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

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was mainly wondering if only cause the top Hunter deck on hsreplay in wild uses Drekthar to pull Huntress and Crossroads Gossiper to play a bunch of secrets, but I didnt really know if it was fringe or not

I guess theres some refinement one could do with it too but who knows if it ever gets that treatment

You are just determined to see Blizzard destroyed...yet you still play their games.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/1/3/AANxMBAAC1TV.jpg
Pretty good turn 3 board state.

No...because you want to see literally every employee fired and replaced, which is just a completely idiotic way to run the business unless all MS wants to do is confiscate their IPs. I'm not sure how them being bought out singularly leads to what you've been proselytizing for the last 3+ years.

Anyway, today I found out it's completely plausible to play a hero with 6 armor, play a reasonably impressive early game board through the first six turns, where I was dealing modestly decent damage and not being challenged by my opponents...and then hit a dude power-leveling who hit a Mithrax and some other garbage and 15's me, and then the next turn, hit another dude power-leveling with a Mithrax and take (more than) 15, and then go up against a guy with Brann + Battlemaster and leave just those minions up and take another 15, and then cycle back to the first dude again for 15 again. (The damage cap was off on the last round, but it was still exactly 15.)...I guess I should look forward to the fact that the game will discourage that by forcing everyone to stay on 1 for 5 turns instead.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Like wtf does that deck do against aggro now?

Depends what aggro. Probably just beats most aggro TBH.

Like...if people try to bring secret mage back, I'm pretty sure quest odd still dumpsters secret mage. Secret mage runs a lot of 4/3s and 3/2s and 2/3s. A 0 mana hero power that can deal 3 damage to a minion (stage 2 reward; not even the finished quest) kinda crushes that deck. Like...when I was experimenting with an un-refined list right after united in stormwind came out, I think I had somewhere in the range of 70%-100% winrate against secret mage? Just clear their board and they lose. Secret mage can even slow down quest completion with counterspell, but that doesn't matter cause they have no board and you'll finish the quest eventually.

Looking at the matchup chart on the old VS report, Odd Quest Hunter has...62% winrate against aggro druid, 64% winrate against secret mage, 61% winrate against murloc shaman, etc. And a 53% winrate against quest warrior (maybe quest warrior gets a small edge there after the nerfs since it's already close and QWar is getting the smaller nerf?)

Not that it can never be beaten by aggro--odd paladin is supposed to have an advantaged matchup into Odd Quest Hunter--probably because a 3 damage hero power isn't that great at killing multiple 1/1s. Shadow Priest...has a disadvantaged matchup against quest hunter right now, but barely (46% winrate) but I could see that flipping around with the nerfs--Shadow Priest has a lot of burn from hand so they are pretty resilient to having their board cleared, so maybe that becomes a slightly advantaged matchup.

But quite a few aggro decks have a lot of 3 health minions and need a board and the first two subquest rewards giving a 3 damage hero power that costs 0 and can hit minions just lines up really nice into those decks.

And there's a collection of other decks that odd hunter would just naturally do well against; decks that rely on their opponent not running flare to clear ice block probably still struggle against quest hunter, as well as controlly Priest decks like Reno Priest and Big Priest, if those make a come back.

Like...if there's a lot of those decks and non-paladin aggro decks in the meta, I'm pretty sure odd quest hunter continues to be fine.

The decks that could really shut out odd quest hunter are like...heavy armourgain druid decks (the worst matchup for odd quest hunter is and has always been quest druid). Another thing that could mess with Odd Quest Hunter is combo decks that don't rely on ice block and haven't been slowed down (stuff like Pillager Rogue jumps to mind). And...theoretically Odd Paladin could be a thorn for odd quest hunter, but odd paladin has a 23% winrate into quest warrior, so if quest warrior remains popular at all, nobody's going to play Odd Paladin to counter Odd Quest Hunter.

Just...as big as the nerf is, I don't really think that decks that rely on having a board are suddenly going to become a general counter to Odd Quest Hunter. Quest Hunter only needs to play 2 spells for their hero power to become a 2 mana darkbomb, and 4 spells for their hero power to become a 0 mana darkbomb. And the rest of odd quest hunter's deck is filled with removal. Building a board (with some exceptions) tends not to work that well against them.

Decks that beat it are still going to be mostly either uninteractive decks--burn decks and combo decks that don't need to keep a board, where the only thing Odd Quest Hunter can do is try to kill them first--against that kind of deck, slowing down the final quest reward will obviously cause quest hunter to lose more games. The other kind of deck that will continue to beat them is hardcore armourgain decks (where yeah, slower quest completion will also matter cause it's a race against armourgain).

