It changes a lot. The scenario you described required 3 different cards in the starting hand, what happened to me was only 2 cards-- Gnoll and evolve spell, plus they started game with coin. So they only needed 2 cards from their deck and coin to summon a Deathwing on turn 2. This can be easily replicated across multiple games so long as Shaman gets coin and mulligans for Gnoll and evolve spell. The outcome will not always be Deathwing but it will be any 10 cost minion.
I’m not saying this to cause you distress, dear sir. I’m simply stating a statistical truth, not a generalization, if you post a salty thread about any topic you will get almost no productive discourse and almost surely snark/snide and otherwise unhelpful replies, even by the same people who will turn around and write their own salty thread topic, not realizing the irony of their actions.
If you disagree I would be amazed at your ability to handle the cognitive dissonance of holding such a different model of reality in your head when the reality is so different. I mean the first post after the OP is an exemplary display of this and is not the exception but the rule.
Indeed. We should aim to change that. A good start would be calling out these players’ (even if indirectly). Shame works. Peer pressure goes a long way.
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Reread my comment. I am advocating for your favorite playstyle (or specific cards you like) to be only slightly edited in such a way that these cards are not destroyed. There must be a compromise that can be attained in an attempt to not remove that playstyle, and some of the cards involved to be, perhaps, adjusted accordingly to appease as many players as possible on both sides of this invincible fence.
To say again: I am not asking to the destruction of cards, but instead, slight redesigns that might make them weaker but that alleviate the tension — the unfun some decks cause.
(Edit: I am not referring entirely to you @autosquelch.)
Ridiculous I say. Ridiculous ! 
Even Ben Brode and co. used to do that to some degree, by the way. It changed.
Ha, the ‘low brackets’ have been the most dreaded for me since I built up some kind of competitive collection, more or less, for this reason. If you go higher, it’s mostly predictable netdeckers, but there, in the lower ranks, you’re bound to eventually meet that one ‘creative’… entertainer who’s prepared to keep losing and is generally a ‘no-one’ in the game, but the whole purpose of their existence is apparently just to ruin your win streak, if not your fun, by pulling off that one-in-a-lifetime combo-wombo. I mean… it’s like someone who lives on a dung pile and so on, and the pinnacle of their life and their proudest achievement is to jump on an unaware and somwhat unlucky decent citizen and smudge their clean and stylish attire with their filth — that’s what those who choose to play ‘troll decks’ look like to me. On the other hand, isn’t Wild supposed to be a playground for these?
FYI for those arguing the regularity of the occurrence, this is the breakdown.
The Shaman has to go second.
The Shaman has to open with:
At least one of two Goldshire Gnolls.
At least one of two Schoolings.
At least one of four 1 mana evolve cards (Muck Pools or Convincing Disguise).
We must also consider the ability to Mulligan up to four cards, so by turn 2 we have seen anywhere from 6 to 10 cards.
The odds of going second and hitting this combo by turn 2 are about 12%. This is surprisingly high, about 1 in 8 games.
The odds of hitting specifically Deathwing are 1 in 9 (11%) as there are 10 different 10 drops but you can’t roll Neptulon. Added into the equation, you’ll see Deathwing on turn 2 about 1.3% of games (about 1 in 75 games).
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Pretty neat explanation!
When games should be fun, and certain aspects of a game are unfun (as agreed upon by a large enough portion of that game’s playerbase), it’s only reasonable to remedy it.
The question is how they come to this conclusion that something is unfun enough to warrant nerfing. I severely doubt it’s anything more scientific than reddit blowing up, influenced by some well known players tweet or saltiness on twitch. It backfires because for every person that finds losing to something unfun, it’s pretty likely that there is someone who finds winning with it fun. People are all too quick to make the mistake that everyone feels about something the same way that they do, just because semi famous people and the unhinged mob on reddit do.
While you are right that the cards deemed “unfun” are probably first evaluated because of player feedback, they will still consider data like Mulligan WR, WR of the specific card when played on the right turn or WR of the deck when things do or don’t align, etc. And then consider how to approach the situation accordingly. Remember Spiteful Summoner? They nerfed him by 1 Mana and it was enough to make the decks more bearable.
I really doubt they only listen to player feedback when making a decision, otherwise Tickatus would have been in the gutter the moment he was printed, yet they didn’t touch him at all.
As a paladin veteran I can only say there are ways to deal with that too like class action layer
Yesterday I was playing dragon pala and seen 8/8 with desthrattle summon 8/8 on turn 2. Still won the game.
Important part is not to panic and stay frosty.
You might be right, but it’s all conjecture on our part. I have my doubts. We all know how Blizzard likes cutting costs, and we know minimal time goes into playtesting new cards, both in terms of balance and potential bugs, so why would they put resources into fully researching the phycological impact of balance changes? Regardless, we know that nerfs are always going to make somebody feel bad. The solution? All you can do is vote with your wallet and your time. People who screech for nerfs because of the echo chamber of reddit betray an unseemly level of immaturity.
