Hearthstone 19: Patches In All The Wrong Places

[Destro_Yersul]

I love that ratting out is what Dirty Rat apparently does.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Because of dailies I decided to try a buff-based Silver Hand approach to paladin. Low ranks, but I had a good time. Having a mage coin fire blast in response to my turn 1 lost in the jungle was interesting to say the least.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

More degenerate Caverns Below gameplay: Devolve doesn't stop it. Sure, you get minions that cost less...but they're all still 5/5s. And, since Rogue usually players rather generic minions, you actually run the risk of giving your opponent Taunt, Windfury, or some other useful abilities.

It's fantastic.

[Chen]

More degenerate Caverns Below gameplay: Devolve doesn't stop it. Sure, you get minions that cost less...but they're all still 5/5s. And, since Rogue usually players rather generic minions, you actually run the risk of giving your opponent Taunt, Windfury, or some other useful abilities.

It's fantastic.

Only things I've seen that do work on the 5/5s are things like Aldor peacekeeper, Equality or Sunkeeper Tarim. Keeper of Uldaman probably works in Wild as would the mass aldor peacekeeper guy.

Basically you can buff or debuff them after the caverns effect goes off. But replacing them with another minion (poly, hex, devolve) just ends up applying the 5/5 onto the new minion.

Separate interesting note. I don't recall what I was doing (probably a tavern brawl) but I ended up with both a Druid of the Claw and the 5/5 demon who deals damage to you when you summon minions. The druid of the claw triggered the demon twice. Not sure if it has to do with the whole transform bit or what, but it had almost costed me the game (had 3 life left after).

[Joran]

More degenerate Caverns Below gameplay: Devolve doesn't stop it. Sure, you get minions that cost less...but they're all still 5/5s. And, since Rogue usually players rather generic minions, you actually run the risk of giving your opponent Taunt, Windfury, or some other useful abilities.

It's fantastic.

After Dog built his Caverns deck, I crafted Caverns because it looked like fun. I opened a Golden one yesterday (my wife who is on a f2p account opened a Golden one also), so I'm really rooting for it to be nerfed.

Wondering if I should stop opening packs and start using some of my dust or if I should continue opening packs. I'm missing a bunch of the good epics and I'm still missing two Stonehill Defenders and a few more rares. I'm probably at 100 packs of Un'goro already and should start saving up gold for the next expansion.

P.S. Devolve also stinks against Jade Golems as does Mass Dispel, because they're vanilla creatures with a mana cost at their stat-line, rather than tokens with a buff.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

More degenerate Caverns Below gameplay: Devolve doesn't stop it. Sure, you get minions that cost less...but they're all still 5/5s. And, since Rogue usually players rather generic minions, you actually run the risk of giving your opponent Taunt, Windfury, or some other useful abilities.

It's fantastic.

Devolve was a rather cheap and heavy handed counter to certain strategies, so I'm actually okay with this.

My personal encounters with Quest Rogue run the gamut from them having flawless draws and playing solitaire as I contemplate ancient Roman philosophy, me having flawless draws to counter them, and one guy who decided to play his swashburglar on turn one, then his quest on turn 2.

[Anarion]

More degenerate Caverns Below gameplay: Devolve doesn't stop it. Sure, you get minions that cost less...but they're all still 5/5s. And, since Rogue usually players rather generic minions, you actually run the risk of giving your opponent Taunt, Windfury, or some other useful abilities.

It's fantastic.

The way to think about it is that any minion the person has will be 5/5. Devolve, hex, polymorph etc. make a new minion (which is normally great since it gets rid of buffs and deathrattles and such) so that minion will be 5/5. Humility and Aldor peacekeeper work because they alter the attack of the existing minion, and other buffs and debuffs on the card all work fine.

[Spore]

Just join in camp "anti-quest rogue decks". We even have working and fun Miracle Rogues including Sherazin. And to think I cursed when I opened my pretty little flower...

[Joran]

Just join in camp "anti-quest rogue decks". We even have working and fun Miracle Rogues including Sherazin. And to think I cursed when I opened my pretty little flower...

The Corpse Flower actually being good is the biggest surprise of the expansion so far for me.

I'm starting to regret my crafting of the Discolock Legendary. Annoying enough, she also counts as a Discarded card when playing the Warlock card that summons a discarded minion.

P.S. The other card that Reddit thought was bad was Lyra. Turns out there's a lot of 2 cost or less Priest spells so you can get a lot of value of her if you get the down the two... Sorcerer's Apprentices.

