I’ve done it the vast majority of the months I’ve hit legend, even with a bunch of stuff people would laugh at me for trying.
The bad decks I end up at around 10k legend with, the decent ones top 1k, the best ones have been my top 100 pushes, but I’ve only gotten there on homebrews twice.
The advent of Armor Warlock showed that there is still some room for creativity in deck building. While I do agree that the current design of the game puts most classes on certain rails, it is possible to break the mold a little. When I hit top 300 legend with my own brew of agro/burn shaman and posted it, I had a bunch of people popping up telling me how it was just a bad version of ‘some random streamer I had never heard of’s’ deck. Even though after checking it seemed i had about 7 cards different from his build.
Net decking is not the only problem. We have also created a community that just gets super toxic if something isn’t what they perceive as the best. People get salty over stuff rather than just saying “grats.”
The only time I’ve unequivocally built the top deck in the meta was when ramp astalor druid was king. I don’t take credit for the astalor combo, I saw that being played in jank/meme decks against me, which had no chance in hell versus aggro.
I discovered the spammy arcanist with lingering zombie combo which basically gave druid a fighting chance versus aggro, and boy did my list take off.
That said, it’s extremely hard to take credit for building an entire deck. Usually what happens is there’s ppl that love to waste time playing jank or meme combos, they don’t care about winning.
Then there’s players like me that see something like that and go, hey hold on, this is workable if only you plug weakness x and y.
In other metas that are much less narrow, I build and run my own decks all the time. For example, when thief rogue was strong I’d consistently be in top 100 with decks that I assemble myself, yes they use the same strong cards, but typically have one or two cards that make a huge impact and only I know it makes sense to run them.
Another example is pain lock, once again, I assemble my own version of the deck not really paying much attention to what’s the top list.
In my experience there is no such thing as the perfect 30 cards VS likes to refer to. They are just plain wrong. Even slight variants in decks make massive impacts.
I think my biggest response to this is, “who cares?”
I really don’t get the hang up on where a deck came from. It’s more often than not someone using their terrible deck as an excuse for why they can’t climb while blaming everyone playing better lists for their problems.
To be fair, you don’t do that, Schyla, you own your good decks and your bad ones.
I just get sick of the entire discussion. Some people build decks, some people pilot them really well, and some can do both. They are separate skills and it’s not comparable.
If I wanted to, I could definitely make a meme deck with a bunch of crazy combos, terribly inconsistent and bad in overall. Which is just about what 99% of players call “deckbuilding”.
Granted, it would probably take me quite some time compared to some of the experienced “memers” (not gonna say deckbuilders, obviously) as their eyes were trained to spot the combos, and they know more cards than I do. But still, I could do it if I set my mind to it.
But I don’t care about that! I’m talking about building a legit, playable deck, that can make it into top 2k on any server. And that you can only accomplish if you also know how to pilot the deck, because it’s a struggle even with a netdeck, let alone with a homebrew.
Hence, deckbuilding and piloting are inseperable skills, in a way that to be a proper deckbuilder, you have to be a proper pilot.
Building decks can be fun… For this game it helps to like a “class”.
Once you have a class, you can look for what cards it has in standard for example like Warlock. Hearthstone has a bad tendency to print cards that are designed to work in packages.
So, Warlock at this point in time can run stuff for self damage, it can go into the fatigue cards, the class can try and play Fat Demons, it could try Excavate… It had Sludge etc.
Really the only time something might change is with neutrals… Like is there a neutral toy that helps make something in the class I wish to play “overpowered”. Something to shake up a duel where someone won’t expect this power move per say.
People that like to build different decks will deck doctor there failures pretty hard. You can always count on the timmies to play whatever is the best decks on ladder. This in turn can “maybe” benefit the deck builder in two ways. Those that wish to counter popular strat, or understand what there deck needs to have before it can do what it wants.
Like if you wanted to try and play Big Demon Warlock right now… It would have a bonus of not being expected… Does it bring anything else to the table though? Can it’s strategy actually win games? Does the current popular decks allow it a chance to be competitive?
These are all things you find out by just being a deck builder. Sometimes you ask yourself what can I do to help me maybe fetch my power cards like Crane Game so I can make sure I get value from it? But the meta doesn’t really allow for slower cards like Card Grader. Does Warlock have tools to stop aggro for instance in case it bricks by daring to run 8 mana cards? No?
There comes a point where your deck idea just sucks because of the meta game itself. Yea, I’d like to try some of the cards they design. But when garbage like triple Battle cries into tutor damage takes off, or early game neutrals are applied to every boneheads deck to force its curve to be good, you start to see the flaws of this game.
tl:dr Hearthstones “deckbuilders” projects only take off if they can function in the face of what is made OP by the Devs. People like to chase creativity, and that blooms when people catch things not intended by the devs design of packages made for each class per expansion.
