of all time? the hardest deck i've ever piloted is probably control warrior of wotog. not the c'thun variant, spell control warrior. i've never had as much fun as when i played that deck.
Exodia Mage relies on a lot of RNG though. A useable spell from Babbling Book, did I start with the coin?, can I get a Primordial Glyph off another Primordial Glyph, will I get Cabalist Tome into another?, etc. The random cards you get dictate your win condition outside of putting in a ton of card draw. I think limited card draw takes more skill than putting in two copies of Novice Engineer, Acolyte of Pain, Arcane Intellect etc. as you need to be careful with your resources. The same argument can be made against Jade Druid and Miracle Rogue. If you are almost in fatigue and your opponent has more than half of their deck left, it's not an indicator that you were more skillful, you simply had way more tools at your disposal.
While many of the skill based decks have fallen off the map because of new sets, nerfs, or the meta, there are some very difficult decks that don't get the credit they deserve.
Control Warlock: almost always difficult to correctly pilot. The older version, handlock, was particularly difficult to pilot, but the amount of skill it takes to play a full hand in general is pretty tough. There's also a good amount of skill involved in figuring out how to play the early turns of the deck against aggro. Defile added to the skill needed and might just be one of the toughest cards to play correctly in the game, although the win con is pretty straightforward.
One of priest: Sure there are game that you draw the nuts and you win with little effort because of it, but the majority of games take a lot of maneuvering. Cards like spirit lash often force the player to choose between tempo and healing. 30 unique options in the deck also makes for a large range of potential options and the long games create a lot of choices throughout the game.
Miracle Rogue: Timing is everything with this deck. You almost always have a way to swing the game...if you manage your resources properly. That is unless you are playing against aggro...but let's be honest. Every other matchup takes some serious know how.
Aggro Rogue: I love when aggro rogue works properly. The deck is rarely top tier...honestly it has only been top tier once, but it always works in some capacity. This is how aggro decks should work. The deck takes damage maximization to another level. With combo cards, sap, and shadow step, there are a lot of ways to screw up and fail to get as much damage as you need. I really hope this style of deck is pushed in the future.
Crusher Shaman is an interesting deck that takes a bit of skill. I'm probably a bit biased though.
There are other decks as well that I don't know as well as I'd like, but mill, combo, and fatigue tend to take a lot of skill to master.
I'm sorry, do we play the same game? How Exodia Mage requires even remotely skill? Draw, draw, freeze, freeze, draw, freeze,ooops ice block number 1, ooops ice block number 2, oooops, ice block discovered with gliph, i collected all my combo pieces, i won. It's a fucking solitaire. Agree tho on worgen otk warrior, that deck was so much fun and far from being unstoppable, but still they killed it. I sincerely hope they will do the same with exodia mage, wich is much more consistent and uninteractive
First, you don't know what a solitaire game is. For a solitaire game, you need a game to be solely influenced by the plays of one player. That is never the case with Exodia Mage. Simply having to use Freeze cards already means your opponent is forcing you to act, because they are doing something that influences the outcome of the game.
Second, if that is all that is required to win with Exodia Mage, you can prove to us by making a sample of 200 games with the deck and winning well over 100 of those games? I can save you the trouble, you will not be able to do it, it is a deck that actually requires proper technical play to work, so you won't pull it off.
Third, they will not do anything to Exodia Mage, the deck is perfectly fine, counterable with Hard and Soft counters, and also, it is interactive, you just don't know what interactivity is in card games and in Hearthstone.
It is best if you don't bother replying to me before you achieve those 100+ wins in 200 games with Exodia Mage. I have account in EU, NA and Asia server so I can actually spectate you those 200 games, it will just take some time since I can't really sit there for full days watching you play. Still, easily 10 games a day is doable. (I would probably not do it, but since I know you will not accept the challenge, I can give myself the luxury to offer doing this :D )
Lol, why so touchy man? Anyway, say what you want, but this forum is full of people complaining with the uninteractivity of Exodia. I actually have no idea how you can say otherwise. "For a solitaire game, you need a game to be solely influenced by the plays of one player. That is never the case with Exodia Mage". Sure, if you want to use the dictionary definition of "solitaire" we can agree that Exodia Mage is not a solitaire. In fact, any deck in Hearthstone is, unless the opponent is AFK from the start till the end of the match. "You won't pull it off". Based on what are you assuming that i can't have >50% winrate with the deck? And why 200? wouldnt be more reasonable, lets say, 50? Gosh, i rather a kick in the balls than playing 200 matches with mage. "The deck is perfectly fine, counterable with Hard and Soft counters". The only counters are Eater of Secrets, Eye for an Eye if somehow you managed to reduce its life to 1 and (with some luck) Dirty Rat and Gnomeferatu. Im talking about slow decks, of course any aggro deck has a big advantage vs Exodia, but whit every control deck is super frustrating (for the control). Also, you didn't consider Wild, in there you don't even need the quest, Thaurissan will do the trick. Even more toxic.
