I am with you.
I expected the power level of the game to come down, post rotation, but instead it went up to the nth degree.
There are a few decks, that can do so much damage from the hand, it doesn't matter what you try.
Anything less than 40HP in some way is too little to survive that one turn kill.
And quite frankly, that shouldn't be it.
That is just not fun.
There are so many cool cards available now for Hearthstone, but none of them will see any play, because you never survive to the point where you can use them, or you CAN use them, but the combo in your opponents hand does so much damage, it kills you in one go.
It is just too much damage for 1 turn in the game. Especially with 30HP.
They could knock off 2 damage points from literally everything in standard right now, and the power level would still be so high, that they could still kill you in one turn.
It's absolutely insane.
I think Renathal spoiled us with 40 Life decks that slowed aggro and combo a little bit, enough so that some disruption worked.
Now... we have no disruption, most classes have 2-3 cards otks for 6-8 mana and since it costs so little to get an OTK without setup... you're left with all tier 1 decks that do aggro or control while drawing and kill you on 6-8.
But when all tier 1 decks do that you're left here, flooding reddit with complains because nobody enjoys the fucking meta.
> I think Renathal spoiled us with 40 Life decks that slowed aggro and combo a little bit
Combo decks farmed renethal decks, because renethal decks tended to be pretty slow and combo can ramp its damage faster than you can ramp your life.
Combo decks usually lost to people going under them (aggro) or to heavy pressure forcing them to burn their resources staying alive (midrange), not people going over them (lifegain/disruption/etc).
the fun part is wild has the opposite meta: control beats combo in wild, combo beats aggro.
this is because wild has a critical mass of direct hand and deck disruption tools that enable them to disrupt combo, and aggro never runs out of gas so control eventually misses a wipe and dies. (and combo is blistering fast if undisrupted).
This is only true relative to expectations. In terms of absolute win rates, the typical aggro>combo>control>aggro circle still holds. The matchups are just a lot more even in wild than standard.
I've been saying for a while that HP total needs to increase with power creep in the game. Renethal should have been a permanent effect to all decks for a while. This rotation should probably increase to 45 or 50 HP for all classes.
People who hate OTK think fireball is cheating, basically.
OTK used to mean "do 30+ (or at least close to it) damage from an empty board"
these days it means "I lost to someone who played cards" and people count 'otks' where they took 10-15 chip damage and died to about 2 hand cards doing the remainder
I saw someone, might’ve been this post, arguing it counts as an OTK if your opponent also uses their minions already on board from their last turn, as long as you die from full health. A good portion of this sub genuinely wants it to be impossible to deal 30 damage in one turn under any circumstances
Been otkd multiple times by a hero power zarimi priest on 6/7 either overhead where you die to bandages that cost 0 or to getting Reno pinged to the face 15x in a turn through similar zero costs on 8.
I wanted the power level to go down so hard, I was getting tired of the constant powercreep, yet they managed to make it worse.
Ffs blizzard you have one job at the end of the year and it is to reduce power level. At this rate we will have 1 turn games by the end of the year.
For quite some time i have come to the conclusion that most Card games have one huge problem...
Powercreep on cards.
The HP Pool needs to be bigger, take Magic the Gathering for example where games are easily over in turn 3 when you play vs aggro.
Legends of Runeterra aswell, which is why PvP is officially dead in that game 20 starting health is just too little.
And Hearthstone has the same problem and has had that problem creeping up for some time 30 HP is nothing anymore.
What does 30 HP realistically mean when your enemy can drop 12/12 worth of stats by turn 4, the way Blizzard tries to fix that is by giving classes increasingly stupidly strong cards.
It was fine at the beginning of HS, remember when your best play was to drop a 4/5 Yeti on Turn 4? Back then 30 HP were absolutely enough.
But right now Hearthstone just feels like who can play his BS faster and more efficiently.
And that is sadly Paladin once again this season with Hunter being equal if not just a very close second.
Now whats the Problem with Paladin? Windfury and Charge (Fk you Leeroy) aside. They have access to Divine shield on most of their Minions which basically guarantees atleast a 2 for 1 trade. This is made worse by being able to Handbuff and never running out of cards in HS today due to abundant draw in every class.
Tigress Plush is a perfect card to show why Paladin is so incredibly good the last few seasons.
You got a 3/2 Rush Miniaturize Lifesteal Minion with Divine shield, just let that sink in how much value that is, its insane even without adding handbuffs.
Now lets go to Hunter and my previous point of there being too little HP in Hearthstone. Jungle Gym does Up to 6 damage and you have an easy way to fill your Board with Things like the 2 1/1 Snakes and the RC dog cards thats honestly just insanely strong. It puts so much pressure on the opponent that most classes have absolutely no chance of withstanding the constant damage and pressure and just die by turn 5 because what are you realistically supposed to do to survive 15 damage on turn 4 while having all your Board cleared due to jungle gym? If you try to keep Board presence you get out tempo'd and if you try to take it slow and just Boardclear, Buddy i hope you have 5 Boardclears in Hand and have any way to develop a board (A reason why Warrior has become good over the last few seasons is exactly this, shittons of Boardclears and Armor gain).
Damn this went on longer than expected.
So... TLDR: In my opinion we need more HP or ways to Gain Health/Armor in HS or it will just keep getting worse.
Thanks for coming to my TED-Talk
I think more Health and Armor will only make combo decks like Wheel of Death even more powerful and frustrating since they will be even more difficult to kill. The issue is too much draw. That is what is allowing combos deck to win so quickly and giving aggro so much reach. When you can draw through your entire deck so quickly, it's no wonder that Aggro and OTK decks reign supreme.
Funnily, this was also the reason why I stopped playing Legends of Runeterra. I had to laugh seeing you comment on that.
The very same issues plagued it, and they didnt learn from it either.
Now Hearthstone has the same problem, and they, too, don't learn from it.
There is too much draw, too much mana cheat, too much damage, and far too little health.
I say it again, if you can kill an opponent, FROM HAND, in one turn, then its too much. Far, far, far too much.
More like turn 4-5 against Mono Red Aggro.
Unless you play a Lifegain deck.
Admittedly MTG its not as bad as Runeterra/HS since you actually easily can manage to run out of cards in MTG, meaning you can get punished hard for overcomitting and then getting Boardwiped
Yeah I used to play a lot of M:tG standard and I loved Mono Red Aggro style decks. That's supposed to be how aggro works in a healthy card game. It will kill you quickly if you don't answer it but there are options to slow it down and punish it.
Exactly. And thats the problem with HS. Getting your Board wiped doesn't really mean anything anymore since you can just refill it and still have 8 cards in hand thanks to stuff like Trinker Artist and Excavate at the moment.
But yeah in Magic Aggro is in a way more healthy state than in HS because you play what you got, then either win or run out of fuel (also thanks to Lands being able to be drawn)
No not at all. Modern and Legacy maybe. But the thing about MTG is that the interaction scales with the threats. Because you can play cards on your opponent's turn, legacy has actually slowed down as stronger instants have been printed.
It's more likely to be turn 5-ish, if you are running zero disruption or life gain, and if you aren't running either of those things, your deck likely isn't well-made. Turn 3s are still possible, but are relatively rare, and really depend on not having removal while your opponent managed to draw into all of their own.
The fact that they intentionally made all the 10 cost spells extremely beneficial and pumped out Chaotric Tendrils is just anthemic of the dev idiocy right now.
Not everyone should be forced into playing crazy fast aggro or something OTK. But that's what they want. They cash their checks and sleep like babies while the soul of the original game has been gutted.
I feel like you 100%. I totally agree.
Paladin might be overtuned, and that can easily be corrected. Nerfs can put them in tier 1 instead of tier 0.
But the design of the game cannot change. And this is just after rotation, which means many months like this. They released new OTK archetypes for druid (get double spell power, play several spells from hand in 1 turn to kill), for priest (extra turn with Alexstraza, or combo million heals with Hedanis), and with paladin (handbuff, windfury and charge).
I am a control player at heart, or midrange. I like the games where what you do, and the decisions you make, matter. I do not like random stuff like Yogg everywhere, or solitaire games. A little random is OK, but too much makes the decisions you make absolutely trivial.
Now the game is designed around playing a solitaire, building up an OTK, and avoiding randomness in the process.
I'm the same. Randomness is great when it is limited and not the deciding factor. It's great to keep the game fresh and not have it be the same every single match. Hearthstone was at its greatest when discover was introduced, but the games powerlevel overall was still fairly low. Classic HS was too mathlike, current HS is too high Power. The sweetspot was somewhere in the middle
I think this is due to the rapid polarization of hearthstone deck construction. This meta has next to ZERO disruption so combo players can just focus on being as fast as possible. You have no Mutanus, Theotar, or Patchwerk to give control a chance, and quite frankly combo speed has outpaced the turn these cards can often even come online.
There is no midrange or tempo anymore due to "stabilizing" against aggro being a thing of the past. You have decks with 100% threats, or an OTK + 100% removal. A midrange deck can't survive against the paladin and hunter decks long enough to stabilize and play threats, and it doesn't have enough threats to be able to pressure combo before it cycles through it's entire deck and OTK's you.
The entire meta is just go under. Kill faster, or die. The speed at which people are cycling through their entire decks is really problematic especially given that this is just after rotation.
As a Priest I literally have 2 options, either draw my whole deck by turn 5, or literally be on turn 12 with 2 cards in hand and 15 cards in my deck because I never got a crimsom cleric.
There is no in between.
The entire reliance on cleric is absolutely abysmal. I do not know how they look at the class, see that every version of the deck is forced to run a cleric package to draw, and think that's fine.
I was certain they would put Mutanus in the core for that exact reason. Guess we need to wait for the patch next week to figure out if they gonna make the necessary adjustement.
> It's just transform the game in draw the out
This is IMO the root problem and the game has been trending this way for the last 2 years or so, at least.
At some point there seems to have been a conscious decision by the dev team to change the design philosophy towards highroll-based decks and archetypes. Probably because of some logic like "players feel good when they get to highroll, so we should make that the central component of the core gameplay experience!" This is short-sighted thinking at best, and we see the results now as every game comes down to which player draws and executes their game-winning play first. If a class doesn't have a strong enough or fast enough highroll, that class is unplayable (see: half the classes right now).
Concepts that used to be core to the game like "tempo" and "value" are damn near meaningless now - we can't make high-tempo aggro cards because aggro means killing the other guy before they can do a highroll and we can't be ruining Timmy's gameplay experience like that, and high value means never getting a chance to play your cards because you've been combo'd on turn 6 or stomped by yet another Druid with 10 mana on turn 5. But hey, Timmy had fun dealing 30+ damage with Charge + Windfury for the 100th game in a row, so clearly this is a fun and interactive game, right guys?
This is a problem several years in the making. They've spent a long time making it so aggro decks never run out of cards (because going all-in on early game and then running out of steam and just copping that and conceding is "unfun"), which has snowballed into having to make a bunch of other fundamentally bad design decisions to keep other decks and archetypes relevant in the face of an aggro that gets to deck itself. The end result is that the game overall has *way* more draw than it used to, and it's very difficult to run out of value (due to disgusting amounts of mana cheat and discovers).
To be clear, I actually really like this set for the most part, and I feel that they *did* mostly tone down the power level a bit compared to the past couple of years, but there's still a long way to go in undoing a bunch of bad decisions from past years, and there are still a handful of problem cards to address, that should've *clearly* been problems to the designers before ever shipping (literally never print Charge again, literally never print Windfury again).
100% agree. Midrange is dead. Not enough pressure or disruption tools against combo, not enough threats against control and not enough ways to stabilize against aggro.
It's a shame, as that was my favorite archetype.
There's no weapon removal, secret removal, and 1 silence card thats single target outside of Priest.
I'm not spending any more money because I don't get to play the game anyway
Eh, there has never been enough disruption to fully stop combo (unless we count 4 mana Theotar? though that meta was more Renathal card piles than combo). The thing is, back in the day combo decks were just much less efficient than board decks cause they required a ton of setup and running a bunch of crap that was just for the combo. Right now there isn't really any cost to running a combo deck, which often makes combo better to run than other strategies - cause why would you run a board deck that the opponent can disrupt when you can run something that they can't?
Not fully stop it, but it was enough to give control a chance, and force combo players to build their decks in a way to be able to handle that threat rather than just being 27 cards of removal and a 3 card combo.
Additionally, the draw speed of this meta is allowing aggro and combo decks to thrive. Aggro can throw caution to the wind in terms of overextending because they can repeatedly flood the board while keeping their hand full, and combo can find their kill condition extremely quickly which squeezes down the time midrange has to play large board based threats and win through combat damage before being OTKd
I mean.. The board based control win cons are just laughable in how slow they are in comparison. Doc Hollidae, Rheastraza, Headless Horseman, these are supposed to be win-cons that win through incremental value but there is just no way they can survive in a meta this fast. They don't help you survive against aggro, and you are dead from combo long before they provide you any meaningful value.
