Lurker > metroid composite

https://twitter.com/AlecoGereco/status/1537471504560009216

Twitter thread of one of the developers on the nerfs.

General consensus I'm seeing from streamers is that warrior got hit too hard.

The patch notes do say "We dont want or expect these decks to disappear entirely after the changes" about control warrior and charge warrior. But so far players seem pretty skeptical.

LiquidOshawott posted...

I mean Revenant was still pretty overtuned

its basically a guaranteed good Cenarion Ward in a class that utilizes armor greatly

I'm...really not convinced it was overtuned.

The comparison that jumps to mind for me with Revenant is Ultimate Infestation, and like...okay, it's a little cheaper, and has a bit more health and armour, but doesn't draw 5 cards. So I feel like Ultimate Infestation is tuned quite a bit stronger than Revenant was.

Or if you want to compare it to an 8 drop you could compare it to Coilfang Warlord, which is a 9/5 rush that deathrattles into a 5/9 taunt. Has some of the same ideas (deal some damage, and then keep your hero safe). Has never been a particularly good card.

The comparison to Cenarion Ward...thing is Cenarion Ward was only really good if you doubled it with solar eclipse. Now, granted, you CAN double up on Revenant too with Brann--the Brann synergy is part of what makes Revenant good right now, but that requires discounting Brann or Revenant with From the Depths.

Drawn winrates also seem to be suggesting it's a solid card, but...not crazy strong or anything--glancing on HSReplay it's typically about the same drawn winrate as Alextraza the Life Binder and Shield Block. (Alextraza and Shield Block are very solid cards, don't get me wrong, but they're not cards I'd expect to get nerfed).

And I would expect these numbers to drop a little with the other cards getting nerfed; a From the Depths nerf makes it harder and slower to Brann+Revenant. A big reason to run Revenant was to help get 10 armour for Shield Shatter, but Shield Shatter got nerfed so that play is a bit weaker too.

LiquidOshawott posted...

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23817872/

hm maybe I am pulled back in

I'm genuinely surprised that they nerfed 13 cards in one patch, I think that's a record? A bunch of those are adventure cards too (like smite), so people are guaranteed to have them. Just a fountain of dust for people.

I feel like not all of those nerfs were necessary, either (Tidal Revenant was not in every control warrior, and people only play it because it has good synergy with From the Depths and Shield Shatter, and both the cards it has synergy with are getting nerfed, so it very well might have dropped off without getting its own numbers changed).

Hotfix for most of the major bugs

https://twitter.com/hsdecktech/status/1532509501919621120

UltimaterializerX posted...

The shop sure doesnt have any bugs though, does it? In fact, in no game since Activision took Blizzard over has any shop had a single glitch. Look it up.

I mean, not specifically the shop, but duplicate protection failing to work on Multi-strike and Dragonbane Shot after people dusted them is certainly an economy based bug.

Some people on reddit were saying there was a time window when it just wasn't working at all, and a couple people opened like 30 packs for the guaranteed dust. But even setting those people asside, even people who didn't even realize a bug was happening (I didn't know it was a bug till I went on reddit) got themselves a decent chunk more dust than was intended.

So...apparently there's two major bugs right now:

Bioluminescence is bugged to be +2 spell damage.

Snapdragon is bugged to give permanent attack to all cards with battlecries, including hero cards, so people have a permanent 1 or 2 attack.

Book of heroes was also a mess for me. Claimed I had already cleared Faelin's book of heroes. Spreading Madness just hit the same target with every hit, instead of random. The final fight bugged out and failed to advance phases on me. And then the next time it advanced all the way till the final phase, there was this whole cutscene of "use the amulet to win" and then the boss made me discard the amulet before I even read what it does. But I won anyway cause I had a big board so....

I know people complaining about hearthstone bugs is basically a meme at this point, but genuinely I don't think I've ever seen it this bad. (From what I understand the QA team went on strike, and faced a lot of union-busting measures from the executive suite).

If you logged in and got your monthly rewards, apparently there's a bug where duplicate protection will forget you already disenchanted Multi-Strike and Dragonbane Shot and give you those two cards again:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/v2dpqh/multistrike_and_dragonbane_shot_from_monthly_chest/

The nerf window is still up so you can disenchant them for full dust.

