Cockroach OTK Shaman is back...again

[SparkyElf-2852]

@First123-1992

You can’t be slower like Sif mage.

You can against something like Warlock or DK.

@First123-1992

If greed is the meta, then you need to be the greediest. You need something stupid like reno, brann, shudderwock, endgame lock, etc… Old school control decks that just try to bore/fatigue people to death ain’t enough.

Ahem… Singleton Warrior is one the greediest deck and is most popular with the ‘fatigue’ option.

@yellovvsnovv-1935

They removed the only way to interact with plagues in rotation, and that was a stretch to call that interactive.

Meet Tony, King of Piracy, you newb!

@yellovvsnovv-1935

DH? Really if they draw weapon in curve and roll the right demons they can trounce nearly anything. How is that interactive it starts coming t3 well before anyone has time to do anything.

That’s literally interactive: playing minions, removing enemy board and whatnot, except for Magtheridons probably — which still do get removed by Reno (and they said ‘permanents’ or dormant minions are untouchable)…

@yellovvsnovv-1935

Wheel Warlock? How is that interactive, it is just stalling for 5 turns.

Well, they literally play big boards, very much like a Classic Handlock, it’s more than just the Wheel itself, although I still don’t consider it quite ‘legitimate’.

@yellovvsnovv-1935

Mage is interactive? I guess if you count disrupting Sif once every few games as interactive.

Still reminiscent of the old Freeze Mage with its many iterations: you either are fast enough and kill it first, or you get armour, or you just die to it, most likely.

@yellovvsnovv-1935

If players are picking it up in top legend it’s not because it’s a great deck to play, it’s because they are frustrated with the toxicity of all the other options.

Or perhaps they are picking it because they have a guaranteed exorbitant win rate (from ‘The Algorithm’), no matter what deck they play, so they just pick this one to troll and abuse their opponents. Doubly so for so-called streamers (see also this, for instance: Why did I have this win rate if the matchmaking is rigged? - #120 by SparkyElf-2852): not only do they have ‘skilL’ (yep, ‘L’ for ‘skill’), but they can also show it off by abusing ordinary players in front of others. Apparently, some are even mentioned here:

@Kassadin-21130

Tic-tac, Norwis, Pocket train, MDroogie → those are just 4 of the top streamers who’re abusing it as we speak.

@Scr0tieMcB-1291

What makes them top streamers is both that they’re good players and that they can please an audience.

Well, yeah, except that the ‘streamer magic’ — the very same that allows them to have 90% win rate with Sif Mage vs Odyn Warrior, for example — wouldn’t apparently work if you’re not ‘certified’ (perhaps ‘aNNointed’ — ‘official’ ™ Blizz orthography — is a better word), no matter how good and entertaining or educational you are.

@Kassadin-21130

Average and slightly above average players see their favorite streamers and top legend players play a deck successfully, they blindly make a copy and expect results. Naturally, they have awful scores and quit.

Yeah, that’s definitely due to a skill difference. I’ve seen that for many years: for example, a ‘top-legendary’ Ramp Druid would always start with a Wild Growth on turn 2, followed by a perfect curve, while a lower-rank or ‘perpetually Rank 5 / D5’ player would be so unskilled that he or she woud have to use a hero power instead… Really skillful players never get their Window Shoppers without a massive discount and always discover a Magtheridon or better, unlike those newbs who can’t play this game well…

@Kassadin-21130

And what happens then is if you’re trying to compete with them, the best you can do is start playing the same deck and hope for a 50-50 matchup because

Nope — because ‘kayfabe’.

@Scr0tieMcB-1291

But 1 Speaker nullifies up to two Flashes.

Since when have so-called ‘hate cards’ — more a sign of bad design than anything — been generally successful at stopping problematic archetypes? Speaking generally there, not necessarily re a particular one.

@Schyla-1490

Well, despite what my interactions recently with him on the forums are, I consider Scrotie a friend.

As in, your pet troll to sic on people, so that you could flag their posts with your ‘forum privileges’, all the while playing a superficially positive ‘community rep’, and partake in forum abuse and bullying without doing the dirty work yourself?

@Schyla-1490

People are fine with combo / OTK decks

Speak for yourself, please, wouldn’t you?