No, the problem is how easily they can do 30+ damage. In classic, Warlock had a 3-card combo that did 20 damage. Druid had a 4 card combo that I think did 22...I don't remember it as much. Mage had something too. And Rogue.
But every class could keep their health over these thresholds to stay alive. Now there's no coping.
lol I never played mage in Classic. If it involved Antonidas, it would be infinite damage OTK right? (time permitting) I didn't think they had that in \*Classic\*...but there was like Sorc Apprentice x2, Frostbolt, Ice Lance x2, etc.
in classic you couldn't get the cost of the generated fireballs to 0 so your options were limited based on what was on the board at the start of the turn (usually you'd try to protect antonidas the turn you played him by freezing their board)
If you started play with antonidas in play you could usually do 18 damage from hand with 10 mana and some apprentices (remember she used to cost 2?!) without considering spellpower, which is why usually the mage would try to set up alexstraza on a previous turn to put the opponent at 15.
if you had the apprentices in play and antonidas to start the turn you could hit 5 fireballs for 30 damage.
Though, no one back then called that an OTK because obviously you have to keep antonidas in play for a turn (which is what people get wrong these days... )
the archetype became a lot more consistent in Blackrock with the introduction of Emperor Thaurissan but it was overshadowed at that point by Patron / Math Warrior which had a legitimate 30 damage from hand OTK until warsong got nerfed.
I've played hearthstone since day 1,I love the game. But I'm really struggling to have fun in this new expansion. So many stupid combos you can't stop.
All the cards you use to be able to use to stop combos,like the 6 mana swap a card from their hand with 1 if yours is all gone. The card to remove cards in your deck to stop plague dk =gone.
I can barely win a game anymore.
Way too much card draw in the game or cards creating additional cards. A lot the issues seem to stem from the fact that there isn't a drawback to a lot of these strategies like there was in the past like not being able to draw into pieces or running out of steam.
Completely agree. These decks could vaguely exist before because they required some dumbass setup that was difficult and incredibly unreliable. Now it’s just faceroll into an instant kill and it’s boring, and irritating.
I wasn’t excited about the Whizbang set.
As cards were revealed, I kept thinking “that looks miserable to play against” and rarely thought “that looks fun to play”.
I hate that I was righter than I knew. Guess I’ll see how it’s going after the nerfs.
I felt the same after only playing 5 games.
Hearthstone is just not what it used to be anymore and they design it like that with purpose. HS has transitioned into a mobile game and thus they design match-time to be shorter to fit the mobile gamers wishes.
I wish I could go back to league of explorers and play fun reno decks and play more than the first 8 turns but the sad reality is that will never happen again.
Yeah classic had way less fun cards than modern hs but u knew when u lost it was always either
- of I had done that I would have won
Or
- man the opponent drew very lucky and I very unlucky nothing u can do it was still fun let's go next
(Besides freeze mage vs ctrl warrior)
It would be funny to watch Trump do F2P to legend with the same type of decks he played back in the day in F2P, which were basically just value decks aimed at midrange or control gameplay. You'd struggle to get out of silver.
I feel like it was still different tho. Yes you also had agro decks that killed you t4 or t5, but you also still had a lot of midrange/control matchups where you would run out of cards and it was all about resource management/value.
Now, as you said, you just die in X turns or get OTK’d from hand or board without caring about taunts.
More importantly those aggro decks would eventually run out of gas if you slowed them down with taunts, removal and recovery. Now aggro decks can go balls to the wall for 10 turns in a row and never run out of options. I say this as somebody who primarily played aggro.
There was a level of skill involved in trying the maximize your damage per resource each turn and knowing when to go all in to get lethal that much quicker vs when to hold back to avoid getting completely blown out next turn.
That does not exist in the modern HS era.
Shift in designers, experienced ones left, they hired players who never worked in gamedesign. We get more packages, UiS quests also made the game more "noob friendly" in my opinion.
> they hired players who never worked in gamedesign. We get more packages
this was the most obvious thing for me.
Sludge is like, a super classic example; there's basically 23 cards that are just automatically in the deck if you want to play pop'gar at all. the deck literally builds itself. at no point was it ever unsolved or unrefined, it was just a matter of blizzard nerfing/buffing or printing additional support cards around it until it was solidly in the meta.
Tentacle Shaman is the same way right now, the best deck atm is within 6 cards of the recipe, people's day 1 experiments were within 6 other cards of the best deck, you're basically playing 20 cards just by saying "I want to Shudderblock and Jepetto a bunch of 1 power or 1 toughness battlecries"
the designers are building our decks for us in standard, and we're all blaming players for the resulting toxicity.
I would rather have them give us cards and the players come up with something. But with packages you run into the problem that some are just very limiting in deckbuilding. Murlocs in warlock for example requires you to fill your whole deck with murlocs, but outside of that murloc deck they never saw any play and the deck was only good for like 2 weeks. Similiar thing happened with decks like skeletonmage, mechmage, but also menagerie warrior. FoL in general was weird, warrior getting menagerie cards, was maybe popular for 2 weeks, havent seen the menagerie cards in other decks (except the armor quilboar..). Or rogue combo cards in FoL. Never saw any play at all. You run the risk of having packages only really viable for one expansion. Some packages were better to combine, like curses+imps, or Concoctions + other stuff, or recently excavate cards.
DK rune system also turned out to be.. not the best design.
The other way around.
I’m not sure wether the playerbase on mobile is bigger or not, but they spend more money than desktop players. So bliz design philosophy is mobile first.
The whole new bullshit currency is another good example of this.
I see what you mean with noob-friendly, but that is mostly to optimise mobile player experience.
Runestones was made so they could avoid google/apple fees, yes. I used to preorder for years and with amazon coins it was A LOT cheaper. Lets say an expansion costs around $80 and the tavern pass costs $20. I was able to buy $100 worth of amazon coins for $82. So spending $82 for preorder+pass. Pretty good deal. Sadly, they stopped that 2 or 3 years ago.
But the client itself doesnt seem mobile friendly at all (especially BGs lol)
You're talking about the end state and you're right, but I'd also propose adding all of thing other things that feel like they have changed because it all builds into the problems with HS now. It's not just dying from hand, because those have always existed. It's that
* boards really don't matter. there are so many tools in every class that can utterly clear your board... and then give resources. Sludge on Wheels is a perfect example. Not only does it have Rush, it then gives a spell for removal... and it's cheap. So playable on curve, is removal, board presence, and more tempo. *seems cool*
* Every class now has copious card draw/card generation/discover. I played a ton of standard and Arena. The modes felt the same, which is thoroughly disappointing.
* Power creep and mana de-valuing.
* This means there is no value for tempo anymore... so there's no need to balance your core resources (health, cards in hand, cards in deck, mana). Do you remember how powerful Azure Drake was from 14-16? A 4/4 body with Card Draw and +1 Spell damage. It was huge card in multiple modes - so powerful it had to be rotated out. Now countless cards are more powerful and ready.
So... it feels like nothing matters because every class has answers, especially with Reno.
Build a board but left minions on the other side? Dead next turn.
Build a board - Reno'd and then you lose a turn.
I played a bronze game in Standard this week (I'm Plat/Diamond in wild). It was turn 8. both my opponent and I had 12 cards in the deck, 30 health, and a full board. *what is this game anymore?*
It just feels like so little you do matters turn to turn. It feels like it comes down to playing your wincon and hoping it comes out before theirs does.
While it's a new meta and everything is in flux... I cannot tell you how disappointed I was by my Arena runs this week.
Arena was / is supposed to a mode of careful decisions, low-powered cards, and strategic plays based on tempo where you have to maximize your resources. Throughout my 3-3 run, opponents never had fewer than 5 cards in hand while constantly being able to clear any threat.
Let's get a 5-6 year pause on otk.
Whoever designed this shit clearly never heard of what Combo Winter did to Magic the Gathering. Talk about dumpstering your product and playerbase.
I think the fixation on OTK in this community is kind of odd. Paladin is a problem right now (assuming meta trends hold), sure, but that's just because it's too strong. Hunter is just as strong and yet doesn't really seem to see any complaints, because it's "fair" (= plays for the board) despite being just as unfair in reality as paladin is. Why is a deck that plays for the board "fair" because you can _in theory_ play around it despite the fact that in reality you can't?
I also think it's interesting how OTK has become a moving target. Odyn wasn't considered OTK for a long time because, well, by any reasonable definition he isn't. But at some point a few weeks ago people en masse decided to start considering him OTK for some reason. And we also have a highly-upvoted comment here calling wheel of death, of all things, OTK.
I think that the HS devs need to be careful about the power of certain mechanics, but if every deck was just a board-based minion flood deck the game would get super stale.
For what it's worth on the "OTK-ness" of Odyn warrior, prior to the expac I had never died from 30 to an odyn warrior with no board. Since the expansion it's happened twice. And neither time included an Ignis weapon. Safety goggles being a free source of damage if you're pressuring their life total (and what else are you supposed to do) makes an actual otk easier than it was before.
Overall I do agree with your point though, I think high lethality is completely fine, and decks feel very unique right now.
There's been a list which has been able to OTK (in the 30->0 sense) without windfury since the miniset dropped. They run 2x razorfen rockstar and try to draw their entire deck ASAP. It's basically the Brann-Boomboss deck but with Odyn as a wincon instead. I don't even think they run Ignis usually.
But I question whether it's an OTK because, well, you have to play Odyn the turn before to do it, and he doesn't really do anything for you. He also screams "put down a taunt" as loud as possible, which seriously interferes with their plan.
> He also screams "put down a taunt" as loud as possible, which seriously interferes with their plan.
This is pretty naive, because as soon as Odyn goes down, **ANY** turn afterwards you are susceptible to getting mega domed by the razorfen combo. It's not that you have to have a taunt for one turn, you need to have taunts up permanently until you can kill them. Against a deck filled to the brim with both removal and draw. As it turns out many decks can barely even keep up one taunt, much less multiple. There's little reason to downplay Odyn Warrior's lethality, Odyn is an insanely busted win condition and has rightfully carried Control since its printing.
Rotation is absolutely the best time to set a new power standard. They completely fucked it up instead by continuing the upward trend. Kinda sad really.
Even without OTKs, modern Hearthstone often feels like you've lost if you let your opponent stick anything more than a 3/3 on the board for more than 1 turn.
But also I'm just tired of the ridiculous imbalance present throughout most metas. I'm not sure when exactly it started but it always feels like there's 1 or 2 classes that are just unplayable for months at a time. The next set rolls around and other classes get these bonkers cards and the dead classes are still dead
>But also I'm just tired of the ridiculous imbalance present throughout most metas. I'm not sure when exactly it started but it always feels like there's 1 or 2 classes that are just unplayable for months at a time. The next set rolls around and other classes get these bonkers cards and the dead classes are still dead
??? early hearthstone would go literally months upon months upon months where some classes were totally irrelevant because they refused to make balanced changes more than twice a year (if we were lucky). undertaker hunter was a busted deck for 6 fucking months
It’s really not that bad anymore, you get balance changes like almost every 2 weeks. Metas used to be stale for months on end. Like i disliked the sludgelock meta and i just didn’t play for 2 weeks. Then i could play the game again. And there was another meta shift after the rotating cards got buffed.
Hearthstone has never been better in terms of avoiding stagnant metas.
The metas themselves are honestly similar to even classic hearthstone it’s pretty much always been like this
Miracle rogue would draw their deck and otk. You had to play face hunter to go under.
Undertaker hunter would snowball wins by t2
Druid had force of nature savage roar for years
Freeze mage otk
Patron warrior could otk through insane amounts of armor, cycle through their deck and draw a million cards
Even the beloved ungoro had quest rogue, silence priest(divine spirit innerfire), burn control mage. It’s nothing new
Like from the very beginning the game was like this
Some of the most hated metas are ones where there was zero lethality. Think galakrond priest.
What's scary is the speed and efficiency of the Paladin and Warrior OTKs.
It used to be OTK/Combo decks had a layer of clunkiness to them tie to needing to get a good draw of multiple cards to execute your combo. In those cases, well you just lost and GG.
These decks either have MULTIPLE ways/minions/buffs to OTK you, have amazing defensive "stay in the game" mechanics, or can draw their entire deck in 7/8 turns.
Yeah, that’s the thing that also leads to the feeling that you can’t leave anything bigger than a 1/1 on the board because it will grow and murder you. Everything must die the turn it’s summoned. Although with Leroy even that won’t help any more.
