So basically since the release of Tunnel Trogg this week I've been fiddling around with Shaman trying to make the class actually work competitively now that they have a premium 1 drop of comparable power level (if not even stronger than) to Mana Wyrm. I tried a bunch of lists most of which were midrange decks focusing on flametongue totem because of its obvious synergy with totems and typical shaman early game stuff like Haunted Creeper, but I didn't really feel like I was using the Trogg to his full potential. But then the thought hit me, why not play the old shaman core of Unbound Elemental, Stormforged Axe, Feral Spirits and Lightning Bolts with the new powerful overload cards we've gotten in BRM and TGT. The result is similar to the old Burst Shaman lists popularized by players like Strifecro and Chakki that utilized Doomhammer and Lava Bursts to quickly kill your opponents once you've gotten in a few points of chip damage.
I definitely don't have enough games yet to say definitively whether or not this deck is statistically as strong as it feels, but with a 46 wins and 17 losses record so far it seems promising to say the least. It plays a lot of cards that haven't really seen play in a good long time and I honestly feel like Tunnel Trogg was the last piece of this puzzle, it gives this deck exactly what it wants and justifies a lot of the potentially oddball deck choices. The synergy Trogg and Unbound Elemental have with your overload cards is comparable to Mana Wyrm and Flamewaker in that they simply reward you for playing your cards and give you tremendous potential damage output and snowball potential. The curve is low enough that the overload doesn't dramatically decrease your options every turn and the tempo you gain from playing these undercosted cards lets you put lots of pressure on your opponents early so that you can safely smack them in the face with doomhammer + rockbiter and spells in the late game to close out in a similar fashion to Midrange / Aggro Druid with the Force of Nature + Savage Roar combo.
Basically if you're looking for a highly competitive shaman list that actually feels like a real unique and powerful deck and not just a mediocre version of something else I think this is the deck you've been looking for.
I got my golden shaman portrait exclusively with Control Shaman builds. I hate how it is worthless now that all these cancerous shaman players have it too.
As a fellow Shammy player I like your list. I just started playing a highlander Reno-Brann-Shaman list, and so far it has been going great. I agree with you that Tunnel Trogg does seem to be the missing piece of the puzzle for midrange Shaman. There are finally enough cards that synergize overload mechanic now.
To the folks suggesting Lava Shock it's too low value and low damage to actually include. 2 mana for 2 damage is pretty poor even if it does reimburse my mana and essentially let me cast it for "free" it's only about equivalent to Backstab a lot of the time. I do admit I haven't tested it extensively and it could be a solid 1-of potentially but I honestly haven't found an effect like that necessary but I could be wrong. Try out the deck and tweak it to your liking I suppose and if lava shock performs well let me know.
Maybe replace one storm forged axe with a lava shock? As a shaman main myself, I have never had an instance where I wanted more than one.
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I got my golden shaman portrait exclusively with Control Shaman builds. I hate how it is worthless now that all these cancerous shaman players have it too.
Stormforged Axe is most definitely NOT bad, it helps tremendously at letting you contest early game board states without investing mana every turn (a precious resource to this deck). 2 damage pings let you kill juggler, minibot, dark peddler, mad scientist, sorcerer's apprentice, tokens, etc. Even just using it to bring minions in to range of dying to Lightning Bolt is fairly valuable and it lets you use your life total as a resource to gain board presence. The card is also very strong when played after a turn 1 Tunnel Trogg.
Doomhammer is not a slow card either, 5 mana for 4 damage every turn for 4 turns is pretty obscene, yes there's the 3 overload but this deck stops its curve at 5 mana so its not like it's stopping us from playing multiple cards in the late game. Doomhammer is the decks main burst win condition with Rockbiter Weapon dealing 10 damage for 6 mana or only 1 mana if the doomhammer was developed on a previous turn. The reason why there's two copies is not so that we use all 16 charges in a single game, that will obviously almost never happen, but the 2nd copy is there to add consistency to our deck. In just about every game we want to draw and develop doomhammer at some point and transition the rest of our resources away from minion interaction and directly in to face damage. Since doomhammer is so damage dense it allows us to get in really obscene amounts of face damage over a relatively short period of time.
Now for why there are no copies of Hex or Earthshock. Again, this is not a control or midrange deck. This deck is an aggressive tempo deck, our goal is to seize the board early through Trogg, Stormforged Axe and Totem Golem, then continue to protect our board with Feral Spirits and develop more threats in the mid game. While Hex and Earthshock are solid defensive removal spells they don't help the deck to actually develop our own board presence and they're too mana / damage inefficient when it comes to removing our opponent's minions, this coupled with the fact that they cannot deal damage to the opponent's face simply means they don't fit well with our overall game plan. This doesn't mean they're bad cards, they're obviously amazing cards in midrange and control shaman, but this deck is neither of those archetypes.
