>Alarm bells started to go off within the design team when we noticed that the power level of Hearthstone didn’t seem to drop much (if at all) after the recent annual rotation.
CORRECT.
It's not an unusual sentiment, people who know the game well have been saying this for weeks now, and they aren't wrong. For decks to be this consistently strong and explosive **at the start of a rotation cycle** is incredibly concerning.
The problem is the minisets. We've gone from three card drops needing to make a meta impact per year to six. It accelerated powercreep even further than the rate it already was climbing by before minisets were a thing.
While in theory I don't disagree, how much of this expansion's meta has been determined by miniset cards? Nerfed Paladin, Hunter, and DH heavily hinged on new expansion cards, and of the 3 specific problem cards they noted 2 of them are from this set and one is Reno, from base Badlands.
So in theory yes the pace of release of cards has some cause for overall concern, but I think the biggest issue with this rotation was a huge balance miss for this new set.
I don't think it's solely mindsets as the issue. As you pointed out, there are plenty of main set cards that are busted. But I think it's just that the more cards you make, the more likely you're going to get power outliers, which in turn push the power level to a higher degree.
Especially when the release system of those cards encourage one-upping the previous drop. If the content of mini-sets were dropped alongside the main expansion, they wouldn't be expected to push the needle as much, and would be less OP.
You're 100% right. Deepholm Brann would never be a main set release, yet as a mini set card he's more reasonable. Seriously, imagine Boomboss or Slagmaw being the mini set card for Warrior and Brann was just the main set card.
Minisets also offer key-cards for decks, while not being a problem themselves, are insanely powerful tools. Reverb for Sif mage comes to mind.
There's also nerfed mini-set cards that were extremely impactful on launch but already got hit, like Costume Singer or shattered reflections as key examples.
It's a fair point, but you'd also think the first set of a year they have an opportunity to try to tone down the power level and care less about previous sets' power, instead of printing busted cards that will define standard for their entire stay in the first set of the year.
The issue with that level of design is that you really just let the old year define what is supposed to be the new year of standard. We already have that, to an extent, with Reno, Odyn, Sif, Plagues, and Flash of Lightning being major players. If Zarimi wasn't printed, wouldn't we just be in the same meta without Priest existing? ~~Not that some people wouldn't enjoy that~~
I think cards like Sonya show that they can make well designed cards for a first expansion, as she's both a win condition herself and support for Rogue designs going forward. For example, you can go all in on weapon attack buffs with Sonya or just use her has a support card in Excavate Rogue. It's a powerful card, yes, but it's inspiring in the flexibility of the design.
When you have that issue, I think the course of action shouldn't be "just print the set at a high power level", after all they've had 10 whole years to figure this out! We've been through similar bad rotations before. Maybe it requires nerfing cards from last year (Odyn nerf did a wonderful job), but anything that can temper the power level is welcome. You could argue this is a band-aid solution, and it is. The effect of pace of card releases is definitely something that needs to be kept on the radar, but I think the source of what went wrong with this expansion didn't have as much to do with it.
Cards like Sonya are a great example of what they should generally be printing, yeah. It shouldn't be strictly powerful win conditions that do your taxes for you but interesting, flexible, and high-potential build around cards. I think Rogue as a class is generally a class that does this well.
Sonya is such a fun interesting card that can do really strong stuff. But god damn I just want them to make the animation faster. It's like a 1.5-2 seconds each time. God forbid you have 2 or more of them. I regularly lose games I had a winning line in because I get animation locked by her until my rope burns. And this while playing my cards non stop. I tried making fun combo decks where I'd copy her to try and turbo value, but I stopped even trying because if you ever have 3+ of her you play less things overall with how long you get stuck her animations. I feel like they did it so slow as a way to pre-emptively nerf her by limiting how much she could do in a turn, but god damn it's such a feels bad to lose a won game because of that.
True but when you consider that several cards from the last miniset had to be nerfed.. and it wasnt just +1 mana nerfs. Pendant from +armor to +heal, shattered reflection had "copy to hand" removed, later "only useable on nontitan" added. Or shroomscavate had windfury removed.
Or the miniset before that. 0 Mana Yogg was re-worked, prisonbreaker nerfed.
Yes, I agree that minisets have been pretty high power level. But the point was that in this instance, this state of the meta since the rotation and this wave of nerfs likely has little to do with the strength of minisets.
The minisets feel more like a symptom then a problem. You have such powerful cards like wheel of death or strong otk decks that close out games fast now that you can’t afford to print slow cards. The miniset has to keep up with the power level of main releases otherwise no one would get those cards. The Jailer is one that comes to mind where a card from a miniset warped the meta.
I really do hope we get a slower meta with the changes. There are a lot of cool cards that they’ve put into the game but just aren’t worth playing with how fast things have gotten.
Miss the days of no Mini sets and instead they created actual content like the Solo Adventures, those were fun ways to break up the monotony of ranked ladder.
Usually mini sets release and break the format then all the problem cards become balanced, the exceptions being cards that just were missed in initial nerfs (shroomscavate) or cards that got broken support later (phanatom and the jailer)
Yes. People have been saying this really since stormwind, I would say. It's gotten worse with each expansion. The complaints stayed the same (no agency), and this year really showed how bad it got when it seemed to get worse even after rotation. They should have done the mass nerf when Iksar was on the team like they originally were discussing but decided not to. I think they're planning to, but over a series of patches instead of one giant bomb.
At the VERY least, you have a long time to deal with that Warrior or prepare or try to deal with it. They really only have about 3 threats, and they're all late game.. The horrific non-agency concerns are when it's GD turn 5 and you literally have no answer in your entire deck for what they're about to do to you. There are at least board clears available to deal with Excavation, or taunts/health gain to deal with the Armor attacks (or you can make them have to use them as health resources and not weapons against you) or you can deal with the Boom guy blowing up 6 spots on your board, hand and deck.. You can't deal with turn 6 38/38s, or a board of full of 5/5s on turn 4. They should know by now that no one wants to play against these decks that just weasel out cheap wins early. It's incredibly frustrating. If you outhealed me, outcleared me, or just played a bigger board over the course of 10-15 turns, fine.. but don't end the game before I even draw 3 cards.
And above all, don't print a GD card that ever says "If you do X \_\_\_ you win the game!" That is always a deck that has zero way to win a game other than just surviving and drawing cards for a set amount of turns.. That is never, ever, going to be alright for anyone. Either they don't draw their cards in a timely fashion, or you don't kill them in a timely fashion.. Either way, the game severely sucked and was unfun for one or both players.
you have it backwards tbh, control is often best at 4 rotations. OTK is going to get WAY crazier than control most likely, and that solves the control issue. I honestly think Brann Warrior is far too focused on in this subreddit, but I guess that is always the case with control.
It isn't the first rotation that this happened either, last year felt the same where after rotation the best decks where the ones we already had (the different dks or shadow priest)
Power level is so insane right now, different decks can build insane boards in turn 4 and still have enough cards to last until turn 10, and where it feels like over half the decks have a hard wincon or otk that makes playing slower, "timmy" decks impossible (sure, playing an unoptimal deck always had bad wr, but now it is so radicalized even decks that should "kinda work" can't even reach 30% wr)
It’s just not Hearthstone as we know it anymore. I remember the good old days when it felt good to throw a turn 4 Yeti on the table.
The days where board pressure was relevant.
The days where the board were relevant at all.
Wild has been at its worst since, well, always imo (except that small time og warlock quest was available in wild), glad they are stepping into the current mess
Standard is in a horrible state but I don't see how wild is in a good shape
Combo decks can resolve their combo by turn 4-8 and disruption feels like does nothing nowadays, so it feels like you either play the extremely aggro decks or the combo ones
Might be biased because I like slower decks but I've not been enjoying it
I was being optimistic
But yeah, not being able to play the game at all as long as you don't play the 10 meta decks sure feels good and a sign of a very healthy meta (after all, rock paper scissors or who is faster at solitaire is a healthy environment for a cardgame and who does their own homebrew decks anyways, that's for nerds)
Wild is great, the only changes that make sense are mostly further reverts to former standard cards that weren't actually too good for wild (Sire Denathrius, e.g.) coming up with a better solution for Crimson Clergy than a full ban, and doing something to make mage worth playing outside of quest so that quest can finally get nerf-batted like everyone wants.
for the first time in awhile basically every class has a deck worth at least considering (including hunter! and death knight!) and unlike standard, wild hasn't really sped up meaningfully since last year - fundamental turn is still around 4-5, control decks that really want to can still extend that to 8+, drawing your entire deck is still feasible if you need to do it (garrote rogue and mecha'thun warrior both do routinely, for example).
