Hearthstone 21: We DO take candle!

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Honestly, I dislike the Hall of Fame in general. If it weren't for Gadgetzan Auctioneer specifically, I could honestly say I didn't want it to even be a thing. That is literally the only card that I think there's a solid case for pulling out of standard despite their original promise not to do that to the Classic set. Frankly, between the Hall of Fame and nerfs like Firey War Axe received, it just feels like Blizzard is slowly trying to make standard more and more reliant on new expansions by eliminating the good cards from Classic, and I don't like that at all.

No, that's definitely the case. They talked about this back during the first set rotation announcements, how they wanted decks to be mostly comprised of expansion cards. It sucks.

[Seerow]

*throws up hands*

then I don't know anything and apparently Zevox knows everything and screw me succeeding ever. I'm sure your right or whatever, but its unclear what claims your making exactly and what really is the meta now. aside from as far as I can discern "priests druids and specific warlock, maybe mage, everyone else is screwed."

Paladin is top tier meta at the moment, aggro paladin is King. Both dude and murloc variants.

Aggro/zoo lock and cube lock are both great.

Barnes spell Hunter is solid, but not top tier

Combo dragon priest, spiteful priest, and big priest are all pretty good

Druid was on top for a while, but is somewhere around ok now. I think Jade is still their best deck, but aggro and big druid both are viable.

Secret mage is a great deck, big spell control mage sees play but is meh.

Rogue has kingsbane which is fun and reasonably popular but just doesn't have the win rate to be competitive long term. Overall not a great place.

Shaman and warrior are the only two classes totally shafted at the moment with no meta viable decks.


As an aside vicious syndicate is usually a pretty good place to get an update on what the meta currently looks like. They update regularly with stats on that decks people are playing, the win rates of those decks, and occasionally highlight decks with great win rates that are not yet well represented (most notably I remember them calling out murloc pally about 2 weeks before it got popular due to someone crushing with it in a tournament).

[Zevox]

*throws up hands*

then I don't know anything and apparently Zevox knows everything and screw me succeeding ever. I'm sure your right or whatever, but its unclear what claims your making exactly and what really is the meta now. aside from as far as I can discern "priests druids and specific warlock, maybe mage, everyone else is screwed."

I'm just trying to help clear up misconceptions you seem to have, nothing more.

[Lord Raziere]

I'm just trying to help clear up misconceptions you seem to have, nothing more.

Without context it only confuses me more. What context are you speaking from?

@ seerow: thank you. it certainly explains why I kept getting trounced easily by aggro paladins last week.

[Zevox]

Without context it only confuses me more. What context are you speaking from?

Not sure what context you're looking for that I didn't mention? I thought I explained the Inner Fire thing in enough detail, and the Warlock remark is just my current understanding of the meta. Which may be flawed, I'm not playing a ton, but I've neither seen much Zoo nor heard anyone saying it's back to being good recently except for Seerow just now. In contrast to Cubelock, which I know is very popular and considered strong, and Control Warlock, which to my knowledge is up there as a good alternative to Cubelock.

[Lord Raziere]

Not sure what context you're looking for that I didn't mention? I thought I explained the Inner Fire thing in enough detail, and the Warlock remark is just my current understanding of the meta. Which may be flawed, I'm not playing a ton, but I've neither seen much Zoo nor heard anyone saying it's back to being good recently except for Seerow just now. In contrast to Cubelock, which I know is very popular and considered strong, and Control Warlock, which to my knowledge is up there as a good alternative to Cubelock.

Forget it. Nevermind. All metas seem to be incomprehensible and cthulhu-like entities that I can't grasp anyways. all I see is the game, and can't connect them into the metagame thing that other people seem to be so good at. Sorry to bother you.

[Rynjin]

Well, I eked out a win in my first match vs a Mill Rogue with my Druid deck for the Brawl, which is already more wins than I expected to get in a Wild match where I'm forced to use my own cards.