Ancestral Knowledge is most certainly NOT "disgustingly bad" it costs 1 mana less than Arcane Intellect and allows us to dig in to our deck in the late game to find more damage to actually close out the game should we have been in a position where we had to use Bolts and Crackles as removal spells. It buffs Tunnel Trogg by +2 attack and Unbound Elemental by +1/+1 adding to that strong synergy. In a deck with such a low mana curve it's also relatively easy to expend resources quickly and run out of stuff to do so having a way to refuel is quite helpful.
Finally Lava Shock is a card that is certainly worth testing, but from my past experience with the card it has never been great outside of comboing it with Elemental Destruction in control shaman where it's a total allstar. It's possible it has a place here as a 1-of possibly over the 2nd Lava Burst and it's something I do intend on testing.
Overload cards are the very definition of tempo lol. Pretty much every card with overload gives you an effect worth more than its actual mana cost because you have access to less mana on the following turn. But when you build your deck to take advantage of this by curving out really low and playing Tunnel Trogg and Unbound Elemental the downside of the overload cards is offset by gaining even more immediate advantage when you cast them.
Aggressive decks don't use healing and the beauty of weapons is you can use them for both trading AND going face not simply one or the other. Weapons are also the most damage efficient cards in the entire game so I have no clue why you think they're "not worth the investment" if you're sending them face. Doomhammer is 5 mana for SIXTEEN damage, there's nothing in hearthstone that comes even remotely close to that sort of damage per mana value.
I want to try this deck out but im 200 gold short of the first wing even so i wont give my opinions about the actual card choices until i get my hands on the trogg. The only thing that strikes me as obvious is that the shaman weapons are simply too slow, it takes 7 turns at least to use all the charges of stormforge and doomhammer combined so if you ever have both copies of either in the hand you would be having a dead card for all game long. For that i consider that cutting the second copy of both for a couple of 2 drops might be better option to make the deck less clunky.
I would drop 1 each of the Stormforged Axe and Doomhammer. For replacement cards I would suggest a single Charged Hammer to get rid of the awful totem hero power, or possibly just a couple of Azure Drakes since you have so many damage damage spells, and not a lot of card draw. Actually, if you want to get right down to it, I would be looking at removing some of the spells to be honest as it seems like overkill to run 2 each of Lightning Bolt, Lava Shock AND Crackle unless you are building some kind of Malygos deck. I would recommend more minions and less direct damage spells, probably go with only the crackles myself.
I would drop 1 each of the Stormforged Axe and Doomhammer. For replacement cards I would suggest a single Charged Hammer to get rid of the awful totem hero power, or possibly just a couple of Azure Drakes since you have so many damage damage spells, and not a lot of card draw. Actually, if you want to get right down to it, I would be looking at removing some of the spells to be honest as it seems like overkill to run 2 each of Lightning Bolt, Lava Shock AND Crackle unless you are building some kind of Malygos deck. I would recommend more minions and less direct damage spells, probably go with only the crackles myself.
I would say I have been running stormforged axe and it works amazingly well with tunnel trogg, the only reason I would want two though is too guarantee that I get one early one...I do think you might be a little overkill on the weapons, though in theory you would be able to have a weapon equipped for 10+ turns in a row....which is crazy (not sure if it is good or bad though..)
Overall I like the list, but may end up tweaking a bit if I try it out. So far in my games that I have been able to get an unbound and a tunnel trogg rolling I have been unstoppable
PS. I think a lot of people are thinking of this more like a midrange deck and as you said it is way more of a tempo aggressive deck, once I look at it more like a mech shaman (speed-wise) it makes a lot more sense.
You hit the nail right on the head. The main reason for the double stormforged axe is that I want it early in just about every matchup to help control the board. In a deck like this you really need to stick either Tunnel Trogg, Toteum Golem or Unbound Elemental and protect them so they can get in large amounts of chip damage throughout the course of the game. I never really want games to go long enough to the point where I'll use all 22 charges of weapons obviously, they're just there to add consistency to my draws.
As for Charged Hammer 2 damage for 4 mana (every turn for 4 turns) just feels a bit too slow and clunky, especially because doomhammer comes down the next turn I really don't feel like it's a fast enough card for this deck. I've seen it do work in Malygos and Control Shaman as a 1-of but in a list like this I feel it's a bit too clunky unfortunately.