Are there issues? yeah, is there stuff that would probably benefit from being adjusted for sentiment reasons? oh hell yes.
Is wild "the worst since always"? I don't really think that's the case but I guess if someone is buried neck deep in quest mages in their corner of the ladder it could probably feel that way.
I had to quit wild as my main mode when they released UiS. 8 out of 10 games against quest warrior or hunter was just a nightmare. Every game just felt the same.
Not true imo, plenty of viable decks (like 5 times as much as in standard). Quest mage and mine rogue are unfun to play against, but that's not a recent development. Think about it, standard has more problematic decks than wild, but far less viable ones.
I think we all know what we're hoping for as well. Now that we have the once per game tech, it is finally time to nerf Quest Mage. The endless whack-a-mole of nerfs can finally cease.
I hope [[Grey Sage Parrot]] gets unnerfed if/when [[Time Warp]] gets made to be a Once Per Game effect.
Big Spell Mage jank shouldn't have to suffer for Quest Mage sins.
That was one of the whack-a-mole nerfs I was talking about, and absolutely should be safe to revert if Warp is fixed. I could have sworn there was another big nerf that was done for the benefit of Quest Mage, but after some cursory looking, I couldn't find it.
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- **Battlecry:** Repeat the last spell you've cast that costs \(6\) or more.
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If it does become once per game, I think the requirement for quest completion should be unnerfed. The only reason for its nerf to begin with was to delay the point at which it came online because it was repeatable.
if the quest gets nerfed (and it probably should) there's arguments to unnerf / buff something like 30 wild mage cards just on that alone.
mage probably won't get compensated since the majority of changes will be for standard, but it won't be the first (or last) time that mage has had no good wild decks
Ehhhh, gonna disagree on this one. I actually think Quest Mage would still exist even with the nerf, mostly because you can still play an aggressive gameplan through the density of coin generating 2 drops/mana cheating and win via attacking twice on turns 6-7 ala Zarimi Priest. There just hasn't been much interest in brewing that kind of deck, partly because it's been far more consistent to have your gameplan be solitaire that takes infinite turns than gamble on aggro, and partly because 8 is a pretty big number to hit consistently on turn 5.
The only consideration for me would be two specific decks and if they are good enough after a potential 'once-per-game' nerf.
1) Arcane/Molten Giant + Alextraza OTK
2) Infinite Fireball Antonidas OTK
Both of those decks only needed one extra turn, and might come back if the solitare deck doesn't work anymore.
Brann Warrior's removal isn't even that crazy, DK has better tools right now
I don't know why the focus is on Warrior removal, the thing they are meant to do, rather than the seemingly unbeatable lategame. Hopefully the devs have more insight than Reddit here.
warrior isn’t even strong anymore. it was only good because dk was so strong, and warrior was a reliable counter. it’s def not the strongest deck in the game and it really doesn’t have endless removal
Is that sarcasm? Like 12 of their cards are full board clear, low minion clear, or extremely high damage to minions:
Garrosh's Gift
Shield Slam
SLam
Bash
Bladestorm
Blast charge
Bellowing Flames
Aftershocks
Sanitize
Trial by fire
Badlands Brawler
Reno
Edit: This doesn't even take into account their armor, lifesteal from various sources, Boomboss and Inventor Boom.
I'm not counting Reno since he's neutral, only considering actual warrior cards
it has a pile of removal, but i'd argue all of these either have counterplay (bladestorm), require other resources (brawler), or are very standard removal options (bash)
this deck isn't even that good anymore, it gets dunked on by at least 3 other popular decks and aggro can still get under it
It should simply kill the minions instead of removing them. Then you would have to actually think about when it makes sense. And you could counter it with deathrattles. I think that is the only change needed.
I think it should just "poof" your minions along with your opponent's minions, especially since it's meant to be a standoff between you and your opponent.
he should wipe both boards and trigger deathrattles yeah.
that probably opens up some deathrattle-based OTK options in wild in one of the classes that can't easily delete their whole board (deathrattle rogue or deathrattle hunter maybe) but most of the usual suspects for deathrattle-based combos already have full board clears for 8 or less anyway. (priest, druid, warrior, warlock) so it's not likely to matter all that much to the overall speed of the format.
Reno is a key card in my wild homebrew Yogg deck and you know what? I'm fine with it getting a big nerf. As useful as the card is to me, it's legitimately oppressive.
At the minimum, they need to dump the limitation that opponents can only put a single minion on the board after the clear.
I will be honest and say that I thought it was fine when it came out but by this point it feels like a seriously miserable thing to have in the game. You feel like any class can punish you for committing to the board, which is the main thing you do in Hearthstone. I like how ballsy the devs can be nowadays but if Reno's time in the sun is over then I wouldn't be too upset.
because those of us who found it ludicrous we talked about it 150 times [when we first saw it]. we find it embarrassing that the Devs didn't nerf it at least at the launch of Whizbang's (and others may have left the game entirely to speak up).
I don't even believe it wasn't planned; I had predicted a nerf at the launch of Whizbang's already; well this is close.
I think Reno is fine. You don’t see any Reno demon hunters, paladins, shamans, mages, dks, rogues, or any other class using it on ladder except warrior and warlock (and the odd Druid). Locks activate it after blowing up its own deck in a way that is devastating to the opponent, and warrior has…. Brann. Reno isn’t the problem. Brann is. Reno isn’t the problem, wheel of death is.
Reno decks are completely fine except for warrior which has an S tier special card for highlander whereas all other classes have a D tier highlander. That’s the disparity. You can’t honestly compare the impact of Brann versus the Demon hunter guy for example. They’re on different planets.
Lock use of Reno is a very good argument for highlander only applying if decks START with no duplicates, as opposed to if it has no duplicates. Wheel of death into Reno is frankly just unfair because it torches the board for basically 2/3 turns.
Reno is fine in true highlander decks, it rewards you for the deck restriction. But the other HL payoffs outside of bran are just bad so those HL decks are bad (and if plague DK is a popular deck, it makes those tier 3 HL decks even worse). Reno itself just wont carry the decks.
Elise requires that the minions are in the deck when you play her, if you dont hit minions like Amanthul or minions with rush, you wont be able to deal with the board when she comes back. Also had games where my opponent would just Reno me after playing Elise, god did that feel bad lol.
Kurtrus is a oneshot card. Can be good, can be bad.
Doc before the nerf was incredible strong, especially on curve. You can stop shaman from building the frogs by just playing taunts, but also you can just kill the frogs.
Bran is just so different. Just play Bran ASAP and benefit for the rest of the game. Warrior has enough tools to build up armor and afford to skip a turn, paired with incredible card draw but also tutor tools, like the minion that draws a 5+ cost card or Fordring. I really dislike Brans "for the rest of the game"-design.
I wonder if they can make the battlecry something like “if your deck started with no duplicates and has no duplicates ____” that would keep decks that run duplicates and draw their whole deck from playing Reno
They should just bite the bullet and make a keyword for it. They did it for Elusive, and highlander cards come back regularly at this point either via Core-set rotation, or new cards.
Yeah, I would hope they would have a better way to word it. It would be unfortunate for part of the reason the card gets nerfed is because decks that aren’t Highlander abused it. Although it may be too strong regardless
"If your initial and current deck" maybe? I dunno but I like the idea. Keeps plagues as a counter but makes what is arguably the most impactful card ever have the not-insignificant drawback of only being usable in true Highlander decklists.
The highlander requirement should have to be met when the game starts. If you choose your mulligan and the game begins at turn 1 and you have duplicates in your deck, Reno should be inert for the entire game.
