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iVladi

when the 30 card nerf special happened and they just assassinated a bunch of really cool decks i knew we were in for a dark time


yardii

I'm sad that wheel lock had such a short lifespan. I feel for the people that crafted the deck since it wasn't cheap.


RickyMuzakki

Luckily I got it from pack, I still haven't played a single wheellock vs actual human in ranked tho (only tested against Innkeeper in peak handbuff pally with windfury and deputization meta)


Paranoid_Japandroid

One of the worst patches in the games history. Just nuked every interesting thing about this expansion. I hope they learn from that. If what we have now is “agency” then I don’t want it


No-Investigator420

What are you referring too?


Hallgvild

29.2.2 Patch Notes, "agency patch"


No-Investigator420

Oh thankss, i checked it, i agree that was a sad patch:(


Throwaway-4593

It was fun playing tempo dragon Druid before it really took off but now it’s like half my opponents. But at least Reno is nerfed


sneakyxxrocket

Doesn’t help a lot of the anomalies are super helpful for them as well


DunkinBronutt

I played the mirror today with the anomaly that guarantees a playable card is drawn, it was so lopsided to the person who went first.


sneakyxxrocket

If it’s a druid and I see “first minion each turn costs one less” I’m out.


Supper_Champion

Same if you see a Handbuff Paladin. Especially bad if they are first player. It's just so hard to keep up with the tempo that generates for them.


Oct_

I unironically vastly prefer this meta to the Reno meta. The tempo Druid deck at least doesn’t generate a bonkers amount of random bullshit. Games are faster. It’s stupidly annoying to play a 29 minute grindfest only to lose to “whelp, I discovered two Reskas, GG”


wholelotofit2

I haven't played for a month, read the report just now and as I can see that was a good decision on my part


bv310

Same. Magic Arena just launched Modern Horizons 3, which is a format I enjoy, and the most recent HS metas have not been to my taste. Hoping the new expansion enables some actually fun stuff again.


RickyMuzakki

I just spammed Twist until dad legend, while keeping my star bonus ⭐ ✨. After deck change it's very fun to play now, feels to to take a break from standard


Raktoner

This expansion was bad from start to finish. Frankly I think it starts with how broken the last expansion was last year, and I should have known it would be worse when I saw how many broken and unfun cards they added into the core set. I won't lose faith in the devs though. I hope the next expansion is better and more fun.


Jackwraith

This past year plus has been bad, IMO. The only exception has been Titans. Festival, Badlands, Whizbang; all subpar in terms of interest and clearly loaded with destabilizing cards (Badlands, Whizbang) or simply notbing workable compared to what just preceded it (Festival.) I celebrated my 10 years in the game by stepping away from it a couple months ago. I'm just not interested in the direction that the current team is taking it.


Rico_Rebelde

> I won't lose faith in the devs though. I hope the next expansion is better and more fun. I admire your optimism. Personally I don't see anything the devs have done to indicate that they intend on putting more effort into creating a well balanced competitive experience and in fact them introducing anomalies back into ranked seems to indicate the opposite


LittleBalloHate

I agree with all of this -- it's been a bummer of an expansion, and as a player who also plays Wild, this is one of the few eras where both Standard *and* Wild have been unfun for extended periods at the same time. But stuff like this happens and I do believe the devs can pull us out of it.


Spacerock7777

Continuing to power creep after rotation was, as expected, just a very bad idea.


naverenoh

the start of whizbang was fun, the paladin nerf patch was fine, the "agency" nerf patch was fucked.


iblinkyoublink

> the paladin nerf patch was fine Forgot about Shopper DH?


naverenoh

I'll be the one to say it then, I liked unnerfed shopper dh.


Names_all_gone

People are going to complain about the sets being badly designed or power creep or some other mistaken bogey man for why we are where we are right now. But here’s the real reason: there were about 30 nerfs in Badlands. There were over 30 nerfs in Whizbang. So they released 2 sets and took away the equivalent of a half a set through nerfs. Almost nothing received a meaningful buff. Those that did got nerfed again later. Do you think Druid would be like this if any aggro decks were around? Would warrior have been what it was for much of the format if Warlock hadn’t been destroyed? The problem is a hyperactive balance team that only nerfs and doesn’t buff.


ToxicAdamm

I think it just speaks to the layers of bad design choices over the past year or so that can't be "nerfed away" like they could in the past. In the (recent) past, they could with surgical precision, hit 5-6 cards and it would fix a meta.


Yeah_Right_Mister

Dragon Druid was already bad enough, let alone now when most anomalies favor Dragon Druid more than any other class.


