Why nerfs in Hearthstone aren’t working anymore…
Вставка
- Опубліковано 5 лип 2024
- Today we take a look at a recent trend in Hearthstone where nerfs have increased yet player sentiment remains as frustrated as ever. Is it time for Hearthstone to change their balance patch philosophy?
Twitter giveaway: x.com/ZeddyHS/status/18094516...
Giveaway video: • PERILS IN PARADISE EXP...
Follow me at:
Twitter: / zeddyhs
Twitch: / zeddy
Discord: / discord
#Hearthstone #HS #Zeddy - Ігри
Most of their nerfs are just a lazy +1 Mana cost. Their balance team is basically a Far Watch Post.
Good one 😂
Had a good laugh, thank you
And what would you advise to do/how make nerf? Make Reno a 1 mana hero card that remove 1 random minoin and1 board space?
@@impkiller5932 Make it remove all but one minion on BOTH sides. Could be random, could be the middle-most one, could the the one with the higher attack (like "Enter the Colosseum" - remember that card?)
@@impkiller5932 Making Reno just destroy enemy minions would probably work. No poof, no board limitation. Just blow up minions. So DR's still trigger and the opponent can rebuild the board after.
That would make it feel less awful to play against.
If you really wanted to gut the card and make it more accurate to Reno's voice line, destroy all minions. Wipe both sides of the board. So it's a 1v1 duel, the enemy hero vs Reno. This way Reno isn't a "Win more" type of card but a hard reset where it's better when you're behind and don't lose as much.
Damage is too cheap and healing and taunts are to expensive. Game is in the worst state it has ever been in. This time im not sure they can save it
Storm wind expansion was still worse.
@@remyllebeau77Mh. I think Stormwind was worse to play, but the difference is, I had some hope for the game still. There was so much push back, so many content creators leaving, that I knew that Blizzard had to change it. And I played a lot during Stormwind because I knew it’d get better. And it did! Sunkencity, Murder at Castle Nathria, Titans amazing sets.
I’m not playing at all right now. Not even daily quests. I don’t see the meta getting better next expansion. How am I supposed to be excited when the decks and classes that suck right now got the worst cards and Pain Warlock and Handbuff Pally (two of the best decks in the game) are getting some of the most busted support tools ever. That Sandcastle Legendary in Pally, the location’s attack increases based off the minion’s attack. And Pally has multiple instants of Charge. And we can’t interact with locations. And they gave Pally access to Windfury on Charge minions. Yup. So fun. Don’t even have to play the game next expansion to know that that deck will be good.
Okay, well. Maybe it gets nerfed, there is some hope there…. And nope. The next balance patch is apparently delayed, so anything busted in the first like two or so weeks of the expansion is there to stay. Not that nerfs will help - see video this comment is attached to.
And I can’t even be hopeful that some new deck emerges that overtakes Pally and Warlock, because the designs this set are just as unfun as last.
Titans, SunkenCity, Murder at Castle Nathria - Best expansions ever and I’ve been playing since TGT. They had their issues, but it was always “they nerf this deck, the metas going to be awesome” and then it happened and it was awesome.
Ever since Badlands it’s been like “they nerf this horrid deck, this even more horrid deck will take its place, they nerf that even more horrid deck, this even worse deck will that its place. Once all three decks are nerfed, the first horrid deck will come back, nerf that one again, and the second even more horrid deck will be back. Nerf those two? Guess who is back? That’s right- the worse deck again!” And none of those three decks ever left Tier 2 even with nerfs.
That never felt like a problem in other sets outside of Badlands onwards and an honorable mention to Stormwind. And it makes for a bad experience, because it feels hopeless, like nothing can ever get better.
@@Alloran9466 Yeah, I can see that it is frustrating.
I remember how it was in the good old days. you had to play around Sylvanas or Mindcontrol or Brawl before you could get out your big stuff. At one point in a match the opponent played everything and you felt a little more secure in rolling out your own win conditions. but today? there is always more...more crowd control, more board wipes, more stealing. endless "discover a card" or "copy a card" or "get everything back youve played the last 30 minutes". its annoying with no end in sight.
As Control player it is the other way around for me. If i dont have Board wipe or massive control advantage every turn i just lost the game. too much damage and too big stats to do anything else.
I feel that. As someone who (desperately) plays for tempo, it's no longer a matter of waiting to bait out their answer. You just play the card ASAP and straight-up hope they don't have it no matter what the odds. Probably one of the reasons tempo playstyles are dead, it's a lot more tempting to go hyper aggro so you get more of that ASAP factor.
@@MikkoLehtovirta Exactly, I don't understand why everyone just plays aggro and don't like to play fun decks anymore, which is the point of a game, to have fun.
@@Amghannam To answer that, is harder than it seems...but I believe it has something to do with dopamine...in that the majority of players who play hearthstone these days, are addicts, specifically dopamine addicts...and when you play more cards, and repeat, over and over again, you get more of a high over time, then when you have to sit and think....it's the iphone generation...the puppet generation...if you try to speak to people about this issue, they'll give a thoughtless lazy answer, a meme, etc...this is the state of the world right now....people do not understand their own actions, and because of this, much of the gaming industry has become netdecking braindead min-maxers...and it's kind of sad honestly
My biggest problem, and it has been for some time now, is the gigantic lack of diversity. We play one deck per class until the next expansion gives us even better cards, and then we play one deck again. This is especially true for Mage, which had nothing but Sif for about three expansions and before that it was spooky mage for what felt like 2 years. Then, for some reason, they bring out an expansion where 80% of the cards are dead on arrival and refuse to buff them at all. I have yet to see a Pirate Rogue, Mech Warrior, or Spell Damage Druid (that isn't wrapped around some giant scam package). It's either broken or bad at this point. Warlock got that big demon deathrattle package-why aren't we buffing that or giving it more support? Instead, we get more Painlock stuff forced down our throats. So what ends up happening? The rest got nerfed to the ground or is just bad, and voila, we're stuck with Painlock for the next four months. I miss the Rise of Shadows - Descent of Dragons era so much. Even if we had some disgustingly broken decks like Galakrond Shaman, there were so many options per class and most of them had a shot of competing with the meta tyrants of the time, i just miss old hearthstone man those were the golden days imo. And if they decide they wanna follow this design route, the least thing they can do is making sure what we have is playable, and that the game is not dominated by 3 Decks for months on end, the unwillingness to change obviously flawed things is giving me Ben Brode era vibes.