(Note that you could also get them from packs, I got 1x Mutli-Strike and 2x Dragonbane Shot, so I guess I must have opened a Multi-strike from a tavern brawl pack or something).

Started wondering about skipping the mini-set this time and just getting the commons and rares from packs. So I ran some math and...

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/v1jkj0/the_is_it_worthit_to_buy_the_miniset_math_iceberg/

lol, nope, I should definitely still buy the mini-set. And so should...almost everyone I think?

It's just inherently better priced than packs. Not by a ton, but by enough that it's a better deal for the vast majority of playstyles.

General opinion of the mini-set so far:

Shaman got some monster cards. I was initially thinking the murlocs would probably bypass standard and go straight to wild, but the pro stream review was like...yeah, the clownfish murloc is busted and getting nerfed, bolner into clownfish into gorlock ravager just lets you draw and play every murloc in your deck. The spell that's just faceless manipulator for 5 overload 1 is pretty good too, and notably is by far the best Nature spell right now to cast with Wrathspine Enchanter, so maybe that becomes a deck.

All of the non-shaman class cards...hmm...mostly stuff that I'm not sure will find a home right now, but could be relevant later (stuff like cards that require casting a specific spell school that the current versions of the archetype don't want to run).

Reveals starting for the mini-set.

Neptulon the Tidehunter (10 mana colossal elemental--looks very similar to Raid Boss Onyxia including the rush and immune while attacking).

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/uz3zzy/new_card_revealed_neptulon_the_tidehunter/

Ozumat (8 mana colossal beast. It has a deathrattle that can wipe the enemy board if its tentacles are still alive; really looks like you'll need some synergy to activate the deathrattle before you choose to run this card):

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/uz4b8t/new_card_revealed_ozumat/

Neutral 1 mana 2/4 elemental with "after this minion takes exactly 1 damage, destroy it"

Neutral 4 mana 5/4 beast with "look at 3 cards in your opponent's hand and choose one; it can't be played next turn".

Neutral 3 mana 3/3 beast with "battlecry: give all battlecry minions in your deck +1/+1"

New VS report out:

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-231/

Tier 1 includes:

Holy Paladin
Mech Paladin
Control Warrior
Burn Shaman
Naga Priest

The big surprises to me, from watching high legend streams, are Burn Shaman and Holy Paladin--not a lot of those were showing up in high legend. I knew Shaman was fine cause I saw McBanterface use it in part of his tournament lineup, but I didn't think it was tier 1 at top legend level of "fine".

Thief Rogue not being tier 1 is...not too surprising TBH. Naga Mage not being tier 1 is a little more surprising to me, but the report clarifies that it looked tier 1 for the first day or two after the balance changes before the meta adapted, so OK fair enough.

I guess I'm a little surprised by Naga Priest being tier 1. Knew the deck was pretty good, saw several streamers trying it out, but I didn't think it was that good.

A bunch of the buffed decks (curse warlock, big best hunter, murloc warlock) are playable tier 3 at high legend, but very good at lower ranks. (Also apparently quest warrior is back and exhibits pretty similar overall winrates to those at most ranks).

Couple interesting tidbits from the VS podcast:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/uvrqg7/summary_of_the_5222022_vicious_syndicate_podcast/

"ZachO says that (shockingly) most Demon Hunters on ladder are still running Drek'Thar. Drek'Thar is still a top 5 card performance wise in those lists, but it's no longer worth the deck building cost to run it."

Sort of what I guessed, but interesting to see it confirmed; if you didn't have any 4+ cost minions you wanted to run anyway, Drek'thar is probably still worth running. This is mostly relevant for wild (there aren't really standard decks that can sensibly cut all their 4+ drops).

Also, in terms of overall balance, they had this to say:

"right now the new meta looks very balanced on the surface. ZachO thinks that post refinement there will be a lot of Tier 2 decks with very little to no Tier 1 decks, as no deck right now looks dominant. [...] Every class other than Demon Hunter looks like it has at least one viable deck, and Demon Hunter may still be good once it's refined for the postpatch nerfs."

