Hearthstone

[Bacchus]

Warrior Rush solves that problem by running lots of charge and dealing damage via weapons. But around rank 8 aggro and zoo decks along with burst/ramp variations of druid still make up the vast majority. Evidently by now all the barely competent rogues have climbed to much higher ranks.

[Gaspar]

Is it me or do tempo decks kinda suck in the current meta? It seems to me that you either have to be slamming down multiple minions at a time to overwhelm control removal or minimize what you put on the board.

Maybe if I manage to grind my way past 4, I'll be able to play in a less controlly meta.

The problem I think is that the entire current meta (at higher ranks of course) is based on either being Miracle Rogue or countering Miracle Rogue. If you're putting down 1 minion a turn, Rogues just have a million ways to remove them with all their low cost spells and ability to draw their whole deck by t8. If you want to beat Rogue, you're either overwhelming the board (they only really have Blade Flurry to deal with that) or you're picking your spots and slamming down huge taunts. Well, or what most people choose, just play it yourself.

I can't tell you how many times I've watched some high-legend player streaming recently, have them start by playing something semi-interesting, get wrecked by a Rogue, decide to switch to a counter deck, get wrecked by something that's not Rogue, then just decide they have to play Miracle themselves if they want to have any success.

I can't imagine how much longer Blizzard will allow this to go on without at least Preparation if not Gadgetzan getting nerfed. I guess its possible they hope the Naxx cards solve it but it is pretty intensely boring to watch the metagame at the highest ranks right now. The reason Miracle is so boring to watch is because it really is just a game against yourself - you either draw some combination of Gadgetzan, Conceal, Preparation and you win 90% of the time or you don't and you win 50% of the time. The opponent is furniture unless they're playing Miracle themselves, in which case its dueling games of solitaire.

[SevenSpirits]

Haven't been following the metagame recently, but I'm curious why - if miracle is so good - it was having so much more trouble before. It certainly wasn't the dominant deck.

The only thing that's happened is the UTH nerf and UTH isn't even good against miracle. So what happened?

[Gaspar]

Haven't been following the metagame recently, but I'm curious why - if miracle is so good - it was having so much more trouble before. It certainly wasn't the dominant deck.

The only thing that's happened is the UTH nerf and UTH isn't even good against miracle. So what happened?

Two things. One is that the UTH nerf meant everyone stopped playing all variations of Hunter and face Hunter was one of Miracle's weakest matchups. Two and more importantly is that the nerf just meant that all the people playing Hunter went and looked for the next broken thing and found Miracle by refining it. The current version is much better than the older version which had a lot of clunky cards involved. For example, Reckful was one of the best players of the old Miracle, here's his deck from maybe midway through season 1:



Now here's an example of the current Miracle:



That decks actually from my collection, I couldn't find an image I had saved of the proper version. The proper version plays Thalnos instead of the Kobold and Van Cleef instead of the questing. There are variations on this - Assassin's Blade or no, Cold Bloods or none, 1 Blade Flurry or 2, 1 Conceal or 2, 1 Sap or 2, but this is the version that I see "lesser" players climbing with most often.

Anyway, imagining those two changes, you can see how much more streamlined this version is. The finisher is simply Leeroy + 2 Shadowsteps on t8 and the whole purpose of the deck is to get there. Basically every card in the deck is removal that can be paired with Gadgetzan. The minions all either further card draw or can be Shadowstepped themselves to gain additional of whatever. That for example is why Novice Engineer is there rather than Loot Hoarder or Acolyte of Pain - you get the card draw immediately and if you're really desperate you can Shadowstep it up to 2 times for no additional mana. If you watch someone play one of these games, what you essentially see them spend the first 5 turns doing whatever removal necessary while digging hard for Gadgetzan and Preparation. Once those two cards are in hand, if they can play Gadgetzan + Conceal on t6 under no pressure the game is over. They'll spend t7 cycling through their entire hand and then hit the Leeroy combo on t8 to win. Most games you see the Rogue player have somewhere between 0-4 cards left in there deck when the game ends as opposed to 10-15 left for the non-Rogue player. That's why you don't need multiple copies of a lot of cards, when you can be guaranteed to draw everything the rest is just details.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, Rogue is basically the new Freeze Mage :\

I actually saw a miracle druid a few days ago. He went double innervate into spamming cheap spells and drawing 6 cards. I dunno if that deck was supposed to be ramp druid or what.

