I don't think that they are replacing it with anything. It will have an abbreviated final year and be gone. I am not sure what you think is the "Awesome Bowl" here but World Championship and Masters Tour are not new. And Lobby Legends is battlegrounds and sounds like it will be a weekend tournament not a weekly season.
I would question if control/heal priest is really tier 1. Looking through the HSreplay data, except for top 1000 legend in the last few days, it is solidly tier 2 with a 50% win rate basically any other way you slice it.
Additionally, even if control warlock is the worse deck, it has the higher popularity, again in everything except top legend in the last ~3 days.
But more over in diamond through legend, priest has a 15-16% win rate against warlock. That is not healthy no matter what. A match up between two semi-popular decks that is worse than a 1 in 6 is so bad for the game. It potentially should get several card changes on both sides to improve the that match up but prevent issues with the other matches.
As for the mage match up, priest only has a 40% win rate, which is often seen as the maximum acceptable difference for a match up. So I don't really see how much more of a "free win" it should be.
As for discover its problem is the opposite of what you suggest. Further limiting the pool of card to discover from is just more of the same issue. With the removal of classic and basic, discover and random generation got much better since so many low rolls got removed. Across the board all of the generation needs to have its power reevaluated. Adjust costs, adjust stats since the generation is now worth more.
Lastly, I can't be sure, but you might not be playing the priest match up correctly. I know I hated playing against warlock and Tickatus. I watched some videos where they explained the matchups, the weak points, etc. And you would be surprised how much less you hate a deck when you beat it 5-10% more.
Except priest doesn't have much stealing or generation right now. Sethekk Veilweaver and Skeletal Dragon are the only generation engines. Psychic Conjurer and Mindrender Illucia are the only steal/copy effects.
Compared to the Galakrond days, there is a real chance that a control priest could gas out.
I don't think that they are replacing it with anything. It will have an abbreviated final year and be gone. I am not sure what you think is the "Awesome Bowl" here but World Championship and Masters Tour are not new. And Lobby Legends is battlegrounds and sounds like it will be a weekend tournament not a weekly season.
Reddit posts like this. Seem to suggest there was a lot of win trading, especially on CN servers.
I feel like one of duels main issues from a design perspective is it reliance on mana cheat to do "big, cool things".
I'd be interested in if they could redesign it, without any mana cheating, and still make it have the "big, cool things"
There is a chance that it is trying to turn a particular percentage of the players against the employees.
They may be hoping that the ones that were upset by the "Jaina nerf" or boo'd this question with start defending them.
The two big ones I can think of off the bat are Animated Broomstick and Hero power for DH so that Illidari Inquisitor can go face.
I would question if control/heal priest is really tier 1. Looking through the HSreplay data, except for top 1000 legend in the last few days, it is solidly tier 2 with a 50% win rate basically any other way you slice it.
Additionally, even if control warlock is the worse deck, it has the higher popularity, again in everything except top legend in the last ~3 days.
But more over in diamond through legend, priest has a 15-16% win rate against warlock. That is not healthy no matter what. A match up between two semi-popular decks that is worse than a 1 in 6 is so bad for the game. It potentially should get several card changes on both sides to improve the that match up but prevent issues with the other matches.
As for the mage match up, priest only has a 40% win rate, which is often seen as the maximum acceptable difference for a match up. So I don't really see how much more of a "free win" it should be.
As for discover its problem is the opposite of what you suggest. Further limiting the pool of card to discover from is just more of the same issue. With the removal of classic and basic, discover and random generation got much better since so many low rolls got removed. Across the board all of the generation needs to have its power reevaluated. Adjust costs, adjust stats since the generation is now worth more.
Lastly, I can't be sure, but you might not be playing the priest match up correctly. I know I hated playing against warlock and Tickatus. I watched some videos where they explained the matchups, the weak points, etc. And you would be surprised how much less you hate a deck when you beat it 5-10% more.
Except priest doesn't have much stealing or generation right now. Sethekk Veilweaver and Skeletal Dragon are the only generation engines. Psychic Conjurer and Mindrender Illucia are the only steal/copy effects.
Compared to the Galakrond days, there is a real chance that a control priest could gas out.
I could be wrong but aren't the first passives of the run a nerfed or weak one and the second ones the original or stronger ones?
I think that there was an attempt to make power ramp start small then go crazy deep into a run.