who the hell are you? if you are game designer you forgot switch off your fake account, if not, glad to see you keep daydreaming.
Yep.
See, what youâre doing here is going full baby rage instead of actually trying to figure out why. Youâre not even attempting to understand it, youâre just labeling it as arbitrary without any intellectual curiosity whatsoever.
Stop being such a moralist. You want to label everything good and bad within seconds of encountering it, based on your gut instead of on reason. I think the best thing for you self development wise would be temporarily forbidding yourself to label things as good or evil and just trying to figure out cooly and calmly how things work.
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Gotcha, I was looking at the buttons rather than the drop-down
Yep, and thereâs more red in the matchup spread for hunter in top 1k than there is in diamond. Thatâs not a result of a different meta, thatâs a result of more decks doing well against it at high ranks than lower, which suggests that higher skilled opponents means hunter wins less.
That helps to make the spread at top legend different, as there are more options when people play well to beat hunter, so thereâs less hunter, and more of those decks.
You canât just arbitrarily decide to be a control meta and crowd hunter out that doesnât make hunter worse against control. They are choosing to play more decks that beat hunter, so hunter isnât a problem there.
There are decks that literally are getting better at beating hunter as player skill improves. Thatâs why hunter isnât a huge problem of the top meta. There are both better decks to play, and some decks hunter used to beat at low ranks it no longer does. It only takes small changes in win rates to shift a deck from tier 1 to 2 or 3. One or two matchups getting worse as players get better is enough to do that.
Thatâs what happened. Hunter isnât the best deck around. It has several possible counters. It gained more of them at top legend that it used to beat at diamond. Specific matchups are getting worse as skill improves, it isnât just a different matchup spread.
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So does that mean the players still playing it are at their skill cap or the deck is less powerful? Are they only in top 1k because they rode an overpowered deck, then hit a wall?
I canât stress this enough: YOU ARE NOT MEASURING SKILL WHEN YOU LOOK AT AGGREGATE WIN RATE IN A GIVEN META.
This is double talk, though.
Either hunter is bad or they are playing decks to beat hunter. Pick one.
And there are decks that get worse, too. Whatâs your point? This is only a measure of skill when you are talking about the same player playing at different ranks.
No, itâs because they play decks that are favored or hunter would be higher scored in the meta. Look at the meta score - one axis is play and the other is power.
The fact that 1k is such an outlier says NOTHING about any individual deck.
I read all the way through this thread again, and I donât think I have said itâs the best deck around.
But other match ups improved. This doesnât matter. The spread of favored to unfavored is the biggest factor in win rate. Even if everything you say is true, it doesnât negate the fact that a hostile meta masks true power for a deck.
This idea that top 1k is anything to base balance around is ignorant.
It hit a wall because decks start beating it when opponents are better.
Nah, you do that when you filter to the top ranks, because strong decks stop covering for mistakes, and lines of play are more optimized per matchup to give a better view of the true deck capabilities.
Outcast DH looks bad against hound hunter, until you start playing outcast DH well enough, then the matchup flips in favor of the DH.
Thatâs skill, not a pocket meta.
Pick one because youâve said this and youâve said they play decks that beat hunter. It canât be both.
Oh, if all skill is then equal, then I am 100% correct that the meta being hostile to it is a larger factor than skill changes. Thank you.
You have conceded my point.
Itâs a 52% to 48% difference at D1-4 and top 1k for that match up. Thatâs nothing.
Have you looked at how much the top decks drop in win rate across those two brackets? Having a win rate 2-5% lower for the best decks in top 1k is pretty standard⌠so this difference doesnât mean anything special if skill is equal when you filter, like you said.
But to look at my point, look at the match ups for all types of mages then count how much mage is at top 1k meta. That right there is a huge chunk of wins that changes the winrates.
Again, and I canât stress this enough, you have to consider what a weighted average is and how it moves (changes, varies) to understand why the numbers are so different.
It isnât skill - because you conceded that filtering for top 1k is filtering for skill - itâs the specific meta.
Nope. Top 1k is always and will always be a pocket meta.
