I saw someone talking about this, forget who but basically said that he is supposed to target combo decks but those decks always have full hands so ends up missing so punishes the wrong kinds of deck, the kinds that have dwindling hands that can’t cope with having a card sniped.
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Priest stole my hero card. I destroyed him 2 turns later 
Not sure i think it was brian kibler.
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Theotar isn’t the only fix needed, Druid, Mage and Rogue all need to be addressed.
Incorrect, theotar is far more punishing to small hands than it is to decks that’s rely on one card win conditions.
This is understood either through a simple statistics argument or by simply playing tempo decks that go to low count hands naturally.
The op is correct, your point is at best true in certain matchups such as control vs control, but certainly not other match ups.
Any way you spin it theotar is, in my opinion, a failure in design, it addresses the issue it’s meant to address as a secondary objective and is far more of a punishing card in situations it has no right to be.
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At the end of the day, they are trying to counter “I Win” Legendary Cards, by printing an “I Win” Legendary card.
It feels like they are trying to put out a fire by adding more gasoline to it.
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Yup it’s the video where Kibler talks about what he would nerf or buff. He doesn’t make a big deal of it at the time, because he says he likes the overall addition of disruption, but he does make it a point to indicate exactly what you guys are talking about, theotar is far more punishing to small hand decks (a lot of tempo decks for ex) than he should have any right to be.
Having theotar in play just to control one broken combo from spiralling out of control while suppressing a lot of decks as an unintended side effect is very poor form.
Why not just address the problematic one or two card combos, and stop punishing unrelated decks (such as tempo decks that the op and others are referring to) in the process?
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I have always, ALWAYS advocated against making cards like Denathrius or Dawngrasp that win games from hand.
The way hearthstone works, if a deck can win from hand it’s going to cause problems.
The issue is that blizzard CONTINUOUSLY makes new cards and effects that win the game because you played them, and not because you did any particular set up that could be interrupted meaningfully.
If blizzard is going to keep cards like Denathrius around, and it’s not just him, cards like Theotar need to exist because hearthstone doesn’t have other ways to defend yourself from decks that win because your opponent drew cards.
Its not a great place to be for midrangey decks though, because they lose either way here.
Either Theotar doesn’t exist, and they lose to the guaranteed win cons like Denathrius, or Theotar does exist, and they both lose to the guaranteed win cons, but also sometimes the disruption card.
In either world they are losing, and in both they are pushed out of the meta to equal degrees, because they just can’t compete with what’s going on.
The only reason, for example, that mage can run every freeze card and solid alibi, and mass polymorph, and STILL win games is because if they play dawngrasp, they will probably win unless you have your own from hand OTK / burn.
Singular cards shouldn’t be good enough to end games on their own. It causes tons of problems that have no real fix. You can just bandaid it with things like Theotar.
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Theo isn’t a Bandaid Fix though, Theo is pouring more gasoline onto the spreading bushfire!
I understand why you feel that way, but the meta would be just as bad if not worse in the absence of Theotar.
It’s hard to imagine that things could be worse, but I assure you that they would be. Druid gave up a ton of consistency, for example, JUST to avoid Theotar.
But you can’t ignore the classes that most often run Theo are the same classes Theo is supposed to counter. The struggling classes can’t play Theo, because a 4 mana 3/3 is too risky when you have to play for board every turn. The broken, greedy classes can run Theo, and as a result it’s making them even more broken and greedy!
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I’m not ignoring it, but that’s happening largely because of how crammed the meta is with this kind of inevitability.
If you are running one yourself, you basically have to run Theotar both in defense of those cards and as a defense against Theotar himself.
The decks would be fine if he were gone, because like I’ve said before, he’s among the weakest card in those decks. The games against other mages/druids/etc., Just become more about who drew the win con first instead of what Theotar manages to hit. They stay equally strong, because they are often losing as many games from Theotar as it’s able to help them win.
Right now your options are be hyper agressive and make Theotar unplayably bad tempo, or play a slow deck with Theotar and hope you can block the auto win cons that happen faster than yours.
Problem is that exact situation arises if Theotar isn’t there…
You either play aggressive where you kill druid before they get to 7 Mana, or you play a faster auto win card.
As crappy as Theotar is… He at least somewhat breaks the “fastest combo deck wins” situation once you get slower than pure aggro.
So, making these ultra greedy control/combo matchups better against other ultra greedy control/combo decks, is really worth potentially killing off any kind of Tempo/Mid range deck until Theo rotates out? That is okay for you? Because it will never be acceptable for me.
We are basically stuck inside a circular meta, where only a handful of classes matter, and Theo seems to exist to make sure those same handful of classes is better then everyone else.
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theotar is the only reason anything else is barely playable.
The ultra greedy combo matchups kill those decks on their own. They don’t do anything that can compete with the combo decks when the combo deck is “I filled my deck with draw and removal and then I win!”
Druid and mage delete that archetype on their own.
It’s more like a handful of classes are just better than everyone else, and Theotar helps make the games less rock paper scissors based on the deck that loads up, but trades it for what Theotar can find.
You can strip out the Theotar part, but warrior and paladin won’t be getting better, it’ll just condense the current best decks to whatever one pulls off their auto win most efficiently.
So it is okay to kill off Paladin and Warrior as long as Theo is in Standard rotation. Cool stuff, thanks for sharing.
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it is not annoying. it is fate. for example: if your opponent has theotar and you have bad cards when your opponent discovers them and your opponent has good cards. he would have to take a bad card and you would have a good card. if you do not like the card your opponent gave you, play your theotar and swap the card back (if possible) for a better or different card.
No, what I’ve repeatedly said is that warrior and paladin are dead regardless because they are incapable of beating druid/mage consistently.
It’s not Theotar. They are just bad.
(Or, I’d argue, some of the things these decks do are way, WAY too strong…)
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no, noone is saying that.
but Theotar is not doing anything special vs those classes.
What makes those classes unplayable is them not having an “i win” button, and not being fast enough as an aggrodeck to kill druid before he can otter/scale your board or mage before he can just freeze you to death.
there´s no card Theotar could ever take from those classes that would have won them the game, because they don´t have any such card right now. That´s the problem, and it´s a massive one (or well, the bigger problem is other classes having exactly such cards).