There’s been a lot of controversy over the current state of the Druid class and that it might currently be overpowered due to the additions of Ultimate Infestation and Spreading Plague. A thread on Reddit citing Vicious Syndicate statistics is claiming that Druid has surpassed the popularity of the once exceedingly popular but now nerfed Undertaker Hunter. Iksar, Blizzard Game Designer, took the time to respond to the post with the comment below.
We cite internal statistics from time to time, but I tend to be cautious of that myself because it’s very difficult to find any statistic that represents everyone. Given enough time and enough access I find that it’s not difficult to display data to support almost any opinion about the metagame. At the end of the Un’Goro cycle, Hunter was actually the highest win rate class among all Hearthstone players. In fact, Hunter held the highest win rate for the a large portion of the expansion. Of course, I wouldn’t say that in retrospect of Un’Goro that Hunter should have been less powerful, but that is what the data might suggest. With that in mind, here are some thoughts on some of the comments I’ve read in this thread.
- Druid surpasses in popularity the historic Undertaker Hunter.
The statistics being used for this post are for one rank over one day. The statistics we cite about Undertaker Hunter reference all Hearthstone players at all ranks over a time range of a week to a month. Druid is popular right now, but these statistics aren’t comparable. If I had to guess what the most popular class within one rank of all time is, I would probably guess Mage at Rank 25 on an average day or Warrior at Legend during the Warsong Commander / Molten Giant era.
- Blizzard disappeared after the expansion.
As with every early metagame, we are monitoring play rates, win rates, and player sentiment on a daily basis. We hop in threads like this one fairly regularly to say exactly that, but people tend to want to know exactly whether we are or are not going to change something. We are discussing what potential changes we could make if Druid increases in popularity over time, but ~5 days of popularity is not enough to make that call at this time.
- The people want to know the status of a druid nerf.
We are looking at a number of Druid cards, but for a deck or archetype to reach this level of popularity this early on in an expansion is not abnormal. The population usually finds something powerful, latches onto it, then other decks that are powerful vs that archetype come onto the scene until one of them emerges as the new popular deck before the cycle continues. It’s certainly possible that Druid is in fact so powerful that it prevents the normal metagame cycle from happening, but it’s too early to tell. Here are some thoughts on current Druid cards. Keep in mind that these are some of the discussions we have internally, not a list of changes.
Innervate, Swipe, Wild Growth: When we changed Keeper of the Grove and Ancient of Lore, the goal was for Druids to have more interesting decisions to make when deckbuilding rather than a large group of cards to be automatically included. Even though those cards changed, there are still some other offenders of this such as Innervate or Swipe…and Wild Growth to a lesser degree. Having some powerful cards that help define what makes a class different can be good, but those cards in particular have spawned a number of internal conversations where we have been weighing the upside and downside to having each as a part of Druid for Hearthstone eternity.
Ultimate Infestation: Changing a card like Ultimate Infestation we think would have a bigger impact on player sentiment than actual play rate or win rate statistics. It’s a big, flashy, cool design but it hasn’t appeared to be statistically responsible for Druid power or popularity. Power level aside, having such a powerful card draw effect in Druid is something we are wary of in Druid because we wouldn’t consider it part of their identity as a class. Partially for that reason and for sentiment reasons it is still part of discussions in terms of what to do with Druid should population and power level continue to rise.
Spreading Plague: Part of what keeps Druid vulnerable is their weakness to minion swarms due to a lack of powerful AoE. While we think plague is a soft version of AoE that fits the Druid flavor kit, it might shore up one of points of vulnerability more than we would have originally intended. Ideally Spreading Plague is used in heavy minion swarm metas and less so as a general inclusion in any Druid deck. Token Druid, Token Shaman, and Murloc Paladin are all showing high population in the current metagame so it’s possible the meta for plague just happens to be now, but it’s a card we’re continuing to keep a close eye on going forward.
I understand all the good suggestions saying the Druid as a whole is a problem. Or that the meta calls for Druid as a strong class right now (to be honest, when hasn’t it been Tier 1 or top of Tier 2?). Probably a druid being able to play a 10 mana card so powerful on turn 5 or 6 is the actual problem…
But Ultimate Infestation is still by definition broken. Just see it very simply: It is Shield Block (3 mana) + Sprint (7 mana) + Firelands portal (7 mana) in ONE CARD. 17mana worth of stats, which any class with crazy discover would need 3 cards to accomplish.
Now take it backwards. To know if a card is balanced (or plain broken), you have to ask yourself if it would be an auto-include in any class. Now think of a 10-mana legendary (hence even just a 1-off) 5/5 minion with “Draw 5 cards, gain 5 armor, deal 5 damage” printed on it. Please tell me WHICH class or deck wouldn’t play it. It would be:
Mage: A simply better finisher or swing for any freeze/control archetype, putting fireland’s portal in the dumpster.
