Just throwing it out there that I haven't forgotten about this: just trying to find time to properly do the Spirited Away request. YouTube has it but I would have to rent/buy the movie; I'd rather not do that. And I don't want to pirate it. So...yeah. Wikipedia might be the way to go lol
Thanks for making this list. I am really enjoying playing it, even though i first thought, it might be a bit too slow.
Currently i am 12 games in with 8-4 playing against dia 5+ opponents, as dumpster legend.
The deck has so many win conditions that i wasn't even bothered, when my opponent Oh my Yogged one of my cthun spells.
The fastest deck i played so far was token druid, which destroyed me. But against most other decks we have so much heal, that we can come back even from very bad situations.
OTK DH is a deck we really have an extreme hard time winning against.
I have not faced a warlock yet, but from what i have seen so far, i think i'll give the deck a try while climbing to legend again next week.
Also i have experienced, that you should not play to much for value when using your big cards. Sometimes its fine to play a nzoth or yshaarj for just 3 cards, if it helps you set the board.
Its not just you. Assuredly many of us have been burned from opening packs expecting to get a legendary every 10 packs only to get one close to the pity timer.
But this is a problem more about the foundations of where hearthstone is built, card games in general, and legal-ethical related issues that comes with the idea of selling what amounts to gambling to children.
I really don't mean to sound patronizing, but this kind of stuff properly belongs to the salt threads, because there's literally no discussion here: Hearthstone is expensive, and the packs are inherently stacked against the player. The only real question would be to raise an eyebrow on whether blizz has quietly tilted the scales further in their favour, but since this is a question no outsider of its codes can ever answer, it amounts to looking up into the sky and attempting a prediction of whether it will be raining some time today.
Hey Matrium - honestly I simply copied the list from the guy who REKT me with it, SB's are really just sticky minions opponent's struggle to remove and certainly don't expect, but you could definitely sub them
Prompted by a recent discussion, I want to discuss the overload mechanic in all its glory. Given we're 7 years into the game, and shaman is the current target of 'the class is weak' memes, it's high time I actually understood the mechanic beyond silent intuition.
Most discussion I've seen on the topic has tried to argue that the mechanic is weak, but I'm going to quickly shut down that idea. No mechanic is weak or strong, they are simply over- or under-valued on a card by card basis. Take inspire for example: if you were to only look at TGT, then you'd probably call it weak. However, if you look at Phase Stalker and Dragonbane (which have the inspire mechanic if not the keyword), then you'd call it strong.
You can look at all mechanics in the same way, and usually find both strong and weak examples, determined entirely by how much mana the devs attributed to the effect on each card. Such a viewpoint is especially convenient for overload, since it is entirely a matter of mana cost.
So having cast aside the notions of strong and weak mechanics, my interest is on assessing its pros and cons to determine whether overload is interesting enough to deserve a permanent spot in shaman's toolkit. I won't try to quantify how much overload is right for a given effect, simply because that would take too long. Maybe that can come later though.
The pros
Show Spoiler
I find the most useful way to view overload is as spending next turn's mana now. There are several benefits to doing this:
The earlier that you play minions, the more impact they are likely to have as the opponent will have a harder time dealing with them.
Note if you have 2 or more overload, you are essentially playing them 2+ turns early (at least in principle).
The earlier removal comes online, the easier it is to respond to pressure.
You might not need all the mana next turn anyway.
The extreme case is when you win the game this turn and never have to pay the overload.
Squeezing more cards into a turn might amplify their effectiveness.
Game-winning combos come to mind again.
These benefits are all quite general, and make overload fill an impressively diverse range of roles. It can be used to the benefit of aggro, control and combo.
A weird sort of pro is that overload has a subtle synergy with itself, since you don't need the full number of mana crystals to have a good turn if you use an overload card. So chaining overload cards can stop you from really suffering from the cost of overload as you effectively kick the problem to later and later turns. Now I think about it, this is probably why overload has mostly worked in full overload synergy decks with lots of them in the deck.
The cons
Show Spoiler
I don't really count 'having less mana next turn' as a con in its own right, because the basis of the mechanic is that you shouldn't need all the mana if you can leverage the mana savings of the previous turn. As a result, I prefer to address what happens when you aren't able to capitalise on the pros above.
1. It is an absolute truth that the opponent will have a harder time dealing with minions played ahead of the curve: the opponent will have drawn fewer cards and therefore have fewer options; the opponent will have had less mana with which to build a board to combat yours; and the opponent has less mana to spend on removal. However, the last of those reasons is not as big a deal as it first seems because removal is usually cheaper than the minions it is designed to remove, meaning it is often available on the same turn overloaded minions come down.