Nerfs will never kill certain card because they are worth it no matter the cost. Still see Reno around and zilliax. They are too good because they are useful.
That isn't true. If you nerf Reno to only removing half or 1/3 of their creatures, his use would radically drop. I could think of 10+ nerf that would annihilate its play %
@@jasonjanisewski78I guess what he meant is, nerfing the cost will never work because the card is playable at any cost.
If they removed the "lock the board for a turn" and made Reno 9 mana it would be totally balanced out.
But Blizzard is against text changes for some reason
@@jasonjanisewski78yeah and while you’re at it with those genius changes let’s just remove effects of minions. All vanilla minions now. No mana cheat. No titans or hero cards. Let’s play classic hearthstone all day. Idiot.
@@TalkingWithBob guess 48% winrate is still too high for some of yall.
And the reason we play it is because it is fun for us control players. Not because it wins us games. If we wanted to win at all cost we would just hop on on the paladin and druid train.
Reno board wipe is fine what makes the card unbalanced is giving you one minion slot for next turn at turn 10 that is game winning effect. Imo 2 slots would be really strong and 3 slots would make it balanced
Would also be nice if there were any playtesting for balance before release.
Blizzard hasn't been doing very well in recent years, it's quite possible that they are saving money and don't have a testing team at all.
I have given up on this game because of the dev team's decisionmaking and card philosophy. When a card needs to be nerfed three times and is still in 80% of decks there is a fundamental issue with the design. Something I'll never understand or forgive is their neglect of Hearthstone's other gamemodes. Duels getting Thanos snapped, Wild essentially being a flaming card dump now and not a place you can "play your favorite decks of the past." Unless they decide to change their philosphy regarding their other gamemodes and card design, I will not give this mess another go.
To be fair, Zilliax is not one card, there are maybe 4-5 popular build. I'd be curious to see the popularity of each particular build
This meta is all Druid mirror matches for me, and it’s so boring. It all depends on the opening hand. Whoever ramps to doomkin first wins.
You could guarantee never having a Druid Mirror match by playing a different class lol
@@jasonjanisewski78
😐
🙄
😐 Listen here you little sh-
@@jasonjanisewski78 then I will be stomped by Druids which is even less fun. Now at least I can play dice rolling and have 50% win rate. 😂
I had a lot of fun with triple win condition Druid with Denathrius years ago. But I'd have to craft 2 or 3 legendary cards to make the current druid, and I just can't be bothered.
I mean your also picking druid every single time lol
I'm sorry, but I don't see any problem with zilliax. It's literally designed to be playable in almost any deck, and the fact that it finds a home in many decks is I'd say a good thing. Of course some combos are better than others, but I wouldn't say it's somehow op or problematic. I just don't want it to be nerfed to the ground like some other cards.
There is a big difference between "playable in almost any deck" and "every deck is worse if they don't run this."
@@franklinnartz1381just craft the card 😂
The issue with Zilliax is that we aren't seeing lots of different combinations in lots of different decks.
We're seeing 2 combinations. Pylon Module + Ticking Module in aggro decks. Virus Module + Perfect Module in control decks.
It's not popular because of its versatility. It's popular because these 2 combinations are so powerful. Like, if these 2 combinations were nerfed to the ground the card would be nearly unplayed (Besides maybe Perfect Module + Twin Module in control decks again)
Why are you sorry lol
@@angelozheng7112 Why though? If every deck is objectively better off running Zilliax, you might as well just give it to everyone for free and limit decks to 29 cards after auto including it. It wouldn't change a thing.
It feels like all minions need to lose like 2 stats, most spells should cost 1-2 more mana and good god, permanent uninteractable effects just need to GO.
What? The whole point of the video was that stats and mana nerfs mean nothing to most cards...
@@BamaLam4 That was just for specific cards that are powerful because of what they do, he was talking about making changes for the whole game.
This is the worst idea I've ever read in the comments.
@@BamaLam4 It is, but a large amount of minions these days have premium stats, and effects come out incredibly quickly. Even if you change card texts, you still have 30 health in the end. I am not disputing that the card text changes are important, but the problems they cause might be less exacerbated if the cards they cheat out/enable are less powerful overall. And aggro needs to chill in general.
So basically return hs into prehistoric unfun mess, thank god you are not really influence decision making😂
We're in the time where we need a ban list, yeah Jus't like YGO. Look at Doomkin, there's nothing we can do to stop this and our 6 mana card becomes a dead card and we have to concede. Ban the card or limit it to 1 copy. I'm not saying this card is too OP, but the power creep is so high that nerf wouldn't make so much difference anymore.
I've been saying that for a long time. We need to be able to ban fighting certain classes. So whatever is worst to play against, you don't have to face it anymore. If that means everybody bans druids, then druids won't get any games anymore unless it's a mirror match, unless they also ban druid and they get no games. :D
A weekly ban list would be a great idea. This would allow for more variety in the meta.
Also Zilliax is 30 cards in one
Yea, I feel like Zilliax is a bad example for this. That card was created to be able to be in as many decks as possible.
Yeah, it's a braindead take to say zilliax is in too many decks.. that's his purpose..
Yes, except the issue is the modules that are played the most by far got nerfed and yet are still played a lot
It's not 30 cards in one with regards to anything that is talked about in the video though. 30 cards in one is a nice little factoid meme that has nothing to do with balance complaints, inclusion complaints, power level complaints, etc.
With regards to those things, zilliaxs is absolutely a problem and it could be two cards in one or 100,000 cards in one and that wouldn't change the issue. You are technically correct while actually saying nothing about the discussion in the video....
