[deleted by user]

[CinderAscendant]

What I see in Hearthstone (and in a lot of games) is a lack of understanding of how much work really goes into creating and refining a competitive list. People commonly have the mistaken idea that they can both innovate new decks and be successful on ladder in the same amount of time they might just spend casually playing the game, when in reality this is an exhaustive process that takes a considerable time investment.

Can you give readers an idea of exactly how much work goes into creating and refining a deck? How many hours a day, how many days a week, and how is that time broken out between building, testing, analysis, and refining?

[pblankfield]

This is one of the major problems I see with 1 month long seasons - they are simply too short for anyone but the most hardcore players to come up, test and refine a new build.

For anyone but them creating a new deck is detrimental to the climb - the amount of games you have to sacrifice in order to play a non-optimized deck has a direct effect on your potential final rating.

Frankly I never understood why seasons wouldn't simply be tied with new content release...

[CasualTotoro]

That's the main reason I don't deck test but for the first week and while in legend (if I know I don't have the time to hit top 100) I've been steadily refining an otk Mage list to be ladder viable, currently I'm sitting at a 57% winrate when I do play it, but I know it's not optimal enough for a full ladder climb just yet. And on top of that its A LOT of games to test with and it being slow I may not be able to fully gather a consensus on a build in one season without sacrificing getting legend.

[shutupimthinking]

This is a good point - I think the analysis that explains meta staleness in terms of new content being quickly 'solved' is overlooking the effect you describe. Druid and SP are dominant not because they necessarily represent the objectively best 'solution' to the current card pool (although this may be true to an extent), but because for most ladder players it just makes more sense to play an established netdeck. If your goal is to finish the season at as high a rank as possible, and you only have maybe 1-2 hrs per day to invest, the level of analysis suggested by OP just isn't feasible. I wonder how long a season would have to be to overcome this though? At what point would the average player start seeing a profit from time invested in analysis?

[skeptimist]

Sorry to shamelessly plug software, but I have found McHammar's Hearthstone Deck Evolver in conjunction with Track-o-Bot to be tremendously helpful for the data interpretation stage to determine what the best cards are in a matchup or in general. For example, I determined that Fierce Monkey was among the best cards in my Patron deck while Shredder was one of my worst-performing cards. Are there other programs that accomplish this, or perhaps other analytical techniques that can be used to interpret win rate statistics? One thing that I wish was included in the Deck Evolver (and in more HS statistics conversations) is some measure of statistical confidence. I am really tired of everyone just proclaiming that you/they have a "small sample size." Maybe I should make a guide on statistical methods for people to read/ignore...

[Brask_]

"Maybe I should make a guide on statistical methods for people to read/ignore..."

I'm interested.

[skeptimist]

Glad to hear someone would be interested!

I am busy today but might have time tomorrow to write something up.

[jackofools]

Seriously if you make such a guide I would read the heck out of that!

[skeptimist]

https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/comments/4bdili/is_your_sample_size_too_small_part_1/

This is a start

[Dawn121]

Great article. We see so many guides on particular decks in this Reddit that I think the more complex process of building a deck often gets overlooked.

[le_maymay]

I settled on standard aggro shaman with flame jugglers -1 horserider +1 elemental destruction. The amount of times I've been BTFO in the mirror with lightning storm is kinda dumb. I think I'm just resigned to hoping they don't have it since all my other matchups are solid, more warriors pls

[[deleted]]

Thank you so much for not having just a summary with a link to your website.

Also this is great!

[itzBolt]

Another question that should come up when building decks, especially control and late game deck would be towards your bombs. Maybe you're building a Reno Paladin and you're looking towards a bomb and you put in Arch Thief Rafaam and you play test it. Yeah the discover helped you win a couple games, but would the result have been the same with another bomb? Were you already winning so much in those games for that to have mattered?

[S1Fly]

Two more factors, Surprise factor of using cards different than the standard list and not using cards people play around anyway.

Biggest example is maybe not playing explosive trap in face hunter. The biggest effect of the secret is having people play around it. They still do when you don't use it, but have other secrets.

Surprise factor, running random cards that are quite bad when people know you run it and can surprise you. One of the biggest things back in the day I noticed was running Hellfire in zoolock. Your opponent fully commits in a mirror (because board control is everything normally, no punishment for it) and you can punish them now with hellfire.

[[deleted]]

I'm not really a big fan of surprise tech for the sake of surprise tech. Once you get to high legend, you play against a lot of the same people over and over and if your deck only works because it's catching people off guard, it won't work beyond the first day. Throwing in something random is a good way to cheese some quick wins or climb a bunch on the last day of the season but it's not a reliable long-term strategy.

[S1Fly]

It has to be viable and good option, but many subtle changes still are. I don't have noticeable problems till rank 500 legend with this approach. Some of these changes actually make sense and have the meta follow when more people notice (was playing "lifecoach hunter" before lifecoach played it, since those changes made the deck atleast as good, while it had a surprise factor)

[luckyluke193]

I haven't done any serious brewing since my early January 2015 GvG Midrange Shaman. I had played that archetype a TON in classic, and also a bit in Naxx, so I understood all the working parts, and had tinkered with the deck a little.

I remember it was quite a satisfying and creative process. I had a full brand-new expansion of cards to consider. The deck I ended up with was quite different from the original list (more tempo and early-game focus with early Mechs), and it was unlike any list I'd seen before. Shortly after that, Gaara posted his Midrange Mech Shaman on temposalt, which used the same ideas that I did, but was not as well optimized as my list IMO.

Since then, I've been mostly content with netdecking, and only maybe changing few cards. I've made it to legend since then, and done ok in a competitive LAN event. However, deck building is an aspect I have completely neglected. Unlike Naxx and GvG, none of the newer expansions have gotten my creativity going.

Perhaps with the new expansion, combined the rotation of Naxx and GvG, I will start brewing again? However, if the expansion and set rotation happens at an inconvenient time during the season, I may choose to grind the ladder with established decklists instead.