So, today I got some daily quests to do some Warlocky things, and I'm a bit burned out on Tempo Rogue, so I decided to build a Control Warlock to ladder with and do a video series on. I thought it would be fun to build it together. So, here's the starting point:
Part 1 of the video is coming soon, I've recorded two games with it. The main cards I think that can be swapped around are Medivh, the Guardian, Prince Valanar, Drain Soul, and Shadow Bolt, though other cards are up for debate too, make your case. I think I'd like to find room for Golakka Crawler because there are still a ton of Pirates in them there seas.
What do you think? What cards do you want me to try out in this deck?
Well, I was approaching it from the other way -- Hellfire and Blastcrystal weren't worth including, so I stuck in Valanar. Want to make a case for those cards?
I dunno, probably not. I only have one Twisting Nether right now and have never felt the need to craft the second (though I will, if that's the direction this deck is going -- lots of people only run 1 Nether). Felfire is probably "good enough" except for when it comes to Atiesh.
First round of changes -- took out Medivh and Felfire for Elise and Lich King.
I added a bunch to the writeup, click through to see it. I added the set of what I think are core cards, and various suggestions for different options for the tech cards. I'm hoping this deck can spark discussion, because more so than most decks, Control Warlock is a deck with a relatively small set of "core cards". We have like 10 slots we can tweak however we want, compared to, say, Tempo Rogue which has 3-4 mutable slots at best. We can tech this deck to be better against control, or better against aggro, or better against combo, with relative ease. It's a powerful and mutable deck, which is why I think it would be interesting to discuss together.
Since control warlock is my favourite deck, I can't help but notice your thread. I want to say, that I would like to talk about some of your inclusions, what you could change for better results.
Before I continue, I would like to share my own deck. just to use it as a reference.
inb4 sorry that this is not in English, my PC is too buggy to use the deck-tracker. Inb4 the deck is far from perfect, I also go through the inclusions and decide which would stay and which won't. I.e. I'm not one of those guys, who are promoting their decks.
In my opinion the LK is not good anymore, today I made some changes to the deck, which included cutting him and Sunfury Protector for 2x Stonehill Defenders and tbh I liked this change. Now I have the opportunity to play more minions early one, the expensive ones were dead draws most of the time. The value out of him will get better after the next expansion hits, but for now just the ability to play cheap stuff and to stall the game, until you play the game-wining DK, is worth it imho.
I would advise you to put back Medivh, since most of your spells are expensive and when you use them you won't have the mana to play something on the board. + The good thing about him is how he makes the reactive cards into proactive ones. I don't have the needed dust/coins for him, but if I had, I would include him in the deck.
Tbh from the start I was never impressed by Drain Soul. It's a nice heal overall, but imho control decks need something more impactful. This card on its own can help you clear a low-cost minion, it can heal you for a bit, but against bigger minions you have to use some kind of a combo, and at the end of the day spending 2 cards (e.g. shadowbolt + this) just for a 2 heal (3-4 with spell damage) is not impressive enough to spend a card slot. I personally went with Felfire Potion, because I needed a way to clear bigger boards, stickier and wider. I;m not going to recommend you do so necessarily, jainaishot also commented on the risk you take with this AoE. So I will also advise you to use Hellfires; don't be afraid to take some damage, the healing in warlock is the damage we inflict to ourselves just to prevent the bigger one from the enemy's board.
1 spell damage is more than enough imho. I would go for some techs. Right now I am using the crabs, but personally I think I'm overdoing it, since I feel I have enough anti-aggro tools in my deck. Now, the following I will say may insult some people, but I am willing to play the TreacheryDefile and Howlfiend meme combo just to have a chance against those combo decks. And as stupid as this sounds, I'm really aware of this, but there is no real tech against that arch-type as a control deck. Since we are playing the defensive game, we aren't really aggressive, so they will have enough time to find their pieces. Dirty Rat and Gnomeferatu are RNG based, you can't reliably discard their combo piece, I'm actually willing to use this in my deck just to improve the chances against Raza and Questmage.
Inb4 normally people go with the strategy of improving their chances against the MU, where this deck mostly has good chances to thrive (the current tempo and zoo decks). They improve the one MU over the other (Raza). So don't take the paragraph above that seriously. But memes are memes.
[edit] don't take the statement for the howlfiend combo seriously, i was just fed up with all the combo decks i faced today of course including two clunky cards will make the deck function bad against everything else.
[Lots of awesome, thoughtful posting about the archetype]
Thanks for the thoughtful response, I _super_ appreciate it. I agree with everything you say, except that my feeling is, that if Lich King is too slow, then Medivh is surely too slow as he costs the same, and has even less immediate impact on the board than LK, right? What you say about Atiesh giving you a minion off of, say, Twisting Nether is both 100% true and important, though.
control lock need value. i cant control board after clear. impossible to win against zoo. and too slow vs exodia mage,razakus pri.
