Before anything, this is a serious thread, not for saltiness, and our opinions may differ. If that's the case, discuss it like an adult.
IMO, this game has fallen into a trap of face decks that are hard to counter and tend to turn the meta into a rock-paper-scissors, where if you are deck A and face deck B, you lose. Direct damage has little to no counter other than extreme healing/armoring or this. Extreme healing and endless armor are quite toxic and boring to the game. Increasing health is the only possible way (apart from deleting cards from existence, which'll never happen), plus, creating decks where that 40 cards restriction is in fact a good thing (Lady Prestor I'm looking at you lol) could be a good thing for creativity.
What do I think will happen in the end with 40 health? Agro decks will change to board/token decks, like old Zoos. And more midrange deck will start flourishing. Those agro decks can be countered in a more healthy way (board clears, building your own board, taunts), and are A LOT more punishing. There is very little punish to face and direct damage, as I said before. I'm tired of wanting to try some deck and losing to some random folk who doesn't even knows how to play his deck (due to his mistakes), but wins anyways. Game is no fun when the opponent ignores you and throws you spells and hits you in the face. Sure, those players may think "this is fun". But eventually they'll get tired and leave the game. And us, the ones who have been here since a long time, are the only ones punished.
Right now we're on the hype train, everything is 40 cards right now (fuck, even saw a quest pirate warrior which has 0 sense lol), but eventually this'll get fixed. Either now, or either with the next expansion and future ones.
That's what I think. What do you guys think? I really hope this is a response for fixing dumb face decks and in the near future they stop printing support for that, so we don't need 40 decks forever in Standard. Agro decks were a lot more fun when you had to be cautious about board clears and maximizing the value of everything so that every little boy counts, or use fancy combos. That's fun and interactive. Playing a weapon and dealing 4890352 damage in turn 4? Nope, that's not. At least for me.
Before anything, this is a serious thread, not for saltiness, and our opinions may differ. If that's the case, discuss it like an adult.
IMO, this game has fallen into a trap of face decks that are hard to counter and tend to turn the meta into a rock-paper-scissors, where if you are deck A and face deck B, you lose. Direct damage has little to no counter other than extreme healing/armoring or this. Extreme healing and endless armor are quite toxic and boring to the game. Increasing health is the only possible way (apart from deleting cards from existence, which'll never happen), plus, creating decks where that 40 cards restriction is in fact a good thing (Lady Prestor I'm looking at you lol) could be a good thing for creativity.
What do I think will happen in the end with 40 health? Agro decks will change to board/token decks, like old Zoos. And more midrange deck will start flourishing. Those agro decks can be countered in a more healthy way (board clears, building your own board, taunts), and are A LOT more punishing. There is very little punish to face and direct damage, as I said before. I'm tired of wanting to try some deck and losing to some random folk who doesn't even knows how to play his deck (due to his mistakes), but wins anyways. Game is no fun when the opponent ignores you and throws you spells and hits you in the face. Sure, those players may think "this is fun". But eventually they'll get tired and leave the game. And us, the ones who have been here since a long time, are the only ones punished.
Right now we're on the hype train, everything is 40 cards right now (fuck, even saw a quest pirate warrior which has 0 sense lol), but eventually this'll get fixed. Either now, or either with the next expansion and future ones.
That's what I think. What do you guys think? I really hope this is a response for fixing dumb face decks and in the near future they stop printing support for that, so we don't need 40 decks forever in Standard. Agro decks were a lot more fun when you had to be cautious about board clears and maximizing the value of everything so that every little boy counts, or use fancy combos. That's fun and interactive. Playing a weapon and dealing 4890352 damage in turn 4? Nope, that's not. At least for me.
I'm totally with you and I'm saying that as an Aggro player. The 40 Health option gives midrange decks a chance to survive long enough to take back control and that's great. As long as the meta doesn't turn into a combo clown fiesta, I'm super happy with the Prince.
I notice I am confused. Something I believe isn't true. How do I know what I think I know?
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, hpmor.com
I think that 40H won't be an issue if we go again to token decks as the go-to agro option. Yes, you'll last for a few more turns, but one can't keep clearing boards every turn, at one point you can run out of removal. At least with most of the decks.
If they ever stop giving support to dumb me-go-face and leave those kind of cards as a finisher and not a whole deck based around these cards... 40 health won't be needed anymore in Standard. Until those cards leave standard, highness Renatahl will cover our backs.
I'm curious which aggro decks you consider "dumb face decks"? Because the current iteration of 'aggro' decks (murloc shaman, mech mage, mech paladin...) have very low skill floors & ceilings.
