Praise Galakrond! Or don't, since its likely on the chopping block along with other overperforming Shaman cards in a balance patch scheduled for some time next week, as confirmed by the PlayHearthstone twitter.
Assuming it arrives on schedule, this will be the fastest balance change in Hearthstone history.
Quote From Blizzard We’re currently working on a balance update that will arrive within the next week containing adjustments for #DescentofDragons, including some changes aimed at Shaman.
Any cards that are affected will be given full arcane dust refunds. Stay tuned for more details next week.
Comments
hah! this is too funny. somehow, I feel there's a slight chance they will do something of this nature and nerf something older than the DoD set
Well that was quick...
The speed of it makes me suspect they released the set expecting shaman to be a problem, but thought they'd let the player-base confirm it first.
We kind of already have confirmation of this since they told us they were watching Mogu Fleshshaper going into DoD. There eye has been on Shaman for a while. With how pissed everyone was about Shaman during the Tomb event, it's not surprising they were keeping a close watch and ready to react quickly.
I'm very interested to see how they are going to go about this. There are some deeper mechanic changes that really need to be addressed as well. They recently addressed one, with the Echo change that broke SN1P-SN4P Warlock, so maybe they'll surprise us with finally addressing the interaction of cost cheating and evolve effects?
I'm not keeping my hopes up... but a man can dream.
I bucketed the Galakrond stuff into what I assumed their expectations to be too. I mean, you just look at it and everything is a great card by itself that activates overpowered cards. Then they had the cheek to give that version of Galakrond the card that invokes twice... as a battlecry... in a class that has been based heavily on exploiting battlecries for the last 4 months (or 20 months if you count Shudderwock). How could that not lead to an overpowered deck?
Sadly I don't expect the change to evolve effects will ever come, but I'm dreaming with you.
I had the same thought as well.
I'm apparently in the minority here, but I really dislike the balance strategy of late. I used to admire what a lot of people have whined about previously - back in the vanilla days, Blizzard were very reluctant to perform any direct balance changes.
That, in my opinion, is the desirable state of affairs. It is a source of continual frustration to me that so many cards have been nerfed - and often not because of any actual balance reason, but because people continually whine about them. The biggest example is probably Quest Rogue on release - barely got above a 50% winrate at any time, and yet got nerfed into non-viability just because people were whining about it. And then ate multiple other nerfs over time, too.
The desirable state of affairs in any card game - hell, any game at all - is for players to find their own solutions. I've gotten to Legend multiple times almost entirely off the back of hating on the most popular decks. Let the meta resolve balance issues, don't just nerf anything that looks like it's doing well before players can react to it.
Unfortunately, that state of affairs is not directly conducive of more people playing (and therefore more money being spent), because people like to whine about things that aren't really problems.
And there's our favourite big priest, which wasn't addressed for years.
14 downvotes
Stay strong Mr. Unpopular opinion!
-21 and counting. I don't care - frankly, the majority are wrong an awful lot of the time :P
Hearthstone is a game, and as a Game Designer I know that the game must be fun for anyone involved.
So, even if something is not above "50%" winrate but makes the player experience bad it will/should be changed.
At least that what the designers should do.
The issue with that comes in the form of the cliche "Fun is subjective" statement.
You will never be able to ever make a card or deck that everyone likes playing against.
You also have to consider which players are actually not liking to play against any card/deck (I'm not just talking about the standard format DoD meta) vs those that are ambivalent vs those that like playing against them.
Lastly, where do you draw the line in the stand that disallows just any 'Not fun complaint' to get chucked at a card/deck/class? I for one really really dislike how overly saturated the priest class is with removal options, as well as dislike how disgusting warlock can get with every other expansion when getting some super value generation machine. Does that mean that just because I dislike those two things that I am entitled for them to get nerfed simply because I don't consider them fun?
My issue with the 'nerf anti-fun' position is both a) your point on enjoyment being subjective, and a broader b) that people are really bad at knowing what's actually fun.
I realise that statement sounds phenomenally arrogant at first glance, but consider - how many 'be careful what you wish for' stories are there in popular culture and mythology? People think they want the big bad deck they're scared of to go away, and yet as soon as it does, something else rises to take its place. To put it in Wild terms - nerf the Mill Rogues keeping control honest and suddenly greed becomes king.
Yes, genuine anti-fun should be removed - but frankly, it should never actually get into the game in the first place with good pre-release testing. And it takes way more than a week to figure out whether something's genuinely anti-fun or just something people need to work out how to deal with.
I've seen the 'token druid is anti-fun' argument in a dozen different expansions now... and I don't think token druid was in tiers 1 or 2 at the end of any of them. The meta resolves these things most of the time.
So I was beginning to reply and was intending to say something like "I usually agree with you but in this case Galakrond Shaman according to HSReplay has winrates over 60% which is really oppressive", except then I went there to confirm that it was still the case. It is but... it is steadily trending down. 64.61% on launch (which sounds ridiculous), down to 60.02% now. Still crazy high, but a) early season meta is full of all sorts of homebrew and decks that people are trying to make work but are simply terrible (not sure what the current equivalents are, but many times that Blizzard have pushed Discolock for example and people have tried it to no success at all) so a strong deck will feast on those.
So yeah, I agree with you, it's too early and the meta is finding a way it seems.
That said, I have played with it, and I have played against it, and in both cases I'm no sure how I would have beaten it, it seems to be strong all game long. I really REALLY hope they don't take it to the ground though because it's fun. 1/1 rushing dudes on Invoke would be an option but that would feel SO bad. Capping the battlecry minions to 6/6? Might feel fairer but might also take it to the ground.