Deck building is something anyone can do. Building a deck that can be tier 1 is tied to being good at the game, ie piloting decks. You need to have a deep understanding of WHY something is good or not. This comes from playing the game at a high level. I actually agree with Altair on this one. I have also been around world class players in other TCG and it has been true for those games as well.
Here’s an skeletal outline for how to build a good deck, maybe t1, usually t2 at least.
Start with the core idea, this is typically a win condition you want for your deck. For example, is it astalor otk? Is it a face race deck? Is it fatigue? Thief rogue? The core idea is the most important step as it will determine where you fall in the winrate bucket. If your win condition requires you to draw and hold ten cards, your deck is hopeless. On the other hand nearly any deck can be a face race deck.
Pick 30 cards that support this core idea best, don’t expect this to be a great 30. Your going to be way way way way off, but that’s okay.
Start playing, and play ranked on ladder, you don’t want to be facing off against meme decks, then the data you collect will be useless.
After each game, analyze the game turn by turn. Is there a card if you ran in your deck it would bump your winrate by 5 to ten percent? For example, more draw, weapon break, ramp, unkilliax?
Analyze the games you best your opponent’s really easily, these games tell you what you truly need to get the win condition off and what is just fluff or only looked good on paper, you can cut the fluff. These games tell you what makes sense to cut.
Analyze the games where you died with little chance. For example, aggro matchups. Take out the cards you identified in step 5 and, now this is the hard part, evaluate each and every turn off games you lost and ask yourself, “if I ran card X could it be my out?”
Repeat step 5 and 6 in a loop they work in duality with each other, telling you which cards can be cut and step 6 is where the creative thought is necessary to imagine solutions to repeated problems you encounter.
Repeat these steps constantly, and you will have a deck that is tuned to the current meta, and where decisions are made off of data as opposed to hypotheticals.
It might actually work both ways. If you know how to pilot competitively, then that means that you know a purpose (or purposes) of each card in each situation, which means you’d probably do well with building a deck.
Ofc, there’s still the main problem which we would need to solve before continuing down this line, and that is - how similar can two decks be one to another before we can call either of them original homebrew?
Because, apart from random disagreements about the criteria of originality, the logic is pretty clear on this one. To be good at deckbuilding, you have to be a good pilot, and perhaps it works the other way around, too.
Amen, brother
In fact, you put this so nicely, that I’m gonna have to use this opportunity and expand on that a bit.
One of the ways I learn the most about the game is when I copy someone’s netdeck and blindly enter the game with it, without even watching the streamer play it and without playing against it enough to learn how it functions, and then ask myself a question for every card in that deck:
why is this card in this deck?
And I’m not really satisfied if I only find one reason, too. I need more reasons. I need to be able to make a complete SWOT analysis of each card in my deck, in order to even consider the fact that I might be piloting that deck good.
Which is why you’ll often see me saying how I’m slow to adapt, and slow at learning. That’s what learning means to me. Learning comes with understanding. And with understanding comes everything else, ANYTHING else.
This is why I found it so frustrating when people blindly say a certain build is bad simply because they saw a streamer play something else. They have no understanding of what MAKES them good or bad. When I posted my agro/burn deck people were telling me how bad a couple cards were. When the reality was that they were outright winning games. When I am playing in D3-L, and actually try-harding, I analyze which cards feel ‘dead’ in certain match ups and which ones feel great regardless of match up. I then look at how often I am seeing those match ups to see if it is worth hedging my bets with a certain tech or swap. This is why when I do my writeups I am often saying, “I was seeing this deck all the time, so I was using this card to help win against it.” In a ladder setting you need to understand that you may even need to make a slight change on the fly.
It sure is. Make your own deck and take it to legend next season, ans stream it as evidence. You think its easy, then show it.
I know you wont because you are a grinder, which is fine. You couldnt take your own homebrew to legend if your life depended on it. Which is again fine.
Man up cupcake! Put your money where your mouth is! Stream your homebrew legend run in the Feb season.
Old tech is a valid answer. Plus, your challenge towards him doesn’t seem really fair either. Build a homebrew with a ton of stuff already out and known at this stage?
Should ask him to do his best with cards from the miniset to build something that he can advance with quickly in standard that he just thinks is good and let that be a challenge. Like if he’s 1,000 see if he can find a deck that uses the new cards + old and advances like to top 500. Seems fairer and fun to me anyway.
If updating an existing archetype/netdeck with a few new cards counts towards that, count me in.
I mean, in that case it might even be too easy, that’s literally how I normally do, anyway xD
It is. If he wants me to stream, he’s welcome to buy me a new config. I would enjoy streaming, and I would definitely give him a cut, should I happen to earn anything
LOL you clearly are not top 1K material. Top 1K players dont blame their equipment! Man up bud!
You accept the challenge, and succeed, THEN I will buy you a new rig! You need to prove you are acrually worthy first. Stream your climb next season using a unique deck.