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

(+) Yeah! (+)

So...card dump is here.

I don't know if irondeep trogg is going to be good, but if it is good, it's going to be really coin-flippy in a very literal way.

If you go first against a quest deck, when they play their quest, you get 2 troggs, and then when they play their coin you get 4 troggs.

BUT if you go second...nothing happens. They don't have a coin, they already played their quest, the trogg is just a 1 mana 1/2.

If this becomes the meta, it's going to be really annoying, cause literally games will be decided by who goes first.

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for a bit of perspective among the card dump...most upvoted cards in the CompetitiveHS subreddit were...

1. Windchill (Shaman, 1 mana freeze a minion, draw a card)
2. Sleetbreaker (Shaman, 2 mana 3/2 elemental add a windchill to your hand)
3. Frostbite (Shaman, 2 mana deal 3 damage, honourable kill your opponent's next spell costs (2) more).

Think I agree with these as the top 3. All 3 frost shaman spells are nutty. 1 mana draw a card is good, so adding a freeze onto it is great. 2 mana deal 3 is good (I'm literally running Darkbomb in wild right now) and this is Darkbomb that is also Loatheb that can also last for more than one turn if they don't cast a spell.

I think the two spells for sure are going to be run in wild. Not sure about the elemental that generates the windchill spell, might be annoying with shuderwock filling your hand with windchills.

4. Iceblood Garrison (2 mana Warrior, deal 1 damage to all minions for the next 3 turns)
5. Flanking Maneuver (4 mana DH, summon a 4/2 with rush, if it dies summon a second one)

Good clears. The DH card might be a little overrated cause DH just gets the best board clears--maybe you can't find space for that one when you have immolation aura. It is a one-sided clear, though, which is rare for DH.

6. Pride Seeker (Druid 3 mana 2/4, your next choose 1 card costs 2 less).

So...yeah, this card is actually a little scary. Cause you can use this before celestial alignment, then Alignment, and immediately cast Nourish for 0 to gain 2 mana crystals.

This is the difference between wild Celestial Alignment Druid and Standard Celestial Alignment Druid, by the way--the ability to immediately get mana the turn you cast Celestial Alignment. This makes Celestial Alignment way more dangerous in standard.

7. Contraband Stash: (Rogue 5 mana, replay 5 cards from other classes you've played this game)

(People don't think it's competitive, but even on the competitive subreddit, people love thief rogue enough that it's generating excitement).

8. Korrak, the bloodrager (Neutral 4 mana 3/5 deathrattle if this was not honourably killed resummon it)

(Some silly stuff can be done with this. Rogue can play that 2/2 that transforms into a deathrattle on 2, play the "your deathrattles trigger twice for the next three turns" on turn 3, Play Sketchy Information and draw this triggering the deathrattle twice, summoning two 3/5s on turn 4, and then turn 5 play this the 2/2 transofmrs into a 2/2 copy of it with rush, attacks in and dies generating two more 3/5s, you've basically got a full board of 3/5s at this point).

9. Stonehearth Vindicator (Paladin 3 mana 3/1 draw a spell that costs 3 or less, set its cost to (0) this turn)

In the right deck, just really good draws. Paladin in the current standard the best thing they can get off of this is Hand of A'dal, which is the same total mana as drawing and casting with Knight of Anointment but it's a 3/1 instead of a 1/1. However, Paladin did get a new 3 mana buff this set, which might be worth running, so maybe you'll be able to get the full 3 mana discount).

10. Bless (2 mana priest spell, give a minion +2 health, then set it's attack to be equal to its health)

Inner fire was currently not in standard. Well, now it is, and it's pretty scary. Even a control priest who doesn't put inner fire into their deck might randomly generate one off of their many, many discovers. That 3/7 taunt they have in play? Might hit you in the face for 9. 18 if they choose to put Battlegrounds Battlemaster into their deck.

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Priest also has a 1/4 they can buff into a 6/6 on turn 2 with Bless. The only awkward thing is that it's not a shadow spell so you're losing the shadowform hero power but maybe it doesn't matter.

Or you could turn Irondeep Trogg into a 4/4 on turn 2 and now your opponent can't play any spells.

