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Hearthstone |OT4| The warsong has ended, please patron other decks

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Aureon

Please do not let me serve on a jury. I am actually a crazy person.
As a arena-exclusive player...
Seriously, no flamestrike counters? More 4-health good drops?
Doing a 12-run and having every single match from 4w to 12w being a mage is... what?
 

Opiate

Member
Chillmaw is underwhelming in a super slow meta where everyone wants to get incredible value out of inspire or Justicar Trueheart and so forth.

If the aggro comes back (and I suspect it will, give it time), suddenly Chillmaw will make more sense. Against control, yes, he's less powerful.
 

Pooya

Member
The main thing Chillmaw does is that it's another dragon to activate synergy for blackwings and others and it's a 7 drop so you can actually play it more often compared with alex or ysera.

Now its deathrattle is rarely going to do the job of board clearing, I lost quite a few games to totem shamans because of hex, so don't remove your flamestrikes or else because I have chillmaw! Actually I feel it's time for two flamestrikes or two board clears in every deck, since all these token inspire decks happening right now are hard to clear.

I guess that's reasonable for the card, it's not weak but it's not some massive swing card either. I probably still prefer to have Dr. Boom over it in a dragon deck even, probably try that next.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
EU is so fucking slow.

Pathetic and disgusting at the same time.
 

Opiate

Member
I got a duplicate off on Chillmaw and was rather happy with it. Stopped the opponent dead in his tracks. I had flamestrike + 2x chillmaw in hand and he really didn't want to put more than one minion on the board for the rest of the game.
 

Mr Cola

Brothas With Attitude / The Wrong Brotha to Fuck Wit / Die Brotha Die / Brothas in Paris
#shaman

z61k6Tk.jpg
 

Opiate

Member
oh also, these are the cards I experimented with in murloc knight paladin that I posted above that I don't think make the cut. Perhaps this will save others some time in their inpsire paladins:

Tinkmaster: I thought this had potential because of how much tokens the deck churns out turn after turn. The deck is low on 3-drops, contains no silence, and has endless 1/1s that could become 5/5s. So in theory it seems great but when I analyzed it in real situations the risk was just too high. If the opponent plays like a haunted creeper the card is just going to sit in your hand forever. Really bad.

Gormok: This card actually works. You very, very often have 4+ minions and can get the battlecry. However, I think this card is a poor choice for the same reasons I think Eadric or Lay on Hands is a better choice than Dr Boom. The deck is a grindy one. You have no burst and using gormok to clear their minion so you can get more face damage in just... isn't that effective. Gormok is a snowbally card but this deck isn't actually looking to snowball and kill them. The goal is to use your board control and mana sinks to just slowly grind them down until they inevitably chipped away. In addition, while this deck very often has more than 4 minions on board it never has 4 minions on board on turn 4. So gormok is not a 4 drop.

Defender of Argus: This card was alright. However, just like gormok this is generally not a turn 4 play. If it is, it's because you have like a knife juggler and a garrison commander on board and now you are giving your most valuable minions, the ones you don't want killed, taunt. So it's a later game play but the way the tokens in this deck works isn't that you want to fill the board and taunt up. You often just take your army of 5 tokens and immediately ram them into the opponent's minions and then generate 5 more tokens. This means the actual effect of argus is little more than a direwolf.

Had you considered silver hand regent?
 

Dahbomb

Member
Chillmaw is great guys, I don't know what you guys are talking about.

Right now the meta is either insanely slow (like Dragon decks, Control Warrior) or some weird type of aggression. Either way it's overall slower than before and Chillmaw doesn't excel in that type of field.

Neither does that 3/6 Taunt dragon but once we go back to the usual stuff these cards will start to shine (provided people still stick with the dragon stuff).
 

Pooya

Member
arena is hard on EU. I dont know why

game overall is harder on EU, since I suspect the overall population gotta be a lot lower than NA server (it explains server resources priority for blizzard too! that they couldn't handle sudden launch traffic but NA works fine) and because of that you get matched with skilled players more often than not, in arena, ladder or else. I feel it's generally highly lopsided to higher skill, old players than newer player. I was playing random decks on ladder these days and got dropped from rank 4 all the way to 9 now and I still face golden legend card back players... US side? it's too easy on rank 3-4.
 

