Hearthpwn

That's the way I've been rolling and it works.

I've been having fun using my own deck creations based around elemental lords. 

This is the one i'm using right now: 

The base cards are Rag, Neptulon, Al'Akir, Flametongue, Acolyte, and Fire ele. Everything else is up for grabs. 

You can lean toward a mini murloc theme by adding Old Murk Eye, or a mech theme by rolling with some annoy-o-trons and an extra arcane nullifier. It is fun and it works. 

You described it pretty well in your last sentence. You slow roll your opponents with Totems, try to maintain board control, then swing the game in your favour with you hyper efficient spells (Lightning Storm, Crackle, Rockbiter Weapon). Shaman is also a very bursty class with the extra focus on Windfury cards like Bloodlust.

Quote from pomonkeypo »

Quote from Sonserf369 »

You slow roll your opponents with Totems

I've convinced myself that shamans rely on totems for the early control, but it never works. What do you mean 'slow roll'?

Building a board with lots of Totems is a great way to bait out board clears/removal without actually spending cards. If your opponent Consecrates a board with 1 Haunted Creeper and 3 totems, you are essentially up by a card. You can also use them with Flametongue Totem in order to essentially trade against their minions for "free". It's a huge mana investment, but it is just about the only way to win against classes like Priest which steal all your crap.

Quote from Sonserf369 »

Quote from pomonkeypo »

Quote from Sonserf369 »

You slow roll your opponents with Totems

I've convinced myself that shamans rely on totems for the early control, but it never works. What do you mean 'slow roll'?

Building a board with lots of Totems is a great way to bait out board clears/removal without actually spending cards. If your opponent Consecrates a board with 1 Haunted Creeper and 3 totems, you are essentially up by a card. You can also use them with Flametongue Totem in order to essentially trade against their minions for "free". It's a huge mana investment, but it is just about the only way to win against classes like Priest which steal all your crap.

It is pretty sweet to have spells like Darkbomb, Lightning Bolt, Holy Smite, Fiery War Axe, Deadly Poison, etc. to be used on something that you put down just for the sake of doing something until next turn. Just being able to have something on hand all the time that the enemy doesn't want to ignore and will eat up their crucial cheap removal is huge.

For me Shaman is a very bursty class. The point is to out value your opponent with easy removal and finish them with Al'Akir/Doomhammer + rockbiter x 2 or you can run bloodlust for that last push. 

This is my deck:
Its a midrange Deck i´ve been using, it is perfmoing very well.

According to Trump when I was watching him the "theme" of shaman is efficiency. Unfortunately that's about as far as it goes. Trump says you want to have something "unfair" for your deck to be good and most of shamans "unfair" stuff isn't really viable. (reincarnate shenanigans are crazy powerful but extremely hard to pull off). So yea... efficiency is shamans theme. If you play vs a control warrior or handlock you can see it to it's full effect. Vs both of these classes you can totem every turn and basically only play 1 minion for them to deal with. When they play something big you throw down flametongue and kill their stuff with a bunch of free cards (totems). Hex, the most efficient removal card and best removal card in the game is another example of efficiency. Fire elemental almost always 2 for 1'ing is another. you can draw a ton of cards potentially with mana tide totem, or health with the other new one. If you play enough shaman you start to see that you need very few card draw sources especially compared to the other classes. Yes it is quite often that you efficiently trade and make many 2 for 1's in your favor and you still lose the game because your opponent drew an extra 4-6 cards over you. This is one of the problems with shaman and their lack of consistency. If you add card draw you take away that efficiency, if you want efficiency you have to decrease consistency with less card draw. It's hard for me to play shaman. I love shaman so much i really do but I can play any other class and easily climb the ladder. It drives me nuts. Also I hate aggro so I refuse to play the now "ladder viable" aggro shaman decks.

I hope that somewhat answers your question. I hope someone else who is better could maybe correct me or explain better.

Shaman theme is getting f*cked over by your own tottems.

(...c´mon spell damage, spell damage....)

I play a similar deck and I see you have a mech theme but I wonder if you are interested in or have tried using wild pyro, unstable ghoul, and acolyte of pain to counter aggro and create card draw. 

Quote from RevutionaryArtillery »

I play a similar deck and I see you have a mech theme but I wonder if you are interested in or have tried using wild pyro, unstable ghoul, and acolyte of pain to counter aggro and create card draw. 

Acolyte is too gimmicky to be worth it IMHO. Mana Tide Totem and Gnomish Inventor both guarantee 1 card (which is as much as you can expect to get from Acolyte), with Mana Tide potentially giving you more.

Unstable Ghoul doesn't do anything in a world where the most popular aggro is running mostly 2/3s.

Wild Pyro could work. I feel it isn't as good since there aren't enough cheap spells now that people don't run Lightning Bolt.

Quote from Sonserf369 »

Quote from RevutionaryArtillery »

I play a similar deck and I see you have a mech theme but I wonder if you are interested in or have tried using wild pyro, unstable ghoul, and acolyte of pain to counter aggro and create card draw. 

Acolyte is too gimmicky to be worth it IMHO. Mana Tide Totem and Gnomish Inventor both guarantee 1 card (which is as much as you can expect to get from Acolyte), with Mana Tide potentially giving you more.

