The case for Blood DK (and control decks)

Multiplayer Discussion
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While watching the latest Zeddy video, I noticed that in legend, at time of recording, DK were sitting mid tier 2, with a 52.2% win rate.

It has however 18% representation in legend, and 25% in average in high diamond. This is crazy high for one single deck. Imagine, one game out of 4 is against a blood death knight in that range.

That tells me 2 things.

  1. Blood death knight is fun to play. People don’t play it for it’s winrate. You don’t get that kind of popularity on a mid tier 2 deck unless people think it’s fun to play.

  2. There is an appetite, a desire for control decks. The reason blood death knight sees so much play is because it’s the best viable control deck, not the best deck.

People on these forums tells me the hearthstone playerbase doesn’t want control decks, doesn’t want to play attrition decks. And here we are, a modest 52% winrate control deck with no hard win condition and 1/4th of the player base jump at a chance to play control again.

You want meta diversity, give warrior a decent control archetype, give paladin a decent control archetype, and I guaranty you will see quite a few players transitioning from DK to those classes.

Control archetypes are not niche, a significant portion of the playerbase wants them. The popularity of blood DK proves it.

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I can’t confirm your evidence but if indeed BDK is barely above 50% winrate yet still very popular, then I strongly agree with the opening post.

The thing about this is that there’s a lot of confusion in the player base about the power level of decks. Only a small fraction of the overall community is actually aware of empirical evidence measuring deck power, so the vast majority base their internal power rankings on feelings and biases. So a lot of the time players mistake fun for winrate. If it feels really good to win and it doesn’t feel hopeless to lose then it can take quite a while to rationally pierce through all that emotion and realize “hey, my deck isn’t really winning all that much” or “hey, this other strategy might perform better.”

My counterintuitive and surprisingly deep point is that, while empiricism is in my opinion the ultimate friend of the person whose JOB involves Hearthstone — such as a balance patch designer — empiricism isn’t really your friend if your goal is purely to have fun playing Hearthstone. It’s that empiricism that tells you that the deck you like isn’t as strong as you hoped it would be, it’s just fun [bane]for you [/bane]. It breaks the immersion. Because for most players they are playing for winrate, it’s just that they’ve found it in a place where it isn’t actually there.

—

But to get my head out of the clouds and back to the thread, to whatever extent BDK is above 50% winrate I am for nerfing it if, and only if, it is closer to 50% winrate after the nerf than it was before. (Actually that goes for every nerf ever.) What I think Blizzard should really focus on here is buffing control archetypes in other classes so BDK isn’t the only flavor with which to satisfy those control cravings.

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These are actually related. There are people who do want to play slow control decks, but Blood DK is the only control deck ATM that is both solved (mostly) and stands a chance against Pure Paladin and Aggro DK, and can win basically any matchup with all the Discovers. So lots of people play Blood DK.

If things like Pure Paladin, Frost DK, and Outcast DH get toned down, Blood DK will fall down to Tier 3 or 4 because all of the things that thrash it will be able to breathe. Hopefully Pure Paladin and Frost DK are on the chopping block.

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Control has to exist. If blood DK is the only option that’s a bad thing. Maybe buff control priest instead of nerfing blood DK.

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Ok first you say people don’t play blood DK for its winrate…

…but then you acknowledge that people play it because it’s the best viable control deck… aka IT HAS THE BEST WIN RATE for a control deck.

I don’t know who these “people” are, but I’m not one of them.

What I will say though is that the meta doesn’t care about people’s fun or appetites. No, this isn’t saying you can’t like or find certain decks fun, but that in no way entitles you to that deck being meta.

Being control for the longest time is like… going into a race wearing high heels and long frilly dresses, accessories, etc. Maybe you like to dress yourself up like that. Maybe you find it fun. More power to you. But statistically and historically speaking, doing so hurts your chances of winning the race.

This also explains why control decks tend to start getting way earlier in the tier list than aggro decks. Control normally just isn’t very good for competitive meta, so if one is slightly successful, chances are it’s leaning on something broken as a crutch.

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This is cherry picking stats.

We have a full expansion of Blood DK being overplayed for its win rate. A single point isn’t what’s telling us people like this deck.

However, the deck significantly spiked in play on release of the expansion.

Initially the stats put Blood DK as the best deck in the new format.

There’s always going to be ship jumping into the best deck. It’s just that Blood DK was super easy to build.

So after a while people start playing Tony Druid, Relic DH, etc to counter the spiked Blood DK.

But there’s going to be a lag between the drops in win rate and play rate.

And that’s why it’s cherry picking. We’re not yet at a stable point where all the ship jumpers have identified the win rate drop and jumped off the Blood DK ship.

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I agree, and people have been just frothing at the mouth waiting to play Blood DK and for it to be viable. As soon as rotation hit and tons of people tried going aggro, it was basically a green light for everyone to play Blood DK that wanted to before but couldn’t because it was extremely bad.

Now that it’s probably more at the Tier 2 level, everyone wanted to play it. And as the meta settles more and more, the play rate should drop a bit as other decks get refined.

I’m also not entirely sure why other control decks have a problem against Blood DK. I completely smash it with my own Control Priest deck…so as people refine Control Priest and other decks more, Blood DK should be seeing more counters.

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100% correct. Blood DK was the most popular deck in the game when it was tier four worthless garbage. It’s a lot like pre rotation Thief Rogue in that regard - doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, the players love it.

