Again, CW is a better tourney deck than a ladder deck. They are 2 different things. CW is slow but has a high win % and is good against a ton of tourney decks while Patron is a great ladder deck. It's relatively fast and has great matchups against the ladder meta which consists of a ton of aggro.

If the number of games/hr was the same for both then CW would be a better choice.

I also think there is nothing wrong with patron and that people are over reacting

Secret Paladin is the only truly annoying deck. I don't know if it should be nerfed, it's just ****ing stoopid.

the main issue isnt specifically win rate but rather

Sounds a lot like Patron haha...after blizzcon this will take effect. I'm sure of it.

I think the correct nerf to Patron is this:

Grim Patron: "Whenever this minion survives damage from full Health, summon another Grim Patron."

Trying to keep my comments short but imo the problem is not charge girl or frothing. Actually both of those existed long before patron and math warrior was a tier 4 fringe deck. The problem itself is patron is too difficult to deal with. Yes when vs CW, handlock the patron goes into burst mode and sets up for a huge 14 mana turn with emperor or whatever. People remember those 50 damage finishers, but ultimately thats not the straw that broke the camel.

The actual backbreaking thing is just deaths bite -> innerrage patron or any number of similar setups. Vs fair decks they have huge problems to be able to contest that 5/1 3/2 3/3 3/3 = 17 of stats + your team got whirlwinded previous turn: compare this to a typical best in slot turn 5 of playing 5/6 = 11 of stats. It completely skews the meta. But the 17 in stats isn't even a real problem, the real problem is if even a single patron > 1 health lives they can threaten to flood again, requiring an immediate answer that is very hard to have (deal atleast 2,3,3 damage without that damage being a sum of parts.) Also players typically use innerrage etc. to double up their patron chain which can let them come back too hard from gamestates where they should be in worse shape.

There are many fixes mentioned over this year, but imo the fix I proposed is the only one that keeps patron correctly in check without just blowing it up. And no I hate playing patron but imo it is a different style of gameplay that some people legitimately like (like eg. playing combo decks in general.) I think my proposed fix is elegant, light handed and actually solves the problems correctly by encouraging deck diversity.

Also finally, this reminds me of necropotence or whatever where people always want to nerf surrounding cards instead of taking a hard look at the real offender. Patron in itself is the broken card imo and should be carefully looked at.

I feel this way as well

What is a "fair" deck?

I wouldn't say tempo mage, handlock, secret paladin, control warrior and other decks are free from cheesy mechanics. Hell, handlock doesn't even start playing until turn four. That's good for the game surely.

Yeah the irony is that stuff like Facehunter, Midrange Hunter, Mech Shaman, Zoo, and Control Priest are some examples of the "most fair" decks.

Pretty much every Tier 1 deck since BRM has been complete cancer and the playerbase is definitely upset about it. They still play, because the game is more addictive than smoking crack cigarettes off a hot crazy bitch's ass, so Blizzard doesn't give a ****, but it's objectively less fun to play than it was a year ago.

lol

Idk if anyone listens to the Well Met Podcast, but in the most recent podcast they had an interesting discussion on how to play druid and scenarios where u had the coin wild growth & shade, they seemed to universally agree that they wanted to wild growth on t2 and save coin but wanted to get shade out early vs handlock to avoid the flame - I was of opinion that it was good 2 coin wg when u have shade & shredder? but have always internally debated when this stuff comes up

What do u do in the various combo/ mid range druids and what does it depend on?

I'm no druid expert, but...

I coin wg most of the time if I have a shade. I just love getting it in play early to build the stats for free. Problem with going turn 2 wg, turn 3 shade is you waste a ton of tempo. Like you mentioned, if you hold shredder and go turn 2 wg you probably would rather drop that on turn 3 or coin out a DotC. Then the shade kinda gets stuck in your hand and misses out on its potential.

This. They obliterated miracle with nerfs and cited this, then they released emperor and combo decks have thrived.

coin WG into t2 shade is one of the strongest openers there is. only an innervate play would make me consider something else

+1

Patron games aren't fun or interesting at all. Regardless of the actual strength of the deck, you either run them over and win by turn 6, or you just lose. Outside of handlock, there isn't a taunt deck out there that can put up a big enough wall.

Haven't people be teching against it in tournaments though? I don't follow the tournament scene super closely so I'm not sure if that's the case but if people have to tech specifically vs a single deck and it only brings it down to a 50% win rate then it's not exactly balanced. If this hasn't been happening then ignore me.

Yes. I've heard streamers say that their deck selection for tournaments starts with "can this beat patron".

It's just so passive though. If you attack with it, any 2 mana 3/2 can take it out. Bla bla Druid is my best class so I know how to play the Shades and I sort of have a rule of when you can start attacking depending on which class you're against (Warrior wait until it's a 6/6, Druid mirror a 5/5, Mage a 4/4, etc.) So "doing nothing" for the first two turns of the game, even though you're a mana ahead and have a Shade on board can just be so blegh. It's amazing against anything other than Mech Mage, Facehunter, Zoo, Eboladin, Dragon Priest... oh.

WG + shade = passive

putting nothing on board = ???

yeah basicly this. it depends what the rest of your hand is and what board development you expect.it can for example be reasonable to go wg on 2, shredder on 3, shade hero power/ wrath on 4 and coin aol on 6

coin darnassius, shade is just better.

need this card;

Dragon Ramp Druid yo.

It definitely beats Patron... and loses to most things.

Ram Wrangler on roids.

wording is tricky as **** to make it make sense in only one way

Warsong nerf incoming. Now reads all your charge minions have +1 attack.