So I really am asking this question with no sarcasm but has the game shifted to more hard counters then soft counters ? To a deck archetype?
I’ve been playing this game on and off for about 8-7 years. I mostly play casually and some rank but not high rank. I generally really like control games. So from a control players perspective I find that the game has shifted to more hard counters while the number of soft counters we have had access to has severely diminished from years past. Is this because of where we are at in the rotation? Or is this just how it currently is?
Is this accurate ? Or am I totally off on my feelings of the game?
Not really a shift, there has always been decks that essentially counter other deck styles. Blizzard has made the mistake of not balancing things well, so you’ll see certain classes having a rather strong advantage. Control is still around, though not in the traditional sense and the decks that can play control well are somewhat limited. Warrior and Druid are probably the two best at it atm. There is a lot more hybrid style decks from what I’ve seen. Decks that do a bit of control, a bit of damage, and play a more mid-range curve. If you want to play control, look at some of the warrior and druid decks. Just messing around in Casual lately I’ve seen a surge in the number of dragon druids running around, so that seems popular this week. It’s a long/slow drawn out deck that just tries to wear out the opponent and still ramps up to maintain a mana advantage.
Okay I understand what you’re saying but my point is if you wanted to counter that Druid or warrior deck it seems like you need a heavy counter to defeat it. The example I have is the mage OTK deck to counter that deck you have have to either draw out the Protoss or armor up beyond the damage it can output. Out of which IMO are such heavy counters and not remotely soft. This is what I mean. And vice versa for shaman, Druid and warrior. The counter to these decks imo are very hard counters and not remotely soft so like your flexibility to navigate past these decks (in a control manner) is such a narrow pathway. And yes I’m playing warlock with locations*
It makes the control perspective just very boring and as a control player I never thought I’d say that yet is has finally happened. The level of predictability has been so high the game was more fun in years past when there wasn’t such a high level of predictability imo. And I’m not exactly a huge fan of the idea of yea let’s just throw yogg at it and develop all randomness in a control game solely on yogg**
Sorry for introducing yogg into the conversation and side tracking it but these are all just examples**
I’m a returning player as well, started to pick up HS again by late October (perils in paradise) last year (after 5 years hiatus around descend of dragons expac), and I gotta say it does feel more polarizing this time around. I think the current miniset still has some polarizing matchups like, aggressive terran shaman loses to location Zerg lock/Ctrl terran warrior/shaman. Zerg DK wins against most control decks. Protoss rogue wins against greedy control deck, weapon rogue and hero power druid wins against Zerg dk, zealot priest punishes any midrange decks. This is why I only enjoy playing Zerg discover hunter since the deck does not have that polarizing feeling since the matchup spread is quite balanced for this deck. You might want to try out Zerg discover hunter, you could just get hunter loaner deck and add a bunch of miniset card, maybe craft griftah ceaseless expanse incindius and you are golden. The deck doesn’t have hard counter as far as I know.
The best deck in the game, is essentially control for the first few rounds against the aggros (especially because of the taunts) and then a mid-range power that can lethal and then an end-game that is bad compared to the slowest decks if you are too late. (Terran Shaman).
The game has shifted to much more proactive play, so reactive control decks aren’t really any good at all anymore. They just can’t contain the decks that keep refilling and flooding stats and they never beat the otk crowd.
If you’re looking to noodle fight and play long games, the best option is to find like minded players and play amongst yourself because the ladder is pretty hostile to most control decks.
Unless you define control as being proactive too. Terran Shaman doesn’t really hope to kill a DK with Backstage Bouncer in the first 6 rounds, but it hopes to control it enough and eventually manage to have a wide board for lethal (Backstage Bouncer alive or not).
For example, back in Classic, if you played a big board against a warlock and you got Twisting Nether’d, that would be considered a soft counter.
Nowadays, you get scenarios like: Quest Warlock vs. Plague Death Knight.
All the plagues fuel the Warlock’s quest and when the quest is done, the damage gets thrown back at the Death Knight. 1 card just countered a whole deck.
If so, then yeah… I noticed that too.
