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Hearthstone | Posted by | 6 years, 7 months ago
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How long do you play your own decks for?

At the early point of each expansion, I want to try so many new decks, but I always end up going through the same routine:

  1. Spend a while creating a new deck
  2. Queue on ladder; get annihilated by an aggro deck
  3. Queue on ladder; get slowly murdered by a control deck over 20 minutes
  4. Rage-delete deck
  5. Cycle 1-4 ad infinitum

Now, all usual responses aside (git gud etc.), I'd like to know how long other players stick with a deck before they decide to refine it or just make an entirely new one. Especially at the early stages of an expansion cycle.

In short, gimme your tips on how to stay focused on one deck. Cheers!

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  • At the early point of each expansion, I want to try so many new decks, but I always end up going through the same routine:

    1. Spend a while creating a new deck
    2. Queue on ladder; get annihilated by an aggro deck
    3. Queue on ladder; get slowly murdered by a control deck over 20 minutes
    4. Rage-delete deck
    5. Cycle 1-4 ad infinitum

    Now, all usual responses aside (git gud etc.), I'd like to know how long other players stick with a deck before they decide to refine it or just make an entirely new one. Especially at the early stages of an expansion cycle.

    In short, gimme your tips on how to stay focused on one deck. Cheers!

    • Quote From Arcsun

      I'd like to know how long other players stick with a deck before they decide to refine it or just make an entirely new one

      Huh?  Isn't the point of testing your own decks to refine them?  If through experiencing games you find that some cards are underperforming, why wouldn't you change them immediately?  Maybe it'll take a few games to be sure something is not working, but once you figure it out, there's no reason not to make changes.  You won't know how much better your deck could be if you don't try and if the changes fail, you can always try a new package/card

      Don't expect the first thing you come up with to be good or win unless it's some netdecked archetype.  If you want to build good decks, you'll need to refine them and refinement requires testing.  There's no way to get around it

      Losing those early games might be hard, but you should know it's not a reflection of your gameplay or deckbuilding skill; it's a consequence of the refinement process.  Someone smart once said success requires many failures... I am too lazy to look it up lol ... but it rings true in deckbuilding 

  • Depends on how fun the deck is, or could possibly be. If you think it has real potential, keep at it, but definitely refine as you go in response to what you're facing. Sometimes I build some crazy OTK thing, and once I get it to go off a single time, I'm happy and delete it. Other types might have more staying power. Don't let your memes be dreams!

    • Quote From Pezman

      Depends on how fun the deck is, or could possibly be. If you think it has real potential, keep at it, but definitely refine as you go in response to what you're facing. Sometimes I build some crazy OTK thing, and once I get it to go off a single time, I'm happy and delete it. Other types might have more staying power. Don't let your memes be dreams!

      Yeah, maybe that's it - set a small goal like 'pull off a cool combo once' and stick to it. Thanks.

    • Quote From Pezman

      Depends on how fun the deck is, or could possibly be. If you think it has real potential, keep at it, but definitely refine as you go in response to what you're facing. Sometimes I build some crazy OTK thing, and once I get it to go off a single time, I'm happy and delete it. Other types might have more staying power. Don't let your memes be dreams!

      Exactly like this ! i play my own decks as long as i have fun with them or if i want to try some crazy OTK i try different builds until it works a few times.

      And sometimes a fun deck turns into my ladder deck for the month :)

  • I think your mindset changes once you have a specific goal in mind. When you're building a home brew deck you have a good sense of how competitive/non-competitive it is or will be. 

    If the goal is to accomplish pulling off a crazy combo, winning games, meme people. Temper your expectations accordingly. And like other posters have said, tweak it to what you're seeing. The games will vastly change from 20-15, 15-10, 10-5, and 5-Legend. So make sure you're setting your deck up for success rather than not adjusting to the types of decks you're seeing. 

    Hope that helps. 

    • Quote From ShanghaiKid

      I think your mindset changes once you have a specific goal in mind. When you're building a home brew deck you have a good sense of how competitive/non-competitive it is or will be. 