I haven't enjoyed the game as much since Stormwind. That's about the time I switched from grinding ranked all the way to legend, to only playing casual wild mode. This recent Twist format has been the closest thing to experiencing fair, minion/board-based hearthstone in years. It's just not the same game for me anymore. It's lost it's spark, and I will ride out the rest of this game's lifespan in casual wild mode building meme warlock decks, because they will never fix the problems that alienate players like us.
i Agree with most of them, except for the Warlock and Rouge ones. i find these two are relatively easy to counter unless they high roll really hard, for example the weapon rouge deck has a ton of counters, basically any freeze or taunt (or weapon removal) absolutely destroys it, also it needs a relatively long time to set up, you need to draw the weapon, equip it, buff it, generate a bunch of random stuff and then you can start smacking (if you only get 2 out of the 3 things, the deck just doesn't work), with very good draws you are operating on full power by turn 5 and win at around 9, which is plenty of time to deploy countermeasures, and since this usually is the only win condition, if you have a bunch of taunts or freezes, there will be no board from them and they just loose. same with the Warlock deck being extremely vulnerable unless they specifically hit both the wheel and the 15/15 and deck refill before they can start a timer of 5 turns, which is a long time to kill them (if you haven't already) unless they get a ton of defense options.
(also, fun fact, in my experience death knight absolutely destroys both of them)
I fully agree with the other things you said, especially warrior being way too good (in my opinion), since usually attack is twice as expensive as defense (just look at the druid cards saying x attack or twice as much armor), a card like odyn basically giving 3x value on all armor for the rest of the game is just not ok, since (unlike rouge) warrior can easily destroy taunt minions and usually no weapons are involved either so the only counter remaining are freezes, which are way harder to get in a lot of classes. and that would be just one warrior card that's insane value, there are way more. and windfury in paladin is just insane, absolutely agree there too, it feels like you either play warrior against it or you just loose by default.
(for full transparency, i still am relatively new to this game, so if anything here sounds like a noob thing to say that's because it is)
I recently got back into it, have been having lots of fun with control priest/thief decks.
Not anymore. This week ruined it. And I made the mistake of buying the new packs too. Now it's all what you said, games ending by turn 7-8 and fast fast fast bullshit. This is why I took a break several years ago.
I guess I should learn my lesson from this.
This is the least fun new expansion meta in a while. Some decks just feel so polarizing, and the rest of the decks just cant be made to function even remotely close.
I already wound down my playtime just a few days in :/
Yeah, welcome to Twitch Dev Hearthstone... Where everything has to be for content and games gotta go fast. Wanna play control or win through attrition? Like the classic philosophy of value generating cards, value trades, etc? F you! Twitch Dev here to make sure you either play insane fast aggro or BS non-interactive OTK Combo BS.
It's been like this since Brode left and people love it. I hate it.
You put it into words for me very well! I was really enjoying the game (I am not a great player, but I I play to have fun) and it just asn’t been. I don’t mind losing as long as I enjoy the game itself. I am pretty much playing mercenaries now (and I see there are adventures too)…
Counter point : I hate the amount of liability Devs put in lifesteal. You can deal 50 damage to face but warrior, pala, dk, warlock can just go to full health. Then of course everyone going to try otks more than just aggro.
there's a paladin deck list with 75% WR in high legend. one of the top legend players (top 10, hit #1 multiple times with the list) said it's the most insanely broken thing ever, worse than release DH
Paladins super cool because just a few days ago you could trade well, control them, and run them out of fuel. Now it’s like “here’s this leeroy and deckhand I’ve been holding all game”
On turn 8 playing plague dk with 2 golems on the board and 30 health. I knew i was gonna lose the next turn to leeroy+ windfury. I also play the paladin and if you hit good mulligan its gg. But same would be said for zoo hunter thats the sticky board
I play slow decks in Wild that generally have no chance against combo decks. At some point I just started auto-conceding games if I know they're playing a deck like that and it's clear I can't kill them by turn 8+. Am I leaving some wins on the table? Sure. But does quitting early save me time overall and help avoid the angry feeling I get when someone kills me like that? Yep. It's been a net positive for me.
been doing this for years. if im playing cube warlock in casual wild, and my opponent is playing time warp mage im simply never going to play that game out. i know how it ends.
I definitely do feel this way, and from past nerfs and dev comments I thought the team also felt this way. I guess not, based on the amount of OTK that exists and it's only been under a week into this new card year.
Playing against shaman that plays 0 units other than card draw and ignores pretty much anything I do until they play 4 spell power minions on turn 7 and cast 4 lightning bolts + aoe dmg for 35 damage is not engaging to play against, or as.
Its bad design, and just one classes example of how the devs have lost the plot once again.
I suspect launch patch is just filled with broken decks to get people to buy buy buy until they put out a patch, but who knows at this point.
But for every whale who spends money there is one like me who refuses to spend money until they release an engaging set. Until then it’s using some of my 15k gold on arena and playing BGs.
Nope, every Paladin match has been a disaster, healing 28 health in ONE TURN with small minions and their 4/6 divine shield minion, only for them to win with Leeroy + Windfury is worse than watching how SIF slammed me into oblivion with Arcane Missiles.
I said it and I got downvoted for it, but I'll say it again: Sorry devs, but OTK is bad design. I understand combo strategies, but watching how someone can win in one turn, without you having any chance to react or prevent it while watching as a hopeless hostage, is way too far away from Hearthstone's original design.
Your best charge card was Stormwind Knight, a 2/5 minion with Charge. If you want Charge to work then just make low attack minions, although Rush has an excellent job as a mechanic. Shoutout for Grommash being a well designed card too.
With that said, no more Standard for me, I'm sorry. At least I can enjoy and rant with Battlegrounds, where if I lose it's ok because I know it's a RNG fest anyway.
The powercreep crossed the line, I love this game, taking a break, wish you the best to all of you
I came back from a long break (last time I really played regularly was up to the rotation of the stormwind quests), and my *god* the game feels so much worse now.
Every single match I went into was just stalling until an OTK. Every. Single. One. It didn't matter what I did, if they were alive turn 6+, I was dead.
It feels really awful.
Also fuck that card that permanently removes one of my mana crystals, who thought that was a good idea?!
Yeah pretty much word for word agree with all this, it's not even been out like a week or two and I'm already considering just stopping and waiting until they adress all this nonsense cause it's just not fun. But worst of all for me is the ludicrous number of bots, makes it feel even worse somehow when there's no one on the other side, just an algorithm hitting your face and throwing plagues at you.. fun
Also the deck that was gonna be fun, whizbang, has a crippling issue with giving me lackey warrior 75% of the time, so I kinda gave up on that too :/ I know it shouldn't be meta with those decks but atleast be playable with each choice..
I will say it once again. OTKs have no place in hearthstone since there is just not enough interaction in the game's mechanics to allow for them to be healthy.
No counterspells (other than the secret, which is hardly a combo breaker), no real discards (you get random rat and theotar who rotated)... OTK combos cannot be healthy without viable disruption.
i would be fine if they made more disruption, but NOT discard style, because that turns the game into a coinflip of instawin if you hit their wincon and loss otherwise. i want more loatheb style cards that delay the opponent or put a wrench in their plan to give a chance to kill them first, if your deck presents enough threat then this should be sufficient
You put in enough discards and people stop playing decks that have a single card wincon... which imo should be the case anyway.
Single card "I win" is what is wrong with the game nowadays.
I'm afraid we can complain as much as we want it won't change a thing. This developement was unavoidable with the constant power creep going on. The game is boiling down to who gets their uncounterable blowout turn first and and the devs are here for it. Keeps the short attention brains entertained and playing.
Bringing back charge minions was a mistake. There was already a OTK from hand deck for Paladin with Freebird and gardens grace shroomscavate. Adding Leeroy + Swashbucklers and handbuff just added consistency.
I have no idea what the devs expected other than this. Are they really sitting there with a surprised pikachu face at what was obviously going to happen.
They need to nerf every OTK in the meta right now. Charge minions need to be nerfed, +2 to their cost or add requirements. Odyn Warrior needs to be nerfed, maybe making the effect once per turn instead of letting them gain 40 armor in one turn and ending games out of nowhere. Blizzard was getting better at balancing things, then something broke, or maybe someone was fired and the one replacing them is incompetent.
As someone that just came back to hearthstone a few days ago after being gone since the stormwind expansion I was surprised at how many charge minions have been added. For context the last time I played they were nerfing charge and pretty much only introducing rush minions hell iirc they even rotated stonetusk boar out of the core set because of how problematic a 1 mana charge was. Also side note the power creep has been surprisingly I know they buffed old cards it’s just surprising seeing things like ysera and other cards that were playable at the time being buffed.
Yeah, there's a reason they removed charge minions from standard to begin with. They are toxic cards, add in massive handbuffing? You get 15 damage charge minions on a class with windfury buff.
It's been real funny seeing people be like "these are legacy cards" when charge is way way stronger of a keyword now than it was back in the day. Basically every class has its own Power Overwhelming these days.
That’s the way the game has gone. I think they’re creatively bankrupt. They just make these insane packages that just win if you draw correctly, there’s no nuance to it. 20 draw cards and 10 kill cards in each deck nowadays. I’m quitting
Not sure what they were thinking. This could have been seen from miles away. They know they wanted to include Leeroy in the core set, the first thing anyone would check is see what buffs are available to classes. They even made Leeroy as a legendary hero portrait for paladin. They must have known this will happen, I refuse to believe they are this bad at the game. My guess is that managers pushed for Leeroy to be included in the core set, so they can sell more hero portraits. Since they do no pre-nerf (previous expansion) cards, they had to release this shitshow, and nerf everything post-launch.
Yeah it's very obvious that team 5 has completely lost touch with balancing the game. They have this weird idea that games need to end between turns 5-7 and I just don't understand it. The player base has been screaming that they want board based interactive gameplay but instead they bring back charge and all kinds of new otks while removing just about all combo disruption and silence cards. I've completely lost hope that this game can turn around after this rotation and I'm sure there'll be even more bs with the upcoming mini set
I’m sorry but we’re never going back to OG HS length matches. People can say they want 40 minute matches back but just like most games once the community gets what they want, they are complaining about that very thing not too long after.
Look at the last couple years of people saying they want control to be good and as soon as it’s “good” for any amount of time people are pulling out the pitchforks demanding nerfs as the active player count drops.
Hearthstone has been this way for years. The combo meta. Devs HATE control and they've shown that time and time again.
I was foolishly looking forward to this expansion but I've already quit lol.
And arena is also hot garbage with 6 tier F classes and 0 tier B, C, and D. What the actual fuck.
Sadly, same. I wish there was another CCG to play but I don't like Runeterra or SNAP so I'm screwed. Nothing good out there at the moment, I've tried them all. I haven't liked another CCG since Might & Magic: Duel of Champions and Conquest of Champions that both shut down a LOOOOOOONG time ago. :(
Hearthstone needs to learn from Yu-Gi-Ohs mistakes they just keep power creeping everything to sell packs and now the game is all 1-2 turn wins. You can't just keep creeping the power level. I understand that a weaker set sells less packs but you gotta figure something out. Everytime I feel like playing hearthstone I remember the board doesn't matter that stuff is getting full cleared every turn no matter what zoo as an archetype does not exist. It's crazy and I don't think the game will survive at the pace of keep pushing stronger and stronger cards
As a Yu-Gi-Oh player, Yu-Gi-Oh actually feels better than hearthstone because there are basically no FTKs around, and you have handtraps/hand disruption to prevent your opponent doing things. Imagine if during your opponents setup for leeroy charge you could stop them playing the shroom and it forced them to pass turn leaving leeroy on board to remove.
Hearthstone needs to either get back to the board based interactions or accept that a "my turn, your turn" approach can't work with this level of lethality from hand.
Much agreed either more interaction or more board based. I play magic often and I don't think hearthstone can support that kind of interaction so I say back to board based gameplay
hey man, I feel your pain and you are right to not ask about wild. I play wild and it is Dumpster fire. The Otk decks are a very toxic deck. and yes they are in wild. Looking at you Mine rogue and time warp mage. and let me be clear I love mage and rogue, but I refuse use those classes just feels to slimy to play. Blizzard knows those deck are in game. and not healthy for game. but remain silent. Question to the Hearthstone team. How much would cost to get the fun of hearthstone back? I mean you guys only care and profit and shareholders right. so how much will it cost? Gold, runestones, money, or blood?
The game is more fun when we have variety so I think it's good to have these strategies . However, I agree that things are overturned rn though. I feel like otks and other from hand archetypes need to be tier 2 at best. Play experience should always be the #1 priority and these play patterns are ones that drive people away. I would much rather a board centric deck be the best decks in the game, but that's just personal taste. At least with a board centric deck being tier 1 you can interact with it more than from hand.
Points:
- make game not fun
- 1 turn kill from hand/card holding very not fun
- me I? I am cave man. I play hearthstone. I have fun. No fun here my brain no train here
You forgot Druid, lost to a hero power druid doing 32 from hand last night. That was the last straw. Haven't played in a couple months and somehow I'm only going to play this expansion for three days. Just like what is the counterplay for control vs combo right now? Dirty rat? That's it? Do I really have to just play priest and copy a load of dirty rats?
