Tempo burn shaman (72% climb to legend)
- Last updated Aug 23, 2020 (Scholomance Academy)
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Wild
- 17 Minions
- 12 Spells
- 1 Weapon
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Midrange Shaman
- Crafting Cost: 7680
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 8/17/2020 (Scholomance Academy)
- Neviroh
- Registered User
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- 6
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
N/A
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Total Deck Rating
7
Warning
This post is almost week old at this point, and as meta changes quickly at the start the expansion, there is the possibility that deck now works worse than before against more refined decks. I'm still sure core of this deck is competitive enough for ladder and legend, but I can't recommend going all-in on dust just try it out now.
If I have more time in the next 2-3 days, I will try to play more matches and adapt deck for the new meta, and will post an update. Until then please be careful with this deck as it seems like either it have become too unrefined for current meta and/or I didn't make a good enough job with explaining playstyle in the guide.
Deck was used to climb to legend all the way from bronze, with light tweaks along the way. Final version went 11-1 from diamond 4 to legend, Currently at 71% winrate with 21-8 games.
https://imgur.com/a/5wmW3C7
Gameplan
Gameplan is to get good tempo at the start of the game, go to the face while maintaining board control at the midgame, and finish it off with spell damage and burn package.
Burn package
Lava Burst
Main card of the deck, in my opinion, and the source of so many wins . Yes, overload 2 is awful, but it's not meant as midgame option. Low cost and spell damage boosts allow for huge damage output in one turn. Many players simply don't expect this from shaman nowadays, so it's easy to catch them off guard.
Can be used as removal, but only in critical situations.
Lightning Bolt
Early removal vs dangerous minions, but optimally burn for face.
Serpentshrine Portal
Burn AND great tempo. Best to use early while clearing the board, or even thrown to face at turn 3. Otherwise yet another burn.
Cumulo-Maximus
Mainly finisher or taunt-removal, or if you get lucky with Bloom at 2-3 turn - gamewinning setup.
Spell support package
At first that package was the core of the deck, but at the end It wasn't good enough to carry other weak cards. Because of that, kinda limited final form:
Diligent Notetaker
One of the best cards in the deck. Best used to copy Lava burst against slow decks, and to copy Portal against fast decks. Can be used as simple 2/3 in case of bad draw.
Lady Vashj
Average tempo, spell damage and potential win condition. Obvious choice.
Rune Dagger
Great in theory, but not as effective as I hoped it to be: having two of these at hand fell awful. Still, good early against aggro, and at the lategame to get just enough damage to face.
Squallhunter
One of my favorite cards: huge tempo if cheated early, and, of course, huge spell damage bust. However overload 2 is too much in many cases, especially if its gets easily removed by some priest or warlock, or copied by paladin. I even considered to cut that card to one at some point. Overall useful card, but important understand the risks.
Board control package
Ras Frostwhisper
Obviously amazing card, especially with spell damage package. No need to tell anything more, I guest.
Devolving Missiles
I hate this card. If there more than 1 minion on the board, it almost always goes three time to the wrong minion for me! Argh. But can't deny how good it overall: amazing against single target, helps with stealth, and sometime just reduces stats of enemy minions.
Tempo package
Lightning Bloom
Great way to cheat Squalhunter or Unbound elemental on the first or second turn. Also great to use on 3 mana to get Cumulo-Maximus with full potential. Otherwise just good situational card.
Primordial Studies
Even though it's spell damage card, I've put it as tempo because this card gives great options for early tempo: second turn Lady Vashj, 2-3 turn Squalhunter (with coin or bloom). Good for mid game too because of some big spell damage cards. Spell damage is just a bonus.
Sludge Slurper
Good first drop that can be useful even at the late game. Though not always best first turn: overload should make consider other tempo options if you have bloom, second drop or studies (you can get Vashj not so rarely).
Unbound Elemental
Surprisingly good tempo card because we have quite a few overload stuff. Often good at first turns, and grows to impressive stats if not removed fast enough.
Marshpawn
Good body with discover. Not the best, but without draw anything that generates card are important.
Value
Instructor Fireheart
Card generation in deck without draw. Helps clear the board or get last burn piece. Must have.
Wandmaker
Final change to the deck, really helps against paladins. Ok card for early game, and source of many great card: luckily, shaman has probably best 1-cost cards. Additional Devolving missiles or earth shock helps to get over taunts or remove buffed minions, lightning - additional burn, and other cards not so bad either.
Matchups
Druid: favorable. Unless they have the best draw with Kael and stuff, we are fast enough to deal enough damage with minions and finish it off with burn.
