When they do this inevitable balance on Warrior i hope they don’t kill the class off. Instead they need to be surgical and hit very specific cards like Boomboss and Brann. Nerfing around those cards weakens the overall Warrior base package and kills any type of other decks emerging.
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It IS sad, but having sufficient matchup winrate data is a tough problem to solve.
Let’s say that Deck X has 4% popularity and Deck Y has 2.5% popularity. Those aren’t even truly rare decks, but only 1 out of every 1000 recorded games (4% of 2.5%) are going to contribute to that matchup data. Even if most of the top 1k Legends have trackers, there obviously can’t be more than a thousand such players at a time, so you can get an idea of how the problem scales. (Sludgelock is a 2.64% popularity deck in T1KL.)
Also, VS just doesn’t publish any sample sizes lower than 100, even if they have them. (So if a matchup is 1 out of 1000 games, they’d need to record about 100,000 games overall. They only got about half of that.) While I understand the principle, I’d rather have a sample of 80 games than nothing at all.
It’s useless and means nothing. It’s literally there only so that midwits who think that popularity is power have their bias confirmed.
Because Blizzard has such a great track record concerning balance changes involving Brann…
Just need to go back to the pile of Battlecries and minions like Kael’thas that died for 3-mana Neutral Brann’s sins.
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I know but i can always dream of a proper balance change.
Is this the otk shaman deck? Or something else?
I think if it’s the otk probably the reason you are thinking it’s favorable is because they are not prioritizing dirty rat. Reno warrior is effectively impossible to target with decks that build up a win condition over time because you have to survive 4x dirty rat followed by bomb boss after that. So I very much don’t understand what win condition you could run that has even a smidge of a chance vs a good player running warrior and knowing your game plan.
Re: mage.
" it’s gone until the mini-set."
Just what one particular person, who shall remain nameless, has been working toward since they were hired.
#JainaIsDead
I disagree. You can look at it as a score which says how much the meta is warped by the influence of highest meta score decks.
From that perspective, it’s useful, as only winrate data don’t tell you that without accounting for popularity as well.
Like, although tier 1, neither Zarimi priest nor Sludgelock are warping the meta nearly as much as Warrior does.
I haven’t seen a Rat in days and also I don’t think people do know the game plan. If you only go by d0nkey or VS you might forget about certain cards.
Actually, I did see a Rat a couple days ago, but he played it on turn 4 right after my Hagatha and it did get the 7-mana 7/7. I still won with the other one, though, because even if you don’t get a massive Al’akir you’re still throwing down dozens and dozens of stats that they have to remove every time.
Boomboss is the real pain, though.
Also, if we’re bragging about who was right with their predictions, I will begin by admitting I was wrong about a few things in this meta.
But then again, I’ve clearly said Reno Warrior is warping the whole meta into full aggro almost a month ago, previous patch.
I didn’t blame it on Brann, but on Reno into Zilliax combo, which for me is still the main culprit, since against the decks which counter warrior, Brann very rarely sees play (if you play it, you die).
And here we go, a month later, and everybody realized it. It even took a NERF to reno to make everybody realize how strong and meta defining it is. It’s the single…let’s not say “I win” but rather… “I stabilize” card, and when it’s played the only thing left is to concede.
(Disclaimer: I don’t count highlander changes as a buff because it made Plague DK useless against them, for the simple reason that plague DK has always been a bad, meme-tier deck in high legend).
I literally plan all my games around winning before Warrior gets 9 mana. If I don’t kill him before, I click Settings and hover my mouse over concede and wait to see if they drop Reno or Zilliax. If they do, I just click concede and go next.
If they don’t, I proceed to kill them. It’s that easy. And it’s been like that for MONTHS.
I’m amazed at how slow even the statistics are at realizing that.
I thin if they nerf wrrior they need to hit paladin and hunter too as those decks might overtake the meta just my thoughs.
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Hunter is basically number 1 in terms of Power.
Someone need to be oblivious to not nerf Hunter even if nothing is done to warrior.
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No, the measurement of that is just popularity, not popularity times winrate.
The other major warping deck at T1KL is Excavate Rogue. The deck is Tier 3 and extremely overplayed, but the Rogue enjoyers have diamond hands (reference to Diamond rank intentional) so they keep playing it anyway. This feeds the Reno Warriors, who have a 60-40 matchup in their favor against it. The stubborn Rogue players are making Warrior both more powerful and more popular than it deserves to be.
