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The Impact of Hearthstone’s New Standard Format

by - 8 years ago

Earlier this week, Blizzard finally announced what they were going to go about their ever-growing card pool. The solution was simple, they decided to add a restricted format much like most TCGs do. Basically now Hearthstone will have two different play modes: “Wild” is the current format, where all cards are allowed; “Standard” is the new format, where only the Basic, Classic, and a list of the latest sets to be released will be allowed play.

A lot of people immediately weighed in on the issues, a lot of the professional players were happy about having larger changes in a metagame that had become too stagnant, where the best decks got only slightly tweaked with each expansion but the core mechanics behind the deck remained largely the same.

On the other hand, a lot of casual players panicked, thinking that their old cards weren’t going to be useful anymore. These subsection of players thought of the move as a blatant money grab, never mind the fact that even in the current format you have to buy cards from the new sets to remain competitive.

Still, I’m going to try and objectively break down what this new Standard Format does.

Problematic core cards get phased out

doctor-boompiloted-shreddermadscientist1

Card such as Dr.Boom and Piloted Shredder are so good that they’ve rendered most of the other neutral 7-drops and 4-drops moot. Not only that, but they are also highly volatile, with a high variance due to their wild RNG effects. Shredder and Boom are cards that can win you games that you had no business winning, and lose you games where you were super ahead just because the uncontrolled randomness decided to hit in the worst/best way possible.  And don’t even get me started on Mad Scientist, which is by far the best 2-drop in the game if you are a Mage or a Hunter.

We will not discuss here why these cards were an issue, but they were an issue that went unresolved. It’s probably because the cards were so popular that nerfing them would’ve sent huge shockwaves through the meta. Right now they won’t be a problem anymore, at least not in the Standard format. This is actually a good plus for Hearthstone, older cards will be phased out in favor of the newer more refined cards that have been designed by a much more experienced team. Just look at the beauty of League of Explorers, which is by far the best Hearthstone expansion thus far.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the controlled randomness of the discover mechanic over the wild shenanigans of Shredders and Boom Bots any day of the week.

Everything is not changing

Savage Roarforce of nature

Blizzard has made an interesting choice, they’ve decided to keep the Basic and Classic sets as a permanent fixture of the new standard formats. This means that the cores of certain archetypes of decks will remain untouched. Lets look at Mid-range druid for example. We have the infamous combo, Druid of the Claw, Keeper of the Grove, Ancient of Lore, Ancient of War, Wild Growth, Innervate, Wrath, Swipe, Azure Drake, Big Game Hunter. That’s a pretty strong core, and considering you have cards such as Chillwind Yeti, Cenarius, and Ragnaros as possibilities to plug the holes, that’s a pretty solid deck that you can build only using the cards from the 2 sets that will be permanently in Standard. This means that if you invest in your decks your money will be relatively safe, these decks will probably only take a few cards after each expansion, and you will probably have enough dust to craft them just by doing your daily quests.

If we factor in the fact that thanks to the card rotation, new cards from the latest expansions won’t have power creep, which means that casual players sticking to wild likely won’t be forced to spend a lot of money on the newer expansions. Hearthstone is a very cheap card game when you compare it with things like Magic: The Gathering, and now it will get even cheaper for the casual player.

But some decks are

mechwarperspider-tank

While some decks are firmly rooted in the Classic and Basic decks, there are some decks that have its core shell situated on an expansion. After GvG is removed from the rotation, you will be hard pressed to build a mech deck. A lot of the decks that currently see play will be patchable and workable in standard, but some decks will go past the point of no return and be exiled from the Standard meta.

There’s a lot to question about Blizzard’s decision of keeping both the Basic and Classic decks in Standard forever, right now it seems that some of the classic archetypes will become relatively stronger while some of the more interesting variants that were born out of synergies between different cards from different sets will fizzle out. I thought the idea was to have the meta be more fluid, I fear that keeping the classic set around might cause some stagnation, but that’s it’s own topic and I’ll look at that closer in the future.

The design space widens

DreadsteedWarsong Commander

One of the problem with card games in general is that as you release more and more cards, some of the interactions between different cards might just break the game. Just take a look at Dreadsteed combined with that old version of Warsong Commander. The Hearthstone Devs originally wanted to make a neutral card with the Dreadsteed’s ability, but they realized that because of Warsong Commander, they just could make it neutral.

Just like that, some of the more interesting cards are bound to heavily restrict the design space. Whenever the devs create a card, they have to make sure that it doesn’t become a part of a game-breaking combo. As more and more cards are released, this gets harder, and we are bound to get less interesting cards.

By constantly rotating out cards, the devs are less constrained and can come up with interesting cards with unique abilities. New mechanics won’t overlap with old mechanics which allows for the creativity of the designers to take over and give us the best cards possible with every new expansion.

But don’t forget about the nerfs

One of the consequences of keeping Classic in Standard is that some of these cards will have to be tweaked for balance reasons. These are cards that will forever interact with every released cards, which means that some powerful cards will have to get brought down a notch to make new cards viable. This is actually really sad for those players who wanted to keep using their decks just the way the are in the “Wild” format. Some decks are bound to be completely destroyed by these nerfs, now we just have to wait and see who the victims are.


In closing, I believe that the inclusion of the new format system will be very positive for players everywhere. Still, I think the way this system is being implemented is far from perfect and there are a few things I don’t agree with, but I’ll probably write a few more articles about that.

Anyway, the most important part is that the end is not coming, and this move will probably make Hearthstone stronger than ever. Sorry Mr. Doomsayer!

Doomsayer

 

 

 

 


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JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


0 responses to “The Impact of Hearthstone’s New Standard Format”

  1. Dobablo says:

    New dusting strategy. I am no longer dusting my classic cards. I will hold them until the changes happen in the hope that some will be nerfed and I can dusted them for the full crafting cost.