We’re definitely aware of some of the discussions of cards in Core that a number of players view as potentially frustrating. Shadowstep would be a leading candidate among these cards being discussed, but when we think about what it means to be a Rogue with Shadowstep, and how Rogue gets to act, we view that as a really strong part of the Rogue’s core identity. So that’s a card we’re keeping around. We think it’s a card that is fun to build around - but again, we’re thinking about flexibility going into the future, so who knows?
Source https://gamerant.com/interview-hearthstone-year-wolf-core-set-interview/
My take on this is biased, I like rogue and I agree that shadowstep is one of the funnest cards to build around, historically. Losing it would really suck for rogue.
That said, I think all the support around mana cheat that they print, either knowingly or unknowingly, such as mailbox dancer has crossed a threshold. It makes the game less about strategizing and more about, ok I have shadowstep and drakka all I need to draw is mailbox dancer to win this game. That’s not strategy, that’s pure luck.
Those of you who have followed what I have to say about this know that I love shadowstep, but I hate all the mana cheat that rogue has become so reliant on.
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The problem is more the fact they introduced more bounce effects that return the minions to hand for cheap.
Like, that’s a time tested problem that’s caused issues, why repeat it?
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Yes I tend to agree I’m not sure what they are thinking by printing an version of shadowstep on steroids, they are asking for major balance issues.
The more power creep that happens with Battlecry/Combo cards, the more and more Shadow Step gets broken. It already feels like it’s at a breaking point with all the shenanigans Rogue gets to pull off with Astalor, what happens when they go past it?
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Yeah, I know how you feel.
Mana Wyrm was exactly the same thing for Mage, as was Fiery War Axe for Warrior.
Oh wait… Team 5 had zero qualms about killing those.
The hypocrisy makes me want to vomit.
With Mailbox Dancer and Scabbs leaving the pop off card is the new weapon. But it requires you to play a lot of Combo cards.
If you look at the past year’s Combo cards, there’s no low cost Combo minions in the past year to bounce back with Shadowstep.
There’s Evicerate back for spell, but the Core Set is also not getting a low cost Combo minion.
This community has a knack for getting things wrong. Remember Immolate and Curse of Agony? I remember some of those people here posting.
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…well is a made up meaning for the word you came up with so change the meaning to another one and you wont vomit (freezeing strong secrets and face damage by spells is mage identity not mana wyrm)
Rogue class identity: ignore your opponent, play with yourself.
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Nearly every time they have to nerf something rogue related, shadow step is right there in the middle of it but never seen as the actual problem.
At some point we need to agree that shadow step is the problem and get rid of it entirely.
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I was definitely one of those who reacted to immolate, but I believe I caveated what I said based on whether the card sees play or not.
To be honest, immolate in classic would of been absolutely destructive, it would of basically destroyed all other control decks. And the card could be played in something like zoo to basically give it the upper hand in control matchups.
The reason that immolate was largely irrelevant when printed could be summarized by the fact that Blizzard effectively killed the control playstyle off in other ways. Immolate seemed like a backstop that they wanted in case their other plans to destroy control decks didn’t work out. Seems it was an unnecessary backstop. Overtuning aggro and face damage to the point where it doesn’t make sense to play anything but that is what killed control. Well that and the fact that losing your entire hand of cards makes barely a dent in your chances to win in a game where you can easily draw 7 to 8 cards in one turn.
First they came for the combo players, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a combo player.
Then they came for the control players, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a control player.
Then they came for the tempo players, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a tempo player.
Then they came for my playstyle—and there was no one left to speak for me, because the game was dead.
Basically the devs are nazziis dictating what play styles are allowed and not.
Let’s keep it real.
“in classic would of been absolutely destructive” this phrase could be said of a wide variety of cards that don’t see any play whatsoever.
What are we doing in Standard with all these bounce effects? Some kind of Freebird deck? Is this what we’re worried about?
It’s more probable that we have some sort of problem deck with some of these effects later down the line. Since they seem to be poor at play testing these types of cards with the weird effects they print later on.
