Well, I did just open the DEATHWING (forgot to screenshot ;_;), so I might throw that in for shits.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Hearthstone [IRC Channel #Skillstone]
- Thread starter LonelyNess
- Start date
Ramp druid has one of the strongest late games. I'm not sure what else can compare to the sheer amount of big ass threats they throw down turn on turn. You're right about them struggling to remove big minions, though. Ramp druid's win condition is usually control the board with beefy or sticky minions, then draw into your combo and burst down the opponent.
Why do people think that control warrior has a bad matchup against zoo? Shitty out-of-date control warrior that doesn't run cleave / wild pyro and still runs frothing berserker will have trouble, because it's too slow, but updated lists have a very good matchup.
Anything can be a bad matchup for priest, but my point is that relative to things like miracle rogue or ramp druid with double yeti, zoo is a walk in the park. oh yea, and handlock is horrible if early drakes come out; it feels literally unwinnable after a turn 4 drake.
handlock has suffered recently because of the recent surge in aggro decks, more specifically backspace rogue, which incorporates mill elements. mill completely fucks handlocks on a fundamental level. handlock benefits from huge card advantage and having one million strong options per turn, mill decks look to burn your cards and kill you (see: shockadin / backspace rogue), the one exception being millacle druid which is a control / mill / ramp deck. having a huge hand obviously opens you up to having important cards burned, so the warlock has to pray he gets early watchers / cheap drops. the game is almost guaranteed over if the mill deck has a decent start and the warlock taps on turns 2/3 (or 1/2/3 with coin).
Why do people think that control warrior has a bad matchup against zoo? Shitty out-of-date control warrior that doesn't run cleave / wild pyro and still runs frothing berserker will have trouble, because it's too slow, but updated lists have a very good matchup.
Anything can be a bad matchup for priest, but my point is that relative to things like miracle rogue or ramp druid with double yeti, zoo is a walk in the park. oh yea, and handlock is horrible if early drakes come out; it feels literally unwinnable after a turn 4 drake.
handlock has suffered recently because of the recent surge in aggro decks, more specifically backspace rogue, which incorporates mill elements. mill completely fucks handlocks on a fundamental level. handlock benefits from huge card advantage and having one million strong options per turn, mill decks look to burn your cards and kill you (see: shockadin / backspace rogue), the one exception being millacle druid which is a control / mill / ramp deck. having a huge hand obviously opens you up to having important cards burned, so the warlock has to pray he gets early watchers / cheap drops. the game is almost guaranteed over if the mill deck has a decent start and the warlock taps on turns 2/3 (or 1/2/3 with coin).
Soul Fly probably meant substandard as far as removal is concerned, which Druid struggles with in general (one of the few classes that almost has to run Big Game Hunter AND The Black Knight). Correct me if I'm wrong though.
Anyways, after a 9 hour push on the last day of the season (the most I've ever played Hearthstone in a day), I peaked at rank 2, but ended up rank 3. I was making all kinds of ultimatums in my mind (if I don't hit Legend this season, I quit this game etc etc), but it was all because my younger sibling made it and I wanted to join him. The biggest reason I didn't make it was time. I have no one to blame but myself on this one. I spent the first half of the season doing Arena for the most part and the little time I did Ranked play was messing with other homebrew decks I made myself and none of them worked out, never getting above rank 10. I put together a big climb from 10-5 with an old Tempo Rogue (roflstomps Zoo - Handlock and Druid? not so much) and hit another wall and struggled between 5-7 until the last day. Rank 3 is the highest I've ever achieved and after this season, I know that I am fully capable.
What might be slightly more interesting is the deck I decided to use to try and make the final push. I went back to my roots and used Midrange Hunter, but I made a few changes. I took out the vanilla beasts that the deck uses (River Crocs, Oasis Snapjaws) to fit in two Eaglehorn Bows, 4 traps (Explosive and Freezing) and a pair of Faerie Dragons to fill the 2 drop slot. Basically the changes were made to fare better against Zoo and Miracle Rogue, two matchups that notoriously aren't favored for Midrange Hunter. It really helped my climb without sacrificing much against the decks it does well against (Druid, Control Warrior etc). I really believe Midrange Hunter is still a very good choice, even in this metagame and, yes, even after the nerf to UTH. The worst matchup from my personal experience is Shockadin. I dropped every game against them, but I still think it's 40% (every single one curved out perfectly and if they didn't they had Divine Favor). I'm honestly not worried about Shockadin because after trying it out myself, it has way too many bad matchups in this meta, literally beating ONLY Hunter, Miracle Rogue and Handlock (even Priest beats it on a good day). I didn't see a single one on the last day (they were everywhere at rank 5 a few days ago). I can post the decklist if you guys want to see it. I'm definitely going to try it again at some point during the climb, but I don't know if I'll start with it or not.
