Hearthstone [IRC Channel #Skillstone]

[ryan]

Doing an alarm o bot draft atm.i dont think ive been as unhappy with a card in arena since the time rodan drafted lorewalker cho (over baron geddon no less)

I went like 6-3 I believe? with an Alarm-O-Bot in Druid. It's obviously not -good-, but it has its upsides. Say you play a 2 drop on 2, they play a 2 drop, you trade 2 drops and play Alarm-O-Bot on three. They're pretty much forced to use removal to take card of it, or else you get a free minion from your hand. Of course, you could pull another 2 drop off your Alarm-O-Bot at the beginning of your turn, and if that happens, you lose tempo because you can't attack with the minion Alarm-O-Bot pulled. But it's decent removal bait if you drop it at the right time, and of course, it could be amazing. I managed to get the dream in one game where it pulled Injured Blademaster (which doesn't get its Battlecry when pulled by Alarm-O-Bot, so it's a 4/7), followed by a Stormwind Champion the next turn. The only reason why this worked is because my opponent used Arcane Shot on his own Timber Wolf instead of my Alarm-O-Bot, but even if he hit the Alarm-O-Bot with the Arcane Shot, he traded his Arcane Shot for my Alarm-O-Bot, which makes it about as good as a Knife Juggler or Wild Pyromancer in that specific situation.

Also, I finally hit legend! \o/ Used Control Paladin for the bulk of my laddering from Rank 2 to Legend, but I ended the grind with Face Hunter because I got fucking tired of losing too much to Zoo in the early game. Here's my Pally list for anyone who cares:

+Ysera

Farmed most of the hunters I ran into. Zombie Chow is ridiculous in this matchup, and as long as you can stabilize by the mid-game, which you usually can if you get an early Zombie Chow and/or Wild Pyromancer. From there, you just play out your strong late-game minions and then heal until they forfeit (and they always forfeit, you never get the chance to kill them). I personally think this is pretty much the best Paladin list out there right now, but I've considered dropping The Black Knight for something else in the early game. The problem is, I have no idea what else you could run for early game outside of maybe a second Owl, since it's good in both control and aggro matchups. Anyways, I think Control Paladin is grossly underrated in this meta. Highly recommend it.

Also, Blessing of Wisdom is sick for another cheap spell to proc Wild Pyro and more card draw, which is one of my only complaints with Paladin.

 

[Mr.E]

I was Huntarding after a while of losing with various shit then ran into a gauntlet of Control Warriors and Priests. I ended up finished the grind this month with stupid-ass Echoing Ooze Druid which apparently is better than I thought it was. Good ol' Malfurion never lets me down. ONYXIA INTO CENARIUS YEEEEEEEEAH

Paladin has been legit for a while but I refuse to run Holy Light, a do-nothing POS, over ERF if you want supplemental healing to your expensive cards. I've actually considered Light's Justice as something to do for more anti-aggro measures but I haven't tried it since I haven't played Paladin in a while myself. You can kill Leper Gnomes, Webskillers, Owls everyone is running these days and continue killing stupid deathrattle tokens for a while (cleaning up stupid spiders). Seems like a pretty nice deal for one mana.
Edit: also against decks that refuse to deal any damage to you for the first 10 turns it's fine slamming your face into moderately large dudes for 1 damage and getting some mileage out of your healing shit

 

[ryan]

I like Holy Light because it's a cheap spell to proc Wild Pyro. Other than Holy Light, you just have one Blessing of Wisdom and one Humility to proc it in the early game without using Equality, and in control matchups, you can always use it to heal minions or get yourself out of burst range in a pinch. I doubt I'd use Light's Justice as because it's so horrible in control matchups, but I'm definitely using at least one Muster for Battle when that comes out. So fucking hot.

 

[Mr.E]

That's why I don't use Wild Pyro. ;D Paladin doesn't have a ton of good cheap spells like Priest (SW:Pain, PW:Shield, Smite, hell even Circle sometimes) to make good use of Pyro. Priest can also naturally heal their Pyro for extra procs without suiciding. It's mostly just in Paladin to add consistency to the Equality combo by standing in for Consecration but Equality isn't even that hard to get mileage out of on its own either, considering Paladin conveniently makes 1/1 dudes that can bump into things. Then you have to go and run even more bad spells if you want Pyro to do things without Equality.

Am I wrong? Maybe, but maybe that's also why everyone thinks Paladin is ass because of course they're ass when you use a deck full of ass cards and your primary win condition is boring people to fatigue. I would say the same thing of Priest in the past with the Circle package; the addition of Zombie Chow really tied everything together for them though. (Chow gives you more reason to run Soulpriest, which gives you more reason to run Circle, which gives you more reason to run Blademaster.) I do think Humility and even BoW are underrated cards on their own but only the latter when it's nigh-guaranteed to draw a replacement card, not as a conditional Arcane Explosion.

 

[dadoux]

Equality+ pyro a great board clear.

