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Hearthstone | Posted by | 3 years, 7 months ago
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Mutanus vs Theotar: opinion on combo disruption

Let me start by saying I enjoy combos: it's super fun to assemble your pieces, fend off the enemy, then administer the coup de grace. I also think that combo disruption is important for the game.

I think Mutanus the Devourer is a perfect and well-balanced combo disruptor: he can only hit minions (he can do nothing about a Purified Shard already in hand, a game-winning Bloodlust, or any hero card you care to mention), he is expensive, and he chooses a random target. Using Mutanus to stop an enemy combo requires a lot of luck, a lot of mana, and some decent hand-reading. And perhaps best of all, he was part of a mini-set, making him easier to collect than most other legendaries.

I hate Theotar, the Mad Duke. He is inexpensive, allows you to choose a target, can steal ANY card (not just minions), and worst of all, he allows your enemy to use your win condition against you. 

I'll include my super salty story below here as a spoiler for anyone who cares to read it. Otherwise, feel free to respond to the opinions above. Agree? Disagree? Let's chat, friends.

Show Spoiler
I'm playing Quest Priest vs. Denathrius Druid. I'm working through my quest, answering my opponent's board, and just having a grand old time. I'm even putting on enough pressure that he has to play his Sire Denathrius early just to stay alive. Then he plays Zola the Gorgon to get a second Sire for later (he's Guff by now and has at least 13 mana). My response: Whirlpool, which honestly hurts my own board worse than his, but it gets rid of both of his Sires (one on board, one in hand). He has NO win condition. I complete my quest. He plays Theotar, the Mad Duke and ganks my Xyrella, the Sanctified, then plays it immediately. I did everything right, made the good plays, defeated his win condition, then lost to my own win condition because of one stupid card that didn't even require any skill or much luck to use.

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  • Let me start by saying I enjoy combos: it's super fun to assemble your pieces, fend off the enemy, then administer the coup de grace. I also think that combo disruption is important for the game.

    I think Mutanus the Devourer is a perfect and well-balanced combo disruptor: he can only hit minions (he can do nothing about a Purified Shard already in hand, a game-winning Bloodlust, or any hero card you care to mention), he is expensive, and he chooses a random target. Using Mutanus to stop an enemy combo requires a lot of luck, a lot of mana, and some decent hand-reading. And perhaps best of all, he was part of a mini-set, making him easier to collect than most other legendaries.

    I hate Theotar, the Mad Duke. He is inexpensive, allows you to choose a target, can steal ANY card (not just minions), and worst of all, he allows your enemy to use your win condition against you. 

    I'll include my super salty story below here as a spoiler for anyone who cares to read it. Otherwise, feel free to respond to the opinions above. Agree? Disagree? Let's chat, friends.

    Show Spoiler
    I'm playing Quest Priest vs. Denathrius Druid. I'm working through my quest, answering my opponent's board, and just having a grand old time. I'm even putting on enough pressure that he has to play his Sire Denathrius early just to stay alive. Then he plays Zola the Gorgon to get a second Sire for later (he's Guff by now and has at least 13 mana). My response: Whirlpool, which honestly hurts my own board worse than his, but it gets rid of both of his Sires (one on board, one in hand). He has NO win condition. I complete my quest. He plays Theotar, the Mad Duke and ganks my Xyrella, the Sanctified, then plays it immediately. I did everything right, made the good plays, defeated his win condition, then lost to my own win condition because of one stupid card that didn't even require any skill or much luck to use.

    • Theotar does not allow you to choose ANY card. It picks 3 at random from both hands. then swaps them. sometimes I'm forced to give them something good for something not great. It requires More hand reading and has less stats than if a big minion gets devoured. It's balanced imo.

      • The fact Theo gives you 3 options to choose from inherently makes hand reading twice as easy. For one, its thrice as likely to pick up the proper target to steal, if not GUARANTEED if the hand size is small, which it often is, if their win condition is in hand. And secondly, even if the target doesnt end up in the discovery options, you can still get away with removing a card from your opponent's hand and giving them something they cant sinergize with, making the failed read/bad roll STILL reward you greatly. The fact the card affects beyond minions like Mutanus also means that you dont  need to bother reading the presence and amount of spells/weapons/heros in the hand that you would otherwise need to do with Mutanus or Dirty Rat.

        If I play Mutanus (which is 7 mana and for most classes its a guaranteed tempo loss if you dont hit your target) and the ENTIRELY RANDOM

        If you end up being "forced" to give them something good for something not great, then I feel like its less that the card is balanced and more that you are severely messing up when playing it. If you play Theo when the opponent's hand is huge and you have important cards then you made a huge mistake.

  • I could not agree more!