But I don't think board based aggro in general will become a sticking point for the deck. The deck packs a ton of removal and has the better long game.

UltimaterializerX posted...

f you dont look at content outside of the client (which is the vast majority), you would never understand whats going on here.

If you don't look outside the client, you also almost certainly don't get banned.

They're not banning people who crafted the last few meme legendaries they don't have (frankly, those people already removed the dust from their own accounts by crafting bad legendaries, lol). Like...pretty sure they didn't ban Zeddy, for example--he spent some of the dust he got without realizing it (and then complained that he was down to 0 dust, and then Blizzard had to remind him that he crafted some cards).

They ARE banning people who saw the leaked balance patch, and crafted 10 copies of raid the docks. You don't craft 10 copies of raid the docks unless you are looking for information outside the client, and see the leaked balance changes, and ALSO suspect that the dust you just received was a glitch and might be taken away (the only reason to craft 10 copies of soon to be nerfed cards is to convert them back into dust, but if you thought all the dust on your account was legit, you would just keep it as dust, no reason to do so much money laundering if you don't think it was a glitch).

Basically, the people who are getting banned obviously thought they received the dust in error, searched for information outside the client to find the leak of the upcoming nerfs, and tried to exploit the system to bypass the Blizzard rollback that they were already expecting.

Seems...fair to punish that group?

And two days before the nerf, we get the newest VS report for wild:

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/wild-vs-data-reaper-report-30/

The interesting new information to me is that C'Thun Druid is probably not the best build of druid--Linecracker Mech'a'thun druid seems to be performing better.

Mech'a'thun Warlock is also apparently quietly a very good deck.

Divine Spirit Priest running Drek'thar to pull Neru'bar Weblords is apparently the best counter to pirate warrior in the entire format (o_O)

I'm very curious where the format goes after the nerfs. Obviously the three decks in tier 1 in this report are getting nerfed. The one thing I will note is that the report is wrong in saying that Ignite Mage has been slowed down by 2 turns (experts are saying it's half a turn slower on average). But also, if decks like ignite mage and odd quest warrior drop in popularity, the decks that target them with anti-spell tech will also drop.

Sorry but that is an awful take.

Exploiting in a way that impacts another user's experience like taking advantage of a bug to win/stall games is one thing.

Exploiting Blizzard's awful economy because of THEIR mistake should not be punished with an account ban. Just remove the stuff they got and move on!

skullbone posted...

Exploiting Blizzard's awful economy because of THEIR mistake should not be punished with an account ban. Just remove the stuff they got and move on!

Sure, I'd prefer if they had just removed the extra resources in some way rather than do a 15 day ban.

I just think some kind of punishment is reasonable for people who clearly thought the dust was a bug and deliberately tried to exploit the bug by using leaked information. I can agree that a 15 day ban is not the punishment I would have chosen, though, sure.

Also, apparently the person claiming to be banned over dust might have been banned for hearthstone at all, cause the screenshot they posted to the hearthstone subreddit was linking back to the WoW terms of service:

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/sauo8e/did_the_guy_who_claimed_a_ban_lie/

Mmm...I've been trying out wild c'thun druid, and playing it badly.

I don't think I've gotten a single kill with c'thun. Partially due to misplays (burning cards, using too many copies of moonlit guidance). But also...games where I would get kills people just concede before I can do so.

Like...obviously I need to learn the deck better, but...also I'm reminded of an old video Toast used to do where he'd pretend to be some kind of combo druid and not actually put a win condition in his deck.

Don't mind me, just cruising to a Pretzel Mustard win on my first game of the new battlegrounds.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/0/4/AAUC3iAAC2TQ.jpg

New patch out.

Gotta say, when I have like 20 copies of sorcerer's apprentice, the game doesn't need to warn me for every single copy I dust that I won't be able to play the card in Classic anymore.

Like...maybe just warn me when I'm down to dusting the last 2 copies?

Four games.

1-3-7-2

I'm sure that trend won't continue.

Just watched a game of Dog playing Yogg and he got to spin the wheel 6 times thanks to a golden brann on his golden buddy. The game kinda broke after that, lol.

Had a trial game with odd quest hunter, to see how bad the nerf was.

I only really played the deck super early the first couple of days after the quest came out, so the old list I had had a whole lot of non-meta cards in it. Let me talk about a few of the random-ass cards I had in my deck.