As toxic as reno or zilliax or even schroomscavate were, they have absolutely nothing on the current druid. the only recent thing I can compare it to is return of yogg pre nerfs. Even that was better though because it didn't directly prevent you from playing the game until the infinite loop. I'm not playing anymore until doomkin is taken out of the game, I just faced the broken preview legendary into dorian into wand into doomkin clones. That isn't even an uncommon sequence to get some approximation of this with their high mana tutor draw. I had no mana left. I haven't even reached legend yet; this wasn't a high complexity miracle rogue sort of thing. In order to beat something this toxic, you need to play something at least on the fringe of being toxic to compete. Flooding stealing mana is where I draw the line though. They don't seem to understand that certain types of card designs are out of bounds since you can't play on your opponents turns. Yeah this was a rant, but I had some hope when they did a massive nerf patch but they undid any good will in spectacular fashion.
This game is a trigger to smoke more weed while playing in order to cut down I can't play hearstone much
I feel that. Basically a 'start of opponent's turn' effect for me.
I definitely agree here. Powerlevel, especially on text, is problematic to the game. There are cards in the game that cost less than 10 and would've been OP as 10 drops in the past. I do think small nerfs are better than large nerfs, but they need to be done often and incrementally on card text and the patch cycle restrictions make it hard for the devs to increment small nerfs on the pace that would be ideal unfortunately. So overall I'm kind of torn on how hard individual nerfs should be, but they should nerf way more things every patch and not be afraid of changing card texts too.
its has to be hard, because theres counter play you can do for a lot of them, brann could be 10 mana and it would still see play, because it still wins the control matchup, especially with fizzle to copy gas
they would have to hit a bunch of druid cards like:
change the druid nest to no reduction
make titans unable to be copied randomly from hand or deck (so priest cant just get a bunch of copies of them)
boomkin to gain instead of steal, or deathrattle give your opponent 2 of your mana crystals
slip splash make it a 3 mana 1/3 deathrattle get an empty mana crystal
nestmatron refreshes 2 mana crystals
fye loses lifesteal
spinetail goes to 4 damage
thirsty drifter goes to a 6 mana 2/6
boomboss tnt destroy a random card from either hand, deck, or field
barrels of sludge go back to 2 mana deal 3
sparkling phial damages a minion only
painter's virture loses lifesteal
zarimi goes to 9 and cannot be generated randomly
reno hero power is now 3 mana
everyone hates brann boomboss, warps the meta
I just also want to point out that a lot of these powerful effects are nowadays on cheap as hell cards. Who has ever heard of a rest of the game card that didnt have deck restrictions or at least cost 6 mana. 4 mana your opponent draws plagues for the rest of the game or getting +1 to attack is beyond stupid.
I also remember the time when spell damage cards cost a lot and were always on a body that the opponent could kill. Now these cards are on very hard to interact with locations or are cheap with bonus effects.....crazy
Helya really isn’t that bad tbh. The other “rest of game cards” can be tough, especially Brann.
@@duke45fan that effect was on a 10 drop before. Granted, mill strats were easier then with druid having togwaggle to swap the deck and cheap cards to make you draw your deck. And the fact that board dump is out of control doesnt do heliya any favours. But it is definatly power creep beyond belief.
For me it's wild that we got to a place where a 2 combo card can destroy *18* cards from your opponent...
Zilliax was DESIGNED to be flexible and slotted into multiple decks. And the sub 50% WR just shows how well designed of a card it is. Alastor. Now that was a problem card
Zil being in 80+% of decks is due to everyone leaving. He was in less than 50% about 2 weeks ago. People just stopped playing because of the anomalies. The game has become so ridiculous that even me, a beta player has started to step back a bit and play other games. When there are win conditions you can't counter, stats on minions don't matter anymore, and you have everyone running the same deck they got online because of the high win rate. The games feel dull right now, not rewarding, and you face the same decks in a rock paper scissors type game
Thing is they used to tone down power level at the begining of every standard rotation. But this year they just said fk it. Like bran. How can you think for the rest of the game your battlecries trigger twice for the rest of the game. How can you ever balance a class for 1 year+ with such an effect.( and tbh it's not even the worst thing to play against). I fully believe the entire year will feel bad but maybe next standard rotation, meta might tone down a tiny bit
Trust me, if you liked playing slow value decks like me, reno warrior was the worst to play against, with priest coming in as a close second. Zero tools to counter reno and brann effects unless you played DK and then that was nerfed.
@@remyllebeau77 I fully believe you since im struggling with control dk in 2024. But i got used to have 10 cards in hand and burn bombs. Dont kill ziliax til i get ro yog it. All that
@@Igbyb That is too hard to answer a board full of warrior minions, and still fill your own hand every turn. That type of playstyle that makes you not play what you want to play because you have to keep your hand full AND risk burning your own cards should never have happened.
there used to be tradeoff in hearthstone, and a bit of thought...sadly, that is gone, and now it's just sit there, put cards on the board, and wait for random shit to happen
if you ask how devs could do this, i think there's really only one logical answer...
they
don't
give
a
sh i t
I think they should start buffing the weaker archetypes more so they could get a chance to shine in the meta.
The design has gone in wrong direction badly.
1. Limit the constant mana cheating on cards (not fun to see 2 8/8 or bigger mobs at turn 3-4)
2. Currently game feels like if you dont have board clear every turn you just lost (control player perspective)
3. All these cards that allow you to fill board with 3/6+ monsters turn after turn. (looking at druid example)
4. Dealing over 30 damage from hand is not fun (Sif, nature shaman, hand buff paladin etc...)
5. Testing needs to be increased also FORCE the designers to face these degenerate decks and combos while trying to climb ladder see how much "fun" they have (i wanted to play the whizbang random decks but ladder grinding kills my joy i just want to get legendary and fall far enough on ladder ranking that i start seeing other whizbang players)
6. Go back to original design of cards and look for inspiration there what made the first 3 expansions in heartstone good people seemed to like those.
7. Locations are way too strong and should have higher mana cost. Not just 1 or 2 mana but between 4-6 (unless the location allready costs 9)
8. There is currently too much cards that gain too much value by just playing them. (excavate, discovery, summon board full of xxxx)
9. Mana nerfs are not enough at this moment to deal with changes there needs to be actual rewrites of cards (ziliax, Reno, Sif, every single mana cheat, excavate "super minions", summon board full of xxxx and so on...)
