That’s subjective, some people might like that xD
Either way, we’ll find out soon enough xD
The logic is correct. If everyone has access to same tools, it’s not broken, it’s balanced.
It is power-crept, though, and that’s not good.
But powercrept doesn’t equal broken, just much stronger than cards used to be before and a sign the product is nearing its’ expiration date (not that it’s gonna happen anytime soon, it won’t).
So out of the 26 to 30 games of Standard that I have played as Highlander Warrior, I probably beat Plague DK like 7 times, while only losing once to the class.
If Brann got nerfed, I imagine Odyn Warrior would replace Highlander Warrior as the better deck, if it’s not already better.
As Highlander Warrior, I tend to be more concerned about facing Warlock, Shaman and Priest—partly, because I am still learning what Shaman and Priest can do in this meta. I should probably be concerned about aggro Hunter and Paladin decks, but so far, I have had really good luck against these classes at lower ranks.
I do not buy into the idea that if everyone has equal access to broken stuff, then then it’s not broken. A good strategy-based CCG allows for interactive game play where skill matters. If games end too early or without possible counter-play, then it’s a badly designed game. And even if both players have “I Win” cards in their deck, which they hope to play first, it does not negate bad design and bad balance—nor does it make broken cards OK.
Cards in a pool should adhere to a balanced “power-curve,” and when there are cards that are so powerful that nothing else comes near to being as impactful on games, then they are broken, because they break a proper power-curve.
Uh… the counter to Brann is that so many decks can beat you before you draw it…you only have a 50% chance to draw it in your first 15 cards, etc…
Played a Warlock. Start of turn 5 they had nothing on board. End of turn 6 they had one 9/9, one 9/9 with taunt, one 3/3, and yep, one 15/15 with taunt.
This isn’t sustainable.
i was thinking of this too, but i dont have inventor Boom and too cheap to craft him. Should i go for it? Reasons why i hesitate:
If the meta is full of reno brann warriors, i’d end up with a mirror match and then my investment ends up becoming a coin toss. Not only that, reno vs reno is very boring.
The other dominating deck is hunter. I havent seen the odds of warrior vs hunter, but if warrior is not favoured, again, i lose my dust.
Any advice?
I have the same issue, but I think I’ll save my dust for the reasons you mentioned. the mirror match is just too boring and warriors are everywhere, and hunter beats warrior. I think i’m going to craft the hunter deck instead because i’m only missing one epic
standard is more broken than wild. a mode where everyone is playing the same decks should be a huge indicator of whether that mode is broken or not. in standard it’s hard to even find a game with someone that isn’t either playing the meta(broken) deck or a budget version of it. both modes are broken because card balance isn’t enough of a focus for the dev team. hopefully that will change and the game will live up to it’s potential.
I disagree with this
We had much more versatility and different decks before the last patch, where many classes were broken (Warrior, shaman, DK…)
Now, when a couple of them are broken, we have 3 decks dominating the ladder
It’s the other way around xD When things are balanced you see the lowest variation in decks on the ladder
well you actually just agreed with me and it sounds to me like you’re making the same point i am. if the ladder is dominated by only three decks that means the mode is broken. people should be able to build 100 different decks and be competitive like you can in mtga. it’s all about card balance. standard is the most restricted mode with such a limited card pool to begin with that broken cards in standard result in a tiny amount of competitive decks. that’s because those decks are reliant on broken cards. if those cards were not broken you’d see many more decks on standard ladder. what do you disagree with?
Isn’t it great that they finally removed Brann only to put it back in, but only one class gets to play it’s busted derp, and it is now a more broken effect?
This.
The defining feature of this meta is that Reno Warrior is very popular, and it has multiple hard counters available, but despite Scissors being everywhere players refuse to switch to a Rock and they keep playing various forms of Paper. They’re not just a “vocal minority” on the forums, this is a true playerbase phenomenon.
When someone’s response as Paper losing to Scissors is “Blizzard, fix Scissors NOW,” that is not someone who wants their own agency. They don’t want to make decisions that could solve their problems, they want Blizz Daddy to step in and make everything right by taking agency away from others.
A significant chunk of the playerbase despises agency. They think freedom is overrated and whatever is wrong, it’s not their place to fix, and there’s nothing they can do but to yell for Daddy louder and more insistently.
I don’t know about this.