They are both true. There are more decks that beat hunter in top legend than there are in diamond, therefore, even without changing the matchup spread, there are more people playing decks that beat hunter.
But, because the individual matchups are significantly different at high legend, the meta also shifts a bit around whatâs actually good there. In the current meta, DH has gained a ton of ground at the top skill levels while also being good against hunter.
This isnât happening at lower brackets, because people arenât playing demon hunter well enough to beat hunter consistently, which leads to a different meta in part due to player skill differences.
Itâs a complex system.
Skill isnât equal though, so that argument flatly doesnât work. If all players had top legend skill levels, hunter would be low tier 2 across the board, and very obviously not a nerf target. Itâs the lower skill brackets making hunter look stronger than the deck is when everything is being played at its max potential.
Thatâs going from a losing to winning matchup. When tiers are separated by 1-2% win rate differentials, a few matchups flipping like that annihilateâs a deckâs viability⌠Especially when that deck becomes one of the most popular decks in the format and starts weighing into hunterâs win rates more.
Yes, because they play the game better.
Outcast DH winrate vs Hound Hunter
T1KL: 0.5152 over 266 games
Legend: 0.4791 over 881 games
D4 and up: 0.4741 over 1293 games
This is pulled direct from VS.
T1KL: 137 out of 266 games
Legend: 422 out of 881 games
D4 and up: 613 out of 1293 games
This is multiplying out actual wins.
T1KL: 137 out of 266 games
Legend below top 1k: 285 out of 615 games
D4-D1: 191 out of 412 games
This is subtracting out higher ranks. Note the change in labels.
T1KL: 51.5%
Legend below top 1k: 46.3%
D4-D1: 46.4%
These are the actual winrates at the different ranks, without the âand upâ qualifier.
In short, VSâs decision to always publish matchup winrates in the form of âand upâ tends to downplay the effect of skill on matchups because higher ranks are always averaged into what youâre looking at. In this case it looks like about a 4% jump when itâs actually more like 5%. Theyâre not lying, but itâs kinda misleading.
Hey op, heres that conversation you wanted, where you at?
OPâs numbers are a bit rubbish,
its a 6 mana card for a 3/6.
So it loses 1 pt offence for rush, 1 for life steal and 1 for cleave?
In terms of the point system its probably correctly stated.
Is it important to hound hunter? Yes. it allows hunter a way to stabilise and heal before they are rushed to death.
It only became a problem because pure paladin was nerfed.
If the name of the game is to nerf every deck to worse then dk then keep on, keeping on.
With all respect.
NeonGhost is just being disrespectfull at this point.
The meta at top ranks not form by coincidence. Period.
The same people at top ranks also arenât there by accident. Period.
At this point any player should just read his posts as total disrespect for people who actually put time and effort to learn to play the game better by the simple reason that it actually is.
His âconclusionsâ can only be true in a world where getting better at playing hearthstone does not affect your rank at all.
In the end this is what he is trying to say here in a covered way.
That itâs all only an arbitrary coincidence and in reality no one here is better at the game than a bronze player.
Iâm over with it and others should be too unless you really think that line of thinking should gain space in any gaming community at all.
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I am reading it and appreciating the feedback and concerns of this card from the community.
Well, the way I think Neon would respond to this is to say that winning using certain means (the ones he favors) is a show of skill, while winning using different means (the ones he dislikes) is not a show of skill at all, but instead exploitation of a flawed system. Thus Neon envisions upper ranks full of poseurs who lack skill but got there on the back of the braindead netdeck of the week.
I think what Neon is missing from that picture is that the advantages gained by deck choice only go so far. At a certain point past simply making Legend, your competition is going to have not only the most finely tuned of netdecks, but theyâre going to be darn good pilots on top of that. Itâs not a club you get to stay in just by having your deck take you there easy.
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A game being well balanced does not means there not gonna have bad options for you to take instead of good ones.
But that the choice of let anything be busted depend exclusively on particular choice of not getting yourself a way to fight against when things are going well.
Itâs 100% not arbitrarily different. It shifts to be guided to the best ddeck around. Itâs not arbitrary.
