Standard is not fun

Multiplayer Discussion
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I recently returned to Hearthstone after an absence of a few years’ time. What I’ve returned is not the same. This isn’t nearly as fun as it once was. Things I think are an issue:

Lots and lots of taunts with huge health. Fine. Lots of board clears, but then they’re re-summoned after you kill them. Which isn’t so bad except…

After you kill them again you have to deal with massive amounts of armor or sometimes health. Like ridiculous levels of it. Even if you had fatigue on your side, it would take forever to punch through, but you don’t because…

Kil’jaedan. Basically an extra deck only the minions are cheap and just get bigger and bigger until you can’t even deal with 2 or 3 on the board. It just allows the player that have this to greedily draw cards until they’re nearly out of cards and then they can just play that.

Imbue is inconsistent across the classes. Some are really good, but others are just awful. Sorry for those classes, I guess. Maybe they’re good in Arena but they’re crap in standard.

And really Imbue Druid is just Jade Golems all over again. It wasn’t creative or fun the first time, not sure why someone thought that would be fun to do all over again.

Battlecries and Deathrattles. Nothing can be done about them. Most of the time I feel I’m just watching someone play their deck. I can’t really meaningfully interact with whatever they’re doing. I’m just along for the ride. If I’m lucky, they screw up. Yeah, there’s Dirty Rat, but having to put those in just to have a shot feels like poor design.

This game used to be fun because there was a good amount of randomness to it and crazy interactions. Someone could pull off a win in an unexpected manner or clever play, but honestly it doesn’t feel like there’s any balance at all. There’s just decks you can’t win against no matter what you put in it. You can only win if they draw poorly or screw up. Not particularly fun.

I’m curious about the next expansion, but if it turns out to be more of the same I think I’ll just take another extended break again.

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The thing I hate more than anything right now is Kil’Jaedan. It’s not because it gives slow control decks a way to avoid fatigue (that’s part of it) but it’s that all slow decks essentially have to run it because all the other ones are.

And when you have 2 players who have both played KJ, the game becomes mind numbingly stupid and heavily RNG. It’s just a matter of who gets blessed with their RNG demon they got offered that turn.

KJ vs KJ basically just means both players quit the game and they are letting the game decide who wins.

It’s so bad that I can’t even play slow decks anymore because the matchup has become agonizingly boring. Control vs Control used to be one of the funnest matches to play as you both are trying to out-resource the other in a sort of chess match. This is no longer the case.

The card needs a counter to the infinite value.

This game has a serious lack of real counters to powerful cards.

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If you thought this was still a strategy game, you are mistaken. The game is third rate slop that can’t handle any latency, crashes every 2 games on every platform, and every game is decided entirely by RNG.

People copy paste a deck from a website, and let an algorithm decide who wins. At no point does strategy have any meaning. It’s actually comical to see some mindless player emoting during an RNG induced win, as if their presence had anything to do with it. They rode passenger on the RNG train. So many games you’ll see people “discover” the one card across all of Hearthstone, across every class, that can save them after being outplayed. You can play 6-7 games before even seeing a single legitimate match.

Arena is even worse, since you only partially get to pick your cards. Whoever is the RNG welfare recipient that got a deck with synergy wins, before you ever enter a match.

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For years control has been telling us how much thinking and strategy and skill there is to their archetypes, but those darn aggro players keep killing them from ever having a fun match.

Well, the meta is actually relatively slow now. Expanse, that card that also came out in Great Dark Beyond, is a card that’s only playable in a longer game.

DKs, DHs and warriors reaching high health/armor levels and building up to their huge starship or taunt walls
Warlocks can go for a long game too, through they could just as well stall into a huge dark gift OTK thing

The last few days I played around with draenei priest and draenei (libram) paladin. Two archetypes that used to be too slow. But I’ve had more success than before. Doubling a velen with askara, and then pulling off Umbra is way too silly.

::Russel Crowe impression:: Are you not entertained?

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Ranked and fun rarely ever go together unfortunately, unless you’re someone who enjoys playing with/against broken decks.

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First people need to stop with the tech card syndrome.

Just the fact that people think that any cards that happens to counter something has to be a stupid weak card that makes you lose any other matchup is dumb.

Then we could start simple with tutoring hate.

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But it is not true. The one who saved more ways to draw cards and clear the board usually wins.
It can be seen in the Warrior vs DK matchup. DK is better bc DK has more ways to draw cards and clear the board. The only chance for Warrior is a chance to destroy DK’s Kiljaeden by Dirty Rat or Hamm.

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I don’t know why this lie keeps being told over and over and over again and no one ever fixes their mistake.

Control. Doesn’t. Normally. Lose. To. Aggro.

It counters it. Why tf people keep saying Control players keep dying to aggro which stops them from having fun is beyond me. It’s not aggro that counters Control. COMBO does. Aggro counters Combo.

Please, I’m begging, stop saying this.

Control players, like myself, am perfectly fine with aggro. In fact, I want aggro to be good because it weeds out more Combo decks. Aggro is Control’s friend.

Nope, we need tech. Why? Because we don’t have a proper counter mechanic in a card game like Hearthstone. Nearly all other card games allow players to counter other players by playing cards during their opponent’s turn to prevent actions.

Hearthstone doesn’t have this. Thus, you need tech cards that you can use after a card is played, during your turn, to fill this void.

People don’t need to stop with the tech card requests. It’s literally a must in Hearthstone.

It’s true most of the time. It might not be true ALL the time, but most of the time a KJ play into another KJ play is just a matter of what you draw. Drawing more cards only helps increase your odds, but at the end of the day, you have zero control of your deck and are at the mercy of what is offered.

