Wild/Casual is just uninteractive now

Multiplayer Discussion
1

Look, I get it. When you play Hearthstone you wanna play to win. Even if you’re not going on ladder, you’re queueing up for Casual, and you want to get your W’s.

But come on. If you’re tryharding so much, why not go into actual ladder? Because right now when I think “oh, I’m gonna pick my silly little RNG mage deck, it’s probably not gonna win but let’s see how far I go!” I run into the following:

  • Death Knight: Mograine, usually accompanied by Zola, Brann, or both. Love being put on an unstoppable clock.
  • Demon Hunter: Jace, Jace, in your face. Even if the original castings didn’t go face, the recastings will.
  • Druid: Either linecracker, jade idol + dew process, or both. Why yes, I love overdrawing four cards per turn while my opponent summons a larger and larger man while hiding behind over a thousand armor. Even better when they just finish the linecracker setup and then just AFK, since they can get more experience and can’t lose. Guff’s totally a balanced card, though. Twenty mana doesn’t mean anything at this point.
  • Hunter: I used to run into a LOT of APM Hunters with the questline, but honestly, not as much anymore. They’ve probably migrated to the other classes.
  • Mage: Similarly, I used to run into a lot of spell damage or mech mages. Now, on a good day, I get Arcane BolTK combos.
  • Paladin: Honestly, I don’t run into many Paladins anymore. Most of the ones I see are running strategies that revolve around the board, so… good for them.
  • Priest: Everybody calls it ‘big priest’, or ‘APM priest’, or ‘rez priest’, but it’s just Cheat Priest. Either get your big dudes into play obscenely early, or play your infinite spells, or create infinite barriers. If I ever run into boar priest, I just concede immediately.
  • Rogue: Everybody’s seen the youtube videos. I’ve ran into a guy that pulled a 38 attack knife out of nowhere. I’ve ran into a guy that pulled a Counterfeit Blade combo on turn 4. I’ve ran into a guy that dropped four 8/8’s on turn 3.
  • Shaman: SCREW Shaman. Nine out of ten times I queue up against Shaman, it’s Shudderwock Shaman. The only difference is the flavors. Are they gonna fill my deck with overload? Are they gonna make all my cards cost twenty mana? Are they gonna summon, freeze, and eat my minions? Are they gonna make me deck out of a 40-card deck on turn 10? Are they gonna make me take twenty damage per card I draw? The best games are the ones where they take their time BMing while a two-minute battlecry animation deals three damage to me per cycle. At least with Murloc Shaman I can interact with the board.
  • Warlock: Similar to APM Hunter, Curse Warlock has fallen out of fashion, but it HAUNTED me for ages. But while that deck’s gone to the wayside, Tamsin and her Phylactery are having plenty of fun.
  • Warrior: Lor’Themar’s having his kicks here, thanks to Vanndar and/or Brann. It’s like Druid’s larger and larger men, except without the mana cheat.

Seriously? If the only ways around this are “pack all the tech cards”, “if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em”, or “just win faster lol”, then that’s not fun gameplay. I don’t want to have to play hyper-aggro just for a chance to win before they pull off their OTK. I don’t want to have to toss out the cards I like just for specific cards that only work in specific situations that might not even work - if I even draw them in time. And I don’t want to play those kinds of decks. Are they winning games? Sure! But if I wanted to spend my time cheesing easy wins, I’d go smurf in Valorant.

Sure, with RNG mage, it usually is a BS win that I pull out of my butt. But at least I played the right cards in the right situation to find that win, instead of playing Solitare with a deck I found online.

I hate having to dig for Theotar or Polymorph spells. I hate losing to a setup that’s literally impossible for me to prevent. I hate dreading every single game I start with a Shaman, praying that once, just once, that it’s a murloc shaman or a deathrattle shaman or even a totem shaman instead of another stupid Shudderwock shaman.

Please. Let me have fun again.

Seriously. It’s called “Casual”, not “Tryhard.” Go to ladder if you want to pull your Fun Interactive Gameplay Combo. Let me and the other plebs bump our action figures together.

2 Likes
2

A lot of these decks are not really playable anymore in ranked, so that is part of it. Then if it is a playable deck, some people like to playtest before going ranked (playtesting in ranked is smarter though unless you’re in high legend and don’t want to lose the ranks), then the other thing is questing with incomplete decks and now this is probably most of your games, it’s what most people use casuals for and most people don’t like taking incomplete decks into ranked (again it’s smarter to just play ranked if you haven’t reached diamond 5 yet, because you can only reach diamond 5 by spamming games).

Don’t play casual though, it is not worth the reduction in cards, you have to be a serious whale and already have the cards to be throwing away the like 40% extra cards you would have gotten by playing ranked, diamond 5 each month is what like 28 rares, 20 packs, 4 epics + 50% modifier to exp gains on track. I get about 6000g (would probably be like 1500 less if I played casual) per each expansion so it is not really enough to even play meme decks for fun.