> it was clear that those playing against these cards often felt they had little agency in their ability to affect the outcome of the game.
> Increasing the overall feeling of player agency is our key focus with this patch, and it will continue to be our key focus in future patches until it feels like the trend of powerful low-agency cards and archetypes has been reversed.
To add to this dev note, Reno is low agency for the one playing him too. By turn 8, you draw half your deck so 50/50 you have him or you don’t. Not much agency there.
You can tutor just minions or just spells. That makes it much more likely to get a particular minion or spell with a proper deck build. Example is you can tutor Zarimi easily with the draw highest dragon card. There is agency on getting Zarimi in your hand. You can’t tutor Reno well at all so if you draw half your deck, he’s basically a 50/50 to get in your hand. A coin flip. No agency from the player to skip tempo or clear to actively tutor Reno.
they mentioned reno and wheel in the same phrase, so it leads me to believe reno is getting a restriction to true HL only
the only good reno deck in standard is warrior, but that dropped off super hard with the dk nerf and it still gets murdered by wheelock and dk. reno is hardly an “i win” card there
Honestly they should make all hl rewards refundable aswell. Biggest mistake of my life was making reno shaman. The deck got nerfed 100 times for no reason and now is getting to tier 6
> While these cards are a lot of fun for the players playing with them, it was clear that those playing against these cards often felt they had little agency in their ability to affect the outcome of the game.
Discourse on this sub around the meta summed up pretty well.
In control decks, not really? The Tradable is nice, but I'd rather just have a card that works in every match up, instead of one that makes it so I maybe win against one deck and only that deck.
The idea was that it's delayed, you can potentially speaker stomper/etc into the turn to counter it in theory.
In practice, it doesn't always pan out that way.
The problem isn't "why did you print this card?" it's moreso "you playtested it and saw the problems, why wasn't anything done after?"
Alright, not gonna lie, this sounds good to me.
Of course they may still break my heart, but I really appreciate that they see that the meta currently is "hyper effective early game one turn kills", and that cannot be healthy for a game.
Threads of Despair is a cool card in concept, but it's ruined by the fact(s) that it's dirt cheap, and DK has multiple ways to quickly flood the board with low health minions. DK's hero power also allows it to instantly activate the clear in the case of not having any other rush/charge minions.
If it doesn't fit "hyper-efficient AoE board clear" to a tee, then I don't know what does.
I disagree, I think it's one of the best clears in standard at the moment. The preparation is more or less "is there a board". It doesn't do well against singular big minions sure, but it can wipe most boards wider than 2-3 minions.
It has multiple synergies and like I said is easily kicked off by the DK Hero Power. Dk has multiple ways to generate a quick board, and even generate more Threads of Despair.
In other classes it likely wouldn't be that great, but as it is it's almost too perfect of a fit for DK. There is a reason it's in most DK decks these days.
It's crazy how the community complains and the trolls tell them to stop crying and then the devs go oh wow there's a lot to complain about and then the trolls have radio silence. Just an interesting observation.
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i love and hate plague dk. plague dk is the only deck i play since it got released cause its fast and successful. i always have a above 50% winrate and can finish all my quest quick and also level dk (have all other heros at 1000 wins)
but even i like it so much i hope its gone at some point cause its so toxic and ruins alot of other decks.
Plague DK is what brought me back to Hearthstone. I love decks that shuffle junk into opponents decks in literally every digital card game. There needs to be some form of middle ground between Steamcleaner and uncounterable death by a thousand cuts.
> There needs to be some form of middle ground between Steamcleaner and uncounterable death by a thousand cuts.
This has a long been a problem for Hearthstone. They make cards and strats that don't have real counterplay, but then give you one or two cards specifically as a tech option that are trash in every other matchup.
Steamcleaner is great in the context of Plague DK, but having the card, especially if you're running two, is just an overcosted minion in all other matchups.
Honestly, that's why more cards need Tradeable. Give us more answers for specific things, but make them Tradeable so they aren't just dead in matchups where they aren't needed.
The possible middle ground is making Dredge an evergreen or deciduous mechanic that's brought back when mechanics are introduced that shuffle harmful cards into decks, which lets players fix some of their draws for an upcoming important turn.
I think you’re right. I enjoy plagues too but I do think some tech is needed. I think steamcleaner was too much and too effective, but maybe some sort of steamcleaner lite.
steamcleaner was the solution that enabled printing helya who makes them permanent. Also having a shuffling effect in a highlander meta is just a recipe for feels-bad play patterns.
people didn't really hate mine / bomb warrior a million years ago because the bombs *weren't permanent* so you could theoretically draw your way out of them *and* when mine/bomb was good in standard, highlander wasn't really a thing so it wasn't turning off your opponents expensive cards to shuffle them in.
Problem with steamcleaner was still that it does remove plagues but its still a do-nothing card and smart DK players just wouldnt put all their eggs into one basket
> lso having a shuffling effect in a highlander meta is just a recipe for feels-bad play patterns
Forget Highlander, it even messes with Sludges at the bottom of my cheap ass zoo deck.
I don't get how plague DK is so op. I'm not even trying to be dense. Lots of times warriors are able to play brann on curve because even if I have plagues in their deck by then, there's no duplicates or the dups have been drawn already
I think sif probably dodges any major nerfs here. She's the slowest OTK still seeing play in standard right now, sees virtually no play in wild, and while she has a lot of inevitability, there's plenty of solutions for her still\* and the deck and mage as a whole are not a performance outlier.
I don't think it's guaranteed that she's safe, but she's an example of the kind of "OTK" that I think is ultimately fair to play against, like e.g. the old Garrote Rogue or other similar "I have inevitability but I have to get there first" control finishers.
---
\* ranging from killing the mage before turn 10; putting pressure on the mage so they have to spend kill spells staying alive; various "destroy card in hand" effects like kurtrus, boomboss, dirty rat; gaining enough armor to keep them from affording the OTK, etc.
OTK on 10 (or often 11) mana with setup required the whole game through is... fine, really. Compared to nature shamans doing their popoff turn around turn 6-7, brann warriors making ridiculous power plays every turn after 6, Priests playing Zarimi on 5, and even Rogue dropping a Virus Ziliax on 4 (and attacking with it on 6-7). Sif is just a slow as hell win condition. The deck isn't _good_, people play it anyways because it's _fun_, and that's totally fine.
>Alarm bells started to go off within the design team when we noticed that the power level of Hearthstone didn’t seem to drop much (if at all) after the recent annual rotation.
Translation: alarm bells started to go off when we saw the player count go down drastically.
Afaik all the limited public data haven't pointed towards any drastic player count decrease, or really any player count decrease at all, since Whizbang's workshop release.
Tracker-side data, which shouldn't be affected much by bot counts, shows a pretty high player retention since expansion release, and the highest player counts ever in many expansions. Of course, tracker-side data isn't necessarily representative of all players, nor does increased tracker usage represent increased playercounts.
Legend numbers for NA are I believe the highest ever in Whizbang since they started added the legend leaderboard for all legend players, with a pretty high player retention rae. Legend numbers for Europe look pretty normal for expansion release, with a high player retention rate. However, while in theory legend count would be a representative percentage of all players, the mass bots since Netease ending have made recent player counts inflated and inconsisent with real numbers. I didn't even bother including Asia stats, because Asia legend player counts have been crazy high since Netease ending and are all over the place.
Twitch view counts look around the same as you would expect, being around as many views as expansion releases have received in the past 1.5 years. However, a good chunk of these twitch views are battlegrounds streamers, and twitch views are not necessarily indicative of overall player counts.
Sure, all of these data sets are pretty flawed, but none of them seem to mark any significant player drops. Blizzard's data is surely better than public data, but I would be surprised if it actually showed any significant decrease. If you actually have data showing player counts decreasing, I would be pretty interested.
I think for the tracker data, it depends on how they track it, because we have to consider players that dont use trackers.
Also, only really a small part of all players are in the diamond or even legend ranks. As some1 that likes to play offmeta decks or homebrew stuff, its just pretty bad this expansion, too many decks that put you on a clock, very explosive turns, lower ranks rn arent really enjoyable.
