What are your thoughts on future meta Schyla?
Seems like handlock is making a comeback (not that it actually was gone, but I’d expect higher playrates). Paladin may also shine again especially with hero card, but viper may become a saver, we’ll see.
Lazy, disappointing nerfs. I mostly agree with Kibler about what should have been done.
Quoting from the patch notes now…
“Wildpaw Gnoll was intended to be a strong payoff for Maestra of the Masquerade’s fun effect”
Made me surprisingly angry to read this. It shouldn’t be a reward for running Maestra, it should be a reward for actually being a Burgle Rogue. Blizzard, your intent is bad (and you should feel bad), and you should have changed your intent instead of stubbornly sticking to it.
“Cloak of Shadows also combined with Shadowcrafter Scabbs for frustrating play experiences.”
No, delay like Cloak of Shadows combined with big burst damage from hand created frustrating play experiences. A little bit of stall isn’t that frustrating; a little bit of stall that allows an OTK to be assembled, is. The damage from spells or from weapon part of Rogue wasn’t nerfed at all so (Gnolls notwithstanding) Poison Rogue still wins just as quickly, unless it dies first. I would much rather have seen a nerf to Swinetusk Shank or to Guild Trader.
Quest Mage nerfed again. Why didn’t they revert the nerf to the Quest? Let’s not pretend that pre-nerf Quest Mage was stronger than Mozaki, in the right hands. (Looks like Mall wins his bet, they totally nerfed Tier 3 Mage again.)
No nerf to Standard Hunter; no nerf to Handlock. New meta is going to be overrun by Hunters and Warlocks.
When I saw kiblers analysis couple days ago, I agree completely.
The issue is not the strength of those cards, it is how often you get to them. If you can draw through your entire deck consistently by turn 10, of course you will have advantage against everybody, who will be on 10-15 cards in the deck ,because you can use all the strong cards, while they can miss on many of them.
These are lazy nerfs, no surprise it will keep being the same.
Agreed.
I feel like they nerfed the things that had the least dust refunds instead of the things that need to be fixed.
The IF nerf is baffling absent adjustments to other mage decks. It may make it harder for Mozaki to go off, but has the side effect of nerfing pretty much every current mage deck. That’s bad.
They further completely ignored several other decks that are going to raise up and fill the rogue void.
I’d say it’s both. Or if you prefer: it’s not just the strength of those cards.
I understand Kibler’s point on “deck velocity” but I gotta admit — I like deck velocity to not be too slow. I hate having just one card of a two card combo stuck in my hand, and good draw makes those situations less likely.
The problem is when it becomes too cheap. The one Rogue card that bothers me the most, from a strictly abstract design perspective, is Blackwater Cutlass — it’s essentially a zero-cost draw 1 whose sole deckbuilding/in-game requirement is “have spells.” It’s the ugliest design in the game, in my opinion. I don’t know if it’s the most broken card in the meta, but it’s the card that’s most obvious about being broken.
It’s the utility, it’s a Swiss Knife. The card is even good vs aggro as a 2/2 weapon!
It could be a 2/2 weapon for 2 and I would still feel mostly the same. It’s the Tradeable half of the card that I don’t think deserves any place in Hearthstone.
But yeah, the weapon half is aggressively costed as well. The comparison with Bloodclaw is hilarious.
I really do think nerfs don’t really change anything much anyways. There are other cards that can be replaced.
Okay…
Now that it’s oficial…
I can say that i think gnoll nerf Just explodes the meta.
It not holds fast decks anymore and that was the foundation the meta was made around.
Any guess is Just speculation.
Still not fixing spell damage interaction with garrote? Still not nerfing weapon rogue?
Edwin still has charge with mr interactive?
Cool. Underwhelming. Scabbs nudged but so what, vanish is still OP.
I don’t think the nerfs deter Rogue play rates as much as they are hoping. The nerfs are minimal to the overall game plan of Rogue.
I think what we’ll see is…Roguestone v2.0. Not quite as strong, but still strong enough. What nerfs were give to Rogue that is detrimental to their success? None, really. At least, not to the Maestra Poison Rogue build. The reason they nerfed Gnoll is because it was being used by Maestra Poison Rogue…basically, a non-thief Rogue build taking advantage of an interaction…and it will continue to do that.
Mozaki Mage gets slowed down at least 1 turn, possibly 2. This is enough to skew its win rates vs decks that want to run Mutanus and aggro that can kill it. Mozaki Mage might not be dead, but it’s certainly not going to be as oppressive as it is now. People will likely drop it.
I expect the meta still be riddled with Rogue and a few other breakthrough classes attempting to make Control viable…but this is where Handlock won’t allow it.
I have been shouting this to the top of my lungs for a long time now. The dev team is notorious for being LAZY with nerfs. Increasing mana cost / stats is an easy coding fix. Actually fixing a card to make it still viable by recoding what it does is not an easy fix, but is almost certainly THE fix that is needed.
The team is so busy trying to save their precious (and failed) Mercenary product, that they are using up all their time trying to build on it. They are dumping all these resources and time into other modes. 90% of the time, their fix for everything is just “increase the mana”. They do it time and time again. It shouldn’t be the go to fix for everything. It’s lazy.
