This -will- be nerfed. (Hollow Hound)

[NeonGhost-111963]

@Smeet-1144

Top 1k legend is the top skill levels of the game.

But you can’t look at the impact of skill unless you track individual players. If you don’t understand this, take a class and learn. Aggregated data is not measuring skill. It simply cannot make causal assertions without causal design, and it does not have that. Saying the difference is “skill” is not measured in the data. What is measured? The different decks being played and in what amounts… preferences.

Aggregate data can only tell you correlation, not causal. Even when we look at trends in population, we can’t make causal conclusions from aggregate data. Go look up research design for causal inferences… you aren’t going to see data like HS has in the list of acceptable designs.

@Smeet-1144

Except when it was, just a few weeks ago.

It was OVER played relative to power? No, it was not.

@Smeet-1144

No, it drops off continuously in power the whole way up.

First, this statement on the face is false. Nothing about the cards change, so the power is the same all the way through. If you want to argue the effectiveness wanes, then I will agree - but not due to skill, due to changes in the meta.

@Smeet-1144

Decks become less bad against it as you climb

You mean as you get closer to a very small pocket meta the differences between the best players and the worst players become smaller? Who would have thought it? I’m just shocked…

Dude, you’re causal attributions are not supported by the data you’ve presented.

@Smeet-1144

They can’t pick up half of the decks that theoretically beat hound hunter, because they won’t be able to with those decks until they get much, much better at the game.

No, those decks need a different set of decks in the rest of the meta to be worth playing. you keep ignoring this part, and it’s the key here. All of the decks need the pocket meta to be successful.

There are piles of times when decks that rake at top 1k aren’t played at diamond, and if you’ve paid attention even VS has called out things like “the lack of aggro decks at top 1k” as the only reason a deck was viable there. That’s literally about pocket metas being a thing, and top 1k is the ultimate irrelevant pocket meta.

[Smeet-1144]

@NeonGhost-111963

But you can’t look at the impact of skill unless you track individual players

Flatly untrue.

The top ranked players are going to be the current set performing better than the rest, and thus, on the aggregate, are the highest skilled group playing at the moment. If they weren’t, they’d naturally drop out of that rank bracket.

If you aren’t good, you don’t get to and stay there.

There’s literally nothing wrong with calling that group the highest skilled players in the game. No deck is strong enough to carry you there without playing it near perfection.

@NeonGhost-111963

What is measured? The different decks being played and in what amounts… preferences.

That is measured, but preferences are not the primary cause of performance there. What decks are being played have literally no bearing on how good the individual matchups are, and those are wildly different at the highest level of play than they are below legend.

@NeonGhost-111963

It was OVER played relative to power? No, it was not.

This rarely happens with any deck, at any bracket to a degree where it warps a meta. Yes, sometimes decks are a bit over/under played, but that’s true across the board, it’s not unique to top legend.

That’s why the meta in a vacuum does have some impact on a deck’s performance. It’s just not the major factor, because a deck has to have the matchup strength to handle a diverse meta. Hunter absolutely does at diamond, overwhelmingly so.

At top legend, nope.

Sometimes decks work the other way, trash in diamond, but nearly uncounterable at top level play. (There are a group of rogue players that like this setup when it applies to them)

@NeonGhost-111963

First, this statement on the face is false.

It’s not, it’s easily verifiable. Hunter doesn’t just fall off a cliff when you reach top 1k, it’s a curve.

@NeonGhost-111963

Nothing about the cards change, so the power is the same all the way through.

How people use those cards and play around those cards changes GREATLY as you climb.

It’s funny when I’m only at a 10 star bonus and start getting ranked against true diamond 5-1 players instead of my MMR. The games get way, WAY easier until I get back to legend and start getting matched against better players again.

It’s literally a night and day difference.

@NeonGhost-111963

You mean as you get closer to a very small pocket meta the differences between the best players and the worst players become smaller?

Yeah, because that meta and skill develops as you climb, it’s not a wall that you pass 1k and suddenly “oh, here’s all DH and hunter is weaker!” it starts trending that way well before then.

@NeonGhost-111963

No, those decks need a different set of decks in the rest of the meta to be worth playing

Nope, a top legend outcast DH player would breeze through diamond ranks with it, because they know how to win several matchups that lesser players lose to (like hound hunter).