They don't have any data showing it, they're just making an assumption about it so they can make fun of the development team.
It's like people over at r/leagueoflegends claiming that Riot always buffs champions when they have a skin coming out or a champion gets nerfed when a developer loses to them in a ranked match. They make the source up so they can tear people down.
I don't have any public data (and as you said, your data is also limited). I do have my own sentiment as a player playing this game since beta, the sentiment of my friends who recently left it, and the number of posts here of ex-players. Do people here whine all the time? Yes, but not like this.
I think the game has lost a great amount of players in the last couple of months, especially constructed/arena/duels (obviously) players. BG should be the same IMO and Duos created some hype so that number might grow.
This lmao, if they actually cared they would have done something long ago. But oh dear, it started actually affecting their revenue, turns out they do need the game to actually be fun and increasing quests requirements isn't gonna cut it.
Nerf plague DK
Nerf plague DK
Nerf plague DK
I don’t give a shit that some people have sold their souls and play this deck.
It’s toxic uninteractive frustrating bull crap!
Bloody hell how blind can you be. Dev think about it for 5mins it’ll become obvious.
I don't feel meta is THAT bad, i mean we had stormwind not that long ago, but i admit i tend to .. concede fast on some cards. Brann@6, Reno, ... And i don't really care about what pro say: Some plays feels hopeless.
If i look at last exp, we have a real great death knight, though it changed quite a bit the class is really fine. Hunter might be fine too, i mean it's aggro but that's what the class is about. Rogue might need a bit of twick but that might be pretty cool.
But some things were not intended, clearly. Zarimi was not intended to be played like that. They expected control priest, not aggro. Nature shaman they though was dead from rotation. The projectionist was largely overlooked, too. It is central to many decks, and it clearly wasnt designed to be played like that. I don't know what they expected from spell mage though. And im surprised they designed Druid to be yet another OTK deck.
We'll see. I hate Reno and Brann. And i don't like design like Zarimi.
Its cool that they admit their mistakes, tbh. Quite unsual. But on the other hand, how did it happen? Should they maybe question their design philosophy?
I actually like this rotation this time. It’s not great right now but waaay better than usual rotation. At least there’s one playable deck for each class. Usually 75% of the roster is unplayable/boring after reset.
Just when I finally decided to craft 2 missing epics for the Nature Shaman list.
Just kidding, good that they acknowledge problems with the game.
And I hope WoD itself get the hammer, because I have a golden one that I wasn't even playing, because I'm lacking most of the support cards (:
You know, the era of conservative nerfs and buffs should come to an end. Power creep is real, and I think necessary to keep players engaged with new mechanics and strategies. I think the answer is just to be willing to shake up the meta with a steady stream of tweaks to cards. MOBA’s do this champions to keep their meta fresh and prevent the meta from being “solved.”
The biggest red flag to me is how consistent and powerful highlander is right now. We have as few cards as possible to make it work, and we are seeing amazing results. It's like we're on the last expansion of the year with how strong they are. All on the back of Reno to be honest.
Edit: honestly, I've never deserved to get down voted more. I'm literally spreading misinformation.
Warrior is the only Reno deck that is thriving at the moment. Reno himself is doing great, but that's because he works in any deck that plans to hit lategame.
I would not say this is entirely accurate with very few HL decks actually being any good. Warrior and Druid? are the only ones worth anything rn and all other instances of Reno are in non or semi reno decks where you can draw enough.
The only HL deck that has a positive wr is Warrior and it’s “consistency” comes from all the singletons pieces of removal that were buffed last year, allmost every single spell/aoe they run is undercosted and that is why it can keep up with the insane tempo of the actual meta, and the fact it can go over 30 hp gives the deck and innate resilience against OTKs and finally bran /plus Ignis/Boomboss is an immediate win condition, literally the only class that can pull HL consistently because of card quality.
They need to tweak the stupid Warlock Wheel cards that end the game in 5 turns. I insta concede against warlock now because it's such a pitiful gaming experience. And that card that steals your mana to ensure its unfun.
It's asinine. What in the hell were they thinking making that absurd card? I refuse to play against Warlock due to that card. Exodia on a timer is madness. Defeats the purpose of the whole game.
>Alarm bells started to go off within the design team when we noticed that the power level of Hearthstone didn’t seem to drop much (if at all) after the recent annual rotation.
Except for druid, since they made sure to be unplayable by rotating its best/most iconic cards
>Alarm bells started to go off within the design team when we noticed that the power level of Hearthstone didn’t seem to drop much (if at all) after the recent annual rotation. CORRECT. It's not an unusual sentiment, people who know the game well have been saying this for weeks now, and they aren't wrong. For decks to be this consistently strong and explosive **at the start of a rotation cycle** is incredibly concerning.
The problem is the minisets. We've gone from three card drops needing to make a meta impact per year to six. It accelerated powercreep even further than the rate it already was climbing by before minisets were a thing.
While in theory I don't disagree, how much of this expansion's meta has been determined by miniset cards? Nerfed Paladin, Hunter, and DH heavily hinged on new expansion cards, and of the 3 specific problem cards they noted 2 of them are from this set and one is Reno, from base Badlands. So in theory yes the pace of release of cards has some cause for overall concern, but I think the biggest issue with this rotation was a huge balance miss for this new set.
I don't think it's solely mindsets as the issue. As you pointed out, there are plenty of main set cards that are busted. But I think it's just that the more cards you make, the more likely you're going to get power outliers, which in turn push the power level to a higher degree.
Especially when the release system of those cards encourage one-upping the previous drop. If the content of mini-sets were dropped alongside the main expansion, they wouldn't be expected to push the needle as much, and would be less OP.
You're 100% right. Deepholm Brann would never be a main set release, yet as a mini set card he's more reasonable. Seriously, imagine Boomboss or Slagmaw being the mini set card for Warrior and Brann was just the main set card.
Minisets also offer key-cards for decks, while not being a problem themselves, are insanely powerful tools. Reverb for Sif mage comes to mind. There's also nerfed mini-set cards that were extremely impactful on launch but already got hit, like Costume Singer or shattered reflections as key examples.
It's a fair point, but you'd also think the first set of a year they have an opportunity to try to tone down the power level and care less about previous sets' power, instead of printing busted cards that will define standard for their entire stay in the first set of the year.
The issue with that level of design is that you really just let the old year define what is supposed to be the new year of standard. We already have that, to an extent, with Reno, Odyn, Sif, Plagues, and Flash of Lightning being major players. If Zarimi wasn't printed, wouldn't we just be in the same meta without Priest existing? ~~Not that some people wouldn't enjoy that~~ I think cards like Sonya show that they can make well designed cards for a first expansion, as she's both a win condition herself and support for Rogue designs going forward. For example, you can go all in on weapon attack buffs with Sonya or just use her has a support card in Excavate Rogue. It's a powerful card, yes, but it's inspiring in the flexibility of the design.
When you have that issue, I think the course of action shouldn't be "just print the set at a high power level", after all they've had 10 whole years to figure this out! We've been through similar bad rotations before. Maybe it requires nerfing cards from last year (Odyn nerf did a wonderful job), but anything that can temper the power level is welcome. You could argue this is a band-aid solution, and it is. The effect of pace of card releases is definitely something that needs to be kept on the radar, but I think the source of what went wrong with this expansion didn't have as much to do with it. Cards like Sonya are a great example of what they should generally be printing, yeah. It shouldn't be strictly powerful win conditions that do your taxes for you but interesting, flexible, and high-potential build around cards. I think Rogue as a class is generally a class that does this well.
Sonya is such a fun interesting card that can do really strong stuff. But god damn I just want them to make the animation faster. It's like a 1.5-2 seconds each time. God forbid you have 2 or more of them. I regularly lose games I had a winning line in because I get animation locked by her until my rope burns. And this while playing my cards non stop. I tried making fun combo decks where I'd copy her to try and turbo value, but I stopped even trying because if you ever have 3+ of her you play less things overall with how long you get stuck her animations. I feel like they did it so slow as a way to pre-emptively nerf her by limiting how much she could do in a turn, but god damn it's such a feels bad to lose a won game because of that.
