Wild feedback - Time Warp nerf - very poor decision

Multiplayer Discussion
1

I’m someone who played Hearthstone Wild for hours.
Now I don’t play Hearthstone at all, because I uninstalled the game
immediately when I discovered this literally awful update.

tldr: many other cards could be nerfed and aren’t,
the point of Wild gameplay is to be wild,
and the Time Warp nerf itself makes 0 sense and is bad writing.

Just take a second to understand my experience and feedback. My hope
is that the developers see this. Would also appreciate
feedback as to where on the forums this testimony is more likely
to be seen and considered.

OK - I only played Hearthstone for Wild. I enjoyed the over the top
strategies and gameplay. I had a few decks making the most of this
experience, one of them being a mage deck, using the Time Warp. The
Time Warp was fun because it was over the top and dominating,
like plenty other strategies that have not been nerfed. Then it
was destroyed for seemingly no reason.

If you’re going to nerf Time Warp on the premise that it is
overpowered and gamebreaking, then you should nerf
“…my claws that catch” out of existence, along with all murlocs,
and all mechs for that matter, since they are all obscenely OP.
You should remove the warrior card that allows armor equipped in
a turn to become attack points. You should completely remove the
entire demon hunter class, as it is hilariously overpowered and
has a multitude of OP cards. You should limit revives in the
priest class to a certain number of revives. You should COMPLETELY
disable ALL combos in the assassin class, as they are game-breaking.
List goes on and on. Destroy all of Wild while you’re at it,
where the point is to be, uh, wild.

But it’s not only a dumb double-standard. It objectively makes
0 sense to impose an arbitrary 1-use limit on Time Warp.
If you can successfully repeat your quest, then you should be able
to repeat the spell again. When you get the spell again, and you
cast it, it doesn’t apply another turn. It’s just bad writing and
makes no sense. Why not remove the spell and quest line altogether
at that point? Also, the Time Warp only became OP when Blizzard
introduced the card that could regurgitate all spells cast in a game
that weren’t originally in the deck. This was…Blizzard’s choice
to add such a card. They didn’t have to add this card, and Time Warp
shouldn’t be penalized just because it was abused in the context of
a new addition. The same could be said of Rewind, another new card which impacted Time Warp.

I’m sure we could all actually go on for a while about why the Time
Warp nerf was such a poor decision, but the basic summary is,
plenty other cards are OP and have not been nerfed, the point of Wild
IS to be wild, and the Time Warp nerf itself is sloppy, bad writing,
and makes no sense.

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2

Is this a poem, why is it written like this?

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3

I was just trying to write my thoughts out in an organized way lmao for easy reading purposes.

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4

“You have been crit by a wall of text for X damage.”

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5

Shudder is far from the best card in Reno Shaman. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good, but the deck could exist without it.

Murloc decks aren’t remotely viable in Wild. I suppose you could argue for another nerf to the Scargill-Clownfish package, but Shaman decks don’t seem to be running that much anymore either.

They did that by banning Mechwarper and then nerfing it to 4. There haven’t been any serious results from mech decks since.

They did when they nerfed it to 9, which effectively killed Even Warrior. Yeah, you can play it in Odd Warrior, but no one actually is cause the deck is awful.

There isn’t a single good DH deck in all of Wild. Outside of the two weeks or so that Blindeye Sharpshooter had 5 health, DH hasn’t had a deck above T3 since Outland. They also just nerfed a key card (Gatekeeper) in Outcast DH, the only tiered DH deck.

Don’t get me wrong, Big Priest type decks are annoying, but I’ve barely seen them since the Shadow Essence nerf.

All combo cards? Seems a bit severe.

Why not? Cards are evaluated in the context they exist in. Kobold Illusionist was a funny meme when it came out, until Sketchy, Snowfall, etc made it broken. Holy Wrath was completely impossible to make consistent for years but became a relevant Wild deck a few months ago. Cards get better, and sometimes that means they become too good and have to be nerfed.

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6

This is the only part of your epic that I read, and I
gotta’ say:
No one had any problem with Wild not being “Wild” when it was Secret mage, and no one had any problem when it was Tempo Mage.
Time Warp has been one of the most hated decks since it’s creation, and I for one, won’t miss it.

Really hope they give mage a boost in Wild for a different deck.

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“If I can’t have fun, no one else should be able to either!” Just say this and save yourself some time.

8

I knew this, because even though I don’t play Wild I knew that people who did play Wild would encounter this deck. But somehow the typical forum complainers get out the torches and the pitchforks for any deck that is popular. According to their bizarro logic, any deck that is popular enough to have many players choose it is an indicator that such a deck is the enemy their own of fun. Jealous pathetic haters, if you ask me.

They didn’t, because statistically it isn’t. I get that, because it’s fun, you might think it’s powerful. It’s natural for fun to create a bias that makes players want to ignore evidence that the fun deck that they think is powerful, actually isn’t all that powerful. But any time a data website has done a winrate report, Quest Mage was solidly Tier 4, underperforming meme tier junk.

