You mean different sources of magic like light, fell, elemental, and so on? It's a possibility but I would need something more specific than that directly related to at least a few cards.
You made me dig the deck out and craft Aja. Shaman and paladin are my main classe and shaman was my only classfor the first year. :-). For wild i moved to an even version but battlecry decks are my favorites. So an upvote from me. Top deck but i keep playing my version ;-). The forum thread made me use healbots. I usually run less healing with zilliax and other lifestealers. I also play BC shaman in standard. There it´s lackeys and tunderheads.
Well all shamans I face are quest ones. So Shaman only plays that deck now it seems. Paladin has 2 decks left, one is the quest the other is the OTK/combo one. Hunter quest I see rarely, mage quest never. I have 0 winrate with it. Do not even know how to buff that one properly. Priest quest is strong. Warrior would be OK if warrior did not have even stronger T1 decks to choose from.
I think silence cards will return when the meta has settled a bit. Now ppl are still experimenting with all the new goodies so rather play that shiny new card instead of putting in a boring silence card. Same for weapon removal; as soon as rogue is T1 again with that new weapon all decks will tech in a weapon removal again.
I also think that anti-secret techs are suboptimal, but what else can you do to fight burn mages? If your deck isn't suited to deal with them optimally, you either add some tech cards or go for a different playstyle.
Burn mages can ruin the opponent's tempo in various ways - burning or copying enemy minions, cancelling spells, dealing with durablewide boards. So swarm decks like odd paladin, that can't buff their minions on time, will lose their board rather quickly, spell heavy decks like big priest can't handle the ammount of pressure their opponents will generate. What is left are some minion-based control decks with a lot of sustain and some mid-range decks (who won't be unlucky enough to take a lot of damage from losing small minions to Explosive Runes and letting their bigger threats getting copied by Mirror Entity). High health, low-cost minions could also appear more often, because those counter the aforementioned secrets quite nicely. If I follow this logic, then maybe IF priest will gain popularity again (although this will be kinda hard to do with the nerf to Extra Arms).
A few days ago I created a budget token dudu deck and played some games with it in casual. My very first game was against burn mage and I won that match thanks to the gross amount of buffs I could apply to my mininos. I didn't rush my units into the opponent's face prematurely, so that I wouldn't proc Flame Ward and lose my board. I'm not promoting this deck or anything, I was lucky that the opponent didn't draw Arcane Flakmage on time, but I've noticed that they couldn't deal with wide and tall boards as well.
Depends on what you're playing. Some decks, such as Reno decks, or Quest Shaman, can easily accomodate some anti-secret tech, as can Spell Hunters (just make sure your Flare doesn't get countered or it won't go into your Zuljin pool). As a bonus, it also helps against Odd Pallies and Reno Mages, since those also run some key secrets. Ziliax and weapon removal aren't particularly intrusive tech and also sorta work against Secret Mage. But in general, if you're playing a deck that has a straight up bad matchup against Secret Mage, no amount of tech is going to save you. The majority of the ranking up I've done this season (from 7-2) was done with spell hunter, and you're just straight up dead to Secret Mages no matter what you do. You don't run enough minions to pop their Mirror Entities/Explosive Runes, so they always have something up for Cloud Princes, you run absolutely no healing outside of Zuljin's 5 armor, you got a bad time recovering mid-sized minion boards from behind. It's not pretty. At that point, switching is really the only way. It's simply not a deck that can be countered with one or two techs, like say a Shudderwock deck can with clutch Dirty Rats/Deathlords or Jade Druid can with a single Geist. In that respect, Secret Mage shapes the meta at high ranks in the same way Res Priest does at ranks 5-4. If you're playing a deck that has no answer to Res Priest at those ranks, don't even bother. On the plus side, Secret Mage isn't nearly as prevalent past Legend, so it's not the whole meta, mostly the climb.
Mmmm. I am not sure about the fair part here. Let me try to break this down in a logical way.
1. Cards can be buffed in lots of ways, one is increasing their stats, one is to reduce their mana. Lots of cards in HS do this. This mechanism is not unfair in itself.
2. Really strong legendary cards can buff not one card, but change the rest of the game. This is also not unfair since it is a legendary. You need to draw it, and most of the time the legendary has a high mana cost.
3. The idea of deck-building is to combine cards in such a way they create the maximal impact. This is the core of HS. Combining different cards to get optimal results. Again, this is not unfair, this is what HS is.