There’s a giant difference in climbing ease with someone that has a 58% win rate against hound hunter when they play the deck through diamond, and someone that has a 44% win rate with the same deck. (

That’s skill at work, it has nothing to do with how many other random decks they are seeing. In reality, that outcast DH likely does even better than the top 1k matchup vs hunter because the diamond hound hunters play worse.

@NeonGhost-111963

There are piles of times when decks that rake at top 1k aren’t played at diamond,

That’s not happening here. No new decks exist only at top legend right now. They just stop playing decks that are non-viable win rate wise. Decks that only work up there simply because of a different deck distribution are rare, and typically require either a matchup spread that perfectly matches the more compact list of decks used up there, or a high skill cap to flip matchups that are bad for them in power brackets.

So even when that happens, it’s still often skill that is making the deck exist.

You want to believe that the top legend meta is just an arbitrary preference of decks that are shifting win rates around forcibly.

That’s not how it works. Preference can cause some shifts, but the larger meta is determined by deck refinement in play, focusing on the ones that are most promising, and mastering how to play against each one of the decks that weren’t filtered out through the climb up there.

That is where the skill comes in, and it is hugely important in understanding why many of the meta shifts you observe happen.

[RageMage101-2781]

Completely agree. Glad other people are intelligent. Broken card

When is this hollow hound garbage being nerfed?

Sick of opponents going <10 hp to full health in 1 turn with 0 deck restriction like a reno requires plus wiping the board on top You just play it (or often cheat it out) wipe the opponents board and heal back to full. Such a board swing should be reserved for legendary cards not cards you can get 2 of in a deck plus discovers copies of consistently If it was used for control purposes only i would be fine with it. Ie. A taunt card that had the same effect on the defense. But this is being used…

This card needs gutting. It gives aggro decks too much mid game stability against mid/control decks. They already chip you down and then any chance you have of killing them first is completely impossibe thanks to this card. All hollow hound does is promote non board/non interactive gameplay. It discourages opponents to play minions because if you do you are just feeding the hound

Any foothold you have on your opponent not only can can be taken from you at any moment but swung back against you with 1 card.

Cards like this shouldnt exist without massive downside in deck building such as reno. This is better than reno. It heals you a bunch, kills your opponents board, develops board with a good minion and has 0 deck restriction

[NeonGhost-111963]

@Smeet-1144

Flatly untrue.

Tell me you don’t understand the difference between correlation and cause without saying it.

You can find correlations, you can’t attribute a cause because you haven’t measured it. This isn’t about HS, this is a factual thing about scientific methods and stats. You don’t have the information to say “skill” is the difference. You flat do not.

@Smeet-1144

There’s literally nothing wrong with calling that group the highest skilled players in the game

I didn’t dispute that part, though. I disputed that skill is the main cause of differences, and nothing about your data measures that other than correlationally, which is insufficient to determine causality. It’s like the idea that increased ice creams sales is associate with more shark attacks - it’s factually true, but you can’t determine the causal associate from the data.

You can make assumptions, which is exactly what you’re doing, but that’s fraught with pitfalls and very often wrong.

@Smeet-1144

What decks are being played have literally no bearing on how good the individual matchups are, and those are wildly different at the highest level of play than they are below legend.

But we don’t evaluate the deck based on individual match ups in a vacuum, we evaluate a deck based on the performance against the whole meta… A deck with 12 good match ups against decks that no one plays will not be played. You know this to be true - to be at 52% win rate, a deck has to win more than it loses and that’s mostly dependent on what else is being played for decks around viable.

@Smeet-1144

This rarely happens with any deck, at any bracket to a degree where it warps a meta

It happens all the time outside of top 1k.

@Smeet-1144

At top legend, nope.

BECAUSE THE DECKS ARE DIFFERENT.

The hunter deck doesn’t change, the meta does.

@Smeet-1144

. Hunter doesn’t just fall off a cliff when you reach top 1k, it’s a curve.

You mean after people get legend they start to play their preferred decks and the meta changes exactly the same curve? Huh. Magic.

The bottom line in this whole discussion is this:

You are mad that someone says your opinion is irrelevant when you spend your whole telling everyone why their opinion is irrelevant.

Top 1k is a joke. It isn’t relevant to balance or anything other than their pocket meta of basement dwelling tryhards that need to really touch some grass. The game is less healthy because of all the choices made based on top 1k, not better.