That said, the changes that follow DO make a different meta. And thatâs verifiable: Paladin had three of its worse matchups as VERY common pre-horn in top 1k. In the wider meta, Paladin was virtually uncontested, having green from start to finish.
At the much tighter, much more hostile top 1k, it disappeared. WE CAN say itâs because player does not like to play paladin, but in this kind of situation i defer to the intelligent option: Players are smart and they can recognize that paladin is inadequate there.
While there are differences, i think âThis deck here beats everyone but the decks in this powerlevel, and this powerlevel consists of 4 decksâ is grounds enough for a nerf. Even if paladin eventually would have itâs winrate equalized by the meta aligning, i think this trend of keeping a few decks on a higher power level severely hurts the deck diversity.
You wanted to play anything but those decks? Enjoy losing to paladin.
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You said filtering by top 1k is filtering by skill. So the fact that it doesnât perform there is meta related more than skill related.
Only if the meta was identical to top 1k
Why is this so hard: 1000 players in a pocket meta of their personal preferences is not the pinnacle of balance?
Has it occurred to you that the play and success of outcast DH is also because of the meta? That the missing spooky mages and the extra enrage warriors are helping prop up that deck the artificial meta that is top 1k? Again, it looks great because of the specific decks, but it is Tier 2 at D1-4 BECAUSE OF THE META MORE THAN BECAUSE OF SKILL.
The only place it isnât T1 is top 1k legend. Just those thousand players. Not the other HALF A MILLION other unique users, just those people. That is definitionally a pocket meta.
It is heavily influenced by preferences of those players and it absolutely ridiculous to balance the game entirely based on the results of those players.
But youâre also saying that paladin warped the top 1k meta into something unrecognizable to the rest of the ladder in an effort to escape it.
If balance was more than just top 1k, we wouldnât have those decks and that would be very good.
It is.
You donât get or stay at those ranks without being among the best players in the game. Picking the top deck of the meta doesnât springboard you to top 1k if you are not good enough.
This is especially true of decks that drop off hard as they approach the top of the meta, like hunter. Your win rate is going to get worse as you climb with it, making it continually harder to keep pushing higher.
If the skill levels across the board were equal, the meta WOULD MATCH the top 1k meta. Itâs a different meta up there because skill level differences have significantly altered the win rates of the decks, not because they just prefer different decks up there.
No, it wouldnât.
You keep ignoring the facts here. People at top 1k have specific decks and styles of decks that they will always pick over other styles and their meta is always artificial. Always.
Nope. It isnât that.
But even is that were true, and itâs not, are you also telling me that if you arenât among the 1000 most skilled players in your region then blow off on balance issues? That seems really myopic and poorly reasoned in a game that no longer has esports.
Nah, thatâs what you are doing. You are refusing to believe that higher skill play impacts the win rates of decks, and that individual matchups often change at higher skill brackets.
The outcast DH change pointed out earlier is a perfect example of thisâŚ
At diamond, if outcast DH was everywhere, hound hunter is a good counter pick with a 52% win rate against it.
At top legend, hunter is a bad pick into our last DH, because youâd lose more often than youâd win.
That MAKES THE META DIFFERENT. Itâs not just a personal preference of the top meta. Hunter stopped being good against that deck, so you look for other options. This both causes less hunters AND it lowers the win rate of hunter because thereâs an extra deck that itâs bad against around.
In order for hunter to recover that loss, it needs another deck that is good against DH to rise in popularity that hunter is good against.
The meta is different because hunter is less good against decks that are played well, which makes the meta different.
The meta doesnât change without that pressure. Thereâs no gentlemanâs agreement up there to play a different meta. The skill differences creates one.
And no, there have definitely been decks that have been nerfed for crating bad play experiences in lower brackets while not being good at high skills (pirate warrior comes to mind).
Hunter isnât enough of a power outlier for that, as it has very solid counters at all brackets, and isnât super polarized against what it is good against, with the one exception of chip burn decks, which needed a hard counter.
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And we have the data to measure how much less good, too. Not just generally, but on an individual matchup level. This isnât mere theory, itâs empirically demonstrable.
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