the fact that combo decks are so popular on ladder even though they are terrible in the meta shows that fun is in the eye of the beholder. kibler is not having fun so kibler wants changes made. i feel the same way. but that's not fair.
@@penoyer79 winning may be part of that in my opinion though. For some people just winning with whatever is fun for them. Not a shot at those people, it is what it is.
@@penoyer79 they're not terrible though; they have bad matchups; The entire meta has warped to be those matchups. The fact they're good enough to shove value/control out and forced the Aggro meta just to play a game against them proves their power. Not to mention the warlock deck especially can cheat wins in bad matchups; if your start isn't aggressive enough to contend with their healing/removal, you can fall short and just die.
@@Bladius_ fair. "terrible" was the wrong word. changes due to powerlevel issues... i'm all for. but not because one prefers one playstyle over another.
@@penoyer79 Why is that not fair? If you dont like the meta of course you need to express your opinion. Feedback will help developers of any game make it better, if they are willing to listen. They will of course also consider how many people are unhappy etc but that is not the players task. Our job is to express how we feel about the game.
For me every game feels like it’s on a timer rather than counter play it’s about beating your opponent with your broken combo / burst before they do it to you .
The real problem is that it is not Stormwind that brought this to the game. It is quite a long time that the players have to explode with a power play before the opponent does, and most of the time both of the players know the result of the game yet when this play happens.
@@andreaiachini7517 Yea but it wasn't secure, you played a strong card your opponent could retaliate or play something in comparison/ clear board etc. stormwind quests are timers going off that you can do nothing about it other than win. (and generally their gameplay of reducing your hand cost as mage or cheating mana as warlock with dark glare, what are you gonna do against that) I understand that this problem is scaling expansions ago as the cards keep getting stronger and stronger cause lets be real who would play new cards for more than a week if they are weaker than the older ones but when you have a maximum mana and cards at 10 mana i think there shouldn't be a 100% win condition by turn 7 since quests are absolute and you can't really whiff on them.
@@Exknight2 I agree with your point. The problem according to me is not the powerplay, but that there is always less space for coming back. This is the real problem. If you have a powerful play that your opponent can't answer or deny because he doesn't have cards (for example). Oh well... It happens in card games sometimes. It hurts, but it happens. But if a powerplay win you the game ON THE SPOT, that is not so fun anyway. As you say, we want powerful cards (as our opponents), but it should also be a strategical fight. And there is a strong lack of strategy lately in HS. You should have a possibility to change the game, If you have the skill.
Thank you for articulating this so much better than I ever could. Everyone seems to just be saying "well, if you look at the winrates, it's not a solitaire meta so there's no issue" without understanding how the whole meta moves together
@@arcaneace8313 Yeah, you're right. There's no nuance of opinion at all dude. Totally how this works. Sarcasm aside, there's a difference between "I hate combo" and "I think it's getting a little silly and would like it not to be canibalising the meta game by forcing certain decks in and others out".
@@Bladius_ yes but kibler and others never seem to care when COMBO is the one getting pushed out and barely surviving. The second they nerf combo (and we all know they will) we'll probably have doomhammer and handbuff garbage take over with combo being relegated to meme tier as usual, and kibler and others will be completely silent because the only time they care is when control is the one in trouble. Combo has been a joke every expansion outside of tiny fringe metas at high legend because whenever a combo deck gets any foothold the control players cry, it gets nerfed and we go back to curvestone.
@@arcaneace8313 That's because TO THE AVERAGE PLAYER Combo is not fun to play against. So it has to be worse than the other decks. The same principle applies to Fatigue decks, that's why they are heavily disincentivized by stuff like the Warlock quest, or the Jade Idol of old. Combo usually is fringe by design, because when it's not then... United In Stormwind happens. You seem to be a Combo deck enthusiast ArcaneAce. The fact is, for one Combo player who gets his fun you have 10 other players who wanna quit the game and never come back. And that's not good for Blizzard's buisness and for the content creator's buisness which relies on HS attracting lots of spectators. I'm sorry but that's the shitty situation you're in. Curvestone just makes bigger numbers.
@@Zedempremier oh I know curvestone gets bigger numbers. I just want people to admit it. They all act like they want some "balanced" metagame when the reality is "balanced" to them means aggro on the ladder and some bullshit control deck at every tournament that has at worst a 55-45 matchup. What they're really saying is "we don't want combo decks to exist ever but we'll never outright say it". Frankly, I'll never understand how people can enjoy watching or playing curvestone it's actually brainless why I stopped taking this game seriously. I'd rather go play battlegrounds then deal with a meta where decks like handbuff pld garbage are what people want. Also yes I like decks only archetype in hearthstone I feel requires any kind of actual though. Aggro is just smorc, and despite the control main narrative control decks are mostly just spamming removal for 20 turns before dropping bombs. I rarely see all these "deep strategic" decisions control deck players keep talking about.
The reason why Paladin competes with these combo decks is: Battlefield Battlemaster + Conviction (Rank 2). If Paladin has exactly 2 minions with a *combined* 4+ Attack survive a turn unfrozen, that's 20+ damage next attack, which _feels a lot like_ the damage from combo deck going off. It can be even crazier with two Convictions, or any other buff. I think that's a huge contributing factor to the current complaints, because even against Paladin you can go from at or near full health to fully dead surprisingly early in the turns.