There those are my biggest problems of the cards in HS
Thank you Zeddy for all the video's you make. do you think Zilliax can be changed to being able to only pick 1 form the top and 1 from the bottom and if so do you think it will bring the balance your looking for?
The reason that nerfs aren't working is because:
1) They're nerfing the wrong things. They keep nerfing Reno and Unkilliax while 90% of the meta is stupid aggro using mana cheatiax...
2) The nerfs they're doing are not impactful. 1 extra mana cost on slow, late game cards is not particularly noteworthy. If a slow deck is playing 8 mana Unkilliax, they can play a 9 mana Unkilliax. If a slow deck can play a 9 mana Reno, they can play a 10 mana Reno. Simple mana changes don't work for slow cards that are played in the late game.
Plus it seems they don't look at the ripple effect that happens from the first nerfs and nerf the next oppressive thing that was being held down by the first thing.
I think Zeddy said it well: THe problem is the card text.
A card like Brann or Reno is still just as broken on a higher manacost. Sure, they will lose win/playrate due to the nerfs(which is a good thing), but they would need to nerf effects.. and well, nerfing effects oftentimes means reworking a card - and they seem VERY hesitant to do that.
Zilliax, for example, should get a rework on his cost structure and current unkilliax is just such a perfect keyword combination that it shouldn't be allowed to happen. Take this as a learning for cards like this, rework the most problematic modules(Like Ticking and Toxic) and we are good. But instead, they go for what I would call the "winrate nerf".
Yeah, winrate will now go down, possibly playrate, too. Doesnt fix any problems, though.
Reno (and highlander warrior in particular) did hurt the meta by being so efficient against other late game strategies though
@@PenguinWithInternetAccess Though that's because of Brann and Boomboss. ALL late game strategies had access to Unkilliax, Yogg and Reno.
It's just that Brann enabled Warrior to have more ways to flood the board with threats than a single Reno could address. While Boomboss simply deleted so many cards that nothing could compete in the late game because they lose so many answers AND start fatiguing so much earlier.
@@tarille1043
Reno does limit you to highlander so he's not available to all late game strategies, but yeah brann and boomboss are the biggest offenders
The problem is cyclical blizzard use to print tech cards that like gluttonous ooze and spellbreaker that could help combat potential problem cards of the time, but then people complained got those cards, NERFED, and then removed and then blizzard as a whole stepped away from making cards that would stop someone’s fun because the community felt it would be better to just have more fun and have the fun compete against each other, which let us here to this overpowered and bombastic play style that Hearthstone has now blizzard needs to look at healthy fun ways to be unfun, add in neutral hand disruption and meaningful tech cards that can help keep the ecosystem friendly towards all decks
those card werent nerfed, most tech cards never got nerfed, they just rotated is all, but the other problem is that you generally have enough room to run tech cards and you dont really want to run them either because a lot of them dont do enough to be meaningful in situations they are not counter to be worth running
@@nuhrii3449 Yes, Yogg is a rare exception where you were seeing the BS often enough to warrant a tech card.
@@synchronium24 its not really much a tech card as it is neutral aoe and removal, tech cards are like hungry crab, bad luck albatross and snakeoil salesman
@@nuhrii3449 It's true Yogg doesn't fit the normal definition of a tech card, but it's playrate skyrocketed when Unkilliax was terrorizing the meta. It's general use case didn't matter that much until the need arose to counter a single meta-warping card.
@@synchronium24 well its not a tech card, its just not good at one thing and that thing alone, its just good in general, also everyone got it the miniset so its easily accessible in a pretty good set, the currently the main abusers of ziliax are warrior and druid for situations where that yog matters, rogue can do it too but theyd rather spend the stuff on drilly and paladin has too many problem cards that it doesnt really matter, same with priest.
you see seagiant and stormwind champion ziliax in hunter and that just depends on if you have the aoes to clear constantly
Would be nice if they buffed cards from the last mini set 😅
The pacing of the game has radically shifted from my perception. Good decks used to be about tempo, but now the best decks are decks that can put out really big stat bombs in one turn, or have a really big turn at once, because the opponent only has so much mana to answer the multiple threats posed at once. There are no honest aggro decks, ones that win with tempo, rather than mana cheat. I would say the most honest aggressive deck at the moment is evolve shaman, but even that is playing zilliax, and aims to win with a big swing turn where they fill their board with old legendaries.
I come from a background playing magic well before ever playing hearthstone, and the biggest difference is that in hearthstone, there are no answers you can play on your opponent’s turn, so against a big turn from the opponent, you can’t spend some of your mana from the previous to deal with some of the threats on their turn and then the rest at sorcery speed on your turn. Secrets don’t solve this problem because your opponent can just play their throwaway minion or spell first, and then their wincon, or huge free minion. The most relevant secret has been objection, and believe it or not, I think objection was somewhat healthy for the game, for decks like bran warrior.
Biggest takeaway is they can’t have game altering effects, and so many mana cheat to zero mana cards, without being able to play cards/interact on your opponent’s turn, because that’s why cards like bran feel uninteractable. Because without interaction, those cards are uninteractable. (Dirty Rat is the best interaction one can play, and even that is random.)
I think the reason disruption feels - rightfully - bad in hearthstone but is far more acceptable in other card games is due to how few of a card we can put in.
In LoR, for example, you get 3 of every card - even your "legendaries". In Magic, it's 4 of each card - and again, even "legendaries".
COmpare that to HS - 2 of each card and only 1 for legendaries, which are often absolutely pivotal to your gameplan.
It's more to do with agency.
In other games, you can interact on your opponents turn. In Yu-Gi-Oh you have Trap cards. In MTG you have instants (And Flash).
In both games you also have agency in regards to blocking. In YGO you cannot attack face if there's a monster in play so you have agency via putting creatures in play to soak attacks. In MTG you decide blockers entirely the attacker can only choose what creatures attack and whether they attack the player, Planeswalker or Battle.
