First, I don’t see it as poorly designed. I think it’s really good.
That’s not exactly what I mean.
It’s designed to counter slow decks, which it does. If it also beat faster decks, it wouldn’t be ideal.
So you’re biased to reject it in any form, which limits the discussion significantly.
But that aside, you seem to have a narrow definition of counterplay that differs from mine. Helya does not end games by herself. It is a card that has a high win rate, but it does not finish games. The counter play is simply to win before the plagues over take you, which is what is happening more than half the time with more than half the decks.
In my mind, that would be bad design. Now we’re making a deck that will beat faster and slower decks by making the damage output the key factor instead of the survival.
I really think it depends on the game long effect.
I think there’s a big gap between “your battle cries trigger twice” and “hey, you might draw that two damage again later if you take too long to kill this noob” as game long effects.
See, I think about decks like that and how awful it was. Plagues are like mosquitos. Annoying, but not usually going to kill you.
The one thing I do dislike about plagues is that Helya alone is too strong. She has been used quite frequently with minimal to no other plague cards because 3 infinite plagues are really all you need in many matchups.
While plagues as an archetype aren’t really too strong, that one card within the package kind of is. If they don’t add in a serious plague counter, I would like another condition on Helya to prevent the single card splash to almost auto win stall matchups. (This is especially annoying when priests find her on Aman’thul)
That’s just a pile of bunk, though. If the plagues are the deciding factor, you are too slow to beat the deck. There are just so many games where you don’t even draw them and die.
So are we going after everything that works like this? Ignite?
Because if you get that far, good for you! If that’s really what it comes down to, gg.
This complaint seems more like preference than legitimate complaint.
I mean, everything about Aman’thul sucks. It’s among my most hated cards… but I’m not asking for it to go away. Killing Helya because Aman’thul is a bunghole seems suspect.
It just kept toxic decks from emerging. If anything, it was pro-fun for the player base. Without it, Bumboss showed up and still haunts us, Plagues have become an inevitability, and counterplay to cards like Symphony and other shuffling effects has ceased.
They tried to fix the inevitability problem in HS, aiming to end games faster, but in the wrong way. Instead of toning down the number of plays each turn to make long games less of a drag, they took away counterplay.
What the game really needs is a reduction in generation, card draw, and overly convoluted effects.
This would speed up gameplay and let people have fun without needing something on the side to avoid the boredom of a full 75-seconds Turn 3.
It’s better to have a “just draw this” counter than to rely on the opponent having bad draws to avoid their inevitability. Steamcleaner is a must, regardless of its power.
Eh, I disagree here. Helya has been effectively used as a tech against fast decks that just draw quickly as well.
So when Helya is good in
Plague DK
Control DK
And as a tech card against draw
the card itself is just too strong. It’s harder to think of decks that don’t just splash Helya in these days if they have access to the singular unholy rune.
The card shouldn’t be playable in decks that aren’t running other plague cards, but it is simply because it’s infinite value. Hell, even back when DK had mograine for infinite 3 damage pings, a single Helya splash instead of triple blood was nearly as effective.
It’s even one of the better cards in this silly corpse burn DK with no other plague cards in it (by played win rate).
Ignite was NEVER close to as good as Helya because it required you to keep drawing and spending resources on the card. Helya is a play once for infinite value. Ignite messed up your draws for a weak burn spell over and over and over again while you made your way to the late game.
At minimum Helya should require being in a full plague deck somehow, not just “oh look, I played an on curve 4 drop for infinite value.”
Anything that shuffles cards into decks. Not everyone is smashing meta. Just because it’s meme, doesn’t mean someone isn’t trying to do it.
Patches the Pilot, Zillax, Jade displays, Aviana, student of the stars, Repackage, Fal’dorei Strider, snake oil, fizzle, adaptive amalgam, … and lots more.
That card basically ruins the fun in wild, at least let us play in standard.
I dislike “i played this so infinite value” cards almost as much as combo, yes.
Classes should need more than 1 card or small group of cards to win in the late game.
Eh, the tier power of cards right now is pretty irrelevant given that we are enjoying concierge druid / hydration station oppression. It’s still dumb that the best DK deck just splashes Helya and it’s correct to do so.