Rogue/hunter/demon hunter: slightly favorable. We have just enough board control and are just fast enough to kill them faster. With bad luck we can be destroyed because of lack of heal and taunts, but mostly we can control the board up to the midgame until they run out of steam, and then kill them in 2-3 turns with big minions and burn.
Mage: favorable. They can't deal with so much tempo early and midgame and don't have any heal.
Warlock: slightly favorable, in my experience, though theoretically they have enough card draw and removals. I guest all that warlocks' selfdamage theme helps us a lot.
Warrior: even/unfavorable. Not many chances against pure control because of armor and removals. But not so bad matchup in case of bomb warrior if they get greedy with weapons.
Priest: slightly unfavorable. Too much removals and heal, but with good draw it's possible kill them fast enough
Paladins: unfavorable. Main enemy of the deck, in my opinion. Even though we have missiles, so much taunts, shields and tempo are really hard to overrun midgame. And healing libram with 8/8 body signifies loss for us in most cases. I found it better to just go face when possible: if we get lucky and they don't, it's possible to burn them down.
Mulligan
Counterintuitively, because of overload our only first drop is not the best option to use in the first turn. Bloom+Squallhunter, wandmaker on turn two or even studies to Vashj is arguably better. So, you have to decide on what to aim for depending on what you have. Even 5 mana cards can be kept if you have two blooms in hand.
For any matchup: Studies or Slurper are good enough, but best option depends on matchup. Keep wandmaker too.
If enemy doesn't have cheap removal: Bloom+Squallhunter is amazing. But only keep hunter if you have bloom or you already have another option for early game.
In other cases:Bloom+elementals or studies+Vashj to control the board early, or Slurper if you don't have first options. Lightning bolt is an option too. Don't keep dagger: even though it is helpful in removing 1 health minions, it is worse than having big minion on the board. In worst case any 3 drop is not so bad, especially portal
Additional cards against paladins and druids: missiles and wandmaker are important to get rid of bubbles and stealth minions
I wanna try this deck to climb. Any changes from testing?
Have you tried putting speaker gidra in the deck? might be good against early minions. i am up 9/12 games with this list at the moment though and added torrent cause i didn't have vashj. You have to be a bit risky to win sometimes, don't you? i.e go all in on face sometimes or you lose.
I had gidra in early lists, yeah, but most of the time it felt too slow for spellburst play and base stats are bad in most cases, so I replaced it. Though maybe now when I have elemental in the list, probably it's not so bad idea to try it again, as elementals are relatively slow too.
And yes, this deck does feel risky sometimes, almost like you steal a win in the last moment. As shaman doesn't have any good draw and value of cards is not nearly as good as, for example, paladin's, you have to shift your plan midway through game to completely face-oriented, to be able to close the match before opponent's value will overwhelm you. The "feeling" when should do it develops with experience, I guess, and it seems like I didn't do good enough job with explaining it in the guide.
Also it seems like meta shifted in a week and this list needs to be updated accordingly. Unfortunately I don't have enough time right now to playtest deck and new variants, so I updated guide with warning for now. Sorry if you feel unsatisfied with the deck: it worked for me at the time and I just wanted to share my experience.
have you played the deck since? Would really like to hear you opinion on Gidra in today's meta.
Since VS is shitting on Shaman and nobody is really playing it apart from Totem and Quest-stuff, which I find terribly unfun. Tried your list and I'm having a blast (pun intended), but I'm really unsure about Gidra, if she's worth it and what to take out to make room for her. 4/7 with Rush and Windfury is obviously great, but more often than not it leads to incredibly weird plays where you overload for a bunch just to make her work...
Bah more like 50%
I'm sorry if deck left you unsatisfied. It seems like meta has changed in a week and this list needs to be updated to work better. Unfortunately I don't have enough time right now to playtest deck and new variants, so I updated guide with warning for now.
Also I could say that it's quite non-standard deck that requires you to stop trading with minions at some point to win, and just rely on burn or topdecking in critical situations as shaman don't have good draw. It may seem counterintuitive at first and I probably haven't explained it well in guide.
I'm having problems with too little card draw... got any suggestions/tips to play with it?
Unfortunately card draw is the main problem of this deck and shaman class in general. The whole point if this deck is to be able to win using the cards that you draw normally. So you have to be very carefull with cards usage, especially with burn cards: they generally best to keep as lethal piece.
But maybe you could specify which matchup you have problems with? It's impossible to give good advice without knowing the matchup.
Yea it was no specific matchup, just in general.
I thought maybe swapping out the Unbound Elemental for 2x Farsight. Even tho u get rid of 2 tempo components then, the cards u draw will mostly be playable right away.
