Hearthstone

[sunrise089]

Thanks to your updates, I took the no-thinking hunter rush deck into ranked. 11 games so far, 11-0 record

EDIT: I'm sure once my rank climbs (currently 18 from a start of 25) this deck will end up easily dealt with by good players, but anecdotally it seems way more dominant than it was I few months ago when I screwed around in ranked, at least in terms of my health margin of victory. I often used to win with 1-10 health left, and I'm probably averaging 20 for this run. Is that randomness, or does the changing metagame mean other decks are avoiding putting damage of their own on the board?

[Gaspar]

Thanks to your updates, I took the no-thinking hunter rush deck into ranked. 11 games so far, 11-0 record

EDIT: I'm sure once my rank climbs (currently 18 from a start of 25) this deck will end up easily dealt with by good players, but anecdotally it seems way more dominant than it was I few months ago when I screwed around in ranked, at least in terms of my health margin of victory. I often used to win with 1-10 health left, and I'm probably averaging 20 for this run. Is that randomness, or does the changing metagame mean other decks are avoiding putting damage of their own on the board?

Well done!

Having made a similarly meteoric climb from 20-15 recently myself - at this point in the season basically you only have new players at that rank. The ones who Smite face on t1 and such. Anyone who sticks with the game will rank up via attrition and so you probably don't start to see a real metagame until you get closer to rank 10. I've found myself stalled out around that point - I hit rank 10 with relative ease and then plummeted all the way back down to 13 by getting crushed by a variety of rush decks I'm still learning to deal with/not tilt when I lose to.

Having said that, I have a pretty good handle on the metagame from twitch and I'd say the trend has been heavily towards combo decks. Because of that, players who are netdecking (which is almost everyone, and should be at low ranks - when they create their own stuff you get them trying out Angry Chicken decks) will be looking at stuff like Miracle Rogue and Handlock which basically rely on board clear until they can get a big combo out. So the effective "death range" health is somewhere between 14-18 for most of those decks, as opposed to trying to whittle you all the way down. Of course, playing for a combo against face hunter is going to fail most of the time but the players you're playing against aren't savvy enough to know that.

I'd also say that there's just a ton of zoo in the 15-10 range so you'll start seeing that change shortly. You should be well equipped to deal with zoo with that deck - before the UtH nerf Hunter was basically considered an autoloss for zoo - and shouldn't start really running into trouble until you get a little higher and start seeing the midrange, taunt-heavy board clear decks like druid and Handlock. I do think Hunter is better than people think right now, because a lot of the major decks will have trouble with it - especially a face rush version that doesn't need a strong UtH. Its just nowhere near as good as it was and is clearly going to be less consistent without the guaranteed card draw it had before - which drops it below the Rogues and Warlocks. I think its comfortably in the next tier with Druid and Shaman, though.

[antisocialmunky]

I'm stuck at rank 6. I stuck 2 mind control techs to get past zoo hell of ranks 10 - 7. I still run into zoo but its more conservatively played zoo which strangely enough is good against my deck... This may be because they think its a Mage Aggro deck and don't just go for the face when in actuality I'm too poor to run an typical mage deck.

That or I've gotten better. I'm trying to find a good 3 drop to use instead, I'm using Kirin Tor Mages since they have good stats and I do have ice block in my deck.

[Bacchus]

I think the wave of zoo is just attritioning its way up the ranking ladder. I made 8 a while back and then also plummeted to 13 as the wave of super-aggresively playing warlocks arrived. Had to drop my priest deck (even after finally crafting Rag) and build something else entirely, with Shieldbearers and Inner Fires which I can neither believe I am playing nor that it is performing. The main idea is still to board clear via Nova or Pyro+stuff or Circle+Soulpriest (one copy in this build), but the rest of the deck is all about getting and 8/8 shieldbearer or 10/10 senjin in turns 5-6 and finishing the game before 10. As always, playskool buff-based approaches are terrible in terms of card economy; if the game gets to turns 11-12 I naturally sit with no cards in hand. However, in a battle of topdecks against zoo it's OK to draw blademasters and stuff. In an amusing sideline, this does ok against druid because of their lack of hard removal and priest as they have so much trouble dealing with 4-power creatures that getting a 4/4 shieldbearer in the early turns is a near autowin, they basically will end up expending a blademaster to trade-off.