[Thialfi]

I'm going to have to try dragon priest. After looking at the cards for this set, I openly wondered if dragons still wasn't the best deck for priests. From early reports, it seems I may have been on to something.

Of course before the set hit I also thought Lyra was average, the warlock quest was good, and the rogue quest would be hard to complete consistently, so what the hell do I know?

[Seerow]

I'm going to have to try dragon priest. After looking at the cards for this set, I openly wondered if dragons still wasn't the best deck for priests. From early reports, it seems I may have been on to something.

Of course before the set hit I also thought Lyra was average, the warlock quest was good, and the rogue quest would be hard to complete consistently, so what the hell do I know?

I am still not sure what the official rating on Lyra is. My experience with it has been amazing, but I haven't seen any of the big names I follow really using it. Hobbs of course is, but that's a good sign that it's a fun card, not necessarily a good one.

[Epinephrine_Syn]

I'm starting to regret my crafting of the Discolock Legendary. Annoying enough, she also counts as a Discarded card when playing the Warlock card that summons a discarded minion.

To be fair, that card is kind of trash spare ultra niche scenarios, so you probably shouldn't be running it. There's Doomguard, there's discarding one and playing the other for the infinite combo... There's playing some weird high power cards for the sole purpose of discarding to get them out.


But you, on average, need to make it summon a 5/5 on it's death rattle to consider running, cause otherwise you should just play Cairne.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Turn three Stonetusk Boar into Shadowstep into Stonetusk Boar into the second Shadowstep into Stonetusk Board + Coin ending with Edwin VanCleef is hilarious.

Hello turn 3 14/14!

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Turn three Stonetusk Boar into Shadowstep into Stonetusk Boar into the second Shadowstep into Stonetusk Board + Coin ending with Edwin VanCleef is hilarious.

Hello turn 3 14/14!

Welcome to Hearthstone, where the key to victory is hoping that your opponent draws badly.

[Rodin]

Welcome to Hearthstone, where the key to victory is hoping that your opponent draws badly.

Kinda how I feel about ranked this expansion in general.

Your options are to run hyper-aggro, or pray that the vast number of Quest Rogues and Quest Mages don't draw into their combos. And that's assuming your opponent isn't Pirate Warrior or Aggro Druid themselves.

Tournament play is fascinating to watch since variety is guaranteed there, but ranked has just been awful. On the plus side, I'm having more fun in Arena than I think I've had since Whispers. The classes feel much closer together there and the only real blow-out card is Spike-ridged Steed.

[PsyBomb]

Let me state for the record that, in Arena, there is very little quite as satisfying as having an enemy drop double-Bittertide on 8, then casting Volcano on the otherwise-empty board.

[tonberrian]

Let me state for the record that, in Arena, there is very little quite as satisfying as having an enemy drop double-Bittertide on 8, then casting Volcano on the otherwise-empty board.

That poor soul...

[Mystic Muse]

Let me state for the record that, in Arena, there is very little quite as satisfying as having an enemy drop double-Bittertide on 8, then casting Volcano on the otherwise-empty board.

That poor soul...

Had this happen to me once, and I still won, and I pulled this on someone who otherwise would have won.

[Destro_Yersul]

Had this happen to me once, and I still won

How? Volcano's 15 damage split among minions only, and every time one of the two bittertides gets hit, the hero takes 3. That's 45 damage total, meaning you need to have had full life and at least 16 armour to possibly survive, unless there were other minions on the board, in which case it's not really the same scenario.

[Mystic Muse]

How? Volcano's 15 damage split among minions only, and every time one of the two bittertides gets hit, the hero takes 3. That's 45 damage total, meaning you need to have had full life and at least 16 armour to possibly survive, unless there were other minions on the board, in which case it's not really the same scenario.

It dies when it gets to 0. I had 27 life, I took 24, and came back.

[Gandariel]

It dies when it gets to 0. I had 27 life, I took 24, and came back.

He's talking double Hydra, you survived a single one.

Anyways, I'm kinda surprised Volcano is good. I thought it'd pretty meh.

[Anarion]

He's talking double Hydra, you survived a single one.

Anyways, I'm kinda surprised Volcano is good. I thought it'd pretty meh.

In arena, it's not that great. It's significantly better if your draft is high cost cards, since you can let them take the board early, volcano, and then start putting out better threats than they can handle. But if you're actually fighting for the board, it's a pretty meh card.

[Mystic Muse]

He's talking double Hydra, you survived a single one.

I misread. My bad.