But I think the way that Trogg works is he summons after the spell resolves so maybe it's not THAT strong. Like if you deal 3 damage to a 4/4 Trogg then the Priest would summon a 4/1 Trogg.

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Blisss best use is probably just in Miracle Priest lol

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skullbone posted...

But I think the way that Trogg works is he summons after the spell resolves so maybe it's not THAT strong. Like if you deal 3 damage to a 4/4 Trogg then the Priest would summon a 4/1 Trogg.

That's sounds correct, yes.

In general if the opponent has removal to point at Trogg, Trogg's not going to do much.

Trogg mostly punishes people who have non-removal spells they want to play early. Quests, coin, incanter's flow, overgrowth, nature studies, etc. Only takes 3 spells to get a full board of troggs.

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Beat Diablo on Turn 4 very easily

Turn 8 he hits me for 27 damage

Can we remove this guy already?

Also I have no idea how to play Sneed but that's unrelated.

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I dunno why they buffed Diablo.

Also the little bit I played BGs I ran back two games with him to first so yeah

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Diablo needs to be removed. The free 5/5 means he pretty much automatically wins turn 4, and then he just starts doing shit. Turn 8 he almost always hits me for 15. And this is often after I fight him naturally on turn 7 to what is basically a draw.

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When you go out in 4th place after literally only taking damage to Diablo.

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Well good news https://twitter.com/DCalkosz/status/1464763885555118086

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Thank goodness Diablo is getting removed.

Now Blizzard let's talk about Sneed...

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Bye Diablo. You won't be missed.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

That bad, huh? BGs are usually far better balanced than this.

Since they added armor BGs has actually been in a really good spot assuming you don't have Diablo or Sneed in your lobby.

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Diablo was an awful experiment for BGs, and Celestalon's staunch defense of him (and basically blaming players for playing the game wrong) was completely bizarre. BGs should be in a pretty good state with him gone. Still plenty to improve (make the ghost system work like every other autochess ffs), but at least worth playing.

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Don't even know who that is. I'm so out of the loop any more. If it wasn't for you guys, I don't even think I'd know there was a set coming out.

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azuarc posted...

Don't even know who that is.

A dev who occasionally answers questions on twitter--honestly not even all that often--he's just not as active on twitter as a lot of other devs.

Most recent thread he participated in regarding diablo I think starts here (this tweet, and 3-4 tweets a bit further down the chain).

https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/1464309717740625923

Can't say I've ever had an issue with him myself, but again, he's usually not the first dev I check on twitter when I'm looking for new info.

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Yeah, the conversation in Sunglitters' channel that he refers to is really where some of my issues lie. He called Diablo 'unquestionably' a good addition to the game (as a temporary hero), argued that Diablo wasn't overtuned at all and it was players playing incorrectly against Diablo (despite several high MMR players in the chat/on stream all stating that Celestalon was either wrong or missing the point), and in general was a bit more combative/defensive than I thought was necessary.

That being said, Cora, who actually does work on BGs, specifically came out and said that they missed the mark with Diablo and will learn from it. I think Diablo could have been quite interesting as a raid boss type hero they were going for IF it was an NPC everyone faced every few rounds instead of having a player control Diablo.

Diablo gone good. Nerf Sneed's next. BGs in pretty decent spot now. Change awful ghost system. Armor system a good start with hero balance - keep balancing up and don't be so slow to react to things. Please for the love of Arena double or triple the offering rate of class cards.

Edit: Underrated part of Diablo being gone - We can get Lord Barov back

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https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/news/23751629/22-0-patch-notes

So the "and other stuff" for Battlegrounds was Scabbs and cosmetic boards. Looks like we'll need to deal with Sneed for another 6 weeks at least. Bummer but BGs is still in a pretty good spot.


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The entire ladder right now is either Aggro Hunter or Aggro Warrior and you can only tech to beat one of them. It's my fault for playing Hearthstone right now I guess but this expansion needs to hurry up already.

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Ladder hasn't been fun for a very long time.

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what is ladder

BGs with a sprinkle of Duels is what keeps this installed.

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what is duels

BGs with a sprinkle of BGs is what keeps this installed.

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Badmouthing ladder makes sense but praising duels in the same post does not.

