Gadgetzan has been out for awhile, whats your opinion?

[TheBeninator 3]

So the latest expansion, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, has been out for more than a month now, and I was curious what everyone´s opinion on it was. Personally, I love the set. It adds more synergy with types of cards that weren´t as popular beforehand. For example, sets like secret mage, demon warlock, taunt warrior, and beast druid/hunter, have all gotten big buffs and can be viable in the meta. I got rank 13 with secret mage and taunt warrior alone, and hope to get to legend with them. What about you?

[positiv2 953]

I believe that this expansion has been the most aggro one yet. The meta is as fast as it has ever been. Next cycle will see a lot of anti-aggro tools gone, like Justicar Trueheart or Revenge, which will even make it worse. 
Each expansion since LoE we receive a new strong 1-drop, or possibly even more. Sadly, this expansion has not been an exception with Patches the Pirate and Small-Time Buccaneer. This is not healthy for the game. 
This expansion also killed my favourite archetype - C'Thun decks. They are too slow to deal efficiently with aggro and they cannot compete against jade decks if they don't draw C'Thun early.

So, all in all, I dislike this expansion and I hope to see a the next cycle to slow down and bring strong(-ish) anti-aggro cards.

[TheBeninator 3]

1 hour ago, positiv2 said:

I believe that this expansion has been the most aggro one yet. The meta is as fast as it has ever been. Next cycle will see a lot of anti-aggro tools gone, like Justicar Trueheart or Revenge, which will even make it worse. 
Each expansion since LoE we receive a new strong 1-drop, or possibly even more. Sadly, this expansion has not been an exception with Patches the Pirate and Small-Time Buccaneer. This is not healthy for the game. 
This expansion also killed my favourite archetype - C'Thun decks. They are too slow to deal efficiently with aggro and they cannot compete against jade decks if they don't draw C'Thun early.

So, all in all, I dislike this expansion and I hope to see a the next cycle to slow down and bring strong(-ish) anti-aggro cards.

I also dislike the amount of aggro, and itĺl only get worse until the next expansion (hopefully). But I like to experiment with all different styles of decks and look at it from a less competitive standpoint. But I see how this could be extremely aggravating for competitive players.

[VaraTreledees 138]

To be honest, this expansion has been terrible.  The power level of constructed decks are so great right now that you need to be playing full budget decks as early as rank 20 to be competitive, either that or have a very strong grasp of how to play this game.  The meta is polarized between patches and kazzakus, *almost* nothing else is even close to competitive.  The pirate/weapon package has completely pushed out every mid range deck except dragon priest, hunter is laughably bad and paladin is not far behind.  The jade package, and jade druid in particular is hilariously poorly designed.  Jade druid has basically doomed any slower control deck to obscurity because of the sheer amount of inevitability it has, this problem isn't as prevalent right now because aggro has pushed them so far out of the meta but if they end up nerfing small time buccaneer, which there Q&A recently sort of hinted at so I strongly suspect they might, jade druid will probably become a dominate force in the game; I personally don't think that it is good design to have a deck that is both strong and so completely counters an entire archtype to the point that player skill is almost irrelevant in the match.  To put it another way, the rock-paper-scissors of jade vs control is a match so slanted in jades favor that you will probably save more time by conceding vs jade druid and moving on then playing out the match, skill is almost irrelevant in the match, much like control warrior vs freeze mage.  The absolute worst part of this meta is it feels like there are very very few *good* games.  Most games are so far one sided that it feels very bad to win/lose them.  Reno lock pushes giant > shambler on turn 4 and 5, you have no answer GG.  It isn't just reno lock either, I can't count the number of times a turn 1 coined doomsayer gets answered, how is it fair that pirate warriors and shamans can EASILY deal 7 damage on turn 2?  The meta has been more un-interactive then it has been in the year and a half that I have played which just leads to the majority of games being boring and uninteresting.  Even some of the more interactive matches just feel bad to lose, I am counting the days until brann rotates out, I want to break my keyboard every time I see a brann > historian > drakanoid OP.  OP is so god damn strong that every time I see it I want to concede the game, like the power level of that card alone is what is carrying dragon priest, it is the ONLY reason why a mid range deck exists in this meta because drakanoid OP is one of, if not the strongest card printed in the last couple years.  I mean you can argue that kazzakus has a stronger effect or challenger had a larger game impact, which is true, but part of the reason that challenger had a larger game impact is that paladin was a much stronger base class, with the best 1-8 mana drops available to it in the game, and kazzakus is limited to only one in your deck, on top of it limiting every other card in your deck to one, which makes it somewhat weaker as an option in my opinion.

