Budget decks are a history

Multiplayer Discussion
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Throughout my 10 years of playing this game I’ve never encountered a situation as dire as this one

I had Shalagdrassil on NA but I disenchanted it after the nerfs thinking it would be unplayable later

Oh boy, what a mistake that was.

None of the decks hard-running that card are viable without it. You can’t even hit Legend with a Pirate Rogue that isn’t running Shalagdrassil.

The difference between winrates of an average deck (and by average I mean it’s somewhere in the top 15 of all decks currently) with and without that one card is over 10%. No cap.

I literally hit a flawless 15-2 run on EU to legend running Shalagdrassil and then played 55 games on NA without it trying to hit Legend, and I couldn’t.

Anyway, what this means is that’s it for the budget decks. No longer can you pick up a top 10 deck, realize you don’t have all the leggo cards, and then just replace it with a good-enough replacement. It just won’t work, unfortunately.

EDIT: I realize the conclusion doesn’t neccessarily follow from the premises. The issue may be localized and relevant only in cases where the missing legendary is as impactful as Shalagdrassil is. Either way, it’s an issue. It might be even more of an issue because of that, not less, as it shows that today’s decks can’t be tuned and optimized the way they could be before. You either play them exactly as you found them, or you do not play them at all.

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Ive been away for a bit from ranked standard. about 2 months now as im enjoying BG these days but thats a thread for another time.

remember when shaladrassil was teased and we thought it was another gimmick card? it always happens as shaladrassil also came with something big: a core rotation. That card right now is just instant include in any deck and for good reason. We’ve got some decks playing completely for it, some using it as a free card slot in their decks, and like u said the only decks without it simply dont own the card.

im at work rn typing away and its too loud so my boss might ring me out but theres a lot i wanna say on this subject and furthermore i am disheartened that they let paladin get out of control (Again) (everytime)

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I doubt it is only Shala that matters. Pirate Rogue is a simple, predictable deck. Such decks tend to lose % of their wr at high ranks, sometimes not only at high ranks, but everywhere higher than the depths of the dumpster legend.

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my personal mistakes means the game is bad, it not me, its the game

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That’s a thread for just about any time, judging from experience :grin: :sweat_smile:

Yes, it appears you’re absolutely right, and it’s time I learned that lesson myself

I guess implied in your reply is the fact that there is no need for drama because it will get better as new cards get out?

I can work with that.

Always

In this exact situation, nothing else matters.

I put in a second windfury pirate instead, and I can confirm it’s definitely coming handy. No longer do I have to save my only windfury pirate for finishing, as I can count on drawing another with any of the tutor cards I have, so I can drop it for tempo on 3 or to increase pressure when I decide do pop-off mid-game

Since the effect of the substitute card is positive and helpful in early to mid-game, which is quite a few turns before Shalagdrassil gets to be played (at least 2 if you’re gonna prep it, but on average much more), that means that the actual bonus winrate of the substitute card is quite big

The earlier a card is played, the higher its value, as the less mana you have, the more important is that card’s impact on the overall game

When you add that to the rest of the story, we get to an uncomfortable truth about just how strong and neccessary shalagdrassil is at the moment. It’s game-deciding, literally, more often than not, even though it comes late.

I just want to reiterate this for emphasis: That card is so strong, that the existance of Pirate Rogue as a deck AT ALL lays entirely on that one card. Without it, its winrate wouldn’t make it to hsguru, tier not-withstanding.

I tried. It’s up to anyone else to prove me wrong, but it won’t be done with just words. I literally have empirical proofs of it xD

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I don’t know where exactly this is bad.

Less “budget” decks means more legendaries are being used and with nowadays resources a new player can literally pull some(not only 1) day 1.
And if that isn’t enough blizzard literally give that player a deck.

As for deck cost. Blizzard really needs to put that war on Gold rewards If they want a healthier metagame.
That because the actual shifts are so wild because people are allowed to manage their resources like a toddler.

Nowadays people don’t whine they don’t have a deck to play. They whine they don’t have the exact deck they want as a day 1 player.
That is at minimal ridiculous.

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Bro, I’m not a day 1 player

I’m a 10-year player strictly focused on Standard who has problems maintaining 2 collections

Not even 2, more like 1 and 1/4 is all I’m asking for

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Yes and when you open 10 packs of an expansion you get a random legendary.

On top of that. Do you remember how Miserable It was on the old days when you pulled a legendary and after the card was revealed you knew It was a pile of trash only worth 400 dust?
That reduced a Lot a i sure many are happy for it.

If it was for me all legendaries in this game would be actually good cards and even buffed when they didn’t fit the bill of being good enough to justify being a 1 off.

Budget decks can die and while we are at It blizzard should create an archtype based on higher rarity cards Just to piss off who is against.

