Support NeoGAF

[Blizzard]

Anyone play anything other than pirate or jade? I mean seriously. Anyone? Whatever the deck is that counters both of these should win all day long cause that's nearly all I see in ranked.

At least last month, dragon priest was everywhere. At higher ranks I heard shaman (aggro, maybe another kind) was extremely common.

 

[CelticKnight]

For this Brawl, as there's so many Warlock's around put a Sacrificial Pact in your deck as a 3 mana Jaraxxus drops from the crates.

 

[GeneralHerpes]

No one's online to take this 80g friendly challenge quest from me! Me being MiracleRobot#1823.

 

[Lone_Prodigy]

Played a Jade Druid who practically played Jade Idols every turn (he shuffled twice) and Nourish whenever his hand was empty.

At the end of the game he had a 9/9 Golem but I won after playing my second Anyfin (3 cards left in my deck.)

 

[Glass Shark]

I'm usually the type who thinks all the meta arguments are overblown and things are not as bad as reddit wants to make them seem. But after playing a ton of Ranked yesterday and today, I totally get it. It really does seem like it's 80% Pirate Warrior or Aggro Shaman, and whoever gets the better opening draw wins. Hopefully things will shake up a bit soon. Although I think it's going to take more than nerfing a few cards to get things where they need to be.

 

[peakish]

No one's online to take this 80g friendly challenge quest from me! Me being MiracleRobot#1823.

Sent you a request if you still have it. I also have mine remaining...

 

[QFNS]

Yeah Standard Ranked is a dumpster fire atm. Nothing can stand up to the Pirate Warriors and Shamans. They can kill on Turn 4 or 5 so Reno decks need the coin and to draw Reno to have a shot. It's really crazy.

I'll wait on ranked till later in the month and it will probably be less bad. Let the people rushing to the upper ranks go.

 

[Fersis]

Yeah Standard Ranked is a dumpster fire atm. Nothing can stand up to the Pirate Warriors and Shamans. They can kill on Turn 4 or 5 so Reno decks need the coin and to draw Reno to have a shot. It's really crazy.

I'll wait on ranked till later in the month and it will probably be less bad. Let the people rushing to the upper ranks go.

Yup, the first 2 weeks of the months are pure Tier 1 decks even at Rank 18 lol
Im playing Casual and Brawl at the moment

 

[LyleLanley]

I would kill for a mode that has faster turns or at least limits how often you can rope in one game. I just spent like half an hour in a game because the other guy constantly stalled for no good reason.

 

[Lone_Prodigy]

Roping on Turn 1 is the worst.

 

[Pooya]

shaman has reached critical levels yet again http://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-36/

it's like when some time passes after every expansion over the last year, same thing repeats itself...they waited 9 months for meta to "correct itself" instead of changing two cards and they even printed more broken cards. hopefully at least they learned something for future. 2 more months of this joke.

 

[Yaboosh]

We need to let go of the idea that the rotation is going to do anything to shaman popularity. Midrange shaman is currently rotation proof.

 

[Vanillalite]

The game has too much burst damage relative to the HP number of 30 that they settled on.

Problem is if you up the starting HP then aggro classes can run out of cards.

I guess you could up the starting hand, but that changes the meta drastically.

Reno being 6 mana means the game can be over before turn 6 hits. Plus taunts seem to be undervalued and not a fool proof way to win against aggro.

I know someone a few days ago said they could go and radically change the game by not allowing weapons to attack heroes. That feels a little too drastic though.

Minion removal doesn't even work that well as charge minions even if they die immediately just end up like a damage to the face spell.

Maybe have it so nobody can attack face in turn 1? Idk idk...

 

[Pooya]

yeah I know I posted about it. I'm hoping for druid style nerfs. spirit claws needs to be deleted for sure and one other card at least otherwise it's same story another year. They can't powercreep more to counter shaman, it doesn't work and causes other issues down the road...good thing cards like kazakus or drakOP won't be a problem later.

 

[FiveSix4Three]

I honestly think I may be done with hearth stone outside of brawls / arena.

Not having the ability to interact on your opponents turn just completely turns every match into tempostone. Its just annoying and won't change.

