No matter how bad something is to play against, it’s simply impossible for most players to ‘feel’ anything about something they don’t face. This means that if you really want to make a nerf based on player’s feelings fair, you can’t just focus on what’s actually receiving complaints, but also on similar decks. They literally don’t see it.
If this doesn’t happen, you’ll not only create imbalance but also give a free pass to any card, class, deck, or anything with such a bad design that players don’t even want to ‘play with’ until you force these bad designs competitively due to the other nerfs, turning the game itself into something that no one even wants to play because instead of making everything fun to play against the only thing you really did was turn everything viable for competition unfun to play with.
Basically, what I’m asking for here are two things:
Objectivity about the reason something needs this type of nerf and only in extreme cases.
That absolutely nothing doing the exact same thing is left behind, regardless of playrate, as is currently happening with Handbuff Paladin decks being able to explode you from hand the same as lamplighter decks.
Otherwise you leave a game not only unbalanced but more unfun than before that type of change.
Being able to explode you from hand is not an offensive thing in and of itself.
If it is, then we have to look at something like Sif mage, or Odyn warrior, or insanity lock, etc
I think it’s more about how you do something not just what you’re doing. How could include how fast, so it’s understandable that often they just slap a mana cost nerf so the thing comes slower.
Lamplighter decks are literally just vomiting elementals every turn to set their burst up.
Handbuff pally at least has to make some decisions between when they handbuff, when they draw, when they play a minion to fight board…
Weapon break can prevent a bit of handbuffs, and if you respond to their turn 4 with a break they’re setback a ton. Disrupting elementals is like… the pally/dk frost spell? That’s much more impractical and have less uses outside this one matchup (believe me I tried)
The feelings based people will not like to hear this, but the objective fact is that lamplighter is handbuff paladin… but even dumber
Most people only engage in goal based thinking. “I don’t like this. I identify it as a problem. My goal is to remove the problem.” That’s where the thinking stops.
Smart people engage in systems based thinking. “If we want to solve the problem and keep it solved, we need something that can deal with all the potential variables, many of which are not currently observable, and filter by those variables to prevent the problem from recurring.” It’s at least one level of abstraction up, depending on the complexity of the system required.
Every feelings based nerf is by definition goal based thinking. They never consider balance as a system, with the participants unnamed and sorting by principles. It’s always just “this deck is bad, kill this deck with fire”
This is not meant to endorse any particular system that you are thinking of. I’m just saying that you seem to be actually trying to think
It is debatable.
How much you have to think if you have resources to almost everything?
While i can agree that elemental decks are dumb in the sense of not needing to think too much due to it’s own lack of tools. There is probably a limit on the resources you can have before you go from “thinking” to just as dumb but because you are given the key to everything.
What’s the difference between “resources” and “tools”? If you can say elementals are dumber as they lack tools, why can’t I say that paladin actually aren’t as dumb since they have so many resources (to choose from, deciding when to use what)?
None.
They’re analogue. Just two forms of saying the exact same thing.
As for the decks…
In my opnion elemental decks and handbuff paladin are mostly the same except one is oriented towards agression and the other is slighty more oriented towards value.
It isn’t even fair to consider they different gameplay while the amount of disruption you can have towards paladin is minimal and debatable because of the fact it’s buffs spread across the hand making stronger mid game boards in the process like big lifesteal,rush and divine shield minions.
Today I was reminded why I have uninstalled the game at least twice over the years, I lost to a mage who played Reno Lone Ranger and Coldarra Drake, then played Arcane Bullet to my face for as many times needed for lethal.
You keep making this very naive mistake of comparing two uncomparable decks
You can just put a wide wall of taunts and watch handbuff pally concede, but you can’t do such thing to prevent 30 hp lethal from lamplighter. Nothing helps against that except maybe a Dirty rat, which is only run in control decks and you have 2 or max 3 of them in your deck. And even then, good luck hitting Lamplighter in a hand full of weak elementals.
Handbuff Pally is a midrange control deck, lamplighter is an aggro combo deck.
Don’t mix apples and oranges.
Also, just because they write “sentimental outlier” in the patch notes, doesn’t mean it’s true. They did that with Nature Shaman last time it got nerfed, which was an absolute lie.
The deck had 51-52% global winrate which got closer to 60% the higher you go in legend. Even AFTER the 3rd “sentimental” nerf of that deck, Norwis hit rank 1 legend using it - TWICE.
4x rush minions with lifesteal
Weapon with lifesteal
2x minions with taunt and divine shield
Toy Captain Tarim
Amitus
You call those “face dmg” tools?
Even Southsea Deckhand is 60% a control tool, only 40% a finishing tool, because if you still have a weapon stack to utilize the card, chances are your minions haven’t been buffed enough to end the game.
how do we as players know which nerfs are based on feelings? If I lose to the same combination every time I face it, with multiple decks, then isn’t that more than feelings?
You’re gaining a very high amount of tempo by not needing to wait and making opponent trades dificult.
Divine shield basically makes the board stickier so you can hit face better.
Control decks are reactive. Handbuff paladin is everything except reactive.
It’s mostly a control tool, lol. If you use it to make an impact the turn you summoned a rush minion, it’s literally the same as using a removal spell. That’s control, not tempo. If it dies while clearing enemy minions, it loses tempo. It only gains it if it survives, which is not seen often, because rush minions have less health than non-rush drops of the same cost.
Not neccessarily.
Cards in HS can most often be used in different situations, so yeah, a card can be both a tempo and a control one
The thing is, Paladin is NOT a tempo deck. It loses in tempo whole game.
It’s not quite full control, because, as you said, it’s much more proactive and it ends the game in midrange/combo fashion, but it has a lot of control tools which can be used in aggro decks, hence aggro-control.
Also, its finisher is not strictly an OTK- That’s how it wins most often against control/slower opponents. Every other archetype loses because it gets outvalued in the mid-game and just die to 30-40 dmg on board.