@@HighLanderPonyYT Catacomb Guard is right on the edge of playability. In my opinion: it's roughly the 32nd or 33rd best card for your Paladin deck, not quite good enough. But if people stop playing combo and all start playing Face Hunter, that could change.
Paladin requires "Minion on the board" at least. You can always interact with it even its in stealth. Playing Taunt , Out heal , Aoe effects are all viable options. And then there is a games against Warlock and Mage where your plays doesnt matter
My biggest problem with the game as it currently stands is damage from hand. The hearthstone team said hearthstone should be about minion vs minion combat however they seemed to have completely forgotten that.
I haven't played since Witchwood but recently got back to watching kibler again because he's fun to watch. Recently got into Legends of Runeterra too and it feels more like minion vs minion vibe.
This is how I was feeling as well and it's nice to see that validated by a professional. Most games are over by turn 6-8 and opponents pretty much play their deck identically almost no matter what you do. This is not fun.
“validated by professional” The state of Hearthstone right now is so obvious average players shouldn’t have to go to professional players for validation. The previous expansion also had a number of decks (e.g Face Hunter) that players played them exactly the same to the point you’d think you are matching against the same player again and again or matching against robots. Since all the way back to Outland expansion, the level of decision making has been steadily going down and down the drain. Why waste time and energy making a decision to flood your board or not to avoid potential AoE when you A) can kill them if they don’t have AoE and B) you can just fill both the board and hand in your next turn? The game should stop rewarding players for playing cards without thinking.
I absolutely agree with your points, great video! It actually reminds me of the Jade Idol situation. Once Jade Idol was printed, on its own, it made Mulligan decks & Control decks impossible to play. Yes you could still beat midranges (and aggro with luck), but the fact that Jade Druid existed at all made you instantly concede as you couldn't either mulligan, either deal with infinite 20/20s. The stats didn't necessarily showed that of course, creating the same situation. Side note, I think Mutanus should have been printed the other way around. It should be a 8/8 or 9/9 that devours a card, and loses stats equal to the card devoured. This would make way much more sense against any matchups.
I disagree with you a lot on this. I loved jade druid. That deck DID have an ultimate win condition - BUT it wasn't until turn 12+ to become oppressive - and opponents could out-tempo you on turn 10+ (as the jades didn't have taunt). There is nothing wrong with a deck having an "inevitable" win condition SO LONG as it happens late (turn 12+) AND can get out-tempoed for the first 10 turns of the game.
Thank you for so eloquently summing up the current meta situation. I’ve never lost interest in playing standard HS so quickly after a new expansion than Stormwind. I love off-meta deck building, but it took me all of 2 days to realize that the sheer volume of viable combo decks on ladder stifle any slower style decks to the point where it seems like 50+% of your games are auto-lose. On top of that, I started to realize that the overarching issue here isn’t any one particular deck or handful of decks, it’s the fundamental circling gameplay experience of Aggro, midrange, combo and control that has been totally eradicated. The meta has been reduced to a single line connecting Aggro and combo decks, and that’s it. Sure there are 10+ different versions of those, but it’s still the same 2 play styles ruling everything. I just threw my hands up and quit ladder after 3 days and have only played Battlegrounds since. Which is disheartening.
Same experience lol. I made an anti combo big demon hunter deck that uses the big demon that makes opponents spells cost more. That has been the only whacky thing that's worked and it's basically a bad deck that's a tech choice instead of something I actually want to play. Sucks. I wanted to play control priest bad!
I broadly agree. Aggro wins because the old "Control beats aggro beats combo beats control" triangle is completely out of whack. I also find the Warlock quest incredibly frustrating and boring to play against. The fact that fatigue is the win condition is the most awful, counterintuitive piece of design I have ever seen: I've mostly played Quest Hunter as my counter rather than the full on Face variants, but it's just not enjoyable. I'm just throwing spells and Hero power at face as if I was a mage player until I can pull the old Shadowpriest trick. I can't help but feel that the entire questline cycle is a failure. It's a shame.
100%.These new quests are extremely lame. Way too easy to complete with a much too powerful payoff. Remember ungoro quests? It actually took effort to complete them lol
@@SkraxsChannel not true at all. Paladin was bad. Warlock was too. Hunter as well. Other than that they all saw play. 2/3 were viable. The others were playable just not great. Just because something isn't on the tier list doesn't mean it can't be fine. It's about deck building and targeting the meta. Kibler should have taught you that.
@@trompell0I think it's also a problem when a "deck-centerpiece"-type card like a Quest or Questline, specifically, becomes too powerful. It's one thing when cards that are useable in a variety of decks are good (like Arcane Intellect, say, or good Neutrals); but with cards like Quests, you don't have a huge versatility in building your deck. So as a result, every game featuring a Quest is going to feel same-y. Obviously it kind of depends on the Quest and the direction it gives you (so like, Priest is pretty open-ended, and Mage technically offers some amount of flexibility in deck-building), but at the end of the day there's generally only one great method to complete something like a Questline, so any deck involving a Questline will end up looking (and playing) one-note. I feel this was an issue with something like Baku and Genn, too, and not just their power level: it's a little ironic, but the interesting part of these cards (the "deck building challenge" aspect) quickly becomes extremely stale because you sacrifice versatile deckbuilding for one powerful schematic.
