Hearthstone [IRC Channel #Skillstone]

[Matthew]

Dancing Swords and Baron Rivendare kinda make me want to make a mill-ish type of deck for shits and giggles, just to see if it'd be at all possible to win by decking the opponent out and killing them with fatigue. Too bad that other than Dancing Swords there's only Coldlight Oracle and Naturalize for milling, unless more of the new cards have that kind of effect.

On another note, does anyone mind giving some tips for my Priest deck?

Hide

I feel like my deck's biggest problem is the early game (not sure if that's just a Priest problem or my deck in particular). More than half is 3-mana or lower, but a lot of them are spells that require me to have monsters to be useful (Inner Fire, PW: Shield) or are better late game (SW: Death, Thoughtsteal). I want to try Circle of Healing for the potential combos with Northshire, Lightwarden, and Auchenai, but that'd just be making the former problem worse unless I replace those.

Loot Hoarder was originally going to be a Bloodmage Thalnos but I'm not sure if it's worth using anymore since I have plenty of draw power already and I dropped a lot of my spell damage cards. I don't have Thalnos atm anyways. Injured Blademaster hasn't been performing as well as I thought it would, nor has Temple Enforcer, but it might just be my inexperience (since I mostly play Druid unless I get quests for other classes) or lacking certain cards to make them better.

well, first off, Priest is terrible in this metagame. If you're dead set on Priest then you're going to need to drop the Inner Fire, Pagel, and one Mind Control. There's no use in Pagel anymore, Inner Fire is useless, 100% useless against what you're going to be facing, and double Mind Control means maybe two dead cards in your hand. Light Warden CAN be good, I'm still 50 / 50 on what it is actually. Add another Temple, 2 2-drops and either a Cabal or an Achani, your call. I feel that if you go for Achani then add another Circle of Healing for the control against aggro.

EDIT:

really good anti-metagame is Giant Pali if you're interested in breaking the norm.

 

[Matthew]

double postin' because I'm scum but if you nerds want to challenge me go ahead (why didn't I do that before?):
boygenny#1733 (why can't it be 1337?)

 

[MagicMaster87]

Well, my main deck is Druid but I really like Priest too, even if he's not good anymore. I prefer slower, more controlly decks (which is why I love Druid) rather than superagressive decks like Zoolock or Hunter. I'm not really trying to get Legendary with Priest, I just want something I can bust out from time to time and expect to do decently well with, if only in normals. Warrior Control is another deck I want to try but I'm missing a few cards like Brawl, Shield Slam, and a few other minor ones that still take dust away from my Druid deck. Never heard of Giant Pali but the only giant I have is a single Sea Giant so that's probably not gonna happen unless I'm mistaken about the deck contents.

I already have two Auchenai Soulpriest in the deck, unless you meant something else by "Achanai"? I don't have a Cabal and can't craft one without a few more cards to disenchant first. I guess I will try your other suggestions, though I'll need to decide which 2-drops to add. So I guess I'll try...

-2 Inner Fire
-1 Nat Pagel
-1 Mind Control
+1 Circle of Healing
+1 Ironbeak Owl (I guess? only other options I can see are Ooze or Fairy Dragon, both of which have their pros and cons over Ironbeak. Maybe another Sunfury, if I had one?)
+1 Loot Hoarder
+1 Temple Enforcer

 

[Matthew]

use the Soulpriest (sorry on the spelling), the Enforcer, and the Owl (owl is strong) along with the CoH and see how your deck feels now. I'm happy to give more suggestions.

EDIT: cheap control Shaman is also available:

Rockbiter x 2
Bolt x 2
Feral x 2
Storm x 2
Hex x 2
Earthshock x 2
Stormforge x 1

Ooze x 1
Pyromancer x 2
Manatide x 1
BHG x 1
Flametongue x 2
Unbound x 2
Drake x 2
Fire Elemental x 2

then the rest of the four is up to you. I've been trying out one Earth Ele + Spirit to try and hold off hard aggro, along with a carne and a doomhamer. those four are up to debate with what you have. but 26 / 30 cards is a really good basis to build the rest of the deck up to your suiting.

 

[MagicMaster87]

Well like I said I already have two Soulpriest in my deck, so I can't really add another one. Since that would leave three additions for the four removals, I added a second Loot Hoarder to help make up for the loss of draw power from Pagel.

I don't mind any other suggestions, either from you or anyone else if they want to help me out.

 

[Matthew]

Not sure how I missed those, my mistake entirely. Without Cabal you're not going to build a solid Priest deck in the slightest. Them is the facts.

