The fine folks at HSReplay have been crunching the data from the start of Fractured in Alterac Valley and the results are in as far as the top cards go!
So, what are the top cards and how are they determined? Quite easily! By looking at cards which are in the most amount of decks overall, we can easily determine the popularity of a given card. By then pairing that with the winrate of the decks those cards are in, we can get a better idea of why exactly those cards have made it to the top. Let's check out which cards are on top and then dive into a deck that makes use of most of them.
Top Overall Cards in Alterac Valley
Tada! These are your top cards that are from Fractured in Alterac Valley. Here are their inclusion rates and deck winrates.
An Owl OTK Warlock Deck to Win With
Although this deck doesn't have Irondeep Trogg present, you'll find the top 4 cards included within. Owl and the Phylactery, name a more iconic duo.
For a quick way to play this deck, you're going to want to mulligan for some of your cheaper cards (Tour Guide, Wicked Shipment, and Armor Vendor), Runed Mithril Rod for that incredible hand-wide cost reduction, and Backfire to make the draw magic happen. As long as you can play Tamsin's Phylactery with Humongous Owl's Deathrattle, you should close out games in your favor.
Are Tamsin's New Cards a Good Craft With Arcane Dust?
I dislike making early recommendations on what new cards to craft because the meta hasn't settled down, but Tamsin is looking strong out the gate and the potential combos are excellent. As our own Blood Mefist said about the Dreadlich: "this is an exceptionally flexible card that can be slotted into a great deal of decks with minimal build-around", and I see no reason why that wouldn't hold true.
Yeah, this pairing might be quite the worthy craft target. The worst case scenario is that you get to have a couple of weeks of fun, she gets outranked by other cards, and isn't herself nerfed allowing you to get a full refund on the dust spent. I believe many of our hero card friends are here to stay though over the next year, which is likely to also be the case with Stormwind's questlines - unless those get the even and odd treatment and get rotated early (the dream).
Have you been playing with any of the top cards in Alterac Valley? Which cards do you feel are on top right now that didn't make the top 5 cut? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments
How about all you otk playing losers out there take a flying leap off a tall Building
kinda harsh but I get the feeling
I've been able to evade the Owl OTK once as Deathrattle priest thanks to Korrak. I've been at high health/armor already at the end game and half the owl deathrattles hit Korrak when they died and since he kept ressurecting himself he absorbed a lot of hits and saved me. My opponent conceded after that since he was in fatigue.
That being said I'm not even going to touch standard except for the weekly quest any time soon.
Actually how does this interaction work? Because deathrattles trigger according to sequence of cards played first, so your first korrak will trigger after dying, but it wouldn't save you from the other 6-14 owl deathrattles. Does korrak immediately come back as each owl deathrattles kill him? So if you're lucky, you can theoretically not take a single hit from them at all?
Unless you have a board full of korraks. That's an entirely different thing altogether.
Thanks for the tip, will try it
This deck seems degenerate. But since I opened both Tamsin and her Phylactery I guess I have no other choice than to play it. RNGsus demands it!
Dreadlich Tamsin will remain a good card even if owlock is nerfed (as long as it dodges the nerf itself). Draw 3 for 6 is already decent, being able to do a 3 damage AoE at the same time shouldn't be able to exist, what more if you drew at least one 3/3 all in the same turn. Even brukan does less at 8 mana.
But I don't think owlock would be nerfed to be honest. Its basically fatiguelock, with the same gameplan and nearly the same cards. The only thing different here is that owlock needs to satisfy more conditions to succeed and can be played around using Mutanus and Rustrot Viper whereas fatiguelock is nearly solitaire at its finest.
If anything, I expect nerfs to either Dreadlich Tamsin or Runed Mithril Rod, the latter or which is straight up insane, even at 4 mana. Dont think anything would happen to owl itself, because if owl gets hit everyone would just go play fatiguelock instead and nothing changes.
I would say one thing though. If I have viper in hand, owlock isn't really too much of a threat as long as you have a decent gameplan yourself. I used to run double viper in my corrupt freeze shaman and just steamroll owls to death.
I got both legendaries on packs and I made a similar version with the Quest package too
Regarding early crafting, Dreadlich Tamsin will probably be good in other decks, but if Humongous Owl gets nerfed will Tamsin's Phylactery still be good?
Assuming they nerf owl (probably never) if zoo is meta, then phylactery would be. Either that or they print another busted deathrattle card. The fact is that a card like Tamsin's Phylactery would never be irrelevant because its powerful and its dependent on something which is generally printed every expansion. Even something as simple as Leper Gnome has the potential of breaking the meta because of this card.
If youre worrying about the dust cost, probably better to wait a couple of weeks when the meta settles down a little. But I crafted mine because Im almost certain I'll never regret it, whether its for memes or just plain competitive.
I guess it can be used like Soul of the Forest in sacrifice decks, so it's probably good enough indeed.
Even though I have some dust in the bank, I'm always worried about dust costs because it's gone in no time when crafting legendaries.
Yes, because nerfing owl in some way (deathrattle proc, only targeting minions and not ALL characters) only nerfs that specific combo. Part of the 'problem' of OwlTK is that it enables the deck to do an obscene amount of lethal damage from hand. You could argue that Rune Mithril Rod is the worst part of the combo (and in some ways it is, cost reduction effects have been proving for awhile now to be the most egregious parts of any combo that is gamebreaking) but it didn't exist before. The primary method of preventing this OTK is to nerf Owl in some way that prevents the combo from existing, and then seeing if further tweaking is necessary.
Personally I plan on making a Rustwix version of the deck for funsies.
What you're saying is exactly what I was getting at: the easiest way to nerf only the OwlTK deck is to make Owl not do face damage. If they take that route, will Phylactery still be a meta-relevant card or will it only be useful for memes? I do like meme decks, but I generally use legendaries that I already have rather than crafting them for a meme deck.
If you can't think of another way to use it, you probably shouldn't craft it.
I have the small hope, that the owl deck is only a temporary phenomenon until other decks are more refined.
Unfortunately it shows all toxic components
In other words, Stormwind-era Warlock.
Not sure if I understand that deck correctly... survive long enough to have an owl trigger it's DR, then flood board with imps, Phylatery them and finally play School Spirits?
I guess the confusion is on how to survive and get a lot of imps on board plus combo in one turn.
Edit: Ahh, the rod. Would love to see this deck in action. Seems hard to survive long enough.
Dekkster has it featured in a video. I'm sure he's not the only one.
Trump played his own version, but I would not recommend that.
Thanks, FortyDust. I've been out of the Twitch scene for too long. I will knock the dust off and check out Dekkster or find it on YT.
Last streamer I watched was Zetalot. Bet he's still jamming out while only playing Priest!