The title does not convey the point very well, but lemme explain what I mean. It’s still early days and the meta may still shift quite a bit. But, honestly, judging by the current state of things I think the meta is quickly solidifying and will land in a marked rock-paper-scissors dynamic between paladin, hunter and warrior. With some wheel warlock here and there thanks to its versatile MU spread.
The problem is, I don’t think there’s an easy way out of it with nerfs, unless the nerfs are very substantial and wide-reaching (which is not to be expected, judging by past experience). Let me explain why I think this:
Nuking palading is actually not that hard. You can hit Deputization Aura by reducing the attack buff (or removing it entirely), or the weapon by reducing its durability by 1. Either of these I think would be very significant nerfs. The Pala can adapt by switching to its aggro board-centric version, which is also strong but much more manageable by control.
However, doing this would shift the meta back to warrior tyranny. Wheel of Death Warlock could be happy to take Paladin’s spot in stealing warrior’s lunch money (I think, not sure how that MU really is), but since plague DK would be back on the menu I honestly doubt Wheel of Death Warlock can ever become a true menace.
If we nerf both Pala and Odyn, then it’s free game for hunter. Control Priest is not really a thing anymore, and Hunter is so oppressive that it can just overwhelm anything except warriors.
So what’s the correct thing to do if things end up developing the way they seem? Do we start an endless nerf loop like we always do and end up still sad somehow? I honestly think at this point we might as well keep things as they are for a while and see how we can adapt to this power spike. Slot Vipers in every deck, fill decks up with Taunts to protect your face from Charge… let’s see where this arms race takes us!
Edit: not a fan of this meta either, particularly as a (very sad) rogue enjoyer, but I really don’t think an endless round of nerfs is going to do much to fix this.
If they nerf Paladin they have to nerf hunter. It’s pretty much right on the heels of Paladin in terms of winning. If they don’t it just becomes the best overall deck.
Warrior has no issues with Paladin or Hunter currently. However if you are playing an old rotation deck looking to play Odyn and finish the game you will lose. There’s better warrior decks out there to play. Warlock is the big issue for Warrior right now. An fast opening from Sludgelock will end everything and the combo deck can be hard to defeat without enough in deck weapons to apply pressure fast enough.
Actually, I was just checking the stats on HSreplay, which are finally out. Warrior is doing awful against Pala in particular, but hunter is a red matchup too. Everything else except plague DK is positive WR, including wheelock (although close to 50%). It’s 54% WR against sludgelock too
Judging by these stats, nerfing Pala would just make hunter king (it actually IS king right now, because it beats pala), but nerfing both would bring us back to pre-Whizbang meta.
Being so high on the ladder you are probably facing the same Warrior decks that are playing a little more traditionally. I would expect you to wreck those decks pretty much every time.
Those HS replay decks are all not very optimal yet. None of them are play any early game and most are still trying to play for the long con with Brann and sometimes Odyn. That simply won’t work in this meta but players seem to want to force it.
Well, your personal data may not match population data for different reasons. For starters, if that data is just ‘VS Warrior’, then it’s not valuable, because warriors can be control or Highlander. Sludge beats highlander very comfortably (close to 60% WR in legend), but it does not have a positive WR against Control warrior (46.4% in legend).
Maybe you’re just that much better than your odyn opponents, but I doubt it (not saying you’re not good ofc, just that the other explanation seems more likely)
This is absolutely reasonable to conclude. All of those games were in legend around the same rank.
This, however, is wrong. Both are easy matchups, highlander slightly easier, but not much diff. You can also consider that advantage cancelled last week due to Renathal buff
Besides, since the expansion hit, there’s only 1 warrior - Odyn control, and I have 13-0 against them.
That I don’t think tho. Dunno what you’ve faced but I have seen multiple Highlander. I saw some HL warriors running the weirdest lists tbh, but I am still D2 now, since I only just came back to standard for whizbang. I figure the warriors you see are less weird and more competitive.
Yes. I might have highrolled a bit, since 13-0 is unrealistic, but I assure you, if warrior wasn’t 15% of my matchups, I would have quit sludgelock long time ago.
I was farmed by mages, farmed by rogues, farmed by druids after the unnerfs. All I had were warriors, DK-s and priests to sustain my rank, which I did.
Also, that HS replay sucks is a long repeated fact. People use different trackers now, mainly Firestone
That we agree, they have been doing a poor job at categorizing decks and that makes their data sloppy sometimes. But the data still very valuable because it is still the largest. The data it is showing for this expansion, sludgelock aside, seems in line with what we see ingame and what other sites show (like d0nkey for instance), so I think it’s worth looking into.
Anyways, you might just be the nuts with that deck, there’s no denying that lol. I firmly believe I was abnormally good with Nathria miracle rogue, to the point I would consistently reach legend with it even at moments when stats showed it was tier 4. Some decks are just built for you
Me and Scrotie will disagree on this, but if you’re a legend player or close to legend, you should be looking at legend only stats. You should not care what score noobs have against warrior, especially considering how much threads every day is spammed about nerfing that class.
And in legend, where skill is about equal, deck strength can be determined more precisely. Sludgelock counters warrior.
Absolutely agreed. I couldn’t imagine spamming any other deck in this meta as much as I spammed this one. But it doesn’t give me magical powers. I still lose unfavorable matchups more than I win.
If I was you, I’d rather wait for VS stats or trust established players on the forum who you can trust
Just my 2 cents
Also, warrior seems to really be falling out of this meta, but maybe it’s just because the meta isn’t stable yet. We’ll see.
What exactly are people looking for after a bunch of nerfs though? Nerf paladin and hand buff people can pivot to DK hand buff and drop that undead that deals attack damage at end of turn for the not dissimilar to windfury charge damage.
Nerf warrior and warlock and everyone is playing timewarp giant priest and I can even see a world where people pivot to playing brann clown warrior in place of astalor/odyn… not an exact apple to apple replacement obviously but pretty much the same effect. Handlock is probably also underrated as well being able to drop location + giants/fiends all game long. Theres even a rogue deck that uses that 3/4 to shuffle cards into the deck to trigger a bunch of cards drawn and play the 8/8 giant and that other spell that gets reduced to 0 for cards drawn. I had it done to me on turn 4. The game right now is probably the easiest its ever been in hearthstone history to put a bunch of stats on the board early.
I imagine hunter is a lot like treant druid… a menace at lower levels but a warriors death at higher levels of play. I think there are plenty of tools in the game to deal with a bunch of tokens for most classes
What I do think needs to be changed is deputization aura has to go and that one DK card that deals damage for the attack is also problematic with how easy it is to buff and play 2 of them in a turn for a quick unavoidable 20 damage. Eventually I suspect timewarp will need to be nerfed as well.
I also dont think the answer right now is decapitating the current top decks. Im liking the more board based strategies in the current game. Its refreshing compared to the suffocating spell heavy strategies of times past. I do think some classes can pump out way too much in stats with 0 downside compared to what other classes can respond with.
Also what exactly would make a great meta? Do people want the game so slow that owl druid is suddenly the best deck in the game… or sludgelock comes back for another 6 months?