Edited January 17, 2017 by VaraTreledees

[Paracel 165]

11 hours ago, TheBeninator said:

So the latest expansion, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, has been out for more than a month now, and I was curious what everyone´s opinion on it was. Personally, I love the set. It adds more synergy with types of cards that weren´t as popular beforehand. For example, sets like secret mage, demon warlock, taunt warrior, and beast druid/hunter, have all gotten big buffs and can be viable in the meta.

Good. Luck.

Seriously, though, I think Mean Streets turned out to be not bad, but definetly worse that I expected. Power creep is very high, and there are some fairly obvious design and economical mistakes in the set, but overall it revitalized Standard enough to call it a relative success. Two classes and meme decks, however, are more dead now than ever. 

I would say MSoG definetly better than TGT, but still worse that WotOG, and, off GvG. However, there was a different context for WotOG, and I'm not sure if it wins in card-by card comparison. 

10 hours ago, positiv2 said:

I believe that this expansion has been the most aggro one yet. The meta is as fast as it has ever been. Next cycle will see a lot of anti-aggro tools gone, like Justicar Trueheart or Revenge, which will even make it worse. 
Each expansion since LoE we receive a new strong 1-drop, or possibly even more. Sadly, this expansion has not been an exception with Patches the Pirate and Small-Time Buccaneer. This is not healthy for the game. 
This expansion also killed my favourite archetype - C'Thun decks. They are too slow to deal efficiently with aggro and they cannot compete against jade decks if they don't draw C'Thun early.

So, all in all, I dislike this expansion and I hope to see a the next cycle to slow down and bring strong(-ish) anti-aggro cards.

I think C'thun was destinies to die to power creep. It was never that great in terms of card power level, and signs of demise were already there with Karazhan.

Your observation of 1-drop printing is an interesting one. I think 1-drops are fairly hard to balance - last time I recall, even Possesed Villager was damn good, and not just on its face but because it contributed consistency through raw count. So maybe you are right, they should just stop printing these. 

And healthy is a strong word and a hot topic. Right now we have a consistent yet dynamic meta, with a lot of viable choices, roles to play, no clear winner and rather skill intensive matchups. The only thing I consider unhealthy now is Miracle Rogue, by the virtue of its good matchup sum and t2/3 wins with EdWin WinCleef.

@VaraTreledees

You voice a lot of concerns, and that's good, but I find a lot of your complaints to be relatively unsupported by facts.

While meta is polarized between Patches and Kazakus, so to speak, this is a feature, not a bug. These two cars are simply two strongest contemporary players, and a force to be reckoned with. However, there is a lot of viability inside these "camps". Reno Mage is not like Reno Warlock and Priest. And Shaman is not the same as Warrior, despite any claims. We have a "healthy" meta.

Midrange is definetly not dead. It's your Sciccors to Rock and Paper. Jade Druid is kicking just as well as the Dragon Priest, and Midrange Shaman is totally playable. Playing Patches in your Midrange suddenly does not make it Aggro.

Jade did not kill Control. Reno is the new Control, and you know, the actual Control Warrior has seen a recent spike in popularity. It's never that lopsided as you think it is, and even the iconic Control Warrior vs Freeze Mage has Mage above zero percent winrate. I've done it myself. There are others factors that keep Jade from being super relevant to the meta, and Aggro is just one of them. If we suddenly see the meta slowing down, Druid will rise, but it can't take over the game, because the game can never be "play 20 turns 100% of your games". 

I should agree that some games feel one-sided, more often than not, but that's just power creep for all of us. You have as many chances to steamroll your opponent as they do, provided you both play decks of the same power level. The most toxic card right now I feel is not really Drakonid Operative, who is just a good fair card, but (surprisingly) Counterfeit Coin, because it powers up Rogue so much a lot of games become removal checks as far as turn 3 goes. There is a lot of difference between a "Pit Fighter, draw a card", turn 5 and "pitch your hand, get a 10/10, draw a Conceal", turn 3, because there are much more tools now to play fair as compared to combatting unfair. They pushed Drakonid hard, but they pushed everything else as well. Enjoy your powerful Standard.