The consequences of this are serious in an aggro/tempo shaman vs control match-up where you need minions to stick, and where a low tempo turn due to overloaded mana crystals can give the opponent enough of a respite to stabilise with. However, it is worth noting that this downside is much less severe when the opponent is using minions - rather than spells - to contest the board because value trading with the overloaded minion can be so efficient.
2. While overload lets you respond more quickly with removal, it reduces your ability to respond on consecutive turns. You are often torn between removal now OR removal next turn where another class might be able to do both. This is especially common because it is rare to need overloaded removal on curve, so it often gets in the way of a swing turn that is needed to in order to actually win.
It is not all doom and gloom though. As per pro 4, overloaded removal being cheap can also facilitate swing turns that most other classes couldn't put together. It ends up a matter of timing: overload can be either friend or foe depending on whether you can afford to wait a turn.
3 & 4. Heavily overloaded finisher and swing turns are great when they work, but you don't always have that luxury. Using these cards early and incurring the overload cost can cripple you much more than doing the equivalent thing in another class.
Personally I like this aspect. It lets the devs use overload as a way to make a finisher card without constraining it to only hit heroes, thereby allowing players to demonstrate skill by knowing when they have to use it inefficiently for something else.
So is it a good keyword?
Having looked at the keyword in some detail, I actually like it even more than I used to. For such a simple mechanic there is a lot of nuance that makes decision making in shaman unique, and does so for all of aggro, control and combo in different ways. That is a distinct advantage over some other mechanics that balance pros and cons, like outcast and discard, which have a much stronger preference for certain archetypes.
Overload is certainly not without its weaknesses, and where they exist they are more severe than other class keywords like combo or choose one, which probably accounts for why it is the target of more claims that it is weak. Part of this is that the effectiveness of overload depends on what the opponent does. This is especially obvious for overstatted minions: when they are dealt with efficiently it can easily feel like you didn't get any benefit for the overload you still have to pay.
However, HS players are salty creatures that more readily remember the bad than the good, and I suspect that is wrongly tilting the balance of opinion against overload. This is perhaps not helped by the way it is presented on the card is as a negative. What you see is how much less mana you have next turn, not how much you save this turn.
Phew, I'll stop there. I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff, and would be keen to see how the community feels about overload. It is all too easy to hear the vocal minority and think it represents everyone...
Honestly the Paladin spell makes me think it was originally a 6-cost (or even 5-cost that summmons 4) because at 7 no Paladin deck plays this, while at 5 or 6 it could have easily been yet another strong midrange play and good god do we not need that right now.
Adventurers should be pretty popular and useful, as they seem to be like stronger lackeys which trade flexibility for immediate board presence. By usefulness in common situations, I'd have to say windfury seems to be the worst out of these. Perhaps this could push rockbiter weapon to be a staple in shaman from now, since it synergizes well with doomhammer and the new rush windfury elemental as well, all of which can be tutored.
Edit: OH I thought they were class specific for some reason, never mind if the effect is always random. I got the idea that shaman would be pushed in a windfury direction.
Axe Cow has to be Shaman. Isn't there some sort of weapon based Shaman build in WoW?
Enhancement is shamans melee dps spec in wow so thats whats she'd be.
Others are either healing (restoration shamans) or ranged dps (elemental) which focuses more on lightning bolts, laba bursts and occasional earthquake.
Hearthstone's Wailing Caverns Mini-Set Adventurers Tokens - What We Know So Far
All of that's great.. what about Priest though?
Hearthstone's Wailing Caverns Mini-Set Adventurers Tokens - What We Know So Far
What about Priest though?
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Malygos and Kalecgos?
I Want Your Custom Champion Proposals
Just throwing it out there that I haven't forgotten about this: just trying to find time to properly do the Spirited Away request. YouTube has it but I would have to rent/buy the movie; I'd rather not do that. And I don't want to pirate it. So...yeah. Wikipedia might be the way to go lol
Two The Point - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Good luck to everyone with the voting!
Edit: ...except me, who forgot to submit on time and only now realized it >_>
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Acidmaw&Dreadscale
Ultimate God Priest Deck List and Guide - Memes and Dreams #18
Thanks for making this list. I am really enjoying playing it, even though i first thought, it might be a bit too slow.
Currently i am 12 games in with 8-4 playing against dia 5+ opponents, as dumpster legend.
The deck has so many win conditions that i wasn't even bothered, when my opponent Oh my Yogged one of my cthun spells.
The fastest deck i played so far was token druid, which destroyed me. But against most other decks we have so much heal, that we can come back even from very bad situations.
OTK DH is a deck we really have an extreme hard time winning against.
