Been away for a little while doing other stuff (TM) for a while. But I have noticed in my recent games that it seems as though there is an unusually high percentage of people playing ZooLock currently. Now, I don't have hard figures to make a soap-box-style rant about it; and I don't wish to - it is quite possible that it is simply personal reflection of what I have seen recently. But I wondered if anyone else was finding that they were facing an inordinate amount of Heal-based Zoo decks of late?
Now I don't hate ZooLock at all (just the low skill noobs that play it.. XD Just kidding! Kappa!) - but I thought there might be opportunity for more diversity in decks with the latest Expac. In fact, I have recently created a pretty strong Priest Dragon Tempo deck which does pretty well (less so against zoo, of course - that's not the basis of this post, though! Honestly! Haha!). I'd be happy to share it with people if they are interested.
Since I haven't been on Hearthpwn for probably months now (A.K.A - living under a rock), there may have been other threads about this very subject. To which I say: sorry, sorry, etc etc.
So is it becoming too pervasive in your opinion? Is it just right? Do you think it is too weak, even? (Maybe someone does, I dont know! Lol!)
Sure - I've found myself relegated to playing Big Spell Mage and Odd Warrior a lot. But finding yourself counter-meta-ing almost exclusively can get rather... samey! :-P
On the subject of Odd Rogue / decks - I don't know what it is, but there is always this inward huge groan feeling whenever you see that Baku animation at the start. It's so weird - it's like psychologically you can almost concede the game before it's even started. It's a powerful effect it can have on people. I think there's a similar feel when that first Flame Imp goes down in zoolock matchups.
Zoolock doesn't bother me. I feel like I'm competitive with even shaman. Sometimes they overwhelm me, sometimes I grind them to death by trading with inferior tokens and superior tempo minions. I see lots of druid. And lots of Hunter. And obviously, when my win rate is too high, I start queueing into an inordinate number of priests. So much so that I have to start teching windspeaker in to have a chance.
I do realise (of course) that there is always the psychological phenomena that the mind can use to highlight the events that cause us irritation or negative emotion. Since these are more often than not caused by facing a zoolock deck, they can seem more prevalent. So it was nice to at least have some confirmation that it's not all psychosomatic! :-)
I'm hard-pressed to imagine people play it for the "fun" as such, since the whole game play of the deck is very dull and linear. Play minions, make value trades, go face lots.
That said, however, I really enjoy good high tempo decks (like Priest or Shaman tempo), which rely on a similar game play style. So maybe who am I to judge perhaps? It just doesn't seem to have the same effect with Zoolock for me. It feels a lot more autopiloted. You don't have to think too much.
Oh - and The Soularium? That card just outright won games almost by itself for me. The number of times it arrives to find you that Soulfire or Leeroy Jenkins is uncanny! Super strong card!
Effective because Warlock has consistent card draw through hero power.
Also, having options at hand each turn feels good, and i think this is what gives it an edge in popularity against Odd Rogue.
I don't see the problem at it being the most popular deck, being far from broken or polarising, since a good number of Tempo/Midrange decks can deal with it.
Ofc if you want to counter it hard you are forced to Control, but that is a choice, not a necessity.
I don't see it as problem too. But I don't find the deck interactive. You just go with the same plan, what's the interaction? you draw buff your minion in some way, swarm the board, you can make the difference with trades.... I don't see many "interaction" with your opponent.
Same can be said about all decks if you go about it that way.
Odd warrior: armour up and clear board
Maly druid (or any combo druid): draw your deck and dont die
Control mage: clear board go jaina DK
Deathrattle Hunter: clone Devilsaurs
On: I actually dont see too many zoolocks lately at all.
Depends a lot on the rank you are at. rank 4-5 are now full of them. Not a problem IMHO, but still all of your example don't hold. surviving with druid is not so "uninteractive" as filling your board. Require thinking, planning again, countering play of different deck ecc. It's not the hardest task to pull of, let's be clear, but while most decks have different plans, zoolock has one and one only. Never thought aggro players are bad, but simply i don't see many interaction with your opponent.
As I said before, I find games with zoolock highly interactive with even shaman. I don't find much interaction in a game against a druid. It's pretty much he kills everything I have with 1 mana and 4 Mana spells, plays spreading if I go wide, at some point he draws five cards, there some animation of him ramping, maybe Alex, then next turn I'm probably dead.