Rapstah

Member
game overall is harder on EU, since I suspect the overall population gotta be a lot lower than NA server (it explains server resources priority for blizzard too! that they couldn't handle sudden launch traffic but NA works fine) and because of that you get matched with skilled players more often than not, in arena, ladder or else. I feel it's generally highly lopsided to higher skill, old players than newer player. I was playing random decks on ladder these days and got dropped from rank 4 all the way to 9 now and I still face golden legend card back players... US side? it's too easy on rank 3-4.

Maybe I'm getting my statistics backwards here but I think EU has consistently had many more players reach Legend than NA now for a while? I think that would mean there are more players in general on EU, although it's not really 1:1.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
Dragons will singlehandedly keep the aggro menace in check for the rest of time.

Here, truly, be dragons.
 

Opiate

Member
Dragons will singlehandedly keep the aggro menace in check for the rest of time.

Here, truly, be dragons.

Yeah, I hope it just doesn't swing too far in the other direction. Aggro needs to exist or else there is little reason to avoid playing ultra mega efficient decks.
 

Tubie

Member
I feel from TGT legs, Justicar is must have as it can go into quite a few decks and classes, it seems like the closest thing to a general purpose legendary that could be good in a lot of control decks now not every class can benefit from it but it's a card you probably want to have.

The rest are far too specific, so I would get that one for sure before everything else.

I'm underwhelmed by Chillmaw, it hasn't worked even once for me, thanks to abundance of silence and polymorphs, it's not a bad card but don't bet your life on it. Still you probably want it if you play dragon decks, twilight guardians are more necessary, actually I think dragon decks could work just fine without Chillmaw but with two of those.

Saarad, the rng on this thing is so wide that I don't think it's all necessary, but it's a 5 drop still with yeti body and the potential to give a win card, even if it's trash if you're playing cards like Twilight Drake or Mountain Giant, maybe it's not so bad? and of course there is spell synergy.

The 3 drops are same as Saarad pretty much, even if you can't use their abilities, they still have good body. It only makes sense in priest or paladin to play these so use cases are even less, it's not something I would craft personally but if I opened them, it's cool.

The rest.... eh yeah.

Then comes the class cards, if you play warrior you probably should get Varian and Aviana for Druid. The rest are underwhelming or merely ok. Nothing to rush for.

I don't feel so bad that the only two legs I got (from 82 packs) were Chillmaw and Saarad. I will definitely put Saarad in my Priest and Mage decks and since I have Chillmaw, I might as well try Dragon Priest too.

I feel like the only other good legendarys I'm missing from TGT are the Twin Valkyrs, Justicar and Varian. I have enough dust to craft 2 right now and if I dust a few crap cards I have I could get enough for the other two.

But right now I'm waiting at least a month and see where the meta ends up going before crafting anything.
 

slayn

needs to show more effort.
Had you considered silver hand regent?
I've eyed it and don't like it on paper but will at some point have to try it in place of peacekeepers. Also this deck can easily run into a problem of 'too many recruits.' Post justicar, murlock knight + garrison commander + hero power loses you a murloc. For paladin it is actually extremely annoying that inspire happens after hero power.

The reason it is worse than garrison commander is
1. less synergy with murloc knight (no double murloc proc)
2. less synergy with justicar (3 recruits instead of 4)

But it fits the theme of the deck well enough that it has to be tried and I can't just write it off completely. It could very well be just better than peacekeeper in this deck.
 

Anilones

Member
May I have some advice on crafting (and potentially disenchanting) legendaries, I have the following:

Malorne
Cenarius
Tirion Fordring
Bloodmage Thalnos
Lorewalker Cho
Nat Pagle
Gormok the Impaler
Blingtron 3000
Bolf Ramshield (disenchanted a duplicate)
Baron Geddon (gold)
Dr. Boom

I fully expect to be told to disenchant Cho and Nat Pagle, before this happens, is there any chance that the meta may start including these cards?

Should I disenchant the gold Baron Geddon? Could a control warrior, especially with Justicar now use Geddon extremely well, or has the meta shifted to other legendaries?

EDIT: I forgot to ask, who should I craft next? Or wait for a possible meta shift?
 

Dahbomb

Member
Alright TGT day 1 review:

Will just review the cards I actually played with or played against. Most of the crap cards weren't used online as expected.


