The Hearthstone Thread

[zabu of nΩd]

I know some of you dorks play, and I demand your opinions on the Witchwood expansion, which goes live this Thursday.

I've been saving up quest rewards for over a month - currently at 2200 gold, 5000 dust (3200 of which is invested in golden Molten Giants), and 4 Witchwood reward packs. The Molten Giants will pay an 800 dust dividend when they rotate into Hall of Fame.

I plan to wait at least a couple weeks after the release, and see where the meta settles, before crafting anything major. Hoping my Cubelock will stay viable, and that this guy offers sick combos with Possessed Lackey and the Cube:



If anyone wants to meet up in-game, my tag is #1322.

Also please post links to any sites you use for info. My main ones are:

http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com
http://metastats.net

DIE, INSECT!

 

[Mort Divine]

I've got about 3100 gold and when I add on HOF dust I'll have around 8k.

I'm not even sure which deck I'll want to play, but I can say for certain that cubelock will likely be king which is boring, but whatever. Mage and priest seem to be not so great, but maybe something interesting will pop up.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I've been dying to play the Spiteful Dragon Priest after seeing it own my Cubelock a zillion times, but couldn't justify buying so many cards about to rotate out. That archetype's about to get wrecked.

Speaking of boring, I'll be glad to see Exodia Mage nerfed when Ice Block goes HOF.

 

[Mort Divine]

I like the mage quest, but not so much in standard (mostly because it just isn't good.) I'll keep playing it in my reno quest deck in wild.

I can agree with the removal of Ice Block from standard, but I'm disappointed that they did not give mage anything to increase their survivability. Sure, they got Jaina and Arcane Artificer, but I'm not sure that is going to be enough.

Spiteful Dragon Priest was fun at first, but it was a dog to aggro.

 

[Phylactery]

I haven’t played in quite a while. I was playing Raza Priest last time I played. I haven’t even looked at the new cards.

I don’t really have a main class but I guess I’ve played priest and warlock the most - warlock is the only one I have golden. The most fun I had playing was probably the original Handlock. Loved that deck, many super intense matches where you were living on a knife’s edge trying to get those cheap Molten Giants out. While it was clearly overpowered there were tonnes of strategic decisions to be made.

I’ve played all sorts of priest decks from deathrattle (when Undertakers were OP as fuck. “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD”) to dragon to the Raza Priest. Others I’ve played quite a lot are the various incarnations or freeze mage, infinite Fireball mage, Malygod Rogue and the more standard Oil Rogue. Also played Wallet Warrior for a bit.

 

[Mort Divine]

Original hand lock is now going to be possible again in Wild since they're unnerfing Molten Giants, but HOFing them.

Currently enjoying wild - Reno N'Zoth Quest Priest and Reno Quest Mage are my two favorite decks at the moment. Neither are tier one strategies, but both are just super fun.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I like the mage quest, but not so much in standard (mostly because it just isn't good.) I'll keep playing it in my reno quest deck in wild.

I can agree with the removal of Ice Block from standard, but I'm disappointed that they did not give mage anything to increase their survivability. Sure, they got Jaina and Arcane Artificer, but I'm not sure that is going to be enough.

Spiteful Dragon Priest was fun at first, but it was a dog to aggro.

Secret Mage is the best performing mage anyway, and afaik that's not meaningfully affected by removing Ice Block. Blizzard called "uninteractive play style" the problem with Ice Block, and really that argument applies to a number of mage archetypes, with all the freezes and board clears. One reason I stopped using Big Spell Mage is I got tired of the long games.

I'm wondering if the game is just more fun when control decks are minion-oriented, and if Blizzard is making changes based on that idea.

 

[Mort Divine]

Yeah, but secret mage just aimed to kill you as fast as possible. It didn't care about survivability. Slower controlling mage decks need tools to survive. Jaina and Arcane Artificer are strong, but are they enough going forward? Who knows.

I worry that they will push minion strategies for mage too much. It feels too much against the class identity (but then again spell hunter is fundamentally not part of the "hunter identity) to have spells not matter much.

I'll probably stop playing the game if they make it even more just Minionstone than it already is. The reason I've typically liked priest and mage so much is that they relied so much on their spells to do their heavy lifting. I'd hate to see that go away (even though priest was heavily moved away from that once the dragon package got absurdly powerful.)

Midrange minions bashing into one another for board control is not the only way to play the game. I hope Blizzard sees this.

 

[Phylactery]

Ice Block is going to the HoF?! Didn’t think that would ever happen. While I’ve always thought it was quite a dumb spell, nearly all mage archetypes rely on it to function. It was also becoming less and less of an issue as more ways were included to counter it - not necessarily even direct ones. There were just more decks that could survive the burst/outlast the mage. So it became less of a problem IMO.

Also, while it does sometimes feel uninteractive for the player on the receiving end, the various freeze mage decks were not mindless and did require lots of game knowledge/skill from the player.