I have not faced a warlock yet, but from what i have seen so far, i think i'll give the deck a try while climbing to legend again next week.
Also i have experienced, that you should not play to much for value when using your big cards. Sometimes its fine to play a nzoth or yshaarj for just 3 cards, if it helps you set the board.
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Both are close!
My Packs
Your face is already dead, too.
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (The Resurrection Attempt)
Tirion Fordring and the new 3/3?
My Packs
Its not just you. Assuredly many of us have been burned from opening packs expecting to get a legendary every 10 packs only to get one close to the pity timer.
But this is a problem more about the foundations of where hearthstone is built, card games in general, and legal-ethical related issues that comes with the idea of selling what amounts to gambling to children.
I really don't mean to sound patronizing, but this kind of stuff properly belongs to the salt threads, because there's literally no discussion here: Hearthstone is expensive, and the packs are inherently stacked against the player. The only real question would be to raise an eyebrow on whether blizz has quietly tilted the scales further in their favour, but since this is a question no outsider of its codes can ever answer, it amounts to looking up into the sky and attempting a prediction of whether it will be raining some time today.
My Packs
I bet you open 3 golden legendaries every time you get a pack and you have the nerve to come to MY thread and make fun of me..,
Hearthstone's Wailing Caverns Mini-Set Adventurers Tokens - What We Know So Far
That ooze isn't so bad. It is a Piloted Shredder for 1 less mana and stats.
Stealing wins with Thief Priest
Hey Matrium - honestly I simply copied the list from the guy who REKT me with it, SB's are really just sticky minions opponent's struggle to remove and certainly don't expect, but you could definitely sub them
Hearthstone's Wailing Caverns Mini-Set Adventurers Tokens - What We Know So Far
I love how they dressed up all the characters in the set that their classes are wearing on the character creation screen in WoW
Is overload a good keyword?
Prompted by a recent discussion, I want to discuss the overload mechanic in all its glory. Given we're 7 years into the game, and shaman is the current target of 'the class is weak' memes, it's high time I actually understood the mechanic beyond silent intuition.
Most discussion I've seen on the topic has tried to argue that the mechanic is weak, but I'm going to quickly shut down that idea. No mechanic is weak or strong, they are simply over- or under-valued on a card by card basis. Take inspire for example: if you were to only look at TGT, then you'd probably call it weak. However, if you look at Phase Stalker and Dragonbane (which have the inspire mechanic if not the keyword), then you'd call it strong.
You can look at all mechanics in the same way, and usually find both strong and weak examples, determined entirely by how much mana the devs attributed to the effect on each card. Such a viewpoint is especially convenient for overload, since it is entirely a matter of mana cost.
So having cast aside the notions of strong and weak mechanics, my interest is on assessing its pros and cons to determine whether overload is interesting enough to deserve a permanent spot in shaman's toolkit. I won't try to quantify how much overload is right for a given effect, simply because that would take too long. Maybe that can come later though.
The pros
I find the most useful way to view overload is as spending next turn's mana now. There are several benefits to doing this:
These benefits are all quite general, and make overload fill an impressively diverse range of roles. It can be used to the benefit of aggro, control and combo.
A weird sort of pro is that overload has a subtle synergy with itself, since you don't need the full number of mana crystals to have a good turn if you use an overload card. So chaining overload cards can stop you from really suffering from the cost of overload as you effectively kick the problem to later and later turns. Now I think about it, this is probably why overload has mostly worked in full overload synergy decks with lots of them in the deck.
The cons
I don't really count 'having less mana next turn' as a con in its own right, because the basis of the mechanic is that you shouldn't need all the mana if you can leverage the mana savings of the previous turn. As a result, I prefer to address what happens when you aren't able to capitalise on the pros above.
1. It is an absolute truth that the opponent will have a harder time dealing with minions played ahead of the curve: the opponent will have drawn fewer cards and therefore have fewer options; the opponent will have had less mana with which to build a board to combat yours; and the opponent has less mana to spend on removal. However, the last of those reasons is not as big a deal as it first seems because removal is usually cheaper than the minions it is designed to remove, meaning it is often available on the same turn overloaded minions come down.
The consequences of this are serious in an aggro/tempo shaman vs control match-up where you need minions to stick, and where a low tempo turn due to overloaded mana crystals can give the opponent enough of a respite to stabilise with. However, it is worth noting that this downside is much less severe when the opponent is using minions - rather than spells - to contest the board because value trading with the overloaded minion can be so efficient.
2. While overload lets you respond more quickly with removal, it reduces your ability to respond on consecutive turns. You are often torn between removal now OR removal next turn where another class might be able to do both. This is especially common because it is rare to need overloaded removal on curve, so it often gets in the way of a swing turn that is needed to in order to actually win.
