It really is. Definitely my most hated class, and if I was asked to remove a class from the game to improve the gameplay experience, it would be the first to go.
The funny thing is that if you had asked me this same question a year ago, I probably would have answered differently and said Sword. Dragon and Sword used to be my two least favorite classes in the game, and it was for a very simple reason: their base design is extremely degenerate and non-interactive.
The difference however is in how these two classes have evolved over time. From the start, Swordcraft had a horrible design because two of the most degenerate mechanics in the game, Storm and Ambush, were part of its class identity. And this degeneracy got supported even further in the powercreep expansion trio of RoB/TotG/WD with cards like Albert, Vagabond Frog, and Kunoichi Master. Albert is by far one of the most broken cards ever printed in the game and to this day I still cannot believe that he was never been nerfed. For a long time, Sword meta decks were all about being as non-interactive as possible, where over half of the cards in their decks consisted of followers that were hard to interact with(through Ambush) or Storm. This all came to a head in SFL with Ambush Aggro Sword, a deck that could potentially play Storm cards every single turn starting from the first one.
However… starting from Chronogenesis, things changed. It feels like Cygames understood how dumb this class was getting, and started giving them higher value cards to encourage the class to play to the board more. Which is honestly what the class should have been from the start. The class still got Storm cards, but for the most part they were all way more fair than previous analogues. Look at cards like Celia and Dragon Knights. They are way more flexible than Albert since they can be used both offensively and defensively. But using Celia offensively requires some setup, and Lancelot is much easier to deal with since he only has 3 health. We can also look at Zeta. She is much more flexible than Alwida’s Command since she has higher stats and innate rush. She even technically provides more reach(4 vs 3), but the 4 damage is delayed. Even non Storm cards are better designed. Arthur is similar to Otohime in that he is a singular card who creates a full board. However, he comes online one turn later, and actually requires some thought in deckbuilding to make the most use of his effect.
So yeah, I actually really like the state of Sword in Rotation right now. The class lost most of its degenerate cards and now has to play for the board. Still a bit too simplistic for my tastes, but it is at least somewhat interesting now. Sword still has by far the dumbest playerbase though.
On the other hand, we now have Dragoncraft. This class has had a horrible design from the start. The way I like to explain it is to compare Dragon to Druid in Hearthstone. It is very clear that Dragon is inspired by this class and the general ramp archetype in card games. I generally think that Shadowverse is a better designed game than Hearthstone, but one thing that HS does better is in the design of its ramp class. Ramp by design is a dangerously powerful mechanic and so Druid has a lot of intentional weaknesses like a terrible early game, awful removal, and poor options for board clears. Although that last weaknesses has been somewhat mitigated since KotFT with Spreading Plague. One of the problems I have with Dragon is that it is basically Druid with no weaknesses. Dragon early game is not significantly worse than other classes. They have some of the best single target removal in the game. AOE damage and board clears are also part of Dragon’s class identity, as Conflagration is a basic card. Not surprisingly, the class also has the best AOE in the entire game.
Not only that, but Dragon has access to stronger and more plentiful sources of ramp compared to Druid. Dragon Oracle is pretty much a better version of Wild Growth, since the cycle happens whenever you are at 7 mana or higher. This is even more true now since Wild Growth was recently nerfed to 3 mana while Oracle still costs 2. And unlike Druid, Dragon has several ways of ramping without losing tempo with cards like both Aielas, Sibyl, Annerose, and Scathacha.
It is not like Druid is a bad class either. Druid has consistently been one of the strongest classes in Hearthstone’s history. And in the current meta, it is an easy contender for #1 strongest class in the game. It really goes to show how different the two games are, when a class like Dragon that is so fundamentally broken by design is not always the best class in the game. But those particular metas where Dragon is at the top are the absolute worst to play in.
Other than design, the other terrible thing about Dragon is its playstyle. Since the beginning, every single Dragon archetype has had the exact same endgame: play endless Storm units. The class does not have access to as much Storm as Sword, but it is pretty close. The classic Ramp Dragon archetype is all about AFKRamp into big storm units every turn. The aggro and PDK archetypes are all about snowballing an early board… into repeated Storm damage. It just feels like every expansion gives Dragon different flavors of Forte/Urd combo and Genesis Dragon.
What makes Dragon worse than Sword is how its design has changed over time. I hated Sword in the beginning, but Cygames at least has taken steps to make the class more interactive and less degenerate. But with Dragon, the class has gotten LESS interactive over time. A lot of people like to complain about Dimension Shift Rune and how it is non-interactive but honestly, Dragon is currently closer to DShift style than any other deck in Rotation right now. The Dawnbreak Nightedge expansion was amazing… but it gave us Lindworm, who is one of the worst designed cards ever. It just encourages Dragon to play removal for the entire game, and then finish with a giant Storm dude who cannot be stopped by Wards. And then Brigade of the Sky gave us Zooey. It pains me to trash Zooey, because I really like her character and voice actress. But her card design is absolute cancer. I honestly wonder who had the bright idea of combining Pyroblast and Ice Block in one card, and how exactly people thought this design was acceptable.
EDIT: It is now the Omen of the Ten meta and I was hoping things would change for Dragon. They have not, and arguably have gotten even worse somehow. The class has gotten even MORE storm with Apostle of Disdain, and one of the most overtuned cards ever with Galmieux, Omen of Disdain. She is not technically a Storm card, but allows Dragon to easily deal with boards while simultaneously pushing face damage. Even the new Mjerrabaine Dragon archetype has the same style of curving out into repeated Storm and/or direct damage in the late game. I am starting to wonder if it will ever be possible for this class to not be completely degenerate.
EDIT2: It is now the tail end of the Altersphere meta and Dragon has consistently been one of the best classes in the game for 2 metas now, which means that currently SV is insufferable to play. It is pretty clear that the team working on card design favors Dragon because the class has constantly been receiving completely overtuned cards for the past 2 expansions. Ramp Dragon in Altersphere is absolute scum, and a big reason is that its cardpool has completely negated the supposed weaknesses of ramp. In pretty much every card game, ramping is supposed to have an opportunity cost: you are losing cards and giving up tempo for a mana advantage later in the game. The combination of 1) way too much ramp available(up to 12 cards in Oracle, Aiela, Roy, Annerose), 2) the entire overloaded Disdain package allowing Dragon to generate card advantage and fight for board while ramping, and 3) a number of overtuned value bombs in Filene, Poseidon, and Masamune has made it so that Dragon literally does everything better than all other classes in the game. I have never played a card game where a deck can ramp multiple times in the early game and still have card advantage and board control.
This was just talking about Rotation too. Dragon is currently dominant in every format in the game, in large part because the past 2 expansions have given the class so many ridiculous, broken cards. Dragon has one of the premiere aggro cards in Unlimited because apparently the slow ramp class is allowed to have broken early game cards and a high amount of Storm finishers too. Ramp Dragon is actually making a comeback in Unlimited after being absent for a while from that meta for the exact same reason.
Lovers Arcana Yamada Lvl99 