Cheap, easy to pilot, fast wins/losses = Very popular. Use decks to counter it. Warrior (almost all variants work great), big spell mage (unless they have the nuts hand), odd mech paladin etc. If you encounter a certain deck a lot then try to counter. In my opinion however i face a zoo warlock 2 out of 10 times at rank 8.
Depends a lot on the rank you are at. rank 4-5 are now full of them. Not a problem IMHO, but still all of your example don't hold. surviving with druid is not so "uninteractive" as filling your board. Require thinking, planning again, countering play of different deck ecc. It's not the hardest task to pull of, let's be clear, but while most decks have different plans, zoolock has one and one only. Never thought aggro players are bad, but simply i don't see many interaction with your opponent.
You are confusing complex with interactive, and proactive with uninteractive.
Ofc you are free to prefer reactive against proactive, and complex against straightforward, but all board-based strategies are undeniably interactive (or at least, it is the highest degree of interaction offered by HS).
I would agree there - I would certainly say its more interactive than most / a lot of previously non-interactive decks like the old Ice Block Quest Mage, or the original Quest Rogue (before it's many nerfages).
In those decks, the opponent could almost be replaced with a basic AI Bot that went through the motions against you. You practically ignored everything they did (barring the occasional clear etc) and waited for your win condition to appear in time.
With Zoolock, it is certainly more apparent that you are required to consider trading the opponent's minions and whether to throw up taunts or to buff for the damage etc. It requires "choices", but on the other hand, the choices are more often than not fairly easy and making the less optimal play is hardly punished unless in the extreme misplay situations.
Maybe that's one of the points of frustration for some opponents? Watching the zoo player make horrible judgement calls and still managing to overwhelm the board, etc.
I've no problems whatsoever with Zoolocks, 'cause of the many players doing dumb mistakes. If piloted correctly it can be very deadly though. Even at rank 2 and 1 there are too many players having brainfarts all the time. ^^
I mean... I only see about 1 Zoolock every session of play. The rest is just Deathrattle Hunter, Odd Warrior, Deeathrattle Hunter, Quest Rogue, Deathrattle Hunter, Aggro Mage, Deathrattle Hunter, you get the gist.
I started playing it a little this month, because I like aggro and needed a switch from Mech Pally - it's a ridiculously powerful deck and right on the money if your playstyle is aggro. If you can't clear them by turn 5, you're usually toast. It starts running out of steam around rank 3, but other than that, not surprised you're seeing a lot of it. One thing is obvious though; lots of newbies play it. When you come up against it, it's often misplay after misplay and just hand-barfing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I wasn't planning on going for a run today. But those cops came out of nowhere.
Sure - I've found myself relegated to playing Big Spell Mage and Odd Warrior a lot. But finding yourself counter-meta-ing almost exclusively can get rather... samey! :-P
Been away for a little while doing other stuff (TM) for a while.
But I have noticed in my recent games that it seems as though there is an unusually high percentage of people playing ZooLock currently.
Now, I don't have hard figures to make a soap-box-style rant about it; and I don't wish to - it is quite possible that it is simply personal reflection of what I have seen recently.
But I wondered if anyone else was finding that they were facing an inordinate amount of Heal-based Zoo decks of late?
Now I don't hate ZooLock at all (just the low skill noobs that play it.. XD Just kidding! Kappa!) - but I thought there might be opportunity for more diversity in decks with the latest Expac.
In fact, I have recently created a pretty strong Priest Dragon Tempo deck which does pretty well (less so against zoo, of course - that's not the basis of this post, though! Honestly! Haha!). I'd be happy to share it with people if they are interested.
Since I haven't been on Hearthpwn for probably months now (A.K.A - living under a rock), there may have been other threads about this very subject. To which I say: sorry, sorry, etc etc.
So is it becoming too pervasive in your opinion? Is it just right? Do you think it is too weak, even? (Maybe someone does, I dont know! Lol!)
Sure - I've found myself relegated to playing Big Spell Mage and Odd Warrior a lot. But finding yourself counter-meta-ing almost exclusively can get rather... samey! :-P
So easy to farm them for gold. Also, insert severe BM if its casual and feast on the tears of the salty.
On the subject of Odd Rogue / decks - I don't know what it is, but there is always this inward huge groan feeling whenever you see that Baku animation at the start. It's so weird - it's like psychologically you can almost concede the game before it's even started.
It's a powerful effect it can have on people. I think there's a similar feel when that first Flame Imp goes down in zoolock matchups.
This is my match history as Secret Hunter, I can safely say that 16% of that 23% is Zoo, the other is a mix of even and control.