Which...kind of matches my impression. I was having trouble really pinning this meta down. Like...if I had to guess the best deck at high levels, maybe Naga mage? But there's so much skill ceiling on that deck, so realistically at my MMR I'm not likely to run into someone who plays that deck close to optimally.

Mmm...as far as Gnoll goes, obviously it's quite good now, but my opinion varies significantly depending on what rogue decks actually end up being good when the meta settles.

If it's something like pre-rotation weapon rogue with garotte...yeah, that's terrible. Fortunately that deck is super dead (lost cloak of shadows, lost most of its card draw) so there's almost no risk of that deck coming back any time soon.

If it's thief rogue...if that deck is really the tier 1 best rogue deck and the meta has few or limited answers to it...eh, I guess nerfing gnoll again would be sensible.

If the best rogue deck turns out to be the deck JAlexander was playing, a.k.a. pirate rogue with a small thief package that still plays 1 drop pirates on turn 1, meaning Gnolls only get discounted to 4 mana from Maestra (and maybe 3 with Tooth of Nefarian) then LOL no: Gnolls are fine.

---

It's really hard to guess the meta at this point, but my guess would be that the JAlexander deck that's mostly aggro pirate warrior that doesn't discount gnoll much might actually be the best build of rogue. IDK, this might just be my wild player bias creeping in, I might be reading standard the wrong way, but playing 1 drops on turn 1 just sounds like a significant tempo advantage over trading tradeables and playing nothing for the first couple turns.

LOL heard in a wild podcast:

"I think you can play any class in wild now, except warrior."

RIP pirate warrior.

I mean, it's definitely more in line with the rest of the game at 2 mana than it was at 3 mana.

That said...I play darkbomb in wild; 2 mana deal 3 damage that can go face is a card I'm willing to put in decks with zero bonus.

Granted there are other 2 mana deal 3 cards with a small bonus, but I think Tooth has the best bonus among those cards now.

I think it's better than quickshot. Easier to trigger condition.

I think it's better than Frostbite. Same condition (honourable kill), but discover a card is probably slightly better than +2 cost on their next spell even ignoring possible synergies. (And it's definitely better if you're running thief payoff cards like gnolls and double agents).

LiquidOshawott posted...

I feel like Thief Rogue got massive buffs with the Wildpaw revert so it could honestly go toe to toe with Paladin/Warrior, especially if it runs Scabbs or Hooktusk

A lot of streamers are running thief rogue right now and saying it is quite good, yeah.

Not just gnoll, 2 mana Tooth of Nefarian is just...very good. I saw someone predict tooth of nefarian to 2 and I remember saying I thought that might be just too strong, that it would just go in every rogue deck. Card's...really strong from everything I've seen so far.

Might need to be changed to not go face or something.

Interestingly, Languagehacker on seeing the nerf announcement didn't feel that the missing nerf was to warrior or paladin, but rather druid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3AbtoYkf80

Side note, I'm surprised I haven't seen much discussion of Xhilag post-buffs.

Like...yeah, it was a joke before the buffs, but going from 4 damage to 8 damage is a pretty substantial increase. Priestess of Fury was 6 random damage at the end of your turn, to compare to another 7 drop.

skullbone posted...

Also the cube bluffing is a really cool dynamic.

It's a cool dynamic, but also...sounds like a gameplay mechanic that's not for me personally.

As someone who plays probably more than half of her hearthstone games in casual, cause I often don't feel like playing for points, making ladder matches cost even more points is not really a direction I'm excited about.

Brode has a professional-tier announcer voice.

Like...the only people I can think of with better announcer voices announce stuff for a living. And even then I can think of plenty of professional e-sports casters with worse voices.

UltimaterializerX posted...

It's why I'm shocked they actually killed Drekthar.

Drek'thar's nerf is way smaller than the nerf you're suggesting to Smite.

Wild players are already discussing if Drek'thar is worth keeping in Spirit of the Frog Shaman post-nerf. Drek'thar was hit pretty hard, but it still has some of the same functionality--4 mana 4/4 that tutors a card from your deck and puts it into play.

Drek'thar's going to be pretty niche now, but it's still a card that some decks will consider.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Smite needs a battlecry that reads cannot attack heroes this turn along with giving pirates rush instead of charge.

Nobody would play that, lol.

