I agree, i am currently at rank 7 and ranked mode is unplayable. Thank god i got casual unlocked. Everybody plays Djikstra, Francesca or portal abuse Calanthe. I even stopped sending GGs to those people. Its just one click so i was sending it all the time, but not anymore. Getting bullyed every single game by people who dont even know how to properly play those decks they dowloaded, made me mad, really mad. I am not the one downloads few pro made metadecks and plays them over and over again, only bcs they want to get a victory... Where is the satisfaction in that?
You talk here about balance all the time, but thats wrong. Yes, game needs polishing, its much better now than ever, but still there are tons of cards that need rework or a buff. There are archetypes which are currently not played at all. Like pirates, bloodthirst for SK beasts, organic for monsters etc, you get the point.
The thing is, despite all the effort put into it, the game will never be balanced as we would like it to be. There will always be certain decks and leaders stronger than others.
We got to ask how to fix that. CDPR has to create a situation in which it would be more atractive to play ,,weaker,, leaders. The only way how to achieve that in my opinion is to create some sort of leader rankings. We got how many leaders right now? 36? So, in those leader ranking will be leaders put in order by the amount of games they were played. ( those numbers would be hidden for obvious reasons, but the rank 1 leader would have the most games, rank 2 less etc ) And now the important part. Leaders at the bottom would have certain benefits and those in upper ranks the opposite.
And since people care for rankings so much, leaders at the bottom would gain more rank points for winning and loose less for losing. Leaders at the top the opposite, gain less for winning and loose more for losing. That way people would be encouraged to play the unpopular leaders and make decks for them which would mean they wouldnt be that weak after all. Rank would be changing all the time, there would be mroe variety in leaders etc.
If you ask me, that might actualy work. Just because of human nature.
And btw, Francesca change was a very bad idea. I think she should stayed the same. I had a fun deck that was based around having 2 ragnarooks... She was the most variable leader only bcs she could replay any special card. Now its like, play waters and justice or go home... boring, not fun and abusing.
And now a litle about portal theme. I really like that card, it makes 4p engines less useless, but there is not enough risk involved so people feel safe putting it into every deck. So, again, how to fix it? I was thinking a litle bit about this and got an idea. What if there was a catch in it. What if it had a deathwish tag, the negative one. If portal got destroyed, it would destroy one of the adjacent units. What do you think about that?