Pulled a Doomguard? Congrats on your RNG.
Pulled an Archimonde? Congrats again.
Pulled Patches? Sucks for you.
Pulled Malefic Rook? Bummer.

You play KJ you literally are just clicking a button that tells the game to make a random deck for you.

It’s time to stop acting like this isn’t the case. Anyone who plays KJ needs to admit that they are just praying for a good demon and are at the complete mercy of RNG. You know dang well you are hoping and praying you don’t draw Malefic Rook, Patches, or a variety of other useless Demons and are openly praying for good RNG every time you draw.

You play KJ, every time you draw you are getting 1 lottery ticket and hoping it’s a winner. By saving more card draw, all you are doing is buying more lottery tickets. You don’t know what you are drawing or even what you could possibly draw because you have zero clue what’s really in your deck.

Card draw in a deck you built is not the same as card draw in a deck you didn’t build.

1 Like
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taunt warrior ? that deck is fun to play ! i love to see my opponent dropping kiljaeden then being unable to win thx to several waves of illusory dragons !
they thought they won because they dropped kiljaeden only to hear “a recurring dream … a recurring dream … a recurring dream”!

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I tend to agree with you and I do not see why a Steamcleaner could not simply counter KilJaeden.

If control decks had to include auto-Steamcleaner to counter Kiljaeden then so be it.

Nothing should perpetually prevent Fatigue. Fatigue has been a win condition forever and it should still be.

However, I would like if a TIE match was decided a bit earlyer in-game. And I would like to see a Turn-counter somewhere on the screen.

When playing Priest vs Priest, I often fought all the way even I knew I could probably not win but could last long enough to get a draw.

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Steamcleaner doesn’t counter it because the portal refills back to 30 cards each turn. How is Steamcleaner a counter? If you are saying it should delete it, then I agree. But as is, Steamcleaner is pretty useless.

I believe the turn counter is displayed if you hover over your deck area somewhere.

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That is EXACTLY what I mean, Steamcleaner should DELETE every cards that did not start in deck.

And KilJaeden should not refill forever the owner’s deck.

And well, no I do not see turn count anywhere in game and I do not even know at what turn a Draw is called. Been here since launch, go figure…

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I think if you hover over the skull or middle area or even the cards themselves it will show a turn count.

A tie happens at turn 45 (90 if you count each player turn). I have had it happen around 30 times or so and every time I get to turn 44 before ending my turn I say Well Played. Opponent usually is confused. Then they blow up and friend request me asking what happened lol

I’ve had a tie like 10 times this season alone because of KJ. Not because I’m running KJ, but because I had an Amalgam deck that went infinite that clears the board every turn. I can’t lose and they can’t win.

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All I can see is how many cards are remaining in both decks but I do not see what turn number is going on anywhere.

I guess I made it to turn 45 a few times in my career but I never knew when it would happen beforehand :slight_smile:

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Hmmm perhaps I see it with the deck tracker. But I thought for sure there was a place you could hover over to view the turn #. I’ll have to double check and let you know if I see it.

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the card works to counter non portal buffs

if you play it youll remove all demons buffed by theron / blackrock and roll and barnabus

it wouldnt be able to counter mill / fatigue decks if it didnt thats what the card is for

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I play Kil’jaeden in exactly one kind of deck and for one main purpose, so Wheel of Death doesn’t fatigue me. If everything goes according to plan, then it doesn’t matter much to me what demons I draw; I have the last few turns mapped out anyways.

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Um, I didn’t say control loses to aggro.

I was talking about what control players, at least the most vocal ones, tell us. Whether what they tell us is actually true or not is irrelevant.

And my point is more about “fun” than whether which deck archetype beats which. We’ve been told time and again that longer matches are more fun and epic, whereas aggro is dumb and boring. Thus the last line in my post asking are you not entertained (by the now longer matches)

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We didn’t need tech.

We need cards that are good by themselves who also happen to counter specific stuff.

The “tech” will Just act as placeholder at this point and we all know that.

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My bad then. I took what you said as a form of mocking Control players as if that was a real issue. I don’t know of any Control players that complain about aggro decks…if a Control deck is having issues against aggro and the aggro deck isn’t some broken tier S deck, then the Control player is really bad at playing this game. You literally build your deck to control aggro. A Control player saying Aggro is giving them a hard time is like a sponge complaining about water. It’s literally the purpose of your deck to take care of that issue. A control deck that doesn’t beat aggro is about as useless as a sponge that doesn’t absorb water.

Longer matches are more fun and epic (most people remember an epic game they played and that game being one that was long and rarely remember the times they lost on turn 6 against aggro).

But Longer Matches = More Fun does not mean the longer a match is the more fun it is. That’s falsely representing what the person is saying.
If games average 8-15 turns, you could say those longer games are more fun than games that last 5-7 turns. But that does not mean the person saying 8-15 turn averages are fun, and by the logic a 45 turn average should be MORE fun.

Once you understand that, you can understand why KJ is not a card that all these Control players were asking for, right?

Why can’t it be both? A simple poisonous minion is a tech card against a big minion, is it not? And the poisonous minion can still see play in normal decks.

Stop thinking people who are talking about “tech cards” are referring to specific cards that counter 1 specific other card. By “tech” I’m talking about counters overall. There are things in this game that have, literally, zero counters. Once it is played, you can do nothing about it.

In short, stop thinking of tech cards as being designed like this:
Rare · Minion · Knights of the Frozen Throne · Hero Powers are disabled.

And start thinking of future tech cards to look more like this:
Common · Minion · The Lost City of Un

Or like this with tradeable
Rare · Minion · March of the Lich King · Battlecry: Freeze an enemy minion. Manathirst (6): Silence it first.