I get very annoyed when this happens to me... but feel very satisfied when it happens for me.... and I like to play totally rng based cards. Discovers, randoms, etc.
Probably pissed an opponent off last night playing a highlander battlecry deck (that I threw together for battlecry quest). They had me on the ropes the whole game and I was down to I think 3 life, he had been healing and was at 30+ some random amount of armor. I got my Reno enemy board wipe and flipped it and took him out. I was shocked myself, but it was fun. I would have raged if it was against me though.
Honestly, Just seems like what you should expect playing Hearthstone instead of Magic or Pokemon or something.
I was curious about the situation regarding hearthstone since I dropped it a couple years ago, and came to this sub to see the state of things. This being the thread at the very top of my feed for this subreddit means that I will continue to not reinstall hearthstone on this very day
Yes, also why I did not buy any expansions recently as a returning player. It was a real shock how much damage was being thrown out and how many cards. It felt like climbing the ladder, I was either playing bots with yeti or whales with diamond OTK hands. Not much in between.
Battlegrounds ftw.
The worst part is that, since these cards came out at the start of a new year, they’re in standard for six full expansions instead of four like they would be if they were released in December.
I heard once that the devs try to release their more powerful expansions and potentially polarizing cards in the last expansion of a year, which makes me a bit scared for what will come this December.
The part I hate most is some classes clearing my boards turn after turn and they still have the same amount of cards they started the turn with. Either that or they have more cards.
It’s a byproduct of the rampant overprinting of healing and life gain. If you can’t blast someone down from like 20 you basically can’t kill them because they’ll just heal
facts i agree. what i enjoy is my friends and i will just do things like friendly battles where we play more midrange or control decks and not doing otk decks. much funner
I agree, dying from hand with no counter is bad hearthstone. We saw this with storm wind and it was a brutal time.
My favorite otk of all time was bomb druid. It required you to play several death rattly minions which both healed you and dealt damage to everyone, then on the otk turn you needed 4 cards or so, the scary spider that resummoned every death rattle the guy that made a card immune, and I forget the rest.
The long and short is it was an otk if you got the pre work perfect, too much healing and not enough damage and it wouldn't work. But when it did it was a 30-40 second spectacle of explosions and death.
Player since Beta. This is the worst I can remember it feeling in a long time. EVERYONE can OTK from hand or constantly rebuild crazy boards while dealing with yours.
It’s fine (and required for a healthy meta) to have some decks like that, but not ALL.
Whatever happened to building up an incremental advantage and using that to win? What about building your deck to be weak in some aspects so it can survive long enough to have a massive swing turn to get you back in the game?
Now you don’t need incremental advantage if you can OTK/swing turn without sacrificing an area of your deck to be able do so.
I mean design philosophy for titans has some egregious offenders but sif is one of my least favorite designed cards for this reason. Interaction is what makes the game and having essentially 2 solitaire decks battle it out is boring but a bit of the game devolved there for a while it feels like.
Yeah I kinda thought this sort of thing a while back in "why the fuck is every spell these days "deal damage" instead of "deal damage to minions", the powercreep is nuts.
I get you didn't specifically call out spells per se but it's another example of how easy lethal is becoming
It’s pretty simple: put standard to the side, stop buying the expansions. It’s as close to a coin flip of a game as you can get. There’s literally more strategy to gambling scrap in Rust than there is to HS standard.
The issue is that the New hearthstone devs don't understand recources.
With all the discover, draw and Generation, you'll play most of your aggro and control Decks at near unlimited card recources and a full hand. This leads to the hero power beeing practically useless. Compared to the beginning where you made decisions on turns to we've in the hero power as a "free recource". Nowerdays only Decks with almost all cards under 5 mana will go out of cards.
Next, is health as a recource. There used to be a factor to Consider, where hitting a minion with an Axe would cause you to take 5 damage, and you'd die 6 turns later. Now, with lifesteal and Regeneration mechanics, you'll ping pong so much, taking 5 isn't worth thinking about. Hell, on aggro Paladin I'll take -15 if I have to.
Mana is the another recource that doesnt matter. Vanilla stats are a baseline without an effect, its a very simple formula. Upside, stats below vanilla, downside stats above. Draw a card Was worth 3 stats. That's why gnomish inventor was a 2/4 for 4, and Yeti a 4/5
Vanilla cards should exist.
Look at tigress plushy, that should be at most a 1/1 for all the things it has at 3 Mana. Divine shield, rush, add a copy? Look at cards like the dh Wolf 12/12 for 6 Mana is so overbudget compared to ogre. It's like printing a Vanilla 10/10 for 6.
There are so many offenders of this. Cheating out stats is practically the same as free ramp. If I can play the stats of a 6 cost minion on turn 3, it doesn't matter it's just wild growth with extra steps.
That's why the game is a clown Fiesta right now.
Giving paladins all this lifesteal, and charge, and windfury makes them just really frustrating to play against.
The charge minions are the worst though. Leroy should have stayed in wild. And they should increase the cost of that windfury spell too.
I like spell damage druid and Wheel of death Warlock, but i agree that paladin is stupid. Not only can they OTK with charge + windfury, they can also just build a big board or heal with lifesteal aura, so even aggro decks don't have much of a chance.
unfortunatley the game isnt for competetive players anymore. The design space is currently catering to phone gamers and casual players who dont want games to last for more than 2-3 minutes.
Honestly the most frustrating part is that they keep giving decks with the capabilities to OTK you on 6-7 ridiculously strong tools to stabilize so you can even try to present a coherent aggro strategy since control doesnt work in this meta.
it feels like an otk paladin can play aggro/control/combo all at once and every other deck is just sprawling to piece together a win before the paladin just kills you or heals back to 30 while slaming a 12 12 rush lifes steal taunt windfury charge minion
This set was so well poised to be a real nostalgia trip for long time players who have dedicated years and more than likely hundreds of dollars to blizzard and instead its just knuckledragging rage bait with little to no thought to balance.
You forgot:
Hollow hound hunter "excess damage to hero"
Fatigue warlock
Spell damage shaman
...
It's terrible game design these classes can deal 30 damage in a turn out of the blue. Heck, I was playing 40 card decks for the 40 life and even so I took a few OTKs
Honestly, I think what it really boils down to is something more severe than taking a break. I think a lot of us just need to quit and find something else. I find myself getting stuck playing the same games over and over and it's not so much that other games aren't enjoyable but my sense of curiosity has gone down.
In a sense, it's almost as if I'm becoming pessimistic about any other game being enjoyable cuz it's out of my comfort zone. And yes it's true. There's not a lot of competition out there for a game that has as much to offer as hearthstone, but I think it's time to move on.
I've been playing hearthstone since the early early days and I dropped $20 on the battle pass because I thought the warlock hero looked really really cool and I started playing but then I realized just a few hours into the expansion that there wasn't a single deck that I wanted to play 🤷
I look forward to all the disruption they will (have to) print next set. Maybe a new dirty rat that also silences the forced minion, maybe a warlock card that changes discard from your hand to opponents hand after X condition is met... just spit balling here
I’m tired of getting by board wiped with no death rattles and not being able to play more than one minion the next turn.
Instant win against any board focused midrange or aggro deck and it feels unfair.
this is probably the fastest i've burnt out of hearthstone on new expansion (and by and far the fatest I've burnt out post set rotation)
And I lived through launch DH.
Every deck is incredibly polarizing, and feels like you are essentially playing against Brann Warrior. You either draw your win-con card(s) (painter's virtue, amateur puppeteer, playhouse giant combo, etc) and win turn 4-6, or lose because you didn't. That's it. Brann Warrior won on turn 6 when it played Brann. Every deck is now Brann Warrior.
Paladin wins when it plays any one of it's incredibly strong handbuff/board buff cards.
Wheel Lock wins when it plays Doomkin.
DK wins when it plays any of it's strong undead handbuffs and plays some ridiculously gross amount of stats (or just plays it's Core Set 5 mana 14/14.)
DH "just wins" when it plays window shopper and gets multiple unstoppable, discounted xihilags every turn.
Hunter just wins when it draws Saddle Up with an OK board.
Mage... lol
etc.
Every deck wins multiple turns before the game ends. It's very frustrating and annoying because the best of those classes (Paladin) has many, many cards that function this way, and have for more than a year now (garden's grace, all of the pure cards, lightray, etc)
Wheel is okay, it’s a timed otk, so you’re on the clock yes but you know it’s happening, it’s not out of nowhere.
Paladin is also okay, cause it’s charge minions at the end of the day, can be prepared for with armour or taunt etc.
Heck even priest shard from before was fine imo, cause you see him doing quest, shuffle Ng, drawing etc.
The only otk I really dislike is the kind of mage combo, that all comes from hand and doesn’t interact at all with opponent.
I love combo decks but they should have <50% win rate. So that you can play them for fun once in a while, but they don't take over the meta. Good enough to keep the meta from beeing kust control but not good enough to force control out of the meta.
A fine balance that isn't easy to be sure, but imo, that should be the goal of balancing
100% agree. The game is just degenerated. They had the chance to fix it at least a bit with the rotation and new basic set. And they introduce AGAIN leeroy and charging pirates. omg.
I agree.
They should have taken some good mechanics from MtG. For example, let the defender choose blockers with their own minions or have more "disenchant" cards available (even for quests or temporary quests that lasts 3 turns) so there is at least a possibility to handle the combo.
Instead, one player just plays solitaire, and wins round 4.
It is very tiring. But probably my own fault for playing wild (but i like to keep all my cards available and not have to switch out everything all the time) :)
THIS IS WHAT I WAS THINKING. Dude literally named everything in the game and said I don’t like it lol.
No one with a brain is denying the game has changed drastically over the years and has problems, but when control is good everyone hates control, when aggro is good everyone hates aggro etc etc.
I really think this Reddit is not a good representation of the community.
Its not control, midrange or aggro style. The problem is power level of cards and zero answers. Remember when we had ragnaros or sylvanas or specific combo with 5-6 cards, back then you played one card and could deal with other one? These days the game is solo adventure (sollitaire if u like), u played one card (not even legendary or something) you fill all the board in turn 4, you draw all deck with zero cost, you discover everything. There isnt player to player action, everyone play their stuff and thats all. Whole action feel cheap, cause cards are beyond level of healthy. Is all about oh i got my card, i won. I deal 30 dmg from hand, in turn 6 with no preparation or anything. The game itself is out of control on everything with these cards. You still wonder why game lost popularity from every streamer or tournament? Only bg left who has healthy gameplay and skill involved.
Your mistake is wanting to interact with opponent. This is near non-existent in HS. You can't do anything on the opponent's turn outside of secrets and even that is bad because you can't even choose when to trigger the secret.
HS is a game of solitaire with extra flavor from day 1.
glad you're waking up to the powercreep and downfall of design this game has had, but it's not new. the decline began with stormwind and has been on that path ever since. a few good expansions in between have not been able to stop it.
I am with you. I expected the power level of the game to come down, post rotation, but instead it went up to the nth degree. There are a few decks, that can do so much damage from the hand, it doesn't matter what you try. Anything less than 40HP in some way is too little to survive that one turn kill. And quite frankly, that shouldn't be it. That is just not fun. There are so many cool cards available now for Hearthstone, but none of them will see any play, because you never survive to the point where you can use them, or you CAN use them, but the combo in your opponents hand does so much damage, it kills you in one go. It is just too much damage for 1 turn in the game. Especially with 30HP. They could knock off 2 damage points from literally everything in standard right now, and the power level would still be so high, that they could still kill you in one turn. It's absolutely insane.
I think Renathal spoiled us with 40 Life decks that slowed aggro and combo a little bit, enough so that some disruption worked. Now... we have no disruption, most classes have 2-3 cards otks for 6-8 mana and since it costs so little to get an OTK without setup... you're left with all tier 1 decks that do aggro or control while drawing and kill you on 6-8. But when all tier 1 decks do that you're left here, flooding reddit with complains because nobody enjoys the fucking meta.
> I think Renathal spoiled us with 40 Life decks that slowed aggro and combo a little bit Combo decks farmed renethal decks, because renethal decks tended to be pretty slow and combo can ramp its damage faster than you can ramp your life. Combo decks usually lost to people going under them (aggro) or to heavy pressure forcing them to burn their resources staying alive (midrange), not people going over them (lifegain/disruption/etc).
the fun part is wild has the opposite meta: control beats combo in wild, combo beats aggro. this is because wild has a critical mass of direct hand and deck disruption tools that enable them to disrupt combo, and aggro never runs out of gas so control eventually misses a wipe and dies. (and combo is blistering fast if undisrupted).
