I think you’re missing a key takeaway from your experience in casual. If you’re experimenting with an off-meta deck, you need to face off against opponents using Tier 1 and Tier 2 decks from time to time to gauge whether the deck you’re using is just a meme or actually has a level of viability. I’m not going to say that losing to those decks is fun, even in casual, because people are playing to win. But suggesting an outright ban for people playing “ranked” decks in casual is not an answer to your frustration.
I have only seen one proposal in this thread that doesn’t punish one set of players or another and offer a significant variation from current play modes.
Homebrew mode, pick and ban mode, tournament mode, house rules, whatever you want to call it, is the only one that makes sense.
Let a player “host” a Homebrew mode. Give the host a solid set of tools for adjusting the rules as they see fit.
Then allow the host to select public or private, and give them a link to share to for people to join.
When new players join the micrometa they will be informed of all the rules changes. Regardless they can join or leave at any time
From my experience, Casual players tend to play less seriously and make weird mistakes I wouldn’t see in Ranked.
Most games, I used to see a non-standard card being played in Casual that I usually don’t see in Ranked. Though recently, the experience is potentially not so “casual friendly” - you require some finesse to win with an off-meta build, where many cards now have a low skill floor for guaranteed value.
That could also be due to you improving your Casual MMR to a point where you’re facing stronger opponents in Casual. Whether they’re stronger due to their understanding of interactions and experience with the game or they’re stronger due to playing better optimized decks is largely irrelevant.
Casual does have meta pockets of its own, just like Ranked, simply due to the Casual MMR.