1 draw a card deal 2, and raise dead, etc)
The deck just has extremely easy way to otk and combo, idk if standard is better, but i feel like it just creates a situation where if you’re bored of aggro it’s great. or tournament stuff, but if you play for enjoyment or already hit legend 4 times, the thought of doing that grind again doesn’t appeal. Post mmr is tricky. I’ve always done my best to pilot decks, and have in the past done like f2p decks to pilot like 55%-60% zoolocks from the anywhere to diamond grind with like piloted 73-78% winrates pre mmr matchmaking straight. I can get like those 22 win 6 loss or 42 wins 11 loss spreads while feeling absolutely no enjoyment or drive at all. Perhaps there isn’t much ownership of decks or other independent inventors, but i feel a personal attachment to at least the wild razakus versions i have spent like 30 iterations going through utilizing some of the earliest spawn of shadow combos, as well as experimental combos with the 3 mana 2/3 that generates a 1/1 copy to play with thaussian brann rag combo otks in brawls or wild with discounts, squashing and recruiters and nearly every inspire synergy and it was enough to constantly hunt and tech and find good enoughish counters for the meta that, at least for me, my personal wild variants seemed to come out, at least for me stronger or funner to play.
But ever since, the wild experience since questlock came out is just awful, my mmr is still kept from last season, but i’m just not feeling motivated to play pre nerf out of lack of enjoyment. the solitare meta is truly hard to enjoy, when it comes at killing a archetype to kill 5-10+ decks for 1-2. Most expacs are barely a blip, but when wild is basically made up of standard cards being more broken through broken mechanics rather than syngery, like 6 mana combos that otk a opponent, gain 10 armor, summon 18/18+ worth of stats without cost over 5 bodies, and could scale up to 70. I just don’t want to see a entire archetype at current meta power be left untouched by balance changes. As well, One could argue that hearthstone and a literal game of rock paper scissors could be the same thing. as long as you win, lose or tie 50% of the time, what’s the big deal? But like… what about the gameplay, the interactivity? the stuff that makes hearthstone… fun?
2 Likes
yea, really struggle to enjoy any games currently, most of them just feel like your decisions ingame just don´t matter much. kinda feels like there´s not much point to skill currently, just hope you roll enough good matchups in a row to climb (or given the spread of some decks hope your just not on the coin, it´s really gotten to be much more auto battler than card game this expansion unfortunately).
Really not sure if just bringing control back is enough to fix all these issues.
(and for the warlock quest - why don´t make it a true link so the warlock can´t heal himself after finishing and really as to make a judgement if he can finish the game with the quest now or needs more healing/control first).
6 Likes
I didn’t read this all, but I support this mans just on the fact that he’s a fellow homebrew Raza player - the problem with this meta, in both Standard and Wild right now, is that entire archetypes of decks - Control, Highlander/Reno - are rendered useless in the face of the combo and aggression necessary to play ladder right now. It’s sad.
Pretty much exactly the way I feel about the meta, and i think Kibler is having the same difficulty in seeing how they can fix this as I am, you’d need to nerf a whole bunch of stuff and it will be very difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
What a collosal balls up this expansion is, maybe the way to fix it is to add a bunch of cards that interact with ‘solitaire’ decks, but that has it’s own set of risks.
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I keep trying to watch this while playing but apparently fail at multitasking. Lemme give it my undivided attention. Heh.
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except most people don’t want to get pushed down in a slow meta where control priest and fatigue warrior are the dominant deck again.
speak for yourself.
20 and so on and so on
This is pretty much exactly what I was saying. If you’re a slower player, you can’t have fun in this meta with your style because you can’t interact with your opponent.
In reality, the problem he’s pointing out (but not saying) is that there is no tech against this stuff.
Just having 1 OTK deck pretty much keeps Control in check from ever becoming too good. When your meta is like 5+ OTK decks, Control dies and aggro thrives. Control helps keep aggro in place (despite what you’ve always been told on these forums).
I’d rather them NOT nerf a lot of stuff and instead just introduce tech cards that allow Control to keep these decks in check.
But I don’t think that’s what most players want. People seem content with this fast paced meta, but they aren’t content with Quest Mage and Quest Warlock playing a slightly longer game with a feel bad win you can’t interact with.
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Kibler is missing the most important point. Was Control good and viable right before UiS dropped? No!
Why not? Because many of the very same people complaining about no Control now, were all raised pitchforks against Control Priest a month ago and got it nerfed.
How is this community so forgetful that Control was already dead before any Quests came on the scene? And it died at their request!!!
