This nerf ruined HS. They are trying to keep up with fast paced games like Marvel Snap by reducing play time and pushing a faster meta, when they should be trying to build out their own niche card experience. They wont ever reach marvel snaps ease of play or speed on mobile, so why push it? Allow players to play a card game that encourages control and slower play styles by reversing that stupid nerf. The majority of players have voiced discontent with the change, and yet Blizzard has stood by the decision while players leave the game in droves.
This nerf was a prime example of balancing not for the player base but for monetary incentives, trying to keep relevancy in a category HS will never compete in. Since the nerf, I have barely played and HS. Along with many others.
Marvel Snap is more interesting, and even though the collecting and deck building isnt as good, the gameplay allows all types of decks to be viable. Not just the extremely fast ones that end the game by turn 6.
The only thing it ever did was make people who make absolutely god awful decks think they have a chance. Very, very few decks were ever made better by including that toxic little prick.
Hearthstone has always had a double standard that burst damage, going face, and anything that ends the game is good while healing, armor, and anything that prolongs the game is bad. A control card like renethal never stood a chance.
The fact people associate Renathal strictly with longer games is proof they talk exclusively from a very low rank perspective, where Renethak vs Renethal wet noodle fights were the norm
Again, if you like to make your lists worse, thatâs totally cool with me. Have all the variety you want⌠over there, not in standard. Letâs be totally honest here, it is bad players at low ranks that got the card nerfed because hardly any actually competitive lists used it.
My opinion on this topic, and it hasnât changed, is that changing the number of cards and the health of one player should be a separate mode rather than standard.
Healing, armor, and anything else that prolongs the game is bad because using cards without developing or removing threats is inherently bad. Using a card to remove a 5/5 minion is infinitely better than spending a card to just heal 5. You end up in the same boat next turn with a 5/5 minion hitting your face or trading with your threats next turn except now you are down a card going the healing and stall route. Thatâs why stalling is bad not and not because Blizzard hateâs control. Just stalling is only good is when you are buying time to get to some kind of game winning wombo combo. Control ends up being bad in most metas because do nothing stall tactics are bad in Hearthstone in general. The core game structure heavily favors having initiative and pure stall just lets your opponents have all the initiative to snowball from.
I just downloaded Snap last night and played it for the first time. Youâre correct. Blizz has slowly been scooting close and closer to Snapâs playstyle and for good reason. Iâve only played maybe a dozen games, but itâs easy, simple and a quick fix to fill in any gap of time with a game on your phone (I know itâs available on PC).
Snapâs playstyle is at best another mode for HS if anything at all. If they continue trying to make the main game (Standard/Wild) like Snap, yeah, it will push a lot of people away because that isnât HS.
If Renethal or the 40 health was part of HS from the beginning, Iâd agree with you, but Ren was added to the game a few months ago and enabled different decks. This nerf didnât ruin HS, it affected decks using him.
Like I said, Snap feels like a decent game, but they are two different games and playstyles. If you like one more than the other, okay, but thatâs a matter of perspective.
Maybe youâre using the word âmajorityâ incorrectly because Iâve mostly seen people happy with the change. I for one see Renethal more as an enabler of toxicity than a healthy inclusion to the game.
The majority of players have voiced discontent with the change
This logic drives me mad. Show me the poll where this is proven. Salty hard stuck Golds on reddit donât count. This really isnât complicated. Different people have different views and tastes. Shocking I know.
Unnerf Renathal now and the only thing that changes is the meta becomes even narrower in favour of older decks.
True. Stalling to allow you the opportunity to draw a key card, and or to allow you the opportunity to make a play for which you needed one more mana, is not dumb. There were a few decks that benefited by Renathal, and not only for this reason. Some decks, like Quest Hunter, had enough redundancy that having more cards did not hurt it, and so it benefited from the increase in health.
However, what we see here are not players upset that their meta deck became worse. What we see here, and elsewhere, are players that enjoy homebrewing. Renathal made it feel like more options were available to these players. Although, Renathal did not objectively improve the success of their homebrews. These are the players weâre hearing from.
Renathal is still in more than 1/4 of decks even after nerf (if I saw the stats right on reddit⌠and astalor is still the most played card in standard) and thatâs awful.
If thatâs really what these players think is cool, give them their own mode.
I agree, kind of. I think an option for âcustom gamesâ would be awesome. Giving players the opportunity to manipulate deck size, health amount, turn duration, mana to begin with, mana-cost limits on cards, etc.
I donât know how this could be implemented.
I think you should be happy, though, that so many of your opponents are actively making their decks worse.
On the one hand, youâre absolutely right about majorities. Itâs pretty much impossible for a majority of Hearthstone players to mildly like, much less love, any one card. The favorability rating of every card and of every class is below 50%.
On the other hand, and more importantly, democracy is a stupid way to approach nerfs.
Imagine if we allowed the entire United States to vote democratically on whether weâd kill everyone in Missouri, sell all their stuff, take all that money, burn half of it, and split the rest equally among everyone else in the US. This is a very stupid idea, especially with the burning half part, but unless morality got ahead of shallow personal self-interest, itâd pass by a landslide. Pure democracy, uncut by constitutionalism, is an evil.
Well that is pretty much how I view Blizzard nerf policy. Take a deck that only a few play, redistribute half the fun to everyone else so they can feel the tiniest bit happy that they donât need to show the patience anymore to play against something that they didnât enjoy playing against, then nuke the deck from orbit, including that half of the fun that wasnât extracted.
Every single nerf, every one, ruins Hearthstone for somebody somewhere. Maybe not you, maybe not me. But someone. But nerfs are popular anyway because the majority arenât in the blast radius.
Indeed Blizzard is cheered for having frequent balance changes. No, the aim should be for minimal balance changes, because patching means you screwed up. But we wonât be seeing that anytime soon because that would require Blizzard to actually test their product before releasing it.