So now we look at [Hearthstone Card (Luna's Pocket Galaxy[Hearthstone Card (. At 7 mana, the card was not played in any competitive deck, since to be meaningful, you would have to put a lot of high mana minions in your deck, and then face the risk of drawing those in your first 6 turns insta losing you the game, or put less big minions in your deck and then risk to spend 7 mana for not a lot of minions reduced and also not a lot of turns to enjoy this since you also need to draw those reduced stuff so you also need some draw engines at the ready (like Luna for instance), and against aggro, if you survive until 7 you would win anyway even with a bunch of Angry Chickens.
Personally I have tried to make this card work before the nerf and it was so cool when I could pull of a Star Aligner combo with it. That did not happen a lot of course but a lot more than I expected. So I was super happy when it got buffed to 5 mana! My god. Then suddenly everybody started playing it and 0-mana mountain giants that got the conjure call treatment where all over the place. Mages were happy! Even without a fireball or a pyroblast. This could lead to some juicy swing turns. Still I believe the proper way to nerf this was to nerf the mountain giant conjure call combo. They should have printed another 12-mana minion with horrible stats but a nice battle-cry or something, so the result would be less predictable and strong. And now with warrior and priest being nerfed, I expect to only find hunterstone, roguestone, murladins and questoshamans on the ladder.
Personally I will just remove the dust on that old star aligner deck and see how it goes. Hell maybe even try to make it into a reno deck, although that crazy moment when your opponent just attacked some giant and you can then play 2 star aligners in a row for 2 mana…total bliss. And fair!!
I 100% agree on that point. The upside is that we won't run out anytime soon, lol. Plenty of themes for them to make that will include at least one or two additional characters along with their Hearthstone-originals, which to contribute to the story in their own unique way. After all, we wouldn't have the League of Explorers in characters added in to WoW if they hadn't first been so popular in Hearthstone.
As do I. I and a few of my friends hope we get to fight against a reborn Black Empire combined with a new Cata-style world revamp in the next expatiation.
A lighning storm seem to be a good card to fit in but the two overload make me worry.
I used to run LS in my original build, because in the very first days of the expansion I faced a lot of swarm decks (odd pala, murloc pala and shamen, mech hunters). But once I climbed to rank 3 and people jumped on the secret mage bandwagon, most of the aforementioned decklists ceased to exist. I also think, that this AOE would be a great addition to the deck in general, but I'm really sceptical it will be any useful in this meta if things don't change. Against burn mages a 2/3-damage board clear is not what I typically want, especially when it overloads me like you said.
I followed Snapshot426's advice and tried out Hagatha's Scheme. I found the card to be useful against burn mages, which put a lot of pressure on the board (Kabal Crystal Runners, Kirin Tor Mages), but I don't like how slowly it upgrades itself, if I top-deck it in the mid- or lategame. That's why I put so many lackey generators in my deck, so that I could use them to fight for board control.
Honestly, this is probably more interesting than most books I've read. Really good job done "summarising" the story and collating the actual cards that pertain to the characters in the story. In fact, only after reading this did I realise that there are a surprising number of missing characters in Hearthstone from WoW.
Personally, I find it rare that I don't have an answer for an early giant, whether its aggro with a bunch of minions, or control/mid with a spell or combo. Most of the time, its the turn 6-7 giant-conjurer combo that gets me, and this nerf delays it by a turn and also, with luna nerf, makes double-conjurer turns way less likely. I'm fine with this.
Well, with aggro you would lose all your minions (bad for aggro) or ignore the giant and risk a 7/8 taunt (or two) in your way.
With tempo/control you again have to have minions with total attack of 8 on board and lose board control completely.
Considering the backfire that will blown on Blizzard if such thing will ever be revealed as true, I doubt it can be real: too many people work on HS to be sure that no one could ever discover it and talk about it outside the company.
It's like those world wide conspiracy theory that cannot be real because they're too wide to possibly be kept an absolute secret.
The impression of getting paired always against a "nemesis" or to get unlucky always on a critical match is just a bias, because we remember more easily events gone bad than those gone right.
Card Nerf - Luna's Pocket Galaxy
And basically this is not a nerf, but a buff of Naga Sand Witch
Fan Community Spotlight - Maxlot's Summoner Class
Heck yeah! More FC Cult attention
The Old Gods, Masters of Madness - Traversing Azeroth
You mean different sources of magic like light, fell, elemental, and so on? It's a possibility but I would need something more specific than that directly related to at least a few cards.
Fan Community Spotlight - Maxlot's Summoner Class
As always, loving the fan creation content!
[Legend] Jade Shudderwock Shaman
You made me dig the deck out and craft Aja. Shaman and paladin are my main classe and shaman was my only classfor the first year. :-). For wild i moved to an even version but battlecry decks are my favorites. So an upvote from me. Top deck but i keep playing my version ;-). The forum thread made me use healbots. I usually run less healing with zilliax and other lifestealers. I also play BC shaman in standard. There it´s lackeys and tunderheads.