Besides, just below the very same person says:

@Schyla-1490

Anything that resembles solitaire doesn’t belong in Hearthstone as far as I’m concerned.

I’m tempted to say: make up your mind.

@Schyla-1490

I’ll never support decks that can just kill you with some combo from hand early.

(Highlighted by me)
That definition of ‘early’ is highly subjective, to put it mildly, that’s why I’m not content with such a formula.

The good old ‘no OTK’ rule was just so much better, in my opinion.

@Schyla-1490

If a card said “You have a 3% chance of automatically winning at the start of the game but the rest of your deck is nothing but 0/2 taunt minions” I wouldn’t support it. It’s terrible to have that interaction. I don’t care if it’s a 3% win rate. No one wants to go into a game and lose against that where there is quite literally nothing they can do about it.

I agree, see, for instance, this: Shaman summoned Deathwing on turn 2 - #25 by SparkyElf-2852

However, there’s apparently a niche among players for such cards — all those people with the “I’m the dung pile that smudged the boots of someone” mentality (same for resident forum trolls, by the way). There’s also the extreme ‘Jimmy’ (or was it ‘Johnny’?) mentality, as MTG players call it.

@Kassadin-21130

Welcome to top legend. Where skills matter!

@Chapuzo-2462

They’re the innovators so they’re the ones actually pushing stats in new directions, and they do so with more intuition than data analysis.

That resembles stock market a bit: you could have all the data about the past, which doesn’t mean you’ll be able to predict the future.

That’s one of the many reasons I consider those ‘deck tracker’ with ‘stats’ and so on to be ‘snake oil’ for most players. Those who gather the data are a different story, though…

@SparkyElf-2852

That’s what all those clueless sods with cheating software like so-called ‘deck trackers’ (which in fact do much more than that, I believe, and include actual hacks) and such probably don’t realise — that they’re nothing more than lab rats to supply data to someone else’s project. In fact, some are already paying for it.

@kewl-21106

The win rate will still reflect a deck’s true power.

Absolutely not — or, at the very least, not as trivially as you’d think.

Gotta self-quote again, tired of explaining the same thing over and over again:

@SparkyElf-2852

I’m tired of explaining that there’s generally no such thing. For example:

First, in such a multiplayer game where one player wins and one player loses, there cannot generally be any ‘miracles’ and ‘wonder decks’ with e.g. 80% winrate — in fact, that number tends towards 50% (if there is that one deck that is much stronger than any other, then essentially everyone’s gonna play it, the winrate becoming strictly equal to 0.5) for any competitive deck.

@Kassadin-21130

I’m literally a top 100 player who lost 25-30 games against that shaman today against all the top streamers

Try going higher, then you might see what this game is really made of, how it’s not rigged and how skill matters.

@Dallaen-1426

I would honestly prefer to play against OTK shaman EVERY day as opposed to that Stealth rogue mech deck. There’s literally no counterplay from multiple classes to this deck and it’s taking over the ladder because of that reason.

Well, at least the DK has some interesting ones.

@yellovvsnovv-1935

Armor vendor lol pretty terrible tech but it exists.

Precisely — I underline ‘terrible’.

@Kassadin-21130

where I lost with great hands, and then a normal 8-loss streak with bad cards (which is normal, I’ve been lowkey highrolling for days now on both EU and NA) and I’m back to 200 legend

Back where you ‘belong’, according to “The Algorithm’s” judgement — that’s how it generally goes.

@Kassadin-21130

People exclusively controlled by emotions are opening threads about this game being rigged.

Not necessarily.

Some people utilise also rational thinking, logic and even a mathematical approach. Having estimated somehow the ‘subjective probability’, as de Finetti would probably put it, that the game is more likely rigged than not, they have come to that conclusion — which might be right or wrong, but it’s rational from a mathematical viewpoint.

[Scr0tieMcB-1291]

Oh hey I missed some posts.

@Schyla-1490

he thoroughly enjoys debating to the point where he’ll actively try to argue against your point just for the sake of debating.

I wouldn’t take a position I know to be false just for the sake of debating. Well, at least not without clarifying that I am playing devil’s advocate or something. But generally speaking, yes, of course this. This is a discussion board. I enjoy discussing. That’s why I’m here. To agree with some things and disagree with the rest.

