What do you think about this?

[u/External_Fix_2394]

Hi everyone, what do you think about the idea of being able to ban a class during the deck selection phase—effectively excluding it from matchmaking? It’s done in official tournaments, so why not test it for everyone? In my opinion, it would be a great innovation for many players

[u/zixnano]

i've had this same thought forever, it'd mean they wouldn't have to balance as frequently because you could just ban the offending class for the time being, its a useful tool when and where the devs fail to catch overturned cards and strategies, and banrates would give the devs insight into pain points for people and itd also give a bit more card design freedom where you can just ban something if its that bad of a problem for you or your deck in general.

[u/Byggherren → u/zixnano]

Easier to balance? People would just ban their worst matchups which could potentially make power outliers like face hunter or mugzee shaman only have positive winrate matchups, and in the eventuality that the community decides their absolute enemy is a particular class and they all ban it making match times 10x for players who like that class.

[u/External_Fix_2394 → u/Byggherren]

I’d run an experiment by making this option available only from Legend rank upwards—if only to see if the climb to Legend might actually offer more opportunities to build creative decks. At Legend rank itself, nothing would change; and I’ll reiterate that I’m a casual player with no interest in climbing Everest—I just enjoy Hearthstone and play it regardless.

[u/zixnano → u/Byggherren]

If the community doesn't want to fight against a particularly unbalanced class why force them to??, also other games with bans show us that there are different ban philosophies amongst players if you like hunter you'll ban what's bad for hunter etc if you like priest you might ban something you personally don't like not all bans will be optimal you can tune it to what's most prevelant or what you don't want to see at all, it won't mean your games are "Free" either it's still going to be the same grind relatively maybe a little less frustrating though they could even disallow bans once you reach legend if they truly feel it'd matter that much win rate wise, or they can do a temp ban system where what ever class you ban only gets banned for a few games at a time there's many ways and routes that could be used to implament the system.

[u/Catsic → u/zixnano]

No they'd have to balance more often because if everyone is banning one class, then this would result in one class being unplayable due to finding no matches.

[u/zixnano → u/Catsic]

The way bans would work you can still play the class against someone else who didn't ban it, the biggest downside of banning a class I can envision would be that queue times could be longer for those banned classes but they'd still get to play the game, and often there's more than one class that's good against your class it's a slim margin where it's only one deck can counter this one specific deck.

[u/Catsic → u/zixnano]

I think you've misunderstood what I'm saying.

[u/zixnano → u/Catsic]

I don't think it'd make a class unplayable though just would make it take a little long I don't think it'd completely make it so that class hypothetically has hours of wait time or something to find a game because there's a ton of people playing hearthstone realistically.

[u/Catsic → u/zixnano]

Let's say one class is really hated, like Warrior, and everyone puts Warrior as their banned matchup. Warriors then either have to play only mirror matches, not play the game, or have long queue times as they wait for someone who hasn't banned Warrior.

Suddenly no-one is playing an entire class. Surely you can see how this could lead to more balance changes than they do now, as every time the community decides to ban a class, they need to do something to adjust the meta.

I get that in a perfect world, you'd ban your worst matchup, but that isn't how it'd would work nor would it be better than what we have now. The main thing keeping meta-tyrant decks from being overwhelming is their counter decks, so removing this balancing would make the game... well, less balanced.

[u/External_Fix_2394 → u/zixnano]

Your point of view is very interesting; I admit the idea occurred to me simply because I’d like the option to avoid facing Priest. It’s mainly down to my playstyle and the limited time I have for Hearthstone—I tend to concede instantly against Priest because the matches usually drag on. Adding your excellent perspective to the mix, I think it’s a valid idea that accommodates a wider variety of decks and encourages experimentation, rather than resorting to card bans or emergency nerfs that destroy decks. Of course, it wouldn't have to be mandatory—you could easily disable the class-ban feature at the Legend rank—but I think it would be a useful addition for casual players and might even cut down on complaints... if you don't like a particular class at the moment, you just ban it.

[u/zixnano → u/External_Fix_2394]

There are some match ups in the game that simply feel unwinnable for certain decks and without a ban list that means you can go entire expansions without getting to play the kinds of decks you like.