Yes, plague DK as an entire package is bad. Helya is the only good plague card, and it’s overtuned. Both things can be true.
I don’t really expect Blizz to make a Helya hard counter or change anything about the card, but I do still think it’s poor design (along with almost anything with “for the rest of the game” on it, or in itself is game ending regardless of board state).
Interaction is fun and kind of the core identity of the game since launch, and cards that deny it from happening are not my favorite.
It’s largely people that are annoyed that you can’t do this vs cards that have infinite effects. There’s no “outsmarting” things like Helya, you just have to beat the clock.
But infinite value is most certainly doing it wrong in modern hearthstone. I think your distaste is mostly held over from decks of yore. Fatigue isn’t a thing in standard unless someone did it on purpose.
I will say this one more time: The scenario you describe says more about the wet noodle opponent deck than it does about plagues. If you’re truly losing to infinite value of three cards (as opposed to a bad run of draw rng on plagues), then your deck sucks.
I typically agree with you, but this isn’t the same as brann.
This is a falsehood, though… what did you do for the 15 turns between when I played Helya and you died? You act like this card is the priest shard or something. It’s just not that good, dude.
I mean, you can keep your hand full and they’re useless and don’t shuffle back, so no, you can play around them if it’s honestly that big of a deal.
I think being able to deal with six damage every couple of turns would be easy for a deck trying to make it to fatigue.
That still doesn’t mean that it’s not on my list of cards that probably should be reworked.
It just does too much outside of the plague package in my opinion.
Helya harshly punishes draw heavy decks, guarantees you win if the game might go to fatigue, messes with cards that require specific draw orders like sludges, RNG wins games when the first plague shows up at the wrong/right time, messes with cards that draw your lowest cost things or tutors spells…
And it does all of that for the rest of the game and there’s no real option to undo it unless you want to run something terrible like Tony.
The card isn’t egregiously strong, it just does way too much for something that requires no real thought beyond “I played a 4 Mana 4/4 at some point.”
If Helya had to go in a plague deck, and wouldn’t activate the infinite plagues otherwise? She would be fine. As is, I dislike the card not going into the deck she was made for.
Kind of like how I disliked Reno being used in non-highlander decks because he was just better in a draw heavy druid or warrior.
But despite that it’s still not in any sort of oppressive deck, so it can’t do as much as you think it does. It seems like the threat of what it can possibly do is what you’re seeing more than the reality that it rarely wins games by itself.
Plagues are just annoying, as is any disruption. You just hate it when you’ve planned your move ahead and then pick up a Frost Plague and have to settle for a less impactive play, or when you prepare a lethal next turn only to draw the Blood plague to heal him and delay it.
Not much use of them nowadays, which is why the deck is very bad.
I mean, sure, I guess if you are in a good enough position to do nothing for 2-3 turns to draw plagues after your overplanner…
Neither of the two things you listed are particularly reliable counters.
You are almost always better off using overplanner to avoid the plagues for 3 turns.
And grub isn’t an amazing card on its own, nevermind trying to pair it with overplanner in the late game to maybe shave 2 plagues out of your deck.
(And against an actual plague deck, them shuffling more plagues counters the planned overdraw counter)
As I’ve mentioned earlier in the thread, there are ways to remove plagues, they are just pretty universally either bad cards or bad plays that you get forced into (doing nothing)
I’d have just preferred plagues never got a “for the rest of the game” effect so easily.
I’d go one step further and say they’re the flat wrong approach and will lose you more games than they save.
I agree with you, but it’s not even widely played at this point. When I looked it up this morning she’s in 7.5% of decks, which is fine. And Reska is in 9.5%, so people aren’t auto including Helya.
I really wish they hadn’t made Zilliax one card that’s meant to go into everything because you can customize it to your deck.
It makes tracking how strong it is a nightmare.
Yeah, I don’t expect anything to actually be done to Helya because of that, but she is closer to Reska than she probably should be because Reska is actually bonkers strong.
If a balance patch does make DK one of the most played classes, I do hope they clip the Helya splash (along with Reska being discoverable) though.