Vs Data Reaper #154 is out and from what I can see three classes are strong while the rest are garbo. Whatever balance ever existed in this game is currently dead.
Nothing wrong with being The Garbo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Garbo
Yeah, s/o had to do this dad joke.
We also recently had a meta update with actual Blizzard data (gasp!) that shows a bit more diversity than might otherwise be assumed.
Granted, if you want to beat the ladder as Mage without screwing around, you still have to play Highlander Mage or be Kibler levels of good/patient with Elemental Mage.
Mech Paladin, a tier 1 deck according to the same report, cries in a corner from loneliness.
??
4 classes have tier 1 decks
and 2 others have tier 2 decks
so 6 out of 9
are you sure you are reading vs report 154 ?
According to VS, there is absolutely no reason to not play Quest Hunter (if you want to rank up fast). The only deck it loses to is Rez Priest which is a deck that sees about as much play as Highlander Mage.
Sky Gen’ral Kragg was the wake-up call needed to bring Quest Hunter into more people’s attention. The archetype is now growing in popularity while improving its performance to become the best performing deck in the game. While we know that Quest Hunter was already a Meta Breaker waiting to happen a couple of weeks ago, Kragg has given it another boost in its win rate which even exceeded our expectations. It is the very best card in the deck.
Oh boy, as if we didn’t see enough Hunters, it’s really about to flood Hunters more with this report.
I don’t think so.
Quest Hunter has been the busted deck for weeks now. I hit my highest ever monthly finish with it last month, before the General came in the picture.
It’s population flags behind many other popular decks at a mere 2.88%, and 6.59 at Legend. Few people will jump the bandwagon for a deck that uses so many Legendary cards that are rotating.
I shall try standard quest hunter then, since I’m a wild player. It sounds interesting
The best part about it is that it doesn’t feel like anything else.
Hunter usually tries to go face, but here you are cleaning up board after board until Quest completion, Except Token Druid who dies super fast. The mistake made by many people is in trying to SMORC the Hunter, which falls flat because There’s so many rush minions to dictate the trades that you pull ahead.
Remember when you could make a strong deck without legendaries, only using commons/uncommons? Been a while. How many legendaries do the top decks have?
There was no data that would indicate a more diverse meta. Win rates do not indicate DIVERSITY.
Old Guardian does those all the time.
I personally don’t remember Legendary free meta decks in my 2.5 years of playing HS.
but the win rates tells how many viable decks are out there
Viability isn’t DIVERSITY. You can’t look at those decks and say “these decks are very viable”. We have HARD DATA that shows the meta isn’t very diverse right now. The DECKS that were touted as high win rates were also lined up with the same THREE CLASSES that OP is complaining about.
The problem here is that there’s an additional non rational component to the meta, human choice.
The best deck in the ladder is Quest Hunter based on both Blizzard and VS data. But it’s only played at 2.88% rate according to VS while big idiot Druid has a 15.28% representation. Combo Priest, a very strong performer at high Ranks, is so poorly represented that VS can’t meta rate it.
A balance patch right now would warp the meta not around balance, but around player’s choice. And let’s remember clearly that Blizzard balanced Galakrond pretty much exactly as the LOE lovers (EVIL haters) wanted.
Fair enough in regards to population, but Blizzard shouldn’t intervene with balance changes just because the playerbase is choosing to largely ride a deck that isn’t displaying meta-warping performance levels.
Lack of meta diversity due to large power unbalance (early Gala Shaman) is something Blizzard is responsible for. Lack of diversity simply because players aren’t diversifying is not.
According to the statistics (HSReplay) you have to play paladin, hunter or druid. Neither of the featured decks requires any thinking at all, which unfortunately is the name of the game at the moment. Let’s come back in april and see if they actually want to make a game for the intelligent ones.
That’s quite an issue not many people still have Flark or hallazi as they are quite underwhelming as standalone cards and wouldn’t have seen play if it weren’t for the insane deck synergy.
Not only that but the dust cost has increase exponentially. Remember when “wallet warrior” was seen as insanely expensive because it was over 10k dust? I wonder what people would have thought of all the 12 to 20K popular meta list that people are running nowadays. The game has definitely lean very hard in the P2W direction lately.
I still have the stance that representation should be accounted for when it comes to nerfs etc. but I’m not seeing anything I would personally consider concerning in VS report 154. For ME, it would be 30%+ class rep, and/or 20%+ deck rep when the alarm bells start to go off, regardless of win rate.