Don't get me wrong--Smite in its current form? Good card. Wouldn't blink if it got a small nerf at some point. But taking away charge from both smite AND smite's aura is...a lot.

Why would anybody pay 6 mana for animated broomstick?

(Now, if you wanted to sell me on a rush based Smite, maybe you could do so with "Battlecry: for the rest of the game your pirates have rush"--that would be kinda like the hero card Dr Boom Mad Genius with mechs. Probably wouldn't be very good, but at least it's a card I'd have some interest in trying).

UltimaterializerX posted...

Curse Warlock has no chance.

I could legit just see the two buffed curse cards being slotted into an aggro deck. 3 mana 3/4 deal 2 damage to the enemy hero is a playable aggro card. 3 mana 3/4 deal 4 damage to the enemy hero is a great aggro card.

I don't think the version of curse warlock with Runed Mithril Rod and lots of card draw to set up an OTK with curses is going to be very good, though, no.

UltimaterializerX posted...

I cannot *believe* warrior and paladin saw no nerfs.

From the Depths+Finley is a stupid combo, I think that's my main objection to warrior right now (despite neither of those cards being individually unreasonable). I don't object to there being a solid control deck that can beat aggro, but said deck shouldn't be able to highroll into an OTK on turn 5-6.

Paladin...nothing super jumps out as a problem in Paladin, except Cariel. I kind-of expect Cariel to be nerfed at some point, but at least you can tech weapon destruction against her.

Patch notes for today with 3 nerfs and 18 buffs.

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/news/23797162

Drek'thar nerfed into the ground (anyone who bought diamond drek'thar gets 3000 gold refund and keeps diamond Drek'thar).

Multi-strike goes to 2 mana

Dragonbane Shot goes to 3 mana

---

Buffs...18 cards have been buffed. Archetypes buffed:

Curse Warlock

Murloc Warlock

Thief Rogue

SI:7 Rogue

four random priest cards

Big beast hunter

Xhilag

Not_an_Owl posted...

Congrats! UWU gets a bad rap as the easiest of the Ultimates but it's still a significant accomplishment. My very first Ultimate weapon was the UWU axe and it holds a special place in my heart because of it.

Honestly, on release there's a case that UWU was pretty similar difficulty to TEA on its release. TEA has the harder early phases, but UWU arguably has the harder late phases.

Being a level 70 instance instead of level 80 instance means it has been subject to whatever scaling is going on at level 70 right now, though. (I don't actually think I've run UWU since Endwalker, so I'm not sure how it looks after the stat squish).

LiquidOshawott posted...

regular amalgams are coming back though, at tier 3 this time

Tier 3 is a big step down. As a tier 2, 3/4 was often the most stats you could put on the board, and then just happened to scale really well into the lategame.

Now it's going to be weak initially, but a good long-term investment.

And also: not every game will have both mechs and murlocs, since tribes rotate out each game.

And also: Toxfin and gentle megasaur are gone. If you want to give Nightmare Amalgam poisonous, you need to use SI:Selfin, and trigger Avenge (4) while both the Amalgam and SI:Selfin are still alive, and you might have to do this twice since the Selfin can give itself poisonous. And you might need to hold off on using Annoy-o-module on your amalgam, cause that also gives taunt, which is going to make it hard to trigger Avenge (4) while the Amalgam is still alive. So you'll potentially be sitting there with an Annoy-o-module and not using it for a few turns.

On the flip side, you will be able to give it reborn cause it's a beast--that's new, that wasn't a thing the last time Nightmare Amalgam was around. I'm guessing it just reborns as a 3/1 without any keywords, so I'm not sure this accomplishes anything.

Camden posted...

Played Battlegrounds for the first time since maybe a year ago, and holy hell is everything different. I don't think I saw a single minion I recognized until about four turns in, there's a damage cap though I don't know if it scales or just goes away, starting armor, hero specific minions. The days of sitting there with 30 seconds remaining after doing what you need to do, waiting for the combat to start, were gone for me as I was just trying to figure out what everything was and/or did.

That's pretty much me with battlegrounds. When it was new I was like "hey new game mode" and spent time learning the strategy, got good enough, but didn't play for a few months, and now I usually don't even know what's going on anymore.

