The game needs a higher health pool already

[AeneasBK]

Zoo and aggro have the exact same playstyles: make favorite minion trades so you can maximize damage to the face. That's the playstyle for literally all non-combo decks.

Who trades with an aggro deck when the face is right there...

[FobManX]

Zoo is actually more board control early on, turns 1-3 ish. You don't really focus on the face as zoo until the mid game. Its not like pirate warrior where you literally never trade(unless its a taunt or you have to to prevent dying but in that situation you lose anyway probably).

[Blueobelisk]

Oh god I meant to type "favorable" but autocorrect fucked me over and made me look retarded. Zzzzzzz.

Zoo is much more about value and board control. You want to make good trades and outlast your opponent with Zoo.

Aggro doesn't want to make "favorable trades" and can't outlast or out-value anything, they just want to go purely to the face. (See: Current Pirate Warrior)

Zoo isn't really about value cards so much as value trades. Which are again, favorable trades that most decks make. VALUE are cards like Ragnaros, Sylvannas, or Thunderbluff where your opponent has to spend resources killing it or it gets out of hand. Zoo doesn't have "value" like that. A 3/2 hitting your face because it got on the board a bit early isn't real value. Zoo's value is having small minions always playable on curve and being able to buff them, or not lose cards with discard mechanics.

Zoo is NOT about outlasting your opponent. You're on a clock as Zoo. If you have no board and are topdecking, even with your hero power, you have to close the game out quickly or you're at risk of dying or just not being able to kill your opponent's big minions/AoE/cards.

Aggro doesn't want to make "favorable trades" and can't outlast or out-value anything, they just want to go purely to the face. (See: Current Pirate Warrior)

Everything in life isn't equal. $5 to you or me isn't the same as $5 to Bill Gates.

Favorable trades for Zoo is making sure their minions can continue damaging face or up-trade. Favorable trades for aggro is maximizing the damage on your opponent's face. Sometimes that means killing a minion, sometimes that means going face and letting your minion get killed next turn, sometimes that means killing a Doomsayer.

It's very different, because most aggro decks (or at least the one everyone thinks of, pirate warrior) have weapons that don't care about your opponent's board or they have spells like mortal strike.

Zoo and Pirate Warrior have different win conditions and ways to generate damage. You're not going to win as zoo if you let your opponent make trades and bank on 2 Soul Fires saving you. Additionally, it's the same reason when you face a mage you start to get scared at 12 Hp because of Fireballs and Roaring torches. They don't need minions to kill you.

Different decks have different win conditions.

Who trades with an aggro deck when the face is right there...

A good player who sees a way to do more damage to face over the course of the match.

Zoo is actually more board control early on, turns 1-3 ish. You don't really focus on the face as zoo until the mid game.

I sort of agree? Board control isn't "I'm the only one who has minions on board." Board control is "The way the board is set up, I have favor." That just naturally happens at some point for Zoo until it becomes weaker to AoE.

[AeneasBK]

A good player who sees a way to do more damage to face over the course of the match.

I'm not gonna say that you won't ever trade a minion if you're playing an aggro deck. Just that if you're forced to do so, it's because the other player is interfering with your plan. It is never the "plan" to trade ever.

[Twoddle]

The whole game is based around having 30HP and a 30 card deck you can't change that.

[AeneasBK]

They're extremely different decks with very different playstyles.

Thankyou .

[Blueobelisk]

I'm not gonna say that you won't ever trade a minion if you're playing an aggro deck. Just that if you're forced to do so, it's because the other player is interfering with your plan. It is never the "plan" to trade ever.

That's actually an interesting way to look at it. But...it's kinda wishful thinking that you can always go face. I don't "plan" on getting into a car accident but I still take out car insurance. You play to maximize opportunities and mitigate losses.

Zoo was indeed always about good value minions. Argent Squire, Harvest Golem, Defender of Argus and so on. Cards that could trade well with at-cost or above-cost opposing minions or facilitate such trades. The 3/2 Flame Imp was often one of the worse cards in that format. (Of course, modern cards have changed "Zoo" a lot)

And yes, that typically meant outlasting your opponent in every match except against pure control. At the end of most of my Zoo games, I had won because my opponent was just out of things to play and still staring at a board with broken golems, bubble-less squires, and so on that ate their minions or soaked their removal.

Pure aggro decks are nothing like that. They just want to throw their hand at the board and go face until the opponent is dead or they're out of cards and just concede to move to the next game. Trading or getting good value out of things is never the plan, and even if they do decide to kill a turn 2 Doomsayer somehow, they've probably just conceded the game at that point.

They're extremely different decks with very different playstyles.

I understand what you're saying and see how the fine points work, but if you ask me to categorize Zoo, it's very close to aggro playstyle.

Zoo vs. Control: Kill them before I run out of hand/board size and their big minions compared to my deck of small minions means I can't get back on board.
Zoo vs. Aggro: Don't die/kill them first.

Aggro vs. Control: Kill them before they stabilize and I run out of hand size/can't topdeck anything to kill them anymore.
Aggro vs. Aggro: Don't die/kill them first.