Warrior: strong control tool, refill for pirate warrior if game took too long, etc.
Priest: A better way of applying tempo in non-control/rez/combo archetypes probably. I’d play it on 10 in Razakus anytime.
Hunter: Turn 9 Call of the Wild, turn 10 this ? GG.
Warlock: Doomguard with no discard or the need to tap afterwards? Yes please…
Rogue: the ultimate tempo play after playing Valeera? Sure!
But you gave that card to the very class that can cheese mana the most powerful way: without any counter. And you gave them the tool to recover from aggro in the same expansion. Really?
Making UI balanced would imply at the very least rethinking innervate. Reading “Refresh 2 mana crystals” would be a pretty good start in my opinion, but it probably won’t be enough.
One mistake I think players are making is blaming the new expiration (KFT). Yes druid received more tools, however, the problem is not the new tools themselves.
Between the removal of quest rouge and the entry of KFT, the European server (where I play) between rankings 5 ​​and legend was mostly played jade druid and aggro variants (pirates and druid) reason why I feel that no alteration occurred.
Currently the various druid variants are not all “op”, pure ramp lists are inconsistent and midrange druid token lists are balanced and do not deny space to other deck styles in the target.
The first major problem is polarity in the present meta:
1º Most decks (rank 5 or more) are druid jade variants that remove most control and midrange control styles from the meta due to the combination of ramp + draw (+ jades!). Also, Sulking Geist was added as “the counter” to jade druid, but it does not work because even without the 1drop the jade druid deck wins with all the ramp, draw and big bodies.
2º The most successful decks against the most inconsistent decks in lower rankings and with the possibility of success in higher ranks are the aggressive and consistent ones (murloc paladin, pirate warrior and aggro druid) with the possibility of winning the game before the jade machine is standing. Evolve token shaman enters this list, but is much more inconsistent regarding its speed.
3º The only successfully late game decks are (to a certain extent) or jade druid counters like exodia mage (but weak against aggro) or “control-combo” decks like kazakus priest (which is very powerful and consistent, and the fact that it is not considered a top tier is possibly due to the variety of lists that currently exist (in low ranks and hight ranks), but this is another deck that in the long run – when the list assumed by most players is the same and solid – can be as problematic as jade druid).
4º The impact of jade druid and kazakus priest is possibly not as visible in lower rankings, with lower rankings probably leading to a misalignment of meta-game (like if they were in a delay regarding the meta adjustment).
The main problem, IMO (as an old-school MTG player) is bad design. Any student of early MTG who knows about Black Lotus & the Moxen, and Ancestral Recall / Time Walk, will know exactly what I mean.
Hearthstone Druid is given resources to accelerate the acquisition of mana & mana crystals – and mana crystals are immune to attack from the opponent. There is no counter; therefore Druid – especially Jade with Innervate + Wild Growth + Jade Blossom – will have more mana more quickly. Add huge card draw with Nourish and Ultimate Infestation, and protection against fatigue with Jade Idol… yeah. Card draw is really strong; card draw w/o fatigue, with lots of mana, is OP when there is no real counter.
Therefore the meta is Druid vs. Aggro decks – the community perception is that the only way to beat Jade Druid is to deal lethal quickly.
That’s exactly my point. The problem is not specifically some recent additions (like ultimate infestation or spreading plague) but rather the over time accumulation of druid unbalanced pieces.
“The main problem, IMO (as an old-school MTG player) is bad design. Any student of early MTG who knows about Black Lotus & the Moxen, and Ancestral Recall / Time Walk, will know exactly what I mean.”
That’s so damn true! and sad…
Ramp Druid was always a thing – it’s designed in – but it was always vulnerable to being Zerged by aggro or Zoolock so it was never hugely successful on the ladder (not to Jade-like levels). KFT has given Druid the tools to deal with aggro though and that, IMO, is the problem now.
… and HS has no equivalent to MTG’s Armageddon 🙂
I’m going to have to dig my old MTG cards out… I’m sure I’ve got at least one of each of the 5 original Moxen and Time Warp and I thought they were all 4th edition prints – either that or I’ve got more Unlimited cards than I thought I had. Don’t have Black Lotus though – not sure about Ancestral Visions, it’s been a while and the cards are in a box that’s yet to be unpacked since we moved house.
IMO Druid’s class identity is ramp up quickly and gain advantage by putting large minons on board
It is designed to be weak to a mass board, with no strong AOE removal.
But SP changed this entirely. This makes no sense to me. They are giving druid something that covers the class’s only weakness.
So they are actually designing some god tier class intentionally, aren’t they?
