Stop Complaining About Fizzle

Just a quickie post today. I took a few quick screenshots from HSGuru to Snapshot this information, as it will change over time, which you can see here if you want the reference for yourself.

There are currently two different Terran Shaman lists: one that plays Fizzle and one that doesn't. Here is the current breakdown of win rate and popularity at different rank brackets:

Diamond-Legend, Last Week:

  • Fizzle: 53.8% win rate, 21.1% popularity

  • Non-Fizzle: 58% win rate, 5.6% popularity

Diamond-Legend, Last 3 days:

  • Fizzle: 53.6% win rate, 20.5% popularity

  • Non-Fizzle: 58.7% win rate, 6.6% popularity

Top 1k Legend, Last Week:

  • Fizzle: 53.5% win rate, 32.1% popularity

  • Non-Fizzle: 55.2% win rate, 4.9% popularity

Top 1k Legend, Last 3 days:

  • Fizzle: 52.6% win rate, 30.2% popularity

  • Non-Fizzle: 57.4% win rate, 5.1% popularity

However you want to slice it, the non-Fizzle Terran Shaman lists are winning more games than Fizzle lists. They're certainly not winning any appreciable amount less, anyway. This is true of Diamond to Legend and in Top Legend. This is true in the last week and the last 3 days. Fizzle has very little to do with why Shaman is good right now but, because it's the more popular list, wouldn't you know it? It's attracting more complaints.

If you banned Fizzle right now and that was all you did, you'd probably end up buffing Shaman.

Why are so many people playing the Fizzle list over the non-Fizzle one? Perhaps because they find it more fun because having that kind of late-game power appeals to them. Perhaps they like the matchup spread better. Perhaps they're mistaken as to which deck seems to win more. But, most importantly, perhaps there isn't some weird design issue here that centers around Fizzle.

The fixation people seem to have on that card is wild when it clearly doesn't seem to be the thing doing most of the powerful stuff. I know, the Fizzle list has that inevitability and it forces players to act earlier in the game and many players don't like having to do that. But keep things in perspective.