I finally added a pair of hexes to the deck as it felt a bit too bad having to constantly use burn spells to answer minions so now the deck finally has a way to answer annoying stuff while still developing at the same time since 3 mana is actually quite cheap for hard removal like that. The card has been fantastic against aggro druid and secret paladin in particular so making your most common ladder matchups stronger has been quite helpful. Hex also helps somewhat against reliquary zoo as an answer to sea giant but in general you need to draw lightning storm or you lose that matchup anyway unless you get some insanely fast start and just burst them out with doomhammer.
So basically since the release of Tunnel Trogg this week I've been fiddling around with Shaman trying to make the class actually work competitively now that they have a premium 1 drop of comparable power level (if not even stronger than) to Mana Wyrm. I tried a bunch of lists most of which were midrange decks focusing on flametongue totem because of its obvious synergy with totems and typical shaman early game stuff like Haunted Creeper, but I didn't really feel like I was using the Trogg to his full potential. But then the thought hit me, why not play the old shaman core of Unbound Elemental, Stormforged Axe, Feral Spirits and Lightning Bolts with the new powerful overload cards we've gotten in BRM and TGT. The result is similar to the old Burst Shaman lists popularized by players like Strifecro and Chakki that utilized Doomhammer and Lava Bursts to quickly kill your opponents once you've gotten in a few points of chip damage.
I definitely don't have enough games yet to say definitively whether or not this deck is statistically as strong as it feels, but with a 46 wins and 17 losses record so far it seems promising to say the least. It plays a lot of cards that haven't really seen play in a good long time and I honestly feel like Tunnel Trogg was the last piece of this puzzle, it gives this deck exactly what it wants and justifies a lot of the potentially oddball deck choices. The synergy Trogg and Unbound Elemental have with your overload cards is comparable to Mana Wyrm and Flamewaker in that they simply reward you for playing your cards and give you tremendous potential damage output and snowball potential. The curve is low enough that the overload doesn't dramatically decrease your options every turn and the tempo you gain from playing these undercosted cards lets you put lots of pressure on your opponents early so that you can safely smack them in the face with doomhammer + rockbiter and spells in the late game to close out in a similar fashion to Midrange / Aggro Druid with the Force of Nature + Savage Roar combo.
Basically if you're looking for a highly competitive shaman list that actually feels like a real unique and powerful deck and not just a mediocre version of something else I think this is the deck you've been looking for.
Lava shock?
I got my golden shaman portrait exclusively with Control Shaman builds. I hate how it is worthless now that all these cancerous shaman players have it too.
LOL, no Lava Shock?
As a fellow Shammy player I like your list. I just started playing a highlander Reno-Brann-Shaman list, and so far it has been going great. I agree with you that Tunnel Trogg does seem to be the missing piece of the puzzle for midrange Shaman. There are finally enough cards that synergize overload mechanic now.
Cheers mate
To the folks suggesting Lava Shock it's too low value and low damage to actually include. 2 mana for 2 damage is pretty poor even if it does reimburse my mana and essentially let me cast it for "free" it's only about equivalent to Backstab a lot of the time. I do admit I haven't tested it extensively and it could be a solid 1-of potentially but I honestly haven't found an effect like that necessary but I could be wrong. Try out the deck and tweak it to your liking I suppose and if lava shock performs well let me know.
Maybe replace one storm forged axe with a lava shock? As a shaman main myself, I have never had an instance where I wanted more than one.
I got my golden shaman portrait exclusively with Control Shaman builds. I hate how it is worthless now that all these cancerous shaman players have it too.
@DryYourTears
Stormforged Axe is most definitely NOT bad, it helps tremendously at letting you contest early game board states without investing mana every turn (a precious resource to this deck). 2 damage pings let you kill juggler, minibot, dark peddler, mad scientist, sorcerer's apprentice, tokens, etc. Even just using it to bring minions in to range of dying to Lightning Bolt is fairly valuable and it lets you use your life total as a resource to gain board presence. The card is also very strong when played after a turn 1 Tunnel Trogg.
Doomhammer is not a slow card either, 5 mana for 4 damage every turn for 4 turns is pretty obscene, yes there's the 3 overload but this deck stops its curve at 5 mana so its not like it's stopping us from playing multiple cards in the late game. Doomhammer is the decks main burst win condition with Rockbiter Weapon dealing 10 damage for 6 mana or only 1 mana if the doomhammer was developed on a previous turn. The reason why there's two copies is not so that we use all 16 charges in a single game, that will obviously almost never happen, but the 2nd copy is there to add consistency to our deck. In just about every game we want to draw and develop doomhammer at some point and transition the rest of our resources away from minion interaction and directly in to face damage. Since doomhammer is so damage dense it allows us to get in really obscene amounts of face damage over a relatively short period of time.
