Player agency balance changes incoming!

Yes, the current meta decks do.

The meta is about to be shaken up greatly. You can’t say for sure that plagues will be bad after that. There are waaaay too many variables. Something currently tier 2 or 3 could easily be tier 1 when clearing out this current group of meta decks.

And again, it doesn’t matter. Helya is still game warping, even if slow and the deck is weak.

Just like wheel of death is, even if the deck can win without it more often than not.

1 Like

I think at this point you’re just clinging to your position to cling.

Will they buff plagues? No. Is there a chance it’s nerfed? Yes.

I don’t get how you think it will suddenly have enough good match ups to be relevant regardless of what they do to shake up the meta. There aren’t enough additional wins to farm from reno decks to compensate for other decks getting buffed and the rest staying the same.

There’s no universe it gets better. None.

Plague DK may be bad and all, but man do I see it a lot in platinum.

1 Like

Plague DK was the best performing deck outside of Top1000 Legend less than 2 months ago before rotation, what makes you think it can’t become good enough with sufficient nerfs. And regardless, the discussion is not about power. It’s about the card being a game warping, polarizing, low-agency legendary that fits the bill discussed by the devs, along with cards like Wheel of Death. It’s even given for free for returning players and if all this isn’t enough to convince you, this legendary is played in 20% of decks Diamond through Legend (the 7th highest playrate according to HSReplay stats), so much for a bad legendary that definitely isn’t game warping at all…

VSReport of 7th March 2024 for reference:

Edit: some more trivia on Helya stats:

  • 10th highest drawn WR (56.7%) in Standard, even higher than Zarimi. For reference, Reno is 24th and Brann is 47th.
  • 3rd highest mulligan WR among legendary cards (56.3%) after Wheel of Death and Loken.

All data from Diamond to Legend and in all decks (plague and rainbow mostly). This is 100% a polarizing, powerful legendary despite plague DK not being a good deck.

1 Like

What you mean is: it should be about those things. Whether it actually is or not, remains to be seen, and I’m not hopeful myself.

Last time I went hard on speculation, it mostly only accomplished getting y’all angry. So I am trying to hold myself back from guessing this time. Truth is we won’t know until we see it.

Because what matchups are good or not depend on what’s being played.

Right now the game is hyper aggro or OTK, which is obviously not a good meta for plagues.

If that is forcefully changed to something more midrange or slower, without the burst from hand that plague DKs struggle with the most? It can easily find itself with enough good matchups to be a top contender.

It’s all speculation without knowing what is changing, or how it’s changing though. It’s very easy for a slew of nerfs to leave the untouched tier 3 deck suddenly a tier 1 contender though. This stuff happens all the time.

Remember in Badlands when Plague DK was Tier 1? Because everything else got nerfed?

Selwynn doesn’t.

1 Like

It’s called Parasitic Game design. It’s existed for a while now so that they can sell expansion with prebuilt combos and cards all inclusive from day 1. Players don’t have to find the decks in that scenario they just buy the expansion and get the deck. They sometimes even straight up offer the deck as a package to buy.

There was a twist format that was perfect for standard and i am surprised they haven’t tried it yet. 30-40 card decks and your starting health was the number of cards in the deck between 30-40.

If they nerf Helya and destroy Plague decks you are going to see nothing but Highlander decks till next years rotation. That is NOT what you want i can guarantee it. It’s a tier 3-4 deck at best in most matches and jumps to tier 2 maybe low tier 1 against Highlander.

That’s because you are incorrect. At best it was at the low end of a top 10 decks during that meta. The best classes during that meta were Paladin and Excavate Rogue for nearly the entire time of that meta. Even Rainbow DK was doing better than Plagues. Plagues were only ever in the talk for best 10 decks because of Highlander existing.

2 Likes

Sounds like what I said a few months ago and certain posters vehemently disagreed. If I cared I would go find my post to have a good laugh at them.

1 Like

Nah it’s been thrown around in conversations for years on all the HS forums and Discords. They did it to boost sales. They took their cue for this from other mobile games.

1 Like

I dont want Helya to be nerfed but i dont see anything wrong with highlander decks dominating either…
Since these tend to be more interactive than aggro or OTK decks…

You have no idea how im going to enjoy it if that happens :upside_down_face:

Yeah… most of the highlander payoffs are pretty tame right now.

Brann is an outlier, and Rheastrasza is potentially a problem.

The rest are just decent cards.

I assume Reno is getting adjusted so he’s less overwhelming as a board clear.

After that, most highlander decks are just pretty standard curvestone.

Well:

  1. why would I not want that. I don’t have a particular issue with Highlander decks tbh. I don’t like facing warrior but that’s more a balance issue than a design one imo (too many board clears).

  2. Pretty sure Highlander decks are getting the axe as well.

We’ll see I guess. Looking forward to the reveal in a few hours

I’ll just assume you enjoyed HS during the Genn and Baku meta.

Brann warrior would like a word with you about interactivity.

We have ZERO idea yet what will change so at this VERY MOMENT having an all highlander meta would be very bad.

Do we know this for sure?

They named Reno when addressing problematic, powerful standalone cards.

It’s basically confirmed to get nerfed.

I know that. The trick is how is it being nerfed though? I mean it could be as simple as going to 9 cost and nothing more. That isn’t really a nerf but it could be counted technically as a nerf. We are all speculating that they will drastically change all of these cards and most if not all could just be cost adjustments.

If this happens the outrage will be deafening.
I’ll take a leap and say that those named at least (Zarimi, Wheel, Reno) are getting a text nerf, otherwise they’ve created expectations which will backfire.

Maybe not in the majority, but a lot of cards need to have their text changed, if they truly care about player agency.

Mate, you said Magic has 60 cards deck limit. If you did not argue for HS to increase it’s deck size similarily then that was a strange non sequitur :wink:

Eh, no, using the extreme example that has so infitisemally small chance of happening as to be impossible is not the best argument to use. YMMV tho.

How exactly are you outcontrolling OTKs which Zarimi and Nature Shaman are.