But that will almost never happen. I seriously don’t know why it ever happens. If we go talk about a case on a case by case basis, maybe we’d find an explanation, but doubtful.
There’s multiple things that can happen with such decks:
a) they can get overplayed to the point where mirrors drive the winrate closer to 50%,
b) they can get forgotten about because the gameplay is not just toxic, but also un-fun, or
c) something in between, where it warps the meta to the point where it’s winrate is high, but not high enough to make everyone agree about it being broken, but perceptive players can easily notice the meta was warped because of it.
I don’t think those options speak in your favor at all. Not a single one. You really do need to cut some problems from their roots, and in this case it’s the Hunter’s imbue being overly tuned, as Raiden said above.
You wanna make the combo cost 0 mana? Sure! Let the imbue lower the costs of the beasts. But if you also wanna make them hurt, you better swap out your removal and card draw in favor of handbuffing package to do that.
There’s just aint no way a deck with access to ALL should be left out a single day as it is. Not a single day. This should have been patched last night, but it wasn’t and won’t be because their patent is working as it was intended to be working (check my thread).
I have tried explaining this to people here multiple times and this logic doesn’t land for them. They don’t get it.
We once had a Rogue deck that was like 60% play rate for a few days and people said it was fine because the win rate was like 52% or something. Yet it was one of the most broken decks ever in standard. It was the original gnoll rogue that dropped the rush minions with maestra early.
Math and statistics are lost on the majority of people here
I enjoyed playing against mirror Plush decks climbing from D5-Legend, while they were setting up to do their burst imbue buff, I went and did the gradual buff, chipping their health at the same time and dropped plush early for the kill
This is easily recognized by tracking the popularity over the course of a couple weeks. If popularity remains extremely high, then mirrors could be slightly dampening the win rate. But it’s not like the mirror matches add in a bunch of sub-50% data. It’s just adding in more 50%'s. So it might drive a win rate down from 55 to 54 or 53. But it’s not driving a win rate down from 59% to 51%. The math doesn’t work like that.
Popularity can decline, but that doesn’t say anything about the actual power of the deck.
This is a fair comment, and certainly worthy of consideration for eliminating a deck. If the meta is so warped such that the only decks being played are the deck in question and the decks that counter it, it could be a problem. And I agree that the devs should watch for that over the next couple weeks. But right now, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Ok… well this is absurd. You need to allow the data to be collected and analyzed.
Right now, in D4-1, Imbue Hunter only has a 51% win rate, even though it has 30% popularity. Imbue Druid, on the other hand, has a 59% win rate, with a 23% popularity.
People say this all the time but this is the difference between a Tier 1 deck and a Tier 2 deck a lot of the time. 1-2% win rate variance is nothing to scoff at.
No, a turn 5 OTK simply shouldn’t be possible in standard unless it’s something like 1 in a 10,000 chance. There is no need to analyze this. The fact that it happens frequently is enough.
Another illogical argument people give about interactions that shouldn’t exist. You also completely ignore the fact that people are purposefully playing counter decks specifically to target this deck. For example, people playing Bulwark Warrior or the sudden inclusion of Dirty Rat in a ton of decks.
That means the deck is warping the meta. Something you agree should be dealt with in your response to this comment:
Won’t work. Nerfing King Plush won’t stop hunter. Or does nobody remember this also got added to the mini set
Buff and copy enough of those and you get the exact same result. Plush is just slightly easier to do it with, but by no means the only path to murder you with.
Deck can have play rate from 0 to 100%. 1% playrate with 50% winrate is a balanced deck. 100% playrate with 50% winrate is not a balanced deck.
50% playrate deck with 50% winrate deck is NOT a balanced deck, because it’s overplayed. If it’s overplayed, it’s either a lot of fun, or it’s broken and I think it’s obvious which one that is at any point.
This is not balance. It’s meta warping. Is it that much fun, though? I’m not sure, haven’t tried.
Anyway, one deck having 50% play rate is definitely not OK because it opens up a possibility where only 2 decks are played and we have 11 classes of which any class and should have multiple decks.
Math!
And that result comes directly from a) + b), as that’s what happens on average
That’s 1/3 of a playerbase playing 1 deck, btw. If every class had 1 deck, each would be played 9%. That’s 3.3 times more play than a deck should see, on average.
The fact they added Magma Hound to the mini set is proof they WANT this imbue interaction to exist. This isn’t an accident you know. The developers knew what they were doing. They intentionally added redundancy so imbue hunter could otk you in multiple different ways.
Fair enough. I understand that, in order for everyone to survive aggro metas which I adore, that means I have to survive the metas they enjoy. Which is why you won’t find me whining about metas in general.
Absolutely! Although, adding that redundancy doesn’t help my theory I put forward in another thread, it’s still not exactly disproving it.
They know they’ll have to hit King Plush as it’s the “most obvious” culprit for the broke-ness (it’s not xD, but that’s what the short-sighted majority will see as obvious) and that they’ll have to hit it, so they had the redundancy ready for when that happens so it’s not immediately obvious to everyone that this is, indeed, what they planned for and wanted to happen AND what the real culprit is.
It’s the Imbue for Hunter but they need that to stay relevant to sell more packs for this expansion. Especially since other imbues are simply unplayably bad (except Druid)
At the same time, they get to keep two things going on for another 2 weeks:
a) hunter dominance, which was long overdue in the last two years, and
b) combo meta, which I can’t remember when the last time was.
We do not count occassionally broken combo decks as combo metas. For a combo meta, most of the decks played need to be combo decks. I don’t remember when the last that we had that was, but it’s certainly been more than a year and 9 months ago.
A balanced game that sucks to play is a bad game, and nothing about your preferences can change that.
To take to an extreme, a 1-mana spell that starts in your hand that is a literal coin flip to win the game or lose it would not require any adjustments, as the win rate of including it in any deck would be exactly 50%.
The primary goal of any game is to be fun. Balance is a derived requirement, something that is often helpful in maintaining fun. But it’s neither a guarantee of fun on its own nor a requirement above all other considerations.
Can you at least acknowledge that your perspective is not shared by most of the participants in this thread, and can therefore assuredly not be taken as authoritative on what should drive game design?
They work on sets pretty far in advance. They’ve been starting to push uninteractive OTK a lot lately, and it’s on us to push back. Kibler’s recent discussion on the subject is the kind of thing that does move the needle, as does the various communities going “why are you doing this, no more.”
Knowing their intent is useful, but don’t act as if we can’t convince them to change course.
How many? Do you have the data? Let’s see what the data shows after a couple of weeks. A deck that result in the use of a tech card isn’t necessarily a problem. In fact, I would say that all tech cards should be Tradeable to encourage the use of them.
But if, in fact, there is a significant change in the meta to the point that playstyle becomes limited and there are only a small handful of viable decks, then I’d agree that a balance adjustment may be in order. But right now, I’m seeing 15 decks above 50% in D4-1, spanning 7 classes. I’m sure there will be a balance patch in a couple weeks based on the first full week of data. To me, it looks like Paladin, Rogue, Druid and DK are likely targets right now… but let’s see how it shakes out next week,
Or… to show that we like it, right? I mean if that many people are playing a 51% win rate deck, there must be a market for it, no? But again, it’s early in the cycle; it may look different next week.
Guess we should all start playing Warriors and stocking up on Bulwharks and Hamms, as that seems to be one of the few decks capable of raining on Hunter’s parade. Provided they draw Hamm early and it eats the right minion. So…more rng? Just like Rat.