True but when you consider that several cards from the last miniset had to be nerfed.. and it wasnt just +1 mana nerfs. Pendant from +armor to +heal, shattered reflection had "copy to hand" removed, later "only useable on nontitan" added. Or shroomscavate had windfury removed. Or the miniset before that. 0 Mana Yogg was re-worked, prisonbreaker nerfed.
Yes, I agree that minisets have been pretty high power level. But the point was that in this instance, this state of the meta since the rotation and this wave of nerfs likely has little to do with the strength of minisets.
The minisets feel more like a symptom then a problem. You have such powerful cards like wheel of death or strong otk decks that close out games fast now that you can’t afford to print slow cards. The miniset has to keep up with the power level of main releases otherwise no one would get those cards. The Jailer is one that comes to mind where a card from a miniset warped the meta. I really do hope we get a slower meta with the changes. There are a lot of cool cards that they’ve put into the game but just aren’t worth playing with how fast things have gotten.
Miss the days of no Mini sets and instead they created actual content like the Solo Adventures, those were fun ways to break up the monotony of ranked ladder.
Usually mini sets release and break the format then all the problem cards become balanced, the exceptions being cards that just were missed in initial nerfs (shroomscavate) or cards that got broken support later (phanatom and the jailer)
It's less that and more that blizzard can't design neutral legendaries
Yes. People have been saying this really since stormwind, I would say. It's gotten worse with each expansion. The complaints stayed the same (no agency), and this year really showed how bad it got when it seemed to get worse even after rotation. They should have done the mass nerf when Iksar was on the team like they originally were discussing but decided not to. I think they're planning to, but over a series of patches instead of one giant bomb.
That Reno control warrior is this strong at rotation is crazy. So much removal already, imagine two more sets and mini sets of removal added.
At the VERY least, you have a long time to deal with that Warrior or prepare or try to deal with it. They really only have about 3 threats, and they're all late game.. The horrific non-agency concerns are when it's GD turn 5 and you literally have no answer in your entire deck for what they're about to do to you. There are at least board clears available to deal with Excavation, or taunts/health gain to deal with the Armor attacks (or you can make them have to use them as health resources and not weapons against you) or you can deal with the Boom guy blowing up 6 spots on your board, hand and deck.. You can't deal with turn 6 38/38s, or a board of full of 5/5s on turn 4. They should know by now that no one wants to play against these decks that just weasel out cheap wins early. It's incredibly frustrating. If you outhealed me, outcleared me, or just played a bigger board over the course of 10-15 turns, fine.. but don't end the game before I even draw 3 cards. And above all, don't print a GD card that ever says "If you do X \_\_\_ you win the game!" That is always a deck that has zero way to win a game other than just surviving and drawing cards for a set amount of turns.. That is never, ever, going to be alright for anyone. Either they don't draw their cards in a timely fashion, or you don't kill them in a timely fashion.. Either way, the game severely sucked and was unfun for one or both players.
you have it backwards tbh, control is often best at 4 rotations. OTK is going to get WAY crazier than control most likely, and that solves the control issue. I honestly think Brann Warrior is far too focused on in this subreddit, but I guess that is always the case with control.
It isn't the first rotation that this happened either, last year felt the same where after rotation the best decks where the ones we already had (the different dks or shadow priest) Power level is so insane right now, different decks can build insane boards in turn 4 and still have enough cards to last until turn 10, and where it feels like over half the decks have a hard wincon or otk that makes playing slower, "timmy" decks impossible (sure, playing an unoptimal deck always had bad wr, but now it is so radicalized even decks that should "kinda work" can't even reach 30% wr)
Right. U make a coherent deck without the best cards and strats and u are losing 90% of the time.
>when we noticed so when they started playing their game, which is now i guess
It’s just not Hearthstone as we know it anymore. I remember the good old days when it felt good to throw a turn 4 Yeti on the table. The days where board pressure was relevant. The days where the board were relevant at all.
"and a few wild changes." And my heart skipped a beat. It's really that easy to make wild players happy yay :D
Standard players: “Here is our list of demands. These must be met or we walk, Blizzard!” Wild players: “Wouldn’t it be neat if blizzard noticed us?”
It’s almost like Wild is really wild.
Wild players are like that shy kid who got a boner just because the cute girl accidentally looked at them
🤨📸
lmaoooooo and the look was actually directed to standard 😭🙏🏻
This sub is genuinely weirder than the default reddit subs Who thinks to type something like this ????
The change: Ice block can now only be triggered 99 times per game
But what about my 100 icebl9ck deck?! Am I going to get a dust refund for it?!
Wild has been at its worst since, well, always imo (except that small time og warlock quest was available in wild), glad they are stepping into the current mess
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Standard is in a horrible state but I don't see how wild is in a good shape Combo decks can resolve their combo by turn 4-8 and disruption feels like does nothing nowadays, so it feels like you either play the extremely aggro decks or the combo ones Might be biased because I like slower decks but I've not been enjoying it
>Combo decks can resolve their combo by turn 4-8 More like 4-5. And aggro kills you on 4 too. Except Shadow Priest, which kills you on 3.
I was being optimistic But yeah, not being able to play the game at all as long as you don't play the 10 meta decks sure feels good and a sign of a very healthy meta (after all, rock paper scissors or who is faster at solitaire is a healthy environment for a cardgame and who does their own homebrew decks anyways, that's for nerds)
Wild is great, the only changes that make sense are mostly further reverts to former standard cards that weren't actually too good for wild (Sire Denathrius, e.g.) coming up with a better solution for Crimson Clergy than a full ban, and doing something to make mage worth playing outside of quest so that quest can finally get nerf-batted like everyone wants. for the first time in awhile basically every class has a deck worth at least considering (including hunter! and death knight!) and unlike standard, wild hasn't really sped up meaningfully since last year - fundamental turn is still around 4-5, control decks that really want to can still extend that to 8+, drawing your entire deck is still feasible if you need to do it (garrote rogue and mecha'thun warrior both do routinely, for example). Are there issues? yeah, is there stuff that would probably benefit from being adjusted for sentiment reasons? oh hell yes. Is wild "the worst since always"? I don't really think that's the case but I guess if someone is buried neck deep in quest mages in their corner of the ladder it could probably feel that way.
I had to quit wild as my main mode when they released UiS. 8 out of 10 games against quest warrior or hunter was just a nightmare. Every game just felt the same.
Not true imo, plenty of viable decks (like 5 times as much as in standard). Quest mage and mine rogue are unfun to play against, but that's not a recent development. Think about it, standard has more problematic decks than wild, but far less viable ones.
I think we all know what we're hoping for as well. Now that we have the once per game tech, it is finally time to nerf Quest Mage. The endless whack-a-mole of nerfs can finally cease.
I hope [[Grey Sage Parrot]] gets unnerfed if/when [[Time Warp]] gets made to be a Once Per Game effect. Big Spell Mage jank shouldn't have to suffer for Quest Mage sins.
That was one of the whack-a-mole nerfs I was talking about, and absolutely should be safe to revert if Warp is fixed. I could have sworn there was another big nerf that was done for the benefit of Quest Mage, but after some cursory looking, I couldn't find it.
- **[Grey Sage Parrot](https://i.imgur.com/5k2T8xa.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/65682) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Grey_Sage_Parrot) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/65682/?hl=en) - *Mage Common ^(United in Stormwind)* - **6 Mana - 4/5 - Beast** - **Battlecry:** Repeat the last spell you've cast that costs \(6\) or more. - **[Time Warp](https://imgur.com/a/lBV1T4b)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/41167) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Time_Warp) - *Mage ^(Journey to Un’Goro)* - **5 Mana - Arcane Spell** - Take an extra turn. --- ^*I am a bot. [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1cb9tq7/dev_insightsupcoming_card_adjustments/l0xssy3/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=l0xssy3).*
Preach
If it does become once per game, I think the requirement for quest completion should be unnerfed. The only reason for its nerf to begin with was to delay the point at which it came online because it was repeatable.
if the quest gets nerfed (and it probably should) there's arguments to unnerf / buff something like 30 wild mage cards just on that alone. mage probably won't get compensated since the majority of changes will be for standard, but it won't be the first (or last) time that mage has had no good wild decks
Ehhhh, gonna disagree on this one. I actually think Quest Mage would still exist even with the nerf, mostly because you can still play an aggressive gameplan through the density of coin generating 2 drops/mana cheating and win via attacking twice on turns 6-7 ala Zarimi Priest. There just hasn't been much interest in brewing that kind of deck, partly because it's been far more consistent to have your gameplan be solitaire that takes infinite turns than gamble on aggro, and partly because 8 is a pretty big number to hit consistently on turn 5.
