Before each expansion, I like to try and theorycraft a deck (that I'm at least a little bit excited for) for each class and share them on the forums. So I'll make this a really long post and just join in this thread instead of making my own.
First up, Demon Hunter!
I decided to fully embrace the Outcast mechanic, and make my deck so cheap that I could almost always get Outcast cards to activate their secondary text. I think DH may just have the aggressive oomph to bring back ye olde style "turn 4" decks.
The latest version of this deck even includes a Wisp. And I'm considering dropping Acidic Swamp Ooze for a second Wisp! But Ooze seems like an ok counter to the Demon Hunter/Rogue meta we'll surely be seeing.
I focused in on Fungal Fortunes and Imprisoned Satyr, wanting to build a deck with minimal minions and make the minions that I do hit with Imprisoned Satyr really impactful. So, that meant bringing back the Malygos Miracle archetype.
How good is Fresh Scent? I haven't played with it at all since it came out, so this is a non-rhetorical question.
Guardian Augmerchant just seems ridiculous to me, so you'll probably be seeing it in a number of my decks. Any deck where I expect to do a fair amount of trading and the decklist wasn't super crowded.
Mage is certainly tough to work with this expansion. But the new cards might finally push Secrets Mage into viability in Standard. Probably not, but I'll present my deck here anyway. At least it's budget-friendly, with no legendaries and few epics.
I have two ideas for Priest, neither that original. Both kind of boring because they aren't that dependent on AoO cards. One just embraces the new identity of Priest as the midrange minion-trading champion class, and suffers for a lack of win conditions. Here's the other: Galakrond Dragon Priest.
Rogue, on the other hand, is probably the class I'm most excited about. And my favorite Rogue deck I've come up with is one that makes the very painful choice to skip the Galakrond and Secrets packages and just focus on killing the enemy very quickly with Stealth synergy. I've tried building Stealth themed decks in the past, but this is the first time they've gotten real support!
For Shaman (my traditional favorite class), this expansion definitely isn't going to be the highlight of its career. But I will try to continue my love of Dragon Quest Shaman.
With my old deck's win condition rotated out, I think I'm going to have to put a Galakrond package in as a win condition. But I didn't have room for a full Galakrond package ... do you think that's ok? It only takes one doubled Corrupt Elementalist to fully upgrade 'Krond.
I still want to make Dragon Handlock a thing, even without Mountain Giant. This decklist really came together, after a number of attempts, when I decided to embrace cutting Plague of Flames.
Dropping something for Valdris Felgorge would obviously be more optimal, but I don't want to spend dust on Valdris, so I'm leaving him out for now ...
Going with Trump's theory that Shadow Council isn't a meme card, but rather a way to turn tech cards (primarily Sacrificial Pact) into useful fuel.
Confession: I actually kind of like Galakrond Warrior. So I just went with that for my deck here, with only a few new cards that aren't that revolutionary. Warrior's getting decent cards, but I don't think they'll spawn any exciting new archetypes; just enhance archetypes that warrior is already playing.
OK, I know some of you have already seen this deck on this site (it's gotten a little bit of hype, including 5 upvotes and me running into someone in HS who recognized me by the deck I was running and friended me).
But until now, however much fun I was having with the deck, I didn't really consider it worthy of posting on the forums about, because its winrate was only in the 30s or 40s.
That's changed in the past few days. Maybe it's just because it's the end of the month and the tryhards have ranked up above me, but ... whatever the reason, I've played 55 games of the latest version of the deck, and it's gotten a winrate of 63.6%. That's newsworthy IMO.
HSReplay says that the typical winrate for Quest Shamans lately (without Galakrond) is 37.8%, so ... I must be doing something right and different to get the results I'm getting!
I'm excited to improve the deck even more on Tuesday when Sky Gen'ral Kragg comes out!
Druid: I tried Treant Miracle druid, and it was as awful as it sounds. Otherwise, my main impression of druid is that Quest is still good against aggressive decks.
Hunter: Was impressed by a few opponents who pulled off Quest much more effectively than I've ever been able to (not that I've tried again in DoD).
Mage: Haven't given my own mage deck enough of a chance to be worth mentioning. Have faced a LOT of Highlander Dragon Mages though, it seems pretty strong. Not sure why none of them bounce their main dragons though. If I ever build the deck, I'll definitely include Dragon Breeder, maybe even Youthful Brewmaster.
Paladin: Not much impression so far.