In Hearthstone, the best you have is Secrets but they're limited in what classes can use them (Also, they're often tuned to being really annoying to deal with). This is why original Hearthstone was more focused on stats and board presence. The way to implement agency in Hearthstone is by making the board significant, you play stats, the opponent can trade into it or play their own stats/taunt. Gameplay revolves around trading well and using Taunts and healing to push things into your favor (Imagine Priest's entire identity not being completely useless!), both players get to interact and instant effects are rarer and more costly (Remember back when "Destroy a minion" spells were 6+ mana cost instead of these days where they can cost as little as 1 mana and have additional effects...)
The board has been rendered nigh useless in recent years though via everything having Rush or Battlecry. So you play stats and the opponent instantly removes it with Rush/Battlecry/Spell. So unless you cheat out massive stats that's difficult to remove the board is irrelevant.
@@tarille1043 "in MTG the defended chooses a blocker"
That sounds reallt F-ing annoying, speaking as someone who never got into MTG.
@@robertlupa8273 Not really. It's quite interesting. It means that you can't just SMOrc and point creatures at face all day. You need to have ways to bypass or prevent blocking to consistently hit face.
This can be either due to having a lot of stats so it's hard to have things survive blocking or effects that bypass blockers (Like Flying which can only be blocked by creatures with Flying or Reach or Trample that makes overkill damage hit through blockers)
Even in MTGA a digital format it's not bothersome to have a player assign blockers whenever you want to attack.
@@tarille1043 I agree with almost all of what you said, but the topic of agency(which is a big design headache in HS, as you correctly pointed out) doesn't really have much to do with the state of disruption in hearthstone.
To illustrate that~ even if you were to heavily increase the amount of agency, the state of disruption is not really changed at all. Its still the same, with singular disruption effects - like Rat/Theotar/Overdrawing etc. - having the potential of winning the game on the spot - which is much, much more rare in other cardgames.
You could add effects like reno or priest removal into the mix: The kind of removals that basically ignore card text and thus shatter entire strategies built around cards(I guess thats why the new WL legendary vona is so broken - cause oftentimes, ourobos will just get answered with one of the aforementioned removals).
@@tarille1043 Just gonna add that the game before now was a lot about managing your resources ( unless you played aggro ). Decks did not have draw engines like today. You played 1-2 cards most of the time while trying to waste the opponents resources.
Now you dump 5-10 per turn depending on what class you are and still have a full hand.
Every hot fix, in my opinion, is the Hearthstone Dev team admitting to a mistake in design and playtesting. Whizbang has had the most patches by far. The patches were needed, but that's the problem. The design is fundamentally flawed. That doesn't mean design is easy, but it does mean that the design of these cards feels like a problem with the card designers not knowing what new ground to tread.
the fact that doomkin is untouched for weeks now already tells us enough about the mental capability of the balance team.
Anyone saying 'nerfs aren't necessary' clearly didn't play HS in the early years when the devs had that same philosophy.
They don't know, man. They don't know.
I have been playing since the release and I hef the most fun back in Un'Goro.
But we all knew that the game would evolve to this point where powerful effects have almost no cost to them.
It used to be premium stats means no extra effects.
Now there is a neutral 1 mana 2/2 with no downside.
Aggro decks don't seem to be able to run out of cards and combo decks have so much draw that they are really consistent.
I personally have the impression that Rumble sent the wrong message to the corporate guys and they made sure that every expansion has crazy power-spike cards that have little to no set up required for the pay off.
I’ve been saying this basically for a long time now and brother… you hit the nail on the head. One more thing is with cards having multiple effects which make them broken so my idea always is to have cards do 1 to 2 things maximum
I don’t think they even play their own game anymore.
Bran Warrior is still one of the most played decks. I just played 6 out of 10 games in Standard today against it. They even play this deck a lot in wild with no wild cards. It's the exact same deck. And you can't kill them quick because they ramp 30+ armor super easy and if they have Bran on curve it's gg.
I'd kill to go against anything other than druids and paladins with the same exact busted ass decks. They all have the same 30 cards, I lose on turn 7 usually or miraculously survive and get lucky because they don't draw one of their 10 win conditions, and I still end up tilted because it's such a boring and uninteractive meta
If a good card is available for everyone then it doesn't need to be nerfed. Specially when it's something as flexible as Zilliax, just happened before people complain and blame their losses to any card that is decent and popular.
i feel like the only way to fix this is to have a couple expansions that greatly have a reduced power level to level it all over time. However this is realistically impossible cause people would hate it and stop playing
i miss when they nerfed a card so bad it was basically deleted from the game,atleast that actually changed the meta
I think they need to rework cards that has effects that if played makes you lose, some examples are brann, boomboss, sif,sargaris etc. I believe cards whose effects that cannot be interacted by your opponent should not exist.
I like you Zeddy, but I gotta agree with Vicious Syndicate on this one. This quote from their last data report sums this expansion perfectly:
"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. This is a weak format that was constantly battered with nerfs and watered down to the point every single boost in synergy somewhere could potentially exploit the power vacuum and dominate."
We don't need to nerf every deck people cry about in social media, devs need to be smarter about what needs to be changed.
Ngl nothing has felt worse than than theo taking my win con. I only played him to take my stolen card back or take their win con because they took mine.
That's why I played Triple win condition Druid. Take my Denathrius, and I could still win. I loved beating people after they played Theo and took something.
Yeah, Theotar was one of those cards you had to run not because you wanted to but because you had to.
I kinda liked Theo because he stopped meta from going to whoever drew the win con first wins meta.
At some point, they simply began to introduce mechanics that were not originally inherent to Hearthstone. I can understand cards like Theotar, Boom Boss or Dirty Rat in MTG, because there is the possibility of counteraction. In Hearthstone, such cards always feel unfair. It’s idiotic when they break your entire deck and waste your time just by pulling out a key card at random.
I think another big issue is that all we ever see is nerfs from the top down and cards that are severely underperforming dont even get touched
I've heard that the reason why they are so hesitant about text nerfs is because the text has to be translated into multiple languages which is much more of an effort.