[Nerocite]

I forgot that Holy Rag was an elemental, so I was very surprised when my arena opponent got the ol' Lightlord off of Servant of Kalimos.

[Gandariel]

So, asking the people who are at high ranks:

How's the meta?

I am playing a bit and I'm currently rank 8, and I feel like it hasn't been "solved" at all.(although the "true" meta is probably clearer to see at ranks 5 and up)

Seeing pretty much all classes and surprising variety of decks around, which is weird because it's already been a couple weeks.

Rogue and Warrior are clearly the most popular AND they have each two fairly different archetypes.

[Anarion]

So, asking the people who are at high ranks:

How's the meta?

I am playing a bit and I'm currently rank 8, and I feel like it hasn't been "solved" at all.(although the "true" meta is probably clearer to see at ranks 5 and up)

Seeing pretty much all classes and surprising variety of decks around, which is weird because it's already been a couple weeks.

Rogue and Warrior are clearly the most popular AND they have each two fairly different archetypes.

It's looking very rock paper scissors. Caverns Rogue (and miracle to some extent as well) generally beat the control decks like priest, paladin, quest warrior, and the occasional elemental shaman. All Rogue variants have a losing matchup to Pirate Warrior. Caverns generally loses to Hunter too, miracle does better against Hunter but has worse control matchups, so it's the more balanced deck. The control decks generally beat Pirate Warrior and Hunter. Freeze mage is also sitting on the sidelines screwing up the triangle by beating all rogue variants, coinflips against aggro, and gets ruined by control (especially priest, having your own cards stolen just ruins freeze mage). Warrior, by the way, benefits immensely from the fact that nobody knows how to mulligan against you, I actually think both decks would be worse if either deck falls out of meta.

I've personally had greatest success ranking up with Caverns Rogue, at which I'm currently sitting at rank 4 without trying that hard (I got rank 4, screwed around with other decks, fell to low 5, spent half a day playing cavern and hit 4 again). I think in large part Caverns games just go quickly. You either win or lose against aggro by turn 6, and if you get far ahead between 4-6 most control players will just concede so the games are really speedy. It's actually most fun going long against control though, there's actual play to how to finish off someone as fast as possible while avoiding brawls and dragonfire potions.

As far as other decks, aggro secret Mage is just worse at higher ranks than running aggro Warrior or Hunter. Everybody knows how to play around the stuff, it's a dumb deck that occasionally wins on double mana wyrm as Mage has always done since time immemorial. Purify inner fire priest is as idiotic as every priest OTK deck ever, but can race Caverns so it doesn't actually suck (you completely lose to hard removal though). Aggro no-quest Zoolock is actually pretty good and I can't figure out why nobody is running it.

Druid does not exist.

[Joran]

Druid does not exist.

Aggro Druid seems to be the most successful Druid style. I occasionally see streamers trying the 5+ attack druid/massive ramp druid, but that doesn't seem like anything other than a meme deck.

Warlock and Druid tend to be the classes I see the least; I haven't had much success with Discolock, but I feel like there's a decent zoo deck out there.

[Anarion]

Aggro Druid seems to be the most successful Druid style. I occasionally see streamers trying the 5+ attack druid/massive ramp druid, but that doesn't seem like anything other than a meme deck.

The druid aggro deck is fine but nobody is playing it ever. I see druids maybe once in 20 games if that.

Warlock and Druid tend to be the classes I see the least; I haven't had much success with Discolock, but I feel like there's a decent zoo deck out there.

There is a decent Zoo deck out there for sure, more people should run it, but it's also quite rare. Just not quite as rare as druid.

My current list (by no means polished) is

Spoiler: Warlock Zoo

Show

2x Fire Fly
2x Flame Imp
2x Malchezaar's Imp
2x Possessed Villager
2x Soulfire
2x Voidwalker
1x Darkshire Librarian
2x Dire Wolf Alpha
2x Knife Juggler
2x Ravasaur Runt
2x Darkshire Councilman
1x Devilsaur egg
2x Silverware Golem
2x Defender of Argus
2x Ravenous Pterrordax
2x Doomguard

[CarpeGuitarrem]

So if you have at least one trigger, turns out Servant of Kalimos is a really good draft. Having Igneous Elemental and double Servant was enough in multiple games to push me to Value Town. 8-3 for the whole draft.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

@ Anarion: Eh, so does that mean Quest Warrior is meta-viable? It was the only Quest I got out of a pack so I tried to make it work for a while before moving on to other things. If it's actually legit, I might go back to it for another shot.