@@badwulff thing is also, especially in Mage that carddraw is so utterly abundant. An individual card holds zero value, so all that matters is its type to complete the quest and how much it costs to play. Mage is basically running 15 no value cards, 10 draw/discover cards and 5 cards they actually want to play for what the card does.
What do you think about the amount of card draw present in standard? I've always thought that pushing inexpensive ways to generate "selfish" card advantage (i.e. cards that generate resources independently as opposed to trading well with the opponent's) was a significant factor in making the metagame very stale. Most decks can play fast and loose with their cards (like aggro or faster decks) and then regain any lost card advantage at very little cost to tempo.
This is exactly why I'm more partial to LoR nowadays (still play HS tho), because of its focus on trading and interactive blocking rather than single turn kills.
I completely agree that card draw (especially cheap card draw) is a HUGE problem. The "value" of a card used to be high (midrane/aggro would "run out of fuel"). Nowadays we have so many draw/generation effects on CHEAP minions that this aspect of HS has been disregarded. Draw/card generation should really be reserved for 4+ mana. This allows for mid-range to compete with aggro (having more value - at the cost of card cost)
This is actually the biggest problem in hs nowadays. Both in standard and wild. I messed around in wild with ConjurersMage and I was able to often play Gnoll for 1 mana and conjure him on turn 4... sometimes even playing some kind of minion (not strong though) every turn! How the hell you can play cards from hand on turn 1-2-3 and increase your hand size on avg. by 2 every turn? Yes, deck was build this way but it is still bulshit. And there is also plenty of one-man-army card draws that doesn't involve close to any setup or heavy deck restrictions which just give you resources for close to no mana investment. Passage for example or hand of Guldan with 4 mana 5-5 rush without downside in standard. These card draw mechanics make all combo so bulshit.
Dear Kibler, I stopped playing HS long time ago but i am watching you daily since you're the most chill and positive streamer that I have ever watched. I hope that never changes. 😊
I agree with this take. It's crazy how much the metagame changed from fitb. Rush warrior was one of the best decks in the meta not too long ago and now it's nowhere to be seen on ladder. That deck was literally designed around controlling the board.
This would probably offend many people but this is why I enjoyed playing the odd paladin meta. Everyone was playing it, it was all about making better choices than your opponent.
But you didn't like the Priest meta? I played the peak of HS control meta in 2019 when control warrior with Dr Boom hero card was the best deck. Games were incredibly long, grindy and boring. I also don't like this solitaire meta. IMO the best metas were Old Gods, Ungoro and Uldum where it felt like getting marginal value out of cards could be impactful, there wasn't too much random generation and there was generally a variety of deck archetypes. Am I just looking back with nostalgia? Is there a perfect way to design a meta? I really don't know tbh.
Thank you so much for accurately breaking down how so much of us have been feeling. Especially highlighting that aggro isn't the meta because it's stronger than control or 'the best' but because the high percentage of combo stops control being possible. I'm still playing a variety of midrange and control but limited to 5k legend and insta losses. Even lost to mage after eating the quest reward with Mutanus. Fingers crossed for major/appropriate changes. Thanks again, love the content
I was actually curious about Kiblerino's take on this. Did not disappoint! HS scene often has an unhealthy culture of calling every single meta "the worst ever", but this is the first time in my playing career that I actually feel that way.
I think a good way to encourage mutanus eating quest rewards is to make it so the quest can’t be competed on the same turn you can play the reward, and this already exists in priest’s quest. You can’t play an 8/7 cost card the same turn as a Xyrella. Something similar could be said for demon hunter, as all of your mana is spent drawing cards instead of the quest reward, sometimes .
The problem with something like this is now everyone just techs that card and now no one plays combo anymore. It solves that problem but creates another equal problem. I'm honestly not really sure how to fix it within the constraints of how HS is designed, but they need a fundamental re-think about combos and ways in which cards in the game can interact with each other without completely breaking one side or the other.
you can technically play the priest reward on the same if you play Ghuun and draw a 7 cost and play it the following turn to complete the quest but that's RNG based
I feel like changing how questlines work is like changing how companion works: an awful idea, an admission of failure from the design team, and also the only thing drastic enough to try to fix things
The problematic questlines are too easy to complete imo. All of them should be more like the Priest questline which can be completed at earliest by turn 8. Or like Demon Hunter - if Mage had to cast all 3 spells in a single turn or Warlock had to do all the damage in a single turn they might be better balanced.
yeah you know if theres one thing i i wish its that the mage and warlock quests felt even less like a progression over the course of the games and were instead just big, sudden swings more than they already are
This problem is exacerbated in wild with warlock and Hunter completing their quests on turn 3 or 4 and playing the reward on curve, so I completely agree they need to be slowed down
Quest warlock runs 5 different ways to cheat mana and ideally tries to draw and cast its entire deck in a single turn. I haven’t played quest mage myself but they seem to have some similar play patterns with Incanter’s Flow + Refreshing Spring Water. I don’t think your proposed nerf would do much.
I especially love how 90+ % of the achievements for UiS require you to play decks that are completely unviable and how by far most legendary minions from the expansion are utterly useless. Not everything has to be useful, but this meta is so extremely one-sided in its tilt towards fast games that it feels like playing a different game. Longer games with important decision-making are gone, everything is a race and almost all contemplation is removed. I won't say it's bad, it's just really not for me.