But I would describe the current meta situation not as balanced, not as traditional broken where nerfs are necessary, but as broken by player stubbornness. If you look at matchup spreads there’s no reason at all for Reno Warrior to be as popular and as winning as it is, it’s a case of Scissors everywhere and all the Papers refuse to switch to Rock, and Token Hunter has only one bad matchup yet it’s underplayed. The tools are available to the players to advance the meta, drive it forward to the next stage in its development, and they just won’t. That’s broken all right, I can’t really argue with that, but it’s really not the dev’s fault for it.
I think things should be fine IF blizzard remembers that there are things who are broken for real.
I’m personally not even gonna touch the game next patch if they nerf warrior without a Hunter nerf.
Unfortunately I think this is somewhat likely. The vocal part of the playerbase is stupid and the developers aren’t much brighter.
This must be the root of it all. When it comes to the philosophy that let to this type of design in the first place.
Player agency for bad players gives those players bad results.
Hs is not intended to be skill intensive,so agency is not neccesarily seen as a good thing.
Even in bg. For blizzard skill in bg is having apm. While at the same time promoting it as a mobile game.
Now we have 5 decks in tier 1, and we all agree the meta is broken
And many other tier 2 and worse decks see a lot of play
The situation you described with 3 decks dominating the ladder, is the usual rock-paper-scissors meta which happens at the end of rotations when there were already double digit number of balance patches done, and then you truly only have 3 decks, each countering one of the others and getting farmed by the 3rd
THAT is a stale, 3-deck meta
I literally have 12 decks ready to play with, all viable to some extent, and I haven’t had nearly as many in the last 7 months
Yep it has gotten worse every expansion/patch, not sure why anyone would think anything different will happen.
I am not sure that Reno Warrior needs Inventor Boom in the current meta, because it’s conditional (Zilliax needs to be played first) and often it feels like a “win more” card. Today, I started experimenting with cutting Inventor Boom for a card that helps in the early game against aggro, because I am running into more aggro decks now.
I have refrained from making a lot of comments in this thread, since I have played so little Standard and there are Legend players weighing in on the health of the meta, but I have played enough now to say:
1). I do not find it fun to slowly stomp people with Highlander Warrior. Brann is ridiculous.
2). Losses to Zarimi’s extra turn feels bad.
3). Losing to Wheel of Death feels bad.
Right now, for me, Standard feels like a garbage mode. I have never felt less inspired to buy cards for constructed modes, and I just dusted my Boomboss, Zilliax, Reno, and Sanitize.
In 2022, I wrote a thread called “Hearthstone Is Complete Crap now, and last December, I specifically discussed what I thought was wrong with HS:
Now, even the devs are starting say similar things when discussing Standard’s current problems:
“Right now, there are a lot of cards that can remove player agency and raise the power level of the game beyond where we want for a 4-set meta. We’re looking at a variety of these meta-defining cards in this patch, from OTK-style cards to powerful AoE effects that make it feel like your minions don’t matter.
There will always be cool, dreamy cards in Hearthstone—that’s part of what makes Hearthstone Hearthstone—but these types of cards can sometimes be disproportionately more fun to play with than play against. We don’t want these kinds of cards to make up the most powerful and prevalent archetypes in the game, especially if they create metagames where player agency feels low.“
Now the question is: Can the devs fix the game or will they just continue to exasperate the problems.
I think two things also contribute this situation:
1). Like me, a lot of players saw an opportunity to try Highlander Warrior for cheap for two weeks, since it had so many nerfed cards.
2). Many of us have played metas were aggro Hunter was dominant, so we found ourselves being attracted to playing something different.
The first three golden heroes for me were Warlock, Mage, and Hunter, so I have played a lot of Hunter before, especially on other accounts, since Hunter has often had good, budget-friendly decks.
https://imgur.com/a/vtOIMHn
About a month ago, I asked what kind of deck I should make for Standard for a new account, and the best advice I got was:
But I decided to skip playing Hunter, because I did not want to spend much time playing that deck on a new account.
Today, I decided to play Hunter on my main account and I can already tell that the deck will be easy-mode to Diamond Rank 5.
I am currently 14-2 with Zoo Hunter. I botched one game by not playing Saddle Up when I should have—turning an auto-win into an auto-loss. And I loss one game to a Druid when I risked overextending with the hopes of playing Saddle Up on the next turn, but I was punished by a devastating Swipe. I made the same decision against the next Druid, but I won that game (see the following pics).
https://imgur.com/a/1iwn3HA
https://imgur.com/a/5AbYsz6