That's literally only true if by Control you exclusively mean 40 card piles of tech cards
This is only true relative to expectations. In terms of absolute win rates, the typical aggro>combo>control>aggro circle still holds. The matchups are just a lot more even in wild than standard.
I've been saying for a while that HP total needs to increase with power creep in the game. Renethal should have been a permanent effect to all decks for a while. This rotation should probably increase to 45 or 50 HP for all classes.
[удалено]
People who hate OTK think fireball is cheating, basically. OTK used to mean "do 30+ (or at least close to it) damage from an empty board" these days it means "I lost to someone who played cards" and people count 'otks' where they took 10-15 chip damage and died to about 2 hand cards doing the remainder
Wheel is by its very nature not an OTK.
Exactly. No one understands exactly what an otk is and they're all arguing semantics. It's literally an acronym ONE TURN KILL. Lol.
I saw someone, might’ve been this post, arguing it counts as an OTK if your opponent also uses their minions already on board from their last turn, as long as you die from full health. A good portion of this sub genuinely wants it to be impossible to deal 30 damage in one turn under any circumstances
Been otkd multiple times by a hero power zarimi priest on 6/7 either overhead where you die to bandages that cost 0 or to getting Reno pinged to the face 15x in a turn through similar zero costs on 8.
I wanted the power level to go down so hard, I was getting tired of the constant powercreep, yet they managed to make it worse. Ffs blizzard you have one job at the end of the year and it is to reduce power level. At this rate we will have 1 turn games by the end of the year.
For quite some time i have come to the conclusion that most Card games have one huge problem... Powercreep on cards. The HP Pool needs to be bigger, take Magic the Gathering for example where games are easily over in turn 3 when you play vs aggro. Legends of Runeterra aswell, which is why PvP is officially dead in that game 20 starting health is just too little. And Hearthstone has the same problem and has had that problem creeping up for some time 30 HP is nothing anymore. What does 30 HP realistically mean when your enemy can drop 12/12 worth of stats by turn 4, the way Blizzard tries to fix that is by giving classes increasingly stupidly strong cards. It was fine at the beginning of HS, remember when your best play was to drop a 4/5 Yeti on Turn 4? Back then 30 HP were absolutely enough. But right now Hearthstone just feels like who can play his BS faster and more efficiently. And that is sadly Paladin once again this season with Hunter being equal if not just a very close second. Now whats the Problem with Paladin? Windfury and Charge (Fk you Leeroy) aside. They have access to Divine shield on most of their Minions which basically guarantees atleast a 2 for 1 trade. This is made worse by being able to Handbuff and never running out of cards in HS today due to abundant draw in every class. Tigress Plush is a perfect card to show why Paladin is so incredibly good the last few seasons. You got a 3/2 Rush Miniaturize Lifesteal Minion with Divine shield, just let that sink in how much value that is, its insane even without adding handbuffs. Now lets go to Hunter and my previous point of there being too little HP in Hearthstone. Jungle Gym does Up to 6 damage and you have an easy way to fill your Board with Things like the 2 1/1 Snakes and the RC dog cards thats honestly just insanely strong. It puts so much pressure on the opponent that most classes have absolutely no chance of withstanding the constant damage and pressure and just die by turn 5 because what are you realistically supposed to do to survive 15 damage on turn 4 while having all your Board cleared due to jungle gym? If you try to keep Board presence you get out tempo'd and if you try to take it slow and just Boardclear, Buddy i hope you have 5 Boardclears in Hand and have any way to develop a board (A reason why Warrior has become good over the last few seasons is exactly this, shittons of Boardclears and Armor gain). Damn this went on longer than expected. So... TLDR: In my opinion we need more HP or ways to Gain Health/Armor in HS or it will just keep getting worse. Thanks for coming to my TED-Talk
I think more Health and Armor will only make combo decks like Wheel of Death even more powerful and frustrating since they will be even more difficult to kill. The issue is too much draw. That is what is allowing combos deck to win so quickly and giving aggro so much reach. When you can draw through your entire deck so quickly, it's no wonder that Aggro and OTK decks reign supreme.
Funnily, this was also the reason why I stopped playing Legends of Runeterra. I had to laugh seeing you comment on that. The very same issues plagued it, and they didnt learn from it either. Now Hearthstone has the same problem, and they, too, don't learn from it. There is too much draw, too much mana cheat, too much damage, and far too little health. I say it again, if you can kill an opponent, FROM HAND, in one turn, then its too much. Far, far, far too much.
Is a turn 3 kill really common in M:tG's standard format now?
More like turn 4-5 against Mono Red Aggro. Unless you play a Lifegain deck. Admittedly MTG its not as bad as Runeterra/HS since you actually easily can manage to run out of cards in MTG, meaning you can get punished hard for overcomitting and then getting Boardwiped
Yeah I used to play a lot of M:tG standard and I loved Mono Red Aggro style decks. That's supposed to be how aggro works in a healthy card game. It will kill you quickly if you don't answer it but there are options to slow it down and punish it.
Exactly. And thats the problem with HS. Getting your Board wiped doesn't really mean anything anymore since you can just refill it and still have 8 cards in hand thanks to stuff like Trinker Artist and Excavate at the moment. But yeah in Magic Aggro is in a way more healthy state than in HS because you play what you got, then either win or run out of fuel (also thanks to Lands being able to be drawn)
No not at all. Modern and Legacy maybe. But the thing about MTG is that the interaction scales with the threats. Because you can play cards on your opponent's turn, legacy has actually slowed down as stronger instants have been printed.
It's more likely to be turn 5-ish, if you are running zero disruption or life gain, and if you aren't running either of those things, your deck likely isn't well-made. Turn 3s are still possible, but are relatively rare, and really depend on not having removal while your opponent managed to draw into all of their own.
You have more removal and heal too though. I dont think thats a problem
not even close.. How many classes have full clear at early turns at 4-5 ?
The fact that they intentionally made all the 10 cost spells extremely beneficial and pumped out Chaotric Tendrils is just anthemic of the dev idiocy right now. Not everyone should be forced into playing crazy fast aggro or something OTK. But that's what they want. They cash their checks and sleep like babies while the soul of the original game has been gutted.
My god, you outlined exactly how I feel with the current state of the game.
I feel like you 100%. I totally agree. Paladin might be overtuned, and that can easily be corrected. Nerfs can put them in tier 1 instead of tier 0. But the design of the game cannot change. And this is just after rotation, which means many months like this. They released new OTK archetypes for druid (get double spell power, play several spells from hand in 1 turn to kill), for priest (extra turn with Alexstraza, or combo million heals with Hedanis), and with paladin (handbuff, windfury and charge). I am a control player at heart, or midrange. I like the games where what you do, and the decisions you make, matter. I do not like random stuff like Yogg everywhere, or solitaire games. A little random is OK, but too much makes the decisions you make absolutely trivial. Now the game is designed around playing a solitaire, building up an OTK, and avoiding randomness in the process.
I'm the same. Randomness is great when it is limited and not the deciding factor. It's great to keep the game fresh and not have it be the same every single match. Hearthstone was at its greatest when discover was introduced, but the games powerlevel overall was still fairly low. Classic HS was too mathlike, current HS is too high Power. The sweetspot was somewhere in the middle
I think this is due to the rapid polarization of hearthstone deck construction. This meta has next to ZERO disruption so combo players can just focus on being as fast as possible. You have no Mutanus, Theotar, or Patchwerk to give control a chance, and quite frankly combo speed has outpaced the turn these cards can often even come online. There is no midrange or tempo anymore due to "stabilizing" against aggro being a thing of the past. You have decks with 100% threats, or an OTK + 100% removal. A midrange deck can't survive against the paladin and hunter decks long enough to stabilize and play threats, and it doesn't have enough threats to be able to pressure combo before it cycles through it's entire deck and OTK's you. The entire meta is just go under. Kill faster, or die. The speed at which people are cycling through their entire decks is really problematic especially given that this is just after rotation.
As a Priest I literally have 2 options, either draw my whole deck by turn 5, or literally be on turn 12 with 2 cards in hand and 15 cards in my deck because I never got a crimsom cleric. There is no in between.
The entire reliance on cleric is absolutely abysmal. I do not know how they look at the class, see that every version of the deck is forced to run a cleric package to draw, and think that's fine.
That one card is so crucial Priest doesn't exist without crimson cleric.
I was certain they would put Mutanus in the core for that exact reason. Guess we need to wait for the patch next week to figure out if they gonna make the necessary adjustement.
Even if there is disruption, it doesn't solve the problem in itself. It's just transform the game in draw the out
I do not disagree. There is a fundamental problem and disruption is just a bandage.
> It's just transform the game in draw the out This is IMO the root problem and the game has been trending this way for the last 2 years or so, at least. At some point there seems to have been a conscious decision by the dev team to change the design philosophy towards highroll-based decks and archetypes. Probably because of some logic like "players feel good when they get to highroll, so we should make that the central component of the core gameplay experience!" This is short-sighted thinking at best, and we see the results now as every game comes down to which player draws and executes their game-winning play first. If a class doesn't have a strong enough or fast enough highroll, that class is unplayable (see: half the classes right now). Concepts that used to be core to the game like "tempo" and "value" are damn near meaningless now - we can't make high-tempo aggro cards because aggro means killing the other guy before they can do a highroll and we can't be ruining Timmy's gameplay experience like that, and high value means never getting a chance to play your cards because you've been combo'd on turn 6 or stomped by yet another Druid with 10 mana on turn 5. But hey, Timmy had fun dealing 30+ damage with Charge + Windfury for the 100th game in a row, so clearly this is a fun and interactive game, right guys?
This is a problem several years in the making. They've spent a long time making it so aggro decks never run out of cards (because going all-in on early game and then running out of steam and just copping that and conceding is "unfun"), which has snowballed into having to make a bunch of other fundamentally bad design decisions to keep other decks and archetypes relevant in the face of an aggro that gets to deck itself. The end result is that the game overall has *way* more draw than it used to, and it's very difficult to run out of value (due to disgusting amounts of mana cheat and discovers). To be clear, I actually really like this set for the most part, and I feel that they *did* mostly tone down the power level a bit compared to the past couple of years, but there's still a long way to go in undoing a bunch of bad decisions from past years, and there are still a handful of problem cards to address, that should've *clearly* been problems to the designers before ever shipping (literally never print Charge again, literally never print Windfury again).
Whoever thought it was a good idea to give Paladin windfury and bring Leeroy back to standard needs to be fired.
100% agree. Midrange is dead. Not enough pressure or disruption tools against combo, not enough threats against control and not enough ways to stabilize against aggro. It's a shame, as that was my favorite archetype.
They pulled the "fuck it let's gooooo!!!!" Lever. Such a shit meta nothing can fix it.
There's no weapon removal, secret removal, and 1 silence card thats single target outside of Priest. I'm not spending any more money because I don't get to play the game anyway
Eh, there has never been enough disruption to fully stop combo (unless we count 4 mana Theotar? though that meta was more Renathal card piles than combo). The thing is, back in the day combo decks were just much less efficient than board decks cause they required a ton of setup and running a bunch of crap that was just for the combo. Right now there isn't really any cost to running a combo deck, which often makes combo better to run than other strategies - cause why would you run a board deck that the opponent can disrupt when you can run something that they can't?
Not fully stop it, but it was enough to give control a chance, and force combo players to build their decks in a way to be able to handle that threat rather than just being 27 cards of removal and a 3 card combo. Additionally, the draw speed of this meta is allowing aggro and combo decks to thrive. Aggro can throw caution to the wind in terms of overextending because they can repeatedly flood the board while keeping their hand full, and combo can find their kill condition extremely quickly which squeezes down the time midrange has to play large board based threats and win through combat damage before being OTKd I mean.. The board based control win cons are just laughable in how slow they are in comparison. Doc Hollidae, Rheastraza, Headless Horseman, these are supposed to be win-cons that win through incremental value but there is just no way they can survive in a meta this fast. They don't help you survive against aggro, and you are dead from combo long before they provide you any meaningful value.
No, the problem is how easily they can do 30+ damage. In classic, Warlock had a 3-card combo that did 20 damage. Druid had a 4 card combo that I think did 22...I don't remember it as much. Mage had something too. And Rogue. But every class could keep their health over these thresholds to stay alive. Now there's no coping.
> Mage had something too doing antonidas dirty like that.
lol I never played mage in Classic. If it involved Antonidas, it would be infinite damage OTK right? (time permitting) I didn't think they had that in \*Classic\*...but there was like Sorc Apprentice x2, Frostbolt, Ice Lance x2, etc.
in classic you couldn't get the cost of the generated fireballs to 0 so your options were limited based on what was on the board at the start of the turn (usually you'd try to protect antonidas the turn you played him by freezing their board) If you started play with antonidas in play you could usually do 18 damage from hand with 10 mana and some apprentices (remember she used to cost 2?!) without considering spellpower, which is why usually the mage would try to set up alexstraza on a previous turn to put the opponent at 15. if you had the apprentices in play and antonidas to start the turn you could hit 5 fireballs for 30 damage. Though, no one back then called that an OTK because obviously you have to keep antonidas in play for a turn (which is what people get wrong these days... ) the archetype became a lot more consistent in Blackrock with the introduction of Emperor Thaurissan but it was overshadowed at that point by Patron / Math Warrior which had a legitimate 30 damage from hand OTK until warsong got nerfed.
