The Problem With C'thun

[Nikkaszal]

How does C'thun getting polymorphed not get treated like he is dead when you use Doom Caller? That is some bullshit.

Because it works the same as it does with EVERY card that restores the dead (Resurrect, N'zoth etc).

Once you transform a card, it ceases to exist and is replaced with a brand new card, like a 1/1 sheep. It removes it from the game entirely. It hasn't died, so there's no trigger for resurrects.

[Rennadrel]

Because it works the same as it does with EVERY card that restores the dead (Resurrect, N'zoth etc).

Once you transform a card, it ceases to exist and is replaced with a brand new card, like a 1/1 sheep. It removes it from the game entirely. It hasn't died, so there's no trigger for resurrects.

Well, that's a bit shit, it cost me a Wild ranked game

[Nikkaszal]

Well, that's a bit shit, it cost me a Wild ranked game

Just the way it's always been *shrug*

[Mormolyce]

Apparently everyone apart from me thinks C'thun is amazing though, I just had three back to back concedes on my Druid.

Nobody tell them my C'thun deck is only half built...

[Kreps]

Anyone who thinks C'thun is a problem is either bad at the game or very naive. C'thun and the cards that buff C'thun are all very balanced cards. There's a reason why Aggro Shaman and Zoo Warlock are the best two decks right now, and not C'thun-oriented decks. C'thun is a very slow card with a HUGE effect. Pretty balanced.

[Kelimbror]

Anyone who thinks C'thun is a problem is either bad at the game or very naive. C'thun and the cards that buff C'thun are all very balanced cards. There's a reason why Aggro Shaman and Zoo Warlock are the best two decks right now, and not C'thun-oriented decks. C'thun is a very slow card with a HUGE effect. Pretty balanced.

"There are people who don't share my opinion, I must rush to the forums and tell them they are bad and insult them directly" - What a great conversation starter. Also, if you read past the OP you would see we've discussed several things beyond 'C'thun being a problem' and have talked about the design of too many cards around it, too little card diversity, and too little opportunity to react or mitigate the buffs.

Too many drop it and forget it cards on top of overtuned class cards cause it to be a little wonky. I was thinking this was limited to druids and priests, but I just made a reno control warrior deck with two of the armor C'thun minions. Lol. Brann into +20 armor, followed by minimum of +10 if not another +20 while still having two 6/6 on the board. It's at least more skillful play than druids zomg quadruple innervate play uber cthun minions on turn 2 then trololol win the the game with nourish for 10 mana by turn 7 or a gazillion cards to always keep your board empty.

This expansion certainly shook up the meta. And by shook up, I mean it turned almost every deck into a smorc deck...the opposite of what we asked for. I will say it's more 'fun' than the other expansions have been in terms of changing how I play personally, so that's cool. I can finally enjoy playing a bad card and not caring b/c it's so cool watching tens of spells firing off in an RNG bonanza.

[Selah]

I've personally had no problem dealing with C'thun, but I play Shaman a lot too. The second I know I'm dealing with a C'thun deck I cling to my Hex or Earthshock. I take a little damage when he's played and then he's a frog or useless. Of course there are a lot of other cards that can render him useless too, might want to hang onto one of them in your deck right now because he is popular for sure.

[breadisfunny]

it should be obvious by now that ben brode and the designers do not really care much about game balance they care about if the cards are fun for them to play with. the only reason they even did the balance changes was to shut up the hearthstone playerbase. they have had 2 years to balance and they've done what how many balance changes 7? 8? to less than 40 cards. i might be off by a bit but you get my point. standard is a trainwreck if your trying to rank up with basic cards now. if their intent was to draw in new players they failed miserably.

[Nelaphim-EX]

Aggro decks, particularly Shaman demolish the majority of C'thun decks, unless you draw poorly and they have RNG blowing on their dice.

Almost all zoo (Hunter or Lock) variants are still favored against almost all of the current C'thun variants.

[Simulacrum]

"There are people who don't share my opinion, I must rush to the forums and tell them they are bad and insult them directly" - What a great conversation starter. Also, if you read past the OP you would see we've discussed several things beyond 'C'thun being a problem' and have talked about the design of too many cards around it, too little card diversity, and too little opportunity to react or mitigate the buffs.

Too many drop it and forget it cards on top of overtuned class cards cause it to be a little wonky. I was thinking this was limited to druids and priests, but I just made a reno control warrior deck with two of the armor C'thun minions. Lol. Brann into +20 armor, followed by minimum of +10 if not another +20 while still having two 6/6 on the board. It's at least more skillful play than druids zomg quadruple innervate play uber cthun minions on turn 2 then trololol win the the game with nourish for 10 mana by turn 7 or a gazillion cards to always keep your board empty.