... and FFS guys, Razakus priest is not hard to play. Did you ever play any other non-dragon priests before? In real control priest, you typically need to clear the board in multiple card combinations and time those properly but also know when to throw out these cards for tempo. The only other major priest archtype was Silence/Divine fire, where knowing when and how much to "go off" can win or lose games. Razakus priest is so easy that, as an old priest main, I'm insulted this is going to be the first tier 1 priest in HS history
Same goes for Exodia mage. The hardest things about freeze mage is knowing when to throw burn at minions and the when to start burning face without Alex. Exodia mage has neither of these decisions to make. It's easier than freeze by a large margin
I'd have to say Razakus. A lot of decision making and being to deal optimally with situations by working with what you've got. When you have the nut draw, it's very hard to lose, but more often than not I find Shadowreaper Anduin buried in the depths of my deck and that's when a good pilot (which I'm not) makes a difference.
While combo decks are quite linear because of their single win condition, their pilot must typically think several turns ahead all while constantly calculating and re-calculating their own odds of drawing into the combo pieces and weighing that against their opponents draws and potential reach options.
Ironically, this is literally what a lot of the less forgiving aggro decks do as well. "Do I have the damage to get there if this burn spell clears a minion?" "What if they play X card?" "If I make this trade I live against X, and can draw Y or Z as my outs." "I need to play this now to get him to X HP before the board clear coming in two turns, then in three turns I'll re-develop with Y."
You might as well just ask "Which decks do you like to play?" and you'd get the same answers from everyone.
After all, who wouldn't like to feel skilled?
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Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
Controls decks require the most skill because you have to be able to predict every decklist you encounter in order to plan when to use your removals and when to use your limited number of threats. Control Shaman falls into this category.
Other kinds of deck are a lot easier because you mainly have to know your deck and your own win condition. Freeze Mage is an ultimate example of this. Freeze Mage is easy to play because your path to victory is so well-defined.
Exodia Mage relies on a lot of RNG though. A useable spell from Babbling Book, did I start with the coin?, can I get a Primordial Glyph off another Primordial Glyph, will I get Cabalist Tome into another?, etc. The random cards you get dictate your win condition outside of putting in a ton of card draw. I think limited card draw takes more skill than putting in two copies of Novice Engineer, Acolyte of Pain, Arcane Intellect etc. as you need to be careful with your resources. The same argument can be made against Jade Druid and Miracle Rogue. If you are almost in fatigue and your opponent has more than half of their deck left, it's not an indicator that you were more skillful, you simply had way more tools at your disposal.
Correct. But not a single players that drinks this abomination will admit to how simple and how reliable the deck is on luck. They like to think that because you can delay the game, the deck is difficult and they are good players ROFL. Sure EleGiggle
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Great art can never be created without great suffering.
This game no longer has high skill decks. All decks now come down to making a decision of when to trade and when to go face, even agro decks sometimes.
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Great art can never be created without great suffering.
The deck I have the hardest time with is my Budget Miracle Rogue deck, because it relies so heavily on spells, and also requires careful rationing of your cards, because thanks to Rogue's combo effects, the act of playing a card can be more significant that the effect of the card itself.
So far, I've spent 3 out of every 4 matches where I make a move and think, "oh, no, I messed that up." This is half the reason I am not interested in crafting the rest of the deck.
You might as well just ask "Which decks do you like to play?" and you'd get the same answers from everyone.
After all, who wouldn't like to feel skilled?
Not really. There is a very easy way to determine the skill requirements of a deck, I already made it clear. Compare the results that decks has in the hands of a good player and a bad player, over a very large sample size of games, and it will indicate to you how much skill is actually involved in piloting the deck. The higher the difference in the results, the higher the skill requirement of the deck. Like I always say, hand a Freeze Mage deck to a good and a bad player, compare the winrates they have, and you will see if there is a skill requirements or not. Then do the same for a Pirate Warrior. (They all require skill, but the differences in Winrate will be really extreme in one case.)
I didn't say no decks require skill, nor that it can't be proven they require skill, all I did was criticize so many obviously biased answers in these types of threads.
That said, some people do look beyond what they play when they look for difficulty, so those honest joes are always appreciated.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health. - Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
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of all time? the hardest deck i've ever piloted is probably control warrior of wotog. not the c'thun variant, spell control warrior. i've never had as much fun as when i played that deck.
Patron Warr and Mill Rogue. Anything else is pretty easy.
Exodia Mage relies on a lot of RNG though. A useable spell from Babbling Book, did I start with the coin?, can I get a Primordial Glyph off another Primordial Glyph, will I get Cabalist Tome into another?, etc. The random cards you get dictate your win condition outside of putting in a ton of card draw. I think limited card draw takes more skill than putting in two copies of Novice Engineer, Acolyte of Pain, Arcane Intellect etc. as you need to be careful with your resources. The same argument can be made against Jade Druid and Miracle Rogue. If you are almost in fatigue and your opponent has more than half of their deck left, it's not an indicator that you were more skillful, you simply had way more tools at your disposal.