Let's see how far my cobbled together deck of:

Spoiler

Show

Enchanted raven
Jade Idol x2
Mark of the Lotus
Young Dragonhawk
Loot Hoarder
Mark of the Wild x2
Volatile Elemental
Wild Growth
WrathBoisterous Bard
Coldlight Oracle
Ironbeak Owl
Jade Blossom x2
Shrieking Shroom
Stonehill Defender
Grim Necromancer
Saronite Chain Gang x2
Shellshifter
Soul of the Forest
Swipe x2
Druid of the Claw x2
Jade Behemoth
Spreading Plague

Can carry me.

[ChaosOS]

Giants warlock is pretty good

Spoiler: list

Show

### MeowthGiants
# Class: Warlock
# Format: Wild
# Year of the Mammoth
#
# 2x (0) Sacrificial Pact
# 2x (1) Kobold Librarian
# 2x (2) Defile
# 2x (2) Doomsayer
# 2x (4) Hellfire
# 2x (4) Lesser Amethyst Spellstone
# 1x (4) Shadowflame
# 2x (4) Voidcaller
# 1x (5) Loatheb
# 2x (5) Naga Sea Witch
# 1x (9) Mal'Ganis
# 2x (9) Voidlord
# 1x (10) Bloodreaver Gul'dan
# 2x (10) Sea Giant
# 2x (12) Clockwork Giant
# 2x (12) Mountain Giant
# 2x (25) Molten Giant
#
AAEBAf0GBJMB+g7CD5fTAg2KAaMB0wG2B+EH3AqODrkR3hbnyw Ly0AKI0gLo5wIA
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
# Generated by HDT - https://hsdecktracker.net

Spoiler: results

Show

[Joran]

Forget it. Nevermind. All metas seem to be incomprehensible and cthulhu-like entities that I can't grasp anyways. all I see is the game, and can't connect them into the metagame thing that other people seem to be so good at. Sorry to bother you.

If you're interested in the meta game (what decks are strong, which are weak, which ones perform well against others), VS Reaper is an excellent resource as Seerow says.

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-...per-report-81/

Otherwise, I mostly get my information from playing a fair bit and watching streams of pro players and tournaments on Twitch.

Zoo's okay, but not great. As I mentioned before, I got pretty hard-countered when I played Zoo into a bunch of mages and the matchup against Paladin wasn't favored enough for me to feel confident in climbing with it. It's pretty good against the other two major decks, Cubelock and Midrange Priests, but I found Aggro Paladin to be the easiest deck for me to climb. That said, I did climb from rank 13 to rank 9 without much of a problem with Zoolock.

Note: You shouldn't feel compelled to use any of the decks in the meta report nor take it as absolute gospel. Sometimes you can break the meta by figuring out which is the most popular deck you're facing and then playing a counter deck. Or you can be just generally good at Hearthstone and win with a Quest Priest Weasel Deck or Control Warrior

[Gandariel]

Grats, chaos! Now go back to writing, though :P

@Raziere: Zevox may have been a bit rough and "absolute" in his ratings.
The truth is, all decks are viable. Play what you have fun with.
Some decks are better, yes, but especially above rank 5, don't worry too much about it.

If you want to increase your winrate and know what to craft, though, really just check vs data reaper and find a deck that looks fun and isn't too expensive. It doesn't have to be one of the top 3 decks. The top 15 are probably within a couple percent points in winrate (again, especially outside high lvel play)

[Rynjin]

Well, I eked out a win in my first match vs a Mill Rogue with my Druid deck for the Brawl, which is already more wins than I expected to get in a Wild match where I'm forced to use my own cards.

Let's see how far my cobbled together deck of:

Spoiler

Show

Enchanted raven
Jade Idol x2
Mark of the Lotus
Young Dragonhawk
Loot Hoarder
Mark of the Wild x2
Volatile Elemental
Wild Growth
WrathBoisterous Bard
Coldlight Oracle
Ironbeak Owl
Jade Blossom x2
Shrieking Shroom
Stonehill Defender
Grim Necromancer
Saronite Chain Gang x2
Shellshifter
Soul of the Forest
Swipe x2
Druid of the Claw x2
Jade Behemoth
Spreading Plague

Can carry me.

