One MAJOR Hearthstone deck might be about to see some big changes
ONE MAJOR Hearthstone deck could be about to get nerfed if they continue to prove as popular as they are right now.
By
Gary Jones
HEARTHSTONE
The Hearthstone decks that use Shaman could see some changes soon
The Hearthstone decks in question are Shaman, which are apparently pretty popular right now.
Some fans have noticed that they are popping up a lot and are proving hard to deal with, be it aggressive or slow.
According to Blizzard, the Shaman deck is very popular right now, you play against one about one game in four.
And while Blizzard can’t do much about what strategy is currently ruling the metagame right now without making some big changes, they have confirmed that they’re keeping an eye on the situation.
Discussing the current popularity of the Shaman deck, game director Max McCall commented: “The reason that a ‘balanced’ metagame is desirable isn’t because ‘balanced’ metagames don’t have dominant strategies.
“They are desirable because you play against different classes more frequently, which means you have a wider variety in the types of Hearthstone games that you play.
“Playing Shaman isn’t a dominant strategy – again, they lose to plenty of decks – but it is still boring to play against the same class over and over again.
“And even though the Shaman decks have distinct differences, those differences are small. If you played against Warlocks one game in four, but half of your Warlock opponents were playing slow Reno control decks and the other half were playing aggressive minion decks, those games would feel very different from one another.
“On the other hand, when you lose to Tunnel Trogg, Totem Golem, Feral Spirit three times in a row, it doesn’t matter if some of those Shamans had a Pirate package or if one of them had Jade cards.
“Your games still felt very homogenous and weren’t that fun especially the third time around.”
McCall says that Blizzard are hoping to see Shamans getting taken down a peg-or-two in the near future naturally because of their known weaknesses, however, they also have a plan B.
“The point I am trying to make is ‘classes can be problematic even though they do not win too often.’ Shamans don’t win too often.
“Right now, they are more popular than we’d like. If they are too popular for too long, we will do something about it, as we did when we nerfed them a couple of months ago. However, it takes time to assess whether or not a class will cause the game to feel too homogenous for too long.
“On release, Mech Mage and recently Pirate Warrior were more popular than Shamans have ever been – but only for a few weeks, then people discovered alternative strategies and the decks became less popular.
“Because we know that Shamans have weaknesses, we hope that those strategies will become more popular and drive down Shaman popularity a bit so that you play against more classes more often.
We are going to keep evaluating Shaman popularity in the near future, and if we don’t like what we see, we will change something about the metagame.
“Perhaps we will change a card. Perhaps we will see Shaman popularity fall and not have to step in at all.
“Perhaps we will wait to introduce a new set and see if that creates the metagame change we want. Either way, it is a thing we are actively concerned about and paying attention to.”
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