Blizzard needs to get back to basics, to simply this game down to the level of paper, rock, scissors.

When you design a card like mysterious challenger, Dr. Boom, Patron, or the druid 9 mana combo, you also need to also design cards that directly counteracts it so creating an effective counter-deck is feasible.

Right now Blizzard just creates these monstrosities and let them loose onto the community hoping some miracle happens and that a few genius deck builders will find an antidote. Wtf?

Right now the aggro side of things is ridiculously OP, while the defensive side of hearthstone is clearly lacking. I tried playing a 58 heal shaman for 20 days this month, and even a face hunter can still burn through it without that much trouble. There's something seriously wrong here.

/end rant

Those fatigue and control warriors tho

I think they tried to counter aggro a bit with TGT and instead they just printed a bunch of unplayed cards.

Besides healing wave which I'm a fan of, I think they did a pretty bad job at designing anti-aggro cards for TGT.

They blew it when they didn't release a good anti-secret neutral card.

Blizzard has done a great job at balancing weapons and anti-weapon cards like Harrison/Ooze. This is good game design.

They need to do the same thing with secrets at the very least, and possibly add better neutral taunt/heal options to balance the scales.

Flare should probably be a neutral card, rather than a Hunter one. I still think the boom bots should only do 1-2 damage instead of 1-4.

Arena is a bit less fun, as well, because it's basically pick Paladin or go home.

Here's another thing that pisses me off. Why do secrets + mad scientist have such great synergy, while counters like Kezan mystic cost a prohibitive 4 mana and have **** stats like 4/3? Even the counter hero power minion costs 4/3 + the silence the demon one.

Meanwhile aggro cards like Mysterious challenger get well priced at 6 mana and have awesome 6/6 stats.

Face hunter CAN easily burn you down if you're running 2x healing wave, but they sure as hell aren't favored. Not close.

Kezan should definitely be like a 2 mana 2/2, same as scientist.

Evil Heckler is pretty OP taunt from TGT.

They just need a Harrison Jones for secrets.

Evil Heckler is amazing. Almost worth running in constructed just to insult opponents. I love picking it in arena, lol.

^ I've played a ton of healing wave shaman this season and faced my fair share of face hunter. Thing is with shaman is that there isn't really a great way to card draw and sometimes you are grasping for the right cards vs a relentless face hunter. I consider this matchup favoured for shaman, but it's much closer than I'd like it to be even when I designed it specifically to defeat face hunter. It's a counter but not a HARD counter deck. Shaman still needs 1-2 more anti-aggro cards to create a true counter imo.

100%, but they need more than to just create a Harrison Jones for secrets.

Here's a thought for Blizzard since they love coming out with broken cards:

Why don't you create a broken anti-aggro card and let's hear all of the face hunters/secret paladins whine and moan on Reddit for 5-6 months before they nerf it. That would be entertaining to say the very least lol.

I don't think there should really be a HARD counter to aggro, if you mean in the way that Control Warrior is to Freeze Mage. If you mean Control Warrior vs Rogue, okay, sure.

Why don't you want a hard counter to aggro? Right now I can create a double ooze + Harrison deck which would defeat a heavy weapons class 85%+ of the time. But it remains weak to other styled decks. The same concept would be applied to a hard counter aggro build.

Something like a 2 mana 2/3, all minions cost 2 more would be nice

I don't really have a sympathy for people who don't like aggro and wanted Patron nerfed. You brought it on yourselves.

FYI - Someone gave the idea of a 2 mana Kezan Mystic 2/2 with the same effect, I love that. That would balance the OPness of mad scientist.

I hope Blizzard is really thinking about these issues right now and are actively creating counter neutral cards to balance Knife Juggler, Boom, Mysterious Challenger, etc.

This

I dunno what people had a problem with for Patron. It was a fairly easy deck to counter *shrug*

Yeah sorry for not wanting a deck in the game that could deliver 70+ damage in one turn and make most of the blizzcon qualifications basically unwatchable.

It's Blizzard's fault the meta is so full of cancer. I think most people want to play decks that require thinking and interaction but all the control cards are expensive legendaries and epics so people have to settle for the cheap aggro decks.

This is actually true. And you can't get get your new players to give you money if they just get tired and quit after 5 games because they see the game as p2w.

The Aggro decks are also better

That's a really good point. It's been a while since I've had to think about cost of cards since I get 99% of what I want day 1 of release.