I'm getting pretty overwhelmed with them and can't keep up with the shadowflames, taunts and siphon souls. It seems like earth shock is always sitting at the bottom deck during these match ups and I'm wondering if I should run black knight. Or perhaps even sylvanas?
Most of the time it feels like, "Okay, I cleared that taunt. Now, I'll be able to flametongue... Oh great, he's running Rag and putting up another taunt. >.<"
First things first, I play handlock. Black knight messes me up pretty badly so I personally recommend it. Sylvanas also rustles my jimmies when I run into her and don't have a silence or manip in hand. Another idea is to maybe run an owl or two to act as a slightly less effective earthshock. Honestly, the best thing you can really do is just bait out removal with your creatures, namely loatheb and your legendaries save for al'akir since he's the most useful IMO. Maybe try running faceless manip to nab rag or the other legendaries run? that's always put me in a bind in several matches.
try to keep that Earth Shock for the drakes. You have 3 finisher cards on ur deck so keep the opponent health in range of lethal, so just use Hex on early giant minions
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***You Cant be the Pros Player >>If you never be the Noob Player before***
Strange. Shaman is almost always autoloss for my handlock. You have a million answers you just have to play smart.
No offense, but I'm coming to a forum to ask for advice/feedback on a particular deck.
Suggesting that I "play smart," like I'm banging my head against my desk and using every card in my hand is hardly helpful. How exactly do these shaman dominate you? Whenever I try to put out any early minions, most handlocks do everything in their power to clear my board and keep me from establishing any kind of presence (which is what most classes do when they face shamans). What are they doing once you shadowflame and clear their early board and use large taunts that are not drakes?
Btw, If every shaman completely dominates you, then these questions may help your play. Overload and a lack of card draw can undermine the shaman, so how do other handlocks take advantage of these impairments?
I'm thinking I might remove flame shock (it doesn't get much use) for tbk, along with a lightning bolt/nerubian egg for sylvanas and faceless. Is big game hunter worth crafting? I don't have that card. I have a few legendaries collecting dust (Loremaster Cho, Nozdormu, etc) that have never gotten much use outside of novelty decks.
Strange. Shaman is almost always autoloss for my handlock. You have a million answers you just have to play smart.
No offense, but I'm coming to a forum to ask for advice/feedback on a particular deck.
Suggesting that I "play smart," like I'm banging my head against my desk and using every card in my hand is hardly helpful. How exactly do these shaman dominate you? Whenever I try to put out any early minions, most handlocks do everything in their power to clear my board and keep me from establishing any kind of presence (which is what most classes do when they face shamans). What are they doing once you shadowflame and clear their early board and use large taunts that are not drakes?
Btw, If every shaman completely dominates you, then these questions may help your play. Overload and a lack of card draw can undermine the shaman, so how do other handlocks take advantage of these impairments?
I'm thinking I might remove flame shock (it doesn't get much use) for tbk, along with a lightning bolt/nerubian egg for sylvanas and faceless. Is big game hunter worth crafting? I don't have that card. I have a few legendaries collecting dust (Loremaster Cho, Nozdormu, etc) that have never gotten much use outside of novelty decks.
Handlock usually tries to outdraw you and leave you with only your totems as defense, making it so you have very little impact from there, in most games I play at least.
Know when to use hex/earth shock and try to get them low enough. Do your best to save your lightning bolts and lava bursts until you can use them as finishing burst.
The other really fun thing you can do for late game purposes is to run sylv along with a single reincarnate. This way when he plays rag on turn 8 (assuming you have managed to keep his board clear up to this point) you drop sylvanas and reincarnate her. Now you have sylv and a rag on your side.
Imho - I would drop lava burst, bloodlust, doom hammer and both nerubian eggs. I would add in TBK, Sylv, reincarnate and then either 2x gnomish inventor or 2x (forget the name but the 2 drop that is 2/1 and has deathrattle of draw a card). That should speed up your deck, give you a little more card draw and give you some more answers for his big taunts. If you worry about not having enough burst finishing power I would drop one of the card draw minions and keep the bloodlust.
Black Knight/BGH are good additions if Handlock is super common in what you're going up against. With Shaman you've got a ton of burst via the Doomhammer and the Al'Akir +Rockbiter so you can afford to keep the the Lock at or around 16 HP and maybe force a bad Molten play. Or kill him before a Molten wall can come up. Mulligan for Earthshock is a great idea - it's alright(Pretty meh but I'm being optimistic) in the Zoo matchup but it's really good in the Handlock matchup and you should really want it. Vs Sylvanas/Twilight/Cairne (If he's run in the particular deck). Also, don't taunt any of your bigger minions to negate his Black Knight play, make him kill a totem or token or whatever with it. Don't give him a kill on a Drake/Elemental/Whatever else you're valuing highly. Keeping the board as totem-y as possible is nice, making the Hellfire/Shadowflames less than great in card trading. Don't be afraid to kill a Ancient if you fear a Shadowflame might be upcoming.
Any kind of shaman build has a good matchup vs handlock in my experience.