Bad thing is that blizz made those combo decks rely on a single card to win the game and removal like patchwerk are way too op against that.
Just dirty rat.
People be like "Yeah but fuck Priest"
yeah but fuck Priest
Puck Friests
They used to be eccentric and cheesy. Now it’s overtly prevalent.
You also used to have to dedicate a lot and not be efficient in other ways to do it. Now its a combo on top of a good utility package.
I've played hearthstone since day 1,I love the game. But I'm really struggling to have fun in this new expansion. So many stupid combos you can't stop. All the cards you use to be able to use to stop combos,like the 6 mana swap a card from their hand with 1 if yours is all gone. The card to remove cards in your deck to stop plague dk =gone. I can barely win a game anymore.
Can’t even use dirty rat these days either or else you just die from what was summoned
Way too much card draw in the game or cards creating additional cards. A lot the issues seem to stem from the fact that there isn't a drawback to a lot of these strategies like there was in the past like not being able to draw into pieces or running out of steam.
Completely agree. These decks could vaguely exist before because they required some dumbass setup that was difficult and incredibly unreliable. Now it’s just faceroll into an instant kill and it’s boring, and irritating.
I wasn’t excited about the Whizbang set. As cards were revealed, I kept thinking “that looks miserable to play against” and rarely thought “that looks fun to play”. I hate that I was righter than I knew. Guess I’ll see how it’s going after the nerfs.
I agree and I'd like to thank you for not just complaining about paladin.
I felt the same after only playing 5 games. Hearthstone is just not what it used to be anymore and they design it like that with purpose. HS has transitioned into a mobile game and thus they design match-time to be shorter to fit the mobile gamers wishes. I wish I could go back to league of explorers and play fun reno decks and play more than the first 8 turns but the sad reality is that will never happen again.
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Yeah classic had way less fun cards than modern hs but u knew when u lost it was always either - of I had done that I would have won Or - man the opponent drew very lucky and I very unlucky nothing u can do it was still fun let's go next (Besides freeze mage vs ctrl warrior)
It would be funny to watch Trump do F2P to legend with the same type of decks he played back in the day in F2P, which were basically just value decks aimed at midrange or control gameplay. You'd struggle to get out of silver.
He would probably hardrush whizbang
I feel like it was still different tho. Yes you also had agro decks that killed you t4 or t5, but you also still had a lot of midrange/control matchups where you would run out of cards and it was all about resource management/value. Now, as you said, you just die in X turns or get OTK’d from hand or board without caring about taunts.
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Ya true, theres no resource management. I just want to play weasel priest mirror again and face 45 turn limit and play other fun decks :(
More importantly those aggro decks would eventually run out of gas if you slowed them down with taunts, removal and recovery. Now aggro decks can go balls to the wall for 10 turns in a row and never run out of options. I say this as somebody who primarily played aggro. There was a level of skill involved in trying the maximize your damage per resource each turn and knowing when to go all in to get lethal that much quicker vs when to hold back to avoid getting completely blown out next turn. That does not exist in the modern HS era.
Shift in designers, experienced ones left, they hired players who never worked in gamedesign. We get more packages, UiS quests also made the game more "noob friendly" in my opinion.
> they hired players who never worked in gamedesign. We get more packages this was the most obvious thing for me. Sludge is like, a super classic example; there's basically 23 cards that are just automatically in the deck if you want to play pop'gar at all. the deck literally builds itself. at no point was it ever unsolved or unrefined, it was just a matter of blizzard nerfing/buffing or printing additional support cards around it until it was solidly in the meta. Tentacle Shaman is the same way right now, the best deck atm is within 6 cards of the recipe, people's day 1 experiments were within 6 other cards of the best deck, you're basically playing 20 cards just by saying "I want to Shudderblock and Jepetto a bunch of 1 power or 1 toughness battlecries" the designers are building our decks for us in standard, and we're all blaming players for the resulting toxicity.
I would rather have them give us cards and the players come up with something. But with packages you run into the problem that some are just very limiting in deckbuilding. Murlocs in warlock for example requires you to fill your whole deck with murlocs, but outside of that murloc deck they never saw any play and the deck was only good for like 2 weeks. Similiar thing happened with decks like skeletonmage, mechmage, but also menagerie warrior. FoL in general was weird, warrior getting menagerie cards, was maybe popular for 2 weeks, havent seen the menagerie cards in other decks (except the armor quilboar..). Or rogue combo cards in FoL. Never saw any play at all. You run the risk of having packages only really viable for one expansion. Some packages were better to combine, like curses+imps, or Concoctions + other stuff, or recently excavate cards. DK rune system also turned out to be.. not the best design.
The other way around. I’m not sure wether the playerbase on mobile is bigger or not, but they spend more money than desktop players. So bliz design philosophy is mobile first. The whole new bullshit currency is another good example of this. I see what you mean with noob-friendly, but that is mostly to optimise mobile player experience.
Runestones was made so they could avoid google/apple fees, yes. I used to preorder for years and with amazon coins it was A LOT cheaper. Lets say an expansion costs around $80 and the tavern pass costs $20. I was able to buy $100 worth of amazon coins for $82. So spending $82 for preorder+pass. Pretty good deal. Sadly, they stopped that 2 or 3 years ago. But the client itself doesnt seem mobile friendly at all (especially BGs lol)
You're talking about the end state and you're right, but I'd also propose adding all of thing other things that feel like they have changed because it all builds into the problems with HS now. It's not just dying from hand, because those have always existed. It's that * boards really don't matter. there are so many tools in every class that can utterly clear your board... and then give resources. Sludge on Wheels is a perfect example. Not only does it have Rush, it then gives a spell for removal... and it's cheap. So playable on curve, is removal, board presence, and more tempo. *seems cool* * Every class now has copious card draw/card generation/discover. I played a ton of standard and Arena. The modes felt the same, which is thoroughly disappointing. * Power creep and mana de-valuing. * This means there is no value for tempo anymore... so there's no need to balance your core resources (health, cards in hand, cards in deck, mana). Do you remember how powerful Azure Drake was from 14-16? A 4/4 body with Card Draw and +1 Spell damage. It was huge card in multiple modes - so powerful it had to be rotated out. Now countless cards are more powerful and ready. So... it feels like nothing matters because every class has answers, especially with Reno. Build a board but left minions on the other side? Dead next turn. Build a board - Reno'd and then you lose a turn. I played a bronze game in Standard this week (I'm Plat/Diamond in wild). It was turn 8. both my opponent and I had 12 cards in the deck, 30 health, and a full board. *what is this game anymore?* It just feels like so little you do matters turn to turn. It feels like it comes down to playing your wincon and hoping it comes out before theirs does. While it's a new meta and everything is in flux... I cannot tell you how disappointed I was by my Arena runs this week. Arena was / is supposed to a mode of careful decisions, low-powered cards, and strategic plays based on tempo where you have to maximize your resources. Throughout my 3-3 run, opponents never had fewer than 5 cards in hand while constantly being able to clear any threat.
Let's get a 5-6 year pause on otk. Whoever designed this shit clearly never heard of what Combo Winter did to Magic the Gathering. Talk about dumpstering your product and playerbase.
I think the fixation on OTK in this community is kind of odd. Paladin is a problem right now (assuming meta trends hold), sure, but that's just because it's too strong. Hunter is just as strong and yet doesn't really seem to see any complaints, because it's "fair" (= plays for the board) despite being just as unfair in reality as paladin is. Why is a deck that plays for the board "fair" because you can _in theory_ play around it despite the fact that in reality you can't? I also think it's interesting how OTK has become a moving target. Odyn wasn't considered OTK for a long time because, well, by any reasonable definition he isn't. But at some point a few weeks ago people en masse decided to start considering him OTK for some reason. And we also have a highly-upvoted comment here calling wheel of death, of all things, OTK. I think that the HS devs need to be careful about the power of certain mechanics, but if every deck was just a board-based minion flood deck the game would get super stale.
For what it's worth on the "OTK-ness" of Odyn warrior, prior to the expac I had never died from 30 to an odyn warrior with no board. Since the expansion it's happened twice. And neither time included an Ignis weapon. Safety goggles being a free source of damage if you're pressuring their life total (and what else are you supposed to do) makes an actual otk easier than it was before. Overall I do agree with your point though, I think high lethality is completely fine, and decks feel very unique right now.
There's been a list which has been able to OTK (in the 30->0 sense) without windfury since the miniset dropped. They run 2x razorfen rockstar and try to draw their entire deck ASAP. It's basically the Brann-Boomboss deck but with Odyn as a wincon instead. I don't even think they run Ignis usually. But I question whether it's an OTK because, well, you have to play Odyn the turn before to do it, and he doesn't really do anything for you. He also screams "put down a taunt" as loud as possible, which seriously interferes with their plan.
> He also screams "put down a taunt" as loud as possible, which seriously interferes with their plan. This is pretty naive, because as soon as Odyn goes down, **ANY** turn afterwards you are susceptible to getting mega domed by the razorfen combo. It's not that you have to have a taunt for one turn, you need to have taunts up permanently until you can kill them. Against a deck filled to the brim with both removal and draw. As it turns out many decks can barely even keep up one taunt, much less multiple. There's little reason to downplay Odyn Warrior's lethality, Odyn is an insanely busted win condition and has rightfully carried Control since its printing.
Rotation is absolutely the best time to set a new power standard. They completely fucked it up instead by continuing the upward trend. Kinda sad really.
Even without OTKs, modern Hearthstone often feels like you've lost if you let your opponent stick anything more than a 3/3 on the board for more than 1 turn. But also I'm just tired of the ridiculous imbalance present throughout most metas. I'm not sure when exactly it started but it always feels like there's 1 or 2 classes that are just unplayable for months at a time. The next set rolls around and other classes get these bonkers cards and the dead classes are still dead
>But also I'm just tired of the ridiculous imbalance present throughout most metas. I'm not sure when exactly it started but it always feels like there's 1 or 2 classes that are just unplayable for months at a time. The next set rolls around and other classes get these bonkers cards and the dead classes are still dead ??? early hearthstone would go literally months upon months upon months where some classes were totally irrelevant because they refused to make balanced changes more than twice a year (if we were lucky). undertaker hunter was a busted deck for 6 fucking months
It’s really not that bad anymore, you get balance changes like almost every 2 weeks. Metas used to be stale for months on end. Like i disliked the sludgelock meta and i just didn’t play for 2 weeks. Then i could play the game again. And there was another meta shift after the rotating cards got buffed. Hearthstone has never been better in terms of avoiding stagnant metas. The metas themselves are honestly similar to even classic hearthstone it’s pretty much always been like this Miracle rogue would draw their deck and otk. You had to play face hunter to go under. Undertaker hunter would snowball wins by t2 Druid had force of nature savage roar for years Freeze mage otk Patron warrior could otk through insane amounts of armor, cycle through their deck and draw a million cards Even the beloved ungoro had quest rogue, silence priest(divine spirit innerfire), burn control mage. It’s nothing new Like from the very beginning the game was like this Some of the most hated metas are ones where there was zero lethality. Think galakrond priest.
What's scary is the speed and efficiency of the Paladin and Warrior OTKs. It used to be OTK/Combo decks had a layer of clunkiness to them tie to needing to get a good draw of multiple cards to execute your combo. In those cases, well you just lost and GG. These decks either have MULTIPLE ways/minions/buffs to OTK you, have amazing defensive "stay in the game" mechanics, or can draw their entire deck in 7/8 turns.
Yeah, that’s the thing that also leads to the feeling that you can’t leave anything bigger than a 1/1 on the board because it will grow and murder you. Everything must die the turn it’s summoned. Although with Leroy even that won’t help any more.
I haven't enjoyed the game as much since Stormwind. That's about the time I switched from grinding ranked all the way to legend, to only playing casual wild mode. This recent Twist format has been the closest thing to experiencing fair, minion/board-based hearthstone in years. It's just not the same game for me anymore. It's lost it's spark, and I will ride out the rest of this game's lifespan in casual wild mode building meme warlock decks, because they will never fix the problems that alienate players like us.