Now for why there are no copies of Hex or Earthshock. Again, this is not a control or midrange deck. This deck is an aggressive tempo deck, our goal is to seize the board early through Trogg, Stormforged Axe and Totem Golem, then continue to protect our board with Feral Spirits and develop more threats in the mid game. While Hex and Earthshock are solid defensive removal spells they don't help the deck to actually develop our own board presence and they're too mana / damage inefficient when it comes to removing our opponent's minions, this coupled with the fact that they cannot deal damage to the opponent's face simply means they don't fit well with our overall game plan. This doesn't mean they're bad cards, they're obviously amazing cards in midrange and control shaman, but this deck is neither of those archetypes.
Ancestral Knowledge is most certainly NOT "disgustingly bad" it costs 1 mana less than Arcane Intellect and allows us to dig in to our deck in the late game to find more damage to actually close out the game should we have been in a position where we had to use Bolts and Crackles as removal spells. It buffs Tunnel Trogg by +2 attack and Unbound Elemental by +1/+1 adding to that strong synergy. In a deck with such a low mana curve it's also relatively easy to expend resources quickly and run out of stuff to do so having a way to refuel is quite helpful.
Finally Lava Shock is a card that is certainly worth testing, but from my past experience with the card it has never been great outside of comboing it with Elemental Destruction in control shaman where it's a total allstar. It's possible it has a place here as a 1-of possibly over the 2nd Lava Burst and it's something I do intend on testing.
I don't exactly think the words overload and tempo fit in the same sentence lol
I have a big doot. My argent lance is ready for action. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Overload cards are the very definition of tempo lol. Pretty much every card with overload gives you an effect worth more than its actual mana cost because you have access to less mana on the following turn. But when you build your deck to take advantage of this by curving out really low and playing Tunnel Trogg and Unbound Elemental the downside of the overload cards is offset by gaining even more immediate advantage when you cast them.
Aggressive decks don't use healing and the beauty of weapons is you can use them for both trading AND going face not simply one or the other. Weapons are also the most damage efficient cards in the entire game so I have no clue why you think they're "not worth the investment" if you're sending them face. Doomhammer is 5 mana for SIXTEEN damage, there's nothing in hearthstone that comes even remotely close to that sort of damage per mana value.
I want to try this deck out but im 200 gold short of the first wing even so i wont give my opinions about the actual card choices until i get my hands on the trogg. The only thing that strikes me as obvious is that the shaman weapons are simply too slow, it takes 7 turns at least to use all the charges of stormforge and doomhammer combined so if you ever have both copies of either in the hand you would be having a dead card for all game long. For that i consider that cutting the second copy of both for a couple of 2 drops might be better option to make the deck less clunky.
THE LEGEND!!!! (not really)
I would drop 1 each of the Stormforged Axe and Doomhammer. For replacement cards I would suggest a single Charged Hammer to get rid of the awful totem hero power, or possibly just a couple of Azure Drakes since you have so many damage damage spells, and not a lot of card draw. Actually, if you want to get right down to it, I would be looking at removing some of the spells to be honest as it seems like overkill to run 2 each of Lightning Bolt, Lava Shock AND Crackle unless you are building some kind of Malygos deck. I would recommend more minions and less direct damage spells, probably go with only the crackles myself.
You hit the nail right on the head. The main reason for the double stormforged axe is that I want it early in just about every matchup to help control the board. In a deck like this you really need to stick either Tunnel Trogg, Toteum Golem or Unbound Elemental and protect them so they can get in large amounts of chip damage throughout the course of the game. I never really want games to go long enough to the point where I'll use all 22 charges of weapons obviously, they're just there to add consistency to my draws.
As for Charged Hammer 2 damage for 4 mana (every turn for 4 turns) just feels a bit too slow and clunky, especially because doomhammer comes down the next turn I really don't feel like it's a fast enough card for this deck. I've seen it do work in Malygos and Control Shaman as a 1-of but in a list like this I feel it's a bit too clunky unfortunately.
I finally added a pair of hexes to the deck as it felt a bit too bad having to constantly use burn spells to answer minions so now the deck finally has a way to answer annoying stuff while still developing at the same time since 3 mana is actually quite cheap for hard removal like that. The card has been fantastic against aggro druid and secret paladin in particular so making your most common ladder matchups stronger has been quite helpful. Hex also helps somewhat against reliquary zoo as an answer to sea giant but in general you need to draw lightning storm or you lose that matchup anyway unless you get some insanely fast start and just burst them out with doomhammer.
I think if you are running Doomhammer without Rockbiter Weapon, you are playing an extremely passive game. Just my 2 cents.
I don't think anyone was suggesting cutting both rockbiter... Lol