I’ve had people swear blind to me on here that certain cards need to be nerfed because ‘everybody hates them’. Needless to say, I care not for this logic.
“My class has means of handling a 12/12 on turn 2 so it’s not broken at all”. The biggest issue in these forums is that people are heavily biased towards their favorite class/playstyle. You can only have a good perspective on balance issues if you play different matchups, and a fairly common 8/8, 10/10 or 12/12 highroll should not be acceptable, period.
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The frustration people feel with combo decks is that they lay low for a period of time and then explode with a dramatic increase in power.
Sometimes they “lay low” completely overtly, such as a quest deck in which you can track the opponent’s progress. Other times, they “lay low” more covertly and you can’t tell how close they are to wielding the combo.
Sometimes the “power explosion” is dramatic, like an instant win with Mecha’thun or Purified Shard or a possible high damage output for an OTK, like Brann>Anub>Astalor or the pre-nerf Brann>SireD. Other times, the “power explosion” is more indirect, merely increasing the power of the deck dramatically for the rest of the game, like Quest Mage’s +3 Spell Damage (later nerfed to +2) or OG Quest Rogue’s buff of all cards to 5/5 stats (also nerfed). Those don’t end the game, but they’re likely to win in the next 2-3 turns.
I don’t see how you could possibly modify those conditions such that those who are annoyed by them are no longer annoyed but still allowing the decks to do what they are designed to do.
How do you make Mecha’thun “weaker”? Or Purified Shard? Astalor damage was nerfed slightly. Does getting hit for a 54 damage OTK feel any less annoying than a 64 damage OTK? And for the more subtle combos, the “little” nerfs to Caverns Below and Sorcerer’s Gambit pushed them entirely out of the meta.
Have to disagree
I read it as a typical post about the state of Evolve Shaman. I didn’t read any rage.
I will say having a response to their post as such feels natural at first because posts like these usually ARE rage posts after just losing a match, but I don’t feel it here.
This was not the first reply I was expecting 
I believe it’s 56 now, lol I’ve had to calculate this many times now which is why reading 54 immediately know its wrong.
I’ve played combo decks as my second favourite type of deck throughout my time in HS circa 2014. I got hooked after seeing an opponent demolished me in classic as freeze mage and I was playing zoo lock. I thought it was one of the coolest things ever, watching them screw around the whole game drawing cards and delaying, I had no idea what was happening that first game.
My favourite deck type to play has been and will likely always be mid-range, as IMHO these are the highest skill cap decks. My reasoning is that mid-range decks have no clear weaknesses, at least when built right, and so you are only limited by RNG and the pilots ability. They may not have spectacular win-rates, but they also have no unwinnable MU (usually.)
Unfortunately, mid-range is a style of the past, now everything is either hyper aggro, or mana cheat.
If memory servers, Blizzard has gone on record multiple times saying that they do not like the combo playstyle and will purposefully target it so that it is unplayable or at least underperforms with respect to other deck types. I think they have done so successfully, there are not true combo decks in standard, the only thing that comes close is ramp druid with the astalor brann combo for 56 damage, but that is a 3 piece combo, its more of a win-condition that was given to druid to end games quickly rather than a true combo.
Something much closer to a combo deck that still lives in wild is pillager rogue. This is actually a pretty complex deck if you want to get your combo fix.
But there are very few combos anymore that require patience, careful planning and thought.
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That’s a layman’s perspective, disregarding the internal metrics T5 has to analyze more precisely what is and what isn’t problematic.
You can have all the data in the world and make entirely the wrong deductions. Also, none of us can see that data, so saying with any authority what their true motivations are is a waste of time.
You’re right. I cannot count how many times aspects of Hearthstone have been changed, seemingly haphazardly and without any extra extrapolation on the effects of those changes.
My point only is that the playerbase reaction (which seems to be considered in these (often nonsensical) changes) is but one component considered. What other metrics T5 has beyond our awareness certainly also play a role — more deeply than what the average Joe Hearthstone player even has the ability to understand.
There’s definitely more going behind the curtain than we know. To pretend otherwise is, and no offense, folly.
Correct. 56, down from 64.
I think what they’ve said is that they do not like OTKs, not necessarily the “combo” archetype. But for me, I stretch my definition of “combo” a bit to include decks that, at some point during the match, gain a dramatic power escalation. It could be an OTK, but it could also just be a big power swing. Quests fall into that category. You may not be assembling the combo pieces in your hand, but by playing a particular combination of cards, you earn a big power bump. Sometimes the power bump might be mana cheat, sometimes it’s increased stats. It’s like George McFly getting beat down time after time and when the right time comes, he’s got that power surge to lay out Biff. And from that point forward, everything is different.
