Board 8 > Hearthstone Topic - C-C-C-COMBO META

(+) Yeah! (+)

I have to keep remembering to do my quests every 3 days. Hopefully this mini-set really shakes things up (seriously doubt it will though based on previous mini-sets) because game is stale AF right now.

---

Pretty quick climb this meta, this time I used Quest Hunter to hit legend

Im in the top 500! Maybe I shoot for something decent ranked, or maybe I just chill til deadmines or whatever the miniset is

---

So uh, is anyone gonna try Mercenaries

---

I played it for about an hour today and honestly it's not too bad. It's a very chill mode and it'll really appeal to you if you like to see numbers going up.

That being said I'm not sure how long it'll hold attention but it's fun so far.

---

I don't even know what Mercenaries is. I'm aware of its existence, but I've made zero effort to learn about it.

---

The closest comparison I could make is a REALLY basic version of Pokemon. You build a team that has a mix of types (red, green, or blue) and each character has 3 abilities they can use in a fight. In a fight both people pick their abilities and then the speed of each ability determines the order that combat triggers. Red does double damage to green, green double damage to blue, and blue double damage to red (Fire > Grass > Water > Fire).

Your minions level up after each fight and they keep their new stats and abilities forever. You get new cards directly from packs or from shards in packs like a mobile game.

There's some interesting strategy from building your team and using abilities with speed that work together. Like for example a card might have an ability that gives an ally +5 attack so you want it to trigger BEFORE the card attacks.

---

Does Mercs require playing regular Hearthstone for daily quests or anything like that, or is it entirely independent? Been watching some people stream it over the last couple of days and even though I don't really understand what's going on that well it looks interesting to me.

Also, I hit a wall playing mahjong and I need a break, the losses are sending me.

---

It's pretty much entirely independent quest wise

You also don't really get gold in it too so it seems like the regular quests are just better right now

---

You need to spend a total of 900 gold to build your little mercenary village but that's the only investment from actual hearthstone.

---

I think I had something like 30,000 gold when I stopped playing so spending gold isn't a problem, I just didn't want to see something like "Play 3 Ranked Games = Get X Merc Coins/Packs" or anything like that. Mostly because I know me and I know I'd end up playing those three ranked games even though I wouldn't enjoy doing so.

---

Why are so many people playing Miracle Priest on ladder

Stop playing Priest

---

Yay we finally get miniset news

---

They made pvp literally unplayable so it will be dead real soon.

---

New 1 mana Druid card

Druid of the Reef
Choose One: Either 3/1 with rush or 1/3 with taunt

Uhhh am I crazy or this is stupid strong for 1 mana.

---

A 3/1 rush for 1 by itself is stupid strong. Do you know how many times I've gotten pissed off by that stupid Fel Rattler in DH? And that thing costs 4. (And does more.)

---

I think giving Aggro Druid a removal option is pretty strong, like this and oracle is basically multishot on a body.

Alternatively on curve its a voidwalker, yeah its pretty good. I guess you cut Horror/whatever 2 drop you use for it

The birds are pretty interesting, the shaman one in particular is pretty flexible with dungeoneer, Forgeborn, Fireheart, and other strong battlecries


---

azuarc posted...

A 3/1 rush for 1 by itself is stupid strong. Do you know how many times I've gotten pissed off by that stupid Fel Rattler in DH? And that thing costs 4. (And does more.)

Fel rattler costs 3, but yeah, it's good because it's a 3 mana swipe (that can't go face).

This is 1 mana holy smite. Still good.

Thoughts on the cards

DH

Crow's nest lookout: 3 mana 2/2 deal damage to the left and rightmost minion. Worth noting, if the enemy has one minion, this'll hit twice. But...TBH, as long as minionless decks like quest mage and big warrior remain popular, I can't see running this.

Need for Greed: If it works the way I think it works (the mana gets set to 3 even if you've discounted the card with the quest or skull of gul'dan) I don't think this will be that great. But still, it's tradeable. Quest probably swaps this in in exchange for some of the other tradeable cards that the deck literally only trades and never plays.

druid

Druid of the Reef: It's very good.

hunter

Monstrous Parrot: looks like garbage. And I say that as someone who still occasionally plays a meme deck in wild casual built around Unearthed Raptor. This still has the 3/4 statline of unearthed raptor, but it costs 4.