Not that the game mode fundamentally changed or anything--even when it launched you needed to memorize cards and know what kind of cards you were going for, know what cards to build around, and that if you found a card you should shift your entire gameplan around it. (Cobalt Guardian was one of those cards when I was learning).

They just introduced new cards, and buffed and nerfed various cards, so you basically need to re-learn the whole strategy of picking cards, even if you had a sense of strategy six months ago.

Feels a lot more unforgiving than constructed, where you can copy a decklist online, and then just remember general principles about when to trade your minions and stuff and you'll probably do fine. It's like...constructed if you were not allowed to net deck or use the auto-complete feature. And also had 90 seconds to build your deck.

When I said "the conversation" I meant the conversation in this topic, which I believe started on wild wild with my post here:

metroid composite posted...

Depends what kind of deck you like, but there's definitely uses for Lokholar. Probably more of them in wild than in standard right now. (Reno paladin uses it; you can throw it into stuff like even warlock).

And continued on wild with the next post

Camden posted...

I like Reno decks, but after not playing for so long I just don't have the collection to build one that doesn't seem incredibly underpowered. I could definitely build wild ones but every time I play wild it feels like I get to silver and then it's just me getting meta-murdered over and over.

Like...maybe the conversation got changed to standard at some point? But we were talking about wild initially.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Reno Paladin was like, tier 5 when Zach last mentioned it.

I believe the conversation was about wild to be fair, where Reno paladin is actually pretty solid (tier 2 the last time there was a VS report).

Camden posted...

Not that I'm likely going to use it but at least I have it?

Depends what kind of deck you like, but there's definitely uses for Lokholar. Probably more of them in wild than in standard right now. (Reno paladin uses it; you can throw it into stuff like even warlock).

UltimaterializerX posted...

Control warrior is about to be laughably broken.

Looking at the VS matchup chart, it's got...

A 20% winrate into quest warrior, so quest warriors going away is going to help it a lot obviously.

A 30% winrate into ramp druid, so that going away is also going to help.

A 30% winrate into mech paladin. I'm surprised the matchup is 30% bad. Maybe Radar Detector is just too much card advantage, or bubble bot is too good against warrior clears? But warrior does have brawl, so IDK exactly what's going on here.

A 40% winrate into various control paladins (holy paladin, reno paladin). That sounds like it might be an issue. It came up on reddit that in China control paladin manged to be tier 1 at high legend already before the nerfs, and it's also a deck held down by pirate warrior and ramp druid.

43% winrate into pirate rogue. 4/3 weapon go Brrrrr I guess. Also Hooktusk might actually matter in this matchup.

47% into quest hunter. Quest hunter is a deck VS flagged as potentially really good assuming people stop playing druid.

Some 45% matchups against a few priest decks. (Quest priest, 4 mana 7/7 priest).

I mean, yeah, looks like it's going to have a nice matchup spread overall, the two worst matchups are being nerfed, but IDK about "laughably broken". Looks like there'll be a number of decks that beat it, ranging from control decks with 60-40s or 55-45s to a few aggro decks that do alright against it.

LiquidOshawott posted...

Kaelthas got changed back to 1 mana
Switcheroo banned

Both more or less expected.

Kael'thas, obviously.

Switcheroo priest in wild is already a divine spirit inner fire deck, so with the change they made to Switcheroo in standard (only swapping health) it would still leave wild in a state of relative chaos with turn 4 OTKs. Slightly less reliable, but would still make for a lot of non-games.

A lot of wild players who want to use Switcheroo just as a draw 2 minions card draw in priest are going to be a little sad--and yeah, I guess I am a little disappointed they didn't find a nerf that worked for both formats. But their focus is on standard, so I understand just making a standard-focused balance change and banning for wild.

LiquidOshawott posted...

Pirate Quest is 3/3/3

Guess I need to decide if I'm disenchanting again. Crafted this damn card twice now, lol.

LiquidOshawott posted...

Pufferfist is 3/3

Yeah, good change. The drawn winrate stats on Pufferfist look as good as Defias Cannoneer in pirate warrior. Relevant tribe for pirate rogue too. It's being run in stuff like Naga DH, where it's actually better drawn winrate than any of the Nagas in the deck. Pretty sure even with the nerfs this still probably goes into those decks--it's justifyiable as an aggressive card cause it deals face damage, and the 1 damage board clear is big in aggro mirrors.