Starter Thief Rogue
very good budget deck, thank you
it really help me complete some rogue quests cause i miss a lot of rogue cards :)
BoB - Best of Both
consider playing Mossy Horror instead of one Quicksand Elemental
Here's some art, make a card! [Legacy Game]
Next: Must be a shaman minion that interacts with spells or Overload.
Quest Trading - Play A Friend!
Done.
Possibility of buffs regarding Quests
Well all shamans I face are quest ones. So Shaman only plays that deck now it seems. Paladin has 2 decks left, one is the quest the other is the OTK/combo one. Hunter quest I see rarely, mage quest never. I have 0 winrate with it. Do not even know how to buff that one properly. Priest quest is strong. Warrior would be OK if warrior did not have even stronger T1 decks to choose from.
Zilliax
I think silence cards will return when the meta has settled a bit. Now ppl are still experimenting with all the new goodies so rather play that shiny new card instead of putting in a boring silence card. Same for weapon removal; as soon as rogue is T1 again with that new weapon all decks will tech in a weapon removal again.
SoU Wild meta
I also think that anti-secret techs are suboptimal, but what else can you do to fight burn mages? If your deck isn't suited to deal with them optimally, you either add some tech cards or go for a different playstyle.
Burn mages can ruin the opponent's tempo in various ways - burning or copying enemy minions, cancelling spells, dealing with durable wide boards. So swarm decks like odd paladin, that can't buff their minions on time, will lose their board rather quickly, spell heavy decks like big priest can't handle the ammount of pressure their opponents will generate. What is left are some minion-based control decks with a lot of sustain and some mid-range decks (who won't be unlucky enough to take a lot of damage from losing small minions to Explosive Runes and letting their bigger threats getting copied by Mirror Entity). High health, low-cost minions could also appear more often, because those counter the aforementioned secrets quite nicely. If I follow this logic, then maybe IF priest will gain popularity again (although this will be kinda hard to do with the nerf to Extra Arms).
A few days ago I created a budget token dudu deck and played some games with it in casual. My very first game was against burn mage and I won that match thanks to the gross amount of buffs I could apply to my mininos. I didn't rush my units into the opponent's face prematurely, so that I wouldn't proc Flame Ward and lose my board. I'm not promoting this deck or anything, I was lucky that the opponent didn't draw Arcane Flakmage on time, but I've noticed that they couldn't deal with wide and tall boards as well.
SoU Wild meta
Depends on what you're playing. Some decks, such as Reno decks, or Quest Shaman, can easily accomodate some anti-secret tech, as can Spell Hunters (just make sure your Flare doesn't get countered or it won't go into your Zuljin pool). As a bonus, it also helps against Odd Pallies and Reno Mages, since those also run some key secrets. Ziliax and weapon removal aren't particularly intrusive tech and also sorta work against Secret Mage. But in general, if you're playing a deck that has a straight up bad matchup against Secret Mage, no amount of tech is going to save you. The majority of the ranking up I've done this season (from 7-2) was done with spell hunter, and you're just straight up dead to Secret Mages no matter what you do. You don't run enough minions to pop their Mirror Entities/Explosive Runes, so they always have something up for Cloud Princes, you run absolutely no healing outside of Zuljin's 5 armor, you got a bad time recovering mid-sized minion boards from behind. It's not pretty. At that point, switching is really the only way. It's simply not a deck that can be countered with one or two techs, like say a Shudderwock deck can with clutch Dirty Rats/Deathlords or Jade Druid can with a single Geist. In that respect, Secret Mage shapes the meta at high ranks in the same way Res Priest does at ranks 5-4. If you're playing a deck that has no answer to Res Priest at those ranks, don't even bother. On the plus side, Secret Mage isn't nearly as prevalent past Legend, so it's not the whole meta, mostly the climb.
The Way-Too-Early-Nerf Thread
Mmmm. I am not sure about the fair part here. Let me try to break this down in a logical way.
1. Cards can be buffed in lots of ways, one is increasing their stats, one is to reduce their mana. Lots of cards in HS do this. This mechanism is not unfair in itself.
2. Really strong legendary cards can buff not one card, but change the rest of the game. This is also not unfair since it is a legendary. You need to draw it, and most of the time the legendary has a high mana cost.
3. The idea of deck-building is to combine cards in such a way they create the maximal impact. This is the core of HS. Combining different cards to get optimal results. Again, this is not unfair, this is what HS is.