 

[ZealousD]

We need to let go of the idea that the rotation is going to do anything to shaman popularity. Midrange shaman is currently rotation proof.

Mid-Jade Shaman can survive the rotation (assuming the pirate package is untouched) but that doesn't mean there won't be a huge hit to Shaman's popularity. Aggro Shaman is still the dominant Shaman deck and that deck dies once Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem rotate out.

 

[Vanillalite]

I honestly think I may be done with hearth stone outside of brawls / arena.

Not having the ability to interact on your opponents turn just completely turns every match into tempostone. Its just annoying and won't change.

Maybe make it so minions can only be played on your turn, but spells can be cast at any point?

Idk how you would handle mana.

 

[Karsticles]

Maybe make it so minions can only be played on your turn, but spells can be cast at any point?

Idk how you would handle mana.

The problem with spells cast at any point is the implementation. Is it like...RTS-style? You can just drop a spell whenever and BOOM? (I actually think this would work fine, be fun, and be awesome). Otherwise you have to give "response time" to the opponent after every action, and it turns the game into a slog (play any other game that allows this).

Mana isn't even hard to handle in this situation - you just let players use any mana they didn't use during their opponent's turn, like in MtG.

 

[QFNS]

The real issue with Shaman dominance will be that they will continue to have the best 1 dmg AoE in the game and still have access to Spirit Claws sweet sweet 3 charges. Losing Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem should remove the pure aggro variant of the deck as it will not have enough powerful 1 drops to compete (assuming Blizz doesn't fuck up and give them another). So as long as the prirates are popular then Shaman will be a good counter to them b/c of Malestrom portal.

I'm expecting to see STB get nefed down to 1 HP or increased to 2 mana. Either of those should make the pirates a lot more palatable. Changing Patches to not have Charge might not be that bad either, but I'm ambivalent about it. Either case, Shaman remains strong against the pirates and then can run the pirates still if they feel like it. Not sure how they want to deal with both issues.

 

[Lone_Prodigy]

I remember pre-MSOG, one of the drawbacks of Midrange Shaman was the lack of heal.

So what does Shaman get? Jinyu.

It was also quite funny to see them get Maelstrom Portal (a better Arcane Explosion) because they lacked AoE or something.

 

[manhack]

Speaking of rotation and a way to put the Shaman problem in perspective here is a link to the deck Lifecoach and SuperJJ spent a lot of time playing at high levels; a pirate, jade Shaman

http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/721060-lifecoach-superjj-jade-shaman

The only card it loses in rotation is Brann Bronzebeard. And while Brann is extremely powerful I'm quite sure that he can be replaced with current cards or newer cards with ease.

This viability of this deck does assume pirates remain the same and no other changes.

 

[Dahbomb]

shaman has reached critical levels yet again http://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-36/

it's like when some time passes after every expansion over the last year, same thing repeats itself...they waited 9 months for meta to "correct itself" instead of changing two cards and they even printed more broken cards. hopefully at least they learned something for future. 2 more months of this joke.

Yeah the meta has never self corrected. It kinda changes in the first few months but then after that phase there is no more self correction. Like the current meta isn't going to self correct, Pirates and Shamans will still dominate if you let the meta hold for more months.

 

[Yaboosh]

Mid-Jade Shaman can survive the rotation (assuming the pirate package is untouched) but that doesn't mean there won't be a huge hit to Shaman's popularity. Aggro Shaman is still the dominant Shaman deck and that deck dies once Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem rotate out.

Aggro shaman died when the last nerfs happened and Shaman popularity only increased.

 

[QFNS]

Yeah the meta has never self corrected. It kinda changes in the first few months but then after that phase there is no more self correction. Like the current meta isn't going to self correct, Pirates and Shamans will still dominate if you let the meta hold for more months.

I want to belive that the meta COULD self correct if the card base was sufficiently balanced against each others. Sadly, it is not. There is nothing you can do in Hearthstone to counter a powerful, on-curve 1-2-3 opening or even a 1-weapon-3 opening (which is worse in some cases).