EDIT:

I mean without the use of Cabal. Somehow I read the Soulpriest as something else. You have the basis of a Priest deck once my removals are added, but without Cabal it's honestly not worth it running a Priest.

EDIT 2:

Just had some fun games with MagicMaster87 all of you are welcome to challenge me. I will help decks (as I can craft all the standard decks in the meta) to test their weakness be less apparent and I'll also just play for fun!

 

[supermarth64]

Take out Lightwarden, it's really hard to get it ramping. Add in a second Injured Blademaster, it has way too much synergy with Priests and Circle of Healing since you're choosing to run it. I know Lightwarden may seem like a good choice but 1 attack does nothing early game and forces you to turn 2 heal something that's injured in order for it to be respectable at all which limits your turn 2 potential.

No Wild Pyromancers either which you may want to consider considering the number of spells that priests have. Lack of Sylvanas also hurts you because of her power and synergy with SW:D. Lightspawn is pretty hard to run because of its upkeep requirment (forcing you to heal it instead of it for it to constantly be a threat), I recommend Tazdingo instead for that slot for a taunter and less maintenance.

If you can get your hand on Holy Fire I recommend that also and take out the Fen Creeper, you get much more mileage out of Holy Fire especially if you swap out your Lightspawns for Tazdingos.

Amaz is probably the best priest player currently and has one of his iterations of priest decks in this image: http://i.imgur.com/ttY34Pc.jpg. His current version that he's been laddering with the past few days is more Watcher based (proccing it with Argus, Sunfury Protectors, and the card Silence).

 

[Shinryu]

I just finally gave it a shot on my iPad last night, it's ok I guess. Was thinking of playing a rogue hero whenever I unlock it since I main a rogue in WoW, any idea if they're good at all?

 

[ryan]

there's a mill deck out there right now, but it's pretty inconsistent. it's a rogue build with king mukla, lorwalker cho, coldlight oracle with shadowstep, and tons of spells. it's more of a fun deck than anything, but it could be viable with the swords. who knows?

I'd give advice on your deck, but I can't stand playing priest. I do know though that most priest decks out there run auchenai/injured blademaster/circle of healing. it gives you a way to live long enough to get going vs. aggro decks like zoo, and if you don't draw auchenai, circle isn't usually a dead card because of blademaster.

 

[MagicMaster87]

Take out Lightwarden, it's really hard to get it ramping. Add in a second Injured Blademaster, it has way too much synergy with Priests and Circle of Healing since you're choosing to run it. I know Lightwarden may seem like a good choice but 1 attack does nothing early game and forces you to turn 2 heal something that's injured in order for it to be respectable at all which limits your turn 2 potential.

No Wild Pyromancers either which you may want to consider considering the number of spells that priests have. Lack of Sylvanas also hurts you because of her power and synergy with SW:D. Lightspawn is pretty hard to run because of its upkeep requirment (forcing you to heal it instead of it for it to constantly be a threat), I recommend Tazdingo instead for that slot for a taunter and less maintenance.

If you can get your hand on Holy Fire I recommend that also and take out the Fen Creeper, you get much more mileage out of Holy Fire especially if you swap out your Lightspawns for Tazdingos.

Amaz is probably the best priest player currently and has one of his iterations of priest decks in this image: http://i.imgur.com/ttY34Pc.jpg. His current version that he's been laddering with the past few days is more Watcher based (proccing it with Argus, Sunfury Protectors, and the card Silence).

Unfortunately I lack a second Injured Blademaster as well as Sylvanas, but I do have Holy Fire. I actually used to have them in my deck but I removed it because I was afraid it'd conflict with the double Auchenai too much. I don't have the Ragnaros in the picture either, nor the Cabal Shadow Priest which I mentioned to Matthew. I've been thinking of swapping Fen Creeper out for Tazdingo since it can be played a turn earlier but I can try out the Lightspawn instead and swap the Creeper out for a Holy Fire.

there's a mill deck out there right now, but it's pretty inconsistent. it's a rogue build with king mukla, lorwalker cho, coldlight oracle with shadowstep, and tons of spells. it's more of a fun deck than anything, but it could be viable with the swords. who knows?

Yeah, that's kinda like what I had in mind, except with Druid and Naturalize over Rogue and Shadowstep. I didn't even think of Shadowstep, that might be a better pick over Naturalize... I don't think the Dancing Swords alone would make it consistent enough to be viable, though, but maybe there'll be another card or two in the new set to go along with it.

I just finally gave it a shot on my iPad last night, it's ok I guess. Was thinking of playing a rogue hero whenever I unlock it since I main a rogue in WoW, any idea if they're good at all?

