History HighTierScrappy / HearthstoneHeroesOfWarcraft

* '''Hunter''' has gone through at least three different deck types that have been universally slammed for being overtly strong, utterly brainless, and completely luck-based to fight against. The first was the combo Hunter that used Unleash the Hounds in conjunction with Starving Buzzard to draw at least 4 cards for a measly 5 mana, with those 4 cards and the full board of dogs being used to finish off the opponent. After Buzzard got nerfed to oblivion, Huntertaker took its place, a deck that abused the snowball potential of Undertaker to either force the opponent to kill it as soon as possible or cause them to flat out lose. After Undertaker was nerfed, it was followed by Face Hunter, a deck designed to do nothing except steamroll the enemy hero and hope they don't die first (Though thankfully this is one is ''far'' less powerful than the other two, and it's mostly just good for climbing up the ladder quickly).

* '''Plague Death Knight''', while never becoming as broken as contemporaries like Odyn Warrior and Handbuff Paladin, has never been particularly well-regarded due to its rather un-fun playstyle in the same vein as Bomb Warrior, and for basically the same reasons. The deck's playstyle involves shuffling Plague cards into the opponent's deck, which cast when drawn to damage their hero and either heal you (Blood Plague), summon a 2/2 Ghoul for you (Unholy Plague), or increase the cost of their next card by 1 (Frost Plague). In some ways, it made drawing cards even ''more'' of a punishing, RNG-heavy mess because Frost Plague was particularly nasty on early turns. As of ''Showdown in the Badlands'', the Plague package is almost always mashed up with the Excavate package to out-tempo the opponent and eventually pair the high-end bombs of the two playstyles, shuffling Plagues to discount [[https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Chained_Guardian Chained Guardian]] and then resurrect it with [[https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/The_Azerite_Rat The Azerite Rat]], while also having just the right Runes to drop [[https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Reska,_the_Pit_Boss Reska, the Pit Boss]] and make the opponent punch the wall at least once. Because the mash-up of two packages means the deck has little room for anything else, this results in a very linear build and playstyle.

* '''Bomb Warrior''' from ''Rise of Shadows'' is known for being an annoying deck with the potential to randomly punish you for drawing cards. The deck is based around a set of cards that shuffle Bombs into the opponent's deck, which deal 5 damage when drawn. It has many of the strengths provided by Control Warrior, mostly thanks to [[https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Dr._Boom,_Mad_Genius Dr. Boom, Mad Genius]], as well as decent tempo and a lot of unfun highroll potential. The design of the deck gets a lot of derision, since it's literally just all the Bomb cards from [=RoS=] mixed with the established Control deck, bound by the parasitic [[https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Blastmaster_Boom Blastmaster Boom]] legendary[[note]]Arguably, including [[https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Augmented_Elekk Augmented Elekk]] in the deck is somewhat interesting, although that ultimately jut means ''more bombs''[[/note]]. Even if Tempo Rogue remains the aggressive boogeyman of the set, Bomb Warrior has patently unfun gameplay.

** ... only for '''Handbuff Paladin''' to pick up where Aggro Paladin left off. In addition to having some decent handbuff options to begin with, Paladin also got [[https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Painter%27s_Virtue Painter's Virtue]] from Whizbang's Workshop, a 2/3 weapon with Lifesteal that buffs all minions in your hand by +1/+1 when your hero attacks. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Well... the Year of the Pegasus Core set also brought back [[https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Southsea_Deckhand Southsea Deckhand]] and Leeroy Jenkins. All of Paladin's handbuffs combined with their board buffs from Auras and Shroomscavate meant that Paladins immediately became public enemy #1 after the launch of Whizbang's Workshop for their ability to end games with ''30+ damage worth of Charge'' straight into the opponent's face, and they had enough control tools that rushing them down was no easy task.