Priest: Galakrond build is easier to beat than I expected. That's most of what I've faced, although I did get wiped by someone still playing Combo Priest hitting me with a sudden 18/18 Injured Blademaster. Sigh.
Rogue: Midrange Waxadred Rogue felt awful when I attempted it. I'll need to look up how other people are having more success with Waxadred. Just tempo rogue with weapon removal is serving me decently, though. I've also gotten killed quite a bit by Galakrond Tempo Rogue, although it feels like the real powerhouse there is Faceless Corruptor.
Shaman: I haven't been as impressed with Galakrond Shaman as everyone else. I played it myself (without the Quest) to mediocre effect, and I have a pretty good winrate against it too. The only defeat that really pissed me off had nothing to do with Galakrond; it was just Mogu Fleshshaper > Mutate > Tirion Fordring on turn 3 into Mogu Fleshshaper > Mutate > Princess Talanji on turn 4. That, I'll admit, is pretty broken! I had some pretty good success myself with Aggro Overload Shaman (with no neutral cards, incidentally).
Warlock: I've been much more impressed by Handlock than by Zoo as far as my opponents go. I've played some Midrange Malylock myself; it did great some games and needed work in others, although I'm not sure how much of that was pilot error. It was good enough that I'll keep refining it.
Warrior: Haven't tried it yet myself, but also haven't found it to be quite as scary as people have warned. Not bad though. Mostly pirate-Galakrond seems to be what's going around.
Pyroblast wins me a LOT of games. It definitely stays, even though it looks too slow.
Azerite is fun when it goes off, but it's definitely one I'm considering cutting. But it is another elemental for the Elemental Allies sidequest, which is a small consideration.
People should try this deck out anyway, it's very fun. It's been my main deck since RoS came out.
But at this point, I'd especially like people to help me figure out how to adjust it to DoD. I don't think it will change much; but it would be nice to have a few new cards sprinkled in.
Quest druid looks pretty good and will have a ton of late game value. Will probably work quite well against control warrior, though it's early game is necessarily weak because of the quest. Unlikely to be more than tier 2 because of that.
Mage - Cyclone mage will continue to be powerful. Probably will remain a tier 1 deck, I don't see any big counters to it coming out.
Big spell mage I'm not sure on. Could be playable, probably will end up tier 3 because of a weakness to aggressive strategies.
Freeze Mage will continue to be an alternative to the cyclone mage if you want to do better against slower decks like control warrior. It didn't really get many new tools in this expansion though, but might be able to murge somewhat with the big spell mage so that you're playing big minions and big spells. Probably tier 2 either way.
Hunter - Mech hunter will continue to be around, but with no new cards will likely just be a fair bit weaker. It was already pretty mediocre and just played because it was simple, fast and easy to secure victories against bad players/poorly refined decks at lower ranks. With the expansion it will likely drop down to a tier 3 aggro deck no one wastes their time playing.
Quest Hunter initially looks pretty bad, but there are some pretty good cards printed for the quest and it's actually not as hard for them to summon 20 minions as it might initially seem. The hero power is also pretty insane if you can pair it with charge minions from unleash the hounds, leeroy jenkins, or with tundra rhino. Probably tier 3 but could make it into tier 2.
OTK Priest will be a tier 4 garbage meme deck and nothing more. If it was going to be good, people would already be playing Stormwind Knight + Power Word: Shield x2 + Divine Spirit x2 + Topsy Turvy for the same amount of mana and the same number of cards. It will die to aggro before it can get the combo off, it just hard loses to any sort of deck that has lots of taunts, control warrior will almost always have enough armor to survive it... I just don't see how this deck could possibly be competitively viable.
I can tell you've been listening to Trump ... or at least you make some of the same arguments he makes.
Quest Druid: What's its win condition? That was where I stumbled when theorycrafting it myself; it doesn't seem to have a good one.
Cyclone Mage: Well, there are big counters to it coming out, most prominently Plague of Murlocs. But I share your opinion that the counters won't be common enough to knock Cyclone Mage from Tier 1.
I'm not sure Big Spell Mage and Freeze Mage are different decks anymore. RDU's combination of the two looked pretty strong.
I've also seen the suggestion that Mech Hunter and Quest Hunter get combined into one ... Does adding a Magnetic minion to a minion already on board add to the Quest's counter? Anyone know?
OTK Priest: You made a very interesting argument; I had to think about it for a while. I'm ultimately not persuaded by it, though.
