Sandstorm Elemental is definitely better, especially against all the Galakrond Zoolocks. I did take out Archmage Vargoth for the Bone Wraith as a tech cause I was facing so many aggressive decks like face Hunter, aggro Zoolock and Pirate Warrior. But if the meta you're playing in is slower, then Archmage Vargoth is definitely better.
When I first read it, I thought "Curse of Rafaam", then finished reading... I want this without the "Playable" part... It's not really a great effect considering the RNG fiesta that Hearthstone is... I would bet that if "playable" weren't in the text, I would normally hit either Coin or a combo finisher card...
I have to wonder because the text does not specify, does it mean any 2 drop minion or just neutrals? Cause this could swing any which way imagine-able if it's any 2 drop minion.
I would bet for the classic discover mechanic, discover a 2 drop neutral/class specific with reduced chance.
What bothers me it's the wording... If High Priest Amet is in play, the minion summoned would first gain +3 health, then be raised/downed to Amet's health.
I mean, I don't have Amet, and hate to play against priest right now (feels like wild is in standard), but the wording makes it look like it's not worth it in a OTK DS/HF deck with Amet.
I don't think the HP would be too game changing, I mean the Galakronds aren't really that game changing, so neither should the League's.
If the battlecry erase every minion in the game (board-graveyard[don't even think such a thing can be done in HS]-deck-hand), then it's the perfect Spell Mage card, and should be accompanied by a HP much like the quest one.
If not, even the normal HP "Deal 1", would be fine considering all the ways mage has to clear/stall the board state.
Had one of those fun meme-off with a Quest-Talritha paladin. I love originality! Paladin had a great start with reborn murloc on one and curving reborn minions till early quest completion followed by a Talritha copying.
Match however ended in a fun way:
- 8:13 Few seconds in the shudderloop, 23hp, lethal onboard, reborn taunt up
- 8:14 two more double shudderwocks to go, 16hp, there goes the board
_Time of death 8:16 , cause: Meteor Shower.
It wasn't really meant to be an OTK but I guess with enough rolls...
Crafted floop's Glorious Gloop for this deck, played 5 games 3 against zoo, 1 against quest hunter and 1 Galakrond Shaman. Couldn't win even a single game, deck looks fun but in this aggressive meta i doubt if its gonna work.
I'm sorry to hear that, I'm free to play and I always never wanted to craft floops gloop myself until I started playing around with gonk and I agree that this deck is super slow and hard to win with, but I have surprising won a lot of games with it. I haven't really kept track but out of the 30 or so games I've played I bet I could wager I've won about half of them. Quest priest really screws with this version of the deck but if you bait out the infiltrators you have a shot.
And yeah I agree again about the agro heavy meta not helping you out. Shaman is a class and before the nerf to dragons pack you couldn't even kill the wolves on board with this deck at all. That's why I'm currently looking into other things for this deck. Without quest.
Sweet, I love Gonk. I always say GONK out loud when I hit the opponent with Gonk in play. (I don´t, but I should).
One thought: Isn´t Zul'DrakRitualist (the 3/9 taunt that spawns 3 dudes) a great fit for Gonk? It can be played early as defense, compared to summoner. Not like it is super great if they remove it, but against a lot of decks it isn´t too bad. And 3 dudes is usually enough for Gonk fodder.
I also think that maybe quest is a little bit greedy, but it´s fine because it is sweet. :)
Yeah the quest is super greedy with this deck and lately I've been trying to make a version without it(I posted a link to my dragon gonk druid below) that relies on board control instead of massive healing like this one in order to combo. With the ritualist I thought about it, but the whole point of this deck is the ability to combo without a florist turn. Double claw double pounce is six damage that's enough to kill usually anything on board against a mid range deck and aggro deck and after that you can. Play even more claws if you played floop gloop making you have massive damage without needing to kill that many minions. With a deck as slow and playing behind as quest druid playing a 7 mana 4/4 florist was just straight up a bad idea so I really wanted to not do that.