The best solution for that would be to put less power into the card text. If a card has innate conditions or synergistic conditions in order to reach its full potential it drastically restricts the shenanigans you can pull off with it. I also think that neither Reno nor Ziliax are problematic cards for themselves but necessary to have any chance of being able to play controlish decks in standard.
If they want strong ass cards give us more hero health so we can play the game. Shit is bananas in both formats.
I still want to have 40 cards in the deck, and more hero health.
Rentathal since it's effect is so unique should always be a standard card it opens up so many decks to play man and that's what headstone needs diversity...the internet has ruined this game people just hsreplay the best deck and only play that. It's crazy how ai the hearthstone community is
The game just isn't fun, there is 0 variety. The games are usually decided by 3-4 legendaries, what happens in the rest of the game just doesn't really matter that much. I honestly don't wanna play anymore... Im having more fun playing shakes and fidget which is basically a clicking simulator...
Devs just don't care doing it out of spite on top of being purposely lazy and incompetent
We keep saying zilliax is 30 different cards, but it's definitely not used in 30 different ways. It's either cheat cost and give minions +1+1 or late game bomb with all keywords. Those are the only 2 combinations being played in the meta.
Overall, I agree with the sentiment of "mass nerfs" which really should mean a huge rework to card development. They need to draw back the power level overall which will be painful for a whole year rotation but I think necessary.
That means they need to buff the other combinations, and still maybe nerf the main ones. Unkilliax wouldn't be so effective if it didn't give as much healing. The problem is when nerfs hurt the other combinations.
@@remyllebeau77 Honestly, they could do with reworking most of the modules.
There's too much overlap in the role they provide. Like, Haywire, Power and Twin modules are all just "Big Stat Bomb". Ticking and Virus are "Enabler" ones that make other modules function by either cheating the card out or making it hard to deal with.
Pylon and Recursive give the card some actual functional difference. One makes it into a board buff, the other gives late game sustain via avoiding Fatigue.
While Perfect is just a bunch of very good keywords that you slap on to anything when you don't have another use to get.
It leads to there being far fewer combinations when you just pick the best ones available because they do such similar things. Hence, we just see Ticking + Pylon or Perfect + Virus (Previously Perfect + Twin)
@@tarille1043 Yeah
Game is fundamentally broken. It won't change until the people who make these decisions change. There's a severe lack of industry veterans in Team 5
There will always be a top deck, unfun metas aren't about there being a best deck but rather what deck is best. Ever since Hearthstone added true combo/otk into design philosophy they needed disruption to also be part of the game. Disruption mechanics are the most unfun as they remove gameplay and decision making, it's why Hearthstone was originally designed with no actions you could play on your opponent's turns like in say Mtg. Nerfs don't work currently as it's a russian roulette where the next big meta deck is more unfun than the last.
TFT makes constant nerfs and buffs and the game evolves and it works - big big difference is in hearthstone unless you pay out you don't have access to all the cards - the reno decks use multiple legendary cards. Nothing feels worse than crafting legendary cards and then they nerf around them leaving you out of dust. Often you have a couple outlier dominating decks and if you craft them you're pretty much guaranteed to be out of luck in a couple of weeks - if you don't craft them you have the pain of being at a disadvantage facing them over and over again until they take the hit. Only way around it is to buy all the cards - maybe that's their strat i dunno.
Part of it is also that every card MUST be unique. If it shares an effect, it must have different stats, mana, class or tribe.
While a great idea initially, theres thousands of cards at this point and the design space with this philosophy is at its limit. So, alongside normal powercreep, they kind of HAVE to do crazier, stronger, more toxic things in order to make new cards.
And the stronger the cards get as a whole, the faster the game is, the less room there is for high cost cards unless they are game-winning, further limiting design space to not having high cost big hitters.
They need to step back and really consider this philosophy, and maybe see it as ok to have some cards work the same.
Another issue is how they print singular archetype payoffs, like sharpshooter. They wanted to introduce Naga DH in showdown, alright, but they only gave players 1 single card that encourages them to play that deck. That is very problematic for several reasons: Firstly, that card will always be an issue, because if you build a deck around it, your deck relies on 1 or 2 copies of that card to win, so if you didn't draw it you can't win. Additionally, that means that when you do draw it, the card's effect has to be strong enough to make up for that. And here comes the 2nd issue: when they print such a card and it ends up being good, they wouldn't change its effect: either they'll kill it or they'll give it a slight nerf, and both of these options keep that archetype unhealthy, just weaker. That's an even bigger problem because these cards prevent them from actually fixing the archetype - giving the archetype more payoffs, each one individually weaker. But since they still have that 1 unhealthy card that they refuse to rework dictating the entire archetype, it simply prevents them from actually doing so, since that would make the toxic card unproportionally stronger and make the deck unhealthy and unfun. Sharpshooter, for example, needs to be completely reworked in order for Naga DH to be a playable healthy deck IN THE FUTURE, as more support gets printed. Else, that deck would stay toxic so long as it bothers with running that card, which it almost certainly will, since they refuse to print more than 1 payoff for that archetype.
I think most of the nerfs are +1 mana cost because the App stores need to approve other types of changes. As we saw with Twist, they can't change mechanics unless it's an app store approved patch. But those kinds of patches can only happen a couple times a month. So team 5 wants to make a quick fix and they settle on changing mana costs.
The nerf team has gotten very lazy and just increases mana cost or reduces health of the card
2:08 but Reno wasn't a control anti aggro card though, it was the most efficient against late game strategies that relied on the board
The design philosophy comment was 100% correct. They design everything for the timmy's so everything is a huge bombastic effect which in a game without disruption like hearthstone feels like crap.
Because they are 20 million of them every month. With handbuff paladin we go through full circle, from overpowered to unplayable to overpowered again
Trust me, you don’t want less nerfs/balance changes. The meta would get stale and you would probably quit playing
@@cluelessmango768People keep saying this but when Ben Brode was the lead of hearthstone and there weren't many balance changes, people DID stay. The game was pretty consistently popular back then which condraticts your point. Since he left it's been downhill from there
@@tomekk.1889Dont worry, plenty of people absolutely quit the game during the Undertaker meta while Brode kept going "No but srsly meta will solve it! trust me guys!"