Never had such a little amount of fun. I’m just watching my opponents play. They either go giga aggro or combo. As someone trying to make quest priest work let me tell you I’m not having fun
I mean if quest priest ever takes off, that is the least stoppable mechanic. You cant complain about decks trying to kill you with a unstoppable combo because you fail to do yours.
@@Smilinturd but quest priest is the only deck vulnerable to anti-combo tech cards since you can’t play the quest reward at the same turn so your opponent can just mutent’s it
@@Smilinturd Quest priest is the only quest deck that actually has massive counterplay with mutanus. Also the spell costs 10, so you can't proc a counterspell effect before using it. You also can't use it if the opponent has more than 2 iq and keeps his cult neophytes for it. So no, there's nothing "unstoppable" with quest Priest. And it's by far the hardest quest to complete.
@@gordonlove5121 sounds like you'd be better off just playing control priest without the quest then? I don't understand why you would build your deck around such a bad card. You want to play control priest? there are better ways to do it, don't follow blizzard's awful "deck recipe" attempt of a priest questline that baits you into thinking it's a build around but it's actually just a trap.
Great video. I just think this set highlights the glaring weakness in HS of not being able to interact with your opponent on their turn. Maybe better disruptive Dirty Rat type cards should be created more often.
Worst even, they only look at the "free" data from HSreplay which is meaningless. Diamond 5 to 1 is actually the relevant data alongside high legend as a control.
Thank you for speaking up and articulated nicely on the current meta condition! I've experienced the gameplay of some meta decks, and particularly, the quest warlock deck. Initially, it is a cool mechanic in both the questline and the reward. However, with the fact that the quest completion is pretty fast and easy enough to get a game-changing reward, that seems pretty unfair if I were my opponent. Winning matches with such decks left me very unsatisfied, because of such low interactivity. I still couldn't believe how Hearthstone has reached to a point where simple and one-sided decisions decide the matches while previously, decision-making becomes the dominant part of your winning condition.
Blizzard basically went «look, we don’t want Priest winning at 10 mana to be a problem. Let’s just make sure that every single game ends way, way before turn 10.» There are so many cool deck _possibilities_ in this expansion that I should love it, but I just don’t - because if you want to win, you gotta play aggro decks. And I don’t enjoy that.
It was never going to be a problem. It was SO obvious that quest priest would suck. I honestly don't even know why people thought quest priest would be a problem in this day and age where aggro kills you by turn 7 or 8.
@@MerryGamer Quest Priest: Step 1: play a 2, 3, and 4 cost card. (Discover a card from your deck) Step 2: play a 5 and 6 cost card. (Discover a card from your deck) Step 3: play a 7 and 8 cost card. (Get Xyrella, the Sanctified) Step 4: play Xyrella (5 mana 7/7 Taunt, Battlecry: Shuffle the Purified Shard into your deck.) Step 5: play Purified Shard (10 mana spell) and win.
@@ヴァイス-m2p The only way Quest priest would be a problem was if we were in a very grindy control meta... which we won't be, cause the combo decks just make those decks obsolete.
It's mind boggling that the devs still can't balance cards in Hearthstone or see obvious design flaws. The current state of the game literally makes cards/decks unplayable. Darkglare - Gain one mana the first time your hero takes damage this turn Stealer of Souls - The first card your draw this turn costs Health instead of mana Incanter's Flow - Reduce the cost of spells in your deck by (1) but not less than (1) Refreshing Spring Water - Draw 2 cards, if they are both spells reduce the cost by 2. Remove Warlock and Mages ability to negate fatigue damage, how did this bullshit get pass testing? Did they not learn from Jade Idols? Even if the quests are nerfed or reworked, how does control stand a chance against "infinite" damage? This expansion has been one the worst so far, either you're playing a quest and hoping to get your quest wincon active or youre playing aggro and smorcing your opponent. If I wanted to play solitare/Yu-gi-oh, I'd be playing those card games instead of Hearthstone.
DH also needs some sort of nerf as well. OTK DH is harder on control than both Warlock and Mage as they can go off for 100+ on turn 8 regardless of the opposing board state. It's also pretty good against aggro with the ridiculous amount of healing.
"Refreshing Spring Water - Draw 2 cards, if they are both spells reduce the cost by 2." That's fine if it gets moved back to 4 mana. I agree with all the other nerfs.
jade idol was never really a big issue lol. People complained about it because it sounded broken in theory but in reality jade druid was never very good because it was soooo weak early and midgame and took way too long to come online. Sure it beat fatigue decks, but you can't just sac every other matchup to beat fatigue decks which aren't that common anyways lol If you look at the old data, druid was one of the worst classes in the game back when jade idol was in standard. The thing most people don't realize about cards like jade idol is 99% of the time games are decided way before you get to the infinite idols empty deck part of the game.
@@shubhod9569 lol actually i was a control warrior/jade druid player at that time and with jade druid it was really easy to climb the legend ranks. they had wild growth and jade blossom and this sprite minion to get Mana. You could easily survive aggro and beat any other deck after stabilizing. Only counter was skulking Geist, but then also you won 60% of the time because your jades got to 11/11 and nobody could stop it. I needed to run skulking geists in every control warrior deck and it was very very hard to win. Jade druid was a joke.
I never react tot videos, but this one struck home. Nail on the head! Well done, and in a calm manner too, which would have been difficult for me on this topic. Keeping my fingers
I don’t play HS at all, but watch vids from a few youtubers. Really enjoyed your view on the meta game, hope to see more meta summary vids like this in the future.
