Ideas to limit stall

[Spartan]

If you want permanent solution cut it at its roots. Ban Bazzar, Loom of Fate and Evil Ascendant from Ranked and tournements. Those cards make the core of most of these decks and arent part of any proper control deck, nor midrange or aggro and I am not counting new players running these just because they are in starter deck. And maybe this would open up design space for some proper control cards that wont be abused by NPE stall decks.

Other card that serves no purpose but pure stall: Armor of Ages

This seems like a good way to improove things. Its radical, but will hit the problem at its root.

[BlastMan]

bazaar and loom of fate are more for the mill decks that use stall, not for just stall decks.

cheaper dual purpose cards to remove items and abilities are what is need. should never ban or remove cards

[XY notlolicat]

bf is annoying too.why not nerf bf?almost warrior take it.

[ka tony s]

ok because of stall decks that cant reach 360r and cant win tournaments
noobs want to nerf them haha

[ka tony s]

nerf all heals
zhannas ability is too strong
change it to 4se gain one health for an ally lol

[Dvsklown]

Stall isn't a problem. You just aren't prepared. Try a few less win conditions and a few more control cards and see what happens.

[Demnchi]

NOTE: I do not do any design work on the cards or their balance. Do NOT take this post as a glimpse into future changes or anything. This is simply my personal opinion as a player who plays this game, like the rest of you.

To me the issue with stall decks has little to do with balance and more to do with the experience of normal matchmaking. It's simply frustrating to go up against a deck that's sole idea of "winning" is to make you wait by preventing your actions from mattering for several turns in a row. To me, the main difference between a stall deck and control deck is that a control deck has an actual win condition they are building up to. Stall doesn't. There is no card to stop or tech for that would let them win, you simply have to find a way to not lose by simply waiting (I've faced plenty of stall decks where my strategy became having a full hand, and passing the turn).

Stall decks I've personally seen:

Moonstaller/Millstalker: The original. You basically use Moonstalker's ability/Full Moon to prevent your opponent from dealing damage to your hero, thus allowing your Evil Ascendant and Lone Wolf to trigger with you in relative safety. You do this hoping you can eventually remove all the options your opponent has. Beyond the cards mentioned above, you also have Now You're Mine and Captured Prey for them to control the board long enough to get to this point. What Big Teeth is usually used to speed this process up since it never breaks. . It is typically beaten by waiting for that one opening and dealing all your damage then, or creating that opening yourself by destroying Full Moon or removing Moonstalker's stealth.

I've actually spent a great deal of time trying to process what purpose Moonstalker's ability has besides stalling. The real answer is that it's supposed to be used to protect your allies to allow them a greater chance of sticking on the board or helping you secure a win. If it didn't stealth the hero, however, then you would give your opponent every excuse to rush you down. The main issue with this is it allows you to turn cards that are supposed to buy you a turn to set up a win condition into cards that just buy you a turn. It never grows towards a real win condition and there is nothing stopping them from doing that imo.

My personal suggestion: Moonstalker's ability is changed to "3SE: While you control an ally, Moonstalker and all friendly allies have Stealth until the start of your next turn. If you don't control an ally, Moonstalker heals 3 damage."

Basically, this would force them to run allies to make use of the stealth, which would leave less resources for the stall cards to be used in such a manner. It also gives opposing players a way to remove stealth from Moonstalker if they are capable of removing all of his allies. Since we've taken away the main way Moonstalker pervent's damage, I felt the healing clause for not having an ally would be helpful, but not cause him to simply waste time.


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Stallvox: This deck makes use of Skervox's ability to ensure that opposing allies are disabled and/or killed before they can act. It's goal is the same as the previous deck. Make sure your opponent runs out of options by making them waste turns as they attempt to play allies to defeat you. Typically, this deck can be defeated by focusing less on allies and more on ability damage or attacking with hero weapons. The other way to defeat it is to overwhelm it with high-health allies to force them through their Perfect Shots.

