Hearthstone has finally reached a point where all modes suffer so much from powercreep, imbalance, broken cards, and insane amounts of broken RNG that it’s hard to play a match with an outcome being determined strategy.
For the most part, Hearthstone is a crap card game now, and the sad part is that current broken game state, which renders hearthstone into the worse play experience in its history was completely predictable and avoidable.
Since year one, developers were cautioned against the inclusion of so many overpowered cards and the dangers including so many powerful RNG effects. The problems were obvious early on, in light of a design philosophy that said “we want turns to feel powerful.”
As Hearthstone developed it was obvious that poor balance had to result in things like Wild Mode and Hall of Fame cards. In the last year, even Standard feels ridiculously broken. There is no constructed mode that feels balanced enough that it’s worth investing money or time into.
Simply put, Hearthstone is not much of a strategy game any more—it’s mostly a broken RNG-clown-fiesta of a game, where players are hoping to draw their broken “I-win” cards or combos first.
Frankly, I have mostly ignored constructed modes during the last year, since the play experience is so poor and not worth investing time or money into.
I have played more Arena this year than I ever have, since it provides a more diverse play experience than constructed does, but Arena also suffers greatly from very poorly balanced cards, such as Raid Boss Onyxia, and currently cards like Sire Denathrius, which is usually an “I-win” card when it gets played.
Normally, I would make suggestions for improving the game, but that’s kind of moot when I have been warning developers not to create the kinds of imbalances that they go ahead to create and embrace anyways. The sad state of Hearthstone is really the resulting mess of a design philosophy that refuses to be curbed.