    Theotar, the Mad Duke is another excellent example of how overpowered the discover ability truly is. This combined with opponent's hand disruption is just poor card design IMO. Often times it is not even random at all, because the hand size is small or contains duplicate cards.

    I believe Hearthstone would be a much healthier game overall if they changed the discover ability from choosing between 3 options to 2 instead. Heck, even keeping the 3 options but having 1 of them hidden somewhat similar to Vulpera Scoundrel would make it more balanced.

    These nerf suggestions are probably less exciting nor popular, but they do not outright kill the ability and still keep the original idea/spirit alive. 

  • I completely agree with your words.
    Yes, Mutanus can win the game or do a lot of disruption, but he is random and costs as much as 7 mana.
    I didn't liked Theotar right away even before the release. Even with 9 cards in hand, there is a very high chance of losing a valuable card. And this is happens every time. Also in return, something weak or completely useless is given. And it's only for 4 mana.
    For a very long time we had only a Dirty Rat, but now there are even more serious ways to spoil the opponent's game. I hope this card will be nerfed.

  • You can call me mad but ...... why not both? (+Brann and/or Zola)

    • Yes, if you want maximum combo disruption, use both and double them. But this thread is about whether Theotar is a healthy card for the game. I think he is too powerful at stopping big plays, and it feelsSObadman to lose to this.

  • Honestly, this card should simply not exist in it's current unhealthy form in the game. You are obligated to run this card in competitive XL decks and even regular sized decks often also run it because it's simply too good. I think a considerable amount of players (myself included) feel either relieved or bad after playing Theotar, the Mad Duke. There is just no real sense of accomplishment or enjoyment to be gained with this minion.

    Actually, I believe the general trend in Hearthstone is quite similar. In this (recurring) rock-paper-scissors meta, you either high or low roll into a favorable or non favorable deck/archetype. The outcome of the matchup was already pretty much decided in most cases. The skill level usually only matters when encountering a mirror match.

    Sorry, I digressed a bit at the end. 

  • The only good thing I have to say about the guy is that I have a golden copy of him :)

    • Quote From anchorm4n

      The only good thing I have to say about the guy is that I have a golden copy of him :)

      lol, that indeed is the only positive thing about having him in golden ^_^ enjoy the big arcane dust refund!

  • I can't speak for Standard but for Wild he's pretty necessary. Yes it's annoying to have your wincon gobbled up and dismantled like this with such reliability but given Hearthstone's limited level of player interaction combos can just run rampant without stuff like this. Theo and the rest keep combo sufficiently fringe (but still very playable) that the whole game doesn't become two guys playing solitaire against each other. Even with all these combo disruptors present (and quite common) in Wild there's a number OTKs occupying some of the top tier spots in the game mode. Without Theotar it would be Combo Central.

    Honestly the one thing that I wish Hearthstone did more of is redundancy so there's more back and forth between the combo player and the disrupting player. There's a whole bunch of combo decks out there that rely on legendaries, meaning if your wincon gets yanked out of your mitts, you have no fallback. To give an example of how other games handle this, in MtG you have a plethora of ways to deal with the matter. Firstly, opponents never yank your card to their hand, at best they get it on board. If you then kill it, it goes to your grave, since you're the owner. If they just have you discard it, it goes to your grave as well. And there are ways to retreive cards from grave. Plus, legendary or not, you can run 4 copies of any card in your deck, so if you lose one, you can get other copies to do the job. If your opponent plays something persistent that stops your combo (like preventing graveyard interaction if you're a graveyard combo deck), well, you just destroy the thing that does it and combo off. So it's a duel. In Hearthstone it's very one-sided. Either the combo player combos off and you can't do shit about it unless you run disruption (and if you run it, you have to draw it and if you draw it it has to hit the right target) or you get your disruption and the combo player is boned. If stuff like Theotar didn't exist, the combo player comboing off would happen a whole lot more than the combo player being boned. 

    My advice if you're a combo player: consider running disruption of your own to try to yank opposing Theotars, Rats and Mutas out before they become a problem. Recreate that back-and-forth in combo decks and the whole thing become a lot more interesting and satisfying for both sides, it stops being solitaire.

    • Quote From doingtheobvious

      The apparent excuse is Team 5 does not give a single toss about constructed since it doesn't make dosh like Battlegrounds does.

      Congratulations, you just won the award for the wrongest statement I've seen on the internet in Q3. If you're gonna have a bias against something or be angry about something cause it's not what you wanted, that's fine. At least be open and honest about your bias instead of pulling statements out of your ass and passing them off as factual justification of your opinion.

