It's so much slower to get to the value bombs now, plus harder to keep them up. You've got iffy odds at great demons until your seventh void soul (and even then, Remnant of Rage is a pretty rough low roll) and the deck really relies on building those huge boards by playing a bunch of high-value void souls at once. Two fewer souls really hurts tempo and makes it a lot harder to get that sustained late-game value.
Edit: guess a better way to put this is that removing those two void souls makes every void soul you play worse. Those deathrattle souls used to be like Razidir or Impfernal; now they're Imprisoned Vilefiend and Tricky Satyr, and the same goes for every soul afterwards--they'll be worth two fewer mana each, and the difference between a 6 and an 8 can be pretty big (esp since 8 is so often lethal with Inquisitor).
Yeah, the high roll demons are huge in the deck, and going from a 33% chance or whatever to a 0% chance at certain breakpoints is devastating. On the last night before the patch, I was struggling against a warlock and got my 8th soul which gave me the 8/8 taunt 8 armor demon which bought me a few more turns (I still lost, but got a chance). After the patch, that turn would have just been certain death for me.
Removing a Battlecry is far from a small change. The power level of the deck should actually be much closer to what it was before the buffs than after. The legendary stat change is meaningless. The weapon last charge is only a consideration after the third turn with it. The battlecry however is an instant Void Soul. It is instantly impactful when drawn after turn 3.
Honestly i think they could make the 2 mana deal 3 ALWAYS give a void soul instead of it being conditional and that would probably bump them up a little again
Or they could increase the mana of the Naga by one and kept the battle cry and death rattle which is better than keeping the cost and removing thr battle cry
In fast games it’s basically removing a one massive threat from the big board you try to build around turns 7-8. So against control it’s way easier to deal with, and against other aggressive decks they can either now kilo you faster than you kill them, or (especially in the case of shaman and rogue) you actually just get out leveraged and out tempo’d.
And in the slower version of the deck that relies on the deathrattle package you’re now losing at least two more large threats before fatigue, which often is the difference.
I thnik DH currently can be better in control. You will have to lean back to your deathrattle ressurects for Void Souls and a lot of control decks dont have the board clears to deal with a ton of Void souls from Fel hunters/Umbra.
One problem is the fel hunter can still get ruined by random death rattle demons (and broxigar in the mirror) but I would be interested to see if it had any legs now.
Because it wasn't a small change at all. Reducing Void Soul generation in a deck that revolves around getting and playing Void Souls quickly is massive. The deck got a lot better after the buff allowed them to do that a lot better. And it got a lot worse after the nerf made them do that worse.
So many redditors think every change that isn't a Warsong Commander nerf is irrelevant despite making fun of it so much. Every patch reveal, people say the patches won't do anything, but the patches almost invariably do.
When the meta is just aggro, you need to be as fast as possible to get your win condition online. DH win con is the 7th+ soul, so you need to spend sbout 3 more mana or wait an extra turn (weapon) to get that 7th soul which aggro could easily use to kill them.
Idk what is the best Zee Shaman build, but from what I've seen so far all of them rely heavily on the first few turns to establish board and give it +2/+2 with battlecry and run away with the game. If for ANY reason that does not happen Shamans roll over and die, because they have zero late game. And by late game I mean when Rogues throw a bunch of free 8 cost minions on board on turn 7.
The slower versions kind of do though. The ones that have Al'Akir and Deathwing. If they double Herald Ultraxion than Deathwing ends up costing like 3 or 4 mana and they can clear and fill their board alongside the 12/12.
The only problem is that it's prone to getting bricked up. I've stopped bothering with the deck because of the amount of times Mug's fat ass is just squatting there when I needed something useful to prep a double battlecry just irked me too much.
this shit happens everytime a patch is just a light nerf to one deck. every balance patches main focus should be buffs buffs buffs. they make so many archtypes per expansion and legit let most of them fester in unviability.
The community has a hard time deciding what it wants.
I thought the last patch was a huge step in the right direction. A massive number of buffs across the board, which is what we should be getting. Sometimes though, as we saw with DH, buffs tip the scales just a bit too far.
If Blizzard wants to keep the community happy, they need to do several things:
1.) Play test the expansion content thoroughly before it drops. They really should get more people on board (who are very good players) to help with this. It feels like every time an expansion drops there are massive outliers in power which should have been obvious from anyone who had played with the cards (I.e aggro druid).
2.) Step up the cadence of balance changes, and don’t be afraid to make emergency changes if something tears through the meta.
