Hearthpwn

Does not work, too much luck involved. Even if someone gets lucky enough to wipe every of Sapphiron's cards, you die from fatigue because your health will be much lower than Sapphiron's.

I do agree it involves a lot of luck. However, do take note that no matter how good your deck is, the fight itself already involves a lot of luck.

I disagree that you will die from fatigue just because your health is much lower. In most circumstances, you should be able to take up to a total of 46 damage because of 2 Ice Barrier. Kripp failed to trigger his last ice barrier but managed to trigger counterspell against pure cold which essentially total up to the additional 16 damage.  You can always feel free to swap out Mad Scientist for Antique Healbot if you like.

By default, Sapphiron should be drawing 2 cards faster than you. 1 extra card from 3 loot Hoarder vs 2 Dancing Sword. The other extra card due to the fact that he always starts second. By the end of it, Sapphiron should have already taken 3 fatigue damage by the time you take the first you should win if you have a few damage leftover.

The problem is that two Ice Barriers counters pure cold, but in the in the end its 30 health or less against 45, so even if Sapphiron is 2 cards faster, you die from fatigue before him. So no, this does not work, maybe with counter spell, but even then its luck related.

The key is antique healbot + duplicate, so this deck works much better: http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/275600-sapphiron-heroic-mage-budget#c1. With this deck you can gain 48 extra health.

You are not necessary be using a card to trade for another card. If you manage to kill off at least 3 minions with a single flamestrike or a fireball, you will have extra damage to deal with sapphiron. Do remember that you still have your hero power to deal damage each turns. If you add those up, you can outlast sapphiron. You have 21 cards to deal with sapphiron's 24 minions. 3 of the cards are board clear. It depends on how smart you play it. Like, when sapphiron drops a necroknight, it would be smart for you to freeze it then deal with more minions next turn. There are people who does it even without GvG cards. So you should be able to do the same as well.

So instead of those healbots, the actual key here is the board clear and delays like Cone of Cold, Frost Nova, Blizzard, and Flamestrike. I personally don't like arcane intellect because they does nothing in this fight other than making you fatigue faster. I would actually swap my Mad Scientist out for Cone of Cold if I have them.

His deck would still work even if he replaced all GvG cards with chargers and Duplicate with Vaporize.

Of course clearing the board is the most important and of course I have my hero power, but it's exactly that where luck is heavily involved. Smart play has nothing to do with it, if you don't draw the right cards in the right moment, it's over: Either you die before Sapphiron's drawn out or you die because because of fatigue. It's statistically nearly impossible to not take damage and to deal enough with your hero power to outlast Sapphiron in the fatigue state. The numbers are so close, that in the end luck is the only factor which is determining the win condition.

Of couse clearing the board is the most important, but antique healbot + duplicate is the key to survive the whole fight till the end.

I would say the smart play is building this deck right from the start. If someone really have to wait for something like antique healbot to come out just to clear the heroic boss. I don't really consider that as an actual solution to this. You kept rambling about luck and what if antique healbot were never released at all? Are you going to dup Priestess of Elune instead?

This fight have been, I admit it, a very luck base battle. I am just sharing a possible solution. It's not a perfect one but it works. It didn't work for you after 1 try? Fine. If that's you statistic. It works for me in the 2nd try and that's why I posted it here.

On the final note. If you really want to compare solution. Do find something that is cheaper than my deck as well.

I'm just saying that this deck relies too heavily on luck. To beat bosses I want decks which work in general if I'm not unlucky. But this one works only if I'm really lucky. About statistics: It's not about how many tries I had, but how perfectly the draws have to be. I didn't even get close to winning with this one and I explained why. And no, I don't want to build decks and I don't want to find a cheaper solution, because my posted solution is on the same scale as your solution, but works much better and I also explained why. There is nothing more to say

If you understand this deck so much. Maybe you could enlighten me what should you mulligan for? I mentioned only the perfect case scenario here but not the actual win condition. To me, the win condition is actually the ability to kill 12 creatures with that one blizzard and 2 flamestrike I have.

Secondly, do you know how boss AI works and how to exploit them? Perhaps you should be questioning your own skill before saying it base too much on luck. I have this deck out without antique healbot and a lot of cards because I don't have them and I don't wish to craft them just to kill an AI. I can actually tell you how the boss spend its card mana wise and how the boss attack with its board.

- They will prioritize on mana efficiency first. For example, if the boss have 5 mana, they will definitely use a 5-mana creature first. If that's not possible, they will spend a 3 mana-minion followed by a 2 mana minion. Boss will never play around secrets. In that case, you can play mirror entity on turn 5 and the chance of  getting a 4 attack minion is really high. Seeing how the boss normally just waste frostbolt on you when it ran out of option to play. If you have counterspell, the chance of sniping a pure cold beyond turn 5 having a clean board is extremely high after the 2 frostbolt is out. (talk about statistic.. pfft..)