The power of 1 drops and Weapons is such that Doomsayer (in theory a board sweep to counter this sort of stuff) isn't enough, and Weapon removal cards aren't good enough when most of the weapon's value is extracted the turn it is played. Sad!

 

[ZealousD]

Aggro shaman died when the last nerfs happened and Shaman popularity only increased.

Aggro Shaman was not the dominant Shaman deck when the last nerfs happened.

 

[luoapp]

The subreddit is pretty much in a riot state right now, publicly demanding a response from Team5.

 

[Vanillalite]

Mana isn't even hard to handle in this situation - you just let players use any mana they didn't use during their opponent's turn, like in MtG.

Magic fundamentally handles mana differently though.

 

[Lone_Prodigy]

Speaking of weapon removal, why is Toxic Sewer Ooze worse than Acidic Swamp Ooze, especially with power creep?

3 mana 4/3 remove 1 durability

vs.

2 mana 3/2 remove weapon

 

[Drkirby]

Speaking of weapon removal, why is Toxic Sewer Ooze worse than Acidic Swamp Ooze, especially with power creep?

3 mana 4/3 remove 1 durability

vs.

2 mana 3/2 remove weapon

They may not want to have super hard weapon removal, and the more cards they print with it, the worse the community will react if it has to get nerfed down the line.

IMO, the game needs more hard weapon removal. A 1 mana spell "Destroy both player's weapon" would be a god send to any class trying to counter a lot of the aggressive decks, which heavily rely on weapons.

Spoiler

They should print the card for Shaman

A secret that destroyed the opponent's weapon when equipped would also be pretty nice, would likely fit Paladin well.

 

[platypotamus]

All you other folks who are feeling burnt out on HS should stop sleeping on Plants vs Zombies: Heroes. It's really freaking good. Here's a copy and paste job from the email I sent to the Magic and Hearthstone email aliases at work the other day:

I've been playing PvZ for the past few months. A lot. I practically quit Hearthstone to play PvZ instead. Here are some reasons why I think it’s worth checking out:

Simple color pie design

On each side, there are 5 “colors” of cards. The symbol on the right/bottom here is for guardian cards. Each hero (10 plants, 10 zombies) can build a deck out of cards from the two colors they champion. So you can see that Wall-Knight is half guardian (half solar). This makes it pretty easy for beginners to know what they are up against. Solar stuff tends to be about ramping to larger threats and/or healing, and guardian you can guess what it specializes in from the name. Rustbolt up there is Brainy (sorta of the pvz zombies equivalent to blue in Magic) and Hearty (Buffing/high toughness/bruisers). It feels pretty equivalent to basically a Magic environment where all 10 guilds are reasonably strong (and the balance is another great thing about the game, but I’ll get to that later, maybe), and you know, focused on the things that the 5 colors for each side focus on here. There is no milling in PvZ

Asymmetry

The game embraces the asymmetry of the plants vs zombies thing. You only ever have a match that is well… a plant vs a zombie. There are abilities (like team up, where you can stack multiple creatures together) that are plant exclusive, and others (gravestones, where the zombie is hidden/practically immune until he pops out) that are zombie exclusive. While there are some parallels in colors between plants and zombies (smarty plant color is roughly equivalent in some ways to brainy zombie color), the execution of each is very distinct. Both hearty and guardian minions tend to have big butts and high survivability, but the two play veryyy differently.

Turn Structure
One aspect of the asymmetry that weirded me out at first but I’ve come to love is the turn structure. Every round goes the same way: First, it’s the zombie turn. They can only play creatures. Then it’s the plant turn, they can play creatures and/or tricks (spells). Then it’s the zombie turn again, but JUST for tricks (this is also the time zombies pop out of grave stones). After zombie tricks, combat happens. That means that zombies sort of have to telegraph that they are playing tricks, by leaving brains up. It’s close to leaving land untapped for instants during your opponent’s turn in magic, but without actually having you act during your opponent’s turn. It also means some of the few cards that are identical for plants and zombies (both have in one color a 3 cost trick to draw 2 cards) are still functionally very different. For plants, you probably play that first on your turn if you are going to play it at all. For zombies, you can’t play it until your tricks-turn. If you draw a zombie you can afford, tough, wait until your next turn.