Control vs. Control: Kill them before they can kill me, or outvalue them long term by predicting the threats in their deck.
Control vs. Aggro: Don't die. If I live long enough, they'll die of natural causes.

I know the details of the gameplay change because Zoo is about favorable minion trades and has a bit longer than "pure aggro" but that's just because the utility is different.

Also, I don't think Zoo is "pure aggro." I think it plays an aggro playstyle though. Unless you think the gameplans I listed above were incomplete. (If you want, I can list three other archtypes, Jade, Combo and Midrange. Otherwise most decks play the same as those 5. Unless I'm forgetting one.)

[Faldric]

The whole game is based around having 30HP and a 30 card deck you can't change that.

The basic game with the basic cards was balanced around 30 HP. With all the expansions the aggro decks got so much more efficient 30 HP is no longer what it used to be.

[zorkuus]

The whole game is based around having 30HP and a 30 card deck you can't change that.

Right... based around and not balanced around. Aggro needs to play like a 3rd of those 30 cards before the game is over.

[FobManX]

So many games nowadays are more or less decided by turn 3. If a Pirate Warrior coins out two 1 drops on turn 1 they get three minions and can deal 5 damage to you on turn 1. That means end of turn 2 thats 10 damage(if not more), or 33% of your life pool. Thats just absurd.

Hearthstone is like what WoW would be if players kept getting gear but we were still in Burning Crusade type health totals.

[Wyattbw09]

Agro decks deal 30 before the half of the game
Face decks deal 30 before the half of the game
Mid-Range decks deal 30 at the half of the game
Control decks deal 30 in one turn
Combo decks deal 30 in one turn

Every turn I play this game these days 30 health doesn't mean shit, midrange shaman? 30 is nothing. The fucking braindead pirate warrior? 30 is nothing. The new Kazakus "control" Reno decks? 30 is fucking absolutely nothing.

They really need to increase the base health pool already.

They know this.

The damage of each card is designed around the idea of a 30 health pool. If they wanted a larger health pool, they would just lower the damage the average card does per mana with each expansion.

- - - Updated - - -

So many games nowadays are more or less decided by turn 3. If a Pirate Warrior coins out two 1 drops on turn 1 they get three minions and can deal 5 damage to you on turn 1. That means end of turn 2 thats 10 damage(if not more), or 33% of your life pool. Thats just absurd.

Hearthstone is like what WoW would be if players kept getting gear but we were still in Burning Crusade type health totals.

Aggro decks are popular for two reasons.

1) They are fast so you win fast and climb the ladder faster, and since the ladder is a HUGE grind faster is better.

2) Aggro decks are effectively the only way to minimize the MASSIVE RNG that is Hearthstone. The longer a game goes the more likely you are going to win/lose based on pure RNG crap.

[Pantalaimon]

Aggro decks are popular for two reasons.

1) They are fast so you win fast and climb the ladder faster, and since the ladder is a HUGE grind faster is better.

2) Aggro decks are effectively the only way to minimize the MASSIVE RNG that is Hearthstone. The longer a game goes the more likely you are going to win/lose based on pure RNG crap.

Not to mention anything that is not aggro falls into the typical fail of any card game (ie anything that is not aggro suffers from bad opening draws). While I do admit I love control or tempo decks more than aggro I can see the appeal in choosing an archtype that consistently steers away from getting opening draws of 4 or 5+ mana cards and higher. Nobody wants an opening hand that more or less makes you pass or HP 3 or 4 turns in a row.

[Deleted]

If you increase health pool it will have negative effect on meta, everything will slow down, aggro decks will vanish and then people will start complaning about control warriors dominating the meta.

[Deleted]

The whole game is based around having 30HP and a 30 card deck you can't change that.

Then why do we have cards that gets removed from the deck such as patches or one that puts 5 cards into the deck? The vanilla game was balanced around 30 hp, but this iteration sure as fuck isn't.

[Twoddle]

Changing the health pool now will create more problems than it will solve.

[Pantalaimon]

Then why do we have cards that gets removed from the deck such as patches or one that puts 5 cards into the deck? The vanilla game was balanced around 30 hp, but this iteration sure as fuck isn't.

You have to purposefully change the deck building of your deck in order to use either of those cards to change your deck size. You need to have at least 2 pirates in your deck instead of something else in order to actually make use of Patches & Malchezaar will generally lower your win rate with having extra 5 cards because you make the draws for your synergistic cards be drawn less reliably.

Allowing people to have a 35 card deck without having to add any gimmicks to get to that extra 5 card limit would drastically change the game.

[Roiids]

Its either pure face, or OTK so fucking dumb... literally had full HP and one turn lost to a mage. Not even a freeze mage.

[Treeskee]

I'd be okay if they made the game play more like MTG in the sense that healing spells can put you over your original HP instead of just healing you to full.

[Pantalaimon]

I'd be okay if they made the game play more like MTG in the sense that healing spells can put you over your original HP instead of just healing you to full.

What would be the difference between healing and armor?

[Treeskee]

What would be the difference between healing and armor?

Spell costs and class mechanics revolving around it.