3

It’s probably unplayable in ladder

This is also probably unplayable in ladder

mech mage is bad in standard, I can’t see it being better in wild ladder

What I am trying to say is that most of these decks are probably good for ladder up to platinum/diamond; maybe you are seeing people upset about real ladder decks that are unbeatable if you are just playing for fun.

I bet your RNG mage exists online somewhere :joy: I see it many many times and it is usually not so good, so I get why you are probably here.

Are you by any chance playing the uldum quest + darkmoon chtun + renathal? I see it often and I don’t understand if you manage to assemble chtun or even complete the quest reliably; cutting chtun would already improve the deck a lot imo, cutting the quest would be the next step.
It doesn’t become a ladder deck with this 2 modifications, but it is probably more consistent.

The problem is that if I let you get value from your random stuff instead of trying to win, I’ll eventually lose, which turns your deck in the “fun interactive gameplay combo” you are criticizing.

Make your deck more suitable for the most common offenders (usually aggro decks) and concede against decks you don’t like to face (for me it’s priest no matter what). You can try to tech against some decks as well, but I only suggest you to use generally good tech cards, like dirty rat or theotar; specific tech cards are useless most of the times (you still need to draw them).

I usually say the opposite: “don’t play ladder, it is not worth the extra epic and extra card pack. just have fun instead with what you like and not what the meta dictates you to play”.

Anyone can reach gold without selling their souls to the game, but when you spend your time to try to rank up to diamond/legend for the extra resources that you will never use (let’s be honest, how impactful is an extra epic per month, when someone only plays netdecks anyways?)

4

You may happen to like the cards, but they don’t seem to work very well.

RNG mage… not sure what your list looks like, but it doesnt’ seem like it’s very effective in the modern HS world.

As far as casual is concerned, you have an internal MMR that is used to put you in matches… My advice is to concede often and early to drop your MMR so you see more beatable meme decks.

5

I think the extra epic is quite crucial, yet still not the most important part of it. Actually the 28 rares and 16 packs you get are very likely to net you some cards that will hit nerfs and that adds up to a lot of dust.

Because I have 20,000 dust worth of duplicate cards its really hard to measure the value of that because I’m unlikely to hit that button, but actually every time there are a lot of cards being nerfed I am usually hitting 1000 dust back, I am losing about 4000 dust each time one of my decks gets hit with nerfs, so if you are treating it in such a way of this equals one playable card, that equals this, but the game is really hard to assess that way. I have probably juiced out this 20k worth of extra duplicates already for at least 30% in value over the time I’ve been playing.

Then there is the other factor, the closer you get to completing one deck it often means you can use some of those cards in a secondary deck so owning 4 decks in hearthstone can often only cost twice of what owning one deck costs and that is where people underestimate the value of the extra packs they are getting. For instance if you have two neutral legendaries that fit across two decks and an epic then that already makes that second deck 3.6k dust cheaper. I currently don’t own any top meta decks in wild or standard, but I am only like 8k dust from owning every useful card in classic which I already have so I can soon start investing into newer legendaries again, but my rares deficit from my half year break makes it pretty unfeasible right now. I have a personal rule that I just outright don’t craft rares and commons.

1 Like
6

If you like playing ladder it’s a good method, but if someone wants to play “bad decks”, forcing themselves to rank up just for some extra dust isn’t worth it (I experienced this and I came to this conclusion)

7

Why don’t you just play the bad deck until platinum? That way you still get something like 9-12 packs and 16-20 rares for free each expansion. I am assuming you are f2p and if you are every bit of dust helps you achieve a more epic dense deck and with that you get to enjoy more complex key words on your cards so it should be more fun.

If you lose a lot and have star bonus then it is not matching you in gold against other gold players, you would still actually play against bronze. If you pump out enough games you can be purely bronze quality and still achieve a gold rank, the math is kind of weird, but with the streak bonus you don’t need a 50% winrate to climb, you can actually climb with something like 45% and if you streak at the right times and lose a bunch at the rank floor then you can even have a lower than 45% to climb.

8

Because sometimes the bad deck is really bad, and seeing always a tier 1 deck is a guaranteed loss (true especially in wild).

I usually play the bad deck in ladder only when my MMR is very low (like x3 or x5 stars); when I had x7 x9 ladder was unplayable with the decks I wanted to play

9

Like I am trying to explain to you, stars and MMR and completely different, stars is based off the rank you achieved last season, so if you reach diamond 5 you are set with enough star bonus to reach diamond 10, you lose a star every like 5 rank floors, but that doesn’t lose you MMR, so if your stars are low it just means that you are nearly a rank just a little bit lower than what you achieved last season, I believe that in my case it ignores MMR when I hit diamond 10 and tries to matchmake you with other diamond 6,7,8… players according to how far you’ve climbed, which actually makes that super easy for me, because it means I am no longer playing against legend players and low diamond players are not very good quality a lot of the time.

