Why do people play Tier 1 decks in casual mode?

Seems a bit weird. If you've got the money to build tier 1 decks, just go play the, in standard. All you'll "learn" in casual is that your tier 1 deck beats my unoptimised silly deathrattle deck. Which, really, you knew already. If you're trying to work out the deck (mulligans, synergy, etc) then playing in an actual ranked match is much better for you.

I'm just playing around with Recurring Villain and Mok'Nathal Lion - the strongest 9 mana combo anyone will ever see (!).

I am with you, but this is a question that has been around since the very start of HS and always ends up at the same answer: different people have different thoughts on what the Casual mode is for.

Frankly no one is wrong so you have to just live with it until a time comes when Blizz does something about it (probably removing the gold earned from every 3 wins, or the introduction of Super-Casual that does that). Note they have never shown any sign that they intend to do something about it...

Maybe because they’re scared of losing stars silver 9 or something, idk to be honest.

to practice them before actually going for the climb? to have an easier time completing quests? To test different builds?

I basically never played Ranked much until they revealed the 1000 win portraits. Before that I just played every deck I liked in Casual, be it meta or meme, because I didn't see the point to enter the competitive ladder when I wasn't really playing seriously anyways.

Basically, some people just don't really think about that because they see ladder as just a way to farm monthly rewards and nothing more.

Because ladder is inherently a grind, and it can be stressful at times.

Going for a cheese in Casual feels relaxing for many. 

Afterall, what do you care if you're playing memes? You shouldn't care of winning in the first place. Just add some survival tools if you want to meme out before losing.

Invalid Deck IDBecause they can. Will blizzard take action? No. What's left for you to do? Stop playing casual or stop playing HS.

Easy enough.

I get what yous all sayin :)

• I'm not that bothered, it is not a complaint, I just don't get it (I don't mind losing with my meme decks)
• There's no point learning to pilot in casual for standard, not if you have a tier 1 deck
• With all the level blocks at 10 and 5, you aren't going to lose many levels if you're grinding (and the learning will be so much better in ranked)
• Easier time completing quests - not with a tier 1 deck - which quest are they completing (play 3 games - doesn't matter if you lose, play 20 battlecries - make a battlecry deck - no longer tier 1)
• Test different builds - nope they are tier 1 decks with no adjustments seen during game play - if you are teching in 1 card change to see how it helps, there's no point in playing casual - you want to see how it fares against other ranked matches

I think it does make sense for Blizz to make casual much more different. There could be all sorts of brawl and adventure type mixups.

Quote From RavenSunHS

Because ladder is inherently a grind, and it can be stressful at times.

Going for a cheese in Casual feels relaxing for many. 

Afterall, what do you care if you're playing memes? You shouldn't care of winning in the first place. Just add some survival tools if you want to meme out before losing.

But part of the reason the ladder is such a grind is because everyone is playing those hyper-refined T1 decks - every match is a real fight. It's inherently contradictory and hypocritical to say "I don't want to have to play against these tough decks right now, so I'll just take my tough deck where it will probably do better & I have a lower chance of running into similarity strong decks" i.e. Casual

And on your second point: it's hard to meme when you're dead on turn 4. Even with "survival tools" you're not lasting more than a few turns against Ramp Druid with Stealth Rogue.

I agree with AngryShuckie - Take the gold rewards away from Casual. You want to "relax", "practice", "complete quests", etc? Well there's nothing more relaxing than a game with no stakes. And if you want to do those things but also get gold, you can get to any one of the now EIGHT rank floors and do your thing there with no consequence to losing.

I daresay you'd find nearly as many t1 in Casual as you find now, even with no gold involved.

As I said, the reward is often cheesing out some wins, without caring too much at the same time.

You're deluding yourselves if you think Casual can be purified of competition.

I seriously doubt all the t1 I meet in Casual are Trainees or Farmers (who's got so much time to waste anyway?!?).