If someone likes the proverb “better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt,” yeah, I will probably irritate them. I hate that proverb. I think it’s far better to speak and be told you’re a fool than to remain silent and not know by what means you might be one. One can’t guarantee the quality of the incoming arguments, of course, perhaps they’re not good enough for you or perhaps you’re not good enough for them. But at least it’s trying.

@Kassadin-21130

So we don’t have data. All we have are personal experiences

I think the best course of action in such situations is not to speculate seriously on such matters with personal experience, but instead wait for data. Key word: seriously. I think speculation is good fun when it comes with the understanding that harder data is the final arbiter and predicting those results is treated as a game.

Which is a lot less fun when someone is accusing you of gaslighting and saying that you should be banned, by the way. I kinda expect Schyla to give me a little crap for being wrong about Paladin and being wrong about Shopper DH, that comes with the territory and I “lost” fair and square. But Schyla has enough common decency to limit it somewhere near “he’s been acting erratic lately” and not, you know, call for me to be banned. It’s just bad sportsmanship and your vehemence is very, very misplaced.

Not that you will even read this but, whatever.

@Schyla-1490

I think it’s important to create a base line where we can agree that “feels bad” decks should affect decisions based on nerfing and that stats alone should not determine what needs to be nerfed

I think it’s important to not have any such agreement. This is the one thing where I am admittedly pretty darn adamant and it’s not really data based.

Here’s the way I look at it: every game in Ranked has exactly two players. So when we’re talking about any deck, we’ve got two possibilities: mirror matches, and not mirror matches. In the case of non-mirrors, a nerf that merely takes the fun from one player and gives it to the other accomplishes nothing. The total fun is the same. So the only way a nerf can be good is if it increases the fun of both players.

How can a nerf increase the fun of both players? Only when one of the players didn’t really want to play the deck they’re playing in the first place. When they are playing the deck they’re playing simply because it wins more. Therefore the only ethical nerf is a winrate nerf.

When people talk about “sentiment outliers” what they’re really doing is othering players. They’re saying that “real” Hearthstone players play decks that are in this group, and if you play some other deck then you’re not one of us and your fun is less important than our fun. I refuse to consider my opponent in a card game to be my political enemy. If I advocate for his deck to be nerfed, I do it not for my own personal pleasure but to hopefully free him from being chained to a deck he doesn’t like but plays anyway just because it wins too much. Nerfing Shopper DH isn’t for all the players who don’t play Shopper DH. Nerfing Shopper DH is just for the Shopper DH players, out of love for them.

That’s the way I think about nerfs. And I am honestly kinda aghast at how many people here advocate for nerfing while displaying naked hatred for other Hearthstone players. I’ve seen people I really want to like calling people scum for playing some deck or another, or for playing a tribe in BGs. And all of that makes me very sad.

What deck people want to play is their choice. It isn’t really your choice to make. Blizzard interfering with that choice should be done only with considerable care.

@Schyla-1490

I’m also open to arguments as to why it shouldn’t be nerfed from people who ARE playing the deck regularly.

Why do you consider such an argument even necessary? They are voting with their feet. You can tell that they enjoy the deck because they choose it. And if it has a winrate below 50%, then you know that they’re not playing it because it wins too much. Should you be compelled to come before a panel of internet haters to articulate to them why, what and how it is that you find fun in whatever deck it is that you’re playing, or have played, or will ever play? You might not understand the how or the why but you know that the players have indicated what they want with their choice. What more do you need?

@Schyla-1490

The problem is that people who play decks that are broken regularly are often the ones who don’t advocate for nerfs

False. We have all seen countless posts where someone advocates for a nerf to a deck they’re currently playing. It’s one of the most common virtue signals, to say that they’re not biased because they play it themselves and “even they” think it should be nerfed.

And most of the others are people with their disgust response triggered, people who have never played as the deck and can’t in any way relate to the experience of people who have.

@Schyla-1490

I, on the other hand, actively ask for nerfs if I’m playing a deck that feels too powerful. IE, Paladin and now Wheel Warlock.

Very normal.

@Schyla-1490

I have to resort to listening to top legend players because they usually are truthful since they play a variety of stuff

I don’t agree. I think most streamers have an audience to consider and are keenly aware of what their audience says, thinks and feels. And I think they have a lot of incentive to not disagree with them.