Secret Plan: I think this is a reasonable card to include--non-zero chance to get quest progression off of it. And after the quest is done it's two hero power resets.

Mystery Winner: meh, it's okay. Against decks that don't give you minions to target with quest progressing cards like powershot and overwhelm, it's a minion to target. On early turns, it's better board tempo than Secret Plan.

Unleash the Hounds: I immediately cut this card for a tradeable cause I remembered how much it sucked when I was messing around with the deck when it was new.

So...overall with my jankier list, -2 Unleash the Hounds, -2 Rapid Fire, +4 tradeables. Worth noting I don't own Toxic Reinforcements, but I'm pretty sure I don't need them.

Completed the quest on something like turn 6, and managed to deal like 70 damage to an armour druid and kill them.

Yeah, pretty sure this deck can survive the balance changes. Obviously my list is not optimal (It's probably still worth running Toxic Reinforcements, and might be worth running the Imported Tarantula+Master's Call package--can't say I felt like crafting 4 epics just to test out a slightly more optimal list).

LOL already faced a mirror.

They were running...

Venomous Scorpid: I feel like this should be worse than Mystery Winner; it costs 3, mystery winner costs 1. Buuuuut I will say that I lost, and Venomous Scorpid being a beast and adding 2 damage to Kill Command was part of the reason I lost, soooo....maybe my opponent is a genius? IDK.

So based on datamining it seems like monk might be coming (presumably in the first set of the next rotation in April)?

https://old.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/sczehm/seems_like_monk_is_actually_coming/

Wow, ok, off my tavern brawl pack I got Abominable Lieutennant (card I've been interested in for standard ramp druid but didn't feel like crafting) AND also Tamsin's Phylactery (a card I was thinking about crafting to try out wild mech'a'thun warlock, but wasn't ready to commit the dust).

Slight functional change to tradeable that makes it a bit worse with bleeds from garotte:

https://twitter.com/hsdecktech/status/1486770242969686016

The way tradeable used to work was put the tradeable on the bottom of your library, draw a card, then shuffle your library. This meant a tradeable alway drew all bleeds if you only had bleeds left.

The way tradeable works now is put the tradeable in a random part of the deck, draw a different card. Now if you have only bleeds left, one tradeable will draw a random amount (at least 1).

Man, I have seen like...almost no discussion of standard at all after the nerfs. (The subreddit is all about Battlegrounds and Duels, which makes sense those modes got new content and it's busted, and wild players are excited cause we don't get nerfs very often).

Had the lunar new year quest to play 3 games in standard, and realized I didn't actually have a standard deck (last one I used to ladder at all was pirate warrior, and I've disenchanted the quest). So...I went with the deck that VS hyped the most, which was Drek'thar taunt druid, crafted one oracle of elune I was missing, re-crafted the two nerfed cards and...went 0-3 at bronze 10.

Well, kinda questioning that 800 dust I spent, but oh well.

---

Anyway, enough about standard; let's talk about wild.

So...on Odd Quest Hunter--part of the reason I was looking into this deck was cause I thought it might have a good matchup into mech'a'thun warlock and freeze shaman, and it does! Also, Ignite Mage is around and has been piloted at high legend by a few players, and also has a good matchup into mech'a'thun warlock and freeze shaman.

But...what I didn't think about is that there's just a better option that can fill the same role.

The one I've been messing with is...quest rogue (caverns below).

I'm actually at the point that I'm bouncing between evenlock and quest rogue on ladder. Evenlock is better against pirate warrior, and probably some hyper aggro decks. Quest rogue feels better against most other stuff I'm facing. Although...worth noting that quest rogue isn't hopeless into pirate warrior (probably have a 40% winrate or so). One of the few quest rewards that are actually better than pirate warrior's quest reward, AND quest rogue can typically finish the quest a turn earlier. Still a bad matchup cause they hit you in the face with pirates. But like...not unwinnably bad?

That said, Divine Spirit Priest might just be a better option--haven't played it yet, but it's got the best winrate against pirate warrior according to VS, and playing against it, I've seen that deck OTK from an empty board on like turn...5 or 6 or so? No idea how consistent that is, but man, just reading about that deck in the VS report I underestimated how good it would be against things other than pirate warrior. I assumed they would just get frozen and devolved by freeze shaman, and plague of flamed by control warriors, but they have a lot more access to charge than I considered (Gnomeregan Infantry, Wave of Apathy+Potion of Illusion).

