The podcast is pretty short this week, mainly because there’s isn’t a whole lot to talk about. This is the first impressions podcast post balance patch. The summary is what you’d expect. Sludge warlock is Tier 1. It has only ONE bad matchup where it doesn’t have a positive win rate, and that;s control warrior (the renethal 40 card build with duplicates and odyn, not the draw your whole deck like a druid version). Plague DK is the only other tier 1 deck, and it beats every other deck that isn’t warlock. Yes, plague DK is now tier 1. Not just because it counters reno warrior, but because it literally wins against every class that isn’t warlock.
The final class is of course Brann warrior, of which the renethal 40 card variant is superior. However, it’s currently sitting at tier 4 because the plague DK matchup is oppressive (Zacho quoted it as 30-70 in favor of the DK0. And plague DK is everywhere on ladder. BUT there is a caveit. If Plague DK was not controlling control warriors win rate and suddenly got nuked to oblivion control warrior would be Tier S. There is no other deck in the format capable of beating a brann on curve into double battlecries, or one with enough late game to punch through control warriors armor. Every other class has been nerfed to the point that warrior beats everything that isn’t plague DK.
Every other class is statistically irrelevant. Druid is dead… its nuked to the moon. Priest is competitively worthless. Rogue is competiively worthless. Paladin is a much worse version of sludge lock that loses to sludge lock, so there’s no reason to play it (it beats bad decks). Mage is dead, shaman is irrelevant (cause plague DK eats it alive), naga demon hunter is… actually playable but hard loses to warrior (like 25-75), so it’s really not playable, hunter is the same as naga DH (and nobody cares about it).
Every deck that isn’t arrior, warlock, or warrior had its viability nuked from orbit, so this is our meta for at minimum 4-5 weeks. They discussed the next patch coming our way will be a content patch, not a balance patch. S So the earliest we can expect a balance patch is toward the end of the month, and since the new expansion rolls out in march there’s a very high chance they just don’t do any balance patch at all until the new year rolls over.
I’m afraid Blizzard will just nerf things until there’s nothing left. It’s to the point where I can’t tell what would actually rise up if Warrior and Sludges are nerfed.
Like, I guess Aggro Paladin would rise up again by default…
It’s a 3 class meta because sludge is tier S, warrior is tier S, and plague DK beats warrior (and beats remo warrior heavily) while going 50:50 ish against lock.
Plague DK requires the meta to be exactly like this in order to be anything above tier 2. There are lots of decks that can beat it. Even blood DK doesn’t struggle against it, but blood DK is unplayable because of lock and warrior. The deck lives and dies based on what is meta exactly because it DOESN’T “beat everything.”
Plague DK is just benefitting from a meta that crowded out everything that beats it. The deck itself isn’t a powerhouse. It never has been.
Nerfs are just cycling in new stupid overpowered things because Blizzard lost sight of good card design a long, long time ago, so it’s really just a rotation of what uninteractive thing kills you.
Do you want it to be Sif? Odyn? Sludges? Windfury bursts from a 1/1? Naga spam? Brann battlecries? Plagues? Nature OTKs? Infinite random discounted cards?
If your answer is “none of them,” well, that’s hearthstone’s design problem. None of the decks feel good to play against to be common matchups. You are just choosing the frustrating thing.
I know I recently made a thread but I’ll point again to Rainbow DK as a ray of hope. Same for Excavate Rogue minus Velarok, or Elemental Shaman, or Highlander payoffs that aren’t Reno. Blizzard definitely isn’t creatively bankrupt yet, but fun is oppressed by the intense centralization of power into these single cards or small packages you mentioned.
I always say, if you play the tavern brawl after the new expac release, where you use their premade decks, that’s the meta the devs wanted. And, honestly, it’s usually pretty enjoyable.
It’s just that it’s a whole different ballgame once the players get involved.
It’s not really rock-paper-scissors when you only have 3 viable classes. More like boulder-paper-chainsaw-fluff. I’m finding myself having to play plague DK (which I really don’t like) to get quests requiring me to win games done. I loathe Slime-lock’s design and refuse to play such a disgusting and busted deck, and every time I try to play Reno warrior the game decides I need more DKs in my life.
Same tbh. I just hit Diamond 10 last night (with Rainbow DK, huzzah!) and my opponents were overwhelmingly Sludge Warlock and Plague DK. I haven’t seen a single Warrior yet in February - I strongly suspect that people don’t want to auto-lose to the easiest deck in the game right now that’s also very popular. VS lags gameplay, as ever.