I called Cloak of Shadows nerf to 4 mana, even though I disagreed with that change, because I knew this was the lazy route they would take.
The 4 mana nerf to SA is such a fail. They could have recoded to make it be “not less than (1)” but now they have effectively killed SA for what many other decks would have used her as.
Lazy nerf.
This is the logic of the dev team.
It’s good that other people are starting to take notice.
Furthermore, the complete disregard for what the meta data is telling them (Handlock cannot be left untouched) if they do the nerfs they just did is just a blatant disregard for the meta. It shows more thought being put into Duels and Mercenaries than their Standard meta.
It really speaks volumes when the majority of people know what the nerfs are going to be because they put on a thinking cap of “What would a stupid nerf look like?” and they get it right.
Now they´re just insulting us.
->This had been true since way before Christmas when they nerfed all the other OTKs and somehow f*** “overlooked” Mozaki.
same thing, this very reasoning has been brought up since the last miniexpansion and it takes them half a century (slight exaggeration) to come to this conclusion?
And similar can be said about any of the other changes. Except for maybe Gnolls, i still think they are mostly fine the way they are (or had been i should say).
While direly needed this is mostly just ridiculous and should have been done way before Christmas. I really lack any confidence in them having any idea how to design this game, it seems to come down to dicerolls and trial and error.
Awesome my total burgle rogue deck was heavily nerfed for no reason. Poisons/Edwin/ Mr. Smite untouched… Clown dev team, especially the decision makers.
One of my favourite decks was espionage rogue. It was fun, flavourful, but quite bad. Now devs had an option to build another version of it, but more consistent, less random, with some good plays.
Instead the made it so maestra instead being just meme card, which makes you switch hero power to start and hide your class and made it centerpiece of archetype. It shouldnt be a way to drop big bodies for cheap itself. It should be similar to other discounts, you have to actually play cards, not just trade/draw them.
I would prefer if Gnoll was 6/6 rush for 7(?), which decreased only by discovered/added cards from another class into your hand, where you need to work for it - similar to Giants. Instead, devs decided to crap on the thief rogue (archetype I would love to play) and instead focused on supporting tempo/aggro rogue with Maestra. Which just feel so stupid.
I hope devs finds out, that giving everybody more and more cheap draw is not the good way forward, as it just allows these broken decks. It would actually be worth looking on cheap draw and nerf it accross the board by 1 mana, because there is just so much cheap draw.
The funny thing here is that I agree with Kibler almost entirely. Why? Because Kibler sees the same issues with the game that I see, and that’s because Kibler ALSO loves playing value/Control decks (that’s why he mentioned N’zoth Shaman and Control Warrior). He plays extremely similar to the way I play and enjoy the same decks for the most part.
And he brings up issues I’ve brought up before. You can’t interact with some of the OTK decks. The only card they give us to disrupt these decks is essentially just Mutanus. Can’t Mutanus a Rogue who uses a tradeable minion as their combo.
And again, the decks aren’t unbeatable by Control decks, but you have to keep your health at like 35-40 to stop the OTK…which is extremely difficult because OTKs are hitting turn 8. Like he said, most people never have an issue with an OTK deck if they actually have to take time to assemble the OTK and give you a chance to set up the counter. But when OTKs are CONSISTENT, it’s a problem. The OTKs we have/had in this meta are entirely TOO consistent entirely TOO early.
A turn 10 OTK that was consistent on turn 10 would be considered really strong. Extremely strong back in the day. Unheard of even. Shudderwock would need to hit turn 12 or so at least. Now we’re talking about how turn 8 OTKs are a thing and people think that should be ok. It’s really not. If turn 8 OTKs are just a normal thing, then 9 and 10 mana cards are absolutely pointless.
I loved OTK decks in previous era, I liked decks centered around malygos, when OTK felt like achievement, when you had to work for it, you had to survive X turns to get to your win condition, you had to wait for your end of turn effects to discount your win condition to hopefully play it next turn and pull it off. It felt great back then.
Malygos druid was extremely fun, when you had to discount the malygos by 7 (so it costs 2), copy your entire hand and in the most insane form, when you survived long enough I believe you could do 58 damage I believe (2 discounted malygoses, 4x moonfire for 44+swipe for 14).
Today OTK feels like another day in the office, as you do it every single game without effortou dont have to work for it as you had to before. It just feels easy.
You draw through your deck like lunatic, you have great removals in almost every single class, that is able to OTK, you often have 100+ if not endless damage (DH, Mage, Shaman) and as rogue you can do it for almost half a year at turn 8-9.
Get ready for more face hunter, handlock and of course like I said before Libram pally. This does not make the game better, it makes it worse.
It cant be much worse.
Warlock is beatable now already even with control priest.
Face hunter is strong, but you can survive, unless crazy 1-2-3 turns.
Pally is playable too.
I am a bit more afraid of OTK DH, as I think it will come back.
It’s back to UiS meta…with Poison Rogue. That’s basically what next week is going to look like.