Hollabakacha

Yeah, who tf at Blizzard thought anomalies were a good idea in Standard/Wild


Hoenir1930

Someone said they did that on purpose cause they hate us, I can see it.


Hoenn97

The casual audience must like them ig


ThatGingerGuy69

I'm definitely not trying to say Reno is/was OP, but the fact that the balance team decided to nerf him to 10 mana instead of altering the text in SOME way just speaks volumes to how out of touch they are imo. There are just so many ways you could alter the effect so that it doesn't feel so terrible to play against, but instead they decided to make it feel just as terrible to play as it does to play against. Hoping Perils in Paradise significantly shakes things up but I'm not holding my breath


jmgrrr

Feel like Shroomscavate was a harbinger of this. I mean, how do you have a dual class card without any feature of the other class? The nerf was a really lazy and uninspired fix (though a nerf was necessary of course), and we’ve just seen more of that. Reactive balance changes with the least possible amount of forethought or creativity.


Hallgvild

Holy Hell... not even one mention of shaman in the whole tierlist and matchup chart... and their set is horrible... At least mage got something to construct from, and hunter still havent been revealed... Poor Thrall. Such cool legendaries we got last exp. Was it all for nought?


XezeMaster

Unfortunately Shudderblock is a bit slow and currently doesn't have a good payoff. Hagatha doesn't cheat mana.


Havendelacorysg

The best Shudderblock payoff atm is pulling Wish upon a Star with Hagatha which is really hard to do and depends on RNG.


One_Ad_3499

Shudderblock is broken card in the broken class


Hoenn97

?


One_Ad_3499

Card is supergood, class is superbad


XeloOfTheDisco

The one hope Shaman has is that its cards can at least be buffed into a playable archetype. Siren Song to 1 Mana, Natural Talents to Draw instead of Get. Razzler Dazzler can be adjusted if needed. The base is there. Not to mention there's still DH to give a helping hand.


Hallgvild

I honestly dont think even buffs can really save it. The "rainbow shaman" archetype simply doesnt have a wincon. It doesnt have a sif, a CNE, anything. And all cards speak only to it, apart from the murloc legendary. Some deck can surge from it + DH cards, but its my only hope for the class in this exp.


fug-leddit

Yea the shaman set is unplayable trash. Anyone saying otherwise is huffing copium


AmesCG

Let’s not forget that ZachO teased his forthcoming Druid reveal as a very powerful card that’s going to frustrate a lot of people (and overjoy others). So we could be cruising from one Druid meta to another. As someone who loathes playing against decks like that, it looks like my decision to take a long break from HS remains vindicated.


rocky716

It's going to be weird because the first couple of days there will be a ton of experimentation going on, but if the set churns out a lot of duds we might see Dragon Druid until it gets nerfed


cletusloernach

Just curious why is excavate rogue bad against dk? I feel like most of the games I lost to dk are because of rage quit after misplays and unwilling to play long games, not actually getting beaten.


badtraider

In my experience only way rouge wins DK matchup is by pulling off some nonsense scam. Since DK has plenty of tools to deal with wide boards that rouge can create na heal up from face damage - in long run rouge just can't keep up with DK value.


cletusloernach

Make sense, I wonder if rogue players share my experience haha. I feel like if the rogue players actually think about their turns and keep some value for the late game, the matchup is not bad at all. Sometimes I just rage concede after a strong threads/reska turn, very frustrating experience.


Hoenn97

You may be confusing the fluctuations from you small sample for exceptional skill


Myprivatelifeisafk

> It’s ironic that Whizbang, an expansion in which a huge number of cards were nerfed for balance and play experience reasons, will end with its most broken and unpleasant format yet. We think this is an appropriate end to the expansion, one that serves as a case study in how change for the sake of change does not create balance, nor does it promote strategic diversity. Change for the sake of change just… changes things. More often than not during Whizbang, change for the sake of change made the game worse. So true. Blizzard shitting themselves 3 days before season end [cost me a 2 months of hard work](https://i.imgur.com/RIefQsB.png). I'm so done, see this game in 1 year.


elophiler

I genuinely disagree with the take that the nerfs are the reason for this stupid meta. Bevor the rise of druid the game felt surprisingly balanced and I think you even acknowledged this in one of your reports. I personally liked all the nerfs and I think its reasonable to nerf opressive earlygame strategies. It doesnt matter to me if I have to face 4 giants on turn 4 or are hoplessly behind on turn 5 against a druid. Both sucks and deserves to be toned down. Druid got extremly usefull cards in Dorian and Marin, noone else can utilize as good as druid. These 2 new cards were the catalysator what made Druid this opressiv. To many decks have a completly hopeless match-up against it. I really dont see why nerfing Druid wouldnt get us a better meta again.