I don't do this anymore, but I used to pretty much only play casual, and I used to play T1 decks there. My reasoning was stupid, and I wish I had just played ladder so I would be closer to 500/1000 wins with all the classes. When I first started playing, ladder felt like it was this "all powerful" place where I was playing against people who were better and had larger collections than me. I went to ladder with a tense mindset (which probably made me lose games I should have won), and I would get triggered when I would lose more than one game in a row and watch my rank drop. 

As time went on, I got over that initial "ladder fear", but I would still play most of my games in casual. This was because I mostly get chances to play when I go and smoke a cigarette, or when on a break at work. Too often I would find myself not having time to play a full game, so to prevent myself from having to concede and lose stars, I opted to just play in casual instead where it wouldn't matter if I had to quickly concede and get back to work. 

Now, my rank means nothing to me, and I just play whatever in ladder just for the opportunity to unlock my remaining 500/1000 win portraits. 

All that being said... This is probably not true for most people, and the real reason is people just want to quickly farm as much gold as they can, and they go to casual to prey on people like you who are just fucking around with meme decks. 

People play to have fun. Winning games is fun. Sometimes the stress of laddering isn't fun. So, you play the decks that win the most without any stress. There's nothing wrong with it, and it's definitely not against the rules.

They will not remove the gold reward from Casual. And even if they do, all it would do is make people incredibly angry. I don't think anybody is playing T-1 decks in casual just to farm gold. It simply isn't practical. If you have a 60% win rate, and an average game takes you 10 mins, it would take 8 hours of playing before you earned 1 pack, which would probably only contain 40 dust. Why would anybody want to do that?

I don't mind T-1 decks in casual. Casual is casual, play whatever the heck you want. 

I do it because its fun and I like to see the victory screen

your name, your profile pic your title fits so well with your message

I think a contributing factor that hasn't been mentioned is the new and improved auto-complete deck algorithm.

This option is popular among my friends who have less time to play/don't enjoy deckbuilding, and I've used it many times myself when trying to complete a "Play 3 Games" quest with a class I don't normally run.  The issue with this is that, even when you try to seed the deck with some memes to build around, the algorithm seems to favor the most popular aggro additions to fill out the remaining slots (e.g. I swear I was getting Mech Hunter suggestions, almost no matter the starting archetype, months after it was T1 and pretty much up until Face Hunter got popular).

I also think there's another factor worth mentioning related to the arms race in Casual that a few other folks commented on:

1. Because Tier 1 decks are pretty common in Casual, you usually can't run pure meme builds and expect to live long enough to play your cool combo. 
2. As a result, you often have to include a meta shell to survive the early game (e.g. there have been a number of seasons where I've felt like I "had" to include a secret shell in my Hunter decks to survive). 
3. However, because you're using a meta opening, that'll sometimes be enough to win the game and then your opponent never knows that you were trying to play a meme deck and his/her salt meter rises by a few grains.
4. After facing the "same" meta decks a number of games in a row (as inferred from their meta opening strategy), the opponent overflows with salt and plays Demon Hunter in the Kael'thas Tavern Brawl until they're so dirty the Roomba tries to scoop them up.    

Personally, I'd love to see them do a trial run of including matchmaking in the Practice Mode for like 2 months.  No gold for wins, no quest progression, just pure practice.  I'm sure folks would still venture down with T1 decks to mindlessly troll, but I wonder if that would persist long-term.  When I tank my Casual MMR so bad that I'm facing folks playing with mostly basic cards, I don't find those wins enjoyable after like the first game and am happy to rise up a bit in competition.  Alas, we'll likely never know...

With the star system I don't get it either, like who cares if you lose a game, when every win gives you 5+ stars lol

Some players like grinding up ladder with one specific deck and play other decks in casual where there isnt any pressure to win. Doesnt have to matter if its tier 1 or not, if you're not comfortable with the deck and you dont want to lose stars, you play in casual.

I think most decks are and should be created with the meta in mind. If I'm building some meme deck, first thing to think about is if it even has a decent chance against what everybody else is playing at the moment.

