How would you propose to make a card that can stop an opponent from killing you with spells from 30+ health to 0?
That sounds next level busted.
Dirty rat is fine when decks aren't designed around the existence of a single card to determine the win or not.
There's far too much power in combos.
If dirty rat pulls Brann in a jade deck for example. All it is is a minor power loss, it's not immediate game over.
If dirty rat pulls Antonidas in quest mage? That's a lot tougher but you can still eek out a win with random burn and apprentices.
If dirty rat pulls out Mechathun? Well of course that's game over.
Put less power (game winning power) in single cards and disruption is no longer just rng whether the game is win or loss.
You should put the only take 1 damage thing and put it on a minion with a form of spell taunt.
Eg. 4/3, 6 mana, can only take one damage at a time from spells. All spells targeting your hero target this minion.
You could still kill it with a minion, but it would basically sap up 3 spells to kill.
That'd be reasonable otk tech.
Any minion with an effect that simply delays it doesn't fix the otk problem.
Very bluntly, if you aren't trying to win you are going to (and absolutely should) lose. A delay moves back the opposing turn to win. You should use that time to win the game. Your statement only invalidates the decks that can actually make that complaint.
Conversely, if you dont want your combo cards hit by a card like Dirty Rat, include more minions.
Why is "run a win-con" an acceptable response to control whiners, while combo players want to protect their "all in" combo pieces without criticism?
That's a problem in and of itself. This idea that cards like Mecha'Thun themselves are overpowered. Mecha'Thun is a card that's only good if you have good cards to go with it. OTK itself relies on that card though. In fact, it's entire game plan does, similar to how Odd Warrior builds it's whole deck around Baku. Take away that hero power, then what was the point of making an all Odd deck if you got no value from it? Sure, you could still maybe get a win, but you'll be limping to the finish line.
If a 2 mana Spell that can literally make your whole deck pointless is good design, then why limit it to just OTK decks? Why should we complain about Deathstalker Rexaar? He is a single card that can make Slow Control decks pointless. That will not stand for other archetypes, but this still stands for specifically Combo decks for some odd reason. I'd like to ask simply, how a form of disruption that stalls rather than completely polarizes the game is not a good solution? I mean if it isn't a good solution, what would be a good solution? Because Odd Warrior especially has given us a taste of what a fatigue oriented control deck would be like in the future, and even though a few of Odd Warrior's cards are rotating soon (notably Direhorn Hatchling, Stonehill Defender, and Reckless Flurry), a new fatigue deck may come to fruition that would run a Dirty Rat card in order to just prevent fatigue's primary counter from killing them.
Also, of course pulling just a good card in a deck that isn't combo doesn't win you the game.
"If a 2 mana Spell that can literally make your whole deck pointless is good design, then why limit it to just OTK decks?"
Because you chose to expose your deck to that vulnerability by going all in on one strategy in a way other decks don't.
Min/max strategies like that have to be punishable, or the meta becomes super polarized and boring.
So I guess the answer is yeah, there should be more cards that tech against more types of decks with singular win cons.
Coming from other games, combo doesn't limit itself that way.
So yeah, it's not the structure of the archetype at all. It's a game design that very intentionally limited certain players.
Combo still doesn't really exist as an archetype at all. You just have control that also happens to have a non-fatigue win condition that we call "combo" because nothing else exists that actually is combo.
Control players want free wins vs combo. They don't want balance. They just don't like that their deck can lose to something.
Even mojomaster feels rather oppressive to some combo.
Shouldn’t otk decks have to play around and tech around these kind of cards? Just like control would have to tech in these cards over better cards. That’s what tech cards are.
This would prevent the current debacle where otk decks only need their win condition cards and can stuff their decks with removal and heal.
Maly rogue, quest rogue, IF/DS (ungoro meta) were combo decks without that "control" factor.
Youre interpretation of combo/archetypes is questionable at best, and BS at worst.
Other side of the scale, we have seen the likes of old-school wallet warrior, handlock and renolock which didnt rely on a combo, nor fatigue, win-con.
This is a recent change (the last year or so) where for control deks to be successful they must run a combo win-con, or fatigue in the cse of odd warrior 'cos they have no other option!