Are there too many incentives to play face/aggro decks?

[Deleted]

So, today's meta is a meta filled with aggro/face decks. We've got Face Hunter, Zoo, Mech Shaman, Mech Mage and even decks like Tempo Mage or Midrange Hunter are aggressive enough that will punish anyone without an answer in the first few turns. Hearthstone provides many incentives to playing these type of decks:

1) Unlike Magic, you can go straight face and not care about the state of the board of the opponent. This means that Face decks can win games without ever trading a single minion and just playing their entire hand without any thought;

2) Face/aggro decks play a lot of 1/2 mana minions/spells/weapons. This means that they are much less likely to lose a game because of their starting hand. This also means that these types of decks are much more consistent than Control/Midrange decks that can be punished because of a bad starting hand and outright lose the game because of that;

3) Playing Face/aggro decks means you will be losing/winning your games at a much faster rate then other decks. This means that you will reach your objectives (ladder/quests) WAY faster than any other type of deck that can have 20 minute long games;

4) Face/aggro decks are WAY cheaper to craft than other decks, making them super accessible for new players that can easily make such decks in a matter of days after starting playing.

5) Opponents of these type of decks never really have much fun while the match is going on. You start behind and need to play a catch-up game that is never fun because you spend your entire turns trying to wipe the opponents minions to prevent them from swarming your board until you actually die or stabilize at a very low health that never really garantees your safety until the opponent is actually dead.

6) Countering these decks usually means playing tech cards or removing key cards in other match-ups from your deck to make room for cheaper answers just to be able to survive the onslaught. This makes your deck much worse against other match-ups and certain tech cards just outright make you sad when you draw them against Control/Midrange decks where they are mostly useless.

7) GvG introduced tons of new cards that are amazing for these types of decks and Blackrock Mountain also added a few more to their arsenal. It seems like these type of decks have much more flexibility in terms of viable card choices and other decks are somewhat pigeonholed to a set number of cards, without much choice on how to construct their decks.

Conclusion:
It seems to me that there are way too many incentives to play face/aggro decks right now and I would love if things changed a bit. I am not saying that Hearthstone needs to completely shift its mechanics, but I would love to see more cards that punish aggro on the next set and benefit control decks just to let more of these Control/Midrange decks to surface instead of being straight away doomed to fail because of all the aggro/face decks around. GvG gave aggro decks a LOT of new toys so why not do the same for midrange/control on the next set? I would love to see more minions like Belcher that are great against these rush decks but aren't automatically bad in other match-ups. What is your opinion? Do you agree with me?

[soulzek]

Control will never become dominant in HS because the game opposes specific control techniques that are inherent in other TCGs:

1) No opponent discard
2) No interrupts
3) Value of card advantage (hand, not board) is diminished because resource generation is free

Because #2 and #3 are integrated deeply into the core gameplay, they will never change. In addition, Blizzard explicitly stated they will never plan on doing #1.

And then, yes, all the other reasons you mentioned.

[Ravex]

So, today's meta is a meta filled with aggro/face decks. We've got Face Hunter, Zoo, Mech Shaman, Mech Mage and even decks like Tempo Mage or Midrange Hunter are aggressive enough that will punish anyone without an answer in the first few turns. Hearthstone provides many incentives to playing these type of decks:

1) Unlike Magic, you can go straight face and not care about the state of the board of the opponent. This means that Face decks can win games without ever trading a single minion and just playing their entire hand without any thought;

2) Face/aggro decks play a lot of 1/2 mana minions/spells/weapons. This means that they are much less likely to lose a game because of their starting hand. This also means that these types of decks are much more consistent than Control/Midrange decks that can be punished because of a bad starting hand and outright lose the game because of that;

3) Playing Face/aggro decks means you will be losing/winning your games at a much faster rate then other decks. This means that you will reach your objectives (ladder/quests) WAY faster than any other type of deck that can have 20 minute long games;

4) Face/aggro decks are WAY cheaper to craft than other decks, making them super accessible for new players that can easily make such decks in a matter of days after starting playing.

5) Opponents of these type of decks never really have much fun while the match is going on. You start behind and need to play a catch-up game that is never fun because you spend your entire turns trying to wipe the opponents minions to prevent them from swarming your board until you actually die or stabilize at a very low health that never really garantees your safety until the opponent is actually dead.

6) Countering these decks usually means playing tech cards or removing key cards in other match-ups from your deck to make room for cheaper answers just to be able to survive the onslaught. This makes your deck much worse against other match-ups and certain tech cards just outright make you sad when you draw them against Control/Midrange decks where they are mostly useless.