*Biggest surprise for me was Murloc Knight. This card was a considerable threat that needed to be dealt with or spiraled out of control. The stats are decent for what it can bring to the table. What really made my opinion change on was that he could spawn himself. Murloc Knight really shines in the later game when the AOEs/removals has been used up and the opponent is running dry then bam... this card starts to get out of control. More surprising was the fact that people were using this outside of Murloc Paladin deck, it's just a solid overall card.

*Competitive Spirit was about as good as I predicted to be. Really fucking annoying card.

*Justicar Trueheart did work in Paladin and Warrior decks. Not OP/broken like some people are claiming. Against aggressive decks, Justicar ended up being a dead card (happened to me against Mages) and I would've preferred Shield Maiden in that situation. But in longer games this card delivers the value. Meta dependent card, right now meta is wonky and slow which means Justicar gains more value than normal. In Paladin this ability is also very strong, maybe even stronger than Warriors. The card in other decks wasn't as impressive as most people expected. It was decent in the Inspire themed Mage deck.

*Polymorph Boar so far has been pretty damn good in Tempo Mage and some people are running it in the Mage Inspire deck as well. It's performing is about as well as I expected initially but we'll see if it sticks. This card will be part of a crazy Kripp highlight video either today or tomorrow guaranteed.

*Darnassus Aspirant has been alright thus far, nothing game breaking or OP. It usually just dies really fast but its very effective against aggro decks. Again, this is yet another card that was made to counter a specific meta but then the meta shifted so drastically that the card isn't seeing its just rewards.

*Healing Wave did work most of the time. I lost one game where the healing failed to heal me the full amount but I was really going to die anyway. This card is really more of a psychological buff to Shaman when they have it in hand. They can play riskier and then heal themselves up when they are ahead to deny the opponent any burst potential. Hunter's least favorite card that's for sure. Right now people are playing Midrange Shaman on Ladder with Totems and this card doesn't see extreme value because it can usually whiff.

*Thunderbuff Valiant has been doing a lot of work. It's the late game linchpin of the Shaman arsenal. You basically just play standard Midrange, fight for the board and once the game is starting to go into the attrition phase then Thunderbuff cleans the game up. While I don't think this card is as insane as Strifecro thinks it is, it's definitely a card that has been effective.

*Tuskarr Totemic has been mediocre for me personally. It's not all that great on curve but it's actually better late game when you just happen to need some extra Totems on board. Thing is that Shamans desperately needed a 3 drop and people use this card anyway just for the Totem Golem spawn. Speaking of which Totem Golem has been effective as well although it gets removed easier than I expected. I still expect it to remain a staple in Shaman Midrange decks.

*Elemental Destruction and Ancestral Knowledge both are performing much better than most people thought they would given the extreme overload costs. Elemental Destruction especially has been game winning in the games that it was successfully used in. People need to realize that Elemental Destruction gives you board initiative when playing from behind (3 mana to wipe board, play 7 mana worth of minions on that same turn then 5 mana next turn to control board) which is absolutely crucial for Shaman. Have even seen people use this twice which kinda took me for surprise. Ancestral Knowledge has been fine as a late game draw source for Shamans.

*While it may seem that Shaman got a lot of good cards working their way, out of the classes that seemed most buffed online was Paladin. Both aggressive and midrange Paladin were just piling on extra pressure with some of the Inspire based minions. Silverhand Regent saw a lot of play as did that Warhorse Trainer. Silverhand Recruits were all over the place and people were actually running double Quartermasters + Competitive Spirits. I only saw one Mysterious Challenger deck and it just crushed me when that card came into play with 3 secrets in play. Already talked about the Murloc Knight. Tuskar Jouster has been seeing a lot of play as well and the card is pretty annoying to deal with, like a Shield Maiden that comes out one turn earlier.

*Varian has been pretty damn good by most accounts but you really, really have to be careful about when to use it. An opponent used it on me and I just Brawled their big minions. Again the meta is a bit slow currently and people are trying different decks so Varian easily gets played for huge value differential.

*The Dragon decks really have slowed down the game. The 3 main dragon archetypes seen on Ladder are Mage, Priest and Warrior... all play really slow and grindy. Chillmaw is an great card but rarely gets to kill many creatures because the meta isn't as aggressive as it used to be. Twilight Guardian and Wyrmwrest agent have been good. Seeing a lot of Rend Blackhands which have been catching me off guard a lot of the time. The Mage one in particular is really grindy and very often go into fatigue.