@@tomekk.1889 I mean sure, but there are additional reasons why people kept playing then:
-especially in the beginning the game felt fresh and new, so despite undertaker becoming a menace, people still wanted to play the game.
-additionally to that, people were still figuring out what the best way to play was.
-the power level of expansions back in the day was often weaker, which meant even if a card was overperforming, it was doing so by less than they do today.
-the game was less quick; you didn’t just die in 1 or 2 key turns, instead your opponent generally chipped away at your health and in a world with far less health restoration that meant you eventually just died.
-there were no/far less tools around telling people what deck is the best to play. You generally saw more people experimenting with making decks for themselves to see what works and what doesn’t.
@@tomekk.1889 Yeah, one of the main things about the Ben Brode era, was that cards were designed with the lack of balance changes in mind. There were FAR fewer outliers in power back then because they actually tested things and held back on powercreep (TGT was intentionally underpowered because they overestimated the value of Inspire for example)
The switch to trigger-happy nerfing has meant they are more careless with design because they think "Oh, if it's stupid and broken, we'll just nerf it later!" so we get more swingy cards that are horrendously unfun to face. Which is exacerbated by their moronic patch cadence, where all their patches are at predetermined times. So when something is broken people are stuck with it until the predetermined patch time comes along and they address it (Unlike you know, every other game that will nerf broken things when they appear and so they make patches around reasons to make a patch)
The worst times to have ever been a standard hearthstone player was during quests. Having said that they do continue to just print obnoxious cards. Sonya and Boomboss are the two most annoying ways to lose right now imo. Luckily, both of those decks are kind of rare to see atm with Reno being dumpstered and Sonya needs a decent piolet. Despite the power level of the game being so high I do feel like they have tried to reel it back some after Showdown in the Badlands. I don't think Whizbang was nearly as strong of a set nor does it look like Paradise as a whole will rival how strong Showdown was.
Back then you could use silence on enemy minions. Now when the effect is imidiate silence is worthless against cards like Brann, Boomboss, Marin etc.
Cards like Puppet Theater definitely give me more nightmares than Reno
if we didn't have this culture of consistent balance patches, this problem would be fixed. The problem is pursuing toxic and "Timmy" cards that are strong. Why can they print reno at 8 mana? Well, if it becomes a problem "fuck it, we'll nerf it next patch". They don't currently have an incentive to not make cards that are both overpowered and toxic
I’m so over warrior removing EVERYTHING for cheap while doubling every battlecry, gaining a billion armour and destroying my deck 😴 🚮
If I run into a Zilliax or Reno, my game is pretty much over. I constantly get players down to 2-3 health and then they play one card that destroys my entire strategy. It is not fun to play like that at all.
Cards today are so strong they could all be 10/10/10 and still be played. But why are these cards any worse than previous cards? It sucked to loose to yogg… grim patron… rogue quest(the all minions are 5/5 one) . It sucks to loose. The problem honestly is there going for the feels good when the facts are one person will feel good and one won’t.. they need to focus on the fun aspect again and stop worrying about how it feels.
Maybe a bold move was needed to save hearthstone. What that bold move should have been, is up for debate.
The problem with ziliax is that they arent adressing the aspect of him that truly matters: Perfect module, that part simply makes him the best healing tool in the game by far
with that said i do believe that power adjustments and a mix of nerfs and buffs are a better move than just nerfs
i mean look at Cross stitch and sunset volley, they got buffed by a whole mana cost and are still just considered okay at best, theres a lot more room for buffing
yogg is love, yogg is life
It’s interesting seeing hearthstone confront the same problem that physical card games have and not use their strongest advantage- essentially reprinting card text. Long running card games always run into power creep as they attempt to keep interest up in their product. MTG has addressed this by using more and more pop culture influenced sets to grab new fans to the game.
Team 5 will eventually write themselves into a corner where the cards that are always useful, no matter the mana cost, will have no where to go but legends. I feel like Reno, Marin, and Brann have this potential within the next year. It’s difficult to not see a hard reset on their design philosophy for the next year as the best outcome and just let the current power level of cards move over to Wild, while a focused “ground up” approach going forward can bring some semblance of moderation back to standard.
This of course would have significant backlash and any hard shift in the game is likely a lose lose situation for blizzard.
It's not that nerfs don't work. It's that the specific +1 Mana nerfs they're doing don't work.
Does anyone really care if Zilliax is in a lot of decks? It's a good card. Almost everyone plays it. We can all anticipate it. Personally IDGAF if it's in 80% of decks.
The power level is one of the biggest reasons for me not playing HS anymore. It feels like no matter the meta you're just hoping to draw your wincon before your opponent draws theirs. Like it's either "Aggro them down before they draw their busted card" or "Survive until you draw you busted card"
I played boomsday-uldun as a control warrior, and I really enjoyed the constant back and forth. I had to weigh each choice, as I needed to make the most efficient plays while putting out plenty of pressure. Nowadays even control decks are just about drawing the one busted card/combo to win. Blood DK was a good return to proper control when it came out, then blizzard proceeded to give them 0 support for like 5 expansions in a row. Instead we got odyn warrior and then brann warrior, which were both basically just "Step 1: Draw odyn/brann. Step 2: Win"
100% agree with this.
Good/fun close match ups are far too few in this meta.
Hearthstone meta is now either:
1) Vomit minions onto the board and win by turn 6
2) Playing solitaire with combos/card generation
3) Stealing or copying your opponents big plays with cheaper cost cards
No wonder so many prominent players have dipped out.
here is a way to fix hearthstone: remove following text from cards: silence, costs (X) less, remove, immune, stealth, charge, for the rest of the game and abusable ongoing effects that arent capped like treasure distrbutor and sonya.
I agree with this so much, its insane the thought process hearthstone developers have about their game
The biggest issue with Hearthstone started when they added the "Discover" mechanic. This opened the Pandora's Box because it meant the birth of the constant card generation design. Cards in card games should act like units in a strategy game: once you use them, you lose them. This means that every card must be carefully played to have the maximum impact on board.
