Why I struggle enjoying Hearthstone (now in a more detailed post)

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So I made a tweet yesterday that got a lot of traction on why I don't enjoy the game. Fun is a very subjective term and I was only speaking for myself as a player that normally loves the game. I've had plenty of fun even when the meta was more imbalanced in the past than this one, but for 'some reason', I can't enjoy the game today.

Some people have asked me what I would change right now if I could, and why I think that some of the problems in the current meta are difficult to fix with balance changes alone. So, here's where I'm at:

Demon Hunter: Flavor-wise, this class was well designed. I generally like the addition of the new class. There are many elements of it that feel cool and fun. Flavor-wise, Death Knights were also cool and well designed. Doesn't mean they weren't a problem from a game-play and possibly, game design perspective.

Demon Hunter is just too good at everything at the moment, without any weaknesses you can consistently exploit, which is why 8 classes in the game just can't seem to find an edge against it. Insane early game board control that invalidates every other aggressive deck that tries to develop a board from turn 1. Insane card draw that makes it extremely difficult for slower decks to develop card advantage against it. Insane damage potential and reach that makes it extremely difficult to outlast. Insane removal and AOE, including removal against things it's "supposed" to be weak against. It's just very difficult for other classes to attack it without similarly game breaking mechanics.

The nerfs I suggest could end up making Demon Hunter too weak, but I honestly don't mind if they do. You can always buff the class later.

1. Warglaives of Azzinoth: This card invalidates a common weakness in aggressive decks (lack of AOE) as well as what's supposed to be a core weakness in Demon Hunter (removing big minions). It offers AOE, single target removal and face damage in one card. Since Demon Hunter consistently establishes board control in the early game, its life total is rarely pressured. It can often just face tank big taunts while also pushing damage. The card also scales to ridiculous levels with the hero power and other attack buffs. Playing taunts against Demon Hunter almost feels like you're helping them half the time by giving them tempo. I'd nerf this card to 6 mana.

2. Kayn: This card is one of the most frustrating and unfun elements while playing against Demon Hunter. If you have somehow managed to stabilize behind taunts after being brutalized by Warglaives of Azzinoth, this guy comes in and invalidates your effort. The other problem is that alongside its insanely game breaking ability, it comes with busted stats for the cost. A 4 mana 3/5 charge with no additional text would be a very strong Hearthstone card. Sometimes you just play Kayn on curve and push 6 damage because it's hard to remove when the opponent is already under so much pressure. I'd completely delete or rework this card if I could, but with this kind of effect, it needs to be a smaller body (like a 2/4).

3. Metamorphosis: Probably the DH card I dislike the most because, to put it bluntly, it's one of the laziest designs I've seen from Team 5. As someone who genuinely likes much of what they do, this is something I can say they whiffed on. Just a thoroughly overpowered, must-include card in every DH deck because why would you pass up on a 7 mana, more flexible Pyroblast? Leaves absolutely no counterplay and makes you feel like you're dead the moment you ping 15 health against Demon Hunter. It would still be strong at 6 mana, which is where I'd put it.

4. Altruis: Why does this card still deal face damage? The cost increase definitely weakened it to some degree but it doesn't change the experience of playing against it, which is complete nonsense. Altruis is like that new MOBA character that was designed with an overloaded, game breaking kit. I'd revert its stats and cost to a 3 mana 3/2, making it a powerful AOE comeback tool for the board, but remove the face damage. Hell, you can keep the face damage, but remove the AOE. My point is that you need to make it good at one thing rather than 'everything'.

5. The Demon Hunter hero power. I've banged on about this multiple times but I feel like it's the biggest long term problem of the class. I don't suggest changing it now, since it will require reworking many of the class' cards, but it's something to think about. It makes Demon Hunter too consistent, especially in the early game, much like Genn Greymane decks of the past. I realize that Demon Hunter's design and fantasy was about frequent attacks, but decks that revolve around pressing the same button repeatedly eventually get stale. Don't take my word for it: this has been a consistent occurrence throughout Hearthstone's history. It might eventually catch up here.

Warrior: I can't blame Team 5 at all for the class ending up being too powerful, since most of us did not see it coming either. It's a case where a synergistic package ended up being too powerful when all the pieces came together. Enrage Warrior wasn't even discovered until the second week of the expansion, while the current iteration of Bomb Warrior is a few weeks old. I think Warrior could be a really cool class to play against if it was toned down just a little.