I have long since stopped playing Hearthstone but I have to say, I never get tired of being validated by it. I remember when it first came out and I found out that you couldn't do anything on your opponents turn, I made a post on the Blizzard forum saying this decision would seriously handicap the design space in such a way that they either can't do combo decks, or combos would completely define metagames anytime they are viable. I've lost count of the number of metagames I have been proven correct. If you want to deal with control decks you MUST allow players to respond to their opponents turn, DURING their opponents turn, or you don't make combo viable. There is no middle ground, there is nothing you can design you fix it, this is your choice, you either permit the opponents turn interaction, or you stop designing combo decks.
Really appreciate the comments. It's frustrating when it feels like a whole swath of decks are just dead on arrival. Previous metas where it was all control often felt just a miserable. I really enjoy the interesting and new mechanics, but would love to see some minor tweaks or a card or two that can interrupt these combos.
Great video! I was wondering if anyone knew if control decks generally costed more dust to create than aggro decks? I know personally for me I like playing longer games and don’t really care about winning as much, but normally when I look up control decks they are upwards of 9,000 dust and I really don’t want to spend that kind of money making the deck. Thanks for the entertainment!
Control Decks are almost always more expensive because you'll have more specific cards (usually Legendary) to react to specific situations from your opponents board. When playing aggro, you're the aggressor, so you usually only run cards that do the one thing you want (hit the face). These cards tend to be less expensive.
It isn't a dust neither control deck problem, there are cheap decks that win by late game that is not control deck also suffers because you straight up dead at turn 6-7 because you can't out heal those infinite damage.
Legendaries tend to be higher in mana cost, which means your curve is higher, which fits control decks more than aggro decks. That's one of the primary reasons.
Also, even though miracle rogue has a ~40% winrate, do you think Auctioneer (especially now with Loan Shark) is also a problem? I feel like if you don’t pressure lethal by turn 7, they’re pretty much guaranteed to kill you on turn 7,8 and that their losses come from forcing them to go for it on turn 6. Also, watching someone play 20+ cards in a turn with all the animations eating into your turn is pretty miserable.
I think being able to discount cards to 0 cost is a problem that turns Auctioneer into a busted card. 0-cost cards have always needed to be checked for power in HS, remember when DQA and Rogue Galakrond were nerfed?
miracle rogue is a combo deck that doesn't start with their combo turn one through a questline. In other words, it is an old school combo deck that actually has to draw well and slowly gather their otk. And it has a 40% winrate. Sounds like you are just biased if you have an issue with it. The issue with questline decks is that they are "guaranteed" to complete their combo early thanks to always having the combo in their opening hand basically. Much less variance. Miracle combo rogue is a fair deck that does not need to be touched.
This expansion is the least fun I've ever had playing Hearthstone. I feel like there's so little counterplay available, both in Standard and Wild. It just feels like there's a lot less player agency. The new Rogue quest is what the questlines SHOULD have been like-- but instead, they made most of them (specifically Mage/Warlock/Hunter/DH) more like the OLD Rogue quest, The Caverns Below, where you just end up feeling hopeless a lot of the time when you play against them.
I disagree with that fully. #1) I refuse to play face decks in order to win against just quest decks because I ain’t that type of player. #2) any deck you play including agro just gets destroyed by quest mage, rogue, Hunter and warlock because a ton on their cards are blatant removal so you can never get board presence! Wanna play orgremancer to counter spells? Nope! Board wipes! Wanna play spice bread baker to out heal mage or rogue? Nope! They will always have the ability to burst you! You have no clue what you are talking about, the first guy has a point and I stand with him
@@jameshampton5774 good for you. your first point agrees with me. your second point contradicts your first. anecdotes about particular cards do not prove any general point. rest of comment immaterial insult/assertion.
I'm gonna go ahead and say that the game would be somewhere around 75% better if Kibler was part of Blizzard's strategy team. Man knows exactly where the problems are and what needs to be fixed. I was really excited for this expansion for the first week, and now that I've realized that I am coherced to play the same decks over and over to stand any chance of climbing, not so much, specially for being more of a control-type player.
Very well said, Kibler! I hope someone someday pinpoints the issue with cards that reduce mana cost, because at this stage it has become utterly ridiculous! How on earth can I predict how much damage my opponent has available next turn or calculate their possible moves, when half of their cards' mana cost is reduced? (e.g. mage, warlock, demon hunter).
I would disagree. For control player in standard there is literally no deck to play with after nerfing Mage. Mage with flow on 2 was bs but it still was partially control deck. However in Wild you can choose between QuestDruid and ConjurersMage. Neither is control, but also neither aggro or pure combo while having really decent WR. Good enough for control player. In standard there is nothing.
Thanks for the video, you really summed up everything i've been feeling with the meta. I've been running a control elwynn boar deck for the shiggles and everything starts coming together around turn 9-10 but i can never get there because i always die on turn 6 lol feels really bad, i just wish there were some hard counters i could include in my deck to counter but i can't find anything impactful enough to delay the game long enough :(
Your comments had me start thinking and I’ve love to hear others thoughts as well. The only quest that sees the least amount of play being the priest quest has to play their reward the next turn. They can’t play a 7/8 mana card then play their Xyrella in one turn like all the other quests can. What i mean is completion and playing of their reward in one turn. I really like the idea that the quest reward has to wait until the next turn to be gained perhaps you get it put on top of your deck as a reward instead of your hand to slow down the draw of the quests decks too thus slowing down the meta just a bit.
