I love hearthstone. I play it a lot, I care about it alot, I pretty much grew up playing it and it grasps me like no other online game does. I think it is one of the most well made entertainment product out there, and I have supported blizzard gladly during the past 6 years other than year of the raven, which I think is justifiable considering how bad the expansions were.
I've been playing quite intensely during the past couple of days and I've managed to reach some pretty decent ranks (rank 2 legend, it's not rank 1 but hey it's close :D). The meta that I experienced made me came to a conclusion that this is the best/worst the game has ever been simultaneously, on different aspects of the game of course.
I want to get in the good aspect of the game first. The game has never been more accessible for new players. New peeps get almost the entire demon hunter class for free, save for a few new cards in the outlands expansion, but it shouldn't be hard for them to reach a decent spot on ladder even without cards like kayn/metamorphosis. People that have been playing for years casually have reached legend with demon hunter for the first time, and I'm happy for them. The ladder reward system is amazing and very generous by blizzard standards, and I'm honestly grateful that they're listening to player's feedback more and being more reponsive/willing to make changes about the game.
Demon hunter is also one of the easiest classes/deck to play, in my humble opinion. I played the class a bit when it came out and winning didn't require much decision making, I just play my cards, go face, and my opponent explodes. It's not a secret that demon hunter cards are overpowered, there are currently 3 posts with skull of guldan meme on the front page. It has warped the entire outlands meta around it, and it is still the majority of my matchups, by a huge margin.
Needless to say, there are much downsides to this. Demon hunter's playstyle is very aggressive, games end by turn 5 or turn 6 all the time, their minions demands answers immediately otherwise snowballs out of control. They're extremly high stats, especially on attack for their cost, and each one of them can end the game if not answered.
We see so many examples of this. Battlefiend, overseer, adept, priestess. They're also hard to clear because you usually can't have a board, they just clear your minions so easily with twin slices and warglaives. You're put into this spot where you're damned if you don't, and damned if you do. It is essentially the perfect deck - every single stage of the game, they can make huge turns and swingy plays. Tempo DH at legend rank, after 2 nerfs, is still sitting at 59% winrate on hsreplay if you put on the filter. The best part about it? The best performing deck started cutting cards like skull and spectral sight, they don't even need card draw, they just play their cards and win. There's no need for the potential cluttering their hand - hell they don't usually even need to play altruis, the card that everyone on this sub apparantly feel is the source of the problem.
Demon hunter feels like every single problematic deck in the past brought back together and mashed into one. It is the opposite of encouraging decision making since the game ends so quickly, it's super aggressive with charge minions and tons of direct damage that bursts opponents down even if the minions never hit face, ever. I can go on and on but I'm sure you all understand my point - you can feel it in game yourself.
I just want to point out why demon hunter is designed this way - and you guessed it, it's because they're competing with galakronds and highlanders. Demon hunter needed to be viable for the devs, so they pushed it to the point where games needed to end before galakrond and dragon queens can come down. You’re competing with the likes of spell Druid that fills entire board turn after turns and kills you from 30 health. They needed to powercreep the powercreep - and demon hunter is the result of that.
Where does it end? You have the paladin set where every single card is very much constructed ready, with amazing value and decent synergies, but they're struggling at the bottom of the barrel because even packages like librams and lightforged is not enough to be competitive. A 7/7 that adds 5 class cards to your hand is not enough resources because they don't cost 0.
Classes like shaman and paladin are still gonna be unplayable even if demon hunters did not exist, the only playable variants like ‘murloc pally’ or ‘totem shaman’, they're not really 'decks', they're tools for f2p players to finish dailies in casual. They're super highrolly and their game plans gets crushed it opponent answers their board at anytime. They’re unplayable not because they’re badly designed, but because other classes are just so backbreaking, miles ahead in what they do compared to them. And what will you need to do to catch up for them? Another galakrond shaman?
All I'm asking, from team 5, is to slow down. Slow down and re-evaluate your design decisions, stop pushing some classes extremely whilst giving other classes nothing, because decisions like these are going to come back and haunt you. You designed year of the dragon in 2018, you did not know baku and gen was going to be hall of famed in 2019, so you gave paladin some pretty bad sets throughout the year. You did the same thing with priest in 2018 when frozen throne/kobolds were in standard, and I hope you understand that balancing a class by giving them bad cards is not a good solution.
Be bold, be creative, I love what you did with demon hunter, hell, Illidan's 1000 win portrait is the best piece of hero art in the entire game in my opinion, I would love to get it, but I don't want to play the same deck so, so, so many other people are playing. Don't let criticisms shut you down from making more new classes, but please please please, balance it better. I love this game, I really do, I would pay for a mode without demon hunter and just the original 9 classes right now. Because I think that version of outland would've been super fucking fun.