      To elucidate just how stupid what you just said is: the reason the new battlepass for Battlegrounds was introduced is because Battlegrounds has become an immensely popular mode, to the point where allegedly about 50 % of the playerbase is playing it. When they introduced it it was a bit of a fun side project and they expected it to be about as popular as Arena. Because of that, they didn't put much thought to monetisation. When they then realised they're sitting on a gold mine, they were suddenly in a situation where they needed to overhaul the monetisation (i.e. wanted to make players pay more) cause it wasn't bringing Blizz the bucks to match the mode's popularity. Hence they introduced the (highly unpopular) battlepass to monetise the mode. The Battlepass was JUST introduced. The monetisation before that was shit (for Blizz, great for us). So the statement they only care about battlegrounds cause it's bringing in the big bucks is utter bullcrap cause Battlegrounds was essentially free until now (and arguably still is cause the 2 extra hero options aren't that big of a deal, I should know, I've been playing without them since they locked them behind a paywall).

      That's as much as I'm going to say on the matter, cause this is not what the topic is about.

  • There's a lot that can be said for both sides, but I think Theotar, the Mad Duke is simply an unhealthy addition to the game. My points as below;

    - This card is simply a mandatory inclusion regardless of whether you're aiming for disruption. The reasoning is simple; this card is a win con in of itself and ironically, cannot truly be countered by anything but itself. So by default you might argue that its inclusion is simply down to whether you can accept a 4 mana 3/3, hence why most aggro decks dont play it. But go one game where your opponent plays this and you dont - spoiler: its not going to be a fun time.

    - Its disruption effects being so powerful and consistent, it allows team5 to justify OP singular cards and that is more than enough reason this card shouldn't exist in its current state. The design in nathria is already concerning; brann, sire denathrius, sinstrider, draka, mage's infinite freezes, wildseeds, etc. And I personally feel team5 did this deliberately because in their minds the counter in mad duke is just perfect. Unfortunately, it makes for a very unfun experience to win or lose not based on skill or momentum, but whether or not a certain card is played or countered before it can be played.

    - The card is too consistent. More often than not you'll lose because your opponent stole your win con and converted a loss to victory. And what's the tradeoff? Mutanus the Devourer is random and cost 7, Dirty Rat can screw you early in the game, steamcleaner, platebreaker, etc. are very specific counters. Theotar is by far more consistent with very little fail states. Brann+Theotar is a genuine strategy that can win games. Even multiple turns mutanus with shaman can't do that.

    - And lastly, because druid exist. Let's be clear here; 4 mana to steal a win con usually allows the opponent a chance to steal it back. But not so when you're druid. Not to mention that the tradeoff (Poor stats for mana) is completely redundant in a class that ramps to 20 mana and is often 4 mana above the opponent. In a world where this card can decide games, in no way is this compatible with the current playstyle of druids.

     

    All that said, I think a nerf is all it takes to even up the odds. Here's a few options,

    - Mana nerf to 6 would still make it playable but no longer as mandatory an inclusion. Mostly likely what team5 would do.

    - Let your opponent choose your cards, so you choose theirs and they choose yours. Perhaps the most radical change here but it makes theotar 'fairer'.

    - Make all choices random. Basically just kill the card.

    Friendly

  • Having a card stolen from your hand and then used to kill you feels incredibly bad so I would be happy if Theotar was changed to discard the 2 cards instead of swapping them. It would weaken the card significantly and focus it purely on disruption.

    Mutanus was effective disruption when a win condition needed multiple minions, such as Kazakusan or the Captain Galvangar otk. Even if Mutanus didn't eat the critical minion it could still delay them or reduce their maximum potential damage. This would affect deck-building and how people played games. Nobody is scared of Mutanus any more.

    I think we need strong disruption to make games more interactive. Currently the meta is dominated by one-card win conditions, high rolls, and aggro druid. Mutanus does nothing against Balinda Stonehearth or Razorfen Beastmaster into Kryxis the Voracious. It is also useless against Magister Dawngrasp and Defend the Dwarven District.

    Specifically to dapperdog above: The problem of 'OP singular cards' has existed for a while, and before Murder at Castle Nathria games would be won and lost by when certain cards were drawn - eg Wildheart Guff.

     

  • I agree that Theo sucks a lot. Combo counters are very good for the game's health because it not only stops one-sided matchups but it also allows for player interaction w hich is not very present in this game i think.

    However Theo is just a win/win card. Very cheap cost for a very risk-free effect that still lets you get away with stealing a card your opponent could have used. The effect is so ridiculously one sided simply because its up to who plays him. If his effect was just to swap two random cards from both players hands it would have made for a pretty risky, impractical distrupt that could still see play over Mutanus due to costing less, without completely outclassing him and beat everything. 

    Hell, it even fits the theme of the card more. Its supposed to be the Mad Duke, what's "Mad" about robbing your opponent risk free? its mad cheap if anything.

  • I personally do not dislike this type of disruption, but I understand how one can find it infuriating.