Lanes

PvZ brings the lanes concept over from mainline PvZ, and it works sooooooooo well in a CCG that it’s made me retroactively angry about Hearthstone’s attacker-attacks-whoever-they-want design. Stuff generally just attacks whatever is across from it (some cards deal splash damage, etc to neighboring lanes). Your opponent plays something you don’t want to hit your face? Play something across from it, or use a trick to remove/debuff/whatever it. It’s that simple, and that is a good thing. During combat, attacks always happen from the leftmost lane first, proceeding to the right. This creates an intrinsic decision every time you play something that seems simple (left > right), but it gets complicated as the board state changes and as the shield gets involved (more on that next). Also important: the left most lane is always a “heights” lane, and the rightmost is always a “water” lane, with “ground” lanes in the middle (in multiplayer anyway, some of the single player scenarios have different boards). Various cards care about the lane type (and only amphibious creatures can go in the water lanes at all). They’ve designed around this board reallllly well. Against certain heroes, certain lanes are risky, because they have things they can do there (Green Shadow has a super power trick to deal 5 damage to the center lane). Some heroes just get no amphibious creatures, so they need to deal with the water lane through tricks or other methods.


The Shield and Super Powers

In the lanes image above, you can see both Green Shadow and Impfinity have shield charges remaining (and if I had to guess, I think Green Shadow’s just triggered and she’s deciding what to do in response). Here’s how it works: each hero has 4 super power tricks (1 cost tricks of very high power levels relative to that 1 cost). One of them is unique to that hero, the other 3 are shared with someone else. At the start of a match, you get one of these cards in your starting hand. The other 3 you get when your shield goes off. Each time your hero is hit, your shield charges up 1-3 charges (regardless of how much damage the hit was). When it hits 8, it triggers, blocking all of the damage that triggered it, and drawing you one of your remaining super power tricks. If the trick has a legal target, you can play it immediately, for free, otherwise it goes into your hand and costs 1 later. Honestly, smart play around the shield is possibly the most important factor in success/failure while playing. Manipulating the board so that your opponent’s powerful creature that you can’t remove yet triggers your shield instead of dealing 7 damage to your face, while possibly also drawing you a superpower trick that you can use to remove that creature? Sooooo satisfying. Incidentally, shields also mean that self-healing your hero is WAY more powerful than it is in magic (even more than Hearthstone too, honestly, outside of like, Reno). One of the most powerful cards in the game is a 3 cost trick for plants that heals target for 4 and draws a card. Magic players might not think that card is good, but I promise it is. I run 4 copies in every solar hero deck I’ve got at the moment (and would probably run more copies if I could!). It also goes without saying that the superpower tricks are themselves, hugely important to the playstyle/identity of a given hero. Learning the tricks at a given hero’s disposal and remembering what they’ve used already is also huge. ¾ of Professor Brainstorm’s super powers are almost always worth playing turn 1, unless he happens to have another good 1 drop in hand. Electric Boogaloo’s super powers are almost all removal. Citron can make all of his plants invulnerable for a turn, and Wall Knight can make HIMSELF invulnerable for a turn. Neptuna can summon a 3/2 amphibious zombie octopus (for 1!). Being ready for what your opponent can do, and even being ready for the cards you might get when your own shield triggers is a big part of the game.

Balance

I have reached a pretty high rank in the ladder (Taco league, rank 43, I believe 50 is the top rank). I regularly play decks for all 18 of the heroes I’ve unlocked (still need Spudow and Immorticia) in ladder. I regularly see decks for every single hero, at my high rank, in ladder. There are definitely match ups that are lopsided (Rustbolt has Hearthstone-priest style removal, easily removing stuff with power <= 2 or >= 4, so a Solar Flare deck centered around PineClones—turning all plants into 3/3s--wrecks my Rustbolt deck real bad). But every hero has a deck capable of earning wins at this rank. The shield/lanes design seems to do a lot to keep games competitive. I have a lot of close games. I won one last night with 1 health left and no shield charges remaining, and that’s not terribly uncommon.