Nowadays there is constant card generation in addition to card randomness. You can't play around anything because anything is possible. You survived one Reno? Too bad, I just discovered one more. You killed my big dude? Eat shit, I just got 2 more of those.
That's why nerfs don't work. How can a card nerf affect the game, when the concepts of card advantage and mana cost have been removed from the game in the first place?
We just have to accept that Hearthstone is a glorified slot machine that is better played when you are drunk and is in no way a game to be played seriously.
i think you simply dont play other card games if you think "once you use them, you lose them." is real. In both ygo and pokemon your discard pile essentially becomes a resource pile that you can pull from in a wide variety of different ways.
@@scooter9537 I've been playing Magic for 20 years and I've seen my fair share of recursive strategies. If you are such an experienced player, you ought to know the difference between having a discard pile or graveyard that can be interacted with and what Hearthstone has in its place.
In addition, other card games don't manifest other random cards in your hand from thin air. Once you play against a deck, you know what you should expect. Good luck with that in Hearthstone.
So, before you jump ahead and criticize someone for not having card game experience, take a couple of minutes to think whether you have an actual argument or you are just being an idiot.
@@Izelor oh i thought of it and it and it didnt help it from being incredibly stupid
@@scooter9537 I am terribly sorry. I didn't know.
The issue isn't necessarily the "Discover" mechanic itself. But more it's overall ubiquity.
Whenever they don't have an idea for a card, they just slap Discover on it and call it a day. Or if they're designing Mage cards, they just stick it on literally everything first and then design cards around it...
The mechanic itself can be fine. It's a better version of the previous "Random" as it provides more consistency (And maintains class cohesion due to not being able to discover other class cards). It's just used WAY too much. So much "Created by" nonsense, even in Arena almost all my games were not against the opponent's actual deck, but against all the cards they discovered instead...
Not quite as bad as during Rise of Shadows, where it was tons of Lackeys creating cards that create Lackeys that create cards that create Lackeys that create cards... But still obnoxiously high amounts of discover.
The biggest downside about "just getting the thing" is, that it's actually less rewarding to "get the thing".
It's the same with carddraw, in the past you had to combo your Acolyte or Auctioneer, now you just draw 2 for 2.
Looking at data from the last 1 day in legend is a little narrow for statistics.
Unpopular opinion...I hate nerfs as a semi causal player. I am not entirely f2p (typically by a bundle of every other expansion). It gets real old crafting a deck to have it nerfed into the ground for something just as dominate take over and I am out resources for trying to play semi competitevly.
I really miss the old philosphy where they'd only nerf truly broken cards and have not as frequent balance patches.
Edit: Also tried playing tier 2 decks...last time I built Highlander Shaman just for the doctor to get yeeted into the sun.
Shaman is still fun to play. Although it isn't as good as top classes.
The problem is they listen to the community and nerf the "feels bad" cards, not the ones that are ACTUALLY plaguing the game with high win rates. In a meta where hand buff paladin is crushing everything, they nerf two of the best tools against that deck. They do it because everyone that plays just the top meta deck bitches about the powerful late game cards. All Blizzard cares about is satisfying all the players that want the game over by turn 5. That is a fact. Watch how insanely fast this new meta will be after the expansion. Games will either be over by turn 4, literally over, or you will have no chance to recover so it is essentially over.
I actually have no problem with Zilliax in so many decks, it's an anomaly, this was their first "make your own minion", so to speak.
Been saying this for literal years. The problem is the design not the power level.
Keep up the good work, Zeddy
I'm not playing standard until the expansion comes out. Barely keeping up with quests
Makes me wonder why they dont think about the design a bit more.
I prefer one card big power spike better than a whole new pushed arquetipe that doesn't work and doesn't get more support anymore in the future. 👍🏼
Edit: But yeah, they need to nerf text when needed on the power spike cards.
Someone needs to remind them that you can't cast counterspell or lightning bolt on the enemy's turn.
Hearthstone has a secondary problem of the standard game not feeling like standard anymore. Genn+baku, anomalies, "from the past", multi-class, whizbang's wacky decks. All these ideas are cool, but when all of them are in standard at the same time the general rules just stop existing.
There are also just not that many cards in format right now. Only 4 sets so even with nerfs we are gonna keep seeing the same decks. Dont worry the next set is going to have handbuff paladin dropping 2 charge pirate minions for 2 mana. Oh and then for 3 more mana it can have windfury. 5 mana for 2 charge minions give one windfury.
That game has drifted so far away from the vision Brode had, I don't recognise it anymore... Thought leaving for months after ten years, left during the daily quests debacle, and the reveal of the expansion is certainly not bringing me back. I miss Sneeds and Dr Boom...
I think hs nowadays/for past year is in waaay better state than before. Until LOE expansion playing hs was torture, if you not watching someone make content with troll decks, now you can create various fun decks to casually go for legend without being pissed off, while before you basically were making decks with 28 cards, boom and loatheb, sitting either for 3-5 min beatdown or spamming HP for 30 min
I still think the early game decks are the biggest problem, aggro is SO powerful in this meta and it seems that is the design philosophy for this year looking at the pirate centric expansion we are about to be slapped across the face with, and since aggro is so strong clears need to be full clears or bust basically
Boomboss TNTs should only destroy 1 card, and randomly each time, and Brann should go back to 6 mana but make it that only the first battlecry each turn gets doubled
The best nerfs do not kill the card, but just tone down the power level.
These stats suggest that 35% of all Decks played are Druid decks.
But this goes back to the fundamental argument of why power creep? I think creep is inevitable. Either they made great, exciting cards that risk breaking the game and pissing me off and making me rage OR they make a set of weak cards that have nearly no impact that we make fun of nearly six years later (i.e. Rastakhan;s). I don't see a way to avoid power creep. Imagine if cards didn't do exciting things. We'd be complaining that they're printing borderline vanillas again that don't affect the game. I think their nerf strategy is poor. Like Zeddy said, just modifying numbers isn't always the most effective way to push a card out of the meta. We need to go back to text changes for some cards without going the way of Warsong Commander. Related: I hate "Unkilliax." It's the least interesting combination, and it's so prevalent and so easy.
Thx for the vids
Thanks for the bundle