I’m concerned about Iksar’s comment on the lack of interest in promoting the control archetype. If you look at these quests, they reflect that philosophy. Mage and warlock are not aggro quests, but they’re also not really control quests. They’re clearly designed to provide a win condition at a relatively early point in the game. I’m not sure what the devs definition of an unhealthy control deck is, but they clearly need to be slowed down. I wonder if that’s something they’re actually willing to do
Ya, that comment really ticked me off. I would probably be ok with them printing control decks *with win conditions* as Iksar stated, but they haven't provided any viable ones in this meta.
The Warrior and Priest one can be good. Just too slow. So Priest is hopeless, and Warrior has to put so many pirate in that doesn't feel like a Control deck anymore
I played against a garrote rogue deck that smashed me from 30 to 0 health in just one turn - on just six mana. After that I was fkn done and went back to BG's (Which I actually enjoy! :))
This is the best description of the problem I've seen. I don't think blizzard understands what a control deck is, or how to allow it a place in the metagame.
Thanks for sharing such calm and well-thought opinions on the meta! I agree with everything I heard. Wise to point out the difference between win rate and popularity.
Another problem that is pushing control even more to the ground is that minions (expecially 1 and 2 drops) have become way more aggressively statted, so you can't remove them efficiently or without taking tons of damage early on.
Mana cheat is one of the biggest problems in HS imo. When you can draw/play your deck in one turn instead of being hindered my mana cost it creates the situation you've described.
@@kevinrineer5356 Right, having some card draw options isn't a bad thing, but when every one of the problem decks can just cycle through their cards it all just feels like you're dying to the same thing with minor animation differences.
I personally think there needs to be a combo breaker added to the base set, something like a 2 mana 2/3 with a text somewhere close to: transform a card in each players hand into one that costs 1 more. Something that specifically targets a certain play style that isn’t a hard counter but is flexible enough that it can fit into Argo or Control.
@@tikussnorlax3544 i get that, its mentioned in the video, i just want something cheap and neutral that can also hit spells and to balance it make it affect both like savoury and demonic project
As a magic player, it's funny to me that hearthstone inverts the triangle. Magic is (broadly) combo > aggro > control > combo - combo can outrace aggro because it's faster than putting together a lethal board especially against a few control pieces, aggro can beat down control before it can stabilize, and control can answer combos crucial pieces to disarm them. But in hearthstone, combos are generally slower but also almost impossible to interact with, so combos die to aggro but destroy control, leaving control in an awkward spot where it has to beat aggro, a difficult feat in itself, and then accept a terrible winrate against combo. With those parameters, it's a lot harder for control to have a chance unless they have incredible tools a la control priest in the previous meta.
I really enjoy building control decks that beat aggro. It's always an interesting trade off, how far do you go with anti-aggro so that you can still beat other control decks.
Stealer of Souls is just echoing the problem started by soccer's apprentice. Cards that have ongoing effects need limits. Take Pint-sized summoner, that says the first minion you play gets -1 cost. I think that needs to be applied to others and leave stronger persistent effects for later game like Thaurissan. By that time in the game people can deal with the board better. Stealer would still be dangerous if he only worked on the first card you draw each turn, it still needs to be killed but it wouldn't be just game ending the turn it comes down.
The amount of times I've conceded because I can't immediately answer a stealer of souls is too high. They basically auto win even if you do manage to kill it. Especially if you don't manage to :P
@@trompell0 that's what I'm saying. It needs to have a limited effect. First card drawn each turn, or battlecry: next card you draw and not a persistent every card.
Someone somewhere at some point knew about this problem, which is why Summoning Portal says "But not less than 1" and has never caused a problem in Hearthstone's history, while it could have absolutely broken the game if that provision were to be removed. That person was apparently immediately fired because they have stupidly not put that limitation on the other infinite discount cards.
@@Thanatos2k I'm not that cynical. It's just general power level of the game has gone up. Pint-sized Summoner was never used, portal only a bit more. So I can see how, when making similar effects, they would remove limits. The problem comes with them being so early game and nonlegendary makes their effects devastating early while being consistently drawn. Designing card games isn't easy, I've followed mtg for years. Luckily hearthstone has the luxury of editing out mistakes. I think these kind of effects have proven too strong early without limits. I'm hoping this makes them reevaluate some cards going forward.
@@ravenssorrow The other thing is that you have an inherent limit on the number of minions you can play in a turn thanks to board size. No such limit exists with spells, to the great detriment in a game in which you can't do anything on your opponent's turn.
Dude... I played ton of games with Malygos Druid. I think I played every version of it (also with Rogue I had fun). And for every play you had to think REALLY carefully. It was not : "get that reward as fast as you can, no matter what you play, you can even waste cards it doesn't matter, you can draw and generate a ton of cards who cares".
Its a horrible meta, its the closest ive been to quitting HS and i have played since the start. Waiting to see what changes are coming. Such a shame so many new cards etc can't even see play.
If you hate it play ConjurersMage in wild with giants and gnolls. It's fun and broken enough to climb legend with. From viable t1. and t.2 decks in both modes I would say with clear concious that it is the most fun one. I couldn't stand standard as well.