7) GvG introduced tons of new cards that are amazing for these types of decks and Blackrock Mountain also added a few more to their arsenal. It seems like these type of decks have much more flexibility in terms of viable card choices and other decks are somewhat pigeonholed to a set number of cards, without much choice on how to construct their decks.

Conclusion:
It seems to me that there are way too many incentives to play face/aggro decks right now and I would love if things changed a bit. I am not saying that Hearthstone needs to completely shift its mechanics, but I would love to see more cards that punish aggro on the next set and benefit control decks just to let more of these Control/Midrange decks to surface instead of being straight away doomed to fail because of all the aggro/face decks around. GvG gave aggro decks a LOT of new toys so why not do the same for midrange/control on the next set? I would love to see more minions like Belcher that are great against these rush decks but aren't automatically bad in other match-ups. What is your opinion? Do you agree with me?

Every single one of my decks are control minus my midrange zoo which I still count as a type of control.

I have a high win rate and don't have to resort to screen licking.

Seems fine to me.

[Mormolyce]

I'd say so. Even in a perfect world where all deck styles were perfectly balanced, rush should be deliberately tuned slightly worse. Because all else being equal, rush still wins because it's fast, easy and cheap. In both senses of the word.

And more importantly, rush style decks are far less vulnerable to RNG. A major factor for a HS deck.

1) Unlike Magic, you can go straight face and not care about the state of the board of the opponent. This means that Face decks can win games without ever trading a single minion and just playing their entire hand without any thought

I agree with all your other points, but this one is only really true of face hunter. Zoo is all about board control. Even mech decks don't exclusively push face.

[PPN]

5) Opponents of these type of decks never really have much fun while the match is going on. You start behind and need to play a catch-up game that is never fun because you spend your entire turns trying to wipe the opponents minions to prevent them from swarming your board until you actually die or stabilize at a very low health that never really garantees your safety until the opponent is actually dead.

I hate when it comes to this part. You hope for that 3-4 game changing cards to pop up in your hand while hoping he wont get the finisher-face-card which he most likely will because his deck consists of 15/30 of those...yaaaawn.

I believed once, those decks will dissappear by themselves because of how boring they are to play...apparently i was wrong. It seems after all that the simplicity and success rate just dominate over all other game factors.

[muto]

Face Decks only get punished if you draw into answers (board clears), and if you do, they run out of steam very quickly since they vomited their entire hand onto the board by turn 5-6, and sometimes it still doesn't matter, cause you'll be at like 10 life or less, and the Hunter can just top deck any of 500000 face damage answers.

[haxartus]

If you don't have enough cards, the only way for you to be competitive is to play a deck that wins at round 5.

[Daws001]

I'm around rank 9 atm and I don't think there are any other classes besides face hunters. I don't think they exist.

HunterStone

[FobManX]

OP is pretty much spot on on every point.

Aggro decks run a lot more minions than control decks will have efficient answers for so its a #s game and the odds are always in the aggro deck's favor over the long run.

[Armbre]

If you want to kill face hunters play an aggro pally, fight fire with fire. Also dragon priest is pretty good with soulpriest circle of healing clears, lightbomb, and holy nova, eveytime i beat a hunter i feel like a make the world a bit better.

People who play hunters are the same that drive in the carpool lane with dummys in the seats, truly the lowest of the low

[Ravex]

If you want to kill face hunters play an aggro pally, fight fire with fire. Also dragon priest is pretty good with soulpriest circle of healing clears, lightbomb, and holy nova, eveytime i beat a hunter i feel like a make the world a bit better.

People who play hunters are the same that drive in the carpool lane with dummys in the seats, truly the lowest of the low

Hunter plays explosive trap.

GG aggro pally.

[Armbre]

Hunter plays explosive trap.

GG aggro pally.

nah i keep a kezan mystic in that deck, but recovery is usually pretty easy with muster+quatermaster

[Irian]

I have to say, from my experiences Hearthstone's format currently favors aggression and tempo decks over the more reactive control decks. Whether this is a good thing or not is debatable, but I don't even really think it can be argued at this point.

Now, these statements below are simply experiences from a player who has been playing semi-competitively since beta, and they may not be everyone's experience but they are at the very least mine:

The biggest issue is in versatility and less reliance on draws. For example, in my experiences, with an aggro deck as long as I get a decent early game mulligan that consists of at the very least one 2 drop (and given aggro's curve, this is practically guaranteed) I have a fighting chance. I'm not picky with what it is, for example as a zoo lock I can draw into a Haunted Creeper or Nerubian Egg and work with it easily as Zoo doesn't peter out until very much later.