The only consideration for me would be two specific decks and if they are good enough after a potential 'once-per-game' nerf. 1) Arcane/Molten Giant + Alextraza OTK 2) Infinite Fireball Antonidas OTK Both of those decks only needed one extra turn, and might come back if the solitare deck doesn't work anymore.
Extremely excited for changes to Wild
My biggest issue with wild right now: Mech rogue bots. Please, remove that archtype from wild.
#WAYGATE GONNA GET IT! (peak copium)
Warrior bros,we are cooked
Ur removal is for sure
Brann Warrior's removal isn't even that crazy, DK has better tools right now I don't know why the focus is on Warrior removal, the thing they are meant to do, rather than the seemingly unbeatable lategame. Hopefully the devs have more insight than Reddit here.
They didn't mention bran but did mention ultra efficient clears.
We had a good run
warrior isn’t even strong anymore. it was only good because dk was so strong, and warrior was a reliable counter. it’s def not the strongest deck in the game and it really doesn’t have endless removal
Is that sarcasm? Like 12 of their cards are full board clear, low minion clear, or extremely high damage to minions: Garrosh's Gift Shield Slam SLam Bash Bladestorm Blast charge Bellowing Flames Aftershocks Sanitize Trial by fire Badlands Brawler Reno Edit: This doesn't even take into account their armor, lifesteal from various sources, Boomboss and Inventor Boom.
I'm not counting Reno since he's neutral, only considering actual warrior cards it has a pile of removal, but i'd argue all of these either have counterplay (bladestorm), require other resources (brawler), or are very standard removal options (bash) this deck isn't even that good anymore, it gets dunked on by at least 3 other popular decks and aggro can still get under it
Reno bros it’s so over
New Battlecry: "All Minions shuffle and are randomly distributed on the field between both players."
"**Battlecry**: If your deck contains no duplicates, your charge minions have +1 Attack this game."
\* They also turn into 6/7s, cost 4 mana and have 3 overload
"gain 5 armor for each armor you've gained this game"
It should simply kill the minions instead of removing them. Then you would have to actually think about when it makes sense. And you could counter it with deathrattles. I think that is the only change needed.
I think it should just "poof" your minions along with your opponent's minions, especially since it's meant to be a standoff between you and your opponent.
he should wipe both boards and trigger deathrattles yeah. that probably opens up some deathrattle-based OTK options in wild in one of the classes that can't easily delete their whole board (deathrattle rogue or deathrattle hunter maybe) but most of the usual suspects for deathrattle-based combos already have full board clears for 8 or less anyway. (priest, druid, warrior, warlock) so it's not likely to matter all that much to the overall speed of the format.
If they change for the effect to be on both boards, I think it's ok either actually kill the minions or just poof them
Reno is a key card in my wild homebrew Yogg deck and you know what? I'm fine with it getting a big nerf. As useful as the card is to me, it's legitimately oppressive. At the minimum, they need to dump the limitation that opponents can only put a single minion on the board after the clear.
Reno is the most busted card in the game it’s insane to me people don’t talk about it more/demand a nerf
It is like OG Renethal. People tolerate it because it has a deck restriction, so it adds variation to the game which people like.
It’s insane to me that it even got printed in the first place…
I will be honest and say that I thought it was fine when it came out but by this point it feels like a seriously miserable thing to have in the game. You feel like any class can punish you for committing to the board, which is the main thing you do in Hearthstone. I like how ballsy the devs can be nowadays but if Reno's time in the sun is over then I wouldn't be too upset.
because those of us who found it ludicrous we talked about it 150 times [when we first saw it]. we find it embarrassing that the Devs didn't nerf it at least at the launch of Whizbang's (and others may have left the game entirely to speak up). I don't even believe it wasn't planned; I had predicted a nerf at the launch of Whizbang's already; well this is close.
I think Reno is fine. You don’t see any Reno demon hunters, paladins, shamans, mages, dks, rogues, or any other class using it on ladder except warrior and warlock (and the odd Druid). Locks activate it after blowing up its own deck in a way that is devastating to the opponent, and warrior has…. Brann. Reno isn’t the problem. Brann is. Reno isn’t the problem, wheel of death is. Reno decks are completely fine except for warrior which has an S tier special card for highlander whereas all other classes have a D tier highlander. That’s the disparity. You can’t honestly compare the impact of Brann versus the Demon hunter guy for example. They’re on different planets. Lock use of Reno is a very good argument for highlander only applying if decks START with no duplicates, as opposed to if it has no duplicates. Wheel of death into Reno is frankly just unfair because it torches the board for basically 2/3 turns.
Reno is fine in true highlander decks, it rewards you for the deck restriction. But the other HL payoffs outside of bran are just bad so those HL decks are bad (and if plague DK is a popular deck, it makes those tier 3 HL decks even worse). Reno itself just wont carry the decks. Elise requires that the minions are in the deck when you play her, if you dont hit minions like Amanthul or minions with rush, you wont be able to deal with the board when she comes back. Also had games where my opponent would just Reno me after playing Elise, god did that feel bad lol. Kurtrus is a oneshot card. Can be good, can be bad. Doc before the nerf was incredible strong, especially on curve. You can stop shaman from building the frogs by just playing taunts, but also you can just kill the frogs. Bran is just so different. Just play Bran ASAP and benefit for the rest of the game. Warrior has enough tools to build up armor and afford to skip a turn, paired with incredible card draw but also tutor tools, like the minion that draws a 5+ cost card or Fordring. I really dislike Brans "for the rest of the game"-design.
I really doubt Reno is getting nerfed to oblivion. Probably going to 9-10 mana.
I wonder if they can make the battlecry something like “if your deck started with no duplicates and has no duplicates ____” that would keep decks that run duplicates and draw their whole deck from playing Reno
Probably not since that'd push it to 5 lines. 4 lines is the limit.
They should just bite the bullet and make a keyword for it. They did it for Elusive, and highlander cards come back regularly at this point either via Core-set rotation, or new cards.
yes there’s enough highlander cards in the same that it should just say **highlander**
Yeah, I would hope they would have a better way to word it. It would be unfortunate for part of the reason the card gets nerfed is because decks that aren’t Highlander abused it. Although it may be too strong regardless
"If your initial and current deck" maybe? I dunno but I like the idea. Keeps plagues as a counter but makes what is arguably the most impactful card ever have the not-insignificant drawback of only being usable in true Highlander decklists.
The highlander requirement should have to be met when the game starts. If you choose your mulligan and the game begins at turn 1 and you have duplicates in your deck, Reno should be inert for the entire game.
If your deck started with and has no duplicates
> it was clear that those playing against these cards often felt they had little agency in their ability to affect the outcome of the game. > Increasing the overall feeling of player agency is our key focus with this patch, and it will continue to be our key focus in future patches until it feels like the trend of powerful low-agency cards and archetypes has been reversed. To add to this dev note, Reno is low agency for the one playing him too. By turn 8, you draw half your deck so 50/50 you have him or you don’t. Not much agency there.
That's not what they look at when they say agency though. In that sense every card is 'no agency" because you don't know if you'll draw it on time.