Like many others here, I'm curious how Reno's Battlecry actually works. Not to mention we don't know what his Hero Power is, so it's hard to judge the card atm.
Shot Bot looks like a great addition to Aggro Paladin decks. I'm actually glad they brought back Reborn because the whole "leaving keywords to specific sets" (i.e. Witch's Brew not having Echo) was genuinely one of the more confusing aspects of HS. I kind of hope this is a sign that the dev team has realized that this prior tradition is not really conducive to a CCG.
Chaos Gazer is an interesting card. It's a decent minion stat-wise for a Turn 3 play, but appears to be better suited for a later turn if you want to utilize the disruption effects.
Dark Prophecy looks kind of meh, but I started to think of old Combo Priest lists (shudders with disgust) and if people replaced Extra Arms with Dark Prophecy, it actually fits into Combo Priest fairly well. Does that mean Combo Priest is going to make a rebound? I really hope not.
Though the pedantic part of me wants to point out you didn't work for Blizzard "literally, my whole adult life" unless where you live doesn't consider you an adult at 18. I hate myself - dunno why I'm like that :P
....And the pedantic part of me wants to point outthat he didn’t write that ;)
He wrote blizzard has been a huge part of his entire adult life, not that he worked for them his entire adult life.
Gotta say, I was never really a fan of tying card availability into the purchase of adventures. I’d rather be playing a live opponent than slogging away at solo content.
So if I read the wiki correctly, as long as the cards are in Standard they are uncraftable? Once in Wild they can be made with dust?
Though the pedantic part of me wants to point out you didn't work for Blizzard "literally, my whole adult life" unless where you live doesn't consider you an adult at 18. I hate myself - dunno why I'm like that :P
I actually don't play the deck at all, so there's no vested interest there. My comments are wholly from my position as an analyst and theorycrafter. I rarely play very aggressive decks simply because I find piloting them less interesting than other decks, and most of my play this expansion has been on midrange decks with a little bit of highlander thrown in.
That said, I would note that pretty much every single deck that people complain about being 'brainless' in fact requires just as much ability to pilot as any other deck. Knowing when to trade and when to push is a major skill in HS, and funnily enough it's one that most control players never master.
The classic example is that of the old Pirate Warrior. Ask the average 'man on the street' and he'll whine that it's a braindead aggro deck. Watch a couple of professional players running Pirate Warrior mirrors, on the other hand, and you'll see more depth of technical ability than you'd see in most matchups in Standard today.
To answer your final paragraph - what you're doing there is apparently misreading my post to mean 'always play for the board'. I very specifically laid out the gamestate in my post - you're only looking to hold the board for as long as you reasonably can. You're making a value judgment on what's going to net the most damage over the course of the game - maintaining board vs abandoning it to push. If you enter a game and start playing all-face from turn 1, you will not maximise your winrate with this deck. Hell, your own post states precisely that - Dwarven Sharpshooter exists to prevent value trades to maximise face damage. That is what board control means. You are controlling the game-state to allow your game plan to proceed - your game plan in this case being maximising damage to ensure the game doesn't go too late.
Your statement 'Board only matters if it threatens your life or can heal your opponent' is wholly inaccurate. Board matters when you can judge the board, the gamestate, your opponent's projected deck and projected hand, and you can make the call that you'll get more damage within your expected game duration from playing for board than you will mindlessly pushing. That is a judgment you have to make every turn - arguably multiple times within each turn - when playing a damage-oriented deck. If you're not performing that analysis, you're playing suboptimally.
Took a couple hours, but finally updated for me too. Guess I just hit it at the wrong time. Felt bad because it was the only time I had to play for a while.
There's a difference between even a full face hunter deck, and a mindless SMOrc deck. A lot of the people on ladder play the deck like the latter, certainly, but the only reason to build towards that path is if you simply don't have the cards to build a stronger list.
- Spellzerker is for Rapid Fire first and foremost, as AliRadicali suggests above. It also has a little more relevance in the later stages of the game because these hunter decks expect to lose the board at some point - and any juggles hitting minions are worthless to you at that point (and arguably even earlier given your game-plan).