I think OTK warrior is a really cool OTK deck. It doesn't only have a clear win condition for the warrior (get +30 armor, silas, shield slam and ashtongue) but also gives the opponent an INTERACTIVE way to constantly engage and counter the opponent's win condition (keep chipping away the armor, don't let it get into lethal range, make sure they burn their shield slams, etc.)
Come on guys, the problem isn’t that Kibler doesn’t like a “combo” meta. The issue is that this meta has _already_ adapted to the combo decks and they’re _still_ some of the most played decks and are maintaining decent win rates. When everyone who isn’t playing your combo deck is building their deck to kill your deck, a 49.87% win rate (Quest Mage at 1:10) is ABSURD. Correction: I went and checked HSreplay and quest mage is currently at 55% and Quest face warlock is at 53.8%. I don’t have premium though so those numbers may be off
Besides rougue, mage, demon hunter I’m happy haha honestly haven’t had more fun in hearthstone in a while but the burn decks are on the level of wild, listening to you explain your take it reminds me of wild, you either fast or fast, on board or in hand
Your "solution" to questlines getting the reward next turn is amazing. Not only is thematic, it would give a chance of interaction. The more I think about it the more I like it, but this should be implemented with some aggro decks nerfs or combo decks are finnished.
This effects the good ones that can play a reactive game less than the bad ones that need to play tempo. It effects them all but if the hunter quest, for example, can't chip you with a spell and get/play Tavish the same turn and has to wait a full extra turn, it's just 400 dust at that point. This applies to Shaman, Druid, Warrior and paladin too; all the "bad" ones. You'd have to buff the bad ones aside to that; or just nerf the good quests/cards. This change alone just makes Warlock and Mage even more susceptible to aggro and only a little worse vs control.
For Warlock quest i think the best way to balance or would be to NOT prevent the damage the Warlock takes, this still plays well into the "link to" theme while not being an auto win against decks that want to go late game, also not progressing the quest for damage on ARMOR could help a lot
Quest druid was great against many of the face decks, and one might even call it a face deck itself, but there is no reason to play it when you run into so many paladins and taunt minions.
The combo vs. aggro vs. control issue feels like a game of Rock Paper Scissors, but instead of the 3 options showing up roughly 1/3 of the time, it's 35% rock (combo), 55% scissors (aggro), and 10% paper (control); hard to make paper work in this.
Final thought give Rogue a secret that does the following; “If your opponent has played 4 cards in a turn, start the timer”, that would actually deal with some of the combo decks on their own turn and create a counter to insane turns where someone plays 12-20 cards and kills you.
Just wanna give my 2 cents: Warlock: Stealer of Souls to the first card each turn AND Raise Dead to 1-mana. Mage: IF to reduce only arcane spells in both deck and hand (can't cost below 1) and add a random arcane spell to your hand AND I'd nerf the quest to +2 spell damage. Hunter: Kolkar Pack Runner to 3-mana 3/4 AND Warsong Wrangler to +1/+1 Shaman: Cagematch Custodian to 1/2 AND Stormstrike to +2 attack Paladin: Alliance Bannerman to draw any card (instead of a minion) AND Prismatic Jewel Kit by fixing the devolve/divine shield interaction AND increase Battleguard's manacost by 1 AND POSSIBLY Conviction to +2 attack. Rogue: Bleeds unnafected by +spell damage. DH: Il'Gynoth only deals damage if you restore health (I've been hating this card for almost a year now). As Kibler suggested I would too rework the questline mechanic. Instead of his suggestion of giving the reward at the end of the turn I'd give it right away but freeze the quest until the next turn. Another more radical change would be to make all the quests requirements need to be completed in one turn, like the Demon Hunter one (with proper rebalancing, specially the priest one that would need to be reworked like play a 1 and 2-cost card in a turn, then a 2 and a 3 and finally a 3 and a 4 for example), but I doubt they'd go that far. As a control player I'm having a hard time finding the fun in the game, it's like everybody is playing one of my most hated deck of all time, Caverns Below Rogue. Control and late midrange decks can be fun, they don't need to be infinite stalling like Freeze Mage or Odd Warrior or Infinite Bullshit Priest.
I fully agree with this, and this is also a large problem in wild. With the far greater amount of tools in wild, these decks are even more awful to deal with. It went from seeing fun, unique builds to basically seeing scarier standard. It’s not fun.
In reference to your delayed reward comment - I don't think the reward should be delayed, but the quest flipping should be delayed until end of turn. Being able to complete multiple tiers of the quest track is more of a problem to me then getting the reward. By not allowing a deck to start on the next part of their quest until the following turn slows these decks down, but doesn't ruin proper timing of a reward going off.
Spot on. I love playing midrange or more control type of decks. Two third of my ranked game (wild AND standard) end up against the new quest combos, and logical consequence, I don't have fun in this expansion. It's the worst expansion for me as even during the first couple of days of experimentation, the experience was terrible.
This was a great video!! I think the fact that all quests start in your hand is the fundamental problem of the current and even previous metas we're quests were available. I think quests shouldn't start in your hand, maybe add cards that will draw the quest and or being able to complete the quest even if you haven't played it yet .
For me the most frustating thing is the insane card draw effects that these combo decks have, I mean being able to draw their entire deck before turn 8 or 7 with little chance of their opponent react or ruin their strategy is completely broken, at least in the past we used to have cards like bad luck albatross which was specific designed to counter these combo decks.