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Oh really or maybe just look a bit stays and how many green match ups this feck has and even most of the negative march uos are around 50% mark.

Do you see the problem? It’s not because bdk is super fun to play. It’s because it can very easily shut down any board based deck which is the majority of the meta.

D1 this deck is 30% of the meta? D1 is not where you see tge most fun and wacky decks but the most effective strategy to win.

Definitely frost and blood dks bith need nerfs

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Could you share your list, please?

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You nerf DK though and all you’ll get is paladin and DH players high rolling mana cheat with countess / relics like it was prior to the expansion.

I know a lot of people like those decks but I’d bet they chase more people away than they draw in

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These crying for blood DK nerfs are absolutely self serving. I bet these people haven’t had to deal with a highroll weapon rogue killing you on turn 4, or getting completely shut out by a highroll mech mage, or blasted by a board of divine shield turn 4-5. Blood DK plays a decently fair game, minus the neutral discover cards most greedier decks play, that i wish would get deleted from the game.

No one cries like solitaire aggro players. They like to call control solitaire, but that is idiocy. Control is, by nature, reactionary meaning it ONLY cares about what your opponent plays. Its the opposite of solitaire and the problem with this meta is not blood DK, it is casino highroll cards/strategies. Any game I win as a blood DK comes down to the wire and usually some risky plays to stay in it. When i lose it is either close or a complete blowout from highroll super aggro BS.

Feels like wild and this is supposed to be the most Tame cycle of the year :frowning:

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the class is at 55% wr on hearthstone replay, featuring blood dk deck that are 69% winrate.

Its a SStier deck, certainly not mid tier 2 .

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Yup. It’s very easy for other control decks to bully Blood DK. It’s the best matchup for my BRnR list according to my personal stats.

However, my same deck has never beaten a Pure Paladin, so…therein lies the problem. But things are shifting and we may even get that sweet balance patch soon…so hopefully more control decks will be able to breathe, instead of needing Blood DK to fight modern Aggro alone.

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I bet these people haven’t had to deal with a highroll weapon rogue killing you on turn 4, or getting completely shut out by a highroll mech mage, or blasted by a board of divine shield turn 4-5.

Lol, we’ve all dealt with this. It’s just some people would rather lose to these than Grindy control. What exactly is wrong with that?

Pirate Warrior was nerfed for dominating low ranks and this will be the same. In fact…

Any game I win as a blood DK comes down to the wire and usually some risky plays to stay in it.

If it’s so big brain why does it get worse the higher ranks you go? Like I said, just like Pirate Warrior.
I’m looking at Gold Hsreplay stats and their winrate is over 61%. VS stated it’s trending towards Tier 3 at top legend in their podcast.

No one cries like solitaire aggro players.

He says while crying about aggro

They like to call control solitaire

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone say this. ‘Solitaire’ is the salty control player’s buzzword for anything that is favoured against them. Thanks reddit.

Feels like wild and this is supposed to be the most Tame cycle of the year

It is, most of the new cards are garbage. And most of the good ones are used by DK.

Fwiw Control having a good time isn’t even the problem with the meta. It’s that so many of last year’s cards were busted, and the new stuff can’t measure up, meaning any decks that retained a large amount of old cards are busted. Classes lucky enough to get good new cards are also doing well. Everything else (a huge number of new archetypes are terrible) cannot win.

MotLK was similar except without the rotation aspect. Feels like Blizzard are intentionally dialling back on the power because they know it’s gone too far, but they don’t know how to do it so the meta doesn’t suck in the meantime. What they should have done was a mass nerf going into rotation but that requires work and if there’s one thing Blizzard hates…

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There’s another deck that beats both Blood DK and Pure Paladin.

Relic DH.

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HSReplay in D-L (sorry to just parrot these numbers, but most players don’t have HSReplay premium), Relic DK is only favored by 4%. Pure Paladin is actually favored against Blood DK by 1.9%. This is data as of the most recent patch. Am I looking at this wrong?

I can’t lie (or omit) that at T1KL, Blood DK is far in a way worse there than at lower ranks. So, in that regard, you are not wrong, and also, several decks perform well against it there.

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Pure Paladin is turning out to be another noob stumper.

I can’t stand Paladin. Because it’s just a class that drops stats and goes face. This isn’t very engaging for me to play as or against.

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Same. I did like Dragon (because dragons), as well as Control Paladin from an expansion or two ago.

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You didn’t read my full sentence. I said the reason blood death knight sees so much play is because it’s the best viable control deck, not the best deck.

What I meant is Blood DK is not the highest winrate among all archetype. But it is the highest winrate within a specific archetype, the control archetype. Which explained its popularity. A significant portion of the playerbase want to play control and Blood DK is their best shot at it.

I didn’t really understand what you were getting at with dress, high heels, races and control deck in hearthstone. Kinda confusing.

I don’t know if you are new to hearthstone, but hearthstone use to have highly competitive control archetype, decks people won championship with. Control paladin in un’goro, Control warrior with dr boom hero card, control value priest, control warlock with Reno etc…

It’s only quite recent that blizzard accelerate significantly the meta and gave highly efficient fast tempo deck or damage from hand. Face deck have always existed, but not to the extend of last year where all tier 1 decks were high tempo or damage from hand decks.

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