First of all, a combo using 1x Power Word: Shield is innately easier to pull off than a combo with 2x [Hearthstone Card (Power Word Shield) Not Found], because it means you can use one of your Power Word: Shields before the combo turn, which is one of Priest's best sources of card draw.
I think Mecha'thun Rogue will be the strongest new archetype (with Anka, the Buried obviously). With its ability to slaughter Control Warrior it will be the bane of the new meta. If they don't nerf or rotate Divine Spirit, then OTK Priest with Stonetusk Boar and High Priest Amet will be right there next to Mecha'thun Rogue.
Most new archetypes, while fun, won't be able to stand up to Control Warrior and Conjurer Mage -- but they might be able to rush down the combo decks above and therefore have a place in the meta.
Other than combo decks, the best "new" archetypes will be Aggro Shaman, and some variety of Quest Shaman. Aggro (!) Quest Priest, Lackey Zoolock, Freeze Mage, Quest Rogue, and Secrets Mage will be ok too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to try a lot of other decktypes in case I'm wrong -- highlander decks, Heal/2TK Druid, Quest Hunter, Quest Paladin, Deathrattle Rogue, Tempo Taunt-Combo Shaman, Watcher-Lock, Tempo Enrage Warrior, and more. As long as I can get the cards for them.
But I don't really think any highlander decks (in Standard), any sort of Druid or Hunter or Paladin, Reborn Priest, Deathrattle Rogue, Quest Warlock, or Taunt Warrior will really be prevalent in the competitive meta. I may look back on this post and laugh about how wrong I was on some things, but these are my best guesses pre-release.
I agree that Mecha'thun Rogue will be a big player in the meta with Anka. Don't know why it's not being hyped more.
The question is how reliably you can draw Anka, Mecha'thun, and Myra's early. My roommate is talking about having no minions in the deck cheaper than Anka and tutoring him with a Witchwood Piper, and I've also seen the idea that you run Octo-whatever his name is as an alternative source of mass card draw.
Haha thanks, he was the last card I added to the deck. I just needed a 6-drop and thought he had the most potential to solo-win the game of any 6-drop.
Before each expansion, I like to try and theorycraft a deck (that I'm at least a little bit excited for) for each class and share them on the forums. So I'll make this a really long post and just join in this thread instead of making my own.
First up, Demon Hunter!
I decided to fully embrace the Outcast mechanic, and make my deck so cheap that I could almost always get Outcast cards to activate their secondary text. I think DH may just have the aggressive oomph to bring back ye olde style "turn 4" decks.
The latest version of this deck even includes a Wisp. And I'm considering dropping Acidic Swamp Ooze for a second Wisp! But Ooze seems like an ok counter to the Demon Hunter/Rogue meta we'll surely be seeing.
Druid
I focused in on Fungal Fortunes and Imprisoned Satyr, wanting to build a deck with minimal minions and make the minions that I do hit with Imprisoned Satyr really impactful. So, that meant bringing back the Malygos Miracle archetype.
Crystalsong Portal, Dreamway Guardians, and Rising Winds are all decent ways to get early game board presence without having minion cards in the deck. A number of the other cards—Secure the Deck x2, Ironbark, Bogbeam x2—are kinda subpar on their own, but make excellent Gadgetzan Auctioneer fuel.
Hunter
I see a lot of deathrattle potential in this expansion. Pack Tactics, Mok'Nathal Lion, Teron Gorefiend. So I started putting in ok deathrattle minions, and soon realized that I had an aggro Beast build without even trying. So I added a few classic aggro/beast cards, like Kill Commands and one Unleash the Hounds/Timber Wolf pair.
How good is Fresh Scent? I haven't played with it at all since it came out, so this is a non-rhetorical question.
Guardian Augmerchant just seems ridiculous to me, so you'll probably be seeing it in a number of my decks. Any deck where I expect to do a fair amount of trading and the decklist wasn't super crowded.
Mage
Mage is certainly tough to work with this expansion. But the new cards might finally push Secrets Mage into viability in Standard. Probably not, but I'll present my deck here anyway. At least it's budget-friendly, with no legendaries and few epics.
Paladin
I'm a believer in the popular notion of Libram Pure Paladin. That's 14 cards of the deck chosen in two neat packages.
Pure Paladin has a scarcity of 1-drop options and an abundance of 2-drop options. Here's my attempt to limit the number of 2-mana cards anyway.
Priest
I have two ideas for Priest, neither that original. Both kind of boring because they aren't that dependent on AoO cards. One just embraces the new identity of Priest as the midrange minion-trading champion class, and suffers for a lack of win conditions. Here's the other: Galakrond Dragon Priest.