 

[Shine 144]

I think (and this goes or trading card games in general) that there is a good reason for the heavy presence of agro in the last sets.

If you are running into alot of agro decks you can effectively do 2 things, either play agro yourself to try outpace them or switch to some agro counter (usually control) in order to outlive and outvalue them.

At some point alot of people will be doing this so the meta changes to be control heavy.

When running into alot o control decks you can again do two things, either play control yourself to try and outvalue them in the late game or switch to agro to outpace the control decks.

This is a fairly natural state but when you think about it for two seconds it just means that agro will be more dominant overall.

Another thing to add to that is that people tend to try and climb the ladder. When playing with a control deck with 60% winrate this will go very slowly since games can take over 15 minutes (which is alot of time for just 1 or 2 stars) playing an agro deck with 60% winrate will easily play 5 games in the same time. effectively ranking you up quicker.

 

I personally am much more fan of control and I truly hate the agro heavy meta we've seen for the last year or two.

The good part lies in the fact that standard is designed the way it is. even if the next one or more sets will keep the meta steered towards agro, theres bound to be some point where control will completely take over. (Remember OTK Murloc paladin?)

I am currently playing pirate warrior, jade shaman and murloc paladin aswell as reno priest, dragon priest and jade druid. and all of these decks have been very successful in my hands sofar.

Point is, no matter what happens, there will always be agro countering control and the other way around, at least the future is somewhat open to meta shifts.

[VaraTreledees 138]

I agree with you on the counterfeit coin being stupid strong, drakanoid OP just triggers me.  When I first got into this game, dragon priest was a fairly dominant deck and I still have nightmares about it.  It is still a stupid strong card though as well and is one of the reasons why dragon priest is as good as it is.  While I did neglect midrange shaman, it is one of 2 or 3 (if you count jade druid) playable mid range decks, and jade druid is hardly what most people would call "good".  It is playable but struggles so much against aggro that you rarely see it when laddering.  But all three mid range decks are very far on the control end of that spectrum, especially mid range shaman.  When you look at like dragon priest, its match up vs pirate warrior, while not abysmal isn't the best because of how efficiently pirate warrior trades up with its weapons and minions like small time buccaneer.  Dragon priest is sort of the "best" mid range deck that is completely board-centric (in the sense that if it loses the board it basically loses the game and has very little way to wrest tempo back from its opponent once lost), and since even it does somewhat poorly (not terribly but still not amazing, definitely not a tier 1 deck imo) any lesser deck in the same vein, Zoo, mid range paladin etc, is awful.   While yes, I know that reno decks and control decks CAN win against jade druid, it rarely happens.  The match up is very slanted in jade druids favor, as someone who has been playing almost exclusively reno decks for the past month, around rank 5, I can attest to how bad that match up is.  Even worse for control warrior, or really any more traditional control deck.  As for the decks around rank 20, I have seen more then a few people play pretty extensively at these ranks and it is full of meta decks, maybe not 100% full budget ones, but pretty close.  One last though, in general, what are defined as "facts" in hearthstone are largely subjective.  What I mean by this, is that hearthstone lacks an API so all data is inherently unreliable due to the methods used to collect it, mainly user submitted data or data mined from the log files which is against the ToS of HS.  While I am not an amazing hearthstone player, I am an active member of the hearthstone community and I spend quite a bit of time keeping up on the meta and watching high profile streamers, so while my opinion is just that, my opinion, it is a relatively well informed one.

Edited January 18, 2017 by VaraTreledees

[Keizoku 185]

I am a middle man. The decks I enjoy playing are the more midrange/tempo oriented ones, because they are as far as I'm concerned the "correct" way to play a card game; in-between the two extremes of 'dump as much on board as fast as possible' of aggro and the 'don't play anything for as long as possible' of control. Now, MSoG is pretty hard on midrange which makes me consider ignoring the game/only doing daily quests until the rotation/next expansion, because this all-out aggro meta just bores me.

This being said, as I already said before, if I have to pick a cancer between an aggro meta or a control meta; I'll pick aggro. If nothing else, a meta where games are over by turn 6 means the grind is over a lot faster and sooner than a meta where games go to fatigue. 