This expansion certainly shook up the meta. And by shook up, I mean it turned almost every deck into a smorc deck...the opposite of what we asked for. I will say it's more 'fun' than the other expansions have been in terms of changing how I play personally, so that's cool. I can finally enjoy playing a bad card and not caring b/c it's so cool watching tens of spells firing off in an RNG bonanza.

That you made it to turn 10 with your c'thun control warrior - much weaker than the old control warrior, filled as it is with weak, slow vanilla minions only there to buff c'thun - doesn't prove anything so much as that either you got really lucky, your opponent got really unlucky, or you matched into a deck weak against yours.

I could generate a random anecdote like that about any deck to make it seem like it's broken. It isn't though, because of said weak, slow vanilla minions. All the C'thun decks that survived the first few days are borderline hybrids, if not outright hybrids, using the c'thun minions to trigger twin emperors and the ability to throw down a 14-16 stat taunted c'thun as a board clear at some point in the endgame.

I mean, all I've faced the last few days have been c'thun decks, since I'm very slowly climbing from rank 22 with slow control decks after not playing for several months (now back up to 11; climbing is really slow even with a huge winrate), and so far the only game I've lost to one of those decks was a game where a c'thun paladin (hardly a deck I hear anyone complain about) got emperor on equality & c'thun then proceeded to equality+c'thun my full board (which I had assumed would render c'thun's damage mostly harmless) while also killing my face. That shit's pretty rare though.

Mostly my losses are to face decks. With an unlucky draw against the new zoo warlock I sometimes just concede on turn 4. Now that's a brainless, smorc deck. At least the C'thun decks take you far enough into a match that it isn't all decided by the RNG of the initial draws.

[Kelimbror]

That you made it to turn 10 with your c'thun control warrior - much weaker than the old control warrior, filled as it is with weak, slow vanilla minions only there to buff c'thun - doesn't prove anything so much as that either you got really lucky, your opponent got really unlucky, or you matched into a deck weak against yours.

Uh, nope. Try again. See, this is where people who don't agree with a stance of conversation fail to participate in the conversation. Making assumptions, trying to dismiss someone outright, these are the hallmarks of lack of ability to have calm, rational discussion. It's also funny how many times people in this thread keep saying the cthun minions are 'vanilla' when it's just not true. Even the arguably weakest minions, the 2/3 and the 2/1 with 2 dmg battlecry provide tempo value and give cthun +2/2. The other most 'vanilla' minion is a 3/4 that provides +1/1 every turn. Have you seen anyone leave that on the board? No. It may as well be a fierce monkey for 1 more mana for the effect.

[Nikkaszal]

Uh, nope. Try again. See, this is where people who don't agree with a stance of conversation fail to participate in the conversation. Making assumptions, trying to dismiss someone outright, these are the hallmarks of lack of ability to have calm, rational discussion.

Kinda funny when twice now your response has been "Nope. Try again."

[Kelimbror]

Kinda funny when twice now your response has been "Nope. Try again."

And then I go on to elaborate, so let's make it a third time? I know this is MMO-C, but I personally expect better from people than the equivalent of 'ur bad, ur mad, ur sad' and 'I'm leet, i never lose, etc'.

So if you have anything productive to contribute, I'm all ears. If it's just to keep saying how you have no problems or someone's deck sucks, or any other contrived notions then hey...keep shouting at the wind. Several people have had good points for both sides of the Cthun spectrum, just a couple of bad apples who can't be bothered to try.

[Cizr]

Dont fix what is not broken.
Look at ladder and see how many higher rated Cthun decks are there. You will meet maybe odd druid every 10 games or so.

[Kelimbror]

Yeah, now that the C'Thun craze is dying down, a huge number of my games are starting to be against face decks where the game is decided by turn 4 and usually due solely to draws.

That's...not much more fun. :|

Certainly not, that's why I was talking about the effect on the meta was to make more decks go face. It gives the impression they were moving to a control meta with nerfs and such, but then gave cards that made new face decks more powerful than the old ones. Isn't that fancy?

[Radaney]

My Aggro decks and Face Hunter is doing fine vs C'Thun...


If C'Thun doesn't get early tempo then they tend to lose because their card effects aren't as powerful.

[Kelimbror]

The sad part is, I get why people play face decks, too. The ranking system just feels like such a goddamned grind, and no one wants to spend 30 minutes/game.