The problem as I see it is the obvious one: losing just isn't fun, so people gravitate to decks that hedge their bets. The only two games I've played avidly for the last 5 years have been HS and LoL. One is VERY good at keeping things fresh, the other.. is showing signs of getting there. For those that don't know, League of Legends is forever in fluctuation- A champion that is S tier could get dropped to a far lower one in a matter of weeks; and back to S again with some patience. 

My sacred wish for HS is to adopt that model and I would be willing to even give up dust refunds to have nerfs and buffs occur on a regular basis. There's a reason pencils usually come with erasers and they ought to be exercised.

One solution to the problem could be adding a number of rotated cards to evergreen sets, the notion being that these cards would be included into more decks and therefor could be safely nerfed should one class become a problem. There wouldn't be a valid grievance because a card would be just as likely to be de-nerfed the next expansion if the class is suffering.

It's radical thinking for sure.. but I for one would love to see the game in never-ending flux where they adjust a cost here and a stat there to try to take the win% down of overachieving decks. The only thing stopping them as I see it is stubbornness or the dust economy.

There isn't just one answer to this question, different strokes for different folks and all that.

One reason is because people may just like the decks and not like ladder. To add to that maybe they've hit legend already as well, or just get anxious and/or stressed playing ranked. I know before getting to legend myself certain match-ups on ladder could really turn me off of the game for the day.

Tbh I've always wondered what the point of casual was. Let's be real here, this mode is just like ranked - there's an MMR system based on players' winrates or collection (in case of new players) - with the only exception that it doesn't offer any rewards other than 10 g per three wins. Since players can get matched with others w/o any restrictions taking place whatsoever, it's inevitable for a meme deck to face something more competitive. And that's something unpleasant for both sides. ArngrimUndying and RangDipkin explained  the reasons for that, so I'm not going to repeat them. 

For me casual should get an overhaul, if the devs want to make it more popular. If we could set some kind of restrictions there, we could satisfy all types of players. Meme decks can get matched with eachother and pull off their fun combos in peace; people, who want to practise for the ladder or a tournament, can find more suitable partners etc. I suggested that change ever since I joined hs-related forums, but a fellow user here made a very nice thread about it:

https://outof.cards/forums/hearthstone/hearthstone-general/2665-tables-a-way-to-play-hearthstone-with-your-own-rules

I am aware, that we won't see a such overhaul in the near future (I'm not an expert, but this suggestion requires s lot of dedicated work), but imho that's what casual truly needs. Right now I don't see a reason to play there. Like DelkoHS said, we could use meme decks on the ladder and get easy stars thanks to the multiplier. This was the case for me, when I gave the new ranking system a try - I just created a fun Raza Thief deck and played it all the way to Diamond 5. If a person reaches the point, when they don't get bonus stars anymore, then can just meme in one if the milestones, so that they don't lose ranks.

Quote From Kovachut

Show Spoiler

Tbh I've always wondered what the point of casual was. Let's be real here, this mode is just like ranked - there's an MMR system based on players' winrates or collection (in case of new players) - with the only exception that it doesn't offer any rewards other than 10 g per three wins. Since players can get matched with others w/o any restrictions taking place whatsoever, it's inevitable for a meme deck to face something more competitive. And that's something unpleasant for both sides. ArngrimUndying and RangDipkin explained  the reasons for that, so I'm not going to repeat them. 

For me casual should get an overhaul, if the devs want to make it more popular. If we could set some kind of restrictions there, we could satisfy all types of players. Meme decks can get matched with eachother and pull off their fun combos in peace; people, who want to practise for the ladder or a tournament, can find more suitable partners etc. I suggested that change ever since I joined hs-related forums, but a fellow user here made a very nice thread about it:

https://outof.cards/forums/hearthstone/hearthstone-general/2665-tables-a-way-to-play-hearthstone-with-your-own-rules

I am aware, that we won't see a such overhaul in the near future (I'm not an expert, but this suggestion requires s lot of dedicated work), but imho that's what casual truly needs. Right now I don't see a reason to play there. Like DelkoHS said, we could use meme decks on the ladder and get easy stars thanks to the multiplier. This was the case for me, when I gave the new ranking system a try - I just created a fun Raza Thief deck and played it all the way to Diamond 5.