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I'm dominating with Handbuff Paladin... Hearthstone has literally never been better except when Dragon Priest and Big Priest existed

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Duels you know what you're getting into though. You either highroll or get highrolled pretty quickly. I don't expect it to be balanced like ladder. And I only have to craft 1 copy of any card I want to use.

Plus I said a sprinkle. Once a week usually, to clear quests.

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I think I played Duels with the update and quest and it was more fun than I expected, I was a OTK DH

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Battlegrounds has existed for 2 years and my skill has not improved at all in that time I think. I really suck at transitioning into the mid game but I don't know how to get better at this point.

I mean I've hovered around 7k for pretty much the entire shelf life of BGs so I'm not COMPLETE trash compared to the whole player base but still.

My last 5 games:

8th place
7th place
7th place
8th place
8th place

I'm clearly missing something that's allowing other players to wreck me in the mid game.

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Playing Handlock and I get 3 Celestial Druids in a row (auto loss). Switch to Hunter for a few games to counter and I get Libram Paladins (basically auto loss). Switch back to Handlock and I bet you can guess who my next opponent was.

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Game of battlegrounds. I decide to play Curator.

Turn 1 opponent: Scabbs
Me: "Why does he have an amalgam?"

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Opened 125 packs without getting Vandarr so I think I win the expansion.

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I was going to open packs but I'm scared of opening vandarr so I guess I wait until I finish honor in three months?

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I was going to say, just auto-concede games until you unlock it... but that would apparently require 720 auto-concedes? Am I reading that right? Even I wasn't greedy enough for that grind.

I'd just open the packs and assume in advance that you're going to open whatever it is because of course that's going to happen.

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Yeah it really sucks how they did this free giveaway thing but I have a feeling the community outcry has been enough that they'll fix it.

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My luckiest pack ever:

https://i.imgur.com/WOOqQOn.png

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Got 2 packs a few days ago from Twitch stuff. 2nd pack had Vanndar because of course it did.

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72 packs, 6 legendaries. Dunno who Vanndar is, but I didn't get him.
2 hunter legendaries
2 warlock legendaries
druid legendary
I forget the sixth

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Whatever faction leader you didn't pick.

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If this is relevant because it's a reward for finishing the honor system, I dunno if that'll ever happen since battlegrounds don't give honor. Unless I decide I actually like this meta, that is.

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Im glad this confirmed everyone picked horde

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Short day 1 anecdotal notes

Freeze Shaman doesn't feel good to play. I've lost to some swingy stuff with Bru'kan + Parrot shenanigans but the deck is a little too easy to play around. Most of the time I see people using freeze spells on their own minions just so that their Beareon will actually summon minions.

OTK Owl Warlock seems to be VERY good. It plays almost identical to Fatigue Warlock from the last set but the win condition is a little easier to pull off because you're not trying to finish your quest. You just focus on removing stuff until you draw your combo and win on turn 9/10. I went 6-0 with this deck and I think I could get legend today if I had more energy but I'm getting a headache.

Zoo Warlock seems pretty good but you can REALLY run out of steam quickly. I know that's true of most aggro but it felt especially bad in this deck topdecking an egg I couldn't do anything with.

Quest Paladin with Dun Baldar Bridge is pretty interesting. You can summon so many minions each turn it's pretty ridiculous. I still beat the 1 I played with OTK Owl but I could see that deck making people on Reddit mad.

Korrak Rogue is fun but I drew sketchy informant and summoned Korrak every game I played. I would be interested to see how it feels if you have to manually play Korrak from hand. I'm guessing pretty bad.

Hero Power mage still doesn't feel great but the new Dawngrasp hero feels surprisingly solid. The only bummer is that if you play Wildfire before you play him then he doesn't buff his own hero power when he plays his copy. It doesn't make much sense to me why it works that way.

That's about all I played today, might play some more later

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Come watch my pack opening stream! :)

link, assuming it's still going?

oh, in your sig. NM. Looks like I missed you.

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Pushed through and hit legend with OTK Owl Warlock. There's absolutely no way this deck doesn't get nerfed within the next two weeks so if you're looking for an easy legend push I'd recommend doing it quickly. They need to kill the entire healing package for Warlock though because if Owl gets nerfed people are just going to switch back to Fatigue instead.

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