Yeah, essentially am. The calcs I did earlier applied the diamond win rates to the legend meta and saw hunter get notably better than they are, showing that the individual matchups are hugely impacting the drop.
Your data and calcs largely confirms that skill differences are making up the majority of the effect for hunter.
I was getting annoyed at the argument that the top legend meta is simply arbitrary preference for decks and not a result of win rates being significantly different causing most of the pressure for a different composition of decks.
Even one common deck losing as much as hunter does in individual matchups can cause a trickle effect through the rest of the meta up there as that one drops out of favor making room for others.
So a deck with a negative win rate slope from skill changes (like hunter) can create room for some decks to see increases in win rate more from meta changes.
Itâs all interconnected, and skill is of equal importance in understanding why decks are good in top 1k legend as the meta changes are.
Hunter is more of a skill issue, which is pretty clear just looking at its matchup spread slowly getting worse as you climb, regardless of the distribution.
Just make control less good at holding the game hostage, so a deck with consistent threats will eventually push through them.
Donât make a card(s) that just auto win against decks that arenât trying to drag you to fatigue that enable a control deck that just auto wins at some point.
Combo decks ARENâT a counter to control decks, they are just control decks with an uninteresting win con.
Sure but I think your goal is to push every deck into playing your game. Combo decks take this ability away from you and maybe thats what is triggering the extreme bias.
One thing I want to point out is that thereâs very little correlation between individual matchup polarization and overall deck winrate polarization.
As an example, letâs say thereâs three decks in the meta, each equally popular for some reason. A wins 55-45 against B, B wins 60-40 against C, and C wins 65-35 against A. If so, A gets a 46.7% winrate, while B and C each get a 51.7% winrate.
But if we now make each matchup 100-0 for the already favored deck, weâve essentially turned the game into Paper Rock Scissors⌠but each deck now has an overall winrate of 50% exactly, perfectly âdepolarized.â
Generally speaking, increasing skill tends to have the paper rock scissors effect, but not as extreme. That is, overall winrate polarization tends to decrease while individual matchup polarization tends to increase. The former is because players in higher ranks tend to metagame harder. The latter is because higher skill means seizing a higher percentage of the opportunities you get to win, and being favored in a matchup means you have more opportunities to win.
YES. I keep telling people that combo is just a variant of control.
Combo decks make any win condition that isnât decisive and instantaneous obsolete past the point where the convo is possible.
Why play a 10 drop that doesnât instantly win the game? Building your deck to use something like that is just making you have an unacceptably bad matchup against combo decks.
They limit what is playable, and delete a style of play that literally can not compete against them.
There are aggressive decks that do well against control. Thereâs an interesting back and forth between them.
There arenât any control decks that do well against combo. The combo deck has all of the control tools to delete traditional threats from the control deck, and the control deck has no solid defense against the combo deck.
The best defense blizzard has made, Theotar, got nerfed until it was essentially unplayable, because people complained THAT was the uninteractive problem.
Thatâs because they are just control decks, but trade out all of the threats theyâd normally try to win with for a set of cards that auto win when played.
Then people get mad that the control tools are too good, which allow the combo to win too much, when really the combo should just be less reliably a win so that late game decks without an auto win are viable.
When control decks become to popular, they become greedier with heavier curves to push through the control tools of the other control decks, which weakens it to the rest of the field.
When combo decks become too popular, it just locks the game length under turn X, and the fastest takes over. (Or the one with the best ability to survive the rest of the field)
Which is kinda the core problem with the Blizzard design philosophy regarding control vs combo.
If I was designing Hearthstone, one of the keys of control design would be access to delay. By which I mean, Discovering a card from the opponentâs hand to be shuffled back into their deck. Not permanently removing them, which is why Theotar is unpopular. Make this ability available on some decent neutral Taunts. Maybe have the opponent draw a card first sometimes, so it doesnât change card advantage â such an ability could essentially be priced at zero. We just want to make sure these minions are not good aggro tools so much as good walls. Good cheap walls, so in later turns they can be played alongside other stuff.
Conversely, one of the keys to combo design would be targeted card draw and Tradable instead of mass card draw. Obviously, if the combo player draws through their entire deck, old school Miracle Rogue style, the delay mechanic described above is ineffective. So instead of mass card draw, thereâd be cards like Instrument Tech to go with weapons that are part of a combo, for example. Maybe even give the Instrument Tech type cards Tradeable â that way if you already have your combo piece, you can shuffle it back in to draw a card WITHOUT getting closer to an empty deck. Only problem is, Instrument Tech is too cheap. Way too possible to somehow play it AND combo same turn. So a bigger, beefier Instrument Tech with a higher cost and Tradeable. Oh, and probably make that weapon or whatever Legendary so they have to tutor up just the one.