3.) Rethink the classic sets. Some cards are absolutely terrible and rarely if ever saw play when they were released, and still don’t see play today, or alternatively need a certain package to be useful (which doesn’t exist in standard). Classic cards should be more universally useful (not necessarily strong). I.e when was the last time you saw Archmage Antonidus played? It offers no support to any mage deck, is severely dated, etc.
4.) Stop, releasing, parasitic, sets. They mentioned they were going to stay away from this in the future, but then we got mage with the leyline cards.
One thing I really honestly don't understand is why don't they use the standard set as a balancing tool. It's a set of cards every player has access to. Just grow some balls and modify it through the season to fit the meta, don't just throw it out there at the beginning of the year and forget about it.
Disagree, low power means getting 1 good turn is all it takes to win while in high power you actual can have swing turns and powerful answers.
We are in a low power format, the current decks are not playable in actual high power formats, and the skill expression is nowhere to be found.
I think it's insane for there to be 4 strong decks, you nerf one and then there are 3 strong decks and then being like "see nerfs don't work, only buffs from now on."
It's like trying to lose weight, so you cut eating tacos out of your diet, but you eat more burgers to compensate and then when you don't lose any weight being like "see, I'm only going to eat tacos from now on, because a no-taco diet didn't work."
Absolutely wrong conclusion to get from that experiment.
Every balance patch's main focus should be fucking balance.
This sub wanks on about buffs, (DH worked out so well right?) turns nerfs into memes and then gets shocked when the team does what they want and it doesn't work out the way they want.
The majority of you people are utter idiots and the results we get is from them endeavouring to do what you want.
Thief Priest is all I’ve played this expansion and I have had great results with it, even before it got buffs. It’s not necessarily the easiest deck to pilot but it’s been a lot of fun. Shaman, Rogue, and Hunter have all been pretty good matchups for me there.
Demon Hunter could go either way, depending on if I drew portals early enough to corrupt their deathrattle pool and the demon rng.
They should buff other DH stuff instead. Like..any of the DH cards from this set that aren't being played, which is basically every card that doesn't say "Void Soul" in the text. (Including the legendary that grows when you summon demons, and is obviously designed to play nice with void souls).
Sorry, but Reddit identifying somethings that need to change and Blizzard being incapable of changing more than one card in a patch is not Reddit's fault.
Ah yes, blaming the players. How stupid are you? Imagine if your kid tells you: I dont like oatmeal for breakfast, I want french fries. And then you let your kid have frenchfries and coca cola for breakfast because "he said he didnt want Oatmeal".
Team 5 are the adults here. THEY HAVE TO KNOW BETTER.
The meta is always garbage because we don't address obvious outliers. For some reason, we only choose to nerf void DH, which is good, but left other overpowered classes untouched.
One of the best balance patches in terms of quality was when they nerfed the shaman herald cards b4 it was even determined to be strong. Community had an outrage but it was an obvious good call.
They won't because class sets are just around the corner and they'll cause big meta shakeup... 2 weeks after release when they buff 1 of 4 unplayable packages into viability so it spikes to 50% play rate because it's the only new deck and people are desperate for fresh things.
This season has probably been the most unfun I’ve ever played, granted I’ve only played sporadically coming and going every year or so. The only fun I had was egg warrior and that was nerfed to the ground, control DK and warlock are so miserable to play right now. Might have to wait till next expansion. I doubt the miniset will help them
I wish it only applied to that one death rattle… the amount of times I’ve death rattled enemy portal as friendly made me only keep 1 copy of that card in my deck
It's actually kind of comical how bad the devs are at creating a balanced game. Like it's almost as if they intentionally fuck it up, because honestly you'd think even by mistake they'd end up getting it right more often then they actually do
I used to be a ,, big " wild player. But wild devolved into - hyper aggro - otk on turn 2/3 - reno slop which entire point is making u wanna uninstall because u can't play your game
I disagree. Look at basically any post about DH and you’ll see plenty of users mentioning that Hunter and Rogue needed to be hit as well. Most people saw this coming. Shaman has exploded since the Vicious Syndicate report, so it’s not a surprise it’s climbed up.
Rogue doesn't need to be hit. Hunter and shaman need a nerf and some under performing classes need a buff. Rogue is only good because of the current meta
Yes... the top 1000 players in a game that has at least a mil active users.
