Hearthstone [IRC Channel #Skillstone]

[Matthew]

Once you figure out the ordering of how secrets are (in regards to the Paladin deck) if you're running any nature of control or combo deck the effect is minimal since Paladin secrets are so fucking bad. I honestly don't think keeping Secret Keeper is even worth keeping as Challenger doesn't proc it. It's only scary in the sense that Undertaker was scary, but less so since, as I said before, Paladin secrets are so fucking bad.

The meta has even switched from secret Paladin to mid-range in just a day. I see way more mid-range than secret.

In the same regard I've been messing around with a Darksteed Warlock deck that uses Baron and a Sense Demons to some legit effect. Infinite 1/1's is fairly strong when you can pull the combo off. Probably not t1 but it's t2/3 which I'm happy with.

Druid is everywhere on the ladder too. Not sure why actually since the token Druid seems fairly weak but maybe someone will help the list out a bit. Patron is still strong, dragon Warrior, too, has shown an emergence thanks to Alexstraza's Champion. Regardless the meta has slowed down a little, and by that I mean mid-range is more common than aggro, but it has slowed in pace.

 

[ryan]

Secret Paladin is garbage. It's just a clunkier Aggro Paladin that draws the nuts or loses most of the time. Aggro Paladin and Midrange Paladin are both still stupid strong, but I think some in-between is the best way to play Paladin right now. I'm just not sure how that in-between would be built. Definitely not like Hybrid Hunter (trash deck anyways), more like a slightly more aggressive midrange than aggro with a couple big dudes. I'm thinking maybe Kings and/or Seal of Champion are just really strong cards that definitely have a place outside of Aggro Paladin. I'd say just play Midrange Paladin and call it a day, but it tends to be too fair of a deck if it doesn't get an explosive Quartermaster turn, and the best Hearthstone decks haven't been fair since before Miracle Rogue first became the top deck in the format.

Patron Warrior is also pretty dumb. I've played like five or six games with it since the reset, and those few games make up over half of the Patron games I have under my belt. I grossly misplayed in two of those games and probably made a ton of minor flubs throughout the others, and I didn't drop a single one. None of them were even close barring a game where I accidentally forgot to drop Warsong before my double Frothings and had to close out the game with stupid Patron boards. I'm actually kind of surprised Blizzard hasn't done anything about the deck yet. It feels very reminiscent of the old 2 mana Unleash the Hounds / 2 mana Starving Buzzard days where you couldn't put more than one or two minions on the board or risk outright losing the game, except Patron Warrior takes it a step further and leaves the potential for you to burst down the opponent by filling your own board with Patrons to get off crazy Frothing turns. Something out of Frothing Berserker/Warsong Commander/Emperor Thaurrisan needs dealt with, and I wouldn't mind a slight nerf to Battle Rage either.

 

[Blazade]

I think when secret paladin mellows out it will be like a tech choice, including Mysterious Challenger and a few secrets (not nearly as many to fuck up the curve) for a more board control oriented deck that takes advantage of how strong a play on turn 6 that is while slightly decreasing consistency in other areas. Of course the thing that people start out with is going to be a full retard divine favor deck that completely loses once people start figuring out how to play around paladin secrets, and most I know basically have at this point.

It really butters up the meta though. Patron doesn't lose to that deck and when other decks tech around it, it's like rolling over to the patrons. Every time I see someone play flare in hunter an angel gets its wings. Last season was the fastest climb to legend I ever had and I expect this one to be no different. Every time I try a new deck I think to myself, "this is nice, but nowhere near as good as patron. I should just play that instead". I'm not complaining though. This is the first meta where the really good deck is both one I have the cards for and one I enjoy playing. There's a lot of subtlety to getting those extra wins, and while that's true with any deck, I enjoy the type of decisions I'm making with my small cards before I get to the big combos.

 

[Mr.E]

Druid got some nice incremental upgrades whenever I go back to playing it more instead of dicking around. Living Roots is excellent. It's probably the best one-drop in the game in addition to being another way to snipe Jugglers and shit, plus it adds 2 damage to combo lategame. It's similar to Claw in some ways, which is a super underrated card BTW, but still way better since it can split 2/1 with Hero Power and hit through taunts, to say nothing of just playing it as a legit one-drop. Zombie Chow can fuck right off.

Aspirant is another early dude to fill the bottom of the curve against aggro with huge upside when it lives, and Aviana is at worst a one-mana 5/5 which gets crazy with late Innervates or a Thaurissan discount. I dunno about token Druid specifically but I'd say "standard" Ramp Druid is looking mighty fine once the experimenting settles down.

