Hearthpwn

To start, I'm really unsure about Violet Teacher.

In rogue, your 0 mana plays to go with Teacher are Backstab (which allows you to often empty the board) and Preparation, which allow you to combo with a spell to clear the board. Teacher can, in rogue, on turn 4, land board control AND make some board clear.

With hunter, on turn 4, you can only Hunter's Mark. Which makes sense only if you already have a way to deal that last one damage. I don't think you'll often reasonably land a Violet Teacher on turn 4, but more likely on turn 6 with one of the 2 mana spell hunter have : either a trap which will be great at protecting the Violet Teacher. That is still a turn 6, you might face off a Thaurissan or your opponent could have Eviscerate, Fireball, Doomguard, Siphon Soul, or many other things. a 5 health minion on turn 6 is vulnerable. I'm not sure it is very reliable. Though if the Freezing Trap does its work and the Violet Teacher survives, the next turn could go into a Lock n Load spellfest. Maybe a bit greedy though.

Oil Rogue, Miracle Rogue and Patron Warrior have some reliable combos to close the game, which are Tinker's Sharpsword Oil + Blade Flury for easily 10+ damage, Leeroy + Shadowstep + Shadowstep for TONS of damage, and Warsong Commander + Grim Patron + Enablers or Warsong Commander + Frothings + Enablers. Each one of these combos are reliable : you have the cards in hand, you count your damage, you go for lethal or not. What I see here isn't exactly comparable to that. Yes, you will draw a lot, but you won't consistently have ways to burst. You might get, with 4-5 spells played, as many gahzrillas, Deadly Shots, Cobra Shots, Multi-Shots, King Krush, Traps, Animal Companions, Webspinners, 1/1 lame wolf thing I forgot the name, etc. The cards you will draw with Lock n Load are card advantage cards, not burst potential cards. Maybe you should consider how likely it would be to

Though, Oil, Miracle and Patron can achieve those combos thanks to some important draw mechanic that help them reduce their decks size (and they are actually not so much looking for increase their hand size) to make their chances to draw their combo higher. In Oil, it is Prep-Sprint, in Miracle it is (was) Auctioneer, in Patron, it is... Well, a lot of different cycle cards and sometimes huge Battle Rage. Here, tracking could actually be decent in this role, even though really lightly compared to the previously named decks, and might sometimes end up awfully since you'd have to discard 2 cards.

The spare parts can work fine with this, but for clockwork gnome staving off aggro, I'm unsure also. Paladin Aggro run muster for Battle, Minibot and Argent Squire, Zoo run Voidwalker, Mechs run Annoy-o-trons and a ton of 2/3 minions... If you are carrying the legacy of Miracle, Oil and Patron here, why bothering with a 1 drop ? you could get the spare part and a more reliable minion with mechanical Yeti. If you are uncomfortable against aggro decks (which might happen, having no SI:7, backstab, Fiery War Axes or Armorsmiths) Play an explosive trap, if you don't have minions on board, it will either act like a Consecration or a Frost Nova (and then a Consecration). And it works with Lock N Load.

I wouldn't be chocked by a Thaurissan here. It might get a lot of work done, reducing tracking's cost to 0, and lock n load and traps to 1, but if your goal is actually to land a simple combo after a few turns of using your opponent's health down thanks to tempo advantage (Oil style after all), it isn't actually necessary and I'd agree with Thaurissan not being here since it is strong in more controley decks with combos (freeze, patron, Malylock). But as I stated earlier, I think Lock N Load is closer to a strict card advantage card than to an actual drawing card, or combo piece to a one turn kill.

Though, I'm intrigued, while it is called Lock and Load Hunter and that its core card is effectively lock and load, you haven't used lock and load in the tests. So the framework, which looks like a tempo hunter - not exactly what you advertised lock and load hunter will be : a deck similar to Miracle, Oil and Patron - has been tested against two of your friends. I'm not sure if this is close enough either to the deck you are Theorycrafting here or to a competitive or ladder environment.

Thanks for the critiques.

I play Clockwork Gnome because the main alternative to that is Arcane Shot, and I think that Clockwork Gnome is better than Arcane Shot. The reason why is because Arcane Shot is mainly just a cycle during your combo  turn, but if you use it early to kill off a Knife Juggler or whatever, you get less value during your combo turn. So by playing Arcane Shot, you're put in this odd situation where you can either choose to get combo value or immediate value. Clockwork Gnome sidesteps that.

Violet Teacher is much harder to get turn 4 value out of than in Oil Rogue, that's true, but oftentimes even in Oil Rogue (which is a deck I've played hundreds of games of, and used it almost exclusively to climb from rank 12 to rank 3 this season), you'd rather play the Piloted Shredder on turn 4, if you have a choice-- that is unless you have an insane play with Preparation lined up. Violet Teacher often comes out much later.

In many games I tested, I was actually able to get some good value out of Violet Teacher. Also, it's an important win condition in the aggro match-up where you probably won't have time to play Lock and Load. One match against aggro pally I did lose, but the game would have been an absolute stomp if I didn't have Violet Teacher; the game was much closer thanks to the Teacher, and in fact if my friend didn't have exactly Equality+Consecration, I would have probably won. I think it's a mistake to run 2 copies of Teacher, but it works as a pretty big board swing and as a third way to dump your spells if you're getting unlucky with drawing Lock and Load but you can't hold onto your cheap spells any longer lest you lose.

You wrote a long essay criticizing Lock and Load and I think you are mostly right-- the big issue with Lock and Load is that it doesn't draw you into a reliable win condition; whereas, for example, with Sprint you are drawing into your deck which has win conditions like Tinker's Sharpsword Oil. I'm not saying that Lock and Load will be viable; all I'm saying is that, if Lock and Load is indeed viable, this should be a good framework for a deck that can utilize it.

I tested this framework precisely because there's no reason not to seeing as 28 out of the 30 cards I'd use are not Grand Tournament cards. People always talk a big game predicting what cards will be good and which won't, without actually seeing whether these ideas would work. I'm one of the only people who tried to see how and whether such a framework could work, and you're going to criticize my testing? (For the record I'm a big tester of things, because I think despite all the caveats involved, it's far better than talking out of one's ass. For example I also calculated data on hero power usage rates to get a feel for how Inspire cards fit into current deck archetypes.) I think that's really unfair of you to criticize my idea on those grounds. Like no shit this plays much differently when you actually have the Lock and Loads in the deck, but there's no reason why a person couldn't get a general feel for how the rest of the deck works.

During my testing, I kept in mind a few things: (1) How awesome would it be to have Lock and Load in my hand right now? and (2) How well does this deck work even if I don't draw into Lock and Load-- or if I don't have time to play it? I'm going to amend my main post, but I should mention that I used a Golden Teacher and a Golden Kill Command to denote the copies of those cards that I considered to be the Lock and Loads (the non-golden ones I considered to be the regular 'ol cards.) The answer is that the deck works pretty decently; it's no Midrange Hunter, but it has a surprisingly close early game.

I actually tested this deck against aggro decks and Patron Warrior. I didn't bother against control because I'm pretty sure this deck is fine vs control; Lock and Load is like guaranteed value against any slow decks, and since Lock and Load is indeed the main win condition vs control, it's virtually impossible to actually get a feel for how the deck works vs control.