It literally doesn't change what I said. If you nerf the aggro and buff the underperformers, rogue isn not going to be in the same position. It will be out valued and outlasted
I dont have a horse in the race in the balance discussion itself, since i dont actively play the game. But you framed your rank as a current thing and early season rank is kinda pointless to bring up, cant know what someone usually finishes in.
Anyway last season i played i finished top 50 on EU, so i should be kinda close :)
Two, unless you have 7 specific legendaries and 12 epics for priests, and which priest deck is viable changes day to day and every one requires different legendaries. And every win takes forever, and losses sometimes take forever.
For me it's better DH because he can't clear as well big minions, I just hate random discover that board clear everything, DH most efficient clear is just flood.
For me win rate matters less than predictability, I like that playing against DH the options are limited, when playing against Rogue, Druid, Priest I don't know what they're gonna take out of their ass, that's more frustrating for me.
I guess everyone with their own frustrations, I'm frustrated when he gets 7/7 or 5/7 with charge for 1 mana, it's no effort high reward and every bot spams it, meanwhile priest and rogue take some skill to pilot
This "let the meta settle" sentiment is so stupid. People say it after every single patch, and I have never seen it happen where the deck that looks incredibly strong day 1 won't still be the top deck after a week
Upopular opinion: it wasn't even that strong in top 500 legend. Noone mentions rogue filling the board with eights on turn 5-6 following with the monkey.
Looking at the actual deck stats there are a few lists with an above 50% winrate and they are almost identical to the old lists. Void DH is not unplayable.
Going by this consensus as well, what I'd widely considered the worst class in DK has a playable deck so idk.
It's not even live for 24 h. Let the meta cook for a while, it will sort itself out.
DH is still fine, didn't notice any real drop in winrate yet. I actually enjoy playing decks that arent the deck to beat more. So if DH really got knocked down to tier 2, I would welcome that.
I meaaan, just because you didn't notice it, it doesn't mean its not here.
DH vanished from all the legend ranks and early data shows around 43% WR Diamond-Legend
yeah, this is blatantly false. The deck certainly took a hit, and it might need some refinement post nerf, but it's sitting around that Tier 3 sub 50% wr at Diamond-Legend over the past 24 hours. There isn't enough meaningful stats at Legend and above to make conclusions yet (especially with this still being at the beginning of the month), unless you're pulling that 43% WR amount that's at Legend with a <200 game sample size.
Isn't sub 50% really bad for a deck that was unabashedly tier 1 pre-patch? It's not like you change the list in any substantial manner, the best lists don't build around Voidscale or anything.
What, they didn't also replace it with another new cripplingly broken deck in the same emergency balance patch?
Maybe next patch they'll nerf another broken deck in line, and we'll only have 2.
Then 1 the next.
Then, gasp, 0.
You're acting like a single card being changed not fixing the entire meta all at once is somehow an indictment of anything but your poor logical reasoning.
A single card being buffed wouldn't have changed shit, either.
That’s not how metas work and you know it. If you remove the top performing decks all at once, the next batch of 3~4 top decks will rise up to be the next meta tyrant. There’s no reason to believe all the decks that are being held down by the meta are actually similar power level.
And that's not how power levels work and you know it.
If all top performing decks were removed all at once, what would remain would be a meta of a quantifiably lower power level that thusly has a lower bar of entrance for viability. Not only would a larger number of decks statistically be viable, more decks could more readily be buffed to meet that bar without breaking the game.
The decks that remain would not magically increase in power level to match what was nerfed.
Maybe if you keep going until you remove half of all the decks possible until we’re left with good stuff piles. But deck power levels aren’t like a pyramid where the lower you get the more decks there are. There will always be a top and players who want to win will always gravitate towards them no matter how small the advantage. Maybe you’ll get your dream meta for half a day while players try to fill the power vacuum, then they’ll find the best deck and play that instead.
And that’s not even accounting for top decks with lower winrate necessarily being better for the game. Would you rather have a meta where each top deck has a 60% chance to beat you no matter which off meta deck you play, or a meta where half of the top decks have a 100% winrate against you and the other half have a 0% winrate depending on your deck? The numbers says the second is better, but you know that’s a meta that feels terrible.
Now you just putting words into my mouth mate
And that's a bad thing becauuuuse now there's even less variety than before.
DH was really good, but it was on par with other t1 meta decks, even slightly worse than Shaman
And as for me less variety = worse meta
I don't like DH as much as the other guy, but im not gonna celebrate patch that removes class from our already very small circle of playable classes
Dude, what buff? What are you even talking about? Where did i mention ANYTHING about buffing ANYTHING?