On other Druid shit, sad to say Astral Communion is a bust. :( I wanted to make it work but it's super lame that you still discard at ten mana, so you effectively can't cycle it unless your hand is already empty, which makes it suck in every game you don't T1-T4 Astral because it's a dead draw later unlike Wild Growth. The deckbuilding constraints are also real, since you don't exactly want to T1 Innervate Communion and then... topdeck a Swipe or Keeper. Nourish is still better if you want to ramp super-hard, since it's generally "good enough" (five to eight mana gets you in range to play Boom/Rag and follow up with Cenarius/Ysera/etc.) without dumping your hand and restricting your card choices.

I tried Beast Druid. I wasn't impressed, but it was okay and I really didn't play it long enough or do enough tweaking to say it couldn't be viable. Jungle Panther and/or Stranglethorn Tiger might be good choices to supplement the Druid beast package, since the density of Druid Beast cards is still low; Tiger's better on paper but Panther fits the curve way better since class cards already clog the five-slot. Savage Combatant is, predictably, pretty good on its own though. At worst it's not too dissimilar to Fire Elemental, but it dominates if it sticks and can come down T1-T2 with Innervate.

RE Patron, I honestly don't even like Battle Rage since it's not that easy to get cards off it unless your board gets ignored and you waste combo pieces, which is fine since there's enough in the deck to spare a few but still. Frothing and Warsong are generally balanced, though the latter could be changed to a persistent aura, they were always able to do that. Thaurissan was arguably a mistake period but if Blizzard thought it was okay to create in the first place, well there's not much you can really do about it. You can make him smaller but he wouldn't be that much worse as an 0/1 really, that's not the broken part.

 

[ryan]

The real problem with Thaurrisan is that it came from an adventure and not an expansion. I know Blizzard nerfed Undertaker despite releasing it in Naxx, but it took endless bitching from the community to get there. All the community bitches about right now is RNG and 20 Atk charging Frothings. As for Battle Rage, even if it draws only two cards, it's still a better Arcane Intellect, and it's really easy to draw two off of it. I guess the real problem with Battle Rage is still Thaurrisan because having a ton of cards in hand as Patron only gets really nasty once Thaurrisan comes out.

I'm not sure what people saw in Beast Druid. Before the expansion came out, I heard a lot of streamers talk about how good it was going to be, but it got one new "good" card with Savage Combatant. Wildwalker or Windwaker or Windwalker or whatever the fuck it is isn't actually that good. It's a worse Houndmaster when played on curve, and standard Druid does a better job fighting for board than what that card allows by buffing Health. The 7 mana 6/6 only drops in cost when it's in your hand, which I did not know until I drafted two in arena and thankfully had enough Beasts that it was still fine. Basically what I'm getting at is that Beast Druid will get there one day, but it's still just worse than Midrange Hunter/standard Druid.

 

[Blazade]

If patron needs a nerf, it should probably be in the warsong. Battle rage can reward you but it is equally difficult to set up, in that you often have to leave extra mana after comboing or use whirwhind effects on on combo minions. It's pretty balanced and a necessary tool for enrage decks, of any kind, which blizzard clearly likes. Just give warsong the old starving buzzard treatment so you can't charge so many things at the same time without multiple tirns of thaurissan and deal 30 out of hand routinely. Patrons can still be about board control and take games off of turn 5, but there are fewer outs outside of that.

 

[Tressed]

Definitely not like Hybrid Hunter (trash deck anyways)

Just curious as to why you feel this way, most sources I've found list it as a top tier deck and I've found it to be really strong myself.

Anyways, I feel like Warsong Commander has always been the broken thing with Patron Warrior, and it really comes down to giving minions Charge when they shouldn't have it. Charge is really difficult to balance for in the first place, and being able to hand it out to anything with under 3 attack will always allow for some janky combos. It's not like Math Warrior wasn't a thing before, it was just a lot less consistent. I mean, there's a bunch of things we could complain about in Patron Warrior (Patrons punishing your opponent for having little minions, Frothing punishing your opponent for having minions to damage, Emperor for allowing so many cards to be played at once), but the main issue I have with it is that all this stuff comes right out of your hand and attacks immediately, so there's not much you can actually do to counter it since you have to preemptively drop Taunts, and then they can delay their combo turn and clear it.

 

[ryan]

Hybrid hunter is a less consistent aggro warrior that has a more favorable matchup against control warrior in exchange for a slightly worse matchup against just about everything else. It's much better on a tournament format where you are designing your lineup to cover as much as possible while still having three solid decks that aren't particularly bad against anything. Would have been even better back on the old last hero standing format. On ladder you just want consistency though, so in my opinion face hunter is just a better deck there.