Rogue
Rogue, on the other hand, is probably the class I'm most excited about. And my favorite Rogue deck I've come up with is one that makes the very painful choice to skip the Galakrond and Secrets packages and just focus on killing the enemy very quickly with Stealth synergy. I've tried building Stealth themed decks in the past, but this is the first time they've gotten real support!
Decklist seems pretty self-explanatory to me.
Shaman
For Shaman (my traditional favorite class), this expansion definitely isn't going to be the highlight of its career. But I will try to continue my love of Dragon Quest Shaman.
With my old deck's win condition rotated out, I think I'm going to have to put a Galakrond package in as a win condition. But I didn't have room for a full Galakrond package ... do you think that's ok? It only takes one doubled Corrupt Elementalist to fully upgrade 'Krond.
Wish I could fit more than six dragons, too, for the sakes of Lightning Breath and Frizz Kindleroost.
Warlock
I still want to make Dragon Handlock a thing, even without Mountain Giant. This decklist really came together, after a number of attempts, when I decided to embrace cutting Plague of Flames.
Dropping something for Valdris Felgorge would obviously be more optimal, but I don't want to spend dust on Valdris, so I'm leaving him out for now ...
Going with Trump's theory that Shadow Council isn't a meme card, but rather a way to turn tech cards (primarily Sacrificial Pact) into useful fuel.
Warrior
Confession: I actually kind of like Galakrond Warrior. So I just went with that for my deck here, with only a few new cards that aren't that revolutionary. Warrior's getting decent cards, but I don't think they'll spawn any exciting new archetypes; just enhance archetypes that warrior is already playing.
OK, I know some of you have already seen this deck on this site (it's gotten a little bit of hype, including 5 upvotes and me running into someone in HS who recognized me by the deck I was running and friended me).
But until now, however much fun I was having with the deck, I didn't really consider it worthy of posting on the forums about, because its winrate was only in the 30s or 40s.
That's changed in the past few days. Maybe it's just because it's the end of the month and the tryhards have ranked up above me, but ... whatever the reason, I've played 55 games of the latest version of the deck, and it's gotten a winrate of 63.6%. That's newsworthy IMO.
HSReplay says that the typical winrate for Quest Shamans lately (without Galakrond) is 37.8%, so ... I must be doing something right and different to get the results I'm getting!
I'm excited to improve the deck even more on Tuesday when Sky Gen'ral Kragg comes out!
Druid: I tried Treant Miracle druid, and it was as awful as it sounds. Otherwise, my main impression of druid is that Quest is still good against aggressive decks.
Hunter: Was impressed by a few opponents who pulled off Quest much more effectively than I've ever been able to (not that I've tried again in DoD).
Mage: Haven't given my own mage deck enough of a chance to be worth mentioning. Have faced a LOT of Highlander Dragon Mages though, it seems pretty strong. Not sure why none of them bounce their main dragons though. If I ever build the deck, I'll definitely include Dragon Breeder, maybe even Youthful Brewmaster.
Paladin: Not much impression so far.
Priest: Galakrond build is easier to beat than I expected. That's most of what I've faced, although I did get wiped by someone still playing Combo Priest hitting me with a sudden 18/18 Injured Blademaster. Sigh.
Rogue: Midrange Waxadred Rogue felt awful when I attempted it. I'll need to look up how other people are having more success with Waxadred. Just tempo rogue with weapon removal is serving me decently, though. I've also gotten killed quite a bit by Galakrond Tempo Rogue, although it feels like the real powerhouse there is Faceless Corruptor.
Shaman: I haven't been as impressed with Galakrond Shaman as everyone else. I played it myself (without the Quest) to mediocre effect, and I have a pretty good winrate against it too. The only defeat that really pissed me off had nothing to do with Galakrond; it was just Mogu Fleshshaper > Mutate > Tirion Fordring on turn 3 into Mogu Fleshshaper > Mutate > Princess Talanji on turn 4. That, I'll admit, is pretty broken! I had some pretty good success myself with Aggro Overload Shaman (with no neutral cards, incidentally).
Warlock: I've been much more impressed by Handlock than by Zoo as far as my opponents go. I've played some Midrange Malylock myself; it did great some games and needed work in others, although I'm not sure how much of that was pilot error. It was good enough that I'll keep refining it.
Warrior: Haven't tried it yet myself, but also haven't found it to be quite as scary as people have warned. Not bad though. Mostly pirate-Galakrond seems to be what's going around.
