That’s a fair point. Their other suggestions aside, it has occurred to me many times that at this rate, an increase to our hero’s health may just work to expand gameplay. I mean, right now, most of my games don’t last past turn 6-7.
Like…
I feel like good designers are good players but not every good player is a good designer.
It’s basically impossible to be a good designer without a high understanding of your game.
I mean, power creep is definitely real and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, so what do you suggest to counteract that? If cards are consistently getting stronger across the board and heroes aren’t, its going to make games shorter.
There are quite a few nerfs I outlined, and they aren’t necessarily massive nerfs. It’s not abnormal for Blizzard to nerf 7-8 cards. It’s not like my nerf suggestions completely change the cards and make them useless. It just brings their power level down a notch to where they aren’t oppressive.
Feel free to counter my nerf suggestions with points of your own. I like to hear what others have to say.
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It’s certainly not impossible. I see it as similar to teaching a subject. Person A can be worse than Person B at pure mathematics, but nevertheless Person A can be better at teaching math than Person B.
What you said would be valid if each game designer only had to work on projects started from 0.
Good designers have to be able to learn things from games that are already “under development” and sometimes even already being played by the public.
If they can’t be fast learning players they basically can’t work with the train already going.
It’s a major skill for that.
First off, you’re simply targeting too much, because you believe “cards are consistently getting stronger across the board.” This is false. I think it might very well be the case that the design intent is for cards to get consistently stronger across the board, but perfectly consistent power levels are literally impossible to achieve in an asymmetric game design.
But let’s try to reinforce your argument by replacing “consistently” with “generally.” Are cards generally getting stronger across the board? Yes. Is this a problem?
No. It’s the only way you sell packs. A lack of power creep isn’t fun, and people who are against power creep value nostalgia over fun. And are wrong.
What do I suggest to counteract power creep? Nothing at all.
But back to “consistently.” It’s where the power creep hasn’t been consistent that adjustments should be made. To the very top performing decks, which are, in order of descending power level: Naga Demon Hunter, Ramp Druid, Token Demon Hunter and Quest Warrior. In some order or another these are the top 4 at Diamond 10-5, Diamond 4-1, bottom Legend and top 1000 Legend. Below that you have some variance and winrates that are close enough to 50%.
As I’ve said in another thread, the three Standard nerfs I recommend are:
- Pufferfist to 2 Attack from 3.
- Multi-Strike to +1 Attack from +2.
- Wildheart Guff hero power to empty mana crystal from full.
You’re targeting based on feels, what you personally dislike. I’m targeting based off data from millions of games. We are not the same.
You mentioned oppression. Oppression is a directional relationship, it implies a power imbalance. There isn’t a power imbalance if cards are consistently getting stronger across the board. As I already said, this isn’t an achievable goal, but we can minimize oppression to the point that it isn’t immediately clear who the oppressors are. Balance is not a thing that can objectively exist, but instead the illusion that there is no optimal choice between two build options. If we had infinite time, we’d always solve any asymmetric game to a single optimal strategy. (For example, in paper rock scissors, it’s rock, because people have a psychological bias for scissors and rock and against paper. Paper is the second best choice, and scissors scrub out.)
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that whole OP screams “fallacy " to me because of the " im a tournament player” bit as if that made his suggestions any better…then i read his 40 health suggestion and stopped reading
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You constantly say you’re backed by data but your conclusions constantly contradict those of the people who work much more closely with all the data, and often contradict even pretty straightforward logical conclusions and dev posts on how balance is typically achieved.
I disagree with the OP’s suggestions and mostly agree that they don’t have additional authority, but I’m pretty sure they just wanted to be clear what part of the ladder they experience and that they have at least a decent basis for understanding how to succeed at this game. Meanwhile you do claim to have authority because you allegedly back yourself with stats… yet for all your talk you typically have some of the crappiest nerf/buff suggestions of all (though the three you suggest in this comment are mostly fine), and not exactly a great history at predicting what changes will actually occur.
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It’s strange that this player’s rank and playing in tournaments is somehow the issue. Who cares? I don’t believe they’re trying to make an argument from authority. I believe the poster is trying to relate his perspective from where he is on ladder. And unfortunately, this all trickles down to lower ranks. We’re experiencing similar results; that is, games end far too quickly the past year now? Longer?
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Let me ask you this, has a card game that suffered from severe power creep ever increased their health pool to stabilize the pace of the game? Yu-Gi-Oh did it twice.
Just saying. 
You just dislike change, which is fine, but it should always be considered. Change can be good or bad and sometimes both. It should never be ignored though.
My brother, my homie, my friend. Cards have been getting stronger in each expansion since Vanilla Hearthstone. Let’s not be silly.
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There is one small issue in his conclusions.
He is so annoyed by the community constant crying and excuses that has just as much nuance as the community in general.
Also most people working at sites aren’t really telling 100% of the truth .
