(Hearthstone) United in Combo - Thoughts on the Standard Metagame
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- Опубликовано: 12 авг 2021
- Kibler discusses the current state of Standard in the wake of United in Stormwind's release, and what he thinks are the problems with the metagame and how they might be solved.
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"Play any deck you want, as long as it kills your opponent by turn 6" Thats a great way to sum up this metagame. Great video Kibler!
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.
“You can go any place, as long as it’s face” -Henry Ford probably
Agro meta is fun because most people hate playing ladder, agro is quick. and slower decks can be a lot more expensive and anti f2p
Henry SMOrd?
@@MikaelMarius Henry SMOrc'd
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
Yeah yeah "blah blah I hate combo and think it shouldn't exist but i'm not gonna outright say it"
@@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.
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 learnt something in the recent years :
( never trust blizzard's promises)
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.
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.
Catacomb whatever is also really good vs aggro once there are some buffs on it. /side note
@@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.
@@scrotiemcb5858 Okay, all I've seen is it swing games with 6*2 lifesteal and such.
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
or just dropping oh my yogg on turn one and destroying their quest is also fun lol.
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.
Hs is best when the metagame is controlling the board imo
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.
@@wolfgangamadeusmozart3775 odd paladin was enjoyable to play against too, I'm speaking for myself obviously
YES
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.
Waited for this video all week long!
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 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.
Larger and larger man!
Mutanus devours Y'Shaarj, and kills itself.
@@Bismark3009 Old Gods are big lads to eat. I know I'd explode if I ate one.
You mean Mill not Mulligan?
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.
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
@@trompell0 ungoro quests were awful. most of them never got off the ground, even on release day.
@@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.
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.
Great talking points. I really enjoy a meta breakdown discussion. You did a great job of articulating my feelings into coherent thoughts.
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.
Yugioh isn't nearly this bad. Most of the best decks interact with the opponent.
@@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.
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.
More pertinent is that your hand size no longer means much, if anything.
@@passerby4507 Except for Quest Warlock because of the card-cost-reduction weapon from drawing cards.
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.
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
Hey Brian, I wish you did more of these videos in the future, not only when meta is completely broken, amazing video!
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
... crossed for more interactivity in the game...
I was saying that this metagame reminded me of OG quest rogue, so seeing you tear into it like you did all those years ago feels pretty good
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.
True!
I still like this much more than the spring meta with the lunacy running rampant.
@@cmxpiipl Tortillat avataan.
@@cmxpiipl agreed LOL lunacy was terrible
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
FYI demon hunter quest can be completed by turn 6 kurtrus played on 7 and u get OTK turn 8 although it is less consistant than warlock and mage
that's a nice and clean solution, m8
maybe the numbers in the warlock quest would require some fine tuning, though (take 6/6/6 damage, perhaps)
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 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
Love your work man. Recently got back into Hearthstone, but always watched your videos.
Maybe should have watched this before returning lol.
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. 😊
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.
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
the dh quest reward isn't actually relevant to the quest dh deck. the quest is just 1 mana reduce the cost of 9 cards by 1
THANK YOU for this - it was such a oppressive feeling to not have a platform to further this message.
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.
This is a fantastic video, and it put my feelings into words I was not able to articulate.
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.
And I think you are right to point out: the ultimate problem symptom is that there are fewer archetypes viable
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?
You see. I’m sure that what you say might be a problem. But- even though I don’t play it- miracle rogue is rad as shit rn and I support it
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.
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 :(
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
At the very least speed up animations. So I don't have to wait 30 seconds after my opponent kills me until my hero explodes XD
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.
But you HATE interaction. Seriously
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.
there's plenty of counterplay you just refuse to use it.
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.
Agree, this is the most trashy meta.
@@gavinthegromit the "counterplay" cost 7 mana, and they play their win condition on turn 5.
Completely agree. You articulated the issues in the current meta perfectly. Hopefully Team 5 sees this and acts upon it.
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
Great thoughts. Agree with you. It’s hard to balance all three interactions (combo, agro and control) but still i want to see it.
losing from a opponent that kills you by turn 6 only from a hand. So fun and interactive
They ARE fun.... when you're the one playing it. Combo decks are always fun for the player but never fun for the opponent.
@@DTDplays Hearthstone, The single player experience
@@kigrovrak1538 this
@@DTDplays There's a reason adventures let you be broken, but standard didn't-
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.
A lot of good points, interested to see what happens
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.
All I ask is to play past turn 5 and not just sit there whilst my opponent plays stuff
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).
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 .
Awesome vid once again bang on. Blizz should hire you!
people really need to actually look at the whole data
most player only look at the tier list with their winrate and thats it
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.
Meta sheep
Kinda crazy that they printed a “win the game on turn 10” card and it’s not the biggest problem in the game. LOL
What card is that exactly?
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.
@@user-gv5ig1vb8w 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.
i hadnt thought of that nerf for felscream blast. that's a really elegant way to deal with OTK DH
I never imagined saying this but arena is actually fun. No aggro and super control
Well said! As a wild player it is even more difficult to play at the moment (or every meta after ashes of outland)
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.
This was BRILLIANT analysis.
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.
Draw has gotten worse too. Remember the days when the devs said "we don't want every class to have powerful draw. Something something class identity"?
@@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’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
iksar was talking about fatigue decks not control in general. He said they want control decks to have win conditions. Which I can get behind imo.
I've not exactly been playing this meta but couldn't you do something like "Quest completed on your turn costs +2 Mana if you play it the same turn"? Like don't make it impossible for the combo to take place but have it be slightly later in the game?
