Hearthpwn

 hey, do you want a tip?

Thing from Below works well with totems; why not replace Acolyte of Pain with Mana Tide Totem

imo you rather need Jinyu Waterspeaker than Tidal Surge

Quote from saibur>>

"imo you rather need Jinyu Waterspeaker than Tidal Surge"

Yeah, I'm still thinking about it. You need to think of it as 2 less heal, but removal for 1 minion that probably ends up dealing face damage to you the round after, that's why Tidal Surge found its place in the deck. Jinyu Waterspeaker feels kind of slow as it doesn't stop the opponent's threat immidietaly, which as I proved before Tidal Surge (and Hot Spring Guardian with its taunt abilities) does. I'm still in the phase of testing when it comes to this spot, so I'll certainly test out Jinyu Waterspeaker a little bit more before I settle down for good :)

I want to disagree with the way you think: 1) I think you have enough single target removals, so adding 2 minions won't end up killing you; 2) I have the feeling, as IF you are scared of the potential face damage you can take. I'm going to quote firebat: "There are some players, controlling the game the whole time and at the end they die". If you look at the popular decks, you will see, that most of them are kinda aggressive, always going to put stuff on the board, always going to pressure you. What I mean is, that if you happen to use an AoE, they can refill the board again, while you have to struggle because of Overload. It's no wonder, that sometimes the best defense is the good offense. Don't think Jinyu Waterspeaker isn't good enough, just because it doesn't have taunt. It can still do some trades and the 6 health makes him very sticky.

Inb4 I played a lot of control shaman in this expansion and I can tell you some things: Hot Spring Guardian is really helpful as a taunt and healing yourself and your minions too, but very often it dies way too easily. PW with an upgraded Fiery War Axe or murlocs with a buff from Warleader... so you can't rely always on it.
Btw you can add a Lightning Bolt in your deck. I tried it in mine and I was very pleased with the results - sometimes you really need to kill a minion early on and waiting 'till turn 4 is kinda devastating (Mana Wyrm).

Anyway if you want, you can test your deck with me. I play in the EU, if you too, then you can give me a call. ;)

Quote from saibur >>

Well, glad to hear you have success with your deck. It looks promising as an anti-aggro deck, with the heal you can even handle the burst from freeze/ discover mages [and not to forget Spirit Echo].

Can I ask about the win-rate of your deck? How does it compete against control decks (taunt warr, dragon priest) without Bloodlust? But more likely how often do you face a slow, value deck?

About the cards you mentioned: well, at least in my case i decided to stick to Lightning Bolt, because I constantly faced early game threats. Of course if you run 2x Devolve, then you may not really need it. In my case I wanted a cheap single target removal and with Thalnos I don't have a big problem not running something else.
About Hot Spring Guardian - well, back then I was thinking about my deck and how Tar Creeper was a better taunt. It absorbed more damage, it did more damage to the enemy minions, priests couldn't cast Potion of Madness on it and like the examples from the previous post (about PW and murlocs), it was more reliable. Come to think of it, you do not run an elemental deck, so it's probably more reasonable to have a Squirming Tentacle with heal than a 3 mana Sen'jin Shieldmasta + you have Spirit Echo for more value. 

I'm not going to lie - your deck looks more synergistic than mine, it's definitely more defensive, but that's the point it bugs me - for me it looks like your deck kinda lacks a good offense. I'm certain, that you do well against faster decks, but the ladder is not only aggro, now is it? This is my opinion and I'll just quote firebat again.

Note: In my first versions of my control shaman deck I also ran many removals and the deck did great back then. However I started to face many control decks and my hand was just full of removals, while the opponent was gathering value. In some games I gained the upper hand, made a board, but because my deck lacked on minions (many were cheap taunts), after the first and the second board clear I couldn't produce enough damage and thus ... as firebat said it. That's why I decided to go with a more proactive approach - risking a percentage of the favourable MUs against aggro for a bigger win-ratio against slower decks. But like I said, this was my decision, maybe you are more comfortable with a pure anti-aggro deck.

Quote from saibur >>

Amm, thank you very much for the reply, I really appreciate a healthy and a calm discussion.

First thing to mention: I understood and I agree with you about the apple part. I think, that in my previous versions of the deck, aka with bunch of removals, I did gain an advantage over my paladin opponents just by having the removals and killing their value sources. I hex-ed their tirions, transformed their board (having spikeridge steed) and N'zoth wasn't scary at the end. So, again, you have a point there. 

The reason I made it the way it is, is because I wanted to find something similar to the old style control decks. After the addition of Jade Idol to the game, decks like the old classic Control Warrior [...] went away, and we were left with [...] proactive control decks. With this deck I tried making something that would resemble the old school control deck with a pure  removal game in the beginning followed by great power to finish up the game. 

Now I see your intention with the deck. Then you did a good job with it :D. btw sorry if I have offended you with the firebat requote, I was just puzzled to see a deck resembling the old school control arch-type. But, still, I think that you could lose some of the removals just for a bit more proactivity. Maybe 1 Volcano for a Bloodlust or Elise (although you could ruin your top-decks)? I think you still have a bunch of removals, so cutting one volcano won't end up killing you and losing your games.

About the decks you mentioned:

- Taunt warrior (off topic)- yes, i'm aware that we shamans can summon totems aka making more targets for their hero power. The jades also work this way and the rag blast gets misdirected. However, I just want to say, that I find this randomness pretty annoying. One time they can hit a totem, in another they will hit an important minion/ or your face.

- Dragon Priest: I read your statement, but I'm kinda skeptical. Personally I played against them many times (once with spirit echo). Needless to say they stole it from me and got even more value and I couldn't handle their dragons. Or when they stole my volcanos and used them on my board. Believe me, this happened pretty often. So I think they can out-value you, they also run elise, shadow visions.
By otvalue-ing I mean the number of resources they have over yours. Don't forget, that control priest was the favourable deck against control warrior, because not only it had removals, but also ways to generate cards. E.g. prests could steal the warriors' minions with Entomb, thus the warriors had to spend another card to deal with THEIR OWN minion and thus they were left with one less apple.
Although Entomb is missing from standard, Dragon OP kinda works that way. If the priest finds a removal (AoE, devolve, hex, sth else) they have more cards than you: a dragon on the board + a card from your deck. 

Control/Freeze Mage:
Alexstrasza is [...] the only reason I can actually lose to this deck tbh, but it needs to rely on card draw in order to beat my deck and it gets really awkward for him when I heal myself right after Alex, resulting in a slightly favorable winrate against it, Primordial Glyph is usually what ends up fucking it up when that happens.

Well, I want to agree with you. But because your deck works like the old school control arch-type, you give them enough time and thus they get the cards eventually. If they see you not playing a minion, then they'll just discover something, e.g. burn. Yeah, regarding the glyph it can screw us big time.

Note: Let's keep your deck visually good, so i'm putting my novel comments in spoilers, i don't want to annoy people with a wall of text. I would suggest you do the same, we can still have our discussion to ourselves :).