The w/r is dropping from 65% to 60% (and right now about 55%) isn't painting the full picture. With the entire metagame designed to stop it, Galakrond Shaman is still at a 57% w/r.
For comparison, Aggro Evolve Shaman (that one we all were sick of and hated) had a 54% w/r as of the last vS report.
Assuming it continues to drop to be right around 55%, a nerf is still certainly warranted.
I'm entirely unable to find this 60% winrate you've claimed. The best version of this on HS replay has a current average winrate of ~63%, and while it has been trending down, a lot of that is due to mirror matches. Its winrate against most classes is at or above 65% - sometimes dramatically so.
Moreover, you've entirely ignored the play data around Faceless Corruptor. It's super powerful, sees play in a majority of decks today, and forces the meta into a state where everyone has to play a board-centric game with it in order to succeed. Sure, it's a neutral card, but no class is as good as Shaman at supporting its play style right now, and typical tempo-oriented contenders like Hunter and Rogue don't have the AOE they'd need to compete with a late game Galakrond, the Tempest, leaving Shaman the undisputed king of the metagame.
I didn't ignore anything. I never claimed to be making a comprehensive set analysis. I simply looked at data and went "hmmm, it looks like things are changing".
If you'll read through my full post you'll probably see that I was really undecided. My general inclination in any situation is "don't be too hasty, things may look very different in a week" because in the history of Hearthstone that has often proven to be the case. In this specific instance I was really torn because my experience with and against the deck told me it seemed really crazy strong.
100% agreed!!
Too many spoiled kids just netdecking and/or expecting for their greedy decks to have 100% WR over everything else..
C'mon, guys!! It has just been 3 (THREE) FUCKING DAYS!!!
The whole problem is that it's only been 3 fucking days. Within 3 days, one deck has become so unbelievably strong that it has plagued over 50% of the current standard ladder, and the number is increasing. Even in mirrors, it's no longer about who can outplay the other player, it's about who can Invoke the fastest and play Galakrond first. There is no actual playmaking skill, it's "draw your deck, play Galakrond and hope your opponent doesn't". This is why combo decks are universally hated as well; they have no gameplan other than to survive long enough to play their combo to kill you, while you have no input in the matter. Control decks can be played around since they need to kill you as well, and therefore they cannot afford to run absolutely every removal tool. Combo decks, on the other hand, are able to do so, and as such have less outplay opportunities.
And besides, what's wrong with net decking? The whole point of the game is to win games to rank up; if it wasn't then Blizzard would give you stars for losing as well. If this is the case, then why shouldn't people net deck? It's simple logic: there's a strong deck, another deck rises that can beat the previous strong deck, people start playing that new deck because it beat the once-popular deck, now that's the strongest deck. While any deck has it's weaknesses and worst matchups (except for Galakrond Shaman), if those counter decks get smashed by other decks, there's no incentive to play it for the one favourable matchup, even if that matchup makes up over 50% of the ladder. This is the lifecycle of any game with a meta, not just Hearthstone, and if you can't grasp that basic concept, maybe you should take a step back from making sweeping statements and learn common sense. Galakrond Shaman is so unbelievably busted that their popularity as skyrocketed far and beyond what other decks can do to keep it in check.
People aren't complaining because their decks are losing to Galakrond Shaman, they're complaining because the ladder has been overrun with the same deck a million times over. The last time the ladder was so plagued was during Year of the Mammoth with Razakus Priest, but even that had decks which countered it. Galakrond Shaman creates an environment that is not fun and doesn't incentivise people to play. There is no longer any skill based on learning a deck to learn how to play the counter matchups, it has become a game of who can play what first. Not only is this a problem for the community, but this is also a problem for Blizzard. If people stop playing because the standard ladder is so plagued and the wild ladder isn't much better, people will shift over to Battlegrounds or quit the game entirely, both of which reduce the company's profits. This is the best move to appease the community and keep their revenue intact.
And yet, on my climb from the 12 I was sat at having not really played in two months, to my current rank 4 (haven't played all that much to be honest, managed a respectable 85% winrate getting there), I never had issues with Shaman. Met plenty of them, sure, but beat most of them and never felt overwhelmed at any point. Teched a pair of Brawls into my midrange warrior and that was that - they contest board well, but as soon as they lose board their only out is two boards of 8/8s (i.e. Galakrond and then Shudderwock). If you have answers for those boardstates, whether via Brawl or duplicated Scions of Ruin, you're pretty much set. They also pack basically no healing, so aggressive strategies shut them down pretty hard.
The winrate is high right now because it's the start of an expansion. I made an entire essay-post primarily devoted to telling people not to make ridiculously greedy decks, precisely because that's exactly what people do at the start of an expansion.
Anyway. That's not even the point. The point I'm trying to make is that the argument as to whether Shaman is overpowered right now is entirely redundant because it's literally impossible to tell at this point whether the meta can resolve it on its own or not. We've all seen decks pop up out of nowhere and break into the meta hard. A week into the expansion we've barely even found our feet. Anyone can have theories, but we don't have enough data to actually form a strong position because that data does not exist. Deckbuilding is a fundamentally iterative process, and when those iterations have yet to be performed - and the meta has yet to react to them - we cannot say with any sort of certainty what's overpowered and what's just strong.
Though, of course, I fully expect to get as downvoted on this post as on my original one. Because people are predictable, and 'burn the witch' is so common a reaction as to actually be boring at this point.