people are going to complain regardless. if you like the decks that are being played; you think it's great and if you hate them, you think it sucks. i like a few different types of decks so I'm relatively happy with the meta but I can see if you don't like going against combo decks you may hate it.

If people dislike combodecks and don't want to play aggro which crushes them, then I can suggest control warlock. It has a bunch of elements that disrupt many of the combos being played, namely Gnomeferatu, Demonic Project and Skulking Gheist.

It's not a good expansion because there's not really anything new. The old decks got stronger. This is as little as i have ever played this game. I barely could be bothered to get my free monthly reward last month.

Maybe next expansion will revive my interest, I hope so.

most mechs are weak as ****:

spiderbomb is played
boom is good; dyno is good
giggling OP
zillax is good
mech'athun is playable

6 out of 46 mechs are playable at the constructed level--maybe a few more in niche decks.

3 of the 9 legendary spells are playable. most are complete ****.

after making the insanely OP death knights, most of the cards are going to be weak.

LOL.

How the ****. I'm playing against hunter. On b2b Wandering monster, my opponent roles Stoneskin Basilisk--1/1 divine shield with poison and Stargazer Luna. I guess when I run bad, I run bad.

CN vs EU

Finals is XiaoT vs Thijs. XiaoT makes a huge mistake where he trades a huffer into the 4/3 mage card and another mistake where he went all face with odd hunter against maly druid. XiaoT ends up losing the final match by 1 life where he top decks another weapon after already having one equipped. First place is an aston martin 175k vs 10k for 2nd place. I'm a huge Thijs fan but that's a brutal ending for XiaoT. Thijs also finally brought a set of aggro decks instead of playing his normal control decks which has been getting him booted out early in a lot of tournaments.

Another sick match this tourney is Shudder where one guy Shudders and as long as it doesn't hit face 3 times the Shudder wins. Of course it hits 3 times. Shudder also top decked a few cards to make it interesting. I hate Shudder so much so I'm glad it lost.

viewership is down big time and HS is down because Boomsday is WOAT level expac

lolsample size caveat but the last few times I've logged in and watched Kripp I've actually been able to read the chat scroll so that seems bad.

Toast did a stream where he was talking and tabulating statistics on viewership and the state of the game. All the major streams have dipped down and it seems it's getting lower and lower. Every xpac sees a spike and then dips until 4 months and the next xpac, just that the peaks and averages do seem to get lower. Not sure what can be done but Hearthstone has been going for 4.5 years now and has held on as the definitive online CCG. Don't see it losing that spot without the genre as a whole just withering away, MtG not withstanding. But the game isn't going to be revolutionized with an xpac. Every one will get similarly stale after 4 months.

Savjz says he's done with HS, at least for now.

All they need to do is make the next expansion good and most people will come back. People probably need to curb their expectations a bit as well. It feels like people buy into the sunken cost fallacy that once they're invested in the game they need to keep playing it forever. I mean if you've gotten a few years of fun out of it and don't like it anymore, maybe it's time to just move on.

Man Savjz must be really sick of the game to leave all that money on the table. What's he going to do now?

The main thing that is awful about HS at the moment is that the meta hasn't had any meaningful change in roughly 6 months (with the exception of people figuring out that zoo is a thing). Boomsday added nothing other than a decent control warrior which is a snoozefest to play against.

The other thing I personally still hate is Shudderwock. I think it's the worst card ever printed. It's not prevalent but it's still so dumb to play against and now for the next year and a half every shaman and neutral battlecry will need to be lame so Shudderwock doesn't go bonkers. It's just dumb.

Perhaps they need a new format. Tournaments, a different kind of draft system, something else, etc. But mostly I think its difficult to keep a game fresh for years.

Yeah that's what kept me playing long after the luster had worn off. I was so afraid I was going to miss something cool, or I'd actually see something cool on a stream (which of course I could never duplicate) and that kept me coming back. Once I missed a single xpac that was it. Was pretty much the same thing with TES Legends. The only thing I miss now is having something to do while waiting for people to make it to happy hour at the bar.

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/met...n-hearthstone/

Loved this article. I check viscous syndicate from time to time, largely to update my decks (since I have long stopped innovating my own, lol)

The tl;dr is that polarity is what causes dissatisfaction among player base, not power levels. And polarity is at its highest, ever.

I agree with this completely - nothing is more frustrating than random queuing into a matchup that is either 2:1 or 1:2 (at best either way) before you even see your hand. It's like you are trying to get lucky by playing against decks that suck vs you while dodging the opposite.

Although no 1 deck is super strong, and no 1 class is way better than others (and amazingly, a lot of decks have balanced winrates!) its that every matchup is heavily skewed, so the game feels bad.

I really agreed with the article

rock paper scissors meta....

What beats mech-odd warrior right now?

Quest rogue destroys it.
Shudderwock destroys it.
Togwoggle destroys it.

the devs arent liking that article

that is a really good article

Deathstalker rexxar as long as he isn't on the bottom of your deck.

Just such painfully long games that I end up conceding due to boredom.

That VS article is the best, most important thing ever written about hearthstone.

I thought so too. Just got completely at the root of the issue - people don't HATE when 1 deck dominates the meta (a lot of great hearthstone metas were dominated by 1 deck, there are too many to list but ya'll know the OPs) but the main thing is that SOME of the OP metas were very very fine. This was largely a mixture of how engaging/back and forth the games still were (even if you were at a win% deficit due to playing weaker cards) and b. how wide open/unsure people were of some matchups because it leaned so heavily into individual skill.

Nowadays I truly feel even if I'm playing super great (or super bad) it matters even less

People sure as hell hated secret pally, shamanstone, pirate warrior, and jade druid when they were dominating the entire meta. The volume of games you played against them was obnoxious. Pirate warrior and jade druid weren't engaging.