I think that we’re already in a two-class meta, effectively. If Warrior breaks even with Sludgelock and loses hard to Plague DK, while Sludgelock forces everything else out, there’s basically no reason to play Warrior currently.
I think that in general it’s becoming sludge lock vs control Odyn warrior with renathal so that it loses to plagues less.
If plague were to disappear, it’d be all Brann warriors as a tier S deck too, which would be very bad, but yeah, warriors are essentially forcing plague DK to be highly used because there’s no point trying to play anything else against them.
I am probably just not playing standard anymore until smth happens because it is utterly unplayable to me. Control warrior is a long and boring deck to play that basically plays itself. Sludge warlock is a bit more skill intesive but it depends on drawing the right pieces and I just don’t enjoy it (and playing against it is miserable). I won’t even talk about plague DK, since I think everyone knows what I think about it. A Standard where plague dk is a 1/3 of my games is a Standard I refuse to play.
Might give twist a try or smth, since BGs is not very appealing to me rn.
No smeet, you’re wrong. Plague DK’s matchup spread is tier 1 into the rest of the field now too. It’s not JUST warrior it beats. It goes even to slightly favored or better into pretty much everything. A big part of the reason for that is because it’s one of the few decks that WASN’T nerfed. The rest of the field has been getting gutted left right and center, but DK has been quietly plugging along all this time doing its thing. The azure rat ressurecting reska is an extremely powerful thing. Helya on curve is an extremely powerful thing. Plague chip damage is more relevant now than ever. The deck is not weak anymore. Not when the rest of the field has been neutered to the extent it has. Plague DK exhibits green matchups nearly across the board. It’s a testament to what happens when you nerf everything that does something powerful.
I don’t get how Sludgelock is some unbeatable matchup for Plagues. If the DK is smart, he can hold off on waiting until after the Sludges are placed at the bottom of the deck before dropping Helya or a bunch of Plagues, and mess with his combos.
Velarok Nerf was totally unnecessary those dev team and actually %90 of the players at reddit doesn’t know a thing about meta. Reddit users suggested the nerf and they did it.
Rogue excavate deck was not strong to begin with. it was just getting free pass because the its counter decks were getting supressed by other decks. Now those counter decks removes the rogue from meta.
Previous velarok was exhausting the targets resources and were increasing the survivability of the rogue. now it just gets a card and dies without posing an actual threat to opponent.
Individual player experiences from one day playing the game are far too small a sample size to base anything on. I played 8 games this morning at diamond 5. 4 of them were control warrior. Three were the renethal 40 card list, one was the draw heavy armor build. The other 4 decks were two plague DK’s, one sludge lock, and a meme ramp druid list running location, whomper, and Therazane. The poor druid conceded in a hell of a hurry when my reska stole all his fatties. I went 5 wins 3 losses playing plague DK. Now I’m bored and done for the day. i did my dailies. I’ll play some other games for now. This meta is total yuck.
Reddit and this forum should 100% be completely ignored. the vast majority of users here and there have no clue what they are talking about. And for quite a while now the devs have been just doing whatever the community whines about.
Azerite snake: Gutted
Dew Process: Gutted
ANY aggro deck whatsoever anywhere: Gutted
Excavate Rogue: Gutted
Reno shaman: let’s also gut it even though no one was complaining about it, why not
They have been designing absolutely horrible and unfun gameplay experiences anyway. I miss the Barrens - Alterac Valley year. The game was just vastly more fun back then.
If anyone here is making comments without actually listening to the podcast, I HIGHLY recommend you listen to the podcast. It’s REALLY good this week. The analysis Zacho gave on the meta and the nerfs we’ve had over the course of the expansion are pretty solid and spot on. You can argue about a lot of things with the way they analyze data on individual decks, but the overall big picture meta analysis of what we’re currently seeing is pretty damn accurate.
5 days tbf. And individual experiences are valid insofar as deckbuilding and deck choices matter. If I have the miraculous fortune of never seeing Warrior, I can breeze to Legend with oddball decks.
My personal experience is that climbing is way easier in the morning and for some reason there are more aggro decks like Paladin, Treant Druid, and even Totem Shaman, even up in Diamond. Been that way for months. The sweaty decks don’t come out until classes and workdays are over.