We could debate that the power level of expansions has been increasing ever since Goblin vs. Gnomes, but I think they really started crushing the gas pedal in United In Stormwind. Though, the concept of quests was first introduced in Un’goro, it was the first time that they gave all the classes access to cards that gave uninterruptible buffs that lasted until the end of the game. Priests had it a bit different from everyone else, but still…
Anyway, the problem was that United In Stormwind wasn’t universally hated. In fact, it was closer to a 50/50 within the community. A lot of people enjoyed having a core pillar in their deck that can’t be sabotaged. So… Hearthstone devs took note of that. Since then, we’ve been seeing more and more “for the rest of the game” effects. It does get annoying when those “for the rest of the game” counter your whole strategy.
Of course, any card game uses luck as a core gameplay pillar so, it’s to be expected to get victories yoinked out of your hands “just because”, but I feel like modern Hearthstone has added an extra layer of randomness by printing out cards so strong that they can shut down entire decks by themselves.
It’s hard to theorycraft anything on Wild. That format is explosively overpowered and almost abandoned by the Devs, because you can play all the best cards of every expansion and some combinations are just broken and it’s been at least since ~2016 that most expansions are extremely powerful so the effect is ludicrously powerful for the best decks.
E.g. people can just mill your entire deck by round ~4, or they can spawn minions with infinite respawns.
Yes, it’s why i 've never care much about wild.
Abanddoned or not, the fact that with all the bundle of cards in wild, there 's noway to balance it. Because card pool is so wide, anycard could be a part of craziest combination, or if it get nerf, it 'll be turned into unplayable forever. So the dev bring twist mode to revive some expac, i think generally it’s good idea but reality 's never as good as theory.
Nothing they can do anymore for wild mode, so they leave as what it be.
Twist would work, if they allowed F2P players to play by giving all the cards temporarily for free. F2P players carry all the formats and without them everything would die because they are probably about 80% of all the players easily.
Well I mean those who buy cards systematically, I don’t mean whoever just bought something once or very rarely.
Yes, those scenarios may happen.
That’s just my opinion but, I feel like Wild offered a more fun gameplay experience despite the fact crazy combos can happen and it’s because there’s no shortages of counters.
What I despise about Standard is the inability to answer to some of the decks out there. Especially when the power level of what you see in Standard is not too far from what you’d see in Wild.
Take for example Zerg DK or Automaton Priest. Both of those decks have a habit of filling the board with huge stats, Reborn and an ongoing buff for the rest of the game.
Ideally, you’d need a cheap mass Silence/polymorph effect but then… you find there’s one single card that fits the bill and it’s Sir Finley the Intrepid and it requires the Excavate package bundled with it to work.
As absurd as it may sound, I found Wild to be more balanced than Standard just because of that: lack of counters.
It’s not very exactly example. As long as the zerg DK triggered infestor buff 3 or 4 times, mass silence literally don’t bring any help against them, it’s an aura that apply for the rest of game.
That’s the only win-con for zerg DK. And that’s also why zergDK has dropped most of their defensive tools, just to find ways to trigger infestor’s deathrattle as much as possible. And sadly, that’s the only way to play DK effectively in this meta
No matter what crazy curve a mill druid has, they never burn your entire deck on round 4, i think you readed many “i win card” silent storm posts, you beleive it and thats your source…
If you mean Velen whats wrong with silence mattering again, he is countered even accidentally with cards like bob, im totally fine with it…
Its the concept of those who actually play it and dont just repeat what they read in doomposts…
It was more of a figure of speech, that if you go in with a regular synergistic Standard deck and they have a good curve of milling by round 4 or 5, then you know you will just die no matter what.
Basically you can see from miles, that if you start losing two to four of your cards per turn and you haven’t even developed anything good yet then you’re dead.
At some point they did it with Tony King of Piracy (although dont remember if it was around turn 4 or 5) and maybe you kept that idea, i really liked that pirate, it was pretty good against combo decks and even against the druid himself…
Just today I beat one mill druid with my highlander pally, by playing kil’jaeden on curve, that i have specifically for these druids in my ETC…
But the trick is that i dont play the OTK version, but rather one focused on disrupting combos and also deals well with aggro,
so i also had the mojomaster zihi on my deck,
And in the end i beat him only thanks to playing a couple of turns before the kiljaeden, my demons were fatter and traded very well, and reduced his mana crystals, it was still a close game,
luckily i have it recorded…