      If the goal is to accomplish pulling off a crazy combo, winning games, meme people. Temper your expectations accordingly. And like other posters have said, tweak it to what you're seeing. The games will vastly change from 20-15, 15-10, 10-5, and 5-Legend. So make sure you're setting your deck up for success rather than not adjusting to the types of decks you're seeing. 

      Hope that helps. 

      It does help, thanks! I think also bouncing between wild and standard means I've not yet properly grasped the respective metagames. Might be worth playing a few games with a random deck first before launching into crafting something new.

  • I play the hell out of my own decks ad nauseam.  I enjoy being able to craft my own stuff with a theme.  I know that most of my own creations get annihilated and I couldn't care less. I play the game to have fun.  I have no delusions of grandeur that I am going pro.  I play maybe an hour a day broken up throughout the day at best. 

     

    But I like being able to craft my own stuff.  Not going to lie, sometimes what I make is an offshoot of what someone else did.  I remember that I played against a Warrior deck that looked almost like a mirror deck.  I thought to myself, "How are they playing the exact same deck?"  But then I saw some tech that they used and I totally put it in my deck.  I really only play the "Net Decks" to get my rank up to 10 and call it good usually. 

     

    Friendly

  • as long as I enjoy them and they aren't terrible in the meta.

    I played my own Discard Questlock during the last months of Rastakhans, but I dropped my Quest Hunter about a week into the expansion after it just couldn't compete with refined decks.

    Right now I'M playing Handbuff Questlock and it's doing pretty well, but if the meta develops in a way where it just loses way too much I'll just stop

    Friendly

  • For the most part, all of my decks end up being heavier control decks, so whenever I see someone playing the value game I’ll usually manage to beat them. Pretty much the only decks I don’t bother trying to beat are things like Jade, Shudderwock, Big Priest, etc. stuff that will get really cheap big minions out or go infinite. Even if I win I won’t find them fun.

    Think all my decks at the moment are ones I made. I try not to be too competitive with this game, since that kind of kills the fun. Most of what I make sticks to around rank 18, usually I’ll know if I made a deck with potential if it gets to 14 or below

  • For me, it varies. Some ideas just stick in my brain and I will spend a lot of time trying to make it work. Quest Hunter (The Marsh Queen) was a deck I had a ton of fun working on and playing regularly with Prince Keleseth. It was a pretty weak deck but crazy fun since Prince K didn't have to be high-roll mulligan. Dropping him AFTER you played Queen Carnassa was insane value. 

    Other deck ideas where I feel like I'm a genius who had an epiphany get trounced and I immediately realize it was a flawed concept so I move on after 4-6 games. 

    • Quote From AbusingKel

      Other deck ideas where I feel like I'm a genius who had an epiphany get trounced and I immediately realize it was a flawed concept so I move on after 4-6 games. 

      The other day I thought I had a great idea with combining Ironhide Direhorn and BEEEES!!!. However, when I actually played the combo, it turned out that the dead bees stay on the board until after all four have attacked, so there is no board space to summon lots of Runts. A 7/3 and two 5/5s is not that great for a 10-mana 2-card combo; I had hoped for a slightly weaker but easier to set up version of Chef Nomi.

      One thing to look at is whether the deck defeats itself or the opponent defeats it. If an interaction just doesn't work or is too difficult to set up, there is no shame in abandoning the concept early. I usually create a small text file to record my experience and the deck code, just in case cards from a future expansion make the deck more viable.

      If the deck itself works, but is not powerful enough to win games, you can try tuning it. I tend to play at least 5 games if it feels like the concept has some promise. But I know the feeling of rage-deleting decks; it can be frustrating to have your own creation be crushed by a netdeck. It also depends on whether it's a meme deck or a regular ladder deck that I'm trying to make: I don't mind if I have a 20% win rate with a Mogu Cultist deck, as long as I can get the combo off sometimes, but with a generic mid-range deck it feels bad if my win rate stays below 40%.

      It might help to log your plays, either manually or with a deck tracker, and then evaluate some properties after a game. Which cards were stuck in your hand for a long time? Did you have too little or too much card draw? Which played cards felt powerful and which felt underwhelming? By analyzing you can get something positive out of the game rather than focusing on the loss.