Defias Blastfisher: So...back in the stone age when mech mage was a thing, they did 4 random damage on a 4 mana 5/4. This with one beast is 4 random damage on a 5 mana 3/2. Doesn't go into any existing decks. I guess the idea is that you put this into a deck with Rodent Nest, and then you play rodent nest on 4, pop it, then play this and deal 12 random damage. Yeah, that's a game winning blowout if it happens. Sounds like a very high RNG deck, though.

mage

Grey Sage Parrot: Big spell mage support. In another era, this would be scary. Right now, I don't think existing mage decks want it.

paladin

Sunwing Squawker: I mean, sure, put this into libram paladin maybe? Most of the time is a yeti that adds a libram of wisdom to your hand. Occasionally will draw a card instead, or summon an 8/8 divine shield taunt. The one thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't save you from a bad draw. Didn't draw libram of wisdom or hand of a'dal? LOL, sucks to be you, here's a minion that does nothing. Not sure this makes the cut.

priest

Defias Leper: This is a big deal for wild shadow priest, since it already runs patches the pirate, and was using bad pirates to pull it out. Now it can run good pirates.

Amulet of the Undying: Gross, big priest support. That said, don't think this matters too much in wild. Scrapyard Colossus isn't usually the best res to get off of your res effects anyway; you'd rather grab blood of G'huun. Probably relevant in standard, though, where priests run lightshower elemental, and Taelan Fordring.

rogue

Blackwater Cutlass: 1 mana 2/2 weapon looks a little bit frightening to me, but...I guess 2 mana 2/2 weapons have been historically pretty weak even with upsides, and if there's a class where it could make sense it's rogue, since the weapon shuts down rogue hero powers, doesn't play nice with the existing "weapon rogue" archetype.

shaman

Brilliant Macaw: Doesn't say "this turn", which is a big deal. But...I don't think it has very good targets in standard. In wild it can replicate Zephrys, Reno Jackson, and Shudderwork. In standard...most of shaman's battlecry cards already have very good stats these days. 2 mana 2/2s. 5 mana 5/6s. Seems like a card for wild reno shaman.

warlock

Shadowblade Slinger: so...most warlocks have moved on from the self damage plan, and are now mostly doing a handlock plan. This maybe pushes them back towards the self-damage plan.

Wicked Shipment: Lost in the jungle, but it's imps. Zoo hasn't shown signs of life in ages, though.

Warrior

Man the cannons: 2 mana swipe, although only 3 damage to the primary target, and 1 damage to your minions too, not just enemy minions. But...still excellent into Druid, 3 is a good number for taking out key targets, and they often have a bunch of 2/1s.

Defias Cannoneer: I've seen the people hyping that this spells doom for wild. I...think it's overhyped. Something that was mentioned on the state of wild podcast is that you basically want to cut all 3 and 4 mana pirates (except for southsea captain). You want to run basically all 1 cost pirates, because in the current meta, completing the quest fast is a big deal. Quest Warrior can beat Quest Hunter, but they do so by completing the quest first. This new card, Defias Cannoneer, is a 3 drop, and you don't even necessarily want to play it on turn 3--only if you've already got a weapon equipped. It will often wait for turn 4 or 5 for after you equip a weapon. The wild VS list still has one 3-drop spider tank pirate left in the list, so maybe this could sub in for stormwind freebooter. But Stormwind Freebooter is a lot better on turn 3 when you don't have a weapon yet. This by comparison is better once you have a weapon. Overall...maybe it replaces Stormwind Freebooter, but I don't think this moves the needle very much for wild. Watch out to see if they release another 1 drop pirate, though. It could be a 1 mana 1/1 with no text, and it might get run in wild pirate warrior just to complete the quest faster.

Golakka Glutton: Who would want to tech against beasts this badly? Maybe blizzard is worried the parrot cycle will be too good? But...3 mana tribe tech cards don't have a good history. Looking at Dragonslayer here, which even if the opponent didn't run dragons at least it was a 4/3. This is a 3 mana 2/3 if the opponent doesn't have beasts.

---

Here's the rares spoiled today



---

So the two class legendaries are gonna be shaman and rogue

Rogue is clearly Edwin but the Shaman one could be interesting to guess

---

Might have just had the nail in the coffin Hearthstone game for me.

It was an OTK DH mirror and I completed Kurtrus by turn 5. Opponent uses Illidari Studies into Glide on turn 5 to complete his quest and shuffle my Kurtrus away.

Next turn I use Illidari Studies and get the card that can shuffle one of his cards into his deck. I shuffle Kurtrus obviously and he draws it the next turn WITH sigil of alacrity bonus. So I basically discounted his Kurtrus by one for him.