Here's how a normal match should go (keep in mind i'm a scrub who knows nothing =D)
The first few turns he taps until like turn 4 where he can now play a giant (i think, maybe turn 5) or a twilight drake. If you have earthshock or hex for either one, great! You should be keeping hexes and earthshocks for your mulligans when you play vs warlock. Hex is iffy vs zoo but it's needed for that double turn 5/6 doomguards he will pwn you with lol. So lets say you have no answer, you probably have to play spirit wolves, idealy you should have a haunted creeper and totem, or egg totems w/e, maybe you can flametongue it down. It's okay to take some damage too, maybe hope for taunt totem and such.
If you never draw any hex or earthshock its a tough game where you sacrifice a lot of card advantage to get rid of his minions. Once he's at 16-17 hp you stop attacking. You just stall the game as long as possible with him around that hp until you can draw a finisher. Your 1 card answers will eventually be drawn and they make it a lot easier to stall the game. He has 4 giants, rag, 2 twilight drakes, and maybe jaraxus. Once he drops jaraxus it can be a pain in the butt but remember he can't play anything else on the turn he plays jaraxus so you have 1 turn to put a hurting on him or position for the kill.
While he is at 16 hp he will want to play his molten giants with taunt enablers because he will fear being 1 shot from that spot. But he has to spend all his mana to play 2 cards while at that HP so you can feel a lot safer, and if he is spending removal to clear your board that's perfectly fine, you can always build it up more. Just don't let him get to 10 hp unless you are going to win lol. You don't need black knights or BGH's or any of that stuff if you play the matchup right. Those two cards can help sure, but bgh makes you worse vs every other matchup IMO, black knight is ok though since sludge belcher is running rampant.
So the key is to be patient! handlock doesn't have those sick 24 damage finishers anymore after they nerfed leroy so its a lot easier to stall the game. BE PATIENT! Don't get scared and try to rush him down, bringing him to 10 hp and ending turn will lose you the game. Keep him at 16 hp until you win, you are definitely favored in this matchup.
Also, personally I would take the bloodlust out of this specific deck. To me you need to have a deck that's more geared toward heavier board control and more minions that replace themselves like harvest golem to use bloodlust. Most of the time your opponent will keep your board too small to kill them with. Also vs handlock I think bloodlust is not so good because of how good they are at aoe clearing your stuff.
Everything shaman already has that makes them so good vs handlock, plus sylvanas and kelthuzad reincarnate combos to just make the handlock feel even worse about themselves.
Edit: sorry for tripple posting that was kind of stupid my bad =(
I'm getting pretty overwhelmed with them and can't keep up with the shadowflames, taunts and siphon souls. It seems like earth shock is always sitting at the bottom deck during these match ups and I'm wondering if I should run black knight. Or perhaps even sylvanas?
Most of the time it feels like, "Okay, I cleared that taunt. Now, I'll be able to flametongue... Oh great, he's running Rag and putting up another taunt. >.<"
This is my current deck.
First things first, I play handlock. Black knight messes me up pretty badly so I personally recommend it. Sylvanas also rustles my jimmies when I run into her and don't have a silence or manip in hand. Another idea is to maybe run an owl or two to act as a slightly less effective earthshock. Honestly, the best thing you can really do is just bait out removal with your creatures, namely loatheb and your legendaries save for al'akir since he's the most useful IMO. Maybe try running faceless manip to nab rag or the other legendaries run? that's always put me in a bind in several matches.
Shaman in general, 1 turn hard removals, save minions up for buffs, hit hard when you have lethal, or run them down before the lord comes out.
Slow and steady wins the game..
Black knight + sylvanas + faceless manipulator
try to keep that Earth Shock for the drakes. You have 3 finisher cards on ur deck so keep the opponent health in range of lethal, so just use Hex on early giant minions
***You Cant be the Pros Player >>If you never be the Noob Player before***
Strange. Shaman is almost always autoloss for my handlock. You have a million answers you just have to play smart.
"Blizzard is just a small indie game company" -Mathmachine
TBK / BGH / Faceless / Hex / Earth Shock.
Any package of that can be good for you. You figure they have 6-7 big things they can taunt most of the time. 4 Giants, 2 Drakes, 1 Rags.
2 Drakes = 2 Earth Shocks
1 Giant = TBK
1 Giant = BGH (or 2 if you decide you need that much power vs it.)
2 Giants = 2 Hex
1 Rags = Faceless (or faceless any of the others and kill rags)
No offense, but I'm coming to a forum to ask for advice/feedback on a particular deck.
Suggesting that I "play smart," like I'm banging my head against my desk and using every card in my hand is hardly helpful. How exactly do these shaman dominate you? Whenever I try to put out any early minions, most handlocks do everything in their power to clear my board and keep me from establishing any kind of presence (which is what most classes do when they face shamans). What are they doing once you shadowflame and clear their early board and use large taunts that are not drakes?
Btw, If every shaman completely dominates you, then these questions may help your play. Overload and a lack of card draw can undermine the shaman, so how do other handlocks take advantage of these impairments?