The ladder is purely a climb, you can't move down ranks, so when you hit a new rank, you can freely experiment with goofy decks with no downside. It hasn't reset in my time playing, so I don't know if they are going to do seasons or anything.

Cool freaking cards

There are some great cards in this game, both mechanically, and just from a “PvZ silly flavor awesomeness” perspective. The sumo jumped out to me early on as just a fantastic freaking card. He couples well with other zombies that can go in his deck (Arm Wrestler gets bigger every time a plant enters his lane, for instance). When a hearty zombie plays a gravestone turn 2, it might be sumo, could be something else, and the decisions around that guess are so fun. Do I want to block? Do I want to try to save a plant I already have on the board by playing something else where he might want to move that plant? Zombies have a couple board clears like the chickening (more rare for plants, usually ETB effects from a plant rather than a spell), and playing around them is always super interesting… especially due to the turn structure mentioned above. Rose Thorn has been so awesome for me to reclaim a lost board, particularly around turn 8 or so if I have a couple 1 drop flowers in my hand &#61514;. Re-Peat moss is useful in a bunch of rapid-win combos, and generally is enemy #1 the second it hits the board (playing a gravestone zombie opposite it can also be a great stall if you can’t kill it immediately with a trick, the gravestones block any bonus attacks while the zombie is still in it). Look at that sexy Ben Franklin mother fucker, just look at him. I have a theory that if I draw more than 1 card off a single Ben Franklin, I win. I think my record is 5 cards (I won).

Section of things I don’t like

There are some things about the game that I don’t like:
• The currencies/sales/etc tactics of the game are aggressively “mobile game” rather than CCG. I wish they just had packs like Hearthstone, and that was it, but they constantly have different specialized pack offerings for cash/hard currency. It is confusing and difficult to tell what is the best bang for your buck, and also just generally a turn off (you can also watch ads for free gems too, blech). That said, I also feel practically no pressure to actually spend real money, though I suspect I will at some point largely as a “support this game I like a lot” gesture, rather than a need to stay competitive.
• The way they’ve crafted their quest/event timers is also very aggressively free to play, trying to get you to sign in and play a lot. You get a new quest (up to 3 max) every 3 hours. Your “boost” for the weekly events recharges every 4 hours. That’s some bullshit right there. That said, they’ve tweaked the costs on the event cards and it’s fairly easy to earn 2 copies in a week without stressing about it too much, and that seems good enough for the most part (though there have certainly been a few event cards I'd run 4 of in a deck).
• No spectating, and no PC client, so no streamers, which I know all the kids are into these days
• That’s probably about it.

 

[thepotatoman]

I want to belive that the meta COULD self correct if the card base was sufficiently balanced against each others. Sadly, it is not. There is nothing you can do in Hearthstone to counter a powerful, on-curve 1-2-3 opening or even a 1-weapon-3 opening (which is worse in some cases).

The power of 1 drops and Weapons is such that Doomsayer (in theory a board sweep to counter this sort of stuff) isn't enough, and Weapon removal cards aren't good enough when most of the weapon's value is extracted the turn it is played. Sad!

At least Harrison Jones gives you additional value for removing the weapons. Too bad it's far too slow to use these days.

It is crazy how little value Acidic Swamp Ooze has against most weapons, and yet Bloodsail Corsair and Toxic Sewer Ooze are basically strictly worse than Acidic Swamp Ooze.

Hearthstone could really use better anti-weapon tech.

 

[BananasWithGuns]

Well, Brode just posted this.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/hearthstone/topic/20753316155#1

 

[QFNS]

Well, Brode just posted this.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/hearthstone/topic/20753316155#1

Brode says Patch at the end of the month and info about Balance probably a week before that.

K.

 

[Yaboosh]

Well, Brode just posted this.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/hearthstone/topic/20753316155#1

Yeah another pointless post by him.

You can't tell a large group of people unhappy with the state of the game that they are wrong. That isn't going to help.

He may or may not be right, but that really isn't the point.

 

[Mulgrok]

I should stop playing experimental decks on ladder because my opponents seem to be furiously masturbating while emote spamming as they win.