He eventually wins like 5 turns later after drawing through his whole deck and meanwhile Kurtrus didn't appear for me at all. It was probably the bottom card in my deck and his got put right on the top.

RNG is gonna RNG but I haven't had fun in Hearthstone in probably like 2 months so I was already pretty close to quitting. After this game I think I really just need to uninstall so I'm not tempted to play or spend any more money at this point.

And yeah I could have played around glide by completing the quest and playing Kurtrus on the same turn but who cares.

---

Understandable. The whole quest meta is kinda fucked TBH. Basically simplified wild down to 3 decks. And every deck in standard needs to either have a quest, or have some lategame plan with similar power to a quest (like token druid summoning multiple greyboughs). Or just a lot of face damage like face hunter and garotte rogue.

I will say that I don't expect this meta to last forever. Either Blizzard will finally nerf more quests, or they'll print cards that make people not want to run the quests anymore. So maybe check in a few weeks after the next expansion? (Not the mini-set, I don't expect the mini-set to change anything).

---

Was watching someone stream raza priest in wild.

One of the twitch comments "playing dwarven district priest"

---

Been a while since I made any attempts, but I have set a new personal best. 4 juggernauts!



---

OK, beat my own record again; five juggernauts (with the sixth rokarra in my hand, but my opponent died).



---

My cats hate it when the bug they're playing with dies before they've lost interest.

---

---

You pick the targets, huh.

All of those work really well thematically.

---

Mr Smite + Rockbiter + Windfury = 18 damage on turn 10

Not quite a GG combo but I could see this card being changed to "Your other pirates have charge".

---

skullbone posted...

Mr Smite + Rockbiter + Windfury = 18 damage on turn 10

Not quite a GG combo but I could see this card being changed to "Your other pirates have charge".

I mean...reckless rocketeer + rockbiter + windfury = 16 damage on turn 10.

I could totally see Mr Smite getting nerfed, but I doubt it'll be because of a 10 mana combo with windfury and rockbiter weapon.

---

Yeah I mean that was partially a joke but also nobody cares about wild lol

---

I think the key thing with Mr Smite is it swings a lot of decks into being able to beat quest mage now

(Well, Warrior and Handbuff Pally at least)

---

well, this is cool...nothing wrong with this...



---

This has to be hands down the worst tavern brawl I ever seen

its. Remarkable

---

Obviously a hotfix is coming, 0 mana 6/6s weren't intended.

But...wow, wild is now 35%-40% druid and rising according to the VS live report.

---

It might be a little while since it doesnt cost them money /s

---

Just lost a game at 20 health where I was 66% favored, tied my opponent, but they had the Diablo effect that summoned 3 random demons, which happened to combine for 14 health of damage and exact lethal.

Sometimes I get Ulti's rage all too well...

---

Hmm I think we get another wave of nerfs before the expansion, like maybe nerfing Battleguard and something from Rogue

BGs just from the little I played Sneeds/Cookie seem pretty broken, especially Sneeds when you have any sort of avenge trigger

---

lol Renew back to 1 mana.

---

UltimaterializerX posted...

I finally figured out my problem with Vicious Syndicate. If the data says something is bad, they just assume it is.

I dont care what data says - Celestial Alignment and Anacondra Druid are terrible for the game.

I mean, yeah, if there's a deck that instantly wins the game on turn 8, but they tend to die to aggro, and 70% of the people on ladder are playing aggro, VS will say that it's a tier 4 45% winrate deck.

But these tend to be the decks I really don't like. Cause I like homebrewing my own variants of decks, and usually my homebrew versions start with an aggro deck and make it a more midrange/greedy and value oriented, and then my midrange versions auto lose to whatever the flavour of the month combo deck is (Tickatus Warlock, Quest Mage, Garotte rogue, Celestial Alignment Druid, etc).

Speaking of which, nerfs are coming to a bunch of the big combo decks, and also Razormane Battleguard, also Renew is going back to 1 mana:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/hearthstone/t/balance-patch-next-week/74666

Razormane Battleguard
Old - 2/2/3
New - 2/2/2
Arcanist Dawngrasp (Mage Questline Reward)
Old - +3 spell damage
New: +2 spell damage
Garrote
Old - Shuffle 3 bleeds
New: Shuffle 2 bleeds
Renew
Old: 2 mana
New: 1 mana

---