Comparatively, Control requires very specific cards to deal with very specific threats, and while many decks can run control, the means they have to deal with these threats are extremely inconsistent and they usually have some sort of glaring weakness for an aggro deck to exploit.
By this I mean, using Zoo as an example again, as a Zoo lock I understand that Handlock surrenders early game board presence and so I want to build a large array of sticky minions that dodge Hellfire like Creeper, Eggs and Imp Gang Boss. I can even get them out of 4-damage Shadowflame range by saving my Defender of Argus specifically for minions like Nerubians and aforementioned IGB to mandate they sacrifice something significant like a giant to Shadowflame them down.
Now let's jump to another control deck and one of the most powerful, Control warrior. Their board clears are weak and sparing so I know if I drop a bunch of annoying 2 health minions, he can't really do much other than attempt to take tempo back with weapons, and even then he has to sacrifice health to do so. 2-3 sticky, decent-health minions is generally enough to win me the game, keeping the threat of Brawl fairly low and other effects like Death's Bite and Whirlwind basically nonexistent.

That's my point. As the reactor, Control is required to have the appropriate response at any given time, and if they don't then they either have to improvise and make horrible trades like whirlwind-executing that 2 cost 4/4 Nerubian or simply take hits in hope that they draw into it. Aggro decks are far more consistent because they require nothing but understanding of tempo and awareness of enemy decks and removal and avoiding situations that may result in a board wipe.
Hell, Face Hunter doesn't even have to consider that.

Compounding that is the fact that aggro decks are generally much cheaper to make and most of them are fairly easy to play at at least a decent level, and we have a recipe for what we're seeing now; a meta dominated by aggro decks with the spare few combo decks making a breakthrough here and there.

[Armbre]

I have to say, from my experiences Hearthstone's format currently favors aggression and tempo decks over the more reactive control decks. Whether this is a good thing or not is debatable, but I don't even really think it can be argued at this point.

Now, these statements below are simply experiences from a player who has been playing semi-competitively since beta, and they may not be everyone's experience but they are at the very least mine:

The biggest issue is in versatility and less reliance on draws. For example, in my experiences, with an aggro deck as long as I get a decent early game mulligan that consists of at the very least one 2 drop (and given aggro's curve, this is practically guaranteed) I have a fighting chance. I'm not picky with what it is, for example as a zoo lock I can draw into a Haunted Creeper or Nerubian Egg and work with it easily as Zoo doesn't peter out until very much later.

Comparatively, Control requires very specific cards to deal with very specific threats, and while many decks can run control, the means they have to deal with these threats are extremely inconsistent and they usually have some sort of glaring weakness for an aggro deck to exploit.
By this I mean, using Zoo as an example again, as a Zoo lock I understand that Handlock surrenders early game board presence and so I want to build a large array of sticky minions that dodge Hellfire like Creeper, Eggs and Imp Gang Boss. I can even get them out of 4-damage Shadowflame range by saving my Defender of Argus specifically for minions like Nerubians and aforementioned IGB to mandate they sacrifice something significant like a giant to Shadowflame them down.
Now let's jump to another control deck and one of the most powerful, Control warrior. Their board clears are weak and sparing so I know if I drop a bunch of annoying 2 health minions, he can't really do much other than attempt to take tempo back with weapons, and even then he has to sacrifice health to do so. 2-3 sticky, decent-health minions is generally enough to win me the game, keeping the threat of Brawl fairly low and other effects like Death's Bite and Whirlwind basically nonexistent.

That's my point. As the reactor, Control is required to have the appropriate response at any given time, and if they don't then they either have to improvise and make horrible trades like whirlwind-executing that 2 cost 4/4 Nerubian or simply take hits in hope that they draw into it. Aggro decks are far more consistent because they require nothing but understanding of tempo and awareness of enemy decks and removal and avoiding situations that may result in a board wipe.
Hell, Face Hunter doesn't even have to consider that.

Compounding that is the fact that aggro decks are generally much cheaper to make and most of them are fairly easy to play at at least a decent level, and we have a recipe for what we're seeing now; a meta dominated by aggro decks with the spare few combo decks making a breakthrough here and there.

Great summary i've seen the call to make the decks 60 cards so that aggro decks would be less consistent and it would push the game into the midgame range where i believe a majority of players would like to see it go.

[Deleted]

I play every season at high ranks where there is barely any aggro The ranking can be tedious tho =/

[Ham on Rye]

I'm around rank 9 atm and I don't think there are any other classes besides face hunters. I don't think they exist.

HunterStone

pretty much this. at best, 70% of my games are against hunters, and the rest are zoo and patron