I loved slow control-ish decks in MtG, but that's because you just played in tournaments and in short 3-game sets. Grinding out ranks with a slow deck? That's just not as enjoyable.

I do the same thing. Granted, my only golden hero is a priest, so clearly I like control...but when it comes to doing dailies or short periods of time to play? Not going to lie, been playing a secret pally before the expansion. It required almost no thought and games were half as long at minimum. Same with face shaman. But do I like that better? Nope. So you're right, it's awkward for people to have to play optimally in a less fun way.

That's where designing the game better comes in, but I guess it's difficult to balance both sides of gameplay. I think they want both fast and slow decks, but tend to weight too heavy on fast since the beginning.

[Kronik85]

Certainly not, that's why I was talking about the effect on the meta was to make more decks go face. It gives the impression they were moving to a control meta with nerfs and such, but then gave cards that made new face decks more powerful than the old ones. Isn't that fancy?

Face Shaman got stronger, every other aggro variant is either about the same or weaker. C'thun decks feel more tempoish to me than control but the Priest and Warrior vairants are a great deal slower than Druid which is basically the same as every other Druid deck that has ever existed (curve out and win). IMO WotOG alongside the new Standard mode have been pretty good for deck variety, the only class that seems to be suffering is Hunter which I'm sure someone will figure out in due course (clearing out my 3 Hunter wins today took longer than expected, kept playing the new Zoo but then I started mulliganing for Knife Juggler/Unleash/Snake Trap and the wins came quick enough).

Current decks are:
C'thun Anything
Druid - Waiting on that Choose Druid, sure it will come in time but pretty locked into C'thun atm.
Hunter - Face, Hybrid, Beast and Deathrattle
Mage - Freeze and Tempo, not sure if Grinder will make a come back without Duplicate but Cabalist Tome could be a good enough to explore.
Paladin - Dive Shield Aggro and super super Control. RIP Midrange T_T (always had a soft spot for flooding the board with dewds).
Priest - Dragon and Control.
Rogue - N'zoth Deathrattle and Miracle.
Shaman - New Shammy, it's basically the same cards but some will lean more towards face and some will be more midrange.....so long as your playing the new stuff it doesn't matter.
Warlock - Reno and Zoo.
Warrior - Patron, Pirate and Control.

Every class seems to have an aggressive and a control option, new players can build C'thun decks with very similar shells which gives them access to fairly powerful decks for multiple classes quickly (even if it's basically the same deck) and the meta is the meta, it's always leaned towards aggro because it's cheap, powerful and quick.

[Deleted]

I do hope in the next expansion we get like a specific C'thun tech card. Something like a 3 mana 3/3 at the end of your turn give your Opponent's C'thun -2/-2 (wherever it is). It does seem odd to have a tech card for one specific card, but if that card is the centrepiece of multiple decks it makes sense.

[Pantalaimon]

Uh, nope. Try again. See, this is where people who don't agree with a stance of conversation fail to participate in the conversation. Making assumptions, trying to dismiss someone outright, these are the hallmarks of lack of ability to have calm, rational discussion. It's also funny how many times people in this thread keep saying the cthun minions are 'vanilla' when it's just not true. Even the arguably weakest minions, the 2/3 and the 2/1 with 2 dmg battlecry provide tempo value and give cthun +2/2. The other most 'vanilla' minion is a 3/4 that provides +1/1 every turn. Have you seen anyone leave that on the board? No. It may as well be a fierce monkey for 1 more mana for the effect.

Yeah I don't get why people try and say all of the C'thun cards are vanilla either. I don't know many vanilla cards that can restore large amounts of armor, healing, or produce a 4/10 for very low mana. However, even a number of the more vanilla like cards are still good & shouldn't be dismissed as inferior because of that. The C'thun Shredder will almost always 2 for 1, or sometimes 3 for 1 when minion trading with some aggro decks. Not to mention the vanilla C'thun taunts still can save you for a couple extra valuable turns.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, there's an article that breaks down time to legend by winrate and average length of games. If you're playing Freeze Mage for instance and have a winrate of 55%+, you're still looking at 50 hours to hit legend. Which doesn't sound like a lot, but since seasons are only a month long...well, you're looking at ~2 hours/day of laddering to get there.

Meanwhile a face hunter deck can have a lower win rate and still get there faster.

So yeah, if your goal is to rank up for whatever reason and you're not a full time pro player type, then...why NOT just play a mindless face deck?

I couldn't stomach the thought of trying to hit legend or the golden hero grind using Control/Fatigue warrior, Freeze Mage, or Control Priest.