I feel like the egregious balance problem is, well, kind of every card in Hearthstone. The power level inflation over the past few years has seemed really extreme to me. That power level kinda killed off anything homebrew or oddball which isn't razor-honed. Meanwhile, the high power level seems like it's made it nearly impossible for Blizzard to maintain a balanced meta. Feels like ages. In times past, yeah, there were strong cards and strong decks. But they also seemed fixable. All just seems like a losing battle to me.
Stealer of souls is poster child for power creep. One card breaks the entire game. But yes I love your line about razor honed. Even memes have to be super competitive haha.
It might be too late for this year, but I'd nerf card draw. If aggro decks could run out of cards in hand, and quest mage/warlocks couldn't reach the end of their decks so quick, this problem might fix itself for the most part. Then just nerf Illgynoth, and let DH be the draw class I guess. Just think about Shaman before dungeoneer and how much it'd slow the game down if every class was like that.
I am a lifelong control Priest player, and yes this meta force me to play shadow priest instead which I don't really enjoy, but I actually appreciate that at least there is no more 30 minutes control mirror match thats decided by fatigue. I agree that the main problem with the meta is how easy quest to be completed for some class. Kibler made a really good suggestion to change how the quest work by giving quest reward AT THE END of each turn instead of instantly. Its simple and elegant change to the quest system that at least give control deck a chance.
totally valid points, everyone has their preferred playstyle. I gotta say though, after what felt like a million years of ridiculous control priests decks, i'm super grateful for the reprieve right now. :P
The problem is that there is very little interactivety with enemy spells bar secrets. We need specific spell interaction so that we can duel our opponents gameplan outside of mage. We have weapon removal, secret interaction, silence for powerful minion texts, we need this for spells too.
I think that card draw is the main problem. There are many decks that can draw and play the whole deck in 7-8 turns which is about 4 cards a turn. It's so dumb in compare to sprint which is a 6 mana card.
I've been wondering your thoughts on this new meta for a long time and I really appreciate this video. I pitched something similar to my friends on a fix: the questline doesn't start the next quest automatically but rather adds it to your hand. This increases the quest completion by 2 mana and potentially provides more ways to interact with the quest to interrupt. Control is my favorite archetype and I'm saddened to see it not find a true place in this meta.
Makes the bad ones way too slow. Quest hunter for example, as it currently stands it's bad in standard and hunter's only semi-viable deck in wild; It's jsut 400 dust if you do this. And this doesn't really touch the oppressive ones, the ones that don't always squeeze every last mana every turn and will happily play a reactive game; where as the midrange-y ones do. There needs to be another way; or you just straight up nerf the good ones.
i was thinking a good mechanic would be something called spell armor, that stops any damage not from a minion (or weapon maybe), so if youre killing your opponents with minions it wouldnt effect you really, but it could let you survive against from hand or over the top damage , so you can make it to turn 10,
Legends of Runeterra uses spell shield and it is nice, I think it’s a fantastic mechanic if not over used, and would be nice in hearthstone to some extant, it would need to be balanced around not being able to react on your opponents turn
Thanks for the very well thought out problems and suggestions you see with the current meta. I think I pretty much agree with all your points, seems like a hard problem to solve. Hearthstone really just needs better ways to interact with and disrupt combos IMO
So here are some of my ideas on how to solve this meta: 1. Accept that Hearthstone got powercrept to a point where too much burst is possible compared to how much hp heroes have - Raise the starting hp of heroes to 40, maybe even 45. 2. Hit all currently oppressive cards, i think the list would be LOONG though. 3. Add Dirty Rat or a similar new card to the current standard rotation, giving early disruption to all classes. 4. Up the numbers on all armor and healing cards - With burst getting comparitivly more useful with a bunch of utility in terms of discovers and stuff, you could just buff all defensive cards in response. Heavy Plate gives 10 armor, Ice block too, Flash heal restores 8 and Truesilver champion 4. Out of all of these i like the first the most, maybe in combination with the last. Aggro just has so much reach, and some otks are still going to work, but going 45 health and 20 Armor by turn 8 might make a warrior survive against a garrot rogue.
I think one of the offenders Quest Warlock wise is the fact that they get to ignore the fatigue mechanic and use it as an infinite damage option, so maybe limit the inflict damage to opponent from cards only so the entire thing won't feel extra cheesed.
I am a long-term control player. I played control Warlock last season all the way until I got to legend, then I tried a bunch of non-meta stuff. When I lost I would think about what I could have done to win that last game. I enjoyed that kind of retrospection a lot. Nowadays the only kind of retrospection I can do is "why I failed to kill them by turn X". On average X is 6 or 7.
I played a game against Quest Mage, and I used Mindrender Ilucia to steal their quest reward, but it turns out you don’t even need that +3 spell damage when you have infinite damage ignites
Increase the mana of the final reward card to more than 5. This will restrict how fast they can end the game. Something like 8 or 9 mana Tamsin or Dawnwisp. Maybe then control decks can compete as they start to drop their top end win conditions on board. Also it'll be easier to hit the 7-mana Mutanus to control the combo decks.
Obviously they should have cost different amounts. The Primes cost different amounts, because they have different strengths. Why the hell don't these quest rewards?
As someone who passionately hates playing against combo decks I sidestepped this metagame issue by not playing standard but mostly battlegrounds and heroic duels. The Warlock Quest and the Mage Quest are actually quite fun in Duels, and not at all broken.