There are a few streamers out there who aren’t particularly afraid to disagree with their audiences. It’s rare, but in those cases maybe.

@Kassadin-21130

I filtered by class (Shaman) and manually counted the wins and losses pertaining to Spell damage shaman only, disregarding Highlander shaman.

The stats show a total score of 117 W - 96 losses, which equal 54,93% winrate.

Again, you probably won’t read this, but if you do: thank you and, um, congratulations. I’m very glad that you’ve done your own research.

However, my concern is: what is the baseline winrate for these players? I mean, it might be that they average 56% winrate no matter what they play, and choosing Burn Shaman has actually had about a -1% effect. So if you could go and count their total collective winrate going back a week or so, that’d give the data you collected some vital context.

@Kassadin-21130

For comparison, I did the same for Shopper DH.

Shopper DH went 200-165, which equals 54,79% win rate.

Well, I guess that’s a start.

@Kassadin-21130

No further discussion is needed. Shaman is more broken than DH. It’s toxic gameplay.

Um, that’s being ridiculous. Do you honestly believe that the margin of error for your little survey here is less than 0.14%? If I was in your shoes I’d probably boast that it’s as toxic, but more? Bruh, they’re the same.

And I’d still be interested in other decks. I suspect that at least one, possibly more, of your selected streamers did play Burn Shaman but didn’t even touch Shopper DH. Or maybe you pulled Shopper DH winrate from streamers who weren’t even in the Burn Shaman pool. I think we can do better on this baseline.

[yellovvsnovv-1935]

So there has been a development in otk that has bumped up its win rate significantly for those who know how to play the deck, but will likely not change much at low MMR.

The basic gist of this development is twofold.

1. Now running the 2 mana 4pt heal actually fits the deck really well, it’s an extra chance to find burn or flash.

2. Fizzle is run, and this gives the deck epic range, something close to 60 damage from hand with a perfect hand. Essentially the idea is, on your flash turn you open with fizzle then you blow your entire hand and use the spell tutor minion to grab snapshot, then blow through another hand. That’s somewhere between 45 to over 60 damage in one turn. Obviously it’s hard to pull off, but it puts Reno warriors and other armor decks on notice.

Essentially I think this deck bumped from tier 4 to tier 1 with this modification.

It’s also important to note with the extra heal it can be played attrition vs demon hunter, essentially merging the best parts of Reno shaman with otk shaman. And ofc we know Reno shaman is one of the few decks with a slightly positive win rate with DH.

Essentially this is THE best deck in the game right now. If your not playing it, it’s because you don’t understand the points I described above. So your welcome.

[Kassadin-21130]

@yellovvsnovv-1935

• Now running the 2 mana 4pt heal actually fits the deck really well, it’s an extra chance to find burn or flash.
• Fizzle is run,

Yes and yes. It’s all in pocket/norwis, basically, EU version.

NA is still lagging behind, but when I lose against it, I don’t really care if it’s the 51% or 55% version. I still lost to a toxic, uninteractive, broken deck.

Also, let’s not get carried away and blame it on those two cards. Sure, their addition made the deck broken, yet again. But we all know, all it takes to prevent spending pointless hours nerfing same thing again and again and again is to just deal with flash of lighting and shut down that toxic gameplay once and for all.

Enough is enough. Go play real decks, which actually makes you blink and think when you look at the opponent’s board.

[Scr0tieMcB-1291]

@yellovvsnovv-1935

Fizzle

Hmm. That’s truly interesting.

Traditionally the Warrior matchup has been a complete nightmare for Burn Shaman, like 20-80 bad. Even if it stayed bad but went to 60-40, that’d be a huge gain. +20% against 10% of the meta is +2% overall right there. That’d go a little bit beyond innovation, more like a revolution!

I definitely hadn’t been running that, and that’s the kind of thing that you really have to know about.

A bit of a shame that no one even mentioned the card until dang near the 100th post. Reminds me of a line from Pulp Fiction containing the phrase “that’s all you had to say.”

@yellovvsnovv-1935

Essentially this is THE best deck in the game right now. If your not playing it, it’s because you don’t understand the points I described above. So your welcome.

I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion just yet, but you’ve definitely given me something to think about.

[SparkyElf-2852]

Forgot to add something, but perhaps it’s for the best — my previuous post turned out too long anyway…

@Kassadin-21130

I enjoy playing broken decks, then why do they get nerfed?