Welcome to Druidstone
Everyone please keep playing druid, so I can continue wrecking you with exodia mage.
it is not early at all to say druid is op, to me is very clear that no deck will get close to druid power , with a good hand, druid will win the game, always
blizzard always says they will wait for the meta to develop, based on several previous expansion, 1 or 2 weeks is all that take to the meta to fully develop
Bottom line….. Stop Frack’n bitching people. I’m getting tired of decks getting nerfed that I had to work hard to put together. I’m not great at the game so every expansion I have to save my gold and dust hard earned legendaries and epics in order to craft new decks.
So because you don’t want to lose your dust everyone should play against imbalanced crap? Lol, I think you have some ego/logic problems
Yeah okay but this really isn’t the right way to respond either. You can’t accuse someone of egotistical tendencies just because they hold the belief that they would like to hang onto the hard work they did because now your not thinking of other’s when excluding the total picture here. There are other answers like bans. To be fair Hearthstone doesn’t have to A) nerf anything they could just ban it in competitive play but still let people play with those sick combo deck (what is the problem with that they put up a new level of competition) or B) do anything that we as the community wants them to do because they are their own company with a vision, a game, and intellectual rights and they may see some solid or awesome advise but in the end they are making choices that they believe are the best long term decision for the community and I respect them for that.
Your defense here was refreshing… I will say tho, bioswat’s rude reply is pretty normal for the hearthstone community unfortunately. For every easy going player that forms an opinion using logic like yourself, there are 3 players that just insult anyone with a questionable view. And I agree, blizzard does do their best.
To be fair, Blizzard IS a company. Their decisions don’t so much reflect the long-term good of the community as they reflect long-term profit. I’m not in Blizzard, but it’s safe to assume their number one priority is to make money out of the game, balanced or not.
Druid overall in KFT era is OP and the reason is that it has too many variants that works as at least tier1.5.
Token druid, Jade druid, Ramp druid, Jade taunt druid…
All those variants share same OP cards and they are from KFT.
So, expansion made the class OP not the meta…
I agree that is too early but as I have seen Blizzard’s actions to problems like this will take over 2 months to do something. Almost always they change things only when is near to new expansion release.
I think, also, that we have to be careful when we wish for changes/nerfs cause if Druid’s some cards will be nerf then there will be a problem with Priest or Hunter.
Priest has also 3 variants and one is already OP too…
I had wrote in the past that the game has huge balance problems with classes.
They need to bring a balance patch for all classes, if they want to really help the game.
i have 90% win rate with jade druid in casual (70% rank 5), the game is almost always even until i win the game with one card UI. UI is broken. super op.
innervate a secondary problem. this card need to change but not be removed. can be some rules like, no 2 innervate at the same turn, and the card can’t be play before turn 3, but it is so akward that probabbly innervate will be removed, also UI is a epic and give more dust back, so it probably will not be changed
by the way, i play druid of the claw over SP for more consistency, SP is amazing anti aggro only. i think is time to those stupid pirates to go away, so SP is ok and should not be change.
nerf UI a bit.
The very essence of Druid is mana ramping – it’s like the single defining thing about the Druid class; Innervate and Wild Growth almost should be auto-includes in Druid otherwise it’s kinda missing the point. I seem to remember the description about druid being all about overtaking your opponent and then overwhelming them with giant creatures.
There are issues now with cards like the Lich King being dropped early – but that’s *always* been the case with Druid. I’ve had Angry Rag on the board on turn 3 before (Wild Growth on T2, Innervate > Innervate > Rag on T3).
Personally I don’t think that’s a problem with Druid – that’s the whole point of Druid.
However – Druid *should* be countered by Aggro; if you don’t get those early Innervates and Wild Growths you’re supposed to be in trouble if your opponent is running an aggressive deck. When aggro became too dominating with things like Pirate Warrior, for instance, some anti-aggro cards were added like Stonehill Defender and Tar Creeper, to a lesser extent Tar Lurker (Warlock) and Warrior got a few new cheap taunts to power the quest (and there’s nothing more boring than playing against a Taunt warrior in wild)… and now Druid, the class that’s biggest weakness is supposed to be that it can get face-rolled by aggro, is getting some very strong anti-aggro cards of its own like Crypt Lord, Druid of the Swarm and Spreading Plague.
IMO Druid is losing it’s class identity – it is supposed to be strong when it gets the mana ramp going – and it’s *supposed* to be much weaker without it… unless it’s aggro token druid of course 🙂
Blizzard should put Innervate in the hall of fame like Reynad recently suggested.
In the old days of MTG at some point the Black Lotus (gain 3 mana) and Moxes (gain 1 mana) where banned from standard tournaments. Powerwise Innervate is like those cards, but available to 1 class only. It’s ridiculous.
Well in MTG the power difference between a 4 drop and a 7 drop is much bigger than in Hearthstone- Usually 10 mana cards in MTG are a flat out GG.
