Hearthstone
Meta after nerfs
Submitted 3 years, 7 months ago by
FortyDust
It's not exactly scientific or anything, but the ONLY difference I have personally noticed is that Rogue has been replaced with Control Warlock (as predicted).
This is not an improvement. WTG, Blizz.
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It's not exactly scientific or anything, but the ONLY difference I have personally noticed is that Rogue has been replaced with Control Warlock (as predicted).
This is not an improvement. WTG, Blizz.
It has barely been 12 hours and you guys are already complaining. Chill and let the meta settle a bit more.
This ain't no place for a hero
I'm only at Diamond 10 and I haven't faced any Control Warlocks yet. I played a couple of games with Secret Paladin to see if it's still strong. I went 8-8, though most of my losses were due to misplays. I noticed a lot of Control Priests, some Face/Midrange Hunters, Rogues, and Spell Mages. That's it so far.
I only played a handful of games post-nerf yesterday, but I did not face a single Mage or Paladin. I'd say (based on my admittedly small sample size) the nerfs succeeded.
"Be excellent to each other." -Bill and Ted
Nerfs did fuck all to Paladin as expected and Mage is still playable, but now it's basically just rock paper scissors because you can't lose against control and still can't win against aggro.
Basically don't play any "fair" decks and hope you can cheese your opponent..
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
Spell Mage is still pretty strong. The problem is that there hasn't been any aggro deck that has risen in play that could counter it, due to the fact that a lot of control decks (Warlock, Priest, and Warrior) are now seeing play. Still waiting on a Demon Hunter deck, though I did get absolutely killed by this Deathrattle DH that had Illidari Inquisitor as its finisher.
It's actually comical how the Lunacy nerf did none of what they set out to do.
They stated that a full RNG card like this shouldn't ever be part of a tier 1 competitive strategy, so instead of just curbing the RNG part down to manageable level (let's say lower the mana discount to 2 or even 1 which still keeps it as a meme card) they just made it even more of a highroll because you still just win if you get to play it on curve.
So essentially the only decks that can beat No Minion Mage are the same ones that already could and the decks it absolutely rolls over with no counterplay because they can't outpace 0-mana draw 4 or turn 5 Nagrand Slam.
Honestly, this nerf patch feels like one of the biggest failures they've done so far. Basically all the currently playyed archetypes either completely steamroll their good matchups or hopelessly flounder against their bad ones. There is no middleground. It'S peak Rock Paper Scissors.
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
The complaint is that there is no "settling" to be done because there was no shake-up in the first place. They succeeded in knocking Rogue out of the 3rd-place spot, and that's about it. Lunacy is as bad as ever because they did not address the actual problems with that card, and Paladin was already oppressive before the secret package got added, so nerfing the sword only takes the class from god tier to demigod tier, still ridiculously strong.
Oh and can we talk about how Kazakus is just an instant win if played on curve because some mental midget thought it would be acceptable to add a 50% chance to get a double up on stats?
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
Actually Secret Paladin now beats out Libram Paladin because Libram now lacks the flexibility of the late game Pen Flingers so you might as well just capitalize on the fact that Secret Paladin has better cards for every mana cost than any other deck.
Also Face Hunter is now optimized enough to just beat most decks so....just in case Secret Paladin wasn't enough of a nostalgic callback you can now reexperience the joy of having your board ignored while getting your face caved in.
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
Secret rogue is a meta sleeper I think. It was already very effective into paladin... but it lost hard to mage. With DoL pushed to 4, it has more game into mage.
Face hunter was also very effective into mage pre-nerf and ok into pally (~40% WR?).
To say meta is solved is pure BS. Paladin is still strong... but I think there is enough breathing space for other decks to try and counter it w.out getting crushed in the mage MU.
Also bring on the tier 3 warlocks -- they are free wins for me as long as my Alex isn't milled.
The nerfs weren't meant to kill Lunacy Mage or make any of its good matchups worse. It was meant to make sure that it has no chance against aggro. At 2 mana, they could highroll and snowball right from turn 2 (with coin). Now, they can only start their shenanigans on turn 4 (if they played Lunacy on 3 with coin) and only if they draw the nuts. This gives aggro decks plenty of time to bring their health down to a level where they can finish them off from hand. The nerfs to the Watch Posts should allow aggro decks to come back into the game. With this, Lunacy Mage will start running into more bad matchups and this should bring its win rate down to a reasonable level (not that good but not completely terrible either). The tryhards that think the deck is good for a fast and reliable climb to legend will start dropping the deck for something better and faster and the deck will be played mostly by the people that actually enjoy it. The total population of the deck should go down and it won't be a meta defining force anymore. This is my analysis of their intention with these changes. Only time will tell if they were successful or not but it is too early to say that the patch was a failure.