Im still loving Quest Priest in standard

Based on lore discussions I've seen, Kazakus' sister is probably Lady Prestor (a.k.a. Onyxia) who we're almost certainly going to fight in the mini set in her dragon form.

Also I will be extremely disappointed if there aren't several references to this audio track (video contains lots of swearing):

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

Man the new Patch basically just said all these buddies are over or underpowered, we gotta change them all up

It also increased the number of times bladestorm can repeat from 30 to 50.

Can now kill some large Yogg Sarons, Abominable Lieutennants, and Ivus the Forest Lord I guess?

Mini-set spoilers have started

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/7/1/AAAmNpAAC6ZP.jpg

Not going to lie, not many of these are jumping out to me. The ones I think will see play are basically "well, it has a dragon tag, and there will probably be dragon decks after the mini set, so this probably goes into those".

Spawn of Deathwing: this is going to feel rough to play against but...weirdly I also don't think I want it in any of my decks? The random discard is really rough. Most warlocks right now have cards they really don't want to discard. Maybe in a dedicated discard warlock deck, but...that's not really a thing in standard, and this card seems a bit slow and clunky for wild (where discard warlock is not exactly close to tier 1 either). Random discard matters for discard warlock too--the good discard cards are ones that reliably discard hand of gul'dan.

Onyxian Drake: I was hyped for this card at first--shield slam stapled to good stats??? But I've cooled on it. Shield slam works cause it costs 1. You can play your 3 mana heavy plate and shield slam in the same turn--that's a 4 mana play. Doing that with Onyxian Drake is a...7 mana play? Oof, that's expensive. Still...might be fine--it has a dragon tag, and it looks like that will matter in the mini set. And even if dragon warrior is not a thing, N'zoth resurrecting this might be a thing.

Whelp Bonker: Seems like a bad version of acolyte of pain. Maybe there are decks in standard that want a bad version of acolyte of pain though? IDK.

Lightmaw Netherdrake: This condition sounds like a pain to put together. Nothing like dying to aggro with your board clear in your hand because you don't have the other things in your hand that activate the board clear. Maybe it's better than it looks?

Onyxian Warder: It has a dragon tag, so it activates all your other dragon nonsense. And...it's a bit like that card from galakrond shaman (corrupt elementalist). 5 mana, summon two 2/1s with rush; obviously that card also invoked galakrond, which is why it was so good, but it was still just a solid tempo play on turn 5, and this is technically slightly better tempo (3/6 instead of 3/3). The dragon tag makes me pretty confident this will go into dragon decks. Like...people ran fire elemental in elemental shaman. Tribal tag on a card that otherwise looks like an arena play is often just good enough. (This assumes dragon decks will be a thing, mind you, obviously if nobody runs dragon decks, RIP this card).

Deep Breath: It's...a 5 mana cleave spell. Most of the cleave spells I can think of that saw play costed 1 mana (shooting star, felscream blast). Blade dance used to cost 2 mana, and it was good at 2. This costs 5. I'm...skeptical.

Don't Stand in the Fire: For most of the decks that want it (combo decks, control decks) it's a worse volcano. But...maybe that's good enough for standard? Some chance of it getting run in a tempo deck that would never consider volcano, just to dunk on other tempo decks, but I think Snowfall Guardian already has Shaman sorted in the "dunk on other tempo decks" department.

None of those cards look good. Some look like they might have a use somewhere, but all of them have a noticeable downside that you have to get around first.

I could see Paladin playing the welp slayer card. Seems like a good buff target

I should have said besides the warlock card. I just hate discard effects. But 5 for a 6/6 with a deadly shot is extremely good, yes.

Ehh...the warlock dragon is rotnest drake with discard a card stapled on basically. Rotnest drake is pretty good, but I don't think it's such a good card to be worth hurting your deck.

In any deck where discarding is dangerous for you, like you could discard your wincon, I don't actually think you want this card.

Decks that will want this are like...zoo, where you can just empty out your hand (if you have no cards in hand, or only cards in hand you're fine with discarding, the discard doesn't hurt you; might even help with discard synergy). Nobody's really playing warlock zoo right now, but...maybe this card revives zoo? IDK.

Did they seriously just give Face Hunter a 2 mana draw 3?

https://preview.redd.it/wxagkl3w49h81.png?width=339&auto=webp&s=40bf22818dbcf053f6e734fdd8c283302177870b

Not really hard to empty your hand to get full benefit from this.

Isn't it just a slightly different Voracious Reader?
I'm more laughing at them giving demon hunter a super Stargazer Luna as a common card.