      If you haven't already, watch Firebat's Deck Doctor videos. He typically tries tuning a deck for about an hour before settling on a version or declaring the patient deceased. It doesn't happen often that he gives up on a deck; usually he can make a deck work somewhat decently, although it requires pretty large changes in some cases.

      One thing I learned from his videos is not to try and do too many different things in a single deck. Not only does that make it hard to have the right synergies at the right time, it also makes it difficult to tune the deck, since there are few free slots for cards that can get you through the turns when you cannot play your synergies.

    • Quote From AbusingKel

      For me, it varies. Some ideas just stick in my brain and I will spend a lot of time trying to make it work. Quest Hunter (The Marsh Queen) was a deck I had a ton of fun working on and playing regularly with Prince Keleseth. It was a pretty weak deck but crazy fun since Prince K didn't have to be high-roll mulligan. Dropping him AFTER you played Queen Carnassa was insane value. 

      Other deck ideas where I feel like I'm a genius who had an epiphany get trounced and I immediately realize it was a flawed concept so I move on after 4-6 games. 

      Quest Hunter was definitely a cool deck. Something really fun to do was play Brann, Carnassa, then Keleseth. You end up with 30 1 mana 5/4’s in your deck that all draw a card

  • First of all: refining is a long and complex process, including honing your own skills with the pace of the new deck, which is not a granted thing. Like, at all.

    Secondly, homebrewing can often fail, and very frequently it just performs up to viability at best, like t3 or similar. It's very rare to homebrew a meta-breaker deck. You should never expect that.

    And in any case, point #1 must be upheld before judging. It requires time, a variable amount of time, but definitely not just a handful of games (unless you find the flaw is so big that any meta deck can consistently hit it).

    eg. I reached the final stage of my Highlander Rogue, in its Shadowdancer form, only few days ago, and i've been tinkering with it, with many failures and complete hoverhauls, since release day.

  • Well, if I get destroyed everytime then the concept of the deck is garbage and I delete it; but I normally start refining it after a few games, and I keep playing the deck for the full season (sometimes even 2 seasons), if it stays above 50% WR. But it depends on my mood, how boring or fun the deck is, and what other decks I want to play.

  • I rarely bother to climb the ladder, so since I'm mostly in Casual I definitely just play what's fun to me even if it isn't all that good. And for me, fun is all about variety. Brief interlude to say this is why I cannot fathom people who play non-meme OTK decks - you're literally playing the same deck the same way over and over and over again. How is that fun?

    So get out the torches and ptichforks you ignorant townsfolk (kidding), but I'll say it loud and proud that the more RNG a deck has the more fun I have with it and the longer I play it. I've been playing Burgle Rogue and Thief Priest for a good while. I'm missing a lot of the cards to make the new SoU Casino Mage, but that's definitely next on my list once I get more cards/dust to craft. If a weekly brawl is fairly RNG-heavy, i'll usually "take that week off" and just play the Brawl.

  • I usually stick with the deck as long as it works in some ways on the ladder, might not have the best win rate, tho. Maybe about getting 1 win in 4 games for me, but if i keep losing more than 5, then something might be wrong with the deck.

    Regarding on building your own deck.. if u need some specific cards but do not own it, is it worth it to spend dust on creating them? Idk if those card could be use outside of the deck i'm currently brewing, but still i want to make those concept work.

    • Quote From Vandaren

      Regarding on building your own deck.. if u need some specific cards but do not own it, is it worth it to spend dust on creating them? Idk if those card could be use outside of the deck i'm currently brewing, but still i want to make those concept work.

      It depends on how much dust you have and what other cards you want. You probably want to save your dust for cards you are going to play more than a few times!

  • 1.Standard - feel free to experiment all your deck there. Memes,OTK ,ranked practice decks standard is only to have fun and test against  different type of decks

    2.Ranked - Play high winrate meta decks (Control/Bomb Warrior , Galaxy Mage, Hunter Decks... ) there is no 100% winrate deck so you should win and loose no matter what deck you play

  • I play my own decks all the way through each expac. The only thing is that the deck becomes less and less 'memey' as I go. I start with Quest Rogue with 2x Violet Haze and 2x Clever Disguise so I can get an early Mountain Giant. Then I cut the fun and add 'removal' and 'card draw' slowly over time.