 

[Byrne]

Calling Hybrid Hunter "trash" is some pretty lol-worthy hyperbole in an attempt to sound edgy, kind of like saying Secret Paladin is garbage when it clearly isn't. People might find it to be slightly worse than regular aggro but jesus get a grip on your adjectives

Blizzard will nerf Warsong eventually because it will yield zero dust refunds on their end lol. There are people with gold Patrons and Emperors and Blizzardo won't want to give them the free dust

 

[Blazade]

If you think of hybrid hunter as midrange with more burst than a slower face hunter, the decision becomes a little more understandable. The secrets alone can make the deck's existence a threat, where hybrid hunter can take better advantage of a freezing trap than a regular face hunter build. In certain ladder metas, I can imagine wanting to play it.

Secret paladin still seems gimmicky at the moment, it's not unreasonable to call that garbage either when realistically, you can hit high legend with just about anything if you put enough time into it and get lucky.

I don't really think we need to be that cynical about Blizzard, Byrne. They nerfed Leeroy before Gadgetzan in miracle when they were cleaning that up even though that was more dust, and I doubt they'll make a balancing call based on "free dust". They're just slow on the trigger finger sometimes (which is understandable).

 

[ryan]

Midrange with Arcane Golems does the "Midrange with more burst" better than Hybrid Hunter. I'm not trying to sound edgy; I'm telling you that it's an overhyped deck, just like Secret Paladin, which is an almost strictly worse Aggro Paladin now that people have learned how to play around Paladin Secrets. Both of these decks were great when they first dropped, but now that people know what the decks are doing, they really aren't good.

 

[Acklow]

I know I'm late to the party but I'm sad that miracle got gutted so hard because now Rogue is literally unplayable outside some gimmicky Pirate or Mill decks...

 

[Blazade]

Midrange with Arcane Golems does the "Midrange with more burst" better than Hybrid Hunter. I'm not trying to sound edgy; I'm telling you that it's an overhyped deck, just like Secret Paladin, which is an almost strictly worse Aggro Paladin now that people have learned how to play around Paladin Secrets. Both of these decks were great when they first dropped, but now that people know what the decks are doing, they really aren't good.

I was under the impression that "hybrid" hunter was basically midrange minus webspinners + leper gnomes and finding room for arcane golems somehow. If not, I'm totally in agreement, any further pushes the bounds of consistency.

And what's wrong with Oil rogue or even the more ridiculous aggro rogue? I miss miracle too but that's why I play patron. As far as I know standard Oil rogue is still pretty viable.

 

[ryan]

Nah Hybrid Hunter is literally just Aggro Hunter with Highmanes and Shredders. I even run Leper Gnome in Midrange Hunter to give me more than just Webspinner for a turn one play. The reason why Face Hunter is so good is because it doesn't have dead draws. You just play your cards and hit your opponent's face. Hybrid Hunter takes some of that consistency away, which is what makes it worse to not just me, but a pretty decent amount of the Hearthstone community.

Oil Rogue is fine, even good as long as Paladin is the top class in the metagame. I personally don't play it much because I just don't have that much fun with it and it doesn't run any of the new cards. I think the overall lack of new cards in Rogue's arsenal is the main reason why it's not seen much yet, but I imagine as time passes, that will change, just like it did in GvG.

 

[Byrne]

Secret paladin still seems gimmicky at the moment, it's not unreasonable to call that garbage either when realistically, you can hit high legend with just about anything if you put enough time into it and get lucky

Uhh you in fact can not, hitting top 100 legend requires craziness like 70% winrates against OTHER top players who are ALSO playing top decks. Given Secret Paladins took up a whole lot of the top 100 I'd say it's pretty obvious the deck is not "garbage" and anyone trying to call it that is going for the edge factor in a game as silly as Hearthstone. Just lol. I hate when people parade around as the Messiahs of Hearthstone...you've been wrong about this game before bro, I can almost hear you saying "Patron is garbage" a week after BRM just like everyone else that plays this game.

This "playing around secrets" argument is stupid. Every decent Hearthstone player already knew what Pally secrets did. It's still difficult to predict what it will be early on if simply played from hand because some secrets require you killing their stuff (Comp Spirit) and some require you leaving it up (Avenge). After the Mysterious Challenger turn if they had a strong board there's no level of adept maneuvering you can do to keep yourself from getting ravaged. The sequence of events is predictable but impossible to do anything about unless you have hard removal in hand

 

[Mr.E]

Nah secret paladin is trash though, it's literally just aggro paladin with 1/3 of the deck being shitty unplayable secrets glued together by one super-broken card, which makes it far less consistent than just having more aggro cards in those deckslots. But sure, some of the luckier players (i.e. not people like me) who don't pull opening hand Repentences and six-drops all day while twiddling their thumbs earlygame will place highly. That's the definition of consistency. Just as the deck will necessarily occupy many top-level rankings when almost everyone is playing it irrespective of how good the deck actually is.