Not to mention you’ve got a lower health total in MTG; 20 as opposed to 30.
So having a Shivan Dragon (for example – been a few years since I played MTG) dropped on the board on T3 is sort of equivalent to getting Angry Rag on the board on T3 in Hearthstone.
There’s also no guarantee in MTG that you’re going to gain 1 mana each turn (you could get a crap land draw), which makes the 3 mana boost from Black Lotus even more powerful… for Innervate to be equivalent in power to Black Lotus I think it would need to give you 4 mana.
I was playing a game on wild and killing a jade druid deck with my zoo warlock…..untill he played spreading plague. Changed the game around right there.
There are decks that are just built to swarm. You just cant play around a card like spreading plague. What, are you only supposed keep only one or two minions in play with decks like zoo and tempo rouge or any other aggro deck? Badly designed card.
Your only looking at it from your perspective. What about the poor druid of they didn’t have spreading plague? They also have no board clears so they’d be pretty much sitting ducks against your “swarm”
Then the “poor Druid” should stop playing such a greedy deck. Swarming is normally how you punish decks for trying to win late game without removal, and it’s a very appropriate balancing mechanism.
5/5 body, draw 5 cards, deal 5 damage, gain 5 armor. 10 mana.
You see, it’s a powerful card depending on what you’ll draw. Sure a 5/5 body, deal 5 damage and gain 5 armor is great but it’s not game-changing. Not for 10 mana at least. What really makes this card shine is the quality fo the cards you’ll draw.
No, what really makes the card shine is that it’s all those things, guaranteed, in a single card. without UI, doing all of those things would empty your hand. instead, you refill it. and it usually gets played right after druid empties his hand by ramping. so he ramps, has 10 mana by turn 6, plays UI, gets insane tempo, and refills his hand. It’s a card without risk, cost or conditions.
Druid is not that bad though. And they even came out with a card to stop the stacking jade golems. Ultimate infestation to me doesnt help much if you can stack the jade golems so i havent ben having to hard of a time against them and i run priest 90% of the time.
Priest does quite well against druid in my experience as well.
I have much more trouble against DK Warlock..
Priest does quite well against druid in my experience as well. Lost only when really unlucky..
I have much more trouble against DK Warlock..
The people that complain aren’t good at the game, I mean druid and priest have I the bottom for a pretty long time. #getgood. Learn how to play against the meta that’s how everyone sets them self of the game.
Wtf you talking about? In cthun era there was malyagos druid and jade druid. Both tier 1 decks until ungoro came out and stuff rotated out. Cthun druid was a thing before msog came out as well. The hard counter to control druid was always aggro. And now they have a 5 mana anti aggro card that can’t be played turn 3 or 4 that basically stops aggro in their tracks. Its got nothing to do with “getting good” man, its that you cant play control against druid and not expext to be over run, but you cant play aggro against it cuz they get 5 1/5 for 5 mana and they turn into 3/7s just as quickly. Its not actually ultimate infestation thats the problem.
Every single big streamer (reynad, kripp,savjz, toast,etc) and MANY players in top 100 (cydonia, tictac, casie, xsirez, ant, saiyan, etc) legend are complaining daily about how stupidly broken Druid is. Its super unfun to play and play against. And no, priest has been in a pretty solid spot since mean streets. Druid has always been tier 1 in almost every meta or high tier 2.
I watch zetalot’s stream regularly (since I only play priest) and he complains a lot he face druid over and over and over again. Even while running geist and playing it still loses vs jade druid.
Even I in rank ~12 face a lot of druid.
In the lower ranks there is more variety tho (because every druid is in the top ranks :P)
Exactly! I kinda suck, but at least I know that’s my problem and never lay Blame on the game or the cards, same thing with Call of Duty, learn to take responsibility people! Stop crying out for nerfs!
It’s mostly the poor players who hold to the “get gudd” argument.
Professional competitors and streamers tend the understand the difference between literally not being able to win games (something that isn’t happening and almost nobody is conplaining about) and one deck warping the meta.
Even in the days of Undertaker Hunter you could still win games easily–all you had to do was play hunter. The problem is the lack of variety of decks that are playable atm.
Good insight. I don’t think Druid is overpowered right now. As they put it, I feel the current meta suits the Druid class and its collection of cards more perfectly so it seems as if it’s overpowered when in reality it’s just a strong class. The Gadgetzan Pirate Warrior was overpowered. So was the WotOD Shaman. There’s a clear difference between these two and KotFT Druid.
Yeah you are right,i mean it’s not fair on calling a deck that’s clearly balanced an op deck cuz of the meta. It’s not like meta dictates what’s op and what’s not that’s clearly not what meta is
Druid has never not been tier one. Clearly something with the base class needs to be changed. I think a soft nerf would be change intervate or retire wild growth.