I'm thinking I might remove flame shock (it doesn't get much use) for tbk, along with a lightning bolt/nerubian egg for sylvanas and faceless. Is big game hunter worth crafting? I don't have that card. I have a few legendaries collecting dust (Loremaster Cho, Nozdormu, etc) that have never gotten much use outside of novelty decks.
Handlock usually tries to outdraw you and leave you with only your totems as defense, making it so you have very little impact from there, in most games I play at least.
Know when to use hex/earth shock and try to get them low enough. Do your best to save your lightning bolts and lava bursts until you can use them as finishing burst.
The other really fun thing you can do for late game purposes is to run sylv along with a single reincarnate. This way when he plays rag on turn 8 (assuming you have managed to keep his board clear up to this point) you drop sylvanas and reincarnate her. Now you have sylv and a rag on your side.
Imho - I would drop lava burst, bloodlust, doom hammer and both nerubian eggs. I would add in TBK, Sylv, reincarnate and then either 2x gnomish inventor or 2x (forget the name but the 2 drop that is 2/1 and has deathrattle of draw a card). That should speed up your deck, give you a little more card draw and give you some more answers for his big taunts. If you worry about not having enough burst finishing power I would drop one of the card draw minions and keep the bloodlust.
Good luck
Black Knight/BGH are good additions if Handlock is super common in what you're going up against. With Shaman you've got a ton of burst via the Doomhammer and the Al'Akir +Rockbiter so you can afford to keep the the Lock at or around 16 HP and maybe force a bad Molten play. Or kill him before a Molten wall can come up.
Mulligan for Earthshock is a great idea - it's alright(Pretty meh but I'm being optimistic) in the Zoo matchup but it's really good in the Handlock matchup and you should really want it. Vs Sylvanas/Twilight/Cairne (If he's run in the particular deck). Also, don't taunt any of your bigger minions to negate his Black Knight play, make him kill a totem or token or whatever with it. Don't give him a kill on a Drake/Elemental/Whatever else you're valuing highly.
Keeping the board as totem-y as possible is nice, making the Hellfire/Shadowflames less than great in card trading. Don't be afraid to kill a Ancient if you fear a Shadowflame might be upcoming.
Wait, what? I play an Enhancement Shaman in WoW, and I think you just shorted my brain.
Any kind of shaman build has a good matchup vs handlock in my experience.
Here's how a normal match should go (keep in mind i'm a scrub who knows nothing =D)
The first few turns he taps until like turn 4 where he can now play a giant (i think, maybe turn 5) or a twilight drake. If you have earthshock or hex for either one, great! You should be keeping hexes and earthshocks for your mulligans when you play vs warlock. Hex is iffy vs zoo but it's needed for that double turn 5/6 doomguards he will pwn you with lol. So lets say you have no answer, you probably have to play spirit wolves, idealy you should have a haunted creeper and totem, or egg totems w/e, maybe you can flametongue it down. It's okay to take some damage too, maybe hope for taunt totem and such.
If you never draw any hex or earthshock its a tough game where you sacrifice a lot of card advantage to get rid of his minions. Once he's at 16-17 hp you stop attacking. You just stall the game as long as possible with him around that hp until you can draw a finisher. Your 1 card answers will eventually be drawn and they make it a lot easier to stall the game. He has 4 giants, rag, 2 twilight drakes, and maybe jaraxus. Once he drops jaraxus it can be a pain in the butt but remember he can't play anything else on the turn he plays jaraxus so you have 1 turn to put a hurting on him or position for the kill.
While he is at 16 hp he will want to play his molten giants with taunt enablers because he will fear being 1 shot from that spot. But he has to spend all his mana to play 2 cards while at that HP so you can feel a lot safer, and if he is spending removal to clear your board that's perfectly fine, you can always build it up more. Just don't let him get to 10 hp unless you are going to win lol. You don't need black knights or BGH's or any of that stuff if you play the matchup right. Those two cards can help sure, but bgh makes you worse vs every other matchup IMO, black knight is ok though since sludge belcher is running rampant.
So the key is to be patient! handlock doesn't have those sick 24 damage finishers anymore after they nerfed leroy so its a lot easier to stall the game. BE PATIENT! Don't get scared and try to rush him down, bringing him to 10 hp and ending turn will lose you the game. Keep him at 16 hp until you win, you are definitely favored in this matchup.
Also, personally I would take the bloodlust out of this specific deck. To me you need to have a deck that's more geared toward heavier board control and more minions that replace themselves like harvest golem to use bloodlust. Most of the time your opponent will keep your board too small to kill them with. Also vs handlock I think bloodlust is not so good because of how good they are at aoe clearing your stuff.
If you really want to just step on handlock like they are bugs try this list out.
http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/106919-magic-winds-reincarnate-shaman
Everything shaman already has that makes them so good vs handlock, plus sylvanas and kelthuzad reincarnate combos to just make the handlock feel even worse about themselves.
Edit: sorry for tripple posting that was kind of stupid my bad =(