Board 8 > Hearthstone Discussion Topic: Voyage To The Sunken City - Year of the Hydra

(+) Yeah! (+)

Doing it right at the start of the new expansion and rotation! Naga themed, apparently Pirate Warrior looks pretty nasty this set but we'll see!

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/news/23784369/welcome-to-the-year-of-the-hydra

New Core Set... looks good! Battlegrounds is pretty healthy balance wise if you don't pay attention to Amalgadons, Mercs... is Mercs.

legitimately just excited to play reno mage and reno warlock decks again.

that's really all i want to do anymore

Got both Mage legendaries (the colossal golden), and the Pally/Shaman/Warrior Nagas in my packs, including the free Amazon legendary and the golden pack I saved for doing book of mercenaries

Opened two copies of Zin-Azshari so I know what I'm meming:
https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/decks/zin-azshari-control-warrior/

Naga APM seems like my kind of deck tbh

Just did the dumbest OTK combo playing battlecry control shaman. Opponent left Bolner up. School Teacher (https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/cards/72598-school-teacher/) discovers Bioluminescence (https://playhearthstone.com/cards/72316-bioluminescence), played the Nagalings until the board was full, small damage spell to the face for some absurd number.

Thought I'd install again today and try things out since Reno is back, but Windows decided it needed to run an update specifically during the hours I chose for it not to run updates during, and also apparently it needed the entirety of my computers ram for four hours to do so.

Outside of the four hours shenanigans, I'm pretty sure this has happened on expansion day to me before.

Mage seems really good right now, two board flood decks that can also do some really good outvaluing in the late game

I also got Brann and Mordreshd after a mailbox dude so maybe that could still be a thing

Pretty much everything except for Warlock and Demon Hunter seem decent so far from what Ive seen. That Priest Switcheroo deck sounds stupid but I imagine it works

So I've been gone long enough that they gave me a free deck, and I chose the Warlock one, but the game decided to immediately pull a fast one on me by not giving me Lokholar. I can't even craft it with dust either, it straight up just isn't there under any section in the game.

It was given away for free in the last reward track which was the only way to get it. Looks like they put acquiring it under an achievement (win a game at 15 health) but screwed up and didn't consider the free decks.

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).

Pufferfish might be even better with Rogue since you can combo it with Plague Scientist

but honestly I dont think Pirate Warrior will end up as the best deck, it just was the easiest to solve. Think Naga Mage beats it right now.

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.

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.

I played four games with Reno Limited Collection Druid. Deck is pretty bad but I miss Reno.

And I'm not sure if it's the time I took off or the ridiculous amount of losses I ate trying to farm achievements the last time I did play, but my mmr was so bad that the game I accidentally queued into in casual was against someone that I'm pretty sure had never played the game before. They had a 23/25 and I played a Doomsayer behind a taunt, so they followed that up by playing some spell that summoned a 1/2, 2/4 and 4/8, traded into my taunt and then passed the turn. Pretty clearly felt like they didn't know they couldn't attack the Doomsayer based on the minion highlighting that was going on.

The four ladder games weren't as easy, especially the two Mage opponents that pretty much rolled right over me.

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.

I hit legend with Druid yesterday, think it and Naga Mage are probably favored against Pirates but its just that your swing turns are so ridiculous its hard for them to catch up

Guessing nerfs right now: Scales, Pufferfist/cannoneer, possible switcheroo ban in wild. If they are worried about Pirate Warrior dominating lower ranks I could see them rework juggernaut too

Keep Guff, Wild Growth, Jerry Rig. Aggro matchups its ok to keep Kelp dude. Mirror and slower its ok to keep nourish. If I have aquatic form I use it at 4 mana if I have a nourish in hand to try to dig an innervate, or for a nourish/Guff at 5 mana

Its mulligan winrate is lower than all the cards I listed so probably not

Its way stronger when you have ramp since you can change Giants or get 2 Onyxias or Kaz treasures

https://twitter.com/fenohs/status/1515836583508955140?s=21&t=EQ7d8te4AWa_Z6Qq18Suhw

actually cool

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.

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 feel like DH was a bit of a surprise going into the expansion because they lost so many important cards, but Multistrike is just a excellent card.

I feel like if Druid is nerfed then control Paladin is something to watch out for btw.

https://twitter.com/gallonhs/status/1517548417462857728?s=21&t=pwEGi1CDm6mOEDWjVY92og

some big changes

Kaelthas got changed back to 1 mana
Switcheroo banned

standard

Pirate Quest is 3/3/3
Pufferfist is 3/3
switcheroo affects health only
Miracle Growth is 8 mana
Kaz requires 4 dragons to activate

rest of his twitter change explains all the changes

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.

I never actually recrafted Raid the Docks, got my 1k Warrior wins and Control was more interesting (think Control Warrior still runs Kaz, just throw an amalgam in there)

Druid hypothetically still could but I dunno how much you revamp it and maybe just straight Giants is better

Played a game of Dragon Priest with the thought in my head that Kazamakus needed four dragons played to be active, forgetting that the nerfs aren't currently active. Good news is I drew him so late that he was good to go anyway.

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.

Man, I played Quest Priest yesterday because there's a daily to finish three quest lines and it's the only standard one I have, and even though I built the deck with only a single 7 and 8 drop aka never going to draw them haha get fucked here's a bunch of pirates to deal with... I draw them every single game. And then they just sit in my hand because all five of my 5 drops are hiding in my deck and cleverly avoid any discovers or dredges I play.

Bug Fixes and Game Improvements

• Granted Lokholar to players who should have been granted Lokholar with their free new/returning player deck selection.

Hey, I finally get my legendary. Not that I'm likely going to use it but at least I have it?

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).

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.

Honestly, my deck building decisions right now pretty much boil down to whether or not it completes my daily quests, or it's some jank deck my opponent played that looked neat. If I had the Shaman quest I'd try out that seemingly terrible Bioluminescence combo deck I saw the other day even though I generally dislike otk-style decks, but I don't want to commit the dust to something I fully expect to play less than ten games with and then abandon.

I feel like Paladin is the best bet for a Reno deck but that might just be because of Cariel

Quest Hunter is fun with Tavish, just giving you the hero power to summon Huffers etc

Drekthar probably should be nerfed soon but they probably are afraid of the people who paid 25 bucks for the Diamond version

Yeah but thats still better than any other Reno deck right now!

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).

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.

Feels good when you run two copies of both Shard of the Naaru and Starfish and you get value out of all four cards in a game. That Paladin thought he was going to win because he was running a bunch of good cards, but nope, Single Digit Win Percentage Priest winning in fatigue is still on the menu.

It's too bad Whirlpool doesn't silence as well or I'd run a copy of that too.

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.

I somehow finished second as Tess before losing to some Gryphon that had about 10k/10k worth of stats when I had, maybe, 120/120.

Yeah one complaint about the game right now is that there's way too much going on so it's hard to get into and even for vets it's turned into an APM game. A lot of people are hoping they take away the hero specific minions with the next big patch (1-2 weeks from now) for both simplicity and balance sake.