I am not against introducing interaction, such as opponent hand destruction, to Hearthstone to allow more forms of agency than the one which we already have, which is that they can’t OTK you if you kill them first.
I am very much against the continued persecution of an entire deck superarchetype.
I am generally against the archetype primarily because blizzard is also against adding meaningful interactions with it.
You’re against the wrong half.
Well, whenever meaningful interactions get made they get obliterated for going into every deck.
If blizz made a non RNG card to mess with from hand bursts, it would currently go into everything because every deck has some major from hand burst.
Then the forums go into meltdown mode about how their combo is ruined every game by the tech card everyone has to run, and the tech card gets a deletion level nerf because it’s doing its job effectively.
After watching that cycle for years, I’m finding it easier to just stop making the OTKs in the first place.
I don’t see blizzard making targeted hand disruption common or powerful enough to create a better gameplay experience there.
So you won’t push for the right thing because every time Blizzard has tried to do the right thing the community has pushed against it. Like I said, that’s toxic gaming culture. I blame the Hearthstone social media communities.
Enough about VS #301 though. That’s two reports ago. How about them Shamans?
As usual, I’m going to take class/archetype distributions and frequencies, as well as matchup winrates, as given and be thankful on those data (even though they’re now 4-5 days late to the party)
I’m gonna take their tier list, which I never agree with, take the deck strength from that list, but frequencies from archetype distribution/frequencies, all for top 1k, as usual, to come up with my own version, which, again, makes much more sense to me than what they put.
This time around, however, my tier list disagrees with their Meta Score, so whatever that is, to hell with it.
The table is in an image available here:
https://ibb.co/7vknYw8
As usual, Rainbow Shaman gets demoted to tier 3 (hey, it’s still top 12-ish of all decks!) right next to Evolve, so whichever of the two you pick you can expect to struggle the same. The deck is borderline unplayable, it consists of 2 versions (both grouped under the same archetype in VS data, interestingly) with total playrate 1,50%. Whichever criteria they use to keep putting it as the strongest deck is completely wrong.
Big Shaman is doing a bit better, top 9 decks, tier 2, and I have to admit I’ve had some problems against it on the ladder the last few days. It wins against the meta tyrant Frost DK overwhelmingly, and loses to tier 3 decks for the most part. We’ll be seeing more of this deck - I suspect that the deck will advance to tier 1 (according to my table, using the data from their next report) when people give up playing unplayable Rogue decks.
Frost DK, Reno Druid and Painlock + Insanity (Insanity is really stuck between tiers 1 and 2, not really tier 1, not really tier 2) are the best decks in overall in top 1k.
Overheal Priest makes sense to dominate those parts of top 1k which even I don’t have access to on a daily basis (top 50), as it’s skill intensive and counters the tier 1 decks. However, we’re using the data for top 1k, and in whole top 1k, this deck is at the top of tier 2. If you’re planning on climbing from rank 900 to rank 50 with it, think twice.
Honorable mentions:
In overall, DK-Druid-Warlock meta is still on; people are experimenting with all sorts of Shaman, Mage and Rogue decks to try to disrupt them, but to no avail. While Shaman stands a chance with a little bit of tweaking, Mage and Rogue have to be saved by the mini-set (I’ve no idea what the mini-set brings, I gave up trying to predict things based on card announcements long time ago)
Many, many different archetypes are played, but mostly of the same 5 classes - DK, Druid, Warlock, Rogue, Shaman. This is a very balanced and fun meta, but it won’t last because of upcoming mini-set. If you’re trying to get some ranks before that, I strongly suggest playing Painlock or Cutlass Rogue.
When the meta is balanced, Rogue decks seem to thrive because they’re well-rounded and because there’s support for so many different archetypes that one of them is bound to be a sleeper. In this case, it’s Cutlass Rogue. It counters Frost Dk, Big Shaman, Insanity Lock and all other Rogue decks, which makes it a counter for approximately 25% of the meta!
EDIT: Yes, I’m going against my own table with this, because:
a) their deck strength number is unfairly low for this deck, and
b) the report is kinda late…as meta gets more and more solidified, and stronger decks played more (which will happen now because the report is out), Cutlass’ Rogue relevancy can only rise, hardly fall.
a certain someone on these forums:
Another certain group of people:
Well dye my beard white and call me Santa
Popularity × overall winrate continues to mean absolutely nothing
It was easy. I played it and didn’t find it difficult.
HOWEVER, it’s easy if you run a tracker because you can hover over Pupil and just immediately know.
But a lot of people don’t run trackers, so they play the deck and forget what is in Pupil.
This is why a lot of people sucked at the deck, imo.
Without a tracker, I would suck with it as well. But the tracker made it much easier to play.
So my conclusion would be the deck was only really good with really good players who run trackers, and atrociously bad with people who didn’t run trackers and tried running the deck.
I don’t know if it deserved a nerf. I never lost to the deck, but when I played the deck I was easily pumping out 60+ damage from hand that was on an infinite loop.