I donât really have a problem with Combo being favored a bit in Combo vs (non-Combo) Control, but this would at least create a bit of counterplay. Control tries to buy turns with the delay Taunts and unless combo has a god tier topdeck they can at best targeted draw it back up the next turn to hope that they donât get delayed again.
Algalon the observer is a decent step in the right direction for that, but itâs still really binary and luck based.
âOops, combo card you canât tutor was on top, guess I probably win because I moved it to the bottomâ
But yeah, if hearthstone supported more of a hand resource fight, it would go a long way to making the combo v control game more interesting.
Sadly, I donât forsee them ever allowing significant hand control like that. (And even moving back to deck would likely be complained about endlessly if it was commonly used)
Well, thatâs because theyâve gone for hand destruction, which feels fundamentally different from hand delay. Not saying that theyâve gone for it particularly hard, but still. Destruction is the kind of thing where you can basically win the game turn 2 with the right Dirty Rat pull. Itâs kinda like the âhoserâ cards from Magic the Gathering, stuff like Tsunami. It might mean well but itâs not good design.
Theyâve actually already done this with a few cards, just not for classes/decks that are particularly known for control play. Itâs mostly been in DH and Rogue so far.
In particular:
Glide is, obviously, the only one that has received a high level of complaints, from what Iâve seen.
And in that case as a delay card, it was primarily a delay card that a combo deck ran to use against other combo decks.
I have covered this repeatedly and you want to ignore it, but you can only measure skill by tracking the same player, not the aggregate. Too manythings change to call the differences âskillâ when you arenât actually measuring âskillâ in any meaningful way. You can say this happens in the highest skill bracket, but you arenât doing anything to measure WHY that happens.
This is factually what it is. Itâs the combination of the two. The strongest deck in the format wonât be overplayed at top 1k if it is paladin. The decks that use miracle combos, discover, and stall to beat paladin will be the most played decks in the format because thatâs what is preferred in top 1k meta. This is verifiable with historical data, and I urge you to look through it.
It really depends on the deck, though. Hound hunter isnât about skill changes as much as itâs not the kind of deck that gets played at top 1k by the actual best players. Not shocking it drops off in that tiny pocket meta.
Top 1k is something like .2% of the game. Imagine if the .2% wealthiest people were the only ones who could vote on anything and you made laws for everyone else based on their preferences. This is exactly how you view the game.
I agree with this exactly and have said as much. I have miniwhatever on ignore over this exact issue.
The whole idea is that anything they donât lose to, itâs your skill issue and anything they lose to needs to be changed. Itâs completely asinine.
Top 1k legend is the top skill levels of the game. Period. Asserting it isnât is absurd. No minor changes in deck preferences up there, or other confounding factors are strong enough to make that not true.
Except when it was, just a few weeks ago.
No, it drops off continuously in power the whole way up. Decks become less bad against it as you climb. Many go from being bad against it to good against it. Thatâs not a meta difference. Stop calling it that.
This is your only valid point. Decks do get nerfed for being too good at lower skill levels. Itâs not exactly comforting to players that the thing they are losing to and getting frustrated with is actually not a problem at grandmaster levels of play.
They canât pick up half of the decks that theoretically beat hound hunter, because they wonât be able to with those decks until they get much, much better at the game.
No changes will be happening to the decks for at least another 3 ish weeks though. Titans will launch before they do any balance changes.
My assumption is that Always a Bigger Jormungar will put hunter in the first wave of emergency nerfs at minimum.
No, we absolutely can, and in the real adult world do, track the aggregate. Because averages exist.
For example, I cannot accurately measure one manâs level of income by taking note of his skin color. That would be a racist fallacy. But: on average, Black Americans have lower income than their white countrymen. That is a fact.
On average, top 1000 Legend players are at a MUCH higher skill level than Diamond 4-1 players. That is a fact. And when we are looking at aggregate winrates that are computed using thousands of recorded games, it is a relevant fact.
Well thatâs not crazy far off, but itâs actually almost double that. And overall, Legend is about the top 4.5%.