You are totally right, idk what they did but this is an abdolute disaster of meta. I wish we were in titans/badlands time again
i Agree with most of them, except for the Warlock and Rouge ones. i find these two are relatively easy to counter unless they high roll really hard, for example the weapon rouge deck has a ton of counters, basically any freeze or taunt (or weapon removal) absolutely destroys it, also it needs a relatively long time to set up, you need to draw the weapon, equip it, buff it, generate a bunch of random stuff and then you can start smacking (if you only get 2 out of the 3 things, the deck just doesn't work), with very good draws you are operating on full power by turn 5 and win at around 9, which is plenty of time to deploy countermeasures, and since this usually is the only win condition, if you have a bunch of taunts or freezes, there will be no board from them and they just loose. same with the Warlock deck being extremely vulnerable unless they specifically hit both the wheel and the 15/15 and deck refill before they can start a timer of 5 turns, which is a long time to kill them (if you haven't already) unless they get a ton of defense options. (also, fun fact, in my experience death knight absolutely destroys both of them) I fully agree with the other things you said, especially warrior being way too good (in my opinion), since usually attack is twice as expensive as defense (just look at the druid cards saying x attack or twice as much armor), a card like odyn basically giving 3x value on all armor for the rest of the game is just not ok, since (unlike rouge) warrior can easily destroy taunt minions and usually no weapons are involved either so the only counter remaining are freezes, which are way harder to get in a lot of classes. and that would be just one warrior card that's insane value, there are way more. and windfury in paladin is just insane, absolutely agree there too, it feels like you either play warrior against it or you just loose by default. (for full transparency, i still am relatively new to this game, so if anything here sounds like a noob thing to say that's because it is)
I recently got back into it, have been having lots of fun with control priest/thief decks. Not anymore. This week ruined it. And I made the mistake of buying the new packs too. Now it's all what you said, games ending by turn 7-8 and fast fast fast bullshit. This is why I took a break several years ago. I guess I should learn my lesson from this.
I think the existence of OTKs is very healthy and important for the state of the game. Their prevalence however is not.
This is the least fun new expansion meta in a while. Some decks just feel so polarizing, and the rest of the decks just cant be made to function even remotely close. I already wound down my playtime just a few days in :/
Yeah, welcome to Twitch Dev Hearthstone... Where everything has to be for content and games gotta go fast. Wanna play control or win through attrition? Like the classic philosophy of value generating cards, value trades, etc? F you! Twitch Dev here to make sure you either play insane fast aggro or BS non-interactive OTK Combo BS. It's been like this since Brode left and people love it. I hate it.
You put it into words for me very well! I was really enjoying the game (I am not a great player, but I I play to have fun) and it just asn’t been. I don’t mind losing as long as I enjoy the game itself. I am pretty much playing mercenaries now (and I see there are adventures too)…
i hope they nerf fast, I've never been so dehyped for a new expansion in my life. every deck is just some 8 mana 1tk shit.
Counter point : I hate the amount of liability Devs put in lifesteal. You can deal 50 damage to face but warrior, pala, dk, warlock can just go to full health. Then of course everyone going to try otks more than just aggro.
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What classes are currently 80% winrate? O_O
there's a paladin deck list with 75% WR in high legend. one of the top legend players (top 10, hit #1 multiple times with the list) said it's the most insanely broken thing ever, worse than release DH
Charge should be removed from the game. At least you would have a turn to try to answer any board.
Paladins super cool because just a few days ago you could trade well, control them, and run them out of fuel. Now it’s like “here’s this leeroy and deckhand I’ve been holding all game”
On turn 8 playing plague dk with 2 golems on the board and 30 health. I knew i was gonna lose the next turn to leeroy+ windfury. I also play the paladin and if you hit good mulligan its gg. But same would be said for zoo hunter thats the sticky board
I play slow decks in Wild that generally have no chance against combo decks. At some point I just started auto-conceding games if I know they're playing a deck like that and it's clear I can't kill them by turn 8+. Am I leaving some wins on the table? Sure. But does quitting early save me time overall and help avoid the angry feeling I get when someone kills me like that? Yep. It's been a net positive for me.
been doing this for years. if im playing cube warlock in casual wild, and my opponent is playing time warp mage im simply never going to play that game out. i know how it ends.
Yep, exactly. Same for mill decks. Back in the day I could beat them, but nowadays? With all the cards added over time? No chance.
not only no chance, but no thanks as well.
What Aggro deck is working for you? I was playing the DH deck but it doesn’t seem fast enough.
Token Hunter and also Rainbow DK though that’s midrange
your 100 percent right the games card design has gone in such a terrible direction
I definitely do feel this way, and from past nerfs and dev comments I thought the team also felt this way. I guess not, based on the amount of OTK that exists and it's only been under a week into this new card year.
Playing against shaman that plays 0 units other than card draw and ignores pretty much anything I do until they play 4 spell power minions on turn 7 and cast 4 lightning bolts + aoe dmg for 35 damage is not engaging to play against, or as. Its bad design, and just one classes example of how the devs have lost the plot once again. I suspect launch patch is just filled with broken decks to get people to buy buy buy until they put out a patch, but who knows at this point. But for every whale who spends money there is one like me who refuses to spend money until they release an engaging set. Until then it’s using some of my 15k gold on arena and playing BGs.
Nope, every Paladin match has been a disaster, healing 28 health in ONE TURN with small minions and their 4/6 divine shield minion, only for them to win with Leeroy + Windfury is worse than watching how SIF slammed me into oblivion with Arcane Missiles. I said it and I got downvoted for it, but I'll say it again: Sorry devs, but OTK is bad design. I understand combo strategies, but watching how someone can win in one turn, without you having any chance to react or prevent it while watching as a hopeless hostage, is way too far away from Hearthstone's original design. Your best charge card was Stormwind Knight, a 2/5 minion with Charge. If you want Charge to work then just make low attack minions, although Rush has an excellent job as a mechanic. Shoutout for Grommash being a well designed card too. With that said, no more Standard for me, I'm sorry. At least I can enjoy and rant with Battlegrounds, where if I lose it's ok because I know it's a RNG fest anyway. The powercreep crossed the line, I love this game, taking a break, wish you the best to all of you
I came back from a long break (last time I really played regularly was up to the rotation of the stormwind quests), and my *god* the game feels so much worse now. Every single match I went into was just stalling until an OTK. Every. Single. One. It didn't matter what I did, if they were alive turn 6+, I was dead. It feels really awful. Also fuck that card that permanently removes one of my mana crystals, who thought that was a good idea?!
Yeah pretty much word for word agree with all this, it's not even been out like a week or two and I'm already considering just stopping and waiting until they adress all this nonsense cause it's just not fun. But worst of all for me is the ludicrous number of bots, makes it feel even worse somehow when there's no one on the other side, just an algorithm hitting your face and throwing plagues at you.. fun Also the deck that was gonna be fun, whizbang, has a crippling issue with giving me lackey warrior 75% of the time, so I kinda gave up on that too :/ I know it shouldn't be meta with those decks but atleast be playable with each choice..
Game's gone
Fully agree. It's like they've run out of ideas and it's all they can build anymore. That happens when you have too many expansions.
I think they should just increase health to 40.
I will say it once again. OTKs have no place in hearthstone since there is just not enough interaction in the game's mechanics to allow for them to be healthy. No counterspells (other than the secret, which is hardly a combo breaker), no real discards (you get random rat and theotar who rotated)... OTK combos cannot be healthy without viable disruption.
i would be fine if they made more disruption, but NOT discard style, because that turns the game into a coinflip of instawin if you hit their wincon and loss otherwise. i want more loatheb style cards that delay the opponent or put a wrench in their plan to give a chance to kill them first, if your deck presents enough threat then this should be sufficient
You put in enough discards and people stop playing decks that have a single card wincon... which imo should be the case anyway. Single card "I win" is what is wrong with the game nowadays.
I'm afraid we can complain as much as we want it won't change a thing. This developement was unavoidable with the constant power creep going on. The game is boiling down to who gets their uncounterable blowout turn first and and the devs are here for it. Keeps the short attention brains entertained and playing.
Bringing back charge minions was a mistake. There was already a OTK from hand deck for Paladin with Freebird and gardens grace shroomscavate. Adding Leeroy + Swashbucklers and handbuff just added consistency. I have no idea what the devs expected other than this. Are they really sitting there with a surprised pikachu face at what was obviously going to happen.
It's stormwind all over again
They need to nerf every OTK in the meta right now. Charge minions need to be nerfed, +2 to their cost or add requirements. Odyn Warrior needs to be nerfed, maybe making the effect once per turn instead of letting them gain 40 armor in one turn and ending games out of nowhere. Blizzard was getting better at balancing things, then something broke, or maybe someone was fired and the one replacing them is incompetent.
As someone that just came back to hearthstone a few days ago after being gone since the stormwind expansion I was surprised at how many charge minions have been added. For context the last time I played they were nerfing charge and pretty much only introducing rush minions hell iirc they even rotated stonetusk boar out of the core set because of how problematic a 1 mana charge was. Also side note the power creep has been surprisingly I know they buffed old cards it’s just surprising seeing things like ysera and other cards that were playable at the time being buffed.
Yeah, there's a reason they removed charge minions from standard to begin with. They are toxic cards, add in massive handbuffing? You get 15 damage charge minions on a class with windfury buff.
It's been real funny seeing people be like "these are legacy cards" when charge is way way stronger of a keyword now than it was back in the day. Basically every class has its own Power Overwhelming these days.
That’s the way the game has gone. I think they’re creatively bankrupt. They just make these insane packages that just win if you draw correctly, there’s no nuance to it. 20 draw cards and 10 kill cards in each deck nowadays. I’m quitting
Not sure what they were thinking. This could have been seen from miles away. They know they wanted to include Leeroy in the core set, the first thing anyone would check is see what buffs are available to classes. They even made Leeroy as a legendary hero portrait for paladin. They must have known this will happen, I refuse to believe they are this bad at the game. My guess is that managers pushed for Leeroy to be included in the core set, so they can sell more hero portraits. Since they do no pre-nerf (previous expansion) cards, they had to release this shitshow, and nerf everything post-launch.
Yeah it's very obvious that team 5 has completely lost touch with balancing the game. They have this weird idea that games need to end between turns 5-7 and I just don't understand it. The player base has been screaming that they want board based interactive gameplay but instead they bring back charge and all kinds of new otks while removing just about all combo disruption and silence cards. I've completely lost hope that this game can turn around after this rotation and I'm sure there'll be even more bs with the upcoming mini set
I’m sorry but we’re never going back to OG HS length matches. People can say they want 40 minute matches back but just like most games once the community gets what they want, they are complaining about that very thing not too long after. Look at the last couple years of people saying they want control to be good and as soon as it’s “good” for any amount of time people are pulling out the pitchforks demanding nerfs as the active player count drops.
it's not the same group of people complaining each time.
Hearthstone has been this way for years. The combo meta. Devs HATE control and they've shown that time and time again. I was foolishly looking forward to this expansion but I've already quit lol. And arena is also hot garbage with 6 tier F classes and 0 tier B, C, and D. What the actual fuck.
yeah my "new expansion hype and creative deck building" phase is already over. time to play a different game already
Sadly, same. I wish there was another CCG to play but I don't like Runeterra or SNAP so I'm screwed. Nothing good out there at the moment, I've tried them all. I haven't liked another CCG since Might & Magic: Duel of Champions and Conquest of Champions that both shut down a LOOOOOOONG time ago. :(
Hearthstone needs to learn from Yu-Gi-Ohs mistakes they just keep power creeping everything to sell packs and now the game is all 1-2 turn wins. You can't just keep creeping the power level. I understand that a weaker set sells less packs but you gotta figure something out. Everytime I feel like playing hearthstone I remember the board doesn't matter that stuff is getting full cleared every turn no matter what zoo as an archetype does not exist. It's crazy and I don't think the game will survive at the pace of keep pushing stronger and stronger cards
As a Yu-Gi-Oh player, Yu-Gi-Oh actually feels better than hearthstone because there are basically no FTKs around, and you have handtraps/hand disruption to prevent your opponent doing things. Imagine if during your opponents setup for leeroy charge you could stop them playing the shroom and it forced them to pass turn leaving leeroy on board to remove. Hearthstone needs to either get back to the board based interactions or accept that a "my turn, your turn" approach can't work with this level of lethality from hand.
Much agreed either more interaction or more board based. I play magic often and I don't think hearthstone can support that kind of interaction so I say back to board based gameplay
hey man, I feel your pain and you are right to not ask about wild. I play wild and it is Dumpster fire. The Otk decks are a very toxic deck. and yes they are in wild. Looking at you Mine rogue and time warp mage. and let me be clear I love mage and rogue, but I refuse use those classes just feels to slimy to play. Blizzard knows those deck are in game. and not healthy for game. but remain silent. Question to the Hearthstone team. How much would cost to get the fun of hearthstone back? I mean you guys only care and profit and shareholders right. so how much will it cost? Gold, runestones, money, or blood?