[Rainbowstar 0]

I enjoy playing Hearthstone at my own pace. Never tried to climb the ladder, never will. There are other things I prefer, like collecting golden cards and build decks. If you want to climb the ladder, be my guest, just look up any agro oriented deck on this website. And here lies the paradox. Hearthstone is a free to play game, the only way for Blizzard to obtain money from this game is by selling packs to the players. What is the point of buying packs to chase legendaries and epics if top decks in game are agro, zoo, 1 mana, 2 mana, shit common card combinations in every meta?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Rainbowstar said:

I enjoy playing Hearthstone at my own pace. Never tried to climb the ladder, never will. There are other things I prefer, like collecting golden cards and build decks. If you want to climb the ladder, be my guest, just look up any agro oriented deck on this website. And here lies the paradox. Hearthstone is a free to play game, the only way for Blizzard to obtain money from this game is by selling packs to the players. What is the point of buying packs to chase legendaries and epics if top decks in game are agro, zoo, 1 mana, 2 mana, shit common card combinations in every meta?

Especially for players who don't invest money (like me) the Ladder seems quite important.

With Rank 5+ you get a golden epic each month, which is worth 400 dust. That is realy important imo, I realized that way too late (just last summer).

I don't like the meta, I prefer midrange games.  (Just like Keizoku).

 

[FanOfValeera 253]

3 minutes ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Especially for players who don't invest money (like me) the Ladder seems quite important.

With Rank 5+ you get a golden epic each month, which is worth 400 dust. That is realy important imo, I realized that way too late (just last summer).

I don't like the meta, I prefer midrange games.  (Just like Keizoku).

 

I love Reno mirrors, whatever the class is, they are not as boring as control warrior mirrors, and pushes players to think, really think, not just play whatever is green at that time. This month, I've played some Reno mirrors, especially when I play RenoLock, I always played against a Reno Mage somehow, and after 3-4 such games, while I play exhausted, I feel great. Those games make want to play more, not brainless pirate warriors. I mean, I understand if developers say not everyone has time for 20 minutes games, but state of todays meta is just terrible for seasoned HS players. And those are the ones who will play the game for a longer time, others wil just quit once control decks become dominant. 

Also, normally I love playing miracle rogue, it is my favourite archetype, but this month even that feels so fast, so I play some kind of a Jade-Deathrattle-Miracle Rogue, and I'm having a blast with it. 

 

[Bozonik 94]

Personally feel the meta is pretty varied at the moment. Ok, Hunter and Paladin are pretty fringe, but everything else has competitive decks. I used to play Pirate Warrior to legend each season prior to MSoG, so I started out with that. When that was 50% of the meta the first week I had a lot of fun with it (I put in Harrison and three oozes and ditched the buccaneers, was winning 80% of mirrors on value), was within 2 wins of legend on day 6. Eventually though everyone learnt how to play and how to counter pirate warrior, and aggro Shaman became dominant. I decided to quit the legend grind (since it's completely pointless) and played a lot of new decks. Currently finding Reno Mage the most fun in the current meta. The only pretty bad matchup is Jade Druid which seems rare, and you have lots of tools to stall out aggro while you try to dig out Reno. Matchups against other Reno decks are great fun, might as well enjoy it while we can.

[Allegro 40]

I'm enjoying it so far. Its fun to see such a big change in what types of decks are working, and how many different kinds work well.  Who would have thought Priest Reno would be thing? And after LOE and Reno rotate out, will Kazukas be a decent card any more? A year ago, Aggro Hunter and Secret Paladin were all over the ladder; now those two classes are seen only rarely. But Priest is big now, and more types of Rogue. The game goes in cycles, you learn to play around them. Its certainly not stagnant.

I've been a fan of Priest decks since I started playing, so having such good options with Dragon Priest has been great fun for me. I had a game vs a Reno Priest recently go to fatigue after both of us were able to play Reno twice - I stole them through Drakonid OP, he was able to entomb my second one to finally pull out the win.

[Strongpoint 74]

I like the meta and I am afraid that pirates will be nerfed because... Because then there will be way more jade decks and I strongly dislike playing them or against them. 

[SithLordOfSnark 78]

I have really been liking it.

[PaasHaaS 81]

Like:

• Priest viability
• Reno Priest/Mage/Warlock all being viable
• Anything involving potion of madness
• Big meta change (pirates, reno/kazakkus, dragon, jade)
• No rexxar

Dislike:

• Shaman still being top dawg
• Pirates

Overall though, I'm quite happy with how Gadgetzan turned out. Sure, the meta could've been a bit slower, but at least there's a whole different meta to play around in compared to the rather minimal impact of some of the previous expansions.