[Smeet-1144]

@NeonGhost-111963

BECAUSE THE DECKS ARE DIFFERENT

No, they aren’t. They are the exact same decks in diamond as in top legend right now. There are literally 0 that are in top legend that don’t exist in diamond as well.

The proportions change, but you can easily verify that if the diamond meta ran on the same proportion of decks as you see in top legend, without changing the win rates of the individual decks, hunter would not be knocked off the top. This is largely why diamond has not shifted to that deck proportion over time. It wouldn’t counter hunter.

When the individual matchups change, there’s a statistical pressure to use a different composition of decks. Yes, some people don’t act logically, and over/under play decks based on their power levels, but not by enough to just waive off skill as likely the most important factor driving everything going on differently up there.

If everyone in diamond decided to copy the top 1k legend meta, you wouldn’t see hunter knocked down to near tier 2. It would stay firmly tier 1, because most of the higher proportion matchups up there aren’t bad matchups for hunter in diamond.

“Oh no! There are now 6x more outcast DH, which I only beat… Oh wait, 56% of the time…”

Unlike in top legend, where it’s a 42% win rate for the hunter, so a x6 increase in DH does drop the win rate.

So yeah, it’s a meta force of more outcast DH, but that same meta doesn’t do the same thing to diamond and top legend.

You are weirdly resistant to mainly attributing that to skill differences. What else is there that would make THAT much of a difference? Everyone good hating to play hunter up there, so they play something else instead, leaving only the bad best players using hunter?

That doesn’t explain why it’s still a popular deck up there.

You are right, you can’t directly measure skill, but you also lack a compelling argument of what is driving a key piece of this data (massive shifts in individual matchups). The proportions of decks has absolutely nothing to do with that. The only really logical conclusion is that it’s primarily skill based.

[NeonGhost-111963]

@Smeet-1144

You are weirdly resistant to mainly attributing that to skill differences.

Because you are completely ignorant of how the world works.

You are just wrong. I am tired of telling you facts you don’t understand.

As good as you might be at hearthstone, you suck at math, stats, and research methods.

You have no data on skill differences and decks because you don’t measure it.

@Smeet-1144

you also lack a compelling argument of what is driving a key piece of this dat

Actually, I don’t. I was very clear and specific, but your epeen won’t accept what doesn’t fit your narrative.

@Smeet-1144

If everyone in diamond decided to copy the top 1k legend meta, you wouldn’t see hunter knocked down to near tier 2.

You just don’t understand how weighted averages work. You simply lack the fundamental grasp of the math and how it works together to understand why and how you’re just flat wrong.

[Smeet-1144]

Dude, you’ve had two separate people properly use weighted averages to prove your “it’s just the meta” idea wrong, and you just call it made up math.

I’m well aware of how this works. This math isn’t hard. You just refuse to engage with the fact that hunter gets worse in almost a dozen matchups and just go “it’s the meta! You don’t understand math!”

I’m beginning to think that you are the one that doesn’t understand any of this stuff.

[NeonGhost-111963]

@Smeet-1144

two separate people

No, I haven’t.

@Smeet-1144

You just refuse to engage with the fact that hunter gets worse in almost a dozen matchups and just go “it’s the meta! You don’t understand math!”

But how much worse? A 1-5% loss in match up wins is less of a factor than a bad match up that triples from Diamond to top 1k. I showed you this, but you don’t want to accept that most of the difference in wins is that exact part of the meta. MOST of the drop in overall win rate is DIRECTLY the drop in that specific match up. If you then factor the rest of the decks that see more play and the ones that see less play, then it drops even if match ups didn’t change from diamond to top 1k at all.

The math is clear. The meta is the problem, the top 1k meta is a joke, and nothing about that meta should be used for balance EVER.

@Smeet-1144

I’m well aware of how this works.

No, you are not or you wouldn’t have said this:

@Smeet-1144

If everyone in diamond decided to copy the top 1k legend meta, you wouldn’t see hunter knocked down to near tier 2.

If you went ahead and made all the changes to all the decks, yes, yes it would because you would have to adjust ALL the decks, not just hunter. If you do this, you change all the variables, not just hunter, and that’s the whole point.

[Smeet-1144]

@NeonGhost-111963

1-5% loss in match up wins is less of a factor than a bad match up that triples from Diamond to top 1k.

Thats not even always true, as it depends on what matchup is going down to make room for that.