"True mastery takes dedication."
control priest is heavily underrated. not the spell version, control with xyrella samuro, cthun, some use yogg. it out heals hunter and almost every deck out there. its almost 100% lose to tickatus warlock but has a fair chance against most decks and just crushes face decks
no way you lost every game by drawing bad
I think that now the super tier 1 is Face hunter. Mage ( warlocks cannot survive enough and paladin need a very good draw to compete.
So the nerf succeded ... but there will be a new one soon to keep the control decks viable
I am 69 years old and still reach Legend
Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you are just a bad player and your losses aren't due to literally having the worst luck possible every single turn?
I am genuinely curious as to what one of your games looks like. Do you use a decktracker? If so would you mind sharing a replay of one of your games?
Carrion, my wayward grub.
Kaladin has a long history of complaining about not being able to beat meta decks with homebrews. It's kind of a thing.
Theres nothing wrong with taking a break from this shitty game every now and again. I think you're burned out. I know exactly how you feel.
I used to feel the exact same way. Now I just play gonk druid. Homebrew my own decks. Gonking my opponents is always more satisfying than getting screwed over and over. And now that's all I play. I can even climb ladder fairly fast with it.
You either need to take a break from the game. And I know it's a pain in the ass to do if you're f2p, because you'll miss the rewards. But it's better for your mental health.
Or to find your own "gonk druid" something you enjoy more than getting screwed over. I thought you liked discover rogue? Wht dont you just play that, and have fun over trying to climb ladder.
Living like that.
From what I hear everything loses to that. So I wouldn't be too upset about it. Theres literally nothing you can do that the game is shit like that.
Living like that.
I have to say, I can't stand the constant whining about the viability of "control" every single meta. There is always a viable control deck, multiple viable control decks right now even. What people mean to say when they complain about the viability of control is they want long winded fatigue matches back. You are not getting them. You can play control priest, warlock or big warrior right now. All of which are capable of reaching high legend. Get over it. Accept that you will have bad match ups and that the meta does not revolve around your play style.
It's also funny given control priest poops all over the "super tier 1" face hunter. You haven't a clue what balance is. You just want fatigue matches to be the norm.
All wise words, but it is not unreasonable to want the speed of the game to change from time to time. After a year of aggro dominating and correspondingly short games, a slower meta would be welcome. And the reverse is true too after prolonged periods of slow metas.
I couldn't care less about the viability of control personally (it is primarily concerned with surviving, which you can work towards in any meta). Instead, I just want a meta that isn't overly hostile to janky midrange-value decks so I can actually use a lot of cool cards/combos. Too much aggro stifles my ability to even try.
None of this would be a problem if there was a place I could escape the meta, but since Casual is basically the same as Ranked, no such place exists (playing against friends doesn't really count because I cannot rely on them being available). If we cannot escape the meta, we are justified in asking for the meta to cater to different parts of the player-base every so often.
HSReplay stats show that two Paladin archetypes are back to being S-tier: Secret Paladin (60% WR) and Libram Secret Paladin (58%). I don't think the devs are done with the nerfs, we might see more coming soon to the Paladin class if this continues.
It's a control-heavy meta in Diamond 5 up though. I'm facing a lot of Priests and Warlocks, with very few Paladins, Rogues, and Hunters. There's lots of DH midrange decks running around, which is what I'm playing currently. It's doing really well.
Diamond 5 to Legend was really hard for me, I faced everything in those ranks and I had to switch decks constantly till I figured out a pattern from what I faced. (Dropped from D1 to D5 twice.)
For me at least, this was what I had to deal with.
D5 was Rogues and Hunters. (Played Control Warlock to get out, teched in 2 scorpids because they are damn good vs hunters.)
D4 was Priests and DHs. (Played Face hunter to get out.)
D3 was Paladins, Mages, and Hunters. (Played Libram Paladin and Control Priest to get out. Oh, and there were a few sneaky token druids here and there.)
D2 was Priest, Warrior and Mages. (Played Face Hunter to get out. This was the hardest rank. Mages teched 2 barriers here + ring toss gave them 2 extra barriers resulting in a 62 health Mage, Handbuff Warrior has a ton of rush to kill your stuff, and Priests are Priests.)
D1 was Hunters, Paladins and Warlocks. (Played a Kazakus Burn Shaman with some draw, which surprisingly did well and got me Legend.)
So, I would say the meta is kinda okay since there are a lot of classes viable. But man was D5 to Legend one hell of a ride.
And I agree, Paladin needs a slight nerf. They already touched Secrets, so it will either be librams or that dreaded Conviction imo.
Refusing to dust my golden Deck of Lunacy bc it's a fun card that will grow in depth as new spells are released. Most HS players don't know what fun is. All about winning which is sad.
That's why I push for a Mirror Match mode where you can play any deck and actually enjoy this game and still have a chance to win with fun cards that are pushed out by more op ones. However every forum I post this idea on I get laughed out by people saying it's a bad idea.
Hearthstone players are somehow happy just playing whatever everyone else is playing like good little robots.
The Only Constructed Deck Worth Playing:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/43506-the-only-constructed-deck-worth-playing