I've actually seem some non-controlly shaman decks use Far sight, and in theory it could help with lethal pieces at the end. So It could work, I'll give it a try next time I play probably.
Overall draw problem will be there anyway unfortunately, so you have to consider your actions very well with this deck. But honestly except for paladins (which is the worst matchup for this deck, at least for me) and controlly warriors I haven't found myself with no cards very often: it either me killing them fast enough, or me losing to aggro faster (happily no so common case). But again, I have not played this week like at all, so maybe it doesn't work like that now.
Edit: also I tried Voracious reader at some point, but in many cases it was useless due to overload and keeping burn spells in hand for lethal .
This decks seems like a lot of fun. I would love to try it out, but I'm missing some cards - hesitant to craft with my limited amount of dust. I have a couple questions:
1) Is Sludge Slurper really the best option on turn 1? It seems like it would really hinder your options for turn 2 and the deck has some good looking two drops available, is it reasonable to switch it out for Surging Tempest ?
2) Is there any merit to running 1 copy of Dwarven Archaeologist ? I feel like it could have multiple practical applications and not just helping finish with burn discovery on Instructor Fireheart
Great questions!
1) At first I had them both, but at some point removed Tempest as it was completely unimpactful on turn 3+, in a deck without any draw. I liked Slurper more because lackeys are always useful and overload mechanic can be used to activate Cumulo and buff elemental. But you made a good point: I think I'll try to run deck with Tempest, because I really did have some weird turns 2 with overload from slurper.
Edit: played a couple of games with it. It is good enough, sometimes even better. But feels like it often stays as 1/3, because outside of Portal we don't really have good overload card for early game. Maybe Bolt too, but most of the times I prefer to save him to the end. Ideally I would want to run both Tempest and Slurper, but without draw I find it too risky for the end game.
Overall I'd say it's fine replacement.
2) Honestly I simply don't have it and didn't want to spend dust on it just to check. There really isnt a lot of discover in this deck. And Marshspawn won't be active at turn 3 if we play Archeologist. So I'm not sure if it can effectively replace other cards. It would be great if you'd try it yourself and told me your opinion though.
Playing 5-0 with this deck now, so much fun!
Glad you liked it! If you'll have any questions or suggestions, feel free to comment. There is definitely more to think and write about, at least in case of matchups, so any additional input would be useful if I'll have time to update the guide.
Can I replace Ras? I don't have him. :(
Well, he is not in core part of the deck, so you probably can. But he is very good (good stats+aoe+face damage), can ofteh win games almost by itself and doesn't really have direct replacement.
As aoe, if you face a lot of aggro, you could simply put storm: you even can play it earlier than Ras, but with overload, of course. Other than that I would experiment with more tempo or face damage cards: some good 3-4 drop or doomhammer, maybe.
In the future though I recommend you to craft him, I'm sure he'll be stable choice for many shaman and mage decks.
Hey!
Congratz on first legend and the good description and advice on the deck!
Do you feel Lady Vashj is a must? Ever tried any replacements or do you have any suggestions? Maybe thalnos for spell damage and draw?
Keep up the good work and gl on ladder ;)
She has been a solid card in all sorts of spell shaman variants, and you can argue that she is an important part of the spell package. I am glad I spent the dust when she was released and I have definitely used her in other deck formats. Compared to other primes, she is not as awesome, but when you do draw prime (if it ever happens) it will fish out the rest of your spells and finish the opponent.
Primarily she is an additional win condition, even in bad matchups like paladin or warrior. Also great synergy with studies, which allows to play her on turn 2.
Honestly never tried to replace, but theoretically it is possible, with slight loss in tempo and winrate, I think. Thalnos is bad option though, because he gives zero tempo, and spell damage is not good enough by itself. Card draw is ok, but again - if you lost your board control, you probably already lost.
So if you don't have her,I would replace her with other tempo-ish 3-4 drops like Frozen Shadoweaver (I actually used her at some point instead of unbound elementals), Ogre Magi or similar.
Or depending on how often you face aggro decks or midrange decks, you could add a Storm or torrent (which was also part of the deck at some point of testing). But it will be loss in tempo.
Hi there!
It's my first deck guide and, honestly, first legend, so I wasn't really sure if I have enough experience to give advice about decks. But I love shaman the most of all clasee, and there aren't many good decks out there for him. So even my deck will turn out bad at the end, well, I at least tried to help.
Feel free to ask or make a suggestion. A can write some more about cards that I didn't include, about mulligan and some other stuff, if this deck will get any attention. But be warned: I'm not so skilled of a player, honestly, so maybe I'll just write some stupid stuff ;)
P.S. Sorry for bad endligh, I rarely use it to write anything