You can’t just look at one matchup because there are a lot of things going on. When 11 matchups go down, it starts to matter more than proportioning the decks differently.

If you look at the meta and win rates together at diamond, you essentially can not create a meta where hunter is anything less than blatantly overpowered by simply rearranging what is being played. There aren’t ANY sleeper matchups that are bad for hunter that you can amplify enough to do that.

You’d need an utterly absurd 70+% play rate of enrage warrior to make hunter look tier 3, even at an absurd 30% play rate, hunter would probably still look firmly tier 1.

There aren’t enough bad matchups that are bad enough to create a bad meta for hound hunter at diamond.

There are at high legend.

Something is happening between diamond and top legend that creates newly bad matchups out of existing decks, which allows a less favorable meta for hunter to exist.

Without that happening, there is no meta that is bad for hound hunter.

I don’t care if you don’t want to call it “skill,” it’s not just the meta, or even majorly the meta. You literally can not create a reasonable unfavorable meta for hunter with its diamond win rates, nevermind one that almost pushed it to tier 2.

[NeonGhost-111963]

@Smeet-1144

Something is happening between diamond and top legend that creates newly bad matchups out of existing decks, which allows a less favorable meta for hunter to exist.

God I don’t know what it is going to take for you to understand that NONE OF THAT IS AS POWERFUL ON THE OUTCOME AS IS THE SPECIFIC MIX OF DECKS.

When the worst match up more than double, your win rate goes down without anything else changing. When you best match ups are played less, same thing.

This is a bigger source of change than any individual matchup winrate change. This is math. It is not speculation, it is verifyable math.

You are wrong. I’ve already shown the math.

You act like it goes from T1 to trash tier. It’s still firmly tier two with good results… it’s just a hostile meta. The dekc didnt lose power, top 1k pocket meta hates it and uses it as an excuse to feed their favorite style decks.

@Smeet-1144

Thats not even always true, as it depends on what matchup is going down to make room for that.

It is 100% always true purely from a math proofs standpoint, I already did this math. If your worst match up triples, you lose more overall win percentage than if your worst match up stays the same play rate and you lose it more often.

The only way this isn’t true is manufactured cases with zero wins or some hypothetical outlier. In any real world deck example, the rate of play is the larger impact.

@Smeet-1144

You literally can not create a reasonable unfavorable meta for hunter with its diamond win rates, nevermind one that almost pushed it to tier 2.

Do yo know how to calculate how much of the meta is enrage warrior and how that match up alone is enough to make it tier 2? Because that’s literally the answer and has been this whole time.

[Smeet-1144]

@NeonGhost-111963

NONE OF THAT IS AS POWERFUL ON THE OUTCOME AS IS THE SPECIFIC MIX OF DECKS.

Then go ahead, create a realistic meta using diamond win rates where hunter is tier 2 without any deck breaking a 25% play rate (because let’s be real, if any deck even got there with a winning record, it would almost certainly be nerfed along with hunter), or taking a deck that’s like 1% of the meta because it’s bad across the board and inflating it to 25%.

I’ll wait.

If it’s just the meta, this should be an easy task.

[NeonGhost-111963]

@Smeet-1144

Then go ahead, create a realistic meta using diamond win rates where hunter is tier 2 without any deck breaking a

If you increase the play of enrage warrior to what it is at top 1k and take out the mages… which is pretty much what happens at top 1k…hunter drops.

It’s not that hard.

[Smeet-1144]

I actually looked at what happens if you take the decks that exist in both diamond and top 1k legend, and then apply the new meta to diamond’s win rates…

Hunter wins more.

It’s not the meta.

Without changing the win rates, just changing how many of the decks that are already there to what you see in top 1k legend doesn’t weaken hunter…

That meta REQUIRES the individual matchups to drop off in huge amounts to make hunter look anything like a non tier 1 deck.

Just adjusting mage down and warrior up like you describe only drops about 1% off of the win rate. Need to lose a good deal more to drop it into tier 2.

[NeonGhost-111963]

@Smeet-1144

only drops about 1%

You did the math wrong.

[Scr0tieMcB-1291]

@Smeet-1144

I actually looked at what happens if you take the decks that exist in both diamond and top 1k legend, and then apply the new meta to diamond’s win rates…

Hunter wins more.

It’s not the meta.

Without changing the win rates, just changing how many of the decks that are already there to what you see in top 1k legend doesn’t weaken hunter…

False. It weakens the deck from 55.13% to 54.52%.