LiquidOshawott posted...

Miracle Growth is 8 mana

This card being 7 mana was always bit weird to me. Warlock had a 6 mana card, abyssal summoner, summon a demon with taunt and stats equal to your hand size. Adding draw 3 to that only adds a single mana?

LiquidOshawott posted...

Kaz requires 4 dragons to activate

This one has me dreaming up possibilities, cause it's not strictly a nerf, now you can run Kaz in a deck that has a mix of creatures. If you've got enough amalgams in your deck, you could even run Kaz in decks you might not expect like a pirate tribal decks (amaglams counting as both a pirate and a dragon).

I think the biggest class that picks up Kaz now is paladin, cause 2 bronze explorers (which I've certainly seen people run) is enough to activate Kaz now.

Apparently standard packs are now going to be the norm for tavern brawls moving forward:

https://twitter.com/themattlondon/status/1516867947943235584

(Used to be previous year packs, like year of the phoenix packs or whatever).

Meanwhile, VS report is out.

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-228/

Druid and aggro DH being on top is not a surprise. Quest Warrior and mech mage being in tier 2 (with quest warrior being the best outside of top legend) is also not a surprise, but the rest of tier 2 I wasn't fully expecting. Pirate rogue, quest hunter, and face hunter. I've seen a little pirate rogue, but I wouldn't have guessed that it was nearly as good as quest warrior when piloted well. And I've seen almost no hunter all expansion, so hunter having two decks rounding out tier 2 is a bit of a surprise to me.

I've finally found a place where hooktusk feels ok.

Wild Reno Rogue.

I mean, probably not against the current meta boogeymen, but I've beaten two different combo-ish warlocks with it (one was mech'a'thun warlock, one was curse of agony). Like these are real decks (well...mech'a'thun warlock much more than curse of agony warlock), and I can say with relative confidence that stealing 5 cards out of their deck probably won me the game.

The added defence and flexibility of cards like Reno and Zephrys frees up hooktusk to go for their cards. (And combine that with the fact that decks like Mech'a'thun warlock aren't threatening you with large boards).

Funnily enough I still ended up using one mind control in these matchups--stole 5 cards out of the opponent's deck, then shadowstepped hooktusk. One of the cards I stole was dirty rat, which popped out Mech'a'thun, who hooktusk then mind controlled.

In my continuing escapades of trying to make hooktusk be meaningful, I played in casual against some kind of a token druid, ok, didn't die, have hooktusk in hand, have played enough pirates to make her relevant but...then I generated Gigafin, and it was just better when I got to turn 8. "I'll hooktusk on turn 9" I told myself.

My opponent conceded.

So...one of the cards I opened was Hooktusk, so I went ahead and made a pirate rogue. Except...I don't have Azsharan Vessel so I quickly tossed in some replacement cards for that.

What I didn't realize is that because I don't have vessel I needed to replace like...five cards. Prep is only in the deck to enable Azsharan Vessel. Gone Fishin is only in the deck to draw sunken vessel (and even in a deck with Vessel is one of the lowest drawn winrate cards in the deck so it really needs to be replaced).

Once I made all these replacements I did get a win where I played hooktusk, although ended up stealing a minion cause I was under too much pressure to do anything else (11/11 snowfall guardian that would have killed me). Definitely had a few other games where I just didn't have a high enough pirate count on turn 8 and just ended up sitting on hooktusk.

I guess I probably need vessel to get full value out of hooktusk, but...even with vessel...I'm looking at her drawn winrate stats on HSReplay and she has the lowest drawn winrate in the deck. Which...isn't too surprising--I didn't expect her to be a new Tickatus, because warlock has stuff like "board clears" and "healing" to support a lategame value card. Rogue if they haven't won by turn 8 is often dead to the opponent on turn 8. But now that the stats are in front of me...oof, I'm wondering if it's just correct to cut her from pirate rogue.