[SevenSpirits]

I think the reckful deck is an aberrant example - most people used a version similar to the one kolento is known for. That deck, which has been in use for several months, is incredibly similar to your second decklist there (well, the more ideal version of it). Basically the only major difference is it used to play assassin's blade and no drakes. But I think that was a metagame call - it was thought that the control warrior matchup was too hard without assassin's blade to make their life total assailable. The other differences between the new version and the old one might be improvements but they also look like metagame-based choices to me.

For example, here is a list from March: http://www.hearthpwn.com/managrind/401-d...acle-rogue

If the answer is that less rush hunter and less control warrior is being played, why is that the case? Rush hunter should be good with no control warrior around, and Control warrior should have a good matchup against this miracle build if people were right about the matchup in the past. What's the confounding factor?

[Gaspar]

Yeah, Rogue is basically the new Freeze Mage :\

I actually saw a miracle druid a few days ago. He went double innervate into spamming cheap spells and drawing 6 cards. I dunno if that deck was supposed to be ramp druid or what.

I see a lot of people throwing Gadgetzan into any deck that has spells these days, but I think in almost all those situations, Azure Drake is a better card. You're rarely getting more than 1 draw off Gadgetzan if you're not a rogue and anybody is going to have it be a priority for removal on the follow-up turn. Better to just get the 1 draw immediately and get +1 spell damage to boot. Especially for Druid who already has one of the best 5-drops in the game in Druid of the Claw. I can't imagine having room for enough 5-drops where Gadgetzan would belong in the deck.

[Gaspar]

I think the reckful deck is an aberrant example - most people used a version similar to the one kolento is known for. That deck, which has been in use for several months, is incredibly similar to your second decklist there (well, the more ideal version of it). Basically the only major difference is it used to play assassin's blade and no drakes. But I think that was a metagame call - it was thought that the control warrior matchup was too hard without assassin's blade to make their life total assailable. The other differences between the new version and the old one might be improvements but they also look like metagame-based choices to me.

For example, here is a list from March: http://www.hearthpwn.com/managrind/401-d...acle-rogue

If the answer is that less rush hunter and less control warrior is being played, why is that the case? Rush hunter should be good with no control warrior around, and Control warrior should have a good matchup against this miracle build if people were right about the matchup in the past. What's the confounding factor?

I'm probably not good enough at the game at this point to answer this question but I very rarely see Control Warrior played. Essentially, the decks that you see played most commonly: Miracle, Handlock, Midrange Shaman, Zoolock, Watcher Druid, Token Druid, pretty much in that order. Whenever I watch tournament play, game one is often Miracle vs Miracle and then the loser almost always immediately goes to Handlock to counter. Then you see Shaman to counter Handlock. Hunter is the natural Shaman counter but I just don't see it played that often. My best guess is simply that Control Warrior is deemed too slow to beat Miracle. If your win conditions cost 8 mana... I don't think there are enough Shield Blocks out there to keep you alive that long. Tides did play a Control Warrior in the Deck Wars finale that was trimmed a bit, it didn't play slower cards like Alexstraza and such but my recollection is on day 2 he lost his first game with it to Miracle Rogue and then went Miracle himself and didn't lose again that day.

[Sir Bruce]

Miracle Rogue was possibly the best deck even before the UTH nerf - over half the top 20 NA legends in April said that they primarily used Miracle Rogue to get there. The problem was that it is pretty hard to play well and its worst match-up in the previous meta was Hunter (traps wreck Miracle). With the nerf to UTH people stopped playing Hunter so it became easier for people to play Miracle. The decline in Hunter also led to more Shaman and Handlock, both of which typically beat Control Warrior. So even if Control Warrior is favored against Miracle (is that right? seems like a toss-up), the rest of the Control Warrior match-ups are bad which explains why you don't see it much anymore.

Nothing has taken over from Miracle yet because most of its hard counters (eg weapon Warrior) are very niche and you can't consistently climb with niche decks. The one exception people are figuring out is the Pally rush "Shockadin" deck (http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/54902-sho...not-needed ) which beats Handlock and Miracle and is a toss-up against Zoo.

[Bacchus]

Extra bracket in the link. I saw this deck yesterday as a Priest quest tempted me back into constructed — it's surprising how long the discovery of the awesomeness of divine favour for a rush deck took, opp got to draw something like 5 card off it against me. Alas, wasn't enough to swing it, as all five died in the next priest efficiency clearance, but a sight to behold nonetheless. Absolutely perfect against combo decks with their set collection.