If you got to platinum 10 last season then you got to gold 10 and started playing a really bad deck after a while you’d be facing people who are bronze, yet you would still be gold ten, it would technically make the gold 10-5 climb almost impossible not to achieve if you played enough games, the only thing with this kind of tanking strategy is that every time you hit gold 5 it’d match you against actual gold quality players and you’d have to prove your worth again to get back to plat 10 for example with no star bonus, just in order to achieve the same star bonus as before, which actually helped you to climb above what you should be with decks that shouldn’t be able to get there.

10

Platinum, exactly.
What I am saying is similar, I skip the climb to diamond/legend because it isn’t worth the rewards.
Going to platinum without even trying is possible, but going to diamond 5 without paying attention at the meta and by playing a bad deck is almost impossible (otherwise everyone would be diamond 5).

For me an extra pack and an extra epic isn’t worth the climb to diamond, I prefer to have fun.
At the month reset with 7x 9x stars I already couldn’t play bad decks at bronze for the whole month, since the game matched me against people who cares about climbing

1 Like
11

It’s not about whether or not the deck is “meta” or not. It’s about the fact that it’s just unfun to play against. I don’t care about winrate. I could have a winrate of 10% and I’d be fine with that, as long as the matches were fun to play. It’s about the ebb and flow of tempo, it’s about jockeying for board control, it’s about fighting to win.

When I go up against combo decks, there’s nothing. It’s just an uphill battle with a binary condition: Can I win before they get their combo off? And because my playstyle is more control-oriented, the answer is ‘no’.

Survival of the Fittest Druid is a fun deck to play against. Oh no, they got big dudes! I better be able to get some decent minions, or get some spells to deal with their big threats. Sure, they may have gotten it out on turn 6 or earlier, but at least there’s time for me to react and adjust.

Token Death Knight is fun to play against. Oh no, they have a never-ending swarm! I better be able to find tools to thin out the horde, or get some dudes to do that thinning for me.

What am I supposed to do against Jade Druid that’s making me draw five cards a turn while they summon three larger and larger men every turn with no chance of fatigue? Against Shudderwock Shaman who summons, freezes, and eats my minions from deck and hand while making everything cost 10 more? Against Curse Warlock who makes me mill and take damage every turn?

At least with Jackpot Rogue, there’s still the aspect of randomness. They’re just as likely to get Drakefire Amulet as they are to get Sunwell. And they still have to play around what they get! Meanwhile someone else queues Druid, shoves their deck into a paper shredder until they get 20 mana and a handful of cards, and then suddenly gain 1280 armor out of nowhere.

Wasn’t everybody complaining about how Sire Denathrius made games trivial because you could drop him out of nowhere and get a swingy turn? Wasn’t everybody complaining about Miracle Rogue dropping massive blades and ghosts? It’s all the same issue - being unable to do anything to stop your opponent from pulling off some janky combo.

The issue isn’t that I need tech cards. It’s that there’s so many things that I’d have to tech against that by the time I can get to my actual deckbuilding, there’s hardly any space left for stuff I want to play.

And even then, there’s no guarantee I’d actually kill their combo.

Let me play Hearthstone, dang it. I’m tired of being on the other side of the table while some drooling Druid or sleepy Shaman plays solitare.

Everybody says if you don’t want to tryhard, then play Casual instead of Ladder. Here I am. And here they are.

3 Likes
12

I understand how you feel. This meta and the game are in a bad place right now.

13

Live with it. Wild is like a Classic Mode with all expansions available.

14

You’re far better off just conceding to crafting up and playing these favoured archetypes because they keep getting fed synergistic pieces as they try appeal to wild players with the newer packs, we have seen that pattern with every expansion recently.

I think control gameplay is the most binary of any archetype, it’s not the combo player who feels like the game is binary because he or she has choices to play combo pieces out of combo and they can play with alternative win conditions if they like, it’s not really the aggro player because the game has gotten to the point where holding back any resources is rarely benefitial because they have so much hand refill, so they are mostly best praying that A the control player doesn’t have the board wipe or B that they draw their hand refill so playing like a scared player will usually give the control player too many turns to take board.

15

I understand you, i was main shaman until the shudderwock card came out, i felt bad winning with such a broken combo and little interaction… Ando i become a paladin… i like to beat my opponents on equal terms…

16

A lot of people are avoiding ladder right now because the meta is just patch waiting room. Basically every deck mentioned in the OP is unplayable on ladder so people are taking them into casual to have some fun while they wait for fixes.

17

I personally don’t know how I feel about Shudderwocks existance, it is one of the few decks that has it’s unique flavour so much to the point where I contemplate crafting it. It should probably be a tiny bit harder to pull off, but I am sick of games ending in turn 4/5, the other obvious choice is the reno priest. All in all I’m not entirely sure where my crafts will go.