And as far as those slower Midrange decks are concerned, DR DH and Rush Warrior are both still good and playable. So I don’t know what are those slower midrange decks he’s referring to, since these two were it last expansion.
12 Likes
Wait, what? I think you have that backwards. The people who were complaining ABOUT control all raised pitchforks and right now they are NOT complaining about there being no control. They are happy there is still no control and enjoying the meta. You can read posts from people right now saying they enjoy the fast meta with no control and that it’s worth it and hope it doesn’t change.
The people who are complaining about there not being any control now are the people who play control.
What’s considered slow now is stuff like Handbuff Paladin, which really ISN’T slow and is just as fast as aggro if you look at average minutes. What’s considered SLOW right now is Quest Mage and Quest Warlock (not zoo version). Go look at the avg minutes of those. Those are the slower decks…and people are complaining about THOSE decks, not the fast ones.
In short, the players of this game are ruining it with complaining because they’re complaining about the wrong thing that matters.
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Priest was an incredibly popular bring to tournaments and performed well at high legend though?
Do you know why? This is part of the problem. People make this point and have NO idea why tournament decks being brought don’t reflect ranked play. Tournaments give you the ability to ban something, so you bring a control deck to offset the ban and control which deck you play against. It’s a strategy. It has no bearing on whether or not control is good in the meta.
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But you ignored the point that it was also performing well at high legend.
No, I think he has it right, since “people who were complaining about control” were pretty much non-existent. Control decks strong enough to draw complaints were/are few and far between for people to raise pitchforks about.
The complaints towards control were mostly to those that aren’t strong in the meta, but are in some way annoying. Priests as mentioned. Tick locks. Turtle mage. Only the last one got a nerf. Note that for tick lock, for all the complaints, there was also a strong reaction to defend tick lock, even some pros came out to tell people tick is fine.
That tick got such defense when it also ate up plenty of slower control decks would be indicative that not many people complained about control. If anything, people liked how slow decks can’t survive against even a tier 3 deck that was tick lock.
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This is correct but what’s the point? Every expansion people think the game will get better, but it gets worse. Nothing is new, they don’t care as long as they make money. Another expansion, another failure for the players. The best deck is a face hunter deck, that doesn’t even have new cards. Priest is now aggro also. The game is a joke.
You might not know this, but tick lock defense was coming from other priest control players like myself. Tick lock wasn’t bad at all against control decks that built for it. My control priest ended up finding the solution to tick lock and ended up with a close to 80% win ratio against them. Then my deck got nerfed into non-existence.
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F in the chat, i mean, same too. i was a raza player and i got burned too. Then i realized i wasn’t draw raza and had a board! then i killed them, and thought it was good that they were printing some combo disruptions. (Though i still can’t say i was a happy victim lol), but i could understand it.
I don’t mind people having counter but a lot of all or nothing combo decks it does feel bad having a rat. But i don’t mind if a deck has backup conditions and that’s all fun of playing… just… damage and otk is so much cheaper than healing right now. What’s cheaper in wild? dealing 30 damage and also having 6 damage lifesteal 6 hp quest and playing 18/18 of stats for 6 mana, or spending 4 mana to do jack to salvage a board and healing 4-12 hp not even able to go over 12/
I feel like that’s a extra problem vs why branching path is good as a bloodlust or +12 armor for 4 mana, and healing potion has the same but it’s generally a lot weaker. You only get full value out of it after 18 hp. And that’s when most minion boards will have control, and when most burn decks will save burn in hand to finish you off next turn. Which is fair, but healing potion has always been the reno lite that only worked when decks were turtle comfortable. I’ll be honest, i’m not too sure about the priest questline in a good control shell. But… you know with meta how it is… 36% winrate when people tried it at all… i’ll hold my breath for when turn 8 exists again.
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Nah, I know. In fact, it’s one of my long time theories that most of the bickering about control is between control players.
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Man, this right here. This is exactly what the masses asked for, and now they’re so upset. I’m a control player, and although I’m trying my best to enjoy this meta, I’d much rather they fix it by introducing/buffing cards to face the OTK and aggro, rather than just let the intense combo, aggro, and control rock-paper-scissors their way through a whole meta. The questlines are so overtuned, and OTK in general has gotten so bad, highlander is almost dead in Wild; at least, it’s not worth running at top legend, although you can still get into legend with it, admittedly. It’s preposterous. Control priest, even when nerfed, has a sub 50 winrate by data sites ALL the time, yet people want to raise pitchforks and get stuff nerfed or banned simply because they cannot use what already exists to counter it. Pitiful.
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