I'll change my tune when it becomes an unending scourge on the ladder (I've already seen the fad largely die down) or a consistent and major player in the tournament scene. Even then I might not believe it because on paper the deck really is that bad. I don't think it has staying power, it's either people are overrating the abilities of a single broken card to single-handedly hold the deck together more consistently than is statistically likely, or they're just fascinated because it's really the only brand-new deck TGT has created to shake up the metagame that previously existed. Token Pally is just an evolution of oldschool midrange/control decks and otherwise the current successful decks are just the old guard which may or may not include any new cards at all (like Token Pally).

 

[Blazade]

Uhh you in fact can not, hitting top 100 legend requires craziness like 70% winrates against OTHER top players who are ALSO playing top decks. Given Secret Paladins took up a whole lot of the top 100 I'd say it's pretty obvious the deck is not "garbage" and anyone trying to call it that is going for the edge factor in a game as silly as Hearthstone. Just lol. I hate when people parade around as the Messiahs of Hearthstone...you've been wrong about this game before bro, I can almost hear you saying "Patron is garbage" a week after BRM just like everyone else that plays this game.

This "playing around secrets" argument is stupid. Every decent Hearthstone player already knew what Pally secrets did. It's still difficult to predict what it will be early on if simply played from hand because some secrets require you killing their stuff (Comp Spirit) and some require you leaving it up (Avenge). After the Mysterious Challenger turn if they had a strong board there's no level of adept maneuvering you can do to keep yourself from getting ravaged. The sequence of events is predictable but impossible to do anything about unless you have hard removal in hand

I don't know where you're getting all this "Messiah" stuff from. I'm not some sheeple that gets all his decks and opinions from the internet but I don't tell people how to think. I didn't really have anything to say about BRM when it cane out, I couldn't have predicted how that was going to turn out except that Thaurissan would carve out the exact niche it did. If you'll recall I actually said exactly what you did about competitive spirit and avenge moments after the card was revealed. It's why I like the design of competitive spirit, without even discussing its power level. I also agreed that Mysterious Challenger on 6 was a really strong board control turn for the reasons you described. It's why I think that it will have a place when the meta levels out, probably in a slightly slower and less all-in deck (the biggest obstacle to this being it's inherent inconsistency and how it competes with Murloc knight on 6). But like, that's just, my opinion, man. And I don't care about "calling it", when I make a comment like that its usually about how I would build a deck to make it good, not about what iteration will become "good" or popular.

I wouldn't call secret pally garbage either. I'm not very interested in the deck, so I don't play it, but I'm pretty confident in my play against it with most decks and I don't have any real problems with it. I'm not intimidated by it. So I can respect hollywood's opinion of the deck as not edgebait because the deck is young, easily comparable to another archetype, all in, and in my experience, predictable. And that's all I was saying, that the opinion was reasonable.

And yeah you got me on the nose with the high legend comment. What I meant was that enough people trying a deck will get a bunch of slots in top legend in the end, and just about any reasonably competitive deck can peak top legend at some point in a season with good play and luck.

Anyway this is getting ridiculous, but I'd rather you not exaggerate what I'm saying or make assumptions about what kind of person I am.

 

[Acklow]

Yo guys it's just a children's card game.

In all seriousness though, I opened two nozdormus today as well as a millhouse. I would say I was lucky except its nozdormu and millhouse we're talking about here.

 

[Acklow]

Ok guys, I'm literally done here. I pulled 4 legendaries in one day. Just pulled Aviana from a pack that I got from an arena run...

 

[ryan]

 

[Kinneas]

i have opened 15-20 TGT packs and got nothing higher than a rare yet. Fuck you Acklow

 

[Byrne]

@ Blazade most of that post was not directed at you, only the high legend part. The rest was directed at Edgelord McJohnson aka hollywood

 

[RODAN]

what are you guys thoughts on justicar in control warrior? and bash over shield blocks?

 

[Acklow]

ipl uses justicar. It's fairly strong imo. I saw him beat another wallet warrior to fatigue with it.

 

[Matthew]

If you're just going to run Justicar just replace her over a Shieldmaiden. I messed around with Bash over Shield Block and I'd say it's personal perference. If the metagame is more aggro / mid-range then I think Bash has a role, if it's more mid-range/control then Block. Doesn't help below rank 10 there is no consistent metagame 4Head