 

[Pooya]

Over the last two weeks, 30% of players are piloting Shaman at Legend. If you include all ranks, 17% of players are playing Shaman. This includes several decks: Aggro Shaman, Midrange Shaman, Control Shaman and Jade Shaman.

The worst point of imbalance in our history was Undertaker Hunter, where Hunter was played by 35% of players across all ranks.

The Pirate 'package' of Small-Time Buccaneer and Patches the Pirate is played in about 50% of all decks at rank 5 and above.

nerfs end of this month at least, I thought they are crazy enough to wait until April!


So, obviously STB is going away. I think the other one is spirit claws since he called it "unfortunate" recently.

 

[thepotatoman]

They may not want to have super hard weapon removal, and the more cards they print with it, the worse the community will react if it has to get nerfed down the line.

IMO, the game needs more hard weapon removal. A 1 mana spell "Destroy both player's weapon" would be a god send to any class trying to counter a lot of the aggressive decks, which heavily rely on weapons.

Spoiler

They should print the card for Shaman

A secret that destroyed the opponent's weapon when equipped would also be pretty nice, would likely fit Paladin well.

I don't think mana is the problem. If you printed a 1 mana 2/1 destroy weapon card, it would be debatable on if that's better or worse than Acidic Swamp Ooze. Mostly better for aggro and worse for control.

Just another minion that somehow gains value or tempo when it destroys a weapon would be nice. Preferably something based off the attack value of the weapon so Rogues aren't punished too much for simply using their hero power.

 

[Yaboosh]

nerfs this month at least, I thought they are crazy enough to wait until April!
I

I don't envy the job of nerfing this time around. It's super complex to "fix" what people think is wrong right now.

 

[The Wizard]

Lot of deflecting towards pure numbers without a lot of acknowledgment as to why the game feels worse to play lately. The best deck 'only' having a 53% win percentage doesn't say much a good chunk of the games it's losing to are running the exact same opener.

 

[Pooya]

It's true, it's very complicated. If they nerf pirates and shaman, miracle rogue will run rampant for 2 months. If they nerf rogue too, meta will be jade and reno, screw that too, that's even more annoying.


One thing he's missing about comparison with huntertaker is that, while hunter was 35 percent the game was far far smaller and had much less players. In raw numbers, there are many more shaman players now, while that doesn't change the overall chance of running into one for one player, it makes the game feel samey and boring for far more players, resulting in much more louder complaints..

 

[charlequin]

You can't tell a large group of people unhappy with the state of the game that they are wrong.

They are wrong tho. These people are not actually capable of being satisfied and any attempt to over-correct to do so is going to make things worse for the much, much larger body of general players.

EDIT: Not saying that nothing should change, mind, but that the same people who consistently misstate the problems with the meta on places like reddit are also the people offering up terrible and unproductive "solutions" to "fix" it.

 

[thepotatoman]

It's true, it's very complicated. If they nerf pirates and shaman, miracle rogue will run rampant for 2 months. If they nerf rogue too, meta will be jade and reno, screw that too, that's even more annoying.


One thing he's missing about comparison with huntertaker is that, while hunter was 35 percent the game was far far smaller and had much less players. In raw numbers, there are many more shaman players now, while that doesn't change the overall chance of running into one for one player, it makes the game feel samey and boring for far more players, resulting in much more louder complaints..

I'd imagine Miracle Rogue would be much easier without Small time Buccaneer and Patches.

I'd bet nerfing just that combo would do wonders for the meta, and Jade Decks regaining popularity would help Hunter and Paladin get back in the picture somewhat if aggro warrior and shaman are somehow outright killed by this nerf. Aggro needs to give up a lot of ground before they no longer can feed on jade decks.

My only question is what to do about shaman. Maybe early rotation for Trogg/Golem combo.

 

[fertygo]

I believe the mentality and environment of community have a lot to do why there's something like 50% of shaman on last day happening

everyone want to play the best, get the best result

If its not shaman why you think its won't happen to the next best thing?

We has some point where warrior is the shaman, everyone play warrior, we see everyone play druid n secret pally

I think that's the best case that you can push actually 2 tier 1 class deck , not one and they must counter each other, so the meta can hang around 2 class instead 1 and that also open more path to "weaker" class

 

[Yaboosh]

They are wrong tho. These people are not actually capable of being satisfied and any attempt to over-correct to do so is going to make things worse for the much, much larger body of general players.