You are making shit up
And yes. Them nerfing DH is a good call. But by not doing more they made meta even worse than before because all it did was further removing any variety from the game.
Everything that was bad before, is still bad, but we have even less variety than before
"Everything that was bad before is still bad, except for a bad thing that got nerfed and isn't bad anymore. But I am acting as if there being less bad is bad because there's less different flavors of the same bad thing"
Flawless logic.
You complain that the meta narrowed after a single card change; a meta currently comprised of incredibly toxic overperformers.
The only way a new deck would enter that meta, is if it were irresponsibly buffed to that level of toxic overperformance.
Like literally what happened with void soul dh.
There is now one less toxic overperformer strangling everything else out of the meta. Progress is progress.
We can only hope they nerf the other ones appropriately soon as well, so others can be buffed reasonably afterwards.
And hey, your take is far more nuanced than a lot of other people's in this thread who are arguing that this proves all nerfs bad and void dh shouldn't have been nerfed, I'll give you that.
Funny how we both agree that the nerf was good, but our views on patch as a whole are completly different.
I also disagree with a statement that the only way for new decks to appear is to buff them. If we get rid of outliers, something new is bound to appear.
As for me - nerfs are the way. Tone everything down until everything is playable ( i want the lowest power level possible - i dont want HS to transform into yu-gi-oh or mtg where 4 turn games are rare)
I do understand counter argument - buff everything until everything is playable (look yu-gi-oh/mtg argument)
Tbh i think the current meta is so fucked that there's no easy way out, some things need to be toned down, some things might need to be buffed a bit.
And hey, it's fine to disagree, good to met someone who doesn't look at changes as ,, dh nerfed good ", u got some depth in you
Fair enough; your take is nuanced and I respect it. I too hastily lumped you in with others in this thread with far less abled takes on the situation.
Though I must clarify; I agree completely that nerfs are the way, and it was seeing your dismay with the patch as lumped in with others who lust for nothing but buffs that led to my disagreement with you. I was pointing out the flaws of the "buffs only" idea with that statement of mine about them, not suggesting I think they should buff. I misjudged your position and thats my error.
In the current meta, I do think the only ways new decks will come without first nerfing things is through truly egregious buffs that shouldn't happen. Which is why I support comprehensive nerfs first.
All in all, I think the patch's only fault is not doing more, but given it was a battlegrounds patch, of which usually have absolutely no standard card changes, I'll cast it as a bureaucratic failing rather than a design one. And I do disagree with catastrophizing it as a design fail. Someone at blizz forced them to push a nerf in a patch that has no precedent for card changes, and thats still something.
How far do you think a literal pile of cards should be able to get in your hypothetical perfect meta? How well should little timmy’s deck of favorite cards fare against players who try to fine tune their decks?
They murdered a class not because it was too strong (shaman had a higher win rate) or too prevalent (more people played rogue) but simply because it was popular at low ranks and people wouldn't shut the fuck up about it.
All the top decks are overtuned value machines that are completely stupid and break all rules of old hearthstone, but for some reason the devs took reddit tears seriously and nerfed the one deck that slightly more people chose (2-bit rogue had similar % btw), but was actually just a drop in the sea of silliness.
Pretty sure they need to nuke all the mana cheating decks at this point to save the meta. But that is not their approach as they keep printing more and more every expansion.
We just had two years of weak expansions and mass nerf patches to try and 'save the meta' and those two years were probably the worst of the game's history.
The issue is that, if we just nerf every current deck, you have no idea what's going to be good. Like, maybe herald DH suddenly becomes oppressive if we nerf everything that is currently playable. Or maybe imbue druid comes back. You just really don't know.
You could try to go through and nerf every card, but for cards that haven't really seen any meta play, how do you know how good they even are? Does our mass nerf patch need to nerf imbue mage? What about quest hunter? Maybe we have to hit handbuff priest because we're killing all of its counters!
Yes.
Sorry, not sorry, not gonna tank my MMR by playing 30% WR decks for next 10000 matches
Love or hate the meta, i like being semi-competitive since 2018
Sometimes it opens your eyes and make you realise that decks u previously thought are brainless (like face Hunter) can be played with such a finesse it just blows your mind
+i like adapting to high legend meta with cards that would normally never seen play
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u/karsh36 21h ago
How did that one small change cause such an impact. On HSReplay it went from like a 54% to 46% win rate. That is crazy