- On how boss send minions to attack. If the spectral knight is the only knight that can attack on that turn, it will attack on that turn despite the fact that you play vaporize. If you are smart in learning how to freeze the enemy minion, it's quite easy to deal with spectral knight using vaporize.

Last point I want to say is, if you are so concern about not having enough fatique damage. Just simply swap out mad scientist so that Sapphiron will take 10 extra fatigue damage more than you.

I do agree that extra 48 health does seal the deal on that fight. However, I am posting a 'somewhat' solution in case you don't have those cards. For me, when I made my run, I have NO antique healbot at all and I win without it. Not everyone here pay to win in Hearthstone and not everyone here have an antique healbot. Even having one blizzard and a couple of vaporize is kinda pushing it. I only won him because of the addition to the 2nd vaporize.

End of the day, I am just disagreeing to your statement that says, "It don't work" because it does. Even if it's just 30% of the time that it work, it's still fine.

The win condition is killing all creatures AND having enough health left. And that's my main problem with this deck, but it seems you won't understand. For example you're mentioning the boss is wasting frostbolt on me, but that's 2 times 3 more damage I take up. Using freeze has nothing to do with playing smart but with actually having freeze in my hand and a reasonable board to use it. I have three changes for freeze IF I draw all early enough but I have to wait for the boss to build up the board twice for flamestrike, which means I will definitely take damage from his minions unless I got VERY lucky draws and the boss plays his minions VERY specific so I could freeze his minions in a way they never attack me, but that involves a huge randomness. The problem is not fatigue damage but actually the health difference at the beginning of fatigue state, so taking out mad scientist won't solve the problem.

Antique Healbot is a common card, whereas Vaporize is not. And you clearly tell me, that you only won because of the second Vaporize. So Vaporize is crucial for this deck, and even more costly than Antique Healbot. Considering this your "pay to win" statement is total bullshit.

Finally, a deck which only works 30% won't work most of the time, so it's bad. For me that's not fine at all.

At least this deck can deal with Sapphiron before the release of GvG. The winning condition back then is having enough board clear value. I would rather get a 2nd Blizzard rather than a 2nd Vaporize actually. Too bad I have to make do with it. I don't think you will understand the pain of trying to kill this without GvG expansion. I guess the way you deal with heroic boss is, "Well, hopefully Blizzard release cards to allow us to have a easier time to deal with boss". So in other work, your 80% solution may not exist if Blizzard don't release certain cards.

On the other hand, just recently I found a deck that uses mostly F2P card and using duplicate + Feugen and Stalagg seems to be the actual solution for using no GvG cards at all. TBH, I really didn't thought of going all out damage using Feugen and Stalagg combo.

And judging by how Tavern Brawl only gives vanilla cards once a week and they changed the reward system in the arena to randomly pick from all 3 pack, getting a rare vanilla card is just slightly lower than getting a common card you actually want. So if you are not spending too much gold to run Arenas and only been doing Tavern Brawl per week. You will probably get vaporize faster than you can get healbot. Note that I only recently got most of my GvG cards after the release of TGT. I stopped playing Hearthstone slightly before the release of GvG. Hence I have a lot more vanilla cards than the new cards.

Back to the "Waiting for more expansion for more solution" part. Looking at most of the cards released in TGT, it seems that there isn't much cards that can provide a solution to Sapphiron. That's the kind of luck you are relying on here. Which is not something I like to rely on.

Lastly, I don't want to craft cards just because it's a solution to the AI. I only craft cards when that card is the final few pieces missing to a deck.

If you think that healing is so important. Maybe you should take a look at Kripp's video and see how he did it after taking extra damage and having 2 of his flamestrike at the bottom of his deck. He isn't using GvG card and he is using a F2P account.

No, the way I deal with a heroic boss is: Can I find a deck on this page which has an approximate 80% win chance? And this deck does not fall in that category. Maybe there are decks which can deal with Sapphiron without GvG cards, but the deck I found and which worked on first try is that deck with Antique Healbot.

And about your statements about rares and commons: I didn't buy GvG cards until recently and I got healbot very fast. But I didn't get Vaporize in a long period, altough I bought vanilla cards for over a year. Common cards are very easy to get and I think I have most of them, but I lack many rare cards.

And I don't wait for new expansions, actually I hate new expansions, because I have to buy more cards even if I don't have all from the current expansion. And I have to find new decks to do my daylies in a moderate amount of time.

I've watched Kripp's video and he got very lucky, because he had an answer for nearly every situation he approached. This is what I'm talking about. In general one does not have that much luck. He had 9 health left, which means 1 or 2 situations which he couldn't answer immediately and he would have lost. So even if you win with this deck it is too close to be good actually, just because most of the time you loose.

Solution is still solution nonetheless. No where in my write-up says it's good. But I would dismiss the message saying that it does not work at all. Cause luck or not, it still work. It isn't like I provided a deck that have absolute no chance of winning at all did I?

For me, a solution which works only 20% is not an actual solution. It means it won't work most of the time. It's like saying building an airplane which crashes about 80% of the time is a solution to airtravel.