It is not all doom and gloom though. As per pro 4, overloaded removal being cheap can also facilitate swing turns that most other classes couldn't put together. It ends up a matter of timing: overload can be either friend or foe depending on whether you can afford to wait a turn.
3 & 4. Heavily overloaded finisher and swing turns are great when they work, but you don't always have that luxury. Using these cards early and incurring the overload cost can cripple you much more than doing the equivalent thing in another class.
Personally I like this aspect. It lets the devs use overload as a way to make a finisher card without constraining it to only hit heroes, thereby allowing players to demonstrate skill by knowing when they have to use it inefficiently for something else.
So is it a good keyword?
Having looked at the keyword in some detail, I actually like it even more than I used to. For such a simple mechanic there is a lot of nuance that makes decision making in shaman unique, and does so for all of aggro, control and combo in different ways. That is a distinct advantage over some other mechanics that balance pros and cons, like outcast and discard, which have a much stronger preference for certain archetypes.
Overload is certainly not without its weaknesses, and where they exist they are more severe than other class keywords like combo or choose one, which probably accounts for why it is the target of more claims that it is weak. Part of this is that the effectiveness of overload depends on what the opponent does. This is especially obvious for overstatted minions: when they are dealt with efficiently it can easily feel like you didn't get any benefit for the overload you still have to pay.
However, HS players are salty creatures that more readily remember the bad than the good, and I suspect that is wrongly tilting the balance of opinion against overload. This is perhaps not helped by the way it is presented on the card is as a negative. What you see is how much less mana you have next turn, not how much you save this turn.
Phew, I'll stop there. I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff, and would be keen to see how the community feels about overload. It is all too easy to hear the vocal minority and think it represents everyone...
My Packs
Yes, I play face hunter. How could you tell?
Darkseeker's channel - 13th November update: KOtsosKOtsos' Reno Evolve Shudderwock Shaman - ft. Archivist Elysiana
29th May update: hsWhiteDelight's Galakrond Shudderwock Shaman: The oceans churn, and the heavens cry!
Shudderwock and Galakrond! Thanks to hsWhiteDelight for the deck.
(I mistakenly called it KremePuff's deck - I got confused with a different deck).
I wasn't sure what to expect with this deck, but it has been working very well on the legend ladder!
Deck code:
AAEBAaoICvoOi84C7/cCtZgDvZkD47QDp7UD08AD9tYDqO4DCrIG0hP2vQLfxAKbywKm8AK5rQOqrwPQrwOS5AMA
https://youtu.be/vff-00c9r38
Out of Cards Changelog - 2021-05-29
Bugfixes
General
Hearthstone
Hearthstone's Wailing Caverns Mini-Set Adventurers Tokens - What We Know So Far
Honestly the Paladin spell makes me think it was originally a 6-cost (or even 5-cost that summmons 4) because at 7 no Paladin deck plays this, while at 5 or 6 it could have easily been yet another strong midrange play and good god do we not need that right now.
Hearthstone's Wailing Caverns Mini-Set Adventurers Tokens - What We Know So Far
Adventurers should be pretty popular and useful, as they seem to be like stronger lackeys which trade flexibility for immediate board presence. By usefulness in common situations, I'd have to say windfury seems to be the worst out of these. Perhaps this could push rockbiter weapon to be a staple in shaman from now, since it synergizes well with doomhammer and the new rush windfury elemental as well, all of which can be tutored.
Edit: OH I thought they were class specific for some reason, never mind if the effect is always random. I got the idea that shaman would be pushed in a windfury direction.
Hearthstone's Wailing Caverns Mini-Set Adventurers Tokens - What We Know So Far
I think there are very different layers of random.
One think is Palm Reading into Renew into Raise Dead into Venomous Scorpid.
Another is Apothecary Helbrim and these Adventurers.
With no RNG effects at all, we'd be playing with pretty much vanilla minions, which would bore you out fairly quickly.
Hearthstone's Wailing Caverns Mini-Set Adventurers Tokens - What We Know So Far
Enhancement is shamans melee dps spec in wow so thats whats she'd be.
Others are either healing (restoration shamans) or ranged dps (elemental) which focuses more on lightning bolts, laba bursts and occasional earthquake.
My Packs
No, YOuR face is already dead!!
Weekend Wild Hearthstone Decks - Clown Shaman, Highlander Pirate Rogue, Odd Shaman, & More!
In the Clown Shaman deck, I think you need to play Yogg first to corrupt the Clowns.
EDIT: Oh, or the Rafaam artifact. Forgot those were 10-cost.