One reason my younger sibling made it was deck of choice (obviously skill as well since we both have prior TCG experience). He pulled so many Shaman staples back when he dropped $40, I insisted he play the class and he hasn't looked back since. Shaman is, IMO, the best overall class to use right now along with Handlock. The Zoo matchup isn't THAT bad (50/50), it does well vs. Handlock, Druid and any stray Control Warriors and also is decent against Miracle Rogue (also 50/50 IMO). It's a difficult class to master though and takes a lot of finesse, which is why I decided against it on the last days. My Shaman play hasn't been that great lately and I was messing with different tech cards last week, so I didn't think I'd have the time to try and get better with the class to hit Legend with it. It's a solid, if not somewhat boring, choice though (similar to Handlock).
Also, I have major reservations against Zoo, but that is an entirely different post that might be even longer than this one.
tl;dr I didn't hit Legend, but rank 3 ain't bad :), Midrange Hunter is still good, Shockadin sucks, and Shaman is da bes pre-Naxx....and Handlock too
My Smogon-fu is lacking lately, my bad. And yeah 3x legend np ez.
Zoo is never a "control deck" in that it attempts to slow the game down and win with card quality. Very much the opposite, of course, but it can succeed under every playstyle ranging from "clear absolutely everything" to "always go face and let the opponent deal with your speed and hand vomit." Ideally it's matchup-based, more face against control and more board control against other aggro, but there is room for personal preference to help decide. Facerush hand vomit is probably more effective on average, actually, because it punishes slow draws and sets up no-discard Soulfires/Doomguards. :/
Maybe bias but I stand by Ramp Druid as the most well-rounded ladder deck. Druid's only notable weakness is lack of hard removal, which isn't that exploitable since they have the largest class minions anyway and there's BGH for Giant tech. Zoo's also an obvious choice but I think their weakness to big taunts is tougher to fix, since teching for it further reduces their speed which is already slow for an aggro deck, and it's just so popular that people metagame against it more. Druid is consistently ~3rd in overall usage and Token is a larger fraction of that than Handlock is of Warlock's usage. The most "metagaming" people do against Druid is running The Black Knight, even then the current FotM "Charge Druid" usually kitty forms DotC and doesn't run any other taunts.
As for some of the matchup stuff:
I wouldn't say Control Warrior is built specifically to beat aggro, it depends on the actual deck. For example, Zoo beats the hell out of CW because they can flood the board like crazy and Warrior AoE is just too poor to reign them in. It's better against facerush. You could say it's built specifically to beat combo decks like Miracle Rogue and Freeze Mage, who have a finite amount of total damage output, but even then I'd just say that's a consequence of CW's general strategy rather than its direct purpose.
Handlock has the upper hand on Zoo. Zoo simply can't handle huge taunts. Most lists lack the raw speed of other aggro decks and Handlock has just enough time to dig and setup 10+ HP of Taunt walls they can't break. Molten Giant is obviously huge as well, mostly because it should be cheap or free to cast alongside a taunt activator in that critical Turn 5-6 range.
Way shittier than Miracle Rogue, which I think is quite overrated but not outright bad. It's better than Freeze Mage at least, which plays in a similar fashion: tons of draw and a combo kill. The only advantage Freeze Mage has is that it beats Miracle Rogue directly.
Late Auctioneer usually means Miracle Rogue just loses. That's how the deck is built. Conceal and Prep have very limited use outside of Auctioneer shenanigans. Shadowstep and Cold Blood are equally limited outside of the burst finisher, of which Auctioneer either draws into late or helps draw past if you pull them early. Pushing the board more with stuff like ERF and Azure Drakes helps alleviate that dependency but perhaps not enough...
Zoo is never a "control deck" in that it attempts to slow the game down and win with card quality. Very much the opposite, of course, but it can succeed under every playstyle ranging from "clear absolutely everything" to "always go face and let the opponent deal with your speed and hand vomit." Ideally it's matchup-based, more face against control and more board control against other aggro, but there is room for personal preference to help decide. Facerush hand vomit is probably more effective on average, actually, because it punishes slow draws and sets up no-discard Soulfires/Doomguards. :/
Maybe bias but I stand by Ramp Druid as the most well-rounded ladder deck. Druid's only notable weakness is lack of hard removal, which isn't that exploitable since they have the largest class minions anyway and there's BGH for Giant tech. Zoo's also an obvious choice but I think their weakness to big taunts is tougher to fix, since teching for it further reduces their speed which is already slow for an aggro deck, and it's just so popular that people metagame against it more. Druid is consistently ~3rd in overall usage and Token is a larger fraction of that than Handlock is of Warlock's usage. The most "metagaming" people do against Druid is running The Black Knight, even then the current FotM "Charge Druid" usually kitty forms DotC and doesn't run any other taunts.