I mean the BIG difference is this new Hunter card actually draws cards you can play the same turn instead of refilling your hand for the next turn.

Kazakusan looks very cool

Also reader used to cost 2 and they nerfed to 3 lol

The hunter spell also gets you the cards immediately rather than next turn.

It's also a spell, which...might matter? (Resets your hero power if you're playing quest hunter and the quest is done).

GANON1025 posted...

Kazakusan looks very cool

I'll admit, I didn't expect them to straight up power creep archivist Elysiana.

Probably a lot less niche than Elysiana too--like decks will be happy to play it while they still have cards left.

Images for all the non-legendary cards revealed today (part 1)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/3/7/AAAmNpAAC6jp.jpg

(part 2)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/3/8/AAAmNpAAC6jq.jpg

Boomkin: It's like you get to pick Antique Healbot, or Fire Elemental. That said...no tribal tag, no real synergy with any currently successful druid decks. Still...maybe it just goes into ramp druid?

Pet collector: I mean, if you're playing big beast hunter with Guardian Animals, I guess this can pull out a 5 mana beast. I'm...still not that impressed, though. Compared to just playing a 5 mana beast from your hand you...get a 3/3. Is that worth it?

Keen Reflexes: Yet another variant on 2 mana swipe. More conditional than man the cannons.

Raid Negotiator: apparently it was changed since the spoiler video was made--now only the card you discover gets both choose one halves played. I think that lowers the value of this card quite a bit.

Dragonbane Shot: Only deck that will ever care is quest hunter. Maybe quest hunter cares?

Razorbane Sentinel: You know, I've noticed a pattern with DH cards in preview season, like "wow, thats a scary draw card" and then the scary draw card proceeds to see almost zero play. The bar for DH draw is just very, very high. So...I don't want to call this one a staple just yet, cause I keep being wrong about DH draw cards. Turns out every DH draw card ever is like...worse than skull and spectral sight. Maybe those will rotate, though?

Wings of Hate: I mean, if there's ever a token aggro DH, this card will slot right in. Token DH is somehow still not a thing, despite all the support it has gotten, though.

Furious Howl: I think this card is bonkers. 2 mana draw 3 has never, ever been bad. Book of Specres was goood. Fungal fortunes was so good it got nerfed to 3 (and even at 3 mana it's one of the best wild druid cards).

Battle Vicar: someone on reddit listed out all the holy spells. Wow there are a lot of trash holy spells in paladin--tons of secrets and nonsense like that; nearly all the cards cost 3 or less. This looks bad, even in a Libram deck (only like...2 out of 20 possible cards are librams).

Stormwind Avenger: hey remember that 3/5 medic that made a 2/2 lifelink any time you cast a holy spell? Yeah, that saw no play, despite having some obvious synergy with Librams. I don't expect this card to be much different.

Spirit Mount: Burn shaman is enough of a thing that 2 mana for spell damage+1 might be worth it.

Bracing Cold: Seems good. 0 mana gain 5 life basically; priest runs a card like that.

Shoulder Check: I mean, it's tradeable so it's by definition not bad. Pretty low value if you actually need to play it, though.

SI:7 Smuggler: Support for rogue quest.

Smokescreen: So...this card looks designed for wild meme decks piloted by Dane specifically. Don't expect to run this and win more games than you lose, but yeah, this card will be shenanigans.

Curse of Agony: Interesting card, and looks very wild relevant. It's a lot like bomb warrior, where it punishes decks that draw heavily. It also disables reno decks. So...you can play up to four of these using Tamsin Roame since it's a shadow card, and obviously fatigue scales very vast, so playing lots of these is very relevant. One of these is 6 damage in the deck. Two of these is 21 damage in the deck. Three of these is 45 damage in the deck. Four of these is 78 damage in the deck. Hard punishes archetypes that draw through their deck, like...anyone trying to play garotte rogue just dies to this in standard, similar for something like mech'a'thun warlock in wild.

Very, very techy card, though. Does nothing in several matchups.

Impfestation: For one less mana than Soul Mirror you get.......this. Why does this cost 6? Hellfire costs 4. I guess hellfire isn't one-sided, but Flamestrike costs 7 for 5 damage.

Hit it very hard: Hey, know what was one of my favourite removal cards of all time? 1 mana rockbiter weapon. It's back baby! Also some burst damage possibilities with this and Silas and soulbound ashtongue (burst damage wincons seem to be the plan with control warrior decks these days).