My Little Rant on Hearthstone

I'm finding myself in the middle of another meta where no viable deck appeals to me and statistically speaking I have a 50-50 chance of having one I like around this time in the next expansion as well.

I've never understood why the bulk of the Hearthstone population doesn't feel more cheated when metas settle and only 5-10% of the cards released see play at all. It's no different then buying a footlong sandwich from a Subway and taking two bites then throwing it away!

These are cards good money was spent on or excitement was had awaiting them and then *poof!*, have fun getting beat by the 3 or 4 decks that work if you want to play them. Wait forever to open a Legendary and chances are it stinks. Greedy big effect card? Ha, good luck it'll do anything.

To me it just reeks of laziness that is only allowed bc the community doesn't urge them on buffing cards more: they've shown some indication of wanting to buff cards but imho it's miserably short every time. 

Pencils have erasers for a reason and squeeky wheels get the oil. I would seriously raise your voice (which equals $ to them) on trying to get this game away from the robotic states it always falls into. My solution? At least monthly buffs and nerfs. Shake up the metas and have something to look forward to every month.

How do you define "viable"? In my opinion, Hearthstone these days has a lot of decks that are viable, in the sense that they allow you to climb the ladder if played well. This wasn't always the case, but recent sets have more playable cards and Blizzard is much quicker to perform balance changes.

I do agree that the economy is still not good: the drop rate of epics and legendaries is quite low and the crafting cost when you don't get the one you want is very high. They have taken important steps improve other aspects of the economy, such as extending the duplicate protection and now the new free core set, but the high cost of epics and legendaries remains a problem.

I shared my thoughts on this topic a long time ago on Hearthpwn. I believe that the Zodiac years should have seasons that have super active rotating set of wild cards which make up the "core" of the game. I think every phase of the moon should mark a new shift of cards with special events that line up with space events in real life. Eclipses and planetary alignments should be used as markers for special events. I really think that Hearthstone missed an opportunity to keep the community on its toes... but these were my thoughts before the dawn of standard. When we dreamed of what was coming...

Plenty of people are unhappy about the number of useless cards they are required to buy.

The good news is, fewer people are willing to continue buying them because it's finally sinking in what a scam random packs are. They are a direct precursor to the loot boxes you see in other games, and every bit as predatory.

If you don't like buying a bunch of stuff you don't need or want -- stuff you are literally required by the game to destroy, moments after you bought it -- stop buying it. That's the only way Blizzard Activision will ever get the message.

I think the game would be a lot more fun if at the end of every month when the ranks reset they just mixed it up. They have the numbers and the fact that theyve been releasing cards as laughably bad as Deck of Chaos or Moonfang then shrug when they don't work.

Screw that! Why can't we have a round of buffs to these losers and a few more nerfs AT THE SAME time to at the very least mix things up so we're not stuck seeing the same garbage every other game.

I believe the reason is because they don't like looking bad twice. If they did this obvious idea and it birthed into an even more wacky meta they would look bad.

Activision, I would forgive you for being wrong twice if you're at least trying and it beats months of playing the same exact decks like good little robots...

I completely understand and feel the same. I have shifted to Arena for this reason as ranked fells just stale and boring. Climbing to D5 is more chore than fun. But even Arena feels stale after some time, would really like to see more rotations.

Some thoughts:

• HS economy is still a problem; yes they did some improvements but as said above getting relevant epics and legendaries can still be a problem; also in my opinion it is still the shittiest economy from all major card games
• The fact that only a limited number of cards actually see play in ranked is pretty common in card games though; I cant speak of LoR but in MTGA it is pretty much exactly the same; this might be an inherent feature to some degree

The bottom line for me is that I would like to see more rotations. Another idea would be to introduce more game formats e.g. in MTGA you have the pauper format (only commons) and other. But even that would only be fun with enough rotations.

My counter rant

You can take shots at Blizzard's 'laziness' if you want, but in truth the players make this problem for themselves. While it is true that there are occasionally metas where decks are truly dominant (e.g. DH at the start of Ashes of Outland), most of the time there are actually plenty of viable decks that people choose not to play, as they insist on only net-decking the top few. 

So the issue is not that cards aren't usable, but that competitive ranks are dominated by 'Spikes' who most enjoy maximising win-rates and inevitably skew the meta to look like there's only 3 or 4 viable decks. As a result it wouldn't matter if Blizz buffed cards more often, because there's always going to be a bit of variation in win rates and Spikes will still end up only using the top 3 or 4 decks.

Now, in an ideal world competitive ranks would look like low ranks just with better players, and the 'Timmy's and 'Johnny's will help populate the meta with the full spread of viable decks. Then the players who care lots about winning but also really want to play with their full collection can rejoice that the illusion of there only being 3 or 4 viable decks has been broken.

But that's a naive pipe dream. In reality those players need to see through the illusion for themselves, and be willing to just play the decks they enjoy. Either those decks end up performing much better than you were expecting anyway (case in point: I reached Legend in December with unrefined shuffle rogue and token DH decks), or your MMR falls enough that you encounter more like-minded players and you actually begin to see more diverse decks being played.

Wild is a great example of this. People always point out the top few decks and lament the 'fact' that 99% of their cards are useless, but at low(ish) ranks most people are just playing their own janky decks without a care in the world for the meta, and it's brilliant down there!

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Tl;dr: Spikes kinda ruin the game for players with different mindsets, but not nearly so much as it sometimes seems.

Actually you can build viable fun decks. I made a Hunter Tonk deck and except of losing to hyperagro it is quite viable against all meta decks. Triggering 3 tonk deathrattles in a turn dealing 24 damage is quite powerful.

Thank you, Dekkster! Thankfully I am able to enjoy the year of the Phoenix thanks to the new highlander mage. It's a bit expensive, but legendary cards like Ivory, Jandice, and Sayge aren't totally necesary. VERY fun deck. Whole new clown fiesta everytime. Effective as well, I have climbed to Plat 7 easily.

https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1379013-hl-ivory-mage