1. Risky Skipper: This is the most powerful card in the deck because it enables many of the deck's most powerful turns. Therefore, nerfing Risky Skipper in any way would kill all of these synergies and likely delete Warrior from the format. What we can do, however, is making these powerful swing turns a bit less common. Warrior simply draws Risky Skipper far too consistently, which makes it difficult to develop anything against them in the early game without inevitably getting blown out. Take out the pirate tag from the card so that a Corsair Cache drawing Ancharrr isn't just "game over" on turn 2 for many potential archetypes.

2. Warmaul Challenger. This card is just not played as it was intended to be played. I feel like Team 5 designed it as a pseudo-removal, pseudo-rush minion, yet its greatest strength is just being slapped down on turn 3 as a 1/10 into an empty board and getting buffed by Inner Rage and Rampage. Opponents have to sink so much damage into it to prevent getting blown out, that it just cripples them. I genuinely like the design of the card and think it's a pretty interesting and cool concept, it's just too powerful as a 3 mana 1/10. I'd nerf it to a 1/8 to be make its stats a bit more reasonable on curve.

3. Bomb Wrangler. This card doesn't even perform that well in the deck, so it's less of a power level issue, but it's probably the card I dislike playing against the most in Warrior. Boom bots are high variance elements that should have never been re-introduced. The fact we're slapping them on a card that gets played earlier in the game than Dr. Boom makes them even worse. I'd make this card bad enough so that it never gets played. Give it the Starving Buzzard treatment or rework it completely.

Will all of these nerfs make the game better? I'm not even sure, because I dread thinking about Spell Druid being the best deck in the game. If I had to explain why I dislike playing as and against other classes in the game, it's due to their high variance. Here, I'm not going to suggest nerfs, but simply voice my concerns.

Priest: Random generation is out of control. Some random generation is okay. I like chocolate, but if you told me to eat 2 pounds of it, I'd probably get sick of it too. Queuing against a Galakrond Priest is one of the most painful experiences I can remember while playing Hearthstone, and I have consistently kept a positive win rate against them, so it's not about winning or losing. It's about the fact I can not reasonably play around anything that they may have generated, which greatly reduces skill making an impact on the outcome of the game. I can carefully play around their Murozond or Soul Mirror for the entire game, but if they generated another copy, then there is nothing I can do about it. You just feel cheated, and you learned nothing from it. That's the worst part. This deck should just never be allowed to be top tier.

Druid: Wild Growth was nerfed so "design space" would be open for other, more "interesting" ramping options. If these are the interesting ramping options, I'd rather just go back to a 2 mana Wild Growth and a 5 mana Nourish. At least, these cards didn't severely limit my options when it came to deck building. I don't see how Breath of Dreams makes the game better or feel fresh. You just make ramp-based decks even more feast or famine, where an activated Breath on 2 is more insane than Wild Growth, but not drawing an activator feels crummy. The same can be said for Overgrowth. It tilts Druid into the extremes, so the class is even more useless when it doesn't draw ramp while feeling impossible to stop when it gets the ramp. How do you reasonably address these cards? You kinda.... have to wait for them to rotate out.

3. Mage's flavor of casting random spells is kind of a disaster. This isn't a viable way of designing the class with any competitive integrity. It's not like we didn't know how Yogg-Saron turned out, so now we're making a Yogg that we can cheat out earlier? Puzzle-Box should be deleted from the game. Nothing is learned when a Hearthstone game ends on a Puzzle-Box. Astromancer Solarian is highly problematic, though at least in this case, there was was some effort in tilting its effect into being 'slightly' less random. I get no satisfaction from winning with these cards. Put them into a Highlander deck, which is already inherently high variance due to its power being concentrated into few cards, and you've got one of the most extreme examples of something that can look like the best deck in the game and the worst deck in the game, during the same match.

4. Rogue, Hunter and Warlock hilariously feel like the least "offensive" classes when it comes to high variance and yet they'd be rightfully considered to be fairly unhealthy in a different context. Galakrond Rogue carries extreme swings through Galakrond/Togwaggle/Edwin coupled by random generation that is only eclipsed in the frustration aspect by Galakrond Priest. Quest Warlock "only" has a hero power that can randomly win the game at any moment. Highlander Hunter is "just" a highlander deck. This is where we are at when a highlander deck provides one of the most 'consistent' ways of playing Hearthstone at the moment.

So, I hope I've explained it. Demon Hunter and Warrior are too good, and yet I wouldn't look forward to a meta after which they're nerfed.

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