They really hate infinite loops unless they are very hard to pull off.
Maybe they nerfed it because it gave people using trackers a bit more of an advantage than they liked, or for the play pattern. I have no idea. It wasn’t a high APM deck either. I don’t consider doing 12-20 actions on a turn high APM. Sure, higher than a lot of brain dead decks, but not some high APM.
Those BG players would laugh at someone calling it a high APM play.
Hmm. I don’t use trackers because I almost always play on mobile. Right now my PC is disassembled in a closet.
When I was playing around with some in-depth spreadsheet analysis of VS #302, I did notice that Sonya Rogue was far more popular with tracker players (~6.64%) than it was with the general population (2.78%) in Legend overall.
That said, the evidence still put Sonya Rogue as a Tier 4 deck below T1KL. I am inclined to believe you when you say that the tracker REALLY helps, but you still need to have serious piloting skill to pull it off.
Cutlass Rogue is the leading Rogue deck now, and will be for the time coming
All other decks are borderline unplayable compared to it (except wishing well in some ranks)
I think you give it too much credit.
The hardest part of playing the deck was finding the right spell from Griftah. Did Griftah give you +6 damage? No? Then figure out a way to make use of the spell it did give you and buy time to try again.
Once Griftah gave you the +6 damage, you just needed to wait to assemble the combo in hand.
The hardest part was surviving long enough to get the combo in hand. Once you did that, it was stupidly easy to do the combo. It wasn’t hard at all.
But it was also extremely susceptible to a lot of counters. Dirty rat, neophyte, etc. Again, I don’t think the deck needed a nerf, it was highly inconsistent and required a lot of luck. But once you got the pieces, it was stupidly easy to push 60 damage from hand each turn, every turn.
Again, I never lost to the deck. Mostly because I would put too much pressure on them, but also because the other person didn’t know how to pilot the deck or didn’t get lucky enough to hit what they needed from Griftah.
Then you think VS was giving it too much credit.
Yes, I do.
I don’t consider myself some super high end player and I found the deck way easier to play than I expected going in.
I’ve piloted way harder decks.
So if we agree I’m not some high end high skill player, and I thought the deck wasn’t too hard, I can only come to the conclusion that it was being given too much credit.
Like on a scale of 1-10 of how hard the deck was to pilot in terms of all decks I’ve played, I’d give it a 7.5 - 8.
To put that in perspective, I’d give Mozaki Mage a 6-7.
That was an EXCEPTIONALLY high skill deck.
Either you are better than you think you are, the best plays for these decks are invisible to you, or some combination of both.
Well we already know that isn’t true. I was pointing out to you on Mozaki Mage before how fast one could OTK from personal experience and you had to play for yourself to match what I was doing and see that it was true.
How about a 2nd option:
You haven’t played some of the harder pilot decks that I consider harder.
Did you ever play Dead Mans Hand Warrior back in the day? Probably the hardest deck to pilot. Even Trump couldn’t pilot it and he was considered one of the better players back in the day.
I think they didn’t really care to nerf that deck in particular, they just nerfed pupil because it was a clear outlier and dealt with multiple problems in a single shot, both current and future. I don’t believe they nerfed it because of Sonya rogue specifically tbh.
There’s the possibility you were not playing as well as you could and you ignored the best plays at each time (which tends to happen to all of us, since we all make the best plays we can think of). No offense intented ofc. I agree the deck was more telegraphed with enough practice than people gave it credit for, but the amount of complex decision making involved in the deck was objectively very high. I also was pretty much unable to play it because I play on mobile most often and mobile play is a huge handicap for that kind of deck.
This is a fair assessment, perhaps it wasn’t really nerfed but Tidepool was a good nerf because it hit other stuff like Insanity Warlock.
I guess to put it in perspective for me, if a deck pretty much requires you to run a deck tracker for it to be playable, it’s high skill cap deck.
You didn’t need to run a tracker for Mozaki to be good.
You pretty much need to run a tracker for Sonya Rogue to be good.
You absolutely need a tracker to even pilot Dead Man’s Hand Warrior.
But if you run a tracker, the decks are significantly easier to play than without one. Like if you play on mobile without a tracker and you played Sonya Rogue, you better have some good memorization skills.
I think it dealt with multiple problems and destroyed a nearly perfect design that should have been protected at all costs. I don’t consider any nerf to Sonya Rogue acceptable.
I did. But I didn’t watch Trump pilot it, or if I did then I don’t remember.
I’ll agree that it was a challenging deck. I remember making misplays and getting frustrated with myself. I don’t think it was as challenging as Mozaki though.
I greatly prefer data over personal feels here. Dead Man Warrior is too old to have data on. I think the best way to calculate skill is a math problem using VS data, not personal piloting experience.
Well…
The argument Schyla made looks convincing enough for me. He atleast played the deck or otherwise would not have a way to give this insights.
Also VS has some history of exagerrating regarding those decks.
Not necessarilly lying but making it look like a far bigger deal than it is because their own need for an history for the report.