If I had to guess, your calculation error was in going to a matchup winrate table for “Diamond 4 and up” and assuming that those numbers are fully accurate for Diamond 4 through Diamond 1. They are not. Legend games are mixed in.

Keep in mind that HH is 51.35% in top Legend so I am not saying that deck popularity is the biggest factor. Just that it weakens.

@NeonGhost-111963

You did the math wrong.

Don’t think you’re good because I’m agreeing with you, you have no idea what’s going on, you’re full of BS and you just got lucky this time.

[Smeet-1144]

Nah, you are only increasing a slightly bad matchup for hunter (a 45% win rate deck going from 4% to 13% of the meta isn’t a huge loss.)

Losing 7% wins of a good matchup from mages disappearing for a slightly bad one isn’t enough to make hunter tier 2.

You need several bad matchups for that, the rest of the meta would easily keep them tier 1 with diamond win rates

[SwampFace-1579]

The TL;DR of the vast majority of this thread is:

Pocket metas affect the global win rates of a deck, for that pocket meta.

Skill turns unfavoured matchups into favoured matchups.
The Pocket meta has no impact whatsoever on this.

It is skill that changes a 1v1 win rate from negative to positive (or vice-versa). Period.

Anyone arguing otherwise is wrong.

The pocket meta ONLY applies to global win rates, not a specific matchup.

[Aldrius-1324]

@Smeet-1144

Eh, the class isn’t really an “aggro” class. For a huge portion of its history it was more powerful as a midrange deck.

Yeah but even that midrange deck was super aggressive. Hunter is just really good at using attrition to win, because it just does a lot of inevitable damage.

Also I don’t really think games need to be longer, or decks need more sort of… blind survivability answers.

Like historically, I think stuff like Deathstalker Rexxar, which gave Hunter the chance at discovering answers was a better long form card. Hollow Hound in general is just… goofy.

I just think the card does too many different things well. Clears 3 threats, heals, leaves a body. 3/6 isn’t even that understated when it does AoE damage. Either it should be 5 mana and not have rush (and probably 5 health), or it should have more attack and no lifesteal.

It’s just one of currently many many cards that make the game an utterly disappointing experience.

Actually, let’s just take rush off half the minions in the game. That’d work for me. Make people actually think about their plays, rather than just netdecking and dropping the green card with 0 cost cards and broken mechanics while never running out of cards in hand.

[Smeet-1144]

@Aldrius-1324

I just think the card does too many different things well. Clears 3 threats, heals, leaves a body. 3/6 isn’t even that understated when it does AoE damage. Either it should be 5 mana and not have rush (and probably 5 health), or it should have more attack and no lifesteal.

I mean, hunter has a 4 Mana 3/4 with rush and cleave (no lifesteal, and it needs 3 infusions to do it), so 2 added Mana gets them lifesteal, 2 health, and infuse dropped. Hound is pretty much on point for the Mana cost compared to that. The gargon struggled to find a deck.

The hound also needs external setup to clear 3 threats a lot of the time, as anything at or above 4 health doesn’t die to it, and often things with 4+ health still has damage values that quickly undo the healing that hound offers. It starts to lose to a bunch of board based decks simply because they can build life threatening boards that it can’t kill early enough.

Hound does get a bit out of hand when buffed by Lor’themar and then duplicated repeatedly, but that’s in game turn ranges where people are usually defending cards that just say “your opponent dies.”

It boggles my mind that a turn 8+ (because it’s usually buffed hounds people complain most about) up to 3 minion clear and heal is more annoying to people than dying on the spot from a combo.

Statistically, hound is one of the weaker cards in the deck. It’s just filling a niche the deck needed.

@Scr0tieMcB-1291

False. It weakens the deck from 55.13% to 54.52%.

If I had to guess, your calculation error was in going to a matchup winrate table for “Diamond 4 and up” and assuming that those numbers are fully accurate for Diamond 4 through Diamond 1. They are not. Legend games are mixed in.

We might have just taken data at a different time since these things are always shifting a bit. Yours were newer, and I limited the view to just the decks that existed in both brackets with enough hunter data at the time.

Either way, it’s not the smoking gun Neon was hoping for. The drop off in hunter’s power is not primarily a meta difference in this case.

[Praetorian-1432]

the cleave is the problem, remove cleave