What about favourite cards? I’m quite a big fan of the death knights in general, although some were quite week. I loved Emperor Thaurissan as well. Other favourites are Cabal Shadowpriest (paired with Shrinkmeister), Vol’jin (super underrated), Kazakus and of course Lord Jaraxxus.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Yeah, but secret mage just aimed to kill you as fast as possible. It didn't care about survivability. Slower controlling mage decks need tools to survive. Jaina and Arcane Artificer are strong, but are they enough going forward? Who knows.

I worry that they will push minion strategies for mage too much. It feels too much against the class identity (but then again spell hunter is fundamentally not part of the "hunter identity) to have spells not matter much.

I'll probably stop playing the game if they make it even more just Minionstone than it already is. The reason I've typically liked priest and mage so much is that they relied so much on their spells to do their heavy lifting. I'd hate to see that go away (even though priest was heavily moved away from that once the dragon package got absurdly powerful.)

Midrange minions bashing into one another for board control is not the only way to play the game. I hope Blizzard sees this.

I'm not impressed with the Witchwood mage spell reveals so far, but there are minions with some interesting spell synergies:

 

[Phylactery]

Forgot to mention in my first post that my favourite class is actually probably shaman on an aesthetic level. The problem is they’ve either had truly overpowered dumb decks, or they’ve been crap. But I really like so much about the class. It’s just rarely come together in an interesting deck for me. I mean Fire Elemental is a vanilla card but it’s such a strong card but as the game became much faster paced, even a clearly over budget 6 drop like that couldn’t find a place.

 

[Mort Divine]

What about favourite cards? I’m quite a big fan of the death knights in general, although some were quite week. I loved Emperor Thaurissan as well. Other favourites are Cabal Shadowpriest (paired with Shrinkmeister), Vol’jin (super underrated), Kazakus and of course Lord Jaraxxus.

I love the DK designs. Rexxar, Jaina, and Anduin being my favorites.

Most of the cards that mandated a highlander style deck were super cool to me. Reno, Kazakus, Raza, and Inkmaster Solia are just really cool cards to me. I wasn't so much a fan of the warlock one though.

I think that Lyra the Sunshard might be my favorite card. It combined with Radiant Elemental just lead to so many stupid games where I just kept cycling and cycling until I found the answers I needed.

 

[Phylactery]

Forgot Lyra! Such a cool card. The kind of RNG that I think is good for the game and actually had some strategy involved. The opposite of the original Yogg-Saron which I think was honestly the worst card they ever put it into the game.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

What about favourite cards? I’m quite a big fan of the death knights in general, although some were quite week. I loved Emperor Thaurissan as well. Other favourites are Cabal Shadowpriest (paired with Shrinkmeister), Vol’jin (super underrated), Kazakus and of course Lord Jaraxxus.

Shadowpriest/Shrinkmeister is a cool combo. Vol'jin's before my time, but there's a number of attack/health swapping minions in the game now, and Twilight Acolyte (which swaps attack values) gets a lot of play.

I'm partial to combo/chain effects in general, so Cubelock deck has a lot of my favorite cards:


Other favorites:


Also think Lich King and Ysera are very interesting with the unique cards they generate, but I don't own them.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Haven't played in years. Used to run a Shadowform Priest deck though. You would either lose, or take a very long time to win. Fun.

 

[-CC-]

Been playing Warlock since release, but I haven't really played seriously since Goblins and Gnomes. I did have a brief resurgence during the Death Knight expansion, but they are dropping these expansions so damn quickly that I get discouraged from playing.

 

[Master_Yoda77]

I'm not sure I fully understand all this Molten Giant dust stuff.

I'm still basically a casual player, but I did buy the pre-purchase and have around 75 packs to open this Thursday. I used to play Evolve Shaman but I never got the Patches combo so it wasn't quite as competitive. Once KOFT hit I had Malfurion so I made a few different cool Druid decks with my favorite being Spiteful/Cthun Druid. It's fun but suffers. Recently, I crafted a Spiteful Priest deck with Duskbreakers and man, that thing rules. I still can't seem to crack the teens, but I only rarely play for more than an hour or two at a time.

Not sure how my decks will change or what I will play, but I'm only losing 3 chards. One should be easily replaceable, but Drakonoid Operative is so crucial to the deck that I'm not sure I'll survive.

I kinda hope to run a sweet Shaman deck, since Thrall is my boy forever.

 

[Master_Yoda77]

Some of the best cards in Witchwood also happen to be Shaman (The new Dragon and Hagatha) and Priest (That chameleon card) so I'm excited to see how it all plays out.

 

[Phylactery]

I’ve never hit Legend rank - nor have I tried. It’s too much of a grind. Highest rank is 4 but man once that win streak bonus disappears it takes forever. With Heartsone having a lot of rng it’s difficult to get beyond a 55% winrate which makes those last few ranks a real grind.

 

[mutantllama]

Thought about trying this game out but I might just wait for Artifact to come out, shit looks pretty cool.