As for some of the matchup stuff:
I wouldn't say Control Warrior is built specifically to beat aggro, it depends on the actual deck. For example, Zoo beats the hell out of CW because they can flood the board like crazy and Warrior AoE is just too poor to reign them in. It's better against facerush. You could say it's built specifically to beat combo decks like Miracle Rogue and Freeze Mage, who have a finite amount of total damage output, but even then I'd just say that's a consequence of CW's general strategy rather than its direct purpose.
Handlock has the upper hand on Zoo. Zoo simply can't handle huge taunts. Most lists lack the raw speed of other aggro decks and Handlock has just enough time to dig and setup 10+ HP of Taunt walls they can't break. Molten Giant is obviously huge as well, mostly because it should be cheap or free to cast alongside a taunt activator in that critical Turn 5-6 range.
Meh, Shockadin is even worse than regular Paladin Aggro and Face Huntard. It's lesser facerush BS with a contingency plan. I really don't understand the Worgen either, it's not like the deck runs Blessing of Kings or any other reason for a Stealth minion.
Way shittier than Miracle Rogue, which I think is quite overrated but not outright bad. It's better than Freeze Mage at least, which plays in a similar fashion: tons of draw and a combo kill. The only advantage Freeze Mage has is that it beats Miracle Rogue directly.
Nah don't even always need Lightning Storm, T1 Argent Squire -> T2 Flametongue or just T2 Stormforged Axe if their one-drop isn't a taunt are almost auto-win irrespective of whether or not you have Lightning Storm. Blah blah blah, point is they can often work with a wide variety of cards. Most decks can.
Late Auctioneer usually means Miracle Rogue just loses. That's how the deck is built. Conceal and Prep have very limited use outside of Auctioneer shenanigans. Shadowstep and Cold Blood are equally limited outside of the burst finisher, of which Auctioneer either draws into late or helps draw past if you pull them early. Pushing the board more with stuff like ERF and Azure Drakes helps alleviate that dependency but perhaps not enough...
Whooooooa there bro, don't talk shit about the best minion in the game.
Last edited:
B-but Ancient of Lore is the best minion evar?Here's a Druid ramp-style deck I've been working with. Consider it played similar to Warrior control would be played like
This is mostly here for defeating two Smogoners with it but in Gookie's defense I had a perfect ramp and Mr.E got a bit unlucky.
also probably because your 4 drop is really weak and you have 0 early game apart from wrath
Last edited:
May as well make it Gaaras deck and add in Molten Giants (they are seriously legit with MotW and Faceless). Also I don't think you need both Sylvanas and TBK, I would rather run Cairne tbh. Whats Baron for? Doesn't seem to synergise with anything. Basically this won't work on the ladder but I doubt that's what you made it for anyway
It actually works quite well on the ladder (rank 18-15 in an hour or so). The point of promise is the Baron in the metagame. Injuring Zoo to when it can't play and harming the Mage Mirror Image. Though I understand why none of you take it completely seriously. I use Sylvanas and TBK in two different situations. TBK + MotW is the auto-removal Druid needs while Sylvanas and MotW is the solution to Handlock (aside from a ridiculous Shadowflame). I can assure you that every card I picked is for a specific reason, and if you don't like it I suggest you try it, however I will contest that I think regular ramp is a better deck overall, this one is just more suited to the metagame as I see it.
EDIT:
not saying that 18-15 is anything great but it did it rather quickly so it has promise I think.
matthew's strategy -> mulligan aggressively for innervate / wild growth.
-> don't get any and cry
-> don't get any and cry
Said literally every Druid deck nowadays :)
Even though the 3 smaller minions are decent at best, I think this might be the best pack I've opened to date.
You only get 1,600 dust.
For the record, I lost because I was playing my Priest deck and my Ysera was double Facelessed. You know, two copies of pretty much the single hardest counter card to any single class in the game.
Healing Touch is also shitty and Geddon is just goofy, even if like 80% of the fucking ladder is Zoo right now like holy fucking shit literally everyone is playing this shit right now and half of them are retarded shit with like leeroy and hellfire and dsfhdsfiofhadsgdgfdhssafhadsdfhasdfads what the fuck is wrong with people
Healing Touch is also shitty and Geddon is just goofy, even if like 80% of the fucking ladder is Zoo right now like holy fucking shit literally everyone is playing this shit right now and half of them are retarded shit with like leeroy and hellfire and dsfhdsfiofhadsgdgfdhssafhadsdfhasdfads what the fuck is wrong with people