For the record: I played the Window Shopper DH before it was cool , and currently I also play DK (that’s more or less all my budget right now).

Gotta admit: I sinned in the past a bit and, during some of my ‘lows’, played some decks for which I’d previously… hate people, so to speak. For example, I played post-nerf Patron Warrior (and even a few times post-unnerf in last month’s Twist — for the first time ever, but it felt disgusting), things like ‘Zoo’ Warlock after WotOG (although with a ‘bonus’ in the form of Sea Giants), the Malygos version (well, at least it was not Leeroy, I said to myself) of the goblen Rogue… There was also the Freeze Mage, especially with ‘I take your candle!’, Hunter at some point, and shortly before quitting the game, even some unsuccesful experiments with Shaman (although I tried unconventional builds). However, I’ve probably never played a broken deck just for the sake of it (all of the aforementioned examples were past their heyday at that moment), and I wouldn’t even consider it — it just doesn’t fit my definition of fun. I suppose, if you use those MTG terms, it’s a bit of a hybrid ‘Jimmy/Spyke’ (or whatever they are called) approach…

For example:

@SparkyElf-2852

While writing this, I realised that I probably should also describe my attitude to playing this game. While I’m not necessarily interested in playing whatever the most ‘broken’, ‘busted’ and ‘OP’ decks at the moment is for some cheap wins, and I’d rather choose something that is more fun or ‘right’ to play for me, I’d still want a ‘playable’, i.e. competitive, decks or archetype, no ‘troll’ (or ‘meme’, whatever that might mean, as some people say) decks and such rubbish, please.

There’s also this:

@SparkyElf-2852

You might be wondering: what’s he going on about when the talk of the town, so to speak, is something like the Paladin — especially the handbuff version with Leeroy and Shroomcavate, and it’s the reason why now might not be a good time and a good meta to play Standard? Gotta say, while the class itself might not necessarily be terrible, this particular play style doesn’t fall under my definition of ‘fun’, so I’d rather not jump on the bandwagon.

I suppose those ‘Spikes’ (playing the most busted decks just for cheap wins) and ‘Jimmy/Timmy’ players (‘troll’ decks) have a right to exist… But I reserve for myself the right to… dislike them strongly , when the game should be played for fun, in my opinion.

[Schyla-1490]

@SparkyElf-2852

As in, your pet troll to sic on people, so that you could flag their posts with your ‘forum privileges’, all the while playing a superficially positive ‘community rep’, and partake in forum abuse and bullying without doing the dirty work yourself?

Well that’s a weird take. I’ve only ever flagged a handful of posts ever and I don’t use Scrotie as some scapegoat. Such a weird position for you to take.

@SparkyElf-2852

Speak for yourself, please, wouldn’t you?

Besides, just below the very same person says:

Well, they are. They as in the majority of players. This is because combo and OTK decks exist by default in nearly every single “collectible” card game.

@SparkyElf-2852

I’m tempted to say: make up your mind.

You don’t know the difference between a solitaire deck and a combo/otk deck I see. You know there are differences, right?

@SparkyElf-2852

That definition of ‘early’ is highly subjective, to put it mildly, that’s why I’m not content with such a formula.

Which is why I said earlier we can have an argument about where the “line” is. Mine seems to coincide with the Blizzard devs. 5-6 is entirely too early in standard if it’s consistent. Evidenced again by their nerf to Mozaki Mage.

[Scr0tieMcB-1291]

@Schyla-1490

@SparkyElf-2852

As in, your pet troll to sic on people, so that you could flag their posts with your ‘forum privileges’, all the while playing a superficially positive ‘community rep’, and partake in forum abuse and bullying without doing the dirty work yourself?

Well that’s a weird take.

Had to scroll up to make sure Sparky wasn’t talking about Kassadin here.

Anywho, I’m not a very good pet.

@Schyla-1490

we can have an argument about where the “line” is. Mine seems to coincide with the Blizzard devs.

I’ve already made my stance on sentiment nerfs clear. But I absolutely believe that Blizzard has no line, indeed they can’t possibly have a line. They just occasionally check Twitter and if the anger is vehement enough they bend to the mob. That’s inevitably the way that unprincipled stances like “sentiment outliers” are enforced. The dark side of democracy, counted in Reddit upvotes.