Unlike shadow priest & face hunter of the previous meta.
Anyway, right now it doesn't seem like any 40 health deck is good besides prestor druid which is barely playable. We'll see if they print more support for it otherwise they may very well die out already come next expansion.
Prince Renathal may actually get a nerf in future, because the balancing act will eventually get ridiculous. Hearthstone has for the most part been designed around 30 health, and a change in the health total has a significant impact on power levels introduced.
No matter how you cut it, aggro decks are meant to gas out just around the time where the opponent's health is reduced to somewhere around 12 or less, and if everyone is jamming this card to reach 40 health it means team5 have to, as a consequence, design cards for aggro decks to compete with it, so aggro will only get stronger, not weaker the longer 40 health becomes the norm. Soon having 4/5s on 3 will be more common, or some form of disruption like Revenant Rascal will get printed more often.
Will it promote more midrange decks? Not necessarily. I think control benefits the most from it, because the 40 cards penalty actually matters less to them while the additional 10 health remains significant. Midrange wants to curve out, and that 40 cards cuts its consistency enough that I think the best midrange decks would probably not have renathal in it.
I dont really like rock-paper-scissors metas myself, but I think the main thing is about diversity, interaction, and avoiding those 'draw card and win' decks that has plagued druid for years. This new 40 health fad won't change this, but for what its worth its at very least allowing some bit of diversity, and a little more nonce when deckbuilding, which is good.
But in my opinion, the card will likely get changed, or get banned from standard after about a year. Like genn/baku did before it, such gameplay alterations not only affects balance, it can also make the game feel stale. At its very worst it can promote that same feeling of helplessness felt whenever baku warrior comes up and games starts lasting in excess of 15-30 minutes each. No one wants that, surely.
IMO dumb face decks are burn shaman, quest hunter, those on which you can't interact that much since the only thing they do is smack in the face with spells.
Although I dislike the decks you mentioned, at least they require the skill of knowing when to not over-extend, when to do value trades, value accumulation (shark turns), etc... They are dumb? Yeah, maybe. The dumbest? Don't think so.
Yes, agro will be stronger in boards than on direct damage, and that's exactly what I said, and I find it good actually. Playing the board game is more fun than healing and armoring up all game, which is the only "counter" against direct damage (apart from Renathal).
100%, this card is a way to test an upcoming mechanic.
We used to see things like this in Tavern Brawl, like when we got the Discover debut in Captain Blackheart's Treasure, so precedence in mechanic testing is definitely a thing.
Hearthstone has gotten more complicated over the years and the vast combinations of cards just lets too much crazy stuff happen and it's been very clear they can't predict much of it anymore since they have to balance cards more than ever. The move to 40 health will be a huge positive for the health of the aging game and might lure players in to give it a try - I'd love to see the metrics on who came back for the new legendary.
I fully expect them to debut this with Hearthstone's next year in 2023. That'll be the year they switch to 4 expansions per year, 40 health on heroes, and do a significant core set rework. We should also see the new rotating format during 2023, with Classic being kicked to the curb.
Remember that this year's final expansion is going to be bigger than ever, which is probably going to help give us a huge push in diversity so when they drop the number of cards we're seeing at the start of next year, it doesn't feel like there are no cards in the game anymore. If Hearthstone's 4 sets a year drop the total cards in a set back to 135 (removing the extra 35 from the mini-sets), it's going to feel like there are not enough options midway through the new set.
Yeah, I'm a little off-topic here but there you have it, my predictions that I can link back to in 2023 when this is all true.
Founder, Out of Games
Follow me on Twitch and Twitter.
If you are planning on playing WoW on US realms, consider using my recruit link =)
Flux, I literally never considered that the big final expansion might be to help with the transition into a 4 set rotation, but that is a brilliant deduction! Whether you thought of that or someone else pointed it out to you, bravo to whoever put that together.
Quick! Someone give me something clever to write here.
Burn shaman was one of the hardest decks to play of last expansion though. Knowing when to go face and how much chip damage you need to get in with your minions. Probably one of the hardest aggro decks of the past year and a half. And I wouldn't consider questline hunter an aggro deck either.
In fact, questline hunter usually beats control decks more than aggro decks because it has near infinite damage.
Anyway, looks like Renathal has been nothing more than a gimmick so far, only finding place in two or three tier 3 (at best) decks. It'll probably become even worse as we get more cards and decks become faster, outpacing decks with 40 cards even more than is already happening right now.