Even at bronze, everyone is piloting sweaty perfectly tuned meta-decks… nobody seems to play anything other than those. Neither standard nor wild offers any fun or creative decks. Just the bland aggro decks like totem shaman, perfectly tuned solitaire decks that disregard anything you play with incredibly efficient removal or highlander decks that basicly invalidate any minion-based deck with reno…
I get that people want to win but do people really only want to play the same stale and creatively bankrupt decks?
Every deck was a home brew at some point. Some survive, others don’t. Players will try anything and everything but when a strategy can’t win games, it is quickly abandoned. That said, there are plenty of players around who will stick with a losing strategy because they care more about their deck doing the big thing than actually winning the game, but after you win a few ranked games, you just won’t queue into these players because their win rates are so low.
I will also be completely transparant, i’ve probably got a 10% winrate at most…and i’m still facing a congaline of copypaste meta decks that can deal with Anything you throw at them.
The game definitely has changed since i’ve been gone a couple of years. Think i’m gonna quit again honestly. There’s no room for creativity and constantly losing also isn’t fun. Also, being out of the loop for a while meant i lacked a lot of cards, and I’d have to spend a lot of money to catch up…which i’ll pass on this time.
Managed to reach my goal for this game of reaching legend recently in wild and standard so i guess i beat hearthstone in a way?
I still play homebrew decks. Currently, the one I am playing is a Reno Hooktusk Menagerie Rogue. It has almost taken me to Dimond 5 this month. It actually got me a friend request, which I have not received in months, where they asked for the deck code.
My best homebrew received 10 of that kind of friend requests in one week.
No people don’t play garbage jank on ladder. The meta decks become the meta deck for a reason. Most people want to win and want to climb ladder so they play decks that function and most of the time that means playing a meta deck.
I played my version of Big Druid to D5. It’s not even on VS’s meta list, so it must be terribly bad. But you don’t need good decks to reach D5, and I had my fun with it.
I used to climb to legend every month, but it’s so boring I don’t even bother anymore. I do have all the top decks I suppose, but it just ain’t worth my time.
Home brew and “garbage jank” are not synonymous. You can still do a home brew with a +50% winrate. I’ve gotten to legend a few times with homebrewery, often by targeting a very prevalent meta deck.
But to the ops point, this has, in some ways gotten both easier and trickier. Easier because decks have become much more linear and less varies, so easier to counter (unless they are straight busted, which also happen a lot).
But it’s gotten harder because meta decks are vastly more powerful, synergistic, and proactive then they used to be. You can’t win with just a good curve out anymore, and that limits your card choices drastically, because you need a gimmick, and most gimmicks are balled into a meta deck strategy (and “meta deck with tweaks” isn’t what most people think of when talking about homebrews).
a warrning, I am a greedy chaotic player. you may find it necessary to adjust some of the cards.
Mostly with this deck I have been trying to meme on the warriors by getting brann and stealing their deck. almost did once, but I just could not get Hooktusk even though I played brann on 6 (still won though).
I do play my own deck. It’s probably the best aggro deck in that class right now; that’s because it can navigate respectably after Diamond 5; at the same time Vicious Syndicate called the class approximately dead (so I have a deck that “officially” does not exist).
Though to be perfectly honest I don’t bother much after Diamond ~4 because I start getting some great players who easily drop me to ~60% win rate; maybe I should continue but I also have limited time so whatever; I already feel happy I invented the deck.
I hold no grudges for people playing net decks or home brews.
That said, I love experimenting in this game and sometimes that means building a home brew. But I also don’t like building useless things, so I enjoy when the home brew or modified net deck does well and don’t enjoy it much if I can’t see it ever progressing.
That said, I’m probably far more patient than the typical player. For example it’s common for be to lose top 500 and drop to 10000 or more while I work out the kinks, then make my way back with the very same deck to top 500 or even 100. In fact, that’s my favorite way to play this game.
Let me give you some examples.
When quest druid was a thing I started experimenting with anub, astalor Brann far before it ever got onto anyone’s radar. The deck ended up being s tier, but before any of that happened I was floundering in about 9k legend trying to figure out how to survive to the otk turn consistently. Turns out my discovery of zombie plus spammy arcanist was the key, allowing for board wipes on critical turns. Once I made this connection I rocketed to top 50 legend. Of course after all this we had months of this deck dominating even after astalor nerfs.
Not long ago, during the yogg meta, I got pretty burned out playing yogg and the like, cause I felt most games were determined by whether you rolled windfury on ingnis or not, pretty sad state of affairs. I started to experiment with Chad Warlock which was probably something like t4 at the time due to pure Paladin. Something in the back of my head signaled to me that this shouldn’t be the case, because Warlock has some of the strongest anti Paladin tools, mortal eradication, defile and reverb. Turns out I was right, I was able to home brew a Chad Warlock deck that attained about an 80 percent win rate, and while I didn’t have time or motivation to take it past top 100, I got very close with near zero effort.
I guess to address the opening post, home Brewing can be some of the best fun you can have in this game, but your attitude makes all the difference.
If you home brew with the attitude of, “this is for sure the best deck cause I made it and I’m the best and nothing I make can ever suck” sorry to tell you you will have a terrible time.
If it home brew with the attitude that you will try stuff out and adjust when new data comes to light, then adjust after that adjust then adjust after that then adjust again then adjust… And so on and so on, you will have a blast. That’s because you will be enjoying the journey and not the destination.
There is a good reason why some militaries around the world define intelligence not as an IQ, but the ability to adapt effectively to your situation and surroundings. It’s because that is the true sign of intelligence, you play with the cards that are dealt not sit around wishing you were dealt a different hand.
I’ll be honest, i tried a couple more time and I feel like hearthstone’s not worth it anymore. Losing so many times in a row and only a tiny selection of cards being useful kills any enjoyment i would have had. Aggro decks have also been incredibly powerful and opressive, so i can play even less cards. And on the other side, combo decks are so efficient and powerful that they’re just playing sollitaire.
For the sake of my sanity i’m gonna uninstall hearthstone again. Last time it took years for me to return but i’m not sure i will anymore.