And yet the 4th most popular deck in the format. Why? Because it was fun.

Two wrongs do not make a right. I’m 100% in agreement that the nerf was unfair, but unfairly nerfing other people’s fun won’t restore any of what you’ve lost. I get that you’re processing loss but those were dark thoughts.

I support your decision and I hope that you and the other Waygate Mages stick to it and leave an impact that Blizzard notices in their metrics. This policy of listening to the haters and giving them what they want will never satisfy the haters, they will be eternally salty no matter what Blizzard does. Nerfs should be on the basis of excessive winrate only. And they’re probably never going to learn unless Blizzard can someday hear the cries of actual Hearthstone players from underneath the cacophony that the haters make on Reddit and X.

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I would point out that
Time Warp was popular because it was all Mage had left in Wild
that could reliably hit legend. Everything else already got nerfed.
Less about fun, more about the sheer #of concedes the deck got facing it.
I hope Team sees fit to replace the deck with something truly competitive that interacts with the opponent more.

10

They
are
called
p a r a g r a p h s.

Makes reading something much easier on the eye.

2 Likes
11

I dunno man feelin pretty good atm…

“I mean Im not sayin Ive been everywhere and done everything but a mans gotta be some kind of fool to think we’re all alone in this Universe”

12

I’m not a Wild player but stats say it was Tier 4, so no, not really.

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the point of wild is to allow a place for people to use any of the cards in the game, wild is just a name, if there are certain cards/combinations that break the game or are deemed to powerful they still need to be addressed, other wild decks/cards were also nerfed and they said they’re planning on maybe further changes in the future, time warp was a big one in that regard with and had an obvious fix so it makes sense they would go for that first

14

I hate to break it to you, but Blizzard has never cared about Wild’s balance and never will.

This nerf was a response to all the complaints from man-children about a format that was never intended to be balanced.

Still…

this wasn’t Quest Mage.

15

isn’t time warp a quest for mage?

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You come to these conclusions when you only look at the data and dont interpret it critically
and also you want to olympicly avoid the objective of the changes that they pointed out with great emphasis, player agency,
but i think they are still valid and i will answer you:

I think questmages limited and violated all gameplay agency rules,
to the point of representing an entry barrier to the format, from the very moment of building your deck,
because despite not being tier 1,
was so refined, that if you didn’t kill him in the early game, you easily fall into his web of icle blocks
a well-known problematic card of the past, and from there lock you out of the game
giving only the green light to advance to the top, to OTK’s (mine rogues, druid barnes) in turn 4 and hyper aggro decks,
because the only other way to face it, is to carryng a lot of disruptions and at the same time without losing too much tempo,
hence shudderwock shaman has made a place for himself, with his crazy murloc sinergy,
basically a kind of skill check deck taken to the extremes
to the point of being unpleasant even to those who main the class …
who is going to envy that…

And yet here we are
Dont locking yourself in that mind set…

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17

I think it was at least as popular as Secret mage because it won more.
Fact is, that mage hasn’t been super popular because everything it has is so weak by comparison.
Now a really crippled Secret deck is all that is left,
were I to hazard a guess.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad the deck was nerfed, but I hope that means Mage players can look forward to some reversions or buffs.

18

The players whose agency was violated were the Waygate Mage players. They enjoyed something and that choice is now removed from them. It was an injustice.

Now, if I want to get people on board with an injustice, how to do it? The tried and true method is to accuse the victim of the same crime. Want to promote racism against a group? Accuse them of being racist themselves. So because your brain acknowledges that the agency of Waygate Mage players has been violated, your brain wants to accuse them of violating the agency of the entire Wild playerbase. Which you did.

I don’t believe in your “gameplay agency rules.” The only balance rule I recognize is that decks that win too much can draw in players to play AS those decks even when they don’t like them, which is a nerf-worthy problem. I don’t recognize ANY form of frustration with what you play AGAINST as a valid balance consideration AT ALL. I value player agency and that means agency to decide what you play AS. You don’t have ANY right to control what your opponent plays, that’s their agency and not yours.

All you’re trying to do here is rationalize a complete corrupt politicization of the patch system.

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19

I consider this a despicable position. I’m not a Wild player, it’s not really my fight, but from every indication this nerf looks completely unjustifiable.

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Based on what? You just said you aren’t a wild player, right?
So what would you know about how I feel regarding the deck?
The deck was glorified solitaire, imho.
It was the textbook definition of “uninteractive”, which has been the excuse given every single time team 5 could not justify nerfing mage based on play or win stats.
If you did not beat the deck fast enough, then you got to sit while the opponent played solo.
Yes, I’m glad it’s gone, and that isn’t a despicable thing.
It’s an honest assessment of a deck that felt miserable to lose to.
I am well convinced that You are determined to say something negative about my view, irrespective of what I write.
Let me tell you: You teaching me about what it’s like to play mage in Wild is the best laugh I have had all day:)

I could say the same of every mage deck that was nerfed when stats did not justify the decision.