- Animal Companion wins out over Wolfrider because while the deck expects to lose the board at some point, there's no reason to just throw away all board pressure on turn 3 without really being pushed to do so. Note that with Dwarven Sharpshooter and Phase Stalker in these decks you have strong early-game board potential, and remember that controlling the board adds up to more damage over time than just throwing everything at face from turn 1.
- I may be wrong (I haven't spent a lot of time on Hunter stats lately), but my assumption is that Timber Wolf is a two-of because Unleash is often your win condition. You want to be able to reliably burst out after losing board. Specifically in that circumstance, it's doubling your Unleash damage for only 1 additional mana outlay. There may be other benefits I'm not seeing because I don't have the deck in front of me right now.
- EDIT: Didn't see the Bomb Toss question. My answer is I have no idea, other than maybe an alternate late-game plan trying to set up a big Spellzerker turn. It's absolutely not something I'd run, personally, unless I was teching against Mage specifically.
- It's important to recognise that this deck is not a mindless SMOrc deck - and in fact, such decks don't really exist outside of budget ladder-grind decks. Your early game should absolutely be about early board, and getting out Dwarven Sharpshooter and Phase Hunter. Midgame is about minimizing what you have to let through on board while pushing more damage. Late game - which for this deck means around turn 7 or 8 - is where you accept the board is lost and make a push to set up lethal. Accept the loss of board to activate a big Wolf-Unleash and push through everything you can. Knowing when to trade and when to push is a fundamental skill of any aggro deck, and in spite of what memes will tell you, 'always face' is not an acceptable answer.
no offense, but stop circlejerking over how face HUnter is "not as braindead as the plebs would have you believe)
The deck is simple and to the point. You push as much face damage as fast as you can. Board only matters if it threatens your life or can heal your opponent. Dwarven Sharpshooter is only ever used against minions to stop your opponent from value trading so you get more face damage in.
Every deck needs piloting to some extent, you're not special. the deck is literally 80% direct damage, it's as straight aggro as it gets.
If you're playing Face Hunter for the board then you're probably losing more games than you have to. You don#t win by having the board, you win by your opponent not having enough to kill you before you finish him off.
Some deck for which casting lots of spells is important. Right now the only major payoff for that in standard is Grave Horror, but the remaining Priest cards in this adventure set might feature some new synergies/payoffs for Priest that make this specific card more appealing.
Dark Prophecy isn't really that bad - on average it creates a slightly above vanilla 3-drop for 3. That's playable enough that it wouldn't take much to make it good in a Spell Priest deck.
Joe "joemag" Magdalena Leaves the Hearthstone Team
I stand corrected :)
[64% WR] Highlander Control Shaman
You're welcome! :)
Sandstorm Elemental is definitely better, especially against all the Galakrond Zoolocks. I did take out Archmage Vargoth for the Bone Wraith as a tech cause I was facing so many aggressive decks like face Hunter, aggro Zoolock and Pirate Warrior. But if the meta you're playing in is slower, then Archmage Vargoth is definitely better.
New Paladin Minion - Shotbot
This in Quest Dragon Paladin.
Dragonrider Talritha + Da Undatakah + Immortal Prelate?
Slow af deck, but if the combo makes it... Who can stop you?
A silence? HA!
Suicide warrior.
what turn do you usually die off at? would be impressive if you could croak at turn 2.
We're Getting an Update this Week on Legends of Runeterra
We're running out of week ...
Joe "joemag" Magdalena Leaves the Hearthstone Team
Well, his bio is in the article, so ...
New Warlock Minion - Chaos Gazer
When I first read it, I thought "Curse of Rafaam", then finished reading... I want this without the "Playable" part... It's not really a great effect considering the RNG fiesta that Hearthstone is... I would bet that if "playable" weren't in the text, I would normally hit either Coin or a combo finisher card...
Now I know I'm gonna hit coin 90% of the time.
New Priest Spell - Dark Prophecy
I would bet for the classic discover mechanic, discover a 2 drop neutral/class specific with reduced chance.