Miracle Rogue and Tempo Rogue are pretty popular decks, although the Miracle version requires a few key cards that are Epic (Preparation) or Legendary (Leeroy Jenkins). I'm not too familiar with Tempo so I can't say how expensive it is to build that.

 

[ryan]

tempo rogue can be really high budget or really low budget depending on your build. it's still really effective as a low budget deck though. this is my current build of it:

Hide

it's like mid-budget atm, solely because of leeroy, which you don't need but is nice if you have it. I'm constantly toying with it to adapt to the meta on the ladder though. I used to run one big game hunter, but all I've been running into is zoo and hunter with the occasional oddball deck, so it's pretty unnecessary. I've also toyed with running one Sap to help out even more against the new midrange hunter with Houndmasters and Savannah Highmane, but that matchup is already pretty good for you.

high budget cards to add in if you've got them would be stuff like thalnos (which is auto-include if you have it), rag, captain greenskin, cairne, edwin (I don't like it in this deck, but most people run it if they have it), bgh (again, depending on the meta; if you're facing lots of warrior control/druid, it's great). if you don't have leeroy, you can honestly replace it with pretty much whatever.

because aggro hunter is a pretty dreadful matchup, you can run earthen ring farseers/a second argus/cold blood>shadowstep (great card to help you race them down, usually try to cast it on yeti or argent commander). I've pretty much given up on trying to beat them consistently though, so if I queue into a lot of hunters, I just switch decks.

 

[remlabmez]

You really need cold blood vs hunters, it let's you beat them in a race if it comes down to it. Little bored of hearthstone at the moment, the meta is so set on hunter/zoo/watcher druid. I did want to go for legendary but after playing ladder and watching some streams, it's all the same shit over and over. Rank 6 for life this season, I don't see myself playing ranked anytime soon.

I'm also sad I can't use all my gold to try and make my full golden decks, I gotta save that gold for naxx cards now.

 

[Matthew]

To be fair the meta has changed a lot lately. Hunters don't go to the face anymore as everyone's taking Kolento's mid-game Hunter which runs Mukala and Highmanes.

Tempo rogue is the perfect counter to Zoo

and giant pali is rocking and rolling all over Handlock.

 

[phalanx]

a couple of hours to do an annoying daily thanks to card draws are not fun :(
saw plenty of face going noobs today.

 

[vonFiedler]

I hate Mad Bomber more than any other card, largely because I am forced to pick it in every draft.

 

[comatthew6]

I hate Mad Bomber more than any other card, largely because I am forced to pick it in every draft.

Dude Mad Bomber is LITERALLY the best neutral common 2-drop in Arena.

 

[vonFiedler]

Hence I keep getting forced to pick it. But it fucks me over every time. The amount of random mechanics in this game is just terrible.

 

[Matthew]

Hence I keep getting forced to pick it. But it fucks me over every time. The amount of random mechanics in this game is just terrible.

Nah it's not that RNG based. The only cards I can think of that are "RNG" are Rag, Sylv (kinda), and Storm and Missiles.

Those are the only RNG cards that are played. Rag is never used for RNG purposes, as you drop it to either kill the big minion or hit the enemy (both are generally fine). Sylv is more of a card that forces your opponent to take care of it without using your strong minions, Storm is just solid removal, and Missiles is to take care of 1 & 2 drops (while it has a 50% chance to kill the 2 drop).

 

[vonFiedler]

Blood Imp
Mad Bomber
Alarm-O-Bot
Demolisher
Knife Juggler
Lightwell
Master Swordsmith
Mind Control Tech
Stampeding Kodo
Young Priestess
2/3 of Elite Tauren Chieftain's Power Chords
Gelbin Mekkatorque and 3/4 of his inventions
Ragnaros the Firelord
Sylvanas Windrunner
Tinkmaster Overspark
Multi-Shot
Animal Companion
Deadly Shot
Misdirection
Arcane Missiles
Avenging Wrath
Mindgames
Forked Lightning
Lightning Storm
Cleave
Brawl

And that's not counting random discard. Most of these are certainly manageable, but some come across as incredibly lazy. Young Priestess for example is honestly one of my favorite cards, but there's little reason I shouldn't be able to choose who gets the bonus each turn. Things like this that expedite gameplay also make it more shallow. Then you have egregious examples like Mad Bomber and Tinkmaster Overspark who clearly couldn't just not be random, but diminish the competitive quality of the game and probably should just be removed. You're probably already implying that I shouldn't care about most of these cards if they don't get played at high levels, but that's crap. 1. No card should be intentionally crappy. 2. We go back to the Mad Bomber in Arena, where I can't just not use it, but too often it just ends up being a 2 mana Fire Imp.