[Nystul]

I've been wobbling between ranks 4 and 5 for the past week with the zoo deck. Experimenting now with owls, on the theory that they make the build a bit more flexible. It's hard to evaluate.

[antisocialmunky]

Does anyone know a reliable way to beat the spell power miracle rogue decks? I just played a game where I wasn't able to keep a minion on the board past turn 4. If anyone hasn't run into it, it is pretty rare but getting more popular. It relies on Mag + Blade Furry or the standard Leeroy + Cold Blood + Faceless finishers.

Seriously, some of these decks are just breaking the game because they can do 15+ burst damage in one turn.
-Faceless Manipulator really needs to be cost 6
-Gagetzan needs to give you the cards when you end turn so you can't draw your whole deck

[Sir Bruce]

If you're giving them time to play Malygos and then take another turn you're not playing fast enough. Leeroy + Cold Blood + Faceless is turn 10 too (and is a worse combo than Leeroy+1xShadowstep+1xCold Blood which is 4 less damage for 3 less mana).

A reasonable aggro deck should be killing them by turn 7 or 8. So Aggro Mage and Weapon Aggro Warrior should beat it down faster than they can combo unless your draws stink or they draw perfectly through turn 6. These decks don't rely on super strong board presence and both also deny/punish the Rogue from using it's hero power.

Zoo should also do well since its board presence is too big for a Rogue to reliably keep clear.

[antisocialmunky]

I dunno, its not really Malygos that's the problem, its that +1 spell power with a rogue gives them 3 damage backstab (instagibs T3's) and 5 damage eviserates (instagibs most 4's). I think the game that put me on tilt was one where the guy got out a kobold geomancer on T4 + backstab (he was using rogue dagger + poison to clear the board on T3) and never looked back. I guess it was the perfect draw for him.

If you are curious, my deck 'not fast enough deck' is kind of a mid-game endurance deck. As such its not specialized to do anything in particular. I can play it as a 1 minion/turn rush deck (mana curves out this way) or turn 10/12 burst depending on match up. It sacrifices the extreme advantage each type though. It can't rush decks with tons of removal down reliably and its not fast as specialized burst decks. As such, it is bad at countering decks that kill on turn 10 or ones that drag out the game to fatigue. So bad draws against spell power rogue, ramp druid, and priest are almost auto lose.

-Handlock is laughably easy as you can just not damage them beyond 18-20HP and abuse your removal one giant at a time while constantly having 2/3 minions hitting the warlock a turn after the first 2 giants drop.
-Control warrior can be rushed down with decent draws.
-Miracle rogue really just depends on if the rogue has a good draw. Sometimes they have absolutely everything they need to kill you, sometimes the deck never gets off the ground.
-Zoo... Its barely fast enough to kill zoo so zoo games are close and usually goes to draw exhaustion.
-Paladin... I don't run into these very much but this deck seems to do well vs aggro in general.

PS. Funny story

I was playing a handlock. Poor guy had to soul fire twice. First time he tossed a molten giant. Second time he tossed Leeroy. Then I disconnected for 2 turns and still managed to win. I felt so bad for the poor guy, worst luck ever.

[Bacchus]

In a continuation of RB Shaman draft craziness, I just pulled this:



The Cult Masters were served up with some even worse choices -- Soutshea Deckhand/Freeze Shock and Windfury Harpy/Something equally poor. Silvermoon Guardian was picked in a similar fashion. Razorfen Hunter, however, was picked over the fourth Fire Elemental. By then I just didn't know.

[WilliamLP]

That deck looks pretty nice! How did it do?

You don't like Cult Master? I think it's quite a strong card in arena, but yeah, I don't know about having 2 of them and you need a fast and efficient enough early curve so that it can hit the board when you have something to trade. It's very often a 2-for-1 though in terms of cards, and occasionally it wins games if you can drop it at the same turn you can trade off a bunch of small minions. But in that deck, I'm guessing the games it loses are going to be because of falling behind in card draw.

I used to like Worgen Infiltrator a lot, but you just cry when they answer with Coin + Mad Bomber.