But paladin is just terrible at the moment, it's not unplayable by any means (i guess so) but Uther got nothing for him, i hope GvG will get better for him (Muster for battle is already pretty good)

 

[ryan]

I pretty much farm hunters with paladin, but I toyed with my list a bit. Cut the Kodo/Humility because it's way too slow and tossed in double Senjin, and I cut the MC Tech for an Earthen Ring, though I'm mostly testing that because I think both are really good. The only times I really lose to hunter are when I draw terribly, but with Chow, Owl, Earthen Ring, Aldor, Senjins, Truesilvers, etc. I rarely fall too far behind in the early game, and unless I can't answer highmanes, which I usually can, it's really easy to stabilize in the midgame. Traps are a joke because of hero power, tons of heals, tons of Taunts with my build at least, etc.

I agree that Pyro isn't amazing, but having AoE without Consecration, 3 damage Consecration, and a guranteed board wipe for 4 mana is really, really nice.

 

[Matthew]

This Auctioneer nerf hurts, man. Though Miracle should still be playable

 

[Soul Fly]

RIP everyone who crafted Malygos to play the Rogue Redux decks.

 

[blitzlefan]

Flare nerf and Soulfire nerf! :D
Deathrattle Hunter and Zoo are ridiculously bullshit decks, and it's nice to see nerfs here. Even if they aren't "broken", they're still a decent deal better than your average deck.

 

[dadoux]

http://www.hearthpwn.com/

GvG for December 8th / 9th + all those legendarys !!!

Tree of life + Malorne = Infinite Life for druid (you can't fatigue if you draw malorne every turn), it's pretty OP

 

[the pugilist]

that combo seems pretty bad against any non grindy matchup and even then you are playing with 1 card down for the most part (9 mana life gain cards arent exactly where u want to be though it could have some uses healing dudes). Malorne on its own seems good enough for that though, so probably not worth it in general (combo). Anyone else think that mech hunter card is insane (even though it is in the worst class possible for mechs).

 

[Soul Fly]

Blizzard be like,

 

[New World Order]

Shrinkmeister, Vol'Jin, Velen's Chosen, and the Holy Hand Grenade pretty much makes Priest the de-facto #1.

 

[ryan]

Shrinkmeister, Vol'Jin, Velen's Chosen, and the Holy Hand Grenade pretty much makes Priest the de-facto #1.

Velen's chosen looks pretty bleh in constructed. Silence is everywhere, and the spell power is only really only useful with holy nova. Just doesn't seem worth it. Holy hand grenade is hot as fuck though.

 

[Joeyboy]

TROGGZORRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Asek]

These GvG cards seem to be really strong in arena, especially the ones with the deathrattle of summoning a 2 mana, 4 mana and legendary minion respectively

Also just made a lazy 800 dust from disenchanting a golden gadgetzan

 

[Mr.E]

Thought about dusting mine, I guess there's technically no disadvantage but I figure I'm not getting non-GvG packs anytime soon so I'm not going to pull extra copies of the nerfed cards and eventually have to recraft them anyway at cost. *shrug*

The quality of arena player must've really gone down with this free GvG play thinger because boy is this deck bad and I still pulled 12 wins with it.

Oh damn forgot to screenshot at the 12th win (I ended 12-2, lost to god deck rogue before running over a really slow mage) but whatever.

 

[Soul Fly]

Lost an Arena run to a druid with 5 back to fucking back (!!) Druid of the Snake a.k.a "snakes, it has to be snakes", a paladin with 3 of the 2/2 divine shield guys behind a tirion followed by double blessing of kings and a mage with 3 flamestrikes.

Ah hearthstone. you are a sadist. but 4 win not bad, enough money for my next run.

 

[ryan]

To be fair Mr.E you have a lot of really high quality minions in there. Clockwork Gnome, triple Argent Protectors (swear to god these things snowball so hard they're like the best Paladin arena card next to Truesilver), Aldor, Spider Tank, Yeti, double Dark Irons, etc.

Also whoever linked the Rag vs. KT thing:

 

[Soul Fly]

Also whoever linked the Rag vs. KT thing:

JUSTICE.





Also Arena is a massive shitfest right now lol. Consistency is out of the window.

 

[Matthew]

arena is for tryhards anyway

 

[coolbiz]

Hey! Anyone have tips for drafting in arena? I usually use trumps tier list and think about it like tryhard mode. I'm fairly new to hearthstone and the best I've done is 3-3 as shaman. Just to mention I play arena for the rewards, not for the concept, I like constructed much, much more.

Add me: Coolbiz #1538

 

[Matthew]

arena drafts come down to picking the better card of the three you're given. However sometimes you're forced to take a lesser card, such as Ooze over Ogre to maybe actually have some early game pressure.

As a rule of thumb when drafting make sure you have 10 cards that are playable turn 1-2 and that's going to help a lot.

EDIT:

GvG out today (like now-ish) for the American and Australian brothers. I've saved up 4K gold and feel pretty confident with that number (40 packs whoo).

 

[coolbiz]

Thanks for the tip, about to draft now, wish me luck

 

[Matthew]

I am the Iron Juggernaut