EDIT: Not saying that nothing should change, mind, but that the same people who consistently misstate the problems with the meta on places like reddit are also the people offering up terrible and unproductive "solutions" to "fix" it.

I don't think people are currently misstating the problems with the meta.

People are saying shaman and pirates in general are way too common. That it's boring.

Brode states how common they are, and they are indeed ridiculously common.

He basically used that statement to say it could and has been worse, but that is little comfort to everybody that is frustrated with the rates of play for shamans/pirates.

People clearly have terrible ideas for how to fix it, but i think currently people are right about the problem.

You are totally right that the correction they come up with could make things even more terrible in another way. That's what makes fixing the current meta so difficult.



And i bet that upper legend was way more than 30% shaman on the last day. And Reddit and here are very driven by streamers, and streamers were seeing ludicrous numbers of shaman in the final stretch making people who follow them think it's even more of a problem.

 

[thepotatoman]

They are wrong tho. These people are not actually capable of being satisfied and any attempt to over-correct to do so is going to make things worse for the much, much larger body of general players.

EDIT: Not saying that nothing should change, mind, but that the same people who consistently misstate the problems with the meta on places like reddit are also the people offering up terrible and unproductive "solutions" to "fix" it.

And I really hate general "people are stupid" comments without being specific with examples and arguments. That just discourages discussion in general, which is what we're here for.

 

[Dahbomb]

Ben Brode put out new statistics which contradicts what was said earlier, that it is Undertaker Hunter and not Combo Druid which had the highest winrate in HS ever at 57%.

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/23511-iksar-shares-some-numbers-on-reddit/

Also most played deck had occurence rate of 25%, not 35% as Ben Brode listed. These are big differences in numbers that were once quoted in order to soften the relativity of Shaman with the meta in Karazhan.

 

[Yaboosh]

Ben Brode put out new statistics which contradicts what was said earlier, that it is Undertaker Hunter and not Combo Druid which had the highest winrate in HS ever at 57%.

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/23511-iksar-shares-some-numbers-on-reddit/

Also most played deck had occurence rate of 25%, not 35% as Ben Brode listed. These are big differences in numbers that were once quoted in order to soften the relativity of Shaman with the meta in Karazhan.

Controversy!

 

[Karsticles]

Magic fundamentally handles mana differently though.

Magic resource usage is the same, though. That's all that matters.

 

[Dahbomb]

50% of decks playing Pirate package is the main alarming statistic and what will result in the ban hammer being dropped.

In general people just want a nerf to the package, not specifically Shaman because most reasonable people know that Shaman is going to get nerfed by rotation anyway. Nerf to pirates lowers power level of Aggro Shaman making Midrange Shaman the more common archetype which is better targetted by Renolock.

The Shaman stats are on the cusp of being too good but not too alarming at least from Blizzard's point. VS shows a different story where more people are playing Shaman at higher ranks than Blizzard is suggesting. In these things I want to trust official numbers from Blizzard but Blizzard can easily make up numbers and no one can really prove them wrong. I have already provided an example of them putting out conflicting stats.

And like they said.. win rate/percentages aren't every thing either... decks and cards have been nerfed with worse stats like Warsong Commander. I personally consider Shaman to be very unfun to play against especially the Aggro variant (same for PW) but that is subjective of course.

 

[Karsticles]

Ben Brode put out new statistics which contradicts what was said earlier, that it is Undertaker Hunter and not Combo Druid which had the highest winrate in HS ever at 57%.

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/23511-iksar-shares-some-numbers-on-reddit/

Also most played deck had occurence rate of 25%, not 35% as Ben Brode listed. These are big differences in numbers that were once quoted in order to soften the relativity of Shaman with the meta in Karazhan.

Dahgawd with the facts, as always.

Also, Brode needs to understand the problem with Pirate X. It's not that there's too much of it, or that it's too good. It's that it's fast and uninteractive, which means a lot of games are just coin flips of who goes first combined with whether you have STB.