Deckbuilding mistake: not including Faceless Corruptor in your list.
I'm kidding; I haven't even played the guy yet myself. But it really is the Corridor Crawler of the set.
Pyroblast wins me a LOT of games. It definitely stays, even though it looks too slow.
Azerite is fun when it goes off, but it's definitely one I'm considering cutting. But it is another elemental for the Elemental Allies sidequest, which is a small consideration.
People should try this deck out anyway, it's very fun. It's been my main deck since RoS came out.
But at this point, I'd especially like people to help me figure out how to adjust it to DoD. I don't think it will change much; but it would be nice to have a few new cards sprinkled in.
Specifically, I'm trying to figure out what to cut in order to fit two Violet Spellwings in. And then I might cut an Arcane Intellect in favor of an Elemental Allies -- crazy, you say? Maybe.
Heck yeah, Malylock is back, baby!
I can tell you've been listening to Trump ... or at least you make some of the same arguments he makes.
Quest Druid: What's its win condition? That was where I stumbled when theorycrafting it myself; it doesn't seem to have a good one.
Cyclone Mage: Well, there are big counters to it coming out, most prominently Plague of Murlocs. But I share your opinion that the counters won't be common enough to knock Cyclone Mage from Tier 1.
I'm not sure Big Spell Mage and Freeze Mage are different decks anymore. RDU's combination of the two looked pretty strong.
I've also seen the suggestion that Mech Hunter and Quest Hunter get combined into one ... Does adding a Magnetic minion to a minion already on board add to the Quest's counter? Anyone know?
OTK Priest: You made a very interesting argument; I had to think about it for a while. I'm ultimately not persuaded by it, though.
First of all, a combo using 1x Power Word: Shield is innately easier to pull off than a combo with 2x [Hearthstone Card (Power Word Shield) Not Found], because it means you can use one of your Power Word: Shields before the combo turn, which is one of Priest's best sources of card draw.
Second, why not run High Priest Amet + Stonetusk Boar and Stormwind Knight, for redundancy in drawing your combo?
I think Mecha'thun Rogue will be the strongest new archetype (with Anka, the Buried obviously). With its ability to slaughter Control Warrior it will be the bane of the new meta. If they don't nerf or rotate Divine Spirit, then OTK Priest with Stonetusk Boar and High Priest Amet will be right there next to Mecha'thun Rogue.
Most new archetypes, while fun, won't be able to stand up to Control Warrior and Conjurer Mage -- but they might be able to rush down the combo decks above and therefore have a place in the meta.
Other than combo decks, the best "new" archetypes will be Aggro Shaman, and some variety of Quest Shaman. Aggro (!) Quest Priest, Lackey Zoolock, Freeze Mage, Quest Rogue, and Secrets Mage will be ok too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to try a lot of other decktypes in case I'm wrong -- highlander decks, Heal/2TK Druid, Quest Hunter, Quest Paladin, Deathrattle Rogue, Tempo Taunt-Combo Shaman, Watcher-Lock, Tempo Enrage Warrior, and more. As long as I can get the cards for them.
But I don't really think any highlander decks (in Standard), any sort of Druid or Hunter or Paladin, Reborn Priest, Deathrattle Rogue, Quest Warlock, or Taunt Warrior will really be prevalent in the competitive meta. I may look back on this post and laugh about how wrong I was on some things, but these are my best guesses pre-release.
Raid the Sky Temple is the only one I don't at least have interesting ideas for. Some of the others might be weaker, but I'd still like to try them.
Definitely crafting Corrupt the Waters if I don't open it.
Your version is not only missing Myra's, it has Raiding Party with nothing for Raiding Party to draw.
I agree that Mecha'thun Rogue will be a big player in the meta with Anka. Don't know why it's not being hyped more.
The question is how reliably you can draw Anka, Mecha'thun, and Myra's early. My roommate is talking about having no minions in the deck cheaper than Anka and tutoring him with a Witchwood Piper, and I've also seen the idea that you run Octo-whatever his name is as an alternative source of mass card draw.
Haha thanks, he was the last card I added to the deck. I just needed a 6-drop and thought he had the most potential to solo-win the game of any 6-drop.
I imagine it will, since it's based on the Hearthstone A.I., and missing lethal is the one mistake I've never seen the A.I. make.
Run this with two Shieldbreakers to take care of your opponent's Reborn Taunts.
Just saw your comment. How did this deck treat you?