*Still mixed bag on Paeltress. In one game she was easily dealt with and in another her one Legendary spawn was game winning (it got off a Prophet Velens). Haven't played against her enough to comment on it.

*Haven't seen too many Aviana dreams yet, leaning towards this card not being that good and too slow as initially expected.

*People have actually been trying out new Hunter decks. There's the Beast deck and the Lock no Load Control-ish deck. They are both basically different forms of the Midrange Hunter deck, not necessarily better. I hate Ram Wrangler still. Bear Trap is decent, Powershot is great as expected and so is Dreadscale. But really though... the Hybrid Hunter decks just are more efficient at getting the wins. Haven't seen many impressive Lock n Load plays yet.... I think Hunter decks are likely to remain the same. Lots of King's Elekks were used though.

*Outside of Pirate decks, Rogue hasn't shown much new stuff online. And the Pirate deck still feels lackluster. Right now Rogue is looking to be the least changed class from the previous expansion as was expected.

*I think some people have died to Holy Champion in spectacular fashion and basically have made that card a priority target to remove. I guess that is a good thing for the card but it has resulted in me not getting as many combos off with the card as I would like. The card is decent on curve but threatening late game. If the meta was more aggressive then there would be more reason to run Pyromancer for the Circle of Healing combos but right now that combo has no place against stuff like Control Warrios and Dragon decks. Aside from this card and Wyrmwest Agent, the new Priest cards haven't really done much. I have heard tales of a Shadowform Priest doing work but have no first hand experience on it yet.

*Savage Combatant has been amazing thus far. One of the few 4 drops that has been somewhat competitive with Shredder.

*Tempo Mages have been using Effigy in their decks and it has thrown me off a bit. It's been working out decent for them. Also seen Effigy used in Dragon decks. There hasn't been some blow out result of Effigy thus far, the card seems decent not ridiculous.

*I saw one Warlock deck yesterday and it was a Handlock that tried and failed to use Wilfred. Just like Rogue, Warlock doesn't seem all that changed for TGT.


*As far as neutral card goes, these cards have been outstanding:

Argent Horserider
Silverhand Regent (Paladin)
Garrison Commander (Paladin)
Justicar Trueheart
Twilight Guardian


Gadgetan Jouster has been used and has been fine but didn't really seem better than Zombie Chow (like there wasn't a situation where I went "OH BOY IF I HAD GOTTEN 5 HEALTH FROM THAT I WOULD BE IN THE GAME!"). Refreshment Vendor has been used, fine but not OP. Mukla's Champion blew me away in one game in a Beast Hunter deck.

Didn't see much play against Gormok and the twin sisters. I still feel those cards are good enough to see play and do some damage.



Overall I was entertained by the expansion yesterday and was happy that a lot of people tried out new stuff. It was definitely a fun experience. Curious to see which of these cards remain strong and usable.
 

Rapstah

Member
I fully expect to be told to disenchant Cho and Nat Pagle, before this happens, is there any chance that the meta may start including these cards?

They will never be in the meta but 400 dust is so little that they're worth keeping unless you hate fun. There's always going to be Tavern Brawls where weird cards like them are suddenly useful.
 

Pooya

Member
Mage seemed to get jack all that is really good for constructed.

On the flip side I really like Pally additions.

I feel mage will fall off pretty hard after TGT, well the decks like tempo mage or control mage mostly as they can't deal with all the fast tokens and board control effectively. Mech mage should be ok still, that clockwork knight is actually pretty good.
Their hero power just isn't going to be very good to deal with that much and they don't benefit as much as say warrior, priest or paladin from justicar. If you could deal 1 damage to two targets it would have better than dealing two damage. Yeah yeah Coldarra Drake, I've seen no one play that and it comes too late to matter in these cases. Garrison Commander is a great card, it's just that you need a permanent effect like that, GC will die very quickly.

Dragon mage should be ok still but not as good as dragon priest or dragon warrior even. There are no class mage cards that benefit from dragons like others have.

Polymorph Boar and Effigy are really good.

They are good but not nearly enough to deal with what others got.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Yeah, I hope it just doesn't swing too far in the other direction. Aggro needs to exist or else there is little reason to avoid playing ultra mega efficient decks.