Maybe she's an anti-control tech card for that deck? Same way face hunter used to run Deathstalker Rexxar even though it was a dead card in a lot of matchups. But like...I feel like you could just run Amalgam of the Deep, and discover Hooktusk in matchups where she's relevant, instead of actually putting her in your deck.

LiquidOshawott posted...

Think Naga Mage beats it right now.

I haven't played a ton of ladder games against naga mage with pirate warrior, but the one game I did play, I won.

They had a scary popoff turn where they swung their board in their direction, and I was taking damage for a turn or two, but I just played as defensively as I could and then out-valued them in a long game.

Entirely possible my opponent was playing a sub-optimal build, though.

UltimaterializerX posted...

The game will eventually revolve around Smothering Starfish. That card is sooooo broken.

I have 2 in pirate warrior and its every bit as dumb as youd think.

To be fair, quest warrior generally is looking close to S-tier in standard right now, so it might not be smothering starfish that's carrying the deck; like...warrior has a 56.4% winrate in standard legend at the moment.

Which...as someone who plays wild as her primary format, I...kind of expected pirate warrior to get way stronger in standard with the new pirates. Wild pirate warrior was famously busted for months, while standard pirate warrior was famously a pretty weak deck, but basically the only substantial difference between standard pirate warrior and wild pirate warrior, is that wild has a lot of 1 drop pirates so can complete the quest really fast, whereas the average cost of pirates in standard was something like 2.8 mana before the new set. This new set added 3 new 2-drop pirates, and a premium 3 drop pirate, which...drops the average cost of standard pirates run in the deck to 2.3 mana, which is a really big deal, speeds up the quest by about a turn.

I can't take full credit for predicting everything about standard pirate warrior, granted--I didn't realize how good Pufferfist was going to be. (Drawn winrates on pufferfist are similar to Defias Cannoneer, and way higher than southsea captain and stormwind freebooter and cargo guard to compare it to the other 3-drops). I thought Pufferfist was going to be "just okay", not like "best 3-drop in the deck" so...whoops, predicted that one wrong.

But yeah, anyway, standard pirate warrior good deck right now.

(Meanwhile, wild is spending some time in combo hell, so I guess I'll be playing some standard till the first balance patch).

Lord Ephraim posted...

There was that time between 1992 and before Donkey Kong Country and Super Metroid where Genesis was the better system.

Worth noting the Sega Genesis came out in 1989, and the SNES came out in 1991, so two extra years of building up a game library.

Like, there was absolutely a time around 1991-1992 when I felt the NES just had the superior library to the SNES too, just because it had years to build up its library. (SMB3 was largely seen as better than Mario World at the time, and very few people really cared about other launch SNES stuff like the original F-Zero or Pilotwings which were mostly seen as tech demos, and not that fun).

So apparently the spell pool being small has the potential to break Pandaren Importer.

From the theorycraft streams:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/tylpsh/new_otk_from_theorycrafting_stream/

If you put one copy of all but 3 rogue spells in your deck, you can guarantee discovering shadowstep off of Pandaren Importer. Combo this with Brann Bronzebeard and a battlecry that does damage.

Pretty underwhelmed/disappointed by the wild reverts this year.

Last year was the year they were super bold with wild un-nerfs. Undertaker, Leper Gnome, arcane Golem, Caverns Below!!!!

This year they are...mostly super timid (except Kael'thas for some reason, wtf???? What wild player even wanted Kael'thas back????)

Not a single old card on the list, no 5 mana giggling inventor, no 5 mana possessed lackey, no 5 mana Level Up--none of these cards are even likely to be relevant in the wild meta, but apparently they are too powerful to be reverted?

People were hyped about this year's un-nerf, because they thought it would make DH relevant in wild, people were predicting stuff like 5 mana Skull of Gul'dan. DH got close to zero important reverts for wild this year. (Death's bite is probably the most impactful one).

They reverted the nerf on Blackjack Stunner, but didn't revert the nerf on Shadowjewler Hanar? Are they really that scared of wild secret rogue, LOL?

Various other cards that didn't get reverted which are...I mean, I definitely understand not reverting some of these, but I thought some of them were at least candidates, and a lot of them aren't being used in any particularly good deck in wild right now (Hand of A'dal, First Day of School, Nitroboost Poison, partial revert on Hysteria to 3 mana, partial revert on darkglare to 2 mana).