If I was going to make a score for meta warping that was a multiple of popularity, I’d call it the Irrationality Index, and it’d be equal to (winrate of #1 deck - this deck’s winrate) * this deck’s popularity. Here’s how that would look like for T1KL:
| Deck | Irrationality |
|---|---|
| Excavate Rogue | 100.00 |
| Spell Mage | 55.58 |
| Hybrid Druid | 45.76 |
| Snakelock | 43.31 |
| Rainbow DK | 36.63 |
| Pirate Rogue | 31.13 |
| Reno Druid | 27.96 |
| Rainbow Mage | 26.32 |
| Reno Priest | 25.45 |
| Cutlass Rogue | 24.90 |
| Wheellock | 20.80 |
| Reno Shaman | 19.01 |
| Reno Warrior | 16.41 |
| Painlock | 16.32 |
| Plague DK | 15.39 |
| Dragon Druid | 11.74 |
| Token Hunter | 7.63 |
| Sludgelock | 7.13 |
| Shopper DH | 4.34 |
| Aggro Paladin | 2.56 |
| Handbuff Pally | 1.83 |
| Zarimi Priest | 0.00 |
The 1st, 2nd, 5th and 6th most irrational decks in the format are hard countered by Reno Warrior, feeding it for no good reason, and the 3rd most irrational deck is an even matchup. Meanwhile Reno Warrior counters like Token Hunter and Sludgelock are criminally underplayed.
I don’t think this is a nerf situation at all yet. I think that this is top Legend as a collective failing to choose the right decks and stubbornly sticking to meme crap. Not you, obviously, you have rational deck selection. But you’re the exception, not the rule.
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That is a nice idea, lol, but I think you’re missing the fact that even Rogue’s popularity being so high and the fact that warrior counters her leads to EVEN MORE warriors on the ladder, which in the end helps to warp the meta.
It might be irrational, but it’s also meta defining. Not as much as Warrior by itself, but it helps the situation be as is.
In a complex system, every feedback is bidirectional (multidirectional, in fact).
If that rogue deck was less fun to play for some, there would be less warriors on the ladder because their matchups would be worse overall.
To me I find the result of the mass nerfs initially interesting, but ultimately a great disappointment.
I was reasonably happy when Reno warrior come out nearly immediately after nerfs as the top deck. Sure, it’s a deck we’ve now had to deal with one form or another for the better part of probably a year? That’s okay, at least it’s well understood. And it’s a single overpowered deck, which means it can be targeted by clever tech choices and even creative home brews.
Then I realized Reno warrior is not even ultimately the real winner of the nerfs, that title, it quickly became apparent, belonged to either aggro Paladin or token hunter.
Token hunter, while being mildly annoying, is not that hard to play against with good results and smart techs.
But what is unforgivable is the return of Paladin in it’s god awful tired forms: showdown Paladin and buff Paladin.
Showdown Paladin is the far greater offender here, because the very reason it’s a good deck is because if the pilot happens to draw cards in the correct order they can create a swing turn so big that there’s effectively no answer. This is exactly the type of gameplay they hoped to remove, massive swing turns that reduce player agency.
Then, we have zamari priest, a deck entirely built around swing turns. I’m pretty sure no one would miss this deck if it was sent to t5, yet when they nerfed zamari they did not bother to raise the mana cost.
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Strongly agree, but this is a real “cmon guys, y’all aren’t even close” situation, directed at the players not the devs. T1KL is normally a pretty reactive meta, and when something gets 20+% popularity people rise up to run counter decks and push it down. In this case they just didn’t, and the matchup data clearly shows that they could have if they’d wanted to. We both know Reno Warrior isn’t some invincible monolith.
Idk if people just wanted to go on autopilot until the first of the month or what.
Yeah, I agree with this 100%
Nicely put
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Yeah, the truth is, there are qualities which make those players be top 1k which at different times are their biggest weaknesses. I think I understand that because I’m one of those people.
It’s resistance to change.
Once you find a deck you like and achieve good results with, it’s hard for you to let it go and find a replacement, ESPECIALLY, when the meta changes as fast as it does now.
The truth about my rational choice of decks isn’t that clear cut. I’ve resisted the change for months and last season it resulted in me dropping to 10k on all servers for most of the time.
The newest patch brought Sludgelock back into the spotlight, and with it, my ranks improved back where I first got thanks to Sludges.
It’s sheer luck, not rationality.
The only rational thing I did last month was drop sludges to pick up Nature Shaman again, but even with that change, I was way too slow. I only had couple of days of broken gameplay abuse before it was toned down.
Also, I want to emphasize that I personally am not a huge advocate for “rational” play. I think people have the most fun when they play decks not for pure raw performance, but because they like the deck and it’s fun. In a way I’m happy for Excavate Rogue players if they’re having so much fun playing the deck that they don’t want to change. But I do expect the players at the very highest ranks to play for the win and not for fun so much, and they’re just failing to do that here.
It’s like they’ve forgotten the drive to be the very best and just decided to get high instead.
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Yep, but that would be top 50 players, and since we already lack the data for top 1k, it’s impossible to follow them and them only
I don’t know if you would be surprised or not but many of the top players(top 200) complain endlessly about decks that aren’t even that good. They also do not believe that the decks that are good are even good. I think they just expect their little private metas to play a certain way and that’s how it should be.
Me i play what i want and make it work despite the stats. I’m also just looking to hit legend and have some fun doing it. Probably not the target demographic.
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