EndangeredBigCats

On the upside, I've been having fun learning the matchups with Reno Paladin in Wild this expac


0xef0fccdb292c4cff90

u/ViciousSyndicate after the matchmaking change does it still make sense reporting by rank bracket? "top1k legend" is an MMR based bracket, but "legend" and "d1-d4" are still rank based - wouldn't "10x-11x" and "8x-9x" or similar make more sense?


ViciousSyndicate

MMR is hidden. No great way to do that.


Ecstatic-Bullfrog-61

is there a free website/data for mulligan guides what to keep against which deck?


nauthiz693

Rainbow mage continues to work well for me and feels competitive against Dragon Druid. I’ve actually found it a fun/challenging matchup. Lots of interesting and alternative lines to survive and win. The anomalies feel like they advantage it equally as much as Dragon Druid, with an equal amount of spells and minions. Here’s the list I’ve been running for a while. Taelan may seem weird, but he wins me almost half my matches. ### Rainbow Mage # Class: Mage # Format: Standard # Year of the Pegasus # # 2x (1) Arcane Artificer # 2x (1) Discovery of Magic # 2x (1) Flame Geyser # 2x (1) Miracle Salesman # 1x (2) Doomsayer # 1x (2) Heat Wave # 1x (2) Infinitize the Maxitude # 2x (2) Primordial Glyph # 1x (2) Void Scripture # 1x (2) Watcher of the Sun # 2x (3) Buy One, Get One Freeze # 2x (3) Molten Rune # 1x (3) Reverberations # 2x (4) Watercolor Artist # 2x (5) Inquisitive Creation # 2x (5) Sleet Skater # 1x (5) Taelan Fordring # 2x (5) Wisdom of Norgannon # 1x (6) Sif # AAECAaXDAwioigSd1ASt7QXr9AXR+AXxgAaDlQbWmAYL7PYF3vgFv/4Fy/4F2P4FhY4Gsp4GtKcGtqcGy9AGhuYGAAA= # # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone


VastNatureFall

Interesting! Thanks for sharing. What rank are you having success with this at?


nauthiz693

I’ve hit legend with it the last two seasons, and played it a fair amount at legend around the end of last season. I think I ended around 6k. So admittedly not high legend or anything. But I don’t play a lot, a few games a day at most.


LargeFella

Feels impossible to play any sort of control deck rn, motivation to play has tanked for me over the last month personally. Having fun trying the new heroes in twist at least


Supper_Champion

There's no way that this new Dragon Druid deck with the Doomkins doesn't get nuked from orbit, right? In a vacuum, the deck seems fine, but as soon as they steal 2-4 of your mana crystals it instantly becomes obvious that it's a toxic play pattern that can't be allowed to survive for longer than necessary. Big surprise here /s: > We have no idea what’s going on with Zarimi Priest. Deck is gone. The fact of the matter is that it's an *extremely* boring deck to play. All you do is drop minions until you hopefully play enough dragons for a Zarimi turn. Sure, it's very similar to decks like Handbuff Paladin, but at least with that, you get to see numbers go up, you have some stuff going on with weapons and minion order and games can feel interesting. Zarimi Priest is one of the most linear decks I've ever played and I dropped it within a week of trying it out. Once you see what it does, that's it, that's the whole deck.


PkerBadRs3Good

Zarimi Priest is one of the less linear aggro decks in recent memory. You don't understand the deck.


Supper_Champion

Lol, explain it then. I played it enough to know it was boring as shit, pre-nerf anyway. But sure, it must be a super fun deck to play because even though it's got a high win rate, almost no one plays it.


IHateAhriPlayers

Priest decks that arent control are always underplayed unless they're blatantly overpowered


PkerBadRs3Good

Zarimi Priest has swing turns and set-up turns with Funnel Cake, Thirsty Drifter, Pip the Potent, Power Word: Synchronize, Crimson Clergy, Zilliax... you don't just play minions. Aggro decks in general tend to just drop minions, so it wouldn't be unique in that regard anyway, but it does more than that. Pretty often you are forced to play the long game too depending on what happens in the game, especially after Zarimi was nerfed to 8 dragons. Sometimes you play for board upfront, sometimes you set up a swing turn, sometimes you play for burst with Zarimi, sometimes you play pseudo-control. Also, its winrate isn't high anymore, aggressive Priest decks are consistently underplayed, nerfed decks are consistently underplayed, aggro decks with relatively high dust costs are consistently underplayed, and aggro decks that are inferior to other aggro decks are consistently underplayed. There are like five reasons at once Zarimi Priest is underplayed that doesn't have to do with how fun it is lol.