But I think we’re more likely looking at a meta similar to Nathria, perhaps returning to Mechs, with maybe a Menagerie (why don’t we interchange Menagerie with Zoo) deck or two.
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Yes, strategy should be building an aggro deck, reducing the luck factor as every top deck is consistently useful, and you just vomit those cards instead of holding onto them in some crazy mana cheat combo…
…oh wait, the players calls aggro braindead and takes no skill; could be run by bots
Ok ok, so strategy should be having mad draw/discover and insane stalls so you go through your deck without dying, and pull off some insane combo…
…oh wait, the players cries how that’s solitarire and uninteractive. And we’re back to mana cheating combos.
Fine fine fine, strategy is having crazy late game combos, but you may not have the draw and/or stalls to reach it all the time.
…but wait, doesn’t that turn us back to relying on luck of the draw?
I think I have the perfect analogy video for what players are experiencing
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I understand what you are getting at, that no matter what archetype or archetypes come out on top people are going to hate playing them or against them.
I think that’s not entirely true. There have existed strategic deck archetypes in Hearthstone that would lead to extremely fun mirrors.
And that’s one metric I would use to do a sanity check on how fun a deck is to play with or against: how fun is the mirror.
Draw will always be important in a card game, I get that, but for the card game to be fun for me, draw, especially early draw, should determine a win or loss about 10 percent of the time. That is, a god draw should result in a win in the mirror with ten percent advantage (60-40) against any average draw, and the worst possible draw should be roughly the reverse (40-60). These statements can be made mathematically precise, but are left vague for now.
With the current meta, those stats are much closer to 90-10 and 10-90, which should be ringing alarm bells. And I’m not targeting any one deck with that statement, I think that’s a blanket statement that applies to all decks that see play in the meta.
Just take a look at a miracle rogue mirror, it’s the perfect example of this. The entire deck is effectively built around high rolling a good early draw, and with the copious amount of free draw in this game now it is very effective at it. In the mirror, the sensitivity to quality of draw is absurd accounting for the entirety of the win or loss.
Are the stats supporting you?
Are there enormously high Mulligan/Drawn win rates for those cards?
Look, you have something valid to complain about.
But those are some big numbers you are throwing out there (90/10), so forgive me for needing more than your word to believe it.
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Has anyone noticed, shadowstep aside, that rogue is actually a rather powerful mage this standard?
When i see a rogue now as a mage i picture Gollum hitting the BM “Whats it got in its filthy little pocketses precious?”.
Blizzard be damned, i swear it hates most of its children.
Simply saying “Well all the busted cards are rotating so it’s okay” is a terrible position to take. Has nobody learned that busted BC effects is exactly the kind of Power creep cards they continue to print. Are players so naive to think there won’t be more busted cards to combo with Step coming?
I could almost excuse letting it remain in the core set but they printed even more ways to bounce BC effects and those cards are here to stay for the next two years.
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Fair point.
I’m basing this off a “gut-feel” and I don’t have numbers to support this, though I’d love to take a stab at the analysis provided I’d have enough replays of games at desired brackets.
One thing I will say, however, is that the 90-10, 10-90 is not an exaggeration for the miracle rogue mirror. In fact, I think it might be an underestimate of this effect in this particular mirror. Given miracle rogue has seem extremely high representation at high brackets this could really skew the average game played in certain brackets to strongly demonstrate this property. I am probably most confident in this assessment of this particular mirror MU.
I will say, however, that that is probably an exaggeration in other mirrors. Take for example the quest druid mirror, I would think its probably somewhere in a 80-20, 20-80 neighbourhood, or perhaps 70-30,30-70.
In any case, I definitely don’t have the data in the form of mass replays analyzed for this effect, but it wouldn’t be impossible to do so if given access to a large enough number of such replays at a desired rank/bracket. This is not something aggregate sites like HSReplay or VS dig into, they mostly just care about the effectiveness of decks, not how impactful draw order is on overall winrate. The latter effect is much more important to me in assessing how “fun” or healthy I think the game is.
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HSREPLAY does have mulligan and drawn win rates to analyze.
For those folks who have a premium sub, that is.