What bothers me it's the wording... If High Priest Amet is in play, the minion summoned would first gain +3 health, then be raised/downed to Amet's health.
I mean, I don't have Amet, and hate to play against priest right now (feels like wild is in standard), but the wording makes it look like it's not worth it in a OTK DS/HF deck with Amet.
New Mage Hero - The Amazing Reno
I don't think the HP would be too game changing, I mean the Galakronds aren't really that game changing, so neither should the League's.
If the battlecry erase every minion in the game (board-graveyard[don't even think such a thing can be done in HS]-deck-hand), then it's the perfect Spell Mage card, and should be accompanied by a HP much like the quest one.
If not, even the normal HP "Deal 1", would be fine considering all the ways mage has to clear/stall the board state.
Joe "joemag" Magdalena
Wishing you good luck on your future endeavor
The Pepper Thread - Share Some Good Vibes!
Had one of those fun meme-off with a Quest-Talritha paladin. I love originality! Paladin had a great start with reborn murloc on one and curving reborn minions till early quest completion followed by a Talritha copying.
Match however ended in a fun way:
- 8:13 Few seconds in the shudderloop, 23hp, lethal onboard, reborn taunt up
- 8:14 two more double shudderwocks to go, 16hp, there goes the board
_Time of death 8:16 , cause: Meteor Shower.
It wasn't really meant to be an OTK but I guess with enough rolls...
Remastered DoD Gonk Druid
I'm sorry to hear that, I'm free to play and I always never wanted to craft floops gloop myself until I started playing around with gonk and I agree that this deck is super slow and hard to win with, but I have surprising won a lot of games with it. I haven't really kept track but out of the 30 or so games I've played I bet I could wager I've won about half of them. Quest priest really screws with this version of the deck but if you bait out the infiltrators you have a shot.
And yeah I agree again about the agro heavy meta not helping you out. Shaman is a class and before the nerf to dragons pack you couldn't even kill the wolves on board with this deck at all. That's why I'm currently looking into other things for this deck. Without quest.
Remastered DoD Gonk Druid
Yeah the quest is super greedy with this deck and lately I've been trying to make a version without it(I posted a link to my dragon gonk druid below) that relies on board control instead of massive healing like this one in order to combo. With the ritualist I thought about it, but the whole point of this deck is the ability to combo without a florist turn. Double claw double pounce is six damage that's enough to kill usually anything on board against a mid range deck and aggro deck and after that you can. Play even more claws if you played floop gloop making you have massive damage without needing to kill that many minions. With a deck as slow and playing behind as quest druid playing a 7 mana 4/4 florist was just straight up a bad idea so I really wanted to not do that.
4 New Cards Revealed from Hearthstone's New Galakrond's Awakening Solo Content - Launches January 21
Like many others here, I'm curious how Reno's Battlecry actually works. Not to mention we don't know what his Hero Power is, so it's hard to judge the card atm.
Shot Bot looks like a great addition to Aggro Paladin decks. I'm actually glad they brought back Reborn because the whole "leaving keywords to specific sets" (i.e. Witch's Brew not having Echo) was genuinely one of the more confusing aspects of HS. I kind of hope this is a sign that the dev team has realized that this prior tradition is not really conducive to a CCG.
Chaos Gazer is an interesting card. It's a decent minion stat-wise for a Turn 3 play, but appears to be better suited for a later turn if you want to utilize the disruption effects.
Dark Prophecy looks kind of meh, but I started to think of old Combo Priest lists (shudders with disgust) and if people replaced Extra Arms with Dark Prophecy, it actually fits into Combo Priest fairly well. Does that mean Combo Priest is going to make a rebound? I really hope not.
New Mage Hero - The Amazing Reno
Thanks!
Joe "joemag" Magdalena Leaves the Hearthstone Team
....And the pedantic part of me wants to point outthat he didn’t write that ;)
He wrote blizzard has been a huge part of his entire adult life, not that he worked for them his entire adult life.