I get the sense Blizzard wants the game to settle around Mid-Range as the most popular archetype with Aggro and Control as existing archetypes that are less common.

Like Ben Brode has been clear that Blizzard doesn't like it when turns are going by and nothing is happening, and while they haven't said it, the card design of this expansion pack suggests they aren't super excited with decks that only rush people's faces.
 

Spruchy

Member
... 2 times I've played Hungry Dragon in this arena run and both times it gave the opponent an Injured Kvaldir...

fuck TGT

My first thought was "lol noob doesn't play his hungry dragon at the right time", then I looked up the Injured Kvaldir card and went "ooooooooooh, that sucks."
 

Anilones

Member
They will never be in the meta but 400 dust is so little that they're worth keeping unless you hate fun. There's always going to be Tavern Brawls where weird cards like them are suddenly useful.
Both of those points were also in my mind, good to know I'm not a crazy collective person.

Is Sylvanas still the next legendary to craft, or should I wait a week or two to check how the meta changes with TGT?
 
It's amazing how you really do get smarter and beter as you go along. Like I'm playing dragon priest a lot and I think about all the dumb ass mulligans i made, having a high level dragon, but discarding it, even though it left twilight whelp without a buff for like three turns.

The better I get, the better the deck gets. Love it. Science.
 

giapel

Member
The meta feels slowed down. I haven't really seen many rush decks and no hunters so far. I guess it's because people are trying the new cards but still...
 

slayn

needs to show more effort.
I'd be interested to see what happened to people who got wrecked by mysterious challenger. That's a few mentions I've seen of him. Personally I got matched up against a mysterious challenger deck once where he arguably lived the dream in that the first MC game down on turn 6 and pulled 4 secrets followed 3 turns later by the second one which also pulled 4 secrets. And I destroyed him. It wasn't even close.

all 8 secrets were at the bottom of his deck, got played for free, and it was an easy win because paladin secrets are just shitty.
 

Dahbomb

Member
So far which are the new decks that are making the top?
No one really knows yet.

Right now the Inspire themed Paladin deck seems pretty strong. Focuses on just pumping out tokens with hero power and then buffing them up with Quartermasters/Horseriders.

Most other decks aren't new but are greatly improved. All Dragon decks are much better than before and really slow down the game.

Midrange Shaman is also improved with quite a lot more options.


The best deck is still Grim Patron though.
 

Opiate

Member
Patron right now is even better than before lol. Those token paladins get rekt by patron.

I'm now honestly glad that Patron exists, because it's a hard counter to token decks in general -- whether we're talking token paladin or token druid or totem shaman -- and they seem to be on the rise here. Having a nope.jpg deck for token is important if those decks continue to rise in prominence.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Main reason people aren't using Patrons online is that the servers are still laggy and it can easily lose you a Patron/Berserker turn.

There really is no reason for Patron to not be #1. The expansion only gave a few counters against Patron and way more stuff that gets absolutely crushed by Patron.


Also Forsen using that Malygos Shaman deck we theory crafted here with the new Shaman cards like Elemental Destruction and Charged Hammer.
 
I get the sense Blizzard wants the game to settle around Mid-Range as the most popular archetype with Aggro and Control as existing archetypes that are less common.

Like Ben Brode has been clear that Blizzard doesn't like it when turns are going by and nothing is happening, and while they haven't said it, the card design of this expansion pack suggests they aren't super excited with decks that only rush people's faces.

I think a more accurate interpretation would be "Blizzard doesn't like it when a large number of their players don't like it when so many decks rush face"

A lot of people will lose interest if Blizzard didn't even appear to be addressing it somehow.
 

Opiate

Member
So far which are the new decks that are making the top?

It's still very early, but Dahbomb got a lot of it.

1) Dragon decks are much stronger now and notably slow the meta down. The top dragon decks seem to be Priest, Warrior, Paladin and Mage. We'll see which become most popular in time.

2) Token (or small minion) decks of various sorts are rising rapidly. This includes Paladin (with Murloc Knight and Justicar Trueheart added to muster for battle for rapid small minion generation), Shaman (totem shaman) and Druid (setting up a savage roar combo). Which of these are the best will take time, but there is definitely improved strength here.

3) Justicar Trueheart is amazing.

There is probably more to come, but so far these are the broad strokes.
 
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