I've shared this opinion on my streams and on the forums many times in the past. Skervox's ability is the real culprit imo. Disabling every single ally on the opposing side basically removes your opponet's board for a whole turn (in most cases). Most abilities can't be utilized and the allies will simply take 2 damage (4 if Evil Ascendant is in play) before they are able to retaliate. Meanwhile, anything that can survive that will be controlled down by hunter's powerful control cards that work VERY well with Skervox's Poison. If it didn't disable allies, they would only take 1 damage (2 if Evil Ascendant is in play) before they are able to be used. Even if that only gives them a single attack, it makes a world of difference when it comes to ensuring the game can be pushed forward.

I don't think that this means Skervox's ability is over powered, I just think it leads to a very frustrating situation for the opposing player.

My Personal Suggestion: Skervox's ability is changed to "4SE: All opposing allies are poisoned and target opposing ally is disabled...." He may need some sort of boost to maintain balance, but the basic premise is that he can't nuke boards so easily on his own with no drawback what so ever and give the opponent something to work with if they play well against Skervox's poison. This is especially true once cards like Krugal Butcher hit the scene, making it even more beneficial to poison allies as a hunter.



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I could breakdown a few more, but it's getting late and this is taking me much longer to write than I thought. x.x One thing I will mention is that I don't see Lay Low Lance as a stall deck, I see it as a combo deck. Sure there are a lot of stall element's in it, but it has a clear plan and one that you can disrupt if it's in the meta.

To me these changes would be better than banning cards or reverting Vermin/Sorcerer. That being said, I don't think changing Vermin/Sorcerer to be more effective than they are now to be a bad thing. The main issue before is that they we're too easy to trigger and became an insane tempo swing when they did. They counted and targeted both items and abilities without prejudice. They basically needed to be reined in, not destroyed. There have been a lot of suggestions but personally I vote for them acting similar to Artful Squire. My personal suggestions:

Vermin: "When Rapacious Vermin is summoned while an opposing player controls at least 3 items and/or abilities, target item or ability controlled by that player may be destroyed. If you do, Rapacious Vermin is Exiled."

Sorcerer: When Sorcerer of Endia is summoned while an opposing player controls at least 3 items and/or abilities, target item or ability controlled by that player may be destroyed. If you do, Sourcer of Endia is Exiled."

Exile prevents them from being recursed and prevents them from being a a good body that already got you a 1 for 1 trade at the least. It also opens up a bit of trickery where you could provide them steadfast (such as Stand Firm or Assumed Command) to allow them to stick to the board anyways. Vermin could also cost 3 when he destroys something, but I'd rather take it one step at a time.

Another great suggestion would be to revert them, except they don't count and/or can't destroy attachments (as mentioned in this very thread). It was the main reason they were able to trigger so easily after all. A Crippling Blow and a Blood Frenzy and suddenly that Warrior can't play the weapon their deck was built around.... or any of them is destroyed.

Yet another direction would be to limit the cost of things they could destroy (my suggestion would be 4 cost or less), thus preventing them from easily taking down High cost weapons and armor for a mesely 2 resources.
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Anyways, I do think stall is a real issue that needs to be tackled. It's just a matter of figuring out how to do that, without making too big of a splash elsewhere.

As a Member of the Board and the Community Manager: I am listening to feedback, please keep giving it and discussing what is important to you.

[DuaMall]

ban players who stall for 3 consecutive games for 1 year! hihihihihihi

[Kolodi]

ban players who stall for 3 consecutive games for 1 year! hihihihihihi

Yeah, and there should be a button in game to report stall player

Sent from my ONE A2003 using Tapatalk

[EdgeAce]

This seems like a great idea, and as for the Vess stall decks, I don't think that will be an issue. Vess right now is a big control jocky that takes time and then sweeps the board late game in my experience, but not so late as to be counted as stall, because he does need to build a board state. Just because an archetype is available is not quite enough to warrant worrying about it. I doubt Vess stall will see to much competitive play unless I have missed something big here.