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So essentially, if you had to choose between having issues with getting your hands on legendary cards but being able to reach top ranks with budget versions anyway AND having all the cards but not being able to win unless you play the exact same version of some netdeck, you’d choose the second option?

I would assume a sane f2p would prefer the 1st, always.

I guess this confirms it. You, sir, and your saneness, aren’t on good terms at the moment.

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You’re jumping some steps here.

  1. Not every legendary card has to be the foundation of your deck so saying you get every deck to be a exact copy paste because the 1 offs play like 1 offs is a bit of an exagerration.

  2. Even if were in the absurd scenario of legendaries turning into Staples. We really don’t.
    There are more card slots in a deck to be filled despite of that for sure being a bad scenario.

  3. This game economy is broken and fix metagame issues pass by doing something about it.
    If someone not want everyone to go instantly to spam the next metagame deck something has to be done one both ends.
    Those ends with the First being game balance and the Second being the hability to collect cards.

If the economy is not fix the metagame Will always be bad for the average player and with a good reason.

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A lot of budget decks were usually solely minions as a win condition decks with mabye a marginal amount of from hand burn…and minions as a win condition are on the way out if not completely gone already. Its either OTK, massive mana cheat, or be able to stat cheat out a billion stats on turn 3-4 before the minion hate engine starts (which is about the only budget strategy left).

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Minions aren’t going out…because they’re used for their effects, and target practice

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That’s true, and even in this scenario, there’s hope it’ll get better as new cards come out

No, more and more often it’s obvious that some cards are THAT broken that you absolutely must run them in order to stay competitive, and Shalagdrassil is one of them at the moment.

And naturally, such cards are always neutral, like this and Zilliax, and there’s at least one such card every rotation, and depending on your playstyle, sometimes more

It has always been that way, but the difference in winrats aka the difference in relative strenghts of those cards is over the tops now compared to before

It takes a lot of practice and a lot of luck to hit on a new meta breaker, and I haven’t had much success experimenting nowadays, and it can’t possibly be expected from your whole f2p playerbase to experiment all the time

I don’t see where this argument is going

What I’m tryna say here, damage is going to be done to all f2p players

And it won’t be visible immediately, because those on or near the top will stay, they got things going good for them, it’s those with less success that are going to drop first, and then with time and slower and slower matchmaking, it’s going to impact everybody

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Yes, there Will be a decent amount of damage done trying to fix this for sure and even blizzard is acting here and there on a more timid way because this really affects their relationship with the community.

Getting the arena changes. Taking more gold out of the reward track to print less gold even if they have to put more packs it still a win for now.

That happened because blizzard for a long time tried to instead of make fun events Just threw cards on people.
On the long run that acumulated creating nowadays situation.

I not against people having acess to cards to play but we are clearly on a side of the equation where the minimal balance change create a completely disproportional horde of players changing decks and i not talking only of the players who got the deck nerf.

One thing is the top legend player that play every damm day to do this but when the more casual players do we clearly have a problem because those people should prioritize play what they like.
Not only that but that specific player hates exactly what he is doing. To have to face the same decks every match.

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Cycle Rogue is probably the cheapest. Incindius is the only real legendary you need for the deck. After that probably one of the various Menagerie decks.

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With climbing speed 0,32, even 20 dust is too much xD

You want me to hit Legend by the end of summer, I need something faster xDD

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That’s nothing compared to the “mistake” I had. I double-crafted a legendary in a Tavern Brawl deck so I literally wasted 1600 dust (unless it’s nerfed (but good luck with that since it’s an already nerfed card)).

But it’s not my mistake because it was a graphics bug with the tavern brawl (it would show it completely uncrafted but the buttons of crafting would still work).

PS if you dust a nerfed card inside the nerf window you lost nothing technically because you can just craft it again without loss, unless you mean that wasn’t the mistake but that you crafted other things useless with that dust.

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1200

Which is exactly how much this mistake will cost me, so it’s the same xD

This. But both were a mistake, disenchanting because it’ll cost me 1200, and spending that on some other legendary for a deck which doesn’t require Shala because it meants I’ll be playing without Shala for a longer period of time

As it stands, I’ll probably be able to re-craft it on NA in a week or so, IF I’m lucky, since I’m 1 miniset (2500g) behind and can’t waste gold for packs just to rack up enough dust for Shala

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Did you dust it in the refund window? If yes you’d get 1600 dust so it can be recrafted for free.

That’s why I ALWAYS dust ALL cards that are nerfed (well unless I have to play them).

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Yes, but did you forget about the initial crafting cost? I didn’t just get Shala for free

Oh, actually, yeah, in that case I lose 1600, not 1200

And in that case you lost 2800g, then