Interesting to learn it’s not a new phenomena. I’ve even started encountering what appears to be bot midrange hunters in Casual play. That’s enough to turn off the game client and try something else

I couldn’t imagine it being worse. I’m hopeful they right the ship.

I used to play odd rogue. I tried playing it after the cold blood nerf, and it just felt different. While it certainly got gutted, odd rogue still felt competitive enough. My feeling is that when a deck or archtype gets gutted, people move onto something else entirely. Shaman players are akin to that feeling. It’s like buying into a sports car and having the dealership recall it and put in a scooter engine. You probably won’t like driving it anymore because it just ain’t the same.

I can only really speak for myself, but there isn’t much diversity in standard ranked play. You can play for hours before seeing anything outside the tier 1 norms. Not that there is anything wrong with that I suppose, but it seems repetitive. I miss odd rogues and even shamans as they once were, not only to play but to play against.

Not a single shaman deck?

Very good article and interesting discussion!

Personally, I think both these cards provide some interesting game play and strategy, but at a cost to the game. On the one hand, it’s yet another way to form some deck synergy by coupling odd/even cards together. On the other hand, it manifests pretty repetitive game tactics (spam hero power) and creates greater limitations for balancing the game. Any time blizzard wants to create a card, or change the cost of a card, they always have to balance that with it’s effect on Baku/Genn decks.

I feel your pain brother. I had the same sentiment a few weeks back when they inexplicably nerfed mage cards. It pretty much abolished a control deck I had built. There was no suitable replacement card, so I ended up sadly deleting the deck. What’s perhaps infuriating in that whole process, is the real money and time I had spent building it, and the pride that came with not just copying someone else’s deck off the web. Ironically, the deck was hardly all that great to begin with, and had a limited win ratio. Prior to that, I had the exact same experience playing a Druid.

I am a casual player who started playing Hearthstone a year or so ago, although an evaluation of both the time and money spent on the game playing catch up is far less than casual. I could have probably put that money on a trip to Europe or something. I don’t even want to think of what I could have done with the time. Having climbed that indeed daunting learning curve, I know enough about the game now to enter the ranks of ‘more than casually frustrated’.

I don’t think the nerfs did much to address the problems in the game now, which affect casual and pro players alike. Increasingly, they seem to have a polarizing effect, which is probably not great for the game long term. People tire of the lack of diversity on the competitive side, and grow bored of being a spectator to OTK decks. Micro nerfs to cards can do very little, when you consider they are hindered by Baku/Genn consequences. Furthermore, I am sure Blizzard is reluctant to do any big changes to the game dynamics that might offend big chunks of their revenue stream. At some point though they will have to weigh out big changes vs the inevitable attrition of players.

Constructively, I still think things can be done to improve matters. One of my biggest frustrations is with the ranking system. If you are a player who doesn’t conform to playing Tier 1 meta decks, you will likely face sad results in the ranked play. My own experience can attest to that. I play a Mage now, and struggle to get past rank 20 sadly, since I enjoy to experiment. I like to experiment since it is fun, and I think that it what the game was originally designed to inspire. The consequence to that, despite all the class knowledge, experience, and real cash money, is that I am faced with a win rate of probably less than 30% and some days 10%. As such I stay at rank 20 everyday and see the message ‘you can’t lose stars at this rank’ far more than I care to, considering what I have invested.

Because I can’t drop in rank, I see the following types of archtypes pretty much all the time..1) mostly players like you and I (shamans, rogues, mages, and other classes that are struggling….2) Tier 1 meta decks that are climbing, and lastly 3) a very rare handful of tier 2/3/4/5 decks

I guess what I am getting at is that the ranking system probably needs an overhaul somehow. If I consistently lose up to 90% of my matches, why put me up against an opponent who I will have little to no chance against? That seems flawed imo. The reduction in stars for people climbing may have reduced these match up a very small amount, but that’s assuming that everyone is climbing at the beginning of the season. I’ve honestly reached the point where if I come across a hunter I just concede right away, and if I see a priest or paladin, I’m usually conceding by turn 6 or 7 if not sooner as a ‘no contest’ loss. I realize that this behavior will never get me in the higher ranks, but playing an experimental mage deck never does anyways. Question is how much long before that gets old too?

I could easily go and copy a tier 1 deck right now, but I think there is probably too much of that going on. Players who just play Tier 1 decks are just as vocal in their own complaints. The complaints are just different.

I have also had very limited success with Control Big Spell, but overall I found it to fall quite short in the tier 1 meta. A good indicator of the of the health of any class are the tournament (HCT) results, and Mages have more than fallen way short. Most competitive players leave Mages out of their toolkit altogether.

There is always hope though.

Not entirely sure about your classification of Big Spell Mages and Odd mages as having much hope or promise this patch, or this nerf for that matter. All the data I’ve seen suggests that mages are barely in the hunt for Tier 3 decks, while most builds fall squarely in the Tier 5 category. Having played them almost exclusively since the beginning of Rastakhan, I can attest that the Mage class is probably the worse class in the game at the moment, with no real promise of any improvement regardless of changes to other classes.

I agree with most of what was said here (Tweeg and Orasha). Some of these nerfs are puzzling though.

Sad to see Odd Rogues take the hit. One of the rare budget decks that had it’s place in Tier 1. Jury is still out on the whole Pirate thing for rogues, so who knows if we will see many around post nerf. Granted you can still win without Cold Blood, but your chances will be diminished quite dramatically, without an obvious replacement.

I think for the sake of the game, both Hunters and Paladin’s needed some changes. They are so prevalent in the standard meta that I simply refuse to join ranks and play them much. With so many Tier 1 builds in these classes, the game gets stale. In ranked play, you see more than your fair share of Hunters and Paladins. Or you see their counterparts, class decks designed to beat hunters and paladins. For the most part I find it tiresome to play against them so often…very little variety in an established meta. I still think the best counter for hunters and paladins is the “Consede” button.

I think the Hunter changes are just an annoying speed bump for them on the road to upper ranked play. I doubt this will even factor at all for Hunters. My guess is the Rogue / Shaman changes open the door for other aggro builds to take their place. Likely Warlocks will see the greatest benefits from the upcoming nerfs with respect to aggro builds.

I get that Blizzard wants people to experiment, but there is a serious disincentive to do that at the moment. I don’t think the nerfs will change that fundamental premise. Take the recent druid nerfs. Druids dominated the Tier 1 meta for quite some time, and now it’s as though the class is a cautionary tale. While you can still win with a druid, you would fair much better playing a Hunter/Paladin/Rogue or frankly any other class. It didn’t really do much but change the guard in terms of Tier 1 decks. If you are at all serious about winning at this game, you likely won’t stray from tried and tested Tier 1 meta decks. After all why would you? If a 60% win rate is good, it’s hard to spend much time doing things that will usually result in lowering your win rate even further in the hopes of finding some hidden synergy. There isn’t much reward out there for players trying to carve their own path or for newcomers either.