Interesting. So there definitely is a larger swathe playing zoo than most other archetypes, let alone classes.
Good to know :-)
Zoolock doesn't bother me. I feel like I'm competitive with even shaman. Sometimes they overwhelm me, sometimes I grind them to death by trading with inferior tokens and superior tempo minions. I see lots of druid. And lots of Hunter. And obviously, when my win rate is too high, I start queueing into an inordinate number of priests. So much so that I have to start teching windspeaker in to have a chance.
I do realise (of course) that there is always the psychological phenomena that the mind can use to highlight the events that cause us irritation or negative emotion. Since these are more often than not caused by facing a zoolock deck, they can seem more prevalent.
So it was nice to at least have some confirmation that it's not all psychosomatic! :-)
I'm hard-pressed to imagine people play it for the "fun" as such, since the whole game play of the deck is very dull and linear. Play minions, make value trades, go face lots.
That said, however, I really enjoy good high tempo decks (like Priest or Shaman tempo), which rely on a similar game play style. So maybe who am I to judge perhaps?
It just doesn't seem to have the same effect with Zoolock for me. It feels a lot more autopiloted. You don't have to think too much.
Oh - and The Soularium? That card just outright won games almost by itself for me. The number of times it arrives to find you that Soulfire or Leeroy Jenkins is uncanny! Super strong card!
Fast, fairly interactive, and effective deck.
Effective because Warlock has consistent card draw through hero power.
Also, having options at hand each turn feels good, and i think this is what gives it an edge in popularity against Odd Rogue.
I don't see the problem at it being the most popular deck, being far from broken or polarising, since a good number of Tempo/Midrange decks can deal with it.
Ofc if you want to counter it hard you are forced to Control, but that is a choice, not a necessity.
Trades, heals and taunts are the interactions, the continuous attempt to prevail on the board.
Not extremely complex in its plan, but it is not a facedeck.
Same can be said about all decks if you go about it that way.
Odd warrior: armour up and clear board
Maly druid (or any combo druid): draw your deck and dont die
Control mage: clear board go jaina DK
Deathrattle Hunter: clone Devilsaurs
On: I actually dont see too many zoolocks lately at all.
As I said before, I find games with zoolock highly interactive with even shaman. I don't find much interaction in a game against a druid. It's pretty much he kills everything I have with 1 mana and 4 Mana spells, plays spreading if I go wide, at some point he draws five cards, there some animation of him ramping, maybe Alex, then next turn I'm probably dead.
"At rank 8" That's cute
You are confusing complex with interactive, and proactive with uninteractive.
Ofc you are free to prefer reactive against proactive, and complex against straightforward, but all board-based strategies are undeniably interactive (or at least, it is the highest degree of interaction offered by HS).
I would agree there - I would certainly say its more interactive than most / a lot of previously non-interactive decks like the old Ice Block Quest Mage, or the original Quest Rogue (before it's many nerfages).
In those decks, the opponent could almost be replaced with a basic AI Bot that went through the motions against you. You practically ignored everything they did (barring the occasional clear etc) and waited for your win condition to appear in time.
With Zoolock, it is certainly more apparent that you are required to consider trading the opponent's minions and whether to throw up taunts or to buff for the damage etc.
It requires "choices", but on the other hand, the choices are more often than not fairly easy and making the less optimal play is hardly punished unless in the extreme misplay situations.
Maybe that's one of the points of frustration for some opponents? Watching the zoo player make horrible judgement calls and still managing to overwhelm the board, etc.
I've no problems whatsoever with Zoolocks, 'cause of the many players doing dumb mistakes. If piloted correctly it can be very deadly though. Even at rank 2 and 1 there are too many players having brainfarts all the time. ^^
Always expect the unexpectable!
I mean... I only see about 1 Zoolock every session of play. The rest is just Deathrattle Hunter, Odd Warrior, Deeathrattle Hunter, Quest Rogue, Deathrattle Hunter, Aggro Mage, Deathrattle Hunter, you get the gist.
I started playing it a little this month, because I like aggro and needed a switch from Mech Pally - it's a ridiculously powerful deck and right on the money if your playstyle is aggro. If you can't clear them by turn 5, you're usually toast. It starts running out of steam around rank 3, but other than that, not surprised you're seeing a lot of it. One thing is obvious though; lots of newbies play it. When you come up against it, it's often misplay after misplay and just hand-barfing.
I wasn't planning on going for a run today. But those cops came out of nowhere.
This is how I get Legend like every time xd
https://outof.cards