Hell, I just WON an Arena game where someone played Ragnaros against me and lost on RNG (can't complain, I'm also a little tired of legendaries being such game changers).

 

[ryan]

Knife Juggler
Mind Control Tech
Stampeding Kodo
Young Priestess
Ragnaros the Firelord
Sylvanas Windrunner
Animal Companion
Deadly Shot
Misdirection
Arcane Missiles
Avenging Wrath
Lightning Storm
Brawl

fixed

like nothing else on that list ever sees use in constructed. in arena, you'll see an occasional demolisher, maybe blood imp though warlock is kinda bad in arena anyways.

of those cards, paladin isn't very good and you get 8 missiles off avenging wrath, so that's not that relevant. mctech isn't really that RNG based because when its battlecry triggers, you're always going to benefit regardless of what you get. kodo usually has one target. animal companion is usually always good, though there are certainly times when you'll get leokk early game or another when it's inconvenient. you can control the opponent's board to make deadly shot work in your favorite. missiles are pretty much only relevant in arena because mage sucks in constructed.

like in almost every game, the only relevant RNG will be your deck order, and the only control you have over that is running cards to cycle through you deck quickly. it sucks when you draw poorly, but that happens in every ccg/tcg. at least in hearthstone, you don't have to mulligan your entire hand.

 

[Matthew]

No card should be intentionally crappy. 2. We go back to the Mad Bomber in Arena, where I can't just not use it, but too often it just ends up being a 2 mana Fire Imp.

Hell, I just WON an Arena game where someone played Ragnaros against me and lost on RNG (can't complain, I'm also a little tired of legendaries being such game changers).

If you're dropping Mad Bomber on an empty board then you're playing badly.

 

[vonFiedler]

like nothing else on that list ever sees use in constructed. in arena, you'll see an occasional demolisher, maybe blood imp though warlock is kinda bad in arena anyways.

As I said, no card should be intentionally crappy.

How many cards that are used in any way NEED to be RNG at all? Knife Juggler, Stampeding Kodo, Young Priestess could all be straight-up choice based and be considered very minor buffs, it's just that the game system is too limited to allow that for Juggler and Priestess. Meanwhile it would be easy to nerf Sylvanas and Ragnaros to allow them to be choice based, but then I wouldn't mind them being nerfed anyway. This leaves MCT somewhere in between the two categories, without enough of a body to really hit but maybe too good to be choice based? When it comes to RNG, if you couldn't allow it to be choice based without being broken, chances are it was a bad design decision to begin with. Deadly Shot, Arcane Missiles, and Brawl fall squarely into that problem. Finally there's just no point at all for Lightning Storm to be random. It's already a unique card in that it's a board clear with overload, pick a value and stick to it. I do at least like Animal Companion, which has a fun factor that I feel eclipses potentially uncompetitive gameplay.

like in almost every game, the only relevant RNG will be your deck order, and the only control you have over that is running cards to cycle through you deck quickly. it sucks when you draw poorly, but that happens in every ccg/tcg. at least in hearthstone, you don't have to mulligan your entire hand.

Yes, I am well aware how card games fundamentally function. There is a reason I didn't include random discard or draw (even Ysera). The inherit challenge of card games is being able to tactically adjust to wildly uneven scenarios. This is true whether you are talking about Poker, Munchkin, or Magic. That does not apply to the kind of RNG I am complaining about. Not a single card you narrowed down won't possibly lose you the game due to bad RNG, even Rag. There WILL be cases where you cannot play around it. Tonight I played a game where I had one big minion that could kill the opponent. Neither of us had hands. He plays Ragnaros, and suddenly has a 50/50 chance of winning. He got screwed. When there are situations where you can win or lose on non-deck based RNG, that's uncompetitive. I don't know how this has to be explained on a Pokemon forum. It's 2014 and this level of randomness really shouldn't be seen in a competitive game anymore.

I can't believe I forgot the Shaman's fucking class ability. Shamans win or lose by that 0/2 taunt all the time.

Now I never said RNG makes Hearthstone an awful game. No, it's a bit down the list when it comes to my overall complaints. It just rears ugly head the most often while I play the only game mode I actually want to play.

If you're dropping Mad Bomber on an empty board then you're playing badly.

I have played Mad Bombers when the opponent had a single Scarlet Crusader, when they had multiple 1 hp minions under taunt, when they had lit 1 hp on their champ, and still gotten screwed. If I was a superstitious man, I would just stop drafting it. Actually, I think it has only lost me a game once (the middle example), but it's still annoying.