Great analysis!!
The "combo winter" reference got me really good.
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.
@@Bladius_ Totally agree. For a legendary it needs to be impactful, but better balanced.
BRO You are literally saying everything I have been feeling about the meta!
Thanks for making this video
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.
Join us over here in LOR the water is fine
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.
Same, worst f.. meta, its beyond retarded...
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 this very articulate examination of the meta. You mentioned introducing more cards that allow control to interact with combo, similar to MTG, but do you have some examples of what these might look like? I feel like a card like Thoughtseize would be too strong as it would be an auto win in a lot of matchups due to the legendary singleton rule, but maybe cards like Trinisphere or Hushbringer? I think another big issue is that while in Magic you can hide your stax in a variety of ways to reduce the ease of removal, in hearthstone, your minions are always targetable and the choice of blockers lies in the aggressor which means getting that stax piece to live for a turn is much less likely. What are your thoughts on this?
Hearthstone already has printed some well designed disruption cards in the past. Look at stuff like Dirty Rat and Loatheb. It's just that most are in wild now.
I got an idea. Hearthstone needs neutral secrets or sigils. Secrets that cost varrying amouts of mana and do different things. Make a counterspell that only counters something 5 or more. A secret that ends the turn if either player plays 4 cards so you cant abuse it. A secret that negates the battlecry of the next minion, one that only counters a spell that targets you specifically. A secret that gives you life if some condition is met. All these neutral secets could either have tradeable or be choose ones with multiple variants of a secret that cost different mana for better versions of an effect or the same cost but different effects. Enchantments kinda exist in the game and i think you could make more of em but make them removable an have static effects. Like the quests that take up a board slot for an effect but make them maybe totems that cant attack or be targeted and have a health pool or like dormant stuff that works for 3 turns then goes away. Minions could have effects that trigger if you have excess mana at end of turn so they could scale say a 3 mana 2 2 that uses one of your mana to make spells your opponent casts cost 1 more for each mana it spends. Finally id like too see a mechanic like kicker from mtg you could make choose one and maybe overload go into more classes and even neutral. You could play a minion for more mana to get a better battlecry or a situational one that lets you interact with combo decks or protect from aggro.
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.
For the quests, would adding the next part of the quest to your hand and having it cost 1 be a good idea? Instead of moving to the next part for free, it would slow those decks down enough to interact against them more
There are lots of potential ways. Question we should ask is why they printed blatantly broken and overpowered quests?
Wonder if each quest step had to be re-played as a 1 mana card if that would be enough to slow down the quests a bit without completely nerfing them. Thematically could act as turning the quest in or something.
yo what if the rewards cost 9 or 10 mana? so even if they finish quest by turn 4 or 5 they cant play it?
With the way that Kibler analyzes cards and game flow, I'm betting he would be good at something like Magic the Gathering!
🤔🤔🤔
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.
Thirty life does feel super tiny these days. Unless you're a quest warlock who deliberately takes as much damage as possible haha. Laaaaame.
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
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
Don’t you think that nerfing combo decks will just leave place only to Aggro deck ? In the last meta, there was only aggro deck and controls decks couldn’t do anything against it. Will control deck be better now with some nerfs on combo deck ?
Great analysis
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.
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
@Brian, how about nerf Incanter's Flow so it would reduce only the first N cards in your deck? 5? 10?
The video I was waiting for
this is the first time in hs history when the 99% of combo decks can beat you below turn 10
do you think the meta is pretty much settled at this point? could with time reduce in combo due to the effectiveness of the aggro decks but i have no idea how these work. Doesn't really matter since there's confirmed nerfs coming so we'll see what happens after those I suppose-
I love combo decks, but holy cow the speed of which these decks can win is just too fast, need to be slowed down a lot.
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".
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.
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.)
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.
Mutanus exists. Also savoury deviant delight in rogue.
@@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
I totally agree. As a control player, the current meta is very frustrating right now and I dont have fun playing with those combo quest decks.
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! :))
great video!
I’ve always thought that quest lines were too contrived and ultimately just a really bad gimmick, the priest one especially.
This so much. These are the words I wanted. Like whats the point of Warrior and it's armor power thus gravitating it to a slower, more controlling style when they've stated they want to go away from that?
Awesome video !
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
What if they made it so you couldn't finish/advance multiple steps of a quest in one turn? What if when you finished a part of a questline, the quest would turn off, so anything you do after that tick of the quest doesn't count towards it until your next turn? I think paired with the final rewards being added to your hand at the end of the turn would allow for more counterplay, as well as make adavncing your quest require more thought and calculation. It may be a little too much and totally make quests unplayable, but may be worth a try.
This is the worst metagame in the history of Hearthstone, no joke.
And people were clowning on barrens being terrible during the stormwind card reveals. Hindsight much?
It’s really not, whilst it’s not great there we’re definitely worse, less interactive metas, such as when it was literally 100% shaman.
Having lived through so many bad metas in Hearthstone, this is just the most annoying one. Frustrating for certain.
Well that’s your opinion. I think it’s the Best metagame in history of Hearthstone! Different people like different stuff.
It reminds me of the days of Undertaker Hunter, but even that wasn't wasn't death by turn 6.
Really got to the heart of the issue!
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.
Solid analysis
Great game theory analysis, it's very much a combo winter
Facts, Mr. Kibler.
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.
do you remember Doctor Boom for 7 mana? it was too strong right ? where are counters now?
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.