While many of the skill based decks have fallen off the map because of new sets, nerfs, or the meta, there are some very difficult decks that don't get the credit they deserve.
"For a solitaire game, you need a game to be solely influenced by the plays of one player. That is never the case with Exodia Mage". Sure, if you want to use the dictionary definition of "solitaire" we can agree that Exodia Mage is not a solitaire. In fact, any deck in Hearthstone is, unless the opponent is AFK from the start till the end of the match.
"You won't pull it off". Based on what are you assuming that i can't have >50% winrate with the deck? And why 200? wouldnt be more reasonable, lets say, 50? Gosh, i rather a kick in the balls than playing 200 matches with mage.
"The deck is perfectly fine, counterable with Hard and Soft counters". The only counters are Eater of Secrets, Eye for an Eye if somehow you managed to reduce its life to 1 and (with some luck) Dirty Rat and Gnomeferatu. Im talking about slow decks, of course any aggro deck has a big advantage vs Exodia, but whit every control deck is super frustrating (for the control).
Also, you didn't consider Wild, in there you don't even need the quest, Thaurissan will do the trick. Even more toxic.
Skill in hearthstone lol.
if u insist(high tier only)
aggro=LoE meta face hunter
midrange=Pre FoN nerf Druid
combo=obviously old freeze mage(exodia is extremely easy to pilot),with old renolock being 2nd.
control=Lightbomb priest, control warrior you just had know your opponents resources
and yeah , miracle rogue was hard but only when you were new to it. It WAS crazy what kolento did with it though .
Echo Giants Mage
Patron Warrior
Aviana Kun Druids
... and FFS guys, Razakus priest is not hard to play. Did you ever play any other non-dragon priests before? In real control priest, you typically need to clear the board in multiple card combinations and time those properly but also know when to throw out these cards for tempo. The only other major priest archtype was Silence/Divine fire, where knowing when and how much to "go off" can win or lose games. Razakus priest is so easy that, as an old priest main, I'm insulted this is going to be the first tier 1 priest in HS history
Same goes for Exodia mage. The hardest things about freeze mage is knowing when to throw burn at minions and the when to start burning face without Alex. Exodia mage has neither of these decisions to make. It's easier than freeze by a large margin
Legend with : S65 Freeze Mage, S57 Maly Gonk Druid, S57 "Okay" Shaman, S53 Boom-zooka Hunter, S53 Maly Tog Druid, S52 Wild Tog Druid ft.Blingtron, S50 Quest Rogue, S49 Dead Man's Warrior, S41 Wild Clown Fiesta Druid, S41 Hadronox Jade Druid, S40 Wild OTK Dragon Druid, S35 SMOrc Shaman, S33 Jade Druid, S22 Control Priest, S19 Control Priest
I'd have to say Razakus. A lot of decision making and being to deal optimally with situations by working with what you've got. When you have the nut draw, it's very hard to lose, but more often than not I find Shadowreaper Anduin buried in the depths of my deck and that's when a good pilot (which I'm not) makes a difference.
Ironically, this is literally what a lot of the less forgiving aggro decks do as well. "Do I have the damage to get there if this burn spell clears a minion?" "What if they play X card?" "If I make this trade I live against X, and can draw Y or Z as my outs." "I need to play this now to get him to X HP before the board clear coming in two turns, then in three turns I'll re-develop with Y."
CCGing since '98.
You might as well just ask "Which decks do you like to play?" and you'd get the same answers from everyone.
After all, who wouldn't like to feel skilled?
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished
Controls decks require the most skill because you have to be able to predict every decklist you encounter in order to plan when to use your removals and when to use your limited number of threats. Control Shaman falls into this category.
Other kinds of deck are a lot easier because you mainly have to know your deck and your own win condition. Freeze Mage is an ultimate example of this. Freeze Mage is easy to play because your path to victory is so well-defined.
Great art can never be created without great suffering.
This game no longer has high skill decks. All decks now come down to making a decision of when to trade and when to go face, even agro decks sometimes.
Great art can never be created without great suffering.
The deck I have the hardest time with is my Budget Miracle Rogue deck, because it relies so heavily on spells, and also requires careful rationing of your cards, because thanks to Rogue's combo effects, the act of playing a card can be more significant that the effect of the card itself.
So far, I've spent 3 out of every 4 matches where I make a move and think, "oh, no, I messed that up." This is half the reason I am not interested in crafting the rest of the deck.
Start of Year: Provoke the failure of 3 expansions, force nerfs on otherwise balanced cards, bring deckbuilding to an all-time low and get rotated one year earlier for being such a threat to the game's health.
- Genn and Baku's historical entry on the White Book of Shit Design, shortly before retiring unpunished