The answer, it seems, is two wins. My second opponent was fully kitted Cubelock, my third some kind of Mecha Mage (I assume the concept was to use Spare Parts to generate Fireballs with Antonidas and nuke me, but I silenced the Antonidas and lost anyway), the fourth was a Priest who never got anything on board by turn 8, an easy victory, and the last was Cthun Druid.

This last peeves me the most because it's the most clear example of "I lost because I didn't have as good of cards"; many of the cards that turned the tide (like Choose the Path, or a second Spreading Plague) are ones I would likely have put in my deck had I owned them. =/

It's immensely frustrating to take someone down to 3 HP and then be forced to watch as they Plague twice and get 30 more armor with Pestilent Malfurion, Kun, Choose, and Ultimate Infestation.

[Destro_Yersul]

I used my free run and got 4 wins with a stupid aggro shaman I chucked together. Prizes for 4 wins aren't great, but eh, it was free.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Forget it. Nevermind. All metas seem to be incomprehensible and cthulhu-like entities that I can't grasp anyways. all I see is the game, and can't connect them into the metagame thing that other people seem to be so good at. Sorry to bother you.

If you can't be bothered with all the theorizing and interpretation, simply cribbing a site like metastats or vicious syndicate for decklists should suffice. Heck, that's how I've gotten along thus far. All I know about the metagame is what people tell me. Of course it has to be said that I'm not at all ambitious when it comes to ladder ranks. Getting the monthly card back is my minimum; I might hit rank 15 if I can be bothered.

I also sometimes watch content creators on YouTube. Though a lot of that is based on entertainment value.

A couple of caveats. Ignore Hearthpwn's "popular decks". Those are based on votes, and have been known to be outright deceptive in the past. Second, sometimes a content creator will take a deck for a spin just for fun or to experiment. Keep that in mind before copying a "pro" deck.

Otherwise, just have fun with it.

[Spore]

No, that's definitely the case. They talked about this back during the first set rotation announcements, how they wanted decks to be mostly comprised of expansion cards. It sucks.

On one side powerful classic cards tend to make a game stale. But Ice Block is the cornerstone of a whole archetype of Mage decks. And this fits nicely into my rage about KaC epics being the most expensive thing in the game so far.

[Mikemical]

Went 3-2 with a Dude Paladin. Lost a game because of a "disconnect"(Searched for a game, cancelled before the game began, checked twice on wether I had a loss, no problem. Played some ranked, checked again, 1 Loss), got 45 Gold and a pack. This mode isn't worth it unless you have a super optimized deck with all the good cards from previous expansions you didn't dust just to try to stay meta.

Lost against an Exodia Mage who always had either a full board clear or a way to keep my 5/5 Silver Hands from attacking, and a Reno Cubelock.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

On one side powerful classic cards tend to make a game stale. But Ice Block is the cornerstone of a whole archetype of Mage decks. And this fits nicely into my rage about KaC epics being the most expensive thing in the game so far.

I don't think powerful older cards make a game stale, but rather provide a stable base and an alternative. It's not like Ryu being a viable Streetfighter character would make Mika unviable.

I'm cynical about that motive, because cycling out powerful old cards means that players have to keep spending money to stay in.

[Zevox]

I don't think powerful older cards make a game stale, but rather provide a stable base and an alternative. It's not like Ryu being a viable Streetfighter character would make Mika unviable.

I'm cynical about that motive, because cycling out powerful old cards means that players have to keep spending money to stay in.

To be fair, the fighting game comparison is both inexact (fighting game characters would be more comparable to complete decks, not individual cards, in terms of how the games' metas go) and not necessarily true (if Ryu had a great matchup against Mika and was broadly strong enough that he was commonly used in tournaments, she might indeed wind up low-tier because of him being viable).