Why?
You just can’t do that without basically losing your Job with the playerbase stopping to Care about you.
If we did go by data token DH is probably the First nerf and would not even touch ramp druid.
With that said there are nerfs that player experience wise are more important and those nerfs gonna probably change the meta enough to not need to nerf token DH.
Those are pirate warrior and ramp druid.
If devs not nerf those two they’re basically losing money.
It can be difficult to predict because Blizzard’s nerf policy is more about making streamers happy and less about balance.
But they’re clearly going to nerf Switcheroo to 4 Mana, unjustly.
They’re going to nerf Mech Mage, unjustly.
And they’re going to hit the four decks I think they should, most likely in ways I wouldn’t.
The only thing i see that needs changed in classes is druid needs slowed down by a turn or two. Guff to 6 and Scales to 8 i think makes a big difference in their early game.
The one card the needs to be reworked is Kazakusan. It provides a Trump card in the form of one card to control/value decks. No class should have access to a single card with such power and not have to think about how to fit it into their deck. It needs more deck construction restrictions to really force hard deck choices. I think the best solution i have heard is have them play X number of dragons during a match to activate Kazakusan. That makes them build specifically, play specifically and be open to counters if they lose too many of those dragons from their deck.
A few buffs i am sure could be done but i don’t know where they start in that area. Perhaps nerf Pirate Warrior a little for the lower rank players as well. The deck is at best tier 3 in high legend but that win rate at low ranks might be a bit much.
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I’m willing to bet the Switcheroo nerf will be to just swap health. Mana left untouched.
I doubt they nerf Mech Mage, even if I think Mech-shark is a bit too powerful, it’s not oppressive right now. It definitely could become oppressive if other decks get a nerf, but we will see.
Time will tell who is right I guess, not that it matters. I just want the game to be fun again.
Druid’s power isn’t in it’s speed. It’s in it’s absolute dominance of late game. As bad as Druid is, if it gets nerfed and nothing else gets touched. The meta will HEAVILY shift in the favor of aggro. It’s already leaning in favor of it now. You won’t see a Tier 1 deck that doesn’t try to win by turn 6. There’s a bit more cards that need to be nerfed to give midgame decks a chance. Shaman and Warlock don’t even have a tier 2 deck because of aggro.
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Hence why i talked about Kazakusan being changed. That card is the biggest offender for druids juggernaut late game. It’s also a card they toss in because the restriction just doesn’t matter.
You are Wrong about slowing them down though. Delaying druid just one more turn really hurts them when facing aggro pressure decks. Also druid is ALL about speed. It’s about their speed to ramp faster and further than their opponents to play power swings. The only deck not trying to do that is aggro druid which is far more balanced.
If you honestly think Team 5 is going to nerf a bunch of cards and change text on cards you haven’t been paying attention to the developers. This current meta isn’t even remotely like how Demon Seed was. We haven’t even approached half the oppression that deck caused. That’s the one and only time Team 5’s hand was forced to seriously change cards effects and how they interacted with the game.
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I beg to differ. Caverns Rogue was the first truly oppressive deck in Hearthstone. When I say truly oppressive, I mean a deck with absolutely zero counterplay.
What you say about Team 5 not going to nerf cards or change card text was the old Team 5. I’ve noticed this new group is a lot more willing to make multiple little tweaks here and there in both nerfs and buffs.
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You understand Demon Seed before the changes was an auto win deck right? There’s a reason it was banned in Wild as their first nerf rounds and cards were fundamentally changed in standard to stop this? Caverns was powerful but a deck that didn’t have to interact with the board and just watched you die from it’s own self fatigue/damage isn’t even in the same conversation as Caverns.
It was among one of the most powerful decks in Standard, and yes it was quite broken in Wild - probably the strongest ever in Wild, but I’m strictly speaking from Standard here, since I don’t take Wild seriously.
Demon Seed irc topped out around 62% winrate (which is astronomically good) but we had Caverns Rogue at a solid 65% and Galakrond Rogue at a 66% winrate before nerfs. There has been worse.
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i like some of your takes here. the mechashark suggestion seems harsh, but possibly needed. i’ve been using a rogue deck that finds lethal as early as turn5. i feel if these nerfs happened that deck might be too strong, but i’m not a top legend player, so i could be wrong.
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Definitely could be a bit heavy handed on the nerf, I just view it based on the package it has to work with. Multiple 0 cost mechs dealing 3 damage each with deathrattle summoning mechs triggering the same 3 damage multiplied by the number of Mecha-Sharks you have can get a bit nuts.
I also feel like even if Mecha-Shark was nerfed to 1 damage it would still be in every mech Mage deck and still be powerful, just in a different way. This is only assuming the other nerfs happened, because right now, Mech Mage is NOT oppressive at all, but if some of the faster decks get nerfed it will easily climb back up to the 57% winrate it had before the DH face deck caught on.
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