Unstable Ghoul doesn't do anything in a world where the most popular aggro is running mostly 2/3s.

Wild Pyro could work. I feel it isn't as good since there aren't enough cheap spells now that people don't run Lightning Bolt.

I see where you are coming from. I am still sticking to lightning bolts over crackles just because I think that the 1 cost actually does matter. I also feel like I am able to take out large cost minions easily without needing to use crackle. lightning bolt is more aggro prevention oriented. I only run crackles in control meta or burst deck.

Also, in regard to the acolyte, I have to say that Acolyte's 1 attack makes it much better than the totem and makes it useful due to the fact that you HAVE to trade/attack to draw cards. Add flametongue and healing totem to make Acolyte the mvp. I would take the trading potential of the acolyte over the hope that my mana tide totem will last for more than 1 turn. To make mana tide worth it, I believe that you need 3 draws. To make acolyte worth it, you need to draw a card and trade with something. Acolyte has a lower and more useful expectation.

Just flood the board with minions and totems.If your opponent has board clear spell in hand you lose,otherwise you win.

I play Shaman with two different themes.

I like to play my Shaman with a "Hello Boys I'm Back" theme. I use mostly minions that when they die they drop another minion. Examples are Harvest Golems, Piloted Shredders, Cairne Bloodhoof, etc.... I also love Ancestral Spirit comboed with these cards. Then with Baron Rivendare and Kel thuzad the game gets insane and even better, insanely fun.

The other theme I play with is burst. With the direct damage spells Shaman can be really bursty. I have been playing a Shaman deck with Malygos, Bloodmage Thalanos, and two Gnomish Experimenters. The rest of the cards are all damage spells except for two Ancestors Calls, and two Far Sights. SO much burst! Crackle, lightning Bolt, Lava Burst.

I have been having an absolute blast with Ancestors call. The number of times I pull out an opponents minion and foil the battle cry has been numerous. I also have it set up that I can get a really big minion out for pretty cheap. A four mana Malygos is pretty Hilarious on turn ten, Followed up by Lightning Bolts and Crackles. An Ancestors Call into Rag on turn seven that pulls out an opponents Alexstraza is hilarious. Plus you have the three mana left to turn it into a frog if you want.

These are mostly fun decks. But those two themes, seem to me, are what Shaman is all about. Burst and extreme minion value. Except for Echo Mage with the secrets to copy minions no other class is as effective.

By far I have the most fun with the Shaman class.

Shaman just has the coolest and most fun cards. Playing Shaman seems less like a challenge to find a good deck and more like a game.

I know people are just posting their decks, so I won't do the same.  But I agree with the general concensus that the two main focii of shaman are:

1. Board control

2. Burst

1. Board Control. 

* Multiple people have mentioned value trading using flametongue totems and rock biter.  This is where either deathrattle minions or regular totems can help.  You can trade or you can go more defensive, like with Defender of Argus. 

* I think many kind of forget about all of shaman's cheap spells that are very capable of just removing anything dropped in the early game.  In my deck, I run BOTH crackles and lightning bolts plus rock biter for this very reason.  Turn 1, rock biter a 3 HP minion, turn 2, totem or LB a 3HP minion.  Turn 3, totem and/or LB another minion.  Many times I am dropping Annoyotrons in those early turns.  Annoyotron and zapping their minion is great early tempo. 

 The great thing about all of those spells is that they are still useful in later game for removal or to melt face with drakes and thalnos.  In short, this is all still under board control.  Some use minions, some more spells. 

2. Burst: I won't belabor this, but yeah, many, many ways to burst with shaman, from bloodlust to doomhammer to al'akir, all with buffs such as flametongue totem or rock biter.   Sometimes you just won the board and have your FE, Drake and three totems with a Flametongue in hand.  That's burst. 

* And again, I think very commonly overlooked is the capacity to burst with magic, especially after Crackle was added.  I know this because my opponents NEVER see a 14-18 dmg magic burst coming to finish off their face.   

There are many ways to build a deck to acheive this board control + burst: deathrattle, midrange/value or even the new mech shaman, which is more agro based. 

In mine, I built the deck to specifically use both minions and magic to either maintain board control or burst.  Minions can burst with bloodlust, magic can burst with the sheer number of spells plus thalnos/drakes/air totem.  Minions can maintain board control through trading if I don't pull spells early, but spells can take care of the job if I don't pull many minions.  This all leads up to my mainstays for taking control around turn 7+: , Dr Boom, Al'Akir,Neptulon (which can give burst or board control with Murlocs given) and the two fire elementals. 

The whole deck was built around the philosophy of flexibility in minions/magic to burst or control the board.  If that is the identity of the shaman, that is what I focused on when building it.  And it has taken a while to perfect. 

The main theme is card and mana efficiency. Deal with 2 of their cards with one of yours, deal with their 6 mana minions with your 3 mana removal, force them to take out your totems (0 cards) with a spell or battlecry effect. As the game runs on you will have card advantage, hopefully before you run out of hp.

Shaman dream plays include:

1) totems trading for minions with help of rockbiter n flametongues.

2) opponents wasting fiery war axe and truesilver champion on stoneclaw totem.

3) opponent silents spell damage totem

4) feral spirits wiping off little minions and then prompting a board wipe.

5) defender of argus taunting up totems beyond concecration and holy nova range.