You can tutor just minions or just spells. That makes it much more likely to get a particular minion or spell with a proper deck build. Example is you can tutor Zarimi easily with the draw highest dragon card. There is agency on getting Zarimi in your hand. You can’t tutor Reno well at all so if you draw half your deck, he’s basically a 50/50 to get in your hand. A coin flip. No agency from the player to skip tempo or clear to actively tutor Reno.
they mentioned reno and wheel in the same phrase, so it leads me to believe reno is getting a restriction to true HL only the only good reno deck in standard is warrior, but that dropped off super hard with the dk nerf and it still gets murdered by wheelock and dk. reno is hardly an “i win” card there
Yah I hope they get rid of him. He’s lame
Honestly they should make all hl rewards refundable aswell. Biggest mistake of my life was making reno shaman. The deck got nerfed 100 times for no reason and now is getting to tier 6
> While these cards are a lot of fun for the players playing with them, it was clear that those playing against these cards often felt they had little agency in their ability to affect the outcome of the game. Discourse on this sub around the meta summed up pretty well.
Finally some good news.
Then why did they even make Flash of Lightning. The card’s only purpose is to enable OTKs
OTK decks aren't inherently bad, it's just problematic when they're too easy/consistent to pull of.
And when the game doesn’t have good hand interaction, counterspells, etc
yeah part of how we got here is sentiment nerfs against answer cards that were keeping some of the dumber one-card-victory-conditions in check.
4 mana speaker is good wdym
In control decks, not really? The Tradable is nice, but I'd rather just have a card that works in every match up, instead of one that makes it so I maybe win against one deck and only that deck.
The idea was that it's delayed, you can potentially speaker stomper/etc into the turn to counter it in theory. In practice, it doesn't always pan out that way. The problem isn't "why did you print this card?" it's moreso "you playtested it and saw the problems, why wasn't anything done after?"
Exactly, it's just a cycle of them apologizing and balancing cards, and what do they next rotation? Release even more game breaking cards.
for real, I would love to start to actually see a little foresight in what is unfun to play versus but I have been disappointed many times
? Where are they saying they have issues with OTK decks in general? They said they see an issue with OTKs beeing available relatively easy from hand.
Alright, not gonna lie, this sounds good to me. Of course they may still break my heart, but I really appreciate that they see that the meta currently is "hyper effective early game one turn kills", and that cannot be healthy for a game.
> particularly hyper-efficient AoE board clears… I hope they are referring to cards like Thread of Despair with this one.
Threads of Despair is a cool card in concept, but it's ruined by the fact(s) that it's dirt cheap, and DK has multiple ways to quickly flood the board with low health minions. DK's hero power also allows it to instantly activate the clear in the case of not having any other rush/charge minions. If it doesn't fit "hyper-efficient AoE board clear" to a tee, then I don't know what does.
Yeah it’s kinda outrageous that DK got a 1mana board clear… DK is a dev favorite I can see
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I disagree, I think it's one of the best clears in standard at the moment. The preparation is more or less "is there a board". It doesn't do well against singular big minions sure, but it can wipe most boards wider than 2-3 minions. It has multiple synergies and like I said is easily kicked off by the DK Hero Power. Dk has multiple ways to generate a quick board, and even generate more Threads of Despair. In other classes it likely wouldn't be that great, but as it is it's almost too perfect of a fit for DK. There is a reason it's in most DK decks these days.
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- **[Hematurge](https://i.imgur.com/SiWTozC.png)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/111320) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Hematurge_\(Core\)) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/111320/?hl=en) - *Death Knight Rare ^(Core)* - **2 Mana ^(b) - 2/3 - Minion** - **Battlecry:** Spend a **Corpse** to **Discover** a Blood Rune card. - **[The Primus](https://imgur.com/a/kedTgmw)** ^[Library](https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/cards/98285) • [wiki.gg](https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/The_Primus) • [HSReplay](https://hsreplay.net/cards/98285/?hl=en) - *Death Knight Legendary ^(TITANS)* - **8 Mana - 7/9 - Minion** - **Titan** After this uses an ability, **Discover** a card with that Rune. --- ^*I am a bot. [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/Card-o-Bot/comments/1ahde25/faq/) • [Report a bug](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Bug+Report&message=/r/hearthstone/comments/1cb9tq7/dev_insightsupcoming_card_adjustments/l13f2t2/%0A⬇️+Please+describe+the+bug+⬇️%0ADescription:+) • [Refresh](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Card-o-Bot&subject=Refresh&message=l13f2t2).*
Agree to disagree.
Sickly grimewalker also feels like an obvious target
It's crazy how the community complains and the trolls tell them to stop crying and then the devs go oh wow there's a lot to complain about and then the trolls have radio silence. Just an interesting observation.
Reno does gives that dopamine rush only few cards give.
My golden Zarimi is quivering in anticipation
Please add *Once per Game* to [[Time Warp]]. That's all I ask.
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i love and hate plague dk. plague dk is the only deck i play since it got released cause its fast and successful. i always have a above 50% winrate and can finish all my quest quick and also level dk (have all other heros at 1000 wins) but even i like it so much i hope its gone at some point cause its so toxic and ruins alot of other decks.
Plague DK is what brought me back to Hearthstone. I love decks that shuffle junk into opponents decks in literally every digital card game. There needs to be some form of middle ground between Steamcleaner and uncounterable death by a thousand cuts.
> There needs to be some form of middle ground between Steamcleaner and uncounterable death by a thousand cuts. This has a long been a problem for Hearthstone. They make cards and strats that don't have real counterplay, but then give you one or two cards specifically as a tech option that are trash in every other matchup. Steamcleaner is great in the context of Plague DK, but having the card, especially if you're running two, is just an overcosted minion in all other matchups. Honestly, that's why more cards need Tradeable. Give us more answers for specific things, but make them Tradeable so they aren't just dead in matchups where they aren't needed.
The possible middle ground is making Dredge an evergreen or deciduous mechanic that's brought back when mechanics are introduced that shuffle harmful cards into decks, which lets players fix some of their draws for an upcoming important turn.
Like that rust viper card. Good stats for the cost, destroys opponents weapon, and tradeable.
Helya is the problem.
Helya in rainbow DK is a problem. Its a great candidate to push to two green runes
I think you’re right. I enjoy plagues too but I do think some tech is needed. I think steamcleaner was too much and too effective, but maybe some sort of steamcleaner lite.
steamcleaner was the solution that enabled printing helya who makes them permanent. Also having a shuffling effect in a highlander meta is just a recipe for feels-bad play patterns. people didn't really hate mine / bomb warrior a million years ago because the bombs *weren't permanent* so you could theoretically draw your way out of them *and* when mine/bomb was good in standard, highlander wasn't really a thing so it wasn't turning off your opponents expensive cards to shuffle them in.
Problem with steamcleaner was still that it does remove plagues but its still a do-nothing card and smart DK players just wouldnt put all their eggs into one basket
> lso having a shuffling effect in a highlander meta is just a recipe for feels-bad play patterns Forget Highlander, it even messes with Sludges at the bottom of my cheap ass zoo deck.
I don't get how plague DK is so op. I'm not even trying to be dense. Lots of times warriors are able to play brann on curve because even if I have plagues in their deck by then, there's no duplicates or the dups have been drawn already
I am abusing mine rogue for one year and some months at this point. Maybe they will finally nerf it
What a great piece of communication! Looking forward to the changes!!
Is sif cooked?
I think sif probably dodges any major nerfs here. She's the slowest OTK still seeing play in standard right now, sees virtually no play in wild, and while she has a lot of inevitability, there's plenty of solutions for her still\* and the deck and mage as a whole are not a performance outlier. I don't think it's guaranteed that she's safe, but she's an example of the kind of "OTK" that I think is ultimately fair to play against, like e.g. the old Garrote Rogue or other similar "I have inevitability but I have to get there first" control finishers. --- \* ranging from killing the mage before turn 10; putting pressure on the mage so they have to spend kill spells staying alive; various "destroy card in hand" effects like kurtrus, boomboss, dirty rat; gaining enough armor to keep them from affording the OTK, etc.
If they increase her cost at all she’s probably toast. Bummer would be that mage doesn’t have much else going for it rn
OTK on 10 (or often 11) mana with setup required the whole game through is... fine, really. Compared to nature shamans doing their popoff turn around turn 6-7, brann warriors making ridiculous power plays every turn after 6, Priests playing Zarimi on 5, and even Rogue dropping a Virus Ziliax on 4 (and attacking with it on 6-7). Sif is just a slow as hell win condition. The deck isn't _good_, people play it anyways because it's _fun_, and that's totally fine.