4 New Cards Revealed from Hearthstone's New Galakrond's Awakening Solo Content - Launches January 21
Gotta say, I was never really a fan of tying card availability into the purchase of adventures. I’d rather be playing a live opponent than slogging away at solo content.
So if I read the wiki correctly, as long as the cards are in Standard they are uncraftable? Once in Wild they can be made with dust?
Joe "joemag" Magdalena Leaves the Hearthstone Team
Good luck mate.
Though the pedantic part of me wants to point out you didn't work for Blizzard "literally, my whole adult life" unless where you live doesn't consider you an adult at 18. I hate myself - dunno why I'm like that :P
Aggro Hunter cards.
I actually don't play the deck at all, so there's no vested interest there. My comments are wholly from my position as an analyst and theorycrafter. I rarely play very aggressive decks simply because I find piloting them less interesting than other decks, and most of my play this expansion has been on midrange decks with a little bit of highlander thrown in.
That said, I would note that pretty much every single deck that people complain about being 'brainless' in fact requires just as much ability to pilot as any other deck. Knowing when to trade and when to push is a major skill in HS, and funnily enough it's one that most control players never master.
The classic example is that of the old Pirate Warrior. Ask the average 'man on the street' and he'll whine that it's a braindead aggro deck. Watch a couple of professional players running Pirate Warrior mirrors, on the other hand, and you'll see more depth of technical ability than you'd see in most matchups in Standard today.
To answer your final paragraph - what you're doing there is apparently misreading my post to mean 'always play for the board'. I very specifically laid out the gamestate in my post - you're only looking to hold the board for as long as you reasonably can. You're making a value judgment on what's going to net the most damage over the course of the game - maintaining board vs abandoning it to push. If you enter a game and start playing all-face from turn 1, you will not maximise your winrate with this deck. Hell, your own post states precisely that - Dwarven Sharpshooter exists to prevent value trades to maximise face damage. That is what board control means. You are controlling the game-state to allow your game plan to proceed - your game plan in this case being maximising damage to ensure the game doesn't go too late.
Your statement 'Board only matters if it threatens your life or can heal your opponent' is wholly inaccurate. Board matters when you can judge the board, the gamestate, your opponent's projected deck and projected hand, and you can make the call that you'll get more damage within your expected game duration from playing for board than you will mindlessly pushing. That is a judgment you have to make every turn - arguably multiple times within each turn - when playing a damage-oriented deck. If you're not performing that analysis, you're playing suboptimally.
January Card Nerfs Are Live, Along With Battlegrounds Buffs - Hearthstone Patch 16.0.8
Took a couple hours, but finally updated for me too. Guess I just hit it at the wrong time. Felt bad because it was the only time I had to play for a while.
New Mage Hero - The Amazing Reno
Or how about HP: "Put a random dragon in your hand. It costs 2 less."
Joe "joemag" Magdalena Leaves the Hearthstone Team
I wish him best of luck in his future game dev. career. But not sure if he even visits this fluffy website...
Aggro Hunter cards.
no offense, but stop circlejerking over how face HUnter is "not as braindead as the plebs would have you believe)
The deck is simple and to the point. You push as much face damage as fast as you can. Board only matters if it threatens your life or can heal your opponent. Dwarven Sharpshooter is only ever used against minions to stop your opponent from value trading so you get more face damage in.
Every deck needs piloting to some extent, you're not special. the deck is literally 80% direct damage, it's as straight aggro as it gets.
If you're playing Face Hunter for the board then you're probably losing more games than you have to. You don#t win by having the board, you win by your opponent not having enough to kill you before you finish him off.
The Hearthstone Team Acknowledges Their Fluffy Overlords
The fluffy website.
New Priest Spell - Dark Prophecy
Some deck for which casting lots of spells is important. Right now the only major payoff for that in standard is Grave Horror, but the remaining Priest cards in this adventure set might feature some new synergies/payoffs for Priest that make this specific card more appealing.
Dark Prophecy isn't really that bad - on average it creates a slightly above vanilla 3-drop for 3. That's playable enough that it wouldn't take much to make it good in a Spell Priest deck.