So now we look at [Hearthstone Card (Luna's Pocket Galaxy[Hearthstone Card (. At 7 mana, the card was not played in any competitive deck, since to be meaningful, you would have to put a lot of high mana minions in your deck, and then face the risk of drawing those in your first 6 turns insta losing you the game, or put less big minions in your deck and then risk to spend 7 mana for not a lot of minions reduced and also not a lot of turns to enjoy this since you also need to draw those reduced stuff so you also need some draw engines at the ready (like Luna for instance), and against aggro, if you survive until 7 you would win anyway even with a bunch of Angry Chickens.
Personally I have tried to make this card work before the nerf and it was so cool when I could pull of a Star Aligner combo with it. That did not happen a lot of course but a lot more than I expected. So I was super happy when it got buffed to 5 mana! My god. Then suddenly everybody started playing it and 0-mana mountain giants that got the conjure call treatment where all over the place. Mages were happy! Even without a fireball or a pyroblast. This could lead to some juicy swing turns. Still I believe the proper way to nerf this was to nerf the mountain giant conjure call combo. They should have printed another 12-mana minion with horrible stats but a nice battle-cry or something, so the result would be less predictable and strong. And now with warrior and priest being nerfed, I expect to only find hunterstone, roguestone, murladins and questoshamans on the ladder.
Personally I will just remove the dust on that old star aligner deck and see how it goes. Hell maybe even try to make it into a reno deck, although that crazy moment when your opponent just attacked some giant and you can then play 2 star aligners in a row for 2 mana…total bliss. And fair!!
) Not Found]) Not Found]The Old Gods, Masters of Madness - Traversing Azeroth
I 100% agree on that point. The upside is that we won't run out anytime soon, lol. Plenty of themes for them to make that will include at least one or two additional characters along with their Hearthstone-originals, which to contribute to the story in their own unique way. After all, we wouldn't have the League of Explorers in characters added in to WoW if they hadn't first been so popular in Hearthstone.
The Old Gods, Masters of Madness - Traversing Azeroth
As do I. I and a few of my friends hope we get to fight against a reborn Black Empire combined with a new Cata-style world revamp in the next expatiation.
The Old Gods, Masters of Madness - Traversing Azeroth
Schools of magic next.
Greedy AF Double-Quester (with story)
If anyone's reading the story, please give a shout. I honestly don't know if I'm writing this tripe for myself, or for anyone else's entertainment.
SoU Wild meta
Thanks to everyone for their contribution.
I'd like to slightly steer away the topic and ask you: how exactly do you deal with Secret Mages?
Is there some strategy to apply, other than changing deck to have a favourable matchup?
Most of us seem to agree that adding anti-Secret tech is highly sub-optimal.
Quest Jade Shaman - a wild sleeper deck.
I used to run LS in my original build, because in the very first days of the expansion I faced a lot of swarm decks (odd pala, murloc pala and shamen, mech hunters). But once I climbed to rank 3 and people jumped on the secret mage bandwagon, most of the aforementioned decklists ceased to exist. I also think, that this AOE would be a great addition to the deck in general, but I'm really sceptical it will be any useful in this meta if things don't change. Against burn mages a 2/3-damage board clear is not what I typically want, especially when it overloads me like you said.
I followed Snapshot426's advice and tried out Hagatha's Scheme. I found the card to be useful against burn mages, which put a lot of pressure on the board (Kabal Crystal Runners, Kirin Tor Mages), but I don't like how slowly it upgrades itself, if I top-deck it in the mid- or lategame. That's why I put so many lackey generators in my deck, so that I could use them to fight for board control.
The Old Gods, Masters of Madness - Traversing Azeroth
Awesome read, thanks a lot. The Warcraft Universe is so vast, I can never get enough from it. Thanks again
The Old Gods, Masters of Madness - Traversing Azeroth
Honestly, this is probably more interesting than most books I've read. Really good job done "summarising" the story and collating the actual cards that pertain to the characters in the story. In fact, only after reading this did I realise that there are a surprising number of missing characters in Hearthstone from WoW.
Card Nerf - Conjurer's Calling
Well, with aggro you would lose all your minions (bad for aggro) or ignore the giant and risk a 7/8 taunt (or two) in your way.
With tempo/control you again have to have minions with total attack of 8 on board and lose board control completely.
"Random" Matchmaking between ranks
MMR is working on casual mode In ladder it is random. Or you think you get the worse matchups ergo your opponent gets a rigged best matchup on ladder?
"Random" Matchmaking between ranks
Considering the backfire that will blown on Blizzard if such thing will ever be revealed as true, I doubt it can be real: too many people work on HS to be sure that no one could ever discover it and talk about it outside the company.
It's like those world wide conspiracy theory that cannot be real because they're too wide to possibly be kept an absolute secret.
The impression of getting paired always against a "nemesis" or to get unlucky always on a critical match is just a bias, because we remember more easily events gone bad than those gone right.