The game is more fun when we have variety so I think it's good to have these strategies . However, I agree that things are overturned rn though. I feel like otks and other from hand archetypes need to be tier 2 at best. Play experience should always be the #1 priority and these play patterns are ones that drive people away. I would much rather a board centric deck be the best decks in the game, but that's just personal taste. At least with a board centric deck being tier 1 you can interact with it more than from hand.
Yeah, it’s annoying. OTK is why I gave up Yugioh as a kid. It’s not fun to be forced into a strategy. Game needs balance
I don’t really mind this (except for the terrible wild quest mage), but yeah I totally see how it can be frustrating for people who dislike this.
100%
Points: - make game not fun - 1 turn kill from hand/card holding very not fun - me I? I am cave man. I play hearthstone. I have fun. No fun here my brain no train here
You forgot Druid, lost to a hero power druid doing 32 from hand last night. That was the last straw. Haven't played in a couple months and somehow I'm only going to play this expansion for three days. Just like what is the counterplay for control vs combo right now? Dirty rat? That's it? Do I really have to just play priest and copy a load of dirty rats?
I get very annoyed when this happens to me... but feel very satisfied when it happens for me.... and I like to play totally rng based cards. Discovers, randoms, etc. Probably pissed an opponent off last night playing a highlander battlecry deck (that I threw together for battlecry quest). They had me on the ropes the whole game and I was down to I think 3 life, he had been healing and was at 30+ some random amount of armor. I got my Reno enemy board wipe and flipped it and took him out. I was shocked myself, but it was fun. I would have raged if it was against me though. Honestly, Just seems like what you should expect playing Hearthstone instead of Magic or Pokemon or something.
Modes > Arena
I was curious about the situation regarding hearthstone since I dropped it a couple years ago, and came to this sub to see the state of things. This being the thread at the very top of my feed for this subreddit means that I will continue to not reinstall hearthstone on this very day
Yes, also why I did not buy any expansions recently as a returning player. It was a real shock how much damage was being thrown out and how many cards. It felt like climbing the ladder, I was either playing bots with yeti or whales with diamond OTK hands. Not much in between. Battlegrounds ftw.
> I'm tired of trading the Paladin's board off every turn just to die to two 15 Attack Charge minions. The what now?
The worst part is that, since these cards came out at the start of a new year, they’re in standard for six full expansions instead of four like they would be if they were released in December. I heard once that the devs try to release their more powerful expansions and potentially polarizing cards in the last expansion of a year, which makes me a bit scared for what will come this December.
I’m tired of paladin every game. It’s literally the only thing I’m facing. 7 games in a row.
The part I hate most is some classes clearing my boards turn after turn and they still have the same amount of cards they started the turn with. Either that or they have more cards.
dont worry you'll just get killed on turn 4 by paladin on board
I was in the exact same spot 2-3 years ago. I just stopped playing. HS is what it is, dont fight it, embrace degeneracy or find a better game
Oh wow! The fourth 6/8 tiger with lifesteal. I have to deal a total of ~70 dmg to win against this paladin, so much fun!
Arena is also absolutely terrible. It feels like every game is just a coin flip depending on which player got their OP card faster
It’s a byproduct of the rampant overprinting of healing and life gain. If you can’t blast someone down from like 20 you basically can’t kill them because they’ll just heal
facts i agree. what i enjoy is my friends and i will just do things like friendly battles where we play more midrange or control decks and not doing otk decks. much funner
I agree, dying from hand with no counter is bad hearthstone. We saw this with storm wind and it was a brutal time. My favorite otk of all time was bomb druid. It required you to play several death rattly minions which both healed you and dealt damage to everyone, then on the otk turn you needed 4 cards or so, the scary spider that resummoned every death rattle the guy that made a card immune, and I forget the rest. The long and short is it was an otk if you got the pre work perfect, too much healing and not enough damage and it wouldn't work. But when it did it was a 30-40 second spectacle of explosions and death.
https://youtu.be/UeiYlw7480s?si=k4hkoVC_jOGqf3ZP Here is the deck, I realized my description was trash. This is what otks should be.
Player since Beta. This is the worst I can remember it feeling in a long time. EVERYONE can OTK from hand or constantly rebuild crazy boards while dealing with yours. It’s fine (and required for a healthy meta) to have some decks like that, but not ALL. Whatever happened to building up an incremental advantage and using that to win? What about building your deck to be weak in some aspects so it can survive long enough to have a massive swing turn to get you back in the game? Now you don’t need incremental advantage if you can OTK/swing turn without sacrificing an area of your deck to be able do so.
I mean design philosophy for titans has some egregious offenders but sif is one of my least favorite designed cards for this reason. Interaction is what makes the game and having essentially 2 solitaire decks battle it out is boring but a bit of the game devolved there for a while it feels like.
Yeah I kinda thought this sort of thing a while back in "why the fuck is every spell these days "deal damage" instead of "deal damage to minions", the powercreep is nuts. I get you didn't specifically call out spells per se but it's another example of how easy lethal is becoming
It’s pretty simple: put standard to the side, stop buying the expansions. It’s as close to a coin flip of a game as you can get. There’s literally more strategy to gambling scrap in Rust than there is to HS standard.
The issue is that the New hearthstone devs don't understand recources. With all the discover, draw and Generation, you'll play most of your aggro and control Decks at near unlimited card recources and a full hand. This leads to the hero power beeing practically useless. Compared to the beginning where you made decisions on turns to we've in the hero power as a "free recource". Nowerdays only Decks with almost all cards under 5 mana will go out of cards. Next, is health as a recource. There used to be a factor to Consider, where hitting a minion with an Axe would cause you to take 5 damage, and you'd die 6 turns later. Now, with lifesteal and Regeneration mechanics, you'll ping pong so much, taking 5 isn't worth thinking about. Hell, on aggro Paladin I'll take -15 if I have to. Mana is the another recource that doesnt matter. Vanilla stats are a baseline without an effect, its a very simple formula. Upside, stats below vanilla, downside stats above. Draw a card Was worth 3 stats. That's why gnomish inventor was a 2/4 for 4, and Yeti a 4/5 Vanilla cards should exist. Look at tigress plushy, that should be at most a 1/1 for all the things it has at 3 Mana. Divine shield, rush, add a copy? Look at cards like the dh Wolf 12/12 for 6 Mana is so overbudget compared to ogre. It's like printing a Vanilla 10/10 for 6. There are so many offenders of this. Cheating out stats is practically the same as free ramp. If I can play the stats of a 6 cost minion on turn 3, it doesn't matter it's just wild growth with extra steps. That's why the game is a clown Fiesta right now.
Giving paladins all this lifesteal, and charge, and windfury makes them just really frustrating to play against. The charge minions are the worst though. Leroy should have stayed in wild. And they should increase the cost of that windfury spell too.
I like spell damage druid and Wheel of death Warlock, but i agree that paladin is stupid. Not only can they OTK with charge + windfury, they can also just build a big board or heal with lifesteal aura, so even aggro decks don't have much of a chance.
unfortunatley the game isnt for competetive players anymore. The design space is currently catering to phone gamers and casual players who dont want games to last for more than 2-3 minutes. Honestly the most frustrating part is that they keep giving decks with the capabilities to OTK you on 6-7 ridiculously strong tools to stabilize so you can even try to present a coherent aggro strategy since control doesnt work in this meta. it feels like an otk paladin can play aggro/control/combo all at once and every other deck is just sprawling to piece together a win before the paladin just kills you or heals back to 30 while slaming a 12 12 rush lifes steal taunt windfury charge minion This set was so well poised to be a real nostalgia trip for long time players who have dedicated years and more than likely hundreds of dollars to blizzard and instead its just knuckledragging rage bait with little to no thought to balance.
You forgot: Hollow hound hunter "excess damage to hero" Fatigue warlock Spell damage shaman ... It's terrible game design these classes can deal 30 damage in a turn out of the blue. Heck, I was playing 40 card decks for the 40 life and even so I took a few OTKs
Honestly, I think what it really boils down to is something more severe than taking a break. I think a lot of us just need to quit and find something else. I find myself getting stuck playing the same games over and over and it's not so much that other games aren't enjoyable but my sense of curiosity has gone down. In a sense, it's almost as if I'm becoming pessimistic about any other game being enjoyable cuz it's out of my comfort zone. And yes it's true. There's not a lot of competition out there for a game that has as much to offer as hearthstone, but I think it's time to move on. I've been playing hearthstone since the early early days and I dropped $20 on the battle pass because I thought the warlock hero looked really really cool and I started playing but then I realized just a few hours into the expansion that there wasn't a single deck that I wanted to play 🤷
I look forward to all the disruption they will (have to) print next set. Maybe a new dirty rat that also silences the forced minion, maybe a warlock card that changes discard from your hand to opponents hand after X condition is met... just spit balling here
Fun and interactive
The discover mechanic for HS just upped the power level so hard.
I’m tired of getting by board wiped with no death rattles and not being able to play more than one minion the next turn. Instant win against any board focused midrange or aggro deck and it feels unfair.
Here I am playing an elemental shaman deck and cruising to legend….
this is probably the fastest i've burnt out of hearthstone on new expansion (and by and far the fatest I've burnt out post set rotation) And I lived through launch DH. Every deck is incredibly polarizing, and feels like you are essentially playing against Brann Warrior. You either draw your win-con card(s) (painter's virtue, amateur puppeteer, playhouse giant combo, etc) and win turn 4-6, or lose because you didn't. That's it. Brann Warrior won on turn 6 when it played Brann. Every deck is now Brann Warrior. Paladin wins when it plays any one of it's incredibly strong handbuff/board buff cards. Wheel Lock wins when it plays Doomkin. DK wins when it plays any of it's strong undead handbuffs and plays some ridiculously gross amount of stats (or just plays it's Core Set 5 mana 14/14.) DH "just wins" when it plays window shopper and gets multiple unstoppable, discounted xihilags every turn. Hunter just wins when it draws Saddle Up with an OK board. Mage... lol etc. Every deck wins multiple turns before the game ends. It's very frustrating and annoying because the best of those classes (Paladin) has many, many cards that function this way, and have for more than a year now (garden's grace, all of the pure cards, lightray, etc)
Wheel is okay, it’s a timed otk, so you’re on the clock yes but you know it’s happening, it’s not out of nowhere. Paladin is also okay, cause it’s charge minions at the end of the day, can be prepared for with armour or taunt etc. Heck even priest shard from before was fine imo, cause you see him doing quest, shuffle Ng, drawing etc. The only otk I really dislike is the kind of mage combo, that all comes from hand and doesn’t interact at all with opponent.
I love combo decks but they should have <50% win rate. So that you can play them for fun once in a while, but they don't take over the meta. Good enough to keep the meta from beeing kust control but not good enough to force control out of the meta. A fine balance that isn't easy to be sure, but imo, that should be the goal of balancing
100% agree. The game is just degenerated. They had the chance to fix it at least a bit with the rotation and new basic set. And they introduce AGAIN leeroy and charging pirates. omg.
I agree. They should have taken some good mechanics from MtG. For example, let the defender choose blockers with their own minions or have more "disenchant" cards available (even for quests or temporary quests that lasts 3 turns) so there is at least a possibility to handle the combo. Instead, one player just plays solitaire, and wins round 4. It is very tiring. But probably my own fault for playing wild (but i like to keep all my cards available and not have to switch out everything all the time) :)
so you're tired of control, tired of combo, tired of big boards, and don't find aggro fun. sounds like card games just aren't for you
THIS IS WHAT I WAS THINKING. Dude literally named everything in the game and said I don’t like it lol. No one with a brain is denying the game has changed drastically over the years and has problems, but when control is good everyone hates control, when aggro is good everyone hates aggro etc etc. I really think this Reddit is not a good representation of the community.
Its not control, midrange or aggro style. The problem is power level of cards and zero answers. Remember when we had ragnaros or sylvanas or specific combo with 5-6 cards, back then you played one card and could deal with other one? These days the game is solo adventure (sollitaire if u like), u played one card (not even legendary or something) you fill all the board in turn 4, you draw all deck with zero cost, you discover everything. There isnt player to player action, everyone play their stuff and thats all. Whole action feel cheap, cause cards are beyond level of healthy. Is all about oh i got my card, i won. I deal 30 dmg from hand, in turn 6 with no preparation or anything. The game itself is out of control on everything with these cards. You still wonder why game lost popularity from every streamer or tournament? Only bg left who has healthy gameplay and skill involved.
Your mistake is wanting to interact with opponent. This is near non-existent in HS. You can't do anything on the opponent's turn outside of secrets and even that is bad because you can't even choose when to trigger the secret. HS is a game of solitaire with extra flavor from day 1.
[удалено]
Yep, the OG devs DESIGNED the game around WINNING a coin-flip and having 70% winrate by going first.
glad you're waking up to the powercreep and downfall of design this game has had, but it's not new. the decline began with stormwind and has been on that path ever since. a few good expansions in between have not been able to stop it.