Now if you Google this, you will read falsehoods giving a different number. Theyâre not lies IMHO, because theyâre going off of old data. Up until March of 2020, it was more or less true that only about 1% of players made Legend. Actually, it was even worse than that: in 2014 Blizzard released an infographic on social media letting us know only 0.5% made Legend. https://www.eurogamer.net/only-0-5-percent-of-hearthstone-players-reach-legend-rank
But that was only true under a rank system that no longer exists. Back in 2019 âTop 1000 Legendâ just meant the top 30ish % of Legend. In April of 2020 Blizzard released the rank system we know today, a system that made Legend much easier to achieve. Almost 9 times easier. https://hearthstone-decks.net/how-many-players-reach-legend-in-hearthstone/
So this means that making Legend today is less challenging than making Rank 5 under the old rank system.
The above source also lets us know that about 13,000 people made Legend just last month. So top 1000 Legend is somewhere about the top 0.35%.
I donât really know how exactly the 1% meme came to be, but I guess it just has a nicer ring to it than 0.5% do it stuck. And continues to stick, even though itâs far from accurate now.
Honestly, the thing has like 4 different things which make it just a design catastrophe.
Bunch of Bananas, and ESPECIALLY Barrel of Monkeys. Monkeys just completely shuts down early aggression, and protects the hunterâs board almost flawlessly. A 4 health taunt is pretty much impossible to scale while killing another target meaning the Hunter pretty much has the board locked down early.
Hollow Hound, okay, lots has already been said, but an aggro class having this level of board development, healing and immediate clear is insane. Absolutely nuts. Blizzardâs kinda pushed intense, wide, high health boards as like a thing now, and their answer to this is not to nerf these effects and decks, but to push AoE and hard removal to be cheaper and more effective. Which⌠the whole thing is just a complete mess. And pushing cheaper AoE is just going to make it worse for fun decks that actually play fair.
Having both these things, an early game card which makes it impossible to apply pressure or effectively trade into their board, and a very powerful midgame card that catches the hunter up, puts it out of range of whatever reach the opponent has, means the Hunter can do ludicrously greedy late game plays, like buff their King Krush, and then summon 2 of them with Faithful Companion. Because thatâs how hard theyâve mastered the board.
I donât think this is necessarily broken, because a lot of other decks do nutty things. But I REALLY wish theyâd just tone down all the nutty things so a deck that does all these things this effectively, in an aggro class with amazing from-hand damage potential wasnât somehow a fair deck with a reasonable winrate.
Itâs very good at protecting the board and your health early on. Itâs main weakness is that the Mana cost basically allows your opponent to build a better board faster than you.
A 2 Mana 1/4 taunt isnât a particularly good play most of the time. The card is only particularly good because you get to use it 3 times.
Ditto with bananas. If that could only be used once, the card would be absolute trash.
Hunter also isnât really using many minions that monkeys protect well early on. Maybe they stick a naga that a bunch of lists are looking at cutting in the near future, but thatâs about it.
Hound hunter isnât really an aggro deck. Itâs a combo / control deck that can curve out well sometimes. (Which isnât that uncommon of decks like that, even curse lock could sometimes just beat you down)
5 of the cards in the deck are for OTKing you
About 8 of them are there to not die
The other half of the deck can play on curve, but itâs rarely quickly punching your face in. Thatâs why itâs worst matchups all tend to be board based early game decks. Hound hunter isnât consistently strong that early.
What it IS very good at is applying mid game damage to make an animal companion Krush drop you to zero the moment they hit turn 10, or in range of 1 Krush if your deck lacks healing.
It does need hound to do that, but the deck would be unplayable at top legend if companions couldnât double Krush, and nowhere near the best deck in diamond if that got broken, even with the hound sustain left alone.
(Although, again, AaBJ is likely going to break the deck in a way we will look back at this version of hunter like âwhat were people mad about?â)
Eh, the class isnât really an âaggroâ class. For a huge portion of its history it was more powerful as a midrange deck.
Itâs kind of refreshing that it can sustain itself a bit to use later game cards.
I just want the things killing you that you canât really stop nerfed, not the things that are letting the hunter play the cards, because there are other interesting things the hunter could do if 16/16 king krushes werenât obviously the right path to push.
With the one mana +2 attack and trample on the horizin it really breaks the hollow houd. It will clear your board reno and hit face dmg. For 7 mana congrats. Amazing design xD