* '''Big/Resurrect Priest''' is a deck that revolves around cheating out small copies of big, high-value minions, letting them die, then abusing Priest's many resurrection effects to bring them back at full power and spam the hell out of annoying and destructive Deathrattle effects (as well as using Priest's many removal effects available in Wild to ensure this happens). While the deck struggles against aggro decks that can bum-rush it down before it starts gathering steam, any other deck that doesn't try to go face against it immediately will have problems, as the Priest will most likely have many more resurrection effects than most control decks have removal. The deck is also very high-rolly, and they can start setting up their win condition as early as '''Turn 3'''[[note]]Thought pre-nerf Barnes on Turn 4 was bad? Now they can use Illuminate to Dredge up a 3-mana Shadow Essence.[[/note]] or as late as Turn 7-8 if they're unlucky. While numerous tech cards have been devised as a counter to Big Priest, most of them ended up being a little too slow or impractical to really put a stop to it, and while more experienced players argue it's a Tier 2 Wild deck at best, it remained an extremely popular deck due to its dumb highroll potential, inefficient tech cards against it, and its generally low skill floor, and since the deck hasn't been particularly powerful in Standard, most of its tools remained untouched for most of its lifetime, with the only notable nerf having Barnes increased in mana cost. When the entire ''Knights of the Frozen Throne'' set was temporarily added to the Standard rotation in the Year of the Kraken, it showed just how degenerate Big Priest can get if it isn't contested by hyper-aggressive Wild aggro decks.
* '''Secret Mage''' is the other scourge of Wild next to Big Priest, having the benefits of Tempo Mage but with added confusion and defensive plays from Secrets. It's far less prominent in Standard where it has a more predictable set of Secrets to play around and less Secret synergy cards to work with, but gets only better with age in Wild, where it gets to keep everything. It can cheat out a ton of Mana for Secrets with Kabal Lackey, Mad Scientist, Ancient Mysteries, and Kirin Tor Mage, wipe the board with Arcane Flakmage, remove minions or go face with Medivh's Valet and Cloud Prince, and tempo out hefty 0-cost minions on board with Kabal Crystal Runner and Contract Conjurer, all while having access to great card draw. It's also an easy deck to get fast wins with, and relatively inexpensive; ''none'' of its core cards are Legendary.

* If you are in PvP team that rely on Protector or Fighter, you will very likely tear your hair out at the presence of '''Xyrella'''. She is a Caster whose Hero Power Blinding Luminance is a Speed 3 no Cooldown ability that let her deal 10 damage and have the target -8 Attack for one turn. This mean she can completely neuter one hero of the enemy choosing (likely before they can act since Speed 3 is extremely fast) and deal a decent chunk of damage to them. Worse, most Protectors and Fighters require their Attack to function, which Xyrella completely stuffed. And that not getting to her Equipment Radiant Wand which let her to enhance Blinding Luminance to 14 damage and -12 Attack, as well as the fact that she is one of the most potent healing Caster in the roster rivaling Anduin. All this combined mean that she can heal up her own team Protector and Fighters who are already difficult to take down when she neuter the other enemy Fighter and Protector. This result to her having the highest pick rate in the entire game. she is so good that Orc team use her as their primary support due to her synergy with Samuros despite not being an Orc.

* '''Land Lubber''' was a new addition to the late 2023 battlegrounds refresh, where a new mechanic was introduced in the way of tavern spells [[labelnote:explanation]]A new mechanic that adds spells to the battleground tavern: they can range from discovering cards(like a minion of your most common type in your warband, a battlecry minion, a buddy) to some advantage like increasing your gold next turn, giving a minion more attack, etc[[/labelnote]] . Land Lubber is a tier 2 hybrid pirate/elemental minion whose effect makes it so you get a extra tavern spell on each fresh, and what looked like a fairly mudane effect at first glance ended up turning it into one of the most overpowered and despised minions in the entire game mode. Lubber's effect basically [[NotTheIntendedUse encouraged players to stay in tavern 2-3]] in order to fish specific tavern spells(Careful investment[[labelnote:explanation]]Costs 1 gold and makes you gain 2 gold on your next turn[[/labelnote]] , Leaf Through the Pages[[labelnote:explanation]]Costs 3 gold and makes you next 3 refreshes free[[/labelnote]], Overconfidence[[labelnote:explanation]]Costs 1 gold:If you win your next combat, you gain 3 gold. If you tie, you get 1 gold[[/labelnote]], Hasty Excavation[[labelnote:explanation]]Costs 3 health to buy and gives you 1 gold[[/labelnote]] to name a few) in order to consistently gain ''over 30-40 gold each turn'' after spending only a few turns in tavern 2. The result was even more absurd when Bejeweled Duelist[[labelnote:explanation]]Tier 2 3/4 elemental that gains 1 health each time you refresh the tavern[[/labelnote]] was in play, since it means each free refresh ''also'' buffed your board's duelists. The effect was too excessive, and Blizzard decided to take action less than a month later and banned Land Lubber from Battlegrounds until they can rework the minion.