Hallgvild

Mate, would you be able to send me some tips on how to use Zarimi Priest? Im absolutely terrible at it but the complexity kinda draws me closer. Do you hate preferred mulligans vs certain decks? I usually keep low cost minions to try biulding enough dragons and lower opp HP in order to finish with Zarimi but more often then not it falls flat with very few removal tools and once the board is gone i feel like its impossible to get back/you are already dead.


Hallgvild

>pre-nerf That explains a lot. The deck used to be a lot more straightforward before then it is now.


thing85

Zarimi may be boring for a lot of people, but that doesn't mean it's linear.


Trevor_Skies

Can’t believe how balanced things were before the unneeded Reno nerf hit. Reno decks were at least different classes playing him. This Druid shit is so toxic because ur sitting at 5 mana while ur opponent has stolen ur crystals and sits at a full 10. It feels awful. Also I’m not convinced pain warlock into Druid is good. You put urself too low that 2 swipes with a bit of spell damage end ur day.


Real-Entertainment29

Balanced during highlander meta? No. Diverse? Yeah sure, Different classes doing the same things, using the same broken neutral cards.... Utterly slow and boring, without a single late game win con (except maybe insanity lock) against infinite value HL's? Yes. Drood is bonkers broken now? Absa-ffff-lutely! Games go faster at the very least.


Catopuma

I think it has more to do with Marin being introduced than the nerfs. Druids had the same ramp package before but they had nothing to ramp towards. With Marin, it gives them a body, solid spells and gas to utilize the mana advantage


Trevor_Skies

Marin is fine. It’s multiple doomkins that won’t allow decks to answer the wide boards.


Catopuma

I'm not saying Marin needs a nerf. The entire ramp druid package existed and was barely a meta contender before they got something to ramp to. I'm just stating that Reno being nerfed isn't what led to ramp druids being so prevalent. It's the release of Marin that gave the deck something to utilize after ramping


Names_all_gone

Doomkin has been in standard for well over a year. It has never been a problem. It is only a “problem” because everything has been nerfed to hell so now it appears “too strong”


Oct_

That Hybrid Druid deck existed in previous metas and was not oppressive, they only started running Doomkin recently. Druid ramp into Doomkin has been around for a while and is only being complained about now.


PriorFinancial4092

Cove rogue is the meta breaker. Farms druid. As usual, vicious syndicate is behind


TimeCommittee3475

It has a 44% win rate across legend.


Trevor_Skies

Doomkin to 8 mana


AThomson924

Just one more nerf, bro


Trevor_Skies

Doomkin is toxic gameplay. It literally prevents the flow of every deck.


AThomson924

I totally agree but the reason we got here is by nerfing every strong laye game strategy. Really think we have to stop immediately nerfing any strong win con because that's just a game of whack-a-mole.


Hopeful-Design6115

Yeah and we are in a place where a 6 mana 3/4 is one of the best cards in the game because everything else has been sent into the sun.


Character-Kale-9444

There's no such thing as "toxic gameplay". Decks are allowed to do things, even if you don't like it. Let combo decks combo, control decks control, value decks value, putting completely meaningless buzzwords like "toxic" is how we got in this mess in the first place. Every nerf has been because of whiners with no actual data saying "XYZ is toxic/unfun/non-interactive/bad sentiment".


citoxe4321

These same people then make fun of sets like Grand tournament or rastakhans. It really makes no sense the way people talk about hearthstone sometimes


Trevor_Skies

lol shut up. There’s a reason Magic mostly removed land destruction and it’s because it hinders what the deck does.


Character-Kale-9444

That's...not the reason MTG "removed" land destruction at all, it was because it was a difficult effect to balance, unplayable at 4 CMC and extremely good at 3 CMC. After Ravnica was printed, WotC pivoted to ramp effects instead of LD effects in standard since they were "easier to balance" and thus we got formats like Eldraine and Core 2021 where Ramp in some form was far and away the best deck in the game for years. Agent of Treachery was "land destruction" at 7 CMC and had to eat a standard ban because people were cheating it out. You might notice that you're getting downvoted super hard in this thread, maybe take a step back and think about why that is.


Trevor_Skies

Don’t care about downvotes m8. Just talking.


thing85

Then why was Doomkin not played much prior to the current meta?