I get where you're coming from, but honestly I would hate for only to have my meme/combo decks to only go against other meme decks because at the end of the day that doesn't help me be a better meme deck builder. Over the years my deck building has not only been refined on ladder, but also in casual where I have to actually think about how to keep my memey behind alive, or have me cycle through to my combo more effectively, etc.

While I have had some amazing meme vs meme games that I enjoyed, it isn't always satisfying enough to win with my own memes if the wins come relatively easily because the other guy is just as wacky as me. Easy wins doesn't always equal satisfying ones.

@Lyra

I was talking about restrictions in general. Those don't have to be narrowed down to the ones I mentioned. If you would like to find more competitive players, so that you improve the survivability of your deck or to face a challenge, there could be an option to mention it. I dunno how such lounges would look like in the face of hs, but in the past I've played on YGoPro with a friend and we had the possiblity to set such custom options and to announce them to others.

Would be pretty awesome if casual took into account the deck tier so if you wanted to run something offbeat youre more likely to run into something similar.

Wouldnt even be hard to program. We have the data..

Quote From RangDipkin

 

1. After facing the "same" meta decks a number of games in a row (as inferred from their meta opening strategy), the opponent overflows with salt and plays Demon Hunter in the Kael'thas Tavern Brawl until they're so dirty the Roomba tries to scoop them up.    

 

ROFL!

Empathy is the answer here I guess. Think like you are doing that. Why would you do that?

If you are a long-term player, you probably will find the reasoning by yourself.

1-) Some T1 decks you saw in casual are first time players which are trying the deck before they play it on ladder.
2-) Some of them are people who tries the deck's playstyle if it fits their gameplay style or not and if they enjoy to play with that deck or not. That might take some time to figure it out.
3-) Some of them are people who wants to play better with that deck, so they do just some practices.
4-) Some of them have only those T1 decks in their collection and they want to do some quests without worrying their rank and they don't want to build new decks for just doing quests. So they play casual. Not everyone has longer free times to build decks and play with them at the same time, you know.
5-) Some of them just want to reach daily gold cap faster and they know, in casual mode, they might face meme decks more than ladder, so they are playing casual to milk meme/homebrew decks.
6-) Some of them are "first game of the day", which some players do before going ladder climb. I am doing that in FPS games to adjust my brain, mentality and reflexes for the game for example.
7-) Some of them just don't want to play stressfully and don't want to care misplays for that day. At the end of the day, you can't know how stressful their real life and what they faced.
8-) and more reasoning i can't empathize. I believe and almost certain that I skipped,forget or can't really find some of them.

Casual is casual. In past, I was like you, I was wondering why they were playing netdecks in casual and i thought like there is no meaning to play netdecks in casual but that doesn't sound right nowadays because if i am free to play my meme decks in casual game mode, They are also free to try, play and practice their t1 decks in casual mode.

I"m not sure if the new mmr in the latest patch is the same for casual as it is in ranked.

Basically your silver/gold level etc is immaterial now to your MMR which is the only matching it's using in ranked (and maybe the same or just a different mmr)

when you win against people you gain mmr, if they're higher than you mmr wise you'll get more than if they're lower.

So I wouldnt worry about it, eventually if you win a lot in casual your mmr is going to go up, so you will be facing people who play T1 decks on casual

 Not even sure if it differentiates between the 2 game modes any more you could be playing against somebody on the ranked ladder even though you chose to play in casual.

Only legend players get to see the rank of their opponent.

I play Tier 1 decks in casual just so I can learn to pilot them.

And yes I feel bad about it, otherwise casual is just for grinding out dailies and gold farming 

Quote From PLANETCRUNCH

I play Tier 1 decks in casual just so I can learn to pilot them.

And yes I feel bad about it, otherwise casual is just for grinding out dailies and gold farming 

Heh. Can't make you feel *that* bad... or you'd stop

I think sometimes it's about pilot navigation. If it's a new deck to you regardless whether it's t1 or not you want to try it out first before going to standard. It's about learning a new deck basically, not just to try and be a d.