In any case though, they said way back when the rotations were introduced that the classic cards were being kept in standard forever in order to make sure that even people who stopped playing for a while had a base of cards that they could always use. I think that was the right idea on their part, so seeing it continuously undermined by nerfs and the Hall of Fame bothers me.

[Spore]

I don't think powerful older cards make a game stale

Imagine the current meta, but instead of Ice Block being Standard, Spiteful Summoner is. Immediately any low cost spell has to compete against being able to summon a 8-10 cost on turn 6.

[Zevox]

So, anybody have any good Wild decks for the Brawl? I still haven't used my freebie. Kind of want to do a Midrange Paladin, since Muster and Mini-bot are actually available, but not sure if that won't just get outclassed.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Imagine the current meta, but instead of Ice Block being Standard, Spiteful Summoner is. Immediately any low cost spell has to compete against being able to summon a 8-10 cost on turn 6.

Aggro decks still exist in a Spiteful world and have no problem using cheap spells. It's on the game designers to provide options that are niche enough to not compete with one another.

This might point to a design flaw in HS: the existence of cards that are good for too many archetypes and decks because they don't require significant synergy in order to pay off.

[Destro_Yersul]

So, anybody have any good Wild decks for the Brawl? I still haven't used my freebie. Kind of want to do a Midrange Paladin, since Muster and Mini-bot are actually available, but not sure if that won't just get outclassed.

I don't know if this is indicative at all, but Ben Brode apparently got to 11 wins with some sort of midrange secret paladin.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Over at r/CompetitiveHS, there was a list of 12-win decks, decent place to start.

[Zevox]

I don't know if this is indicative at all, but Ben Brode apparently got to 11 wins with some sort of midrange secret paladin.

Eh, I can't do Secret Paladin though. No Mysterious Challengers.

Over at r/CompetitiveHS, there was a list of 12-win decks, decent place to start.

Hm, let's see... no, no, no, hell no, no, no, no, hell no, hell no, hell no... wait, Kingsbane Rogue? Really? That's unexpected. Doesn't feel quite right just doing this with a slight variant on the deck I'm using as often as quests permit in Standard these days, but if it really works that well...

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Being able to run Sludge Belcher and Healbot is pretty great.

[Zevox]

Blech, well, that didn't go well. Ended 2-3. Lost one game because I misplayed badly and milled my own Kingsbane, and the other two to OTK decks that lucked out and drew their combos by the time they were halfway through their decks, before I had any chance to mill them. Disgusting.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Which OTKs are out there? Obviously Malygos for one.

[Zevox]

Which OTKs are out there? Obviously Malygos for one.

I ran into an Aviana + Kun + Malygos Druid and a Velen Priest (he got Velen out with Shadow Essence, then resurrected him twice and fired two Mind Blasts for 20 each). Very annoying stuff.

Started another run out of frustration, already ran into another, a Twig of the World Tree + Malygos Druid. Nearly managed to beat him, since he actually didn't kill me with his initial combo, but my draw was crap that game - no Kingsbane until much too late.

[Mando Knight]

Being able to run Sludge Belcher and Healbot is pretty great.

Also Tinker's Sharpsword Oil, which is maybe as useful with Kingsbane as it was with pre-nerf Blade Flurry.

[Wraith]

These are exactly the sort of brawls that I hate, because the player base does not play along. Blizzard sets up a brawl that lets you build your own deck, but with a couple of caveats to make you think about what you're doing and try something new and inspired?

Nah, just play Freeze Mage, Beast Hunter, Cubelock and Murloc Paladin like you did on ladder; Card-for-card, play for play, exactly the same.

Constructed Brawls are by far my least favourite part of the game, because 95% of people in it are just there to get their wins and forget about it. I know that "winning is fun" but for Gods' sake, there are other ways to enjoy yoursel.

[ChaosOS]

Wait, how is a brawl that is just normal wild constructed with no special rules besides the buy-in and heavily weighted rewards supposed to encourage fun and diversity? This isn't challengestone or some brawl with odd rules, if you want weird stuff play wild casual.