 

[Mr.E]

Minor buff? Knife Juggler would be in literally every decklist if you could choose its target(s). :P But all cards are not created equal in every CCG pretty much, it's an intentional design decision that drives the sales of the genre. Low odds of getting (most of) the better cards = more packs sold. Magic also uses it a balancing mechanism for Limited (Draft, Sealed) play so every game doesn't simply devolve into "Mewtwo wars," so to speak. I think Hearthstone tried that too but they fucked up with Flamestrike as a basic (common) card. :(

It can be annoying sometimes but the RNG stuff doesn't really bother me. For one, it's kind of a fresh take on the genre since CCGs are generally paper products and Mad Bomber, Avenging Wrath-level of randomness is largely not feasible in-person. I don't really see why it would be such a big deal on top of the inherent RNG of card games anyway. You're still playing the odds when you YOLO Rag in front of your opponent's lone fatty or whatever, it's just another probabilistic event to consider when you make gameplay decisions.

In other news, I maintain Priest/Paladin are well-situated in the Huntard/Warlock/Druid metagame. Unless you want to join the Druid circlejerk, which frankly I've become tired of losing mirrors because I refuse to be inbred enough to pretend aggro doesn't exist to make more room for stuff like The Black Knight in my list, then you need something that still handles Hunter/Warlock aggro fairly well but also preys on Druid's weakness to fatties. I think both Priest and Paladin are capable of such. I actually had some quick success with Shaman myself, quickly pushing up to mid-Rank 2 Thursday night after being stuck in a Rank 3-4 rut the previous few days.

There's plenty of room for the Ranked metagame to shift. Much like League, I think there are more viable alternatives than see common use. Hunter and Zoolock are the most popular decks, by far, because they're the cheapest to build. (And aggro is cheaper than control in general because aggro values tempo/efficiency, where control values quality/power.) Druid comes in as the most popular control class, particularly Watcher, both because it's a great counter to those two aggro decks but also relatively cheap itself for a control deck. (Most Druids top their curve at the Ancients and don't use a ton of Legendaries.) New players will play these decks because they're accessible, the mass of ignorant sheeple will play them because they're the most popular. That doesn't mean other classes/builds can't work.

 

[ryan]

The problem with Paladin and Priest is that they're so slow. If you can keep up a bit in the early game vs. all these aggressive decks, you're usually set. Otherwise, you need a really high quality Consecration/Holy Nova/Auchenai Circle to regain some momentum. But against Zoo, there are ways to play around these cards (most run Amani Berserker just for AOE, and you've also got Argus, Shattered Sun Cleric, and Young Priestess to keep your minions out of that 2 damage range). It's a shame too; without Zoo around every corner, I genuinely believe that Priest would be a good class. Control really struggles to out-late-game Priest because they have their own big legendaries, Mind Control, and potentially your big legendaries because of Thoughtsteal.

Paladin isn't really bad either, but it seems like everything it tries to do, other decks do better. I've seen cool Aggro Paladin builds around Divine Favor to restock once you've dumped your hand and Sword of Justice to make your trades almost always favorable in the early game. But Warlock's hero power is just so much more consistent than hoping you pull your Divine Favors. And Control Paladin has Tirion, which is arguably the best legendary in the game, along with Equality + Consecration/Pyromancer, which are strong tools for sure. But their early game is just so bad that it's much easier to run Druid and throw out Watchers to Keeper later or drop a turn two Druid of the Claw/Yeti, etc. Like if Paladin got Innervate, it would probably be a top control class.

On the topic of underrepresented classes, there was a guy streaming yesterday who got to like legend rank 32 I think with a really aggressive burn Mage. I threw it together last night with a couple tweaks, and it's a ton of fun. Super low budget deck too, so it's easy to try out (I had everything but Thalnos). Here's the decklist:

Hide

If you don't have Thalnos, the guy who built it recommended Novice Engineer as a replacement because the draw card is much more important than the Spell Damage. I tested out Leeroy instead, and it was actually really bad. It was almost always a dead card when I drew it, and you have plenty of push with Frostbolt + Ice Lances and your two Fireballs. Anyways, you guys should try it out because it's super fun. The guy got up from rank 5 to legend really quickly with it.

 

[Mulligan]

http://www.liquidhearth.com/gatherings/

Anybody going to one of these? There's one in my city this Saturday coming up. I don't know if I'm going or not yet. It is cool you can still get the "Fireside Gatherings" card back without going to one of these, but it might be fun just to meet other Hearthstone players in the area.