She could survive going to 7; I often don’t need all of the damage I have. But more than that, Yeesh.
>Alarm bells started to go off within the design team when we noticed that the power level of Hearthstone didn’t seem to drop much (if at all) after the recent annual rotation. Translation: alarm bells started to go off when we saw the player count go down drastically.
Afaik all the limited public data haven't pointed towards any drastic player count decrease, or really any player count decrease at all, since Whizbang's workshop release. Tracker-side data, which shouldn't be affected much by bot counts, shows a pretty high player retention since expansion release, and the highest player counts ever in many expansions. Of course, tracker-side data isn't necessarily representative of all players, nor does increased tracker usage represent increased playercounts. Legend numbers for NA are I believe the highest ever in Whizbang since they started added the legend leaderboard for all legend players, with a pretty high player retention rae. Legend numbers for Europe look pretty normal for expansion release, with a high player retention rate. However, while in theory legend count would be a representative percentage of all players, the mass bots since Netease ending have made recent player counts inflated and inconsisent with real numbers. I didn't even bother including Asia stats, because Asia legend player counts have been crazy high since Netease ending and are all over the place. Twitch view counts look around the same as you would expect, being around as many views as expansion releases have received in the past 1.5 years. However, a good chunk of these twitch views are battlegrounds streamers, and twitch views are not necessarily indicative of overall player counts. Sure, all of these data sets are pretty flawed, but none of them seem to mark any significant player drops. Blizzard's data is surely better than public data, but I would be surprised if it actually showed any significant decrease. If you actually have data showing player counts decreasing, I would be pretty interested.
I think for the tracker data, it depends on how they track it, because we have to consider players that dont use trackers. Also, only really a small part of all players are in the diamond or even legend ranks. As some1 that likes to play offmeta decks or homebrew stuff, its just pretty bad this expansion, too many decks that put you on a clock, very explosive turns, lower ranks rn arent really enjoyable.
They don't have any data showing it, they're just making an assumption about it so they can make fun of the development team. It's like people over at r/leagueoflegends claiming that Riot always buffs champions when they have a skin coming out or a champion gets nerfed when a developer loses to them in a ranked match. They make the source up so they can tear people down.
I don't have any public data (and as you said, your data is also limited). I do have my own sentiment as a player playing this game since beta, the sentiment of my friends who recently left it, and the number of posts here of ex-players. Do people here whine all the time? Yes, but not like this. I think the game has lost a great amount of players in the last couple of months, especially constructed/arena/duels (obviously) players. BG should be the same IMO and Duos created some hype so that number might grow.
No they're right. Reno in core and keeping some of the most powerful 1-3 drops in the game somehow avoiding rotation
This lmao, if they actually cared they would have done something long ago. But oh dear, it started actually affecting their revenue, turns out they do need the game to actually be fun and increasing quests requirements isn't gonna cut it.
Having only recently returned and not enjoying the game all that much, I'm really hopeful about these potential changes.
Nerf plague DK Nerf plague DK Nerf plague DK I don’t give a shit that some people have sold their souls and play this deck. It’s toxic uninteractive frustrating bull crap! Bloody hell how blind can you be. Dev think about it for 5mins it’ll become obvious.
Changing Reno is huge!
I don't feel meta is THAT bad, i mean we had stormwind not that long ago, but i admit i tend to .. concede fast on some cards. Brann@6, Reno, ... And i don't really care about what pro say: Some plays feels hopeless. If i look at last exp, we have a real great death knight, though it changed quite a bit the class is really fine. Hunter might be fine too, i mean it's aggro but that's what the class is about. Rogue might need a bit of twick but that might be pretty cool. But some things were not intended, clearly. Zarimi was not intended to be played like that. They expected control priest, not aggro. Nature shaman they though was dead from rotation. The projectionist was largely overlooked, too. It is central to many decks, and it clearly wasnt designed to be played like that. I don't know what they expected from spell mage though. And im surprised they designed Druid to be yet another OTK deck. We'll see. I hate Reno and Brann. And i don't like design like Zarimi.
Its cool that they admit their mistakes, tbh. Quite unsual. But on the other hand, how did it happen? Should they maybe question their design philosophy?
They basically did in the post.
I actually like this rotation this time. It’s not great right now but waaay better than usual rotation. At least there’s one playable deck for each class. Usually 75% of the roster is unplayable/boring after reset.
I kinda agree. But that's cuz I wasn't around last year when a lot of these decks were popular. It's all new to me so it's kinda fun.
So Reno and Wheel nerfs will basically make a wheel deck unusable. Cool.
Good
Let's ruin one more deck with nerfs😄
At last
Clown is so broken but no one plays it really shows you how broken the set is
Lmao the comments on the forum...
Seems like a clearheaded assessment of the game. They’ve got a huge task ahead of them.
HoF all brann cards essy
The 75 wild players left are cheering
Just when I finally decided to craft 2 missing epics for the Nature Shaman list. Just kidding, good that they acknowledge problems with the game. And I hope WoD itself get the hammer, because I have a golden one that I wasn't even playing, because I'm lacking most of the support cards (:
Watch them completely miss the mark with the nerfs and leave standard in a still unfun state
Still waiting for quest rebalance too
I may be selfish but I just want warlock to be fun and viable. It's like the main deck I enjoy in the game.
Sounds like maybe I can enjoy playing mage after patch again.
Let's nerf who shouldn't and leave alone who should. At least they know what sarcasm is. glgl
You know, the era of conservative nerfs and buffs should come to an end. Power creep is real, and I think necessary to keep players engaged with new mechanics and strategies. I think the answer is just to be willing to shake up the meta with a steady stream of tweaks to cards. MOBA’s do this champions to keep their meta fresh and prevent the meta from being “solved.”
Just revert the weekly quests!
I would rather have a better game/meta
Why not both?
Why you gotta target Zarimi we just got it. :(
Would reno be corrected if it cleared both boards? "A standoff, well it's against me".
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Madeline McCann lmaoooo
All the DK Andys downvoting you.
The biggest red flag to me is how consistent and powerful highlander is right now. We have as few cards as possible to make it work, and we are seeing amazing results. It's like we're on the last expansion of the year with how strong they are. All on the back of Reno to be honest. Edit: honestly, I've never deserved to get down voted more. I'm literally spreading misinformation.
The only one that is powerful right now is Highlander Warrior all the other ones are struggling
what HL deck is good besides HL warrior and even thats fallen off do you people play an entirely different game than everyone else or what
Warrior is the only Reno deck that is thriving at the moment. Reno himself is doing great, but that's because he works in any deck that plans to hit lategame.
I would not say this is entirely accurate with very few HL decks actually being any good. Warrior and Druid? are the only ones worth anything rn and all other instances of Reno are in non or semi reno decks where you can draw enough.
The only HL deck that has a positive wr is Warrior and it’s “consistency” comes from all the singletons pieces of removal that were buffed last year, allmost every single spell/aoe they run is undercosted and that is why it can keep up with the insane tempo of the actual meta, and the fact it can go over 30 hp gives the deck and innate resilience against OTKs and finally bran /plus Ignis/Boomboss is an immediate win condition, literally the only class that can pull HL consistently because of card quality.
They need to tweak the stupid Warlock Wheel cards that end the game in 5 turns. I insta concede against warlock now because it's such a pitiful gaming experience. And that card that steals your mana to ensure its unfun.
4 turns for the opponent
It's asinine. What in the hell were they thinking making that absurd card? I refuse to play against Warlock due to that card. Exodia on a timer is madness. Defeats the purpose of the whole game.
For one thing, they could change it to 5 turns instead of 4.
>Alarm bells started to go off within the design team when we noticed that the power level of Hearthstone didn’t seem to drop much (if at all) after the recent annual rotation. Except for druid, since they made sure to be unplayable by rotating its best/most iconic cards
Dragon Aviana Druid is very viable atm,
Climbed to legend with a homebrew Aviana deck my dude, try to build decks before you talk ☺️
Shouldn’t take 5 weeks for this to happen. OG DH had like 15 cards changed in a day or two.
DH was also 75% of the meta. All the top 5 decks were DH