[SparkyElf-2852]

@Schyla-1490

Well that’s a weird take. I’ve only ever flagged a handful of posts ever and I don’t use Scrotie as some scapegoat. Such a weird position for you to take.

Could have been a coincidence, but I think I spotted your dynamic duo in topics dedicated mostly to trolling or bullying some frustrated forum participants. If these were some outliers, then, well, a mistake happened — it happpens.

@Schyla-1490

Which is why I said earlier we can have an argument about where the “line” is.

@Schyla-1490

Well, they are. They as in the majority of players. This is because combo and OTK decks exist by default in nearly every single “collectible” card game.

Not in the original Hearthstone as per Ben Brode’s initial vision — that’s my reference point, if you will, and the ‘line’ I’d argue for.

Sure, he might not have always been the greatest designer of all time, and I don’t agree with some of his ideas (regarding randomness and ‘variance’ in particular), but if you look at subsequent controversial changes in design philosophy and principles, I’d say he wins by comparison. I’d argue that remembering at least some of his ‘tenets’ wouldn’t be bad for the game at all. For example, one of them was the following: if they’d consider something ‘not fun’ for players (and to play against in particular), they’d refrain from printing it. This resonates very much with what you said about feelings in this topic, by the way, regardless of performance and whatnot, and I think it’s a good design idea: after all, the game should feel fun (sorry for tautology).

[JacktR-1750]

Honestly I think people just hate the deck because their boring removal cards (which make up half of most peoples decks these days) are dead cards so it feels ‘uninteractive’

[yellovvsnovv-1935]

Can confirm the Fizzle basically makes the Reno warrior MU favorable for OTK shaman (wow!), but the Odyn matchup is still unwinnable (they seem to have over 100 armor in the deck, easily.)

This makes me think that if OTK shaman catches on I see the meta being disrupted and becoming:

Odyn warrior > OTK shaman > Wheel Warlock > Odyn Warrior

and we will be back in a weird 3-way meta. At least DH would die off in that meta, no nerfs needed.

[SparkyElf-2852]

@yellovvsnovv-1935

At least DH would die off in that meta, no nerfs needed.

When did it ever need nerfs?

This decks has never felt as anything close to Undertaker Hunter, Oil Rogue, Patron Warrior, Secret Paladin, Pirate Warrior, etc, etc or the recent busted pre-nerf Paladin to me.

[Kassadin-21130]

I guess I better learn to play that deck properly.

I’ve given it a try before every nerf and I could never fulfill the deck’s potential for some reason.

but then again, it took me like 70-80 games on sludgelock to start winning and then I got hooked for thousands of games xDD

[ŘǮƘŤ-1615]

Ok… how abount hunter for the first time a belive it does need a nerf.

[Smeet-1144]

@yellovvsnovv-1935

So there has been a development in otk that has bumped up its win rate significantly for those who know how to play the deck, but will likely not change much at low MMR

Yeah, nature shaman’s refinement there was missed in this week’s VS report because Zach pulls the data on Tuesday, and the change happened after that. It’s one of the rarer times where VS’ report is just entirely worthless on the deck because it had a massive change in win rate basically overnight.

@SparkyElf-2852

This decks has never felt as anything close to Undertaker Hunter, Oil Rogue, Patron Warrior, Secret Paladin, Pirate Warrior, etc, etc or the recent busted pre-nerf Paladin to me

It had a week of no bad matchups while the meta figured it out. I assume the stuff above it is going to get adjusted in a few weeks on the next scheduled balance patch, but DH needs a nerf too.

[Piter-2158]

Cause most classes don’t have any armor gain at all lol xD druid warrior and mage can gain armor that’s about it.

[Kassadin-21130]

Armor doesn’t protect you anymore. If you could do around 30 before, you can do up to 60 now with photographer fizzle

the deck’s just broken and there’s no repair. It’s a “delete the archetype or let the game die” moment, IMO

[Smeet-1144]

Sounds like a great candidate for “not less than 1” treatment.

[Dallaen-1426]

a story as old as the game of HS at this point.

[VictoriousDN-1441]

@Kassadin-21130

And he thinks he’s actually smart xD

Honestly, one of the most annoying online personalities are people that read spread sheets and think they are smarter than professionals.