Hearthpwn

Thanks for all the feedback.  This season I climbed up to rank 2 very quickly with Jade, but started facing about 60% aggro druid and 30% jade druid, then 10% everything else.  Aggro wiped me out in 5 turns when they beat me, but lost otherwise.  That being said, I was losing to aggro more than I was winning, so I wondered if it's me or if aggro is simply more effective.  Seems like consensus is that they're both great decks, and my opinion is that I'm probably losing to better players than I usually face since I play casually and almost never get past rank 5.  I'm having fun playing aggro and jade each half the time and hopefully I'll get one last good win streak this month...

I kind of prefer to play Jade and have had much success with it this month.  However, I do face a lot of aggro druids too.  They seem to win within 4-5 turns, so perhaps it is a better deck for ladder, but anytime they don't get an optimal start, I can hold them off pretty easily with Jade.  What have been your experiences?  BTW, as a Druid player since HS began, it's nice to see we have two top-tier decks now.

Faced 3 Paladins in a row with a very mediocre Rogue draft, lost to all of them.  2 of them played their Death Knight turn 9.  The cheap 1/1 with divine shield and taunt is hard to beat when they drop 3 of them by turn 2.

I'm wondering if Paladin is the new #1 for Arena.

If you make a deck specifically to beat this, put in silences and/or kooky chemist, crazed alchemist, etc... to make the bone spikes ineffective.  That's the strongest thing you have to face.  

Hungry Dragon is 5/6 for 4 mana and its drawback of giving the opponent a 1-cost minion is minimal compared to this.

Keeper of the Grove might've been too strong at 2/4.  It is too weak at 2/2.  Making it 2/3 would've been a better nerf.  Instead they just made it into a card that nobody plays.

I play Barnabus on the ladder pretty often.  It has about a 50% WR in ranks 6-10 since nobody expects it.  Does ok against slow-developing decks.  It isn't a top-tier deck, but it is fun to play.

I went from 18 to 10 with Pirate Warrior in a few hours.  Since passing 10, I am getting nowhere with it.  The other decks seem to be tuned to beat it from ranks 10-5.

I am trying the deck out.  I had only 1 Primordial Drake and 1 Wild Pyromancer so I added a second Jade Blossom and a Youthful Brewmaster.  I'll see how it works out - climbing from rank 17.

Undefeated until opponent had floating cards.

I wish Fight Promoter had 5 attack...

I'm not seeing much that can succeed with ramp or Jungle Giants at the moment.  I got to rank 9 with it but that's as far as I can seem to get.  Aggro is killing me before I can do anything.  I've tried a variety of different decks, but they are all too slow for the likes of murloc pally, hunter, pirate warrior, and quest rogue.  Not to mention secret mage has gotten much faster now that people have tuned their decks.  It's brutal for anything other than aggro at the moment.

The best build I had was a Jungle giants build - it won a lot against taunt warrior, priest, and much midrange.  But aggro?  So long by turn 5.

You have 11 minions with 5 attack or more.  It seems like Jungle Giants couldn't hurt the deck, but could be great if it pops, free cards are cool.

I'm not sold on patches because there are a lot of ppl playing golakka crawler.  So I subbed in 2 wraths and bloodmage thalnos for the 3 pirates.  It's been working quite well for me.