Most impactful revert (other than Kael'thas) is Crabrider. Second most impactful...Polkelt, probably. Third most impactful...I don't even know, like...possibly something like Boggspine Knuckles, lol.

Just...wow, what a super low-impact nerf revert year. Very cautious reverts, most of these. (Except Kael'thas which I'm not excited about for completely different reasons).

Opened the Xyrella hero card, did the thing I usually do when I get a new build-around legendary and played several games with it in casual.

Lost every game.

(Opponents were ping mage with double mass polymorph to deny me deathrattles who got their hero power up to 9 damage and then used it 3x in one turn, mozaki mage who dodged mutanis, OwlTK warlock who dodged mutanis, and a Rally priest. The rally priest game was kinda close I guess?)

Best internet april fools I've seen in a while, TBH.

skullbone posted...

Those were really good but am I crazy or does Taunt Taunt actually sound like an okay mechanic.

Yeah, it'd be a perfectly functional mechanic.

That one, like a lot of these, is a reference to an old meme. Someone on reddit did machine learning try to learn how to write hearthstone cards, and one of the frequently referenced cards from that had the text "Taunt. Taunt. Taunt. Taunt. Taunt."

Honestly, I'm impressed by how well they know their hearthstone memes. Like...there's references on there that I didn't even recognize, like the battlegrounds battlemaster one. Apparently hunterace when he was reviewing cards saw that card and said "this is literally Loatheb, you play it and you win the game."

The neutral silence all minions card is presumably aimed at snowfall guardian--silence the freeze on your own minions, while shrinking the snowfall guardian.

This is generally good for minion based decks--playing minions is really bad into snowfall guardian and this card helps a lot.

Radar Detector is potentially very good draw card for mech paladin:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/tktglg/new_paladin_epic_radar_detector/

Mech handbuff paladin used to be good in wild, genuinely wanting a big hand to handbuff and discount with stuff like mechwarper, it hasn't been good for a while, but maybe this card brings it back?

Standard...really depends how many paladin mechs there are--looks like the paladin colossal is probably a mech, and there's a 2-drop mech revealed, but that's...three cards in the deck.

New amalgam looks pretty good in any heavily tribal deck:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/thtrgl/new_card_revealed_amalgam_of_the_deep/

I'm pretty annoyed that it's epic, though. I thought when circus amalgam came out that they had learned that amalgams at common were a good thing to help all the off-meta tribal decks people didn't necessarily want to spend dust on.

FFDragon posted...

I'm actually kinda mad that they keep pumping resources into Mercenaries.

It was a flop. Abandon it.

From what I've heard, it was targeted at the Asian market, and might have been successful in Asia?

Though yeah, I agree that it's annoying they keep giving people incentives to play the mode (having dailies that are obviously meant to be completed in mercs, having quests to play mercs, etc).

Like...there's more quests pointing people towards mercs than battlegrounds, which is really weird to me.

skullbone posted...

Just ran into a mage playing literal FLIGHTMASTER DUNGAR to tech against aggro. How are people playing these decks that auto lose to Druids in this current meta?

Is Flightmaster strictly anti-aggro? Like...sure, against aggro you can choose 10 healing, but 12 damage is also an option on the card, as is "awaken in one turn and get a 2/2 adventurer" although I've literally never seen anyone pick the 2/2. 12 damage though? Maybe?

(Not a card I've ever played, granted, despite getting it for free, so I have no sense of how effective that would be).

The hunter version of Vandarr seems interesting, cause it can go over the top of other Vanndar decks but requires some specific deck construction.

Beastmaster Leoroxx on 5 (immediately after Vanndar) to dump a bunch of beasts into play from hand. Wing Commander Ichman on 6 to pull a bunch of beasts out of the deck.

Need to cut a lot of 8s and 9s to guarantee these two cards, but they are substantially better than what other classes can do on turn 5/6.

Not sure what they typically do later in the curve. 7 could be Raid Boss Onyxia, 8 could be guardian animals or Jewel of N'Zoth? (Jewel can revive Mountain Bears, Humongous Owls, Teacher's Pet, I guess maybe Rat King or Imported Tarantula though I've yet to see those two).