Like Kovachut has said, if you are having issues with controlling the board after a clear, you might want to slot Medivh, the Guardian back in so you get a guy off of your Twisting Nether. You can also consider running Hellfire as a cheaper clear.
I'm not running Prince in my own list but surely, oh surely, I wouldn't run Blastcrystal potion, not in a million years
Yeah, Blastcrystal Potion seems like an odd choice to me.. Much like the 3/5 taunt, it's not bad on turn 10. But every turn previous, man, losing a mana crystal is disastrous to this deck.
I agree with everything you say, except that my feeling is, that if Lich King is too slow, then Medivh is surely too slow as he costs the same, and has even less immediate impact on the board than LK, right? What you say about Atiesh giving you a minion off of, say, Twisting Nether is both 100% true and important, though.
I mean, your statement is logical. Come to think of it most of the popular decks in this meta are minion-centered, so kill the threats, then you win.
Yeah, you have a point there. Maybe I was thinking about the time, when control decks were more popular and running a bit slower cards was profitable. But those times have passed, haven't they?
Right now I can think of the following decks: * Warrior (super rare encounter for me) - Dead man's hand, Pirate. The Pirate version would be the most common case, so yeah - Medivh isn't needed. * Hunter - mid-range hunter. Same case. * Paladin (rare encounter for me too) - mostly murlocadins. Medivh is slow. * Rogue - almost always tempo.... * Shaman - token..... * Druid - jade, big and token. Of all the mentioned classes until now running Medivh would be beneficial, if you play against jade and big druid too. But if you clear the finite bodies of big dudu, then you have won anyway, not to mention, that the third popular deck is the aggro one, which would be devastating for a starting hand with expensive stuff. * Warlock - zoo and rarely control. Zoo is the most popular deck from that class, so yeah Medivh is out. * Mage - quest, secret and control/grinder. The first case is a combo deck, Medivh doesn't act as a tech there, in the second case he won't do anything, for the third case - Gul'Dan was always the game-winning card. * Priest - Raza and Big. The first case is a combo deck. Unlike quest mage Medivh could be helpful in a way, if you constantly pressure your opponent until the finds their winning pieces. Gul"dan would also act like the game-winning card, since keeping your health as high as possible would help a lot. In the Big Priest MU - well, finite threats, nothing more to say. The timing of Twisting Nether is crucial.
tl; dr - So yeah, you have a point there. Medivh doesn't really achieve anything in this meta (for warlock).
But dunno. I still think we need to put some sort of tech in our decks. Something against those combo decks, because I feel how we have a spare space to tech against them as well. For me the treachery howlfiend meme combo would be the most effective way, as you can discard a lot of cards from their hand and this the chances of discarding a combo piece would be so high. The problem is, obviously, how top-decking one of those card (or why not both) against an aggressive deck, while you fish for taunts or AoEs, would end up with a lost.
The other techs are dirty and gnomeferatu. And tbh, especially with the rat, I really hate when you have "1 shot" to pull an important card and to kill it with your tools. And once again the timing is really frustrating. Keeping track of which minions have already passed and cross your fingers, that they will perform their combo only when the other minions have been played. Else you may end up pulling off a card-drawing minion (Acolyte of Pain), and your one and only try ended. Not to mention, that against aggressive decks, especially when Bonemare is so popular, you are just signing your doom if you make them summon a minion for free. Atm Gnomeferatu seems the least disadvantageous in comparison to the previous tech, because you can always play the fatigue game and you may win from there (mage being at 1 health just before the fatigue damage), but that's still not reliable enough, because you hope that their combo pieces are on the bottom of their decks.
The reason for me writing yet another unnecessary post is to ask you how you think about this, how you think we could prepare for those MUs?
The reason for me writing yet another unnecessary post is to ask you how you think about this, how you think we could prepare for those MUs?
I agree with your matchup analysis, medivh is good vs Ramp Druid and maybe other control warlocks, that's about it.
To answer your question, how do we prepare better for the combo matchups ... I think Gnomeferatu and Dirty Rat are the two best options. I'll give it some more thought. But, you know, sometimes you just accept the bad matchup instead of weakening your deck to try to improve it.. Razakus + Combo mage is only something like 15% of the field combined...
Played some more games with this over the weekend, currently at 9-1 with the only loss coming to dragon inner fire priest, and only because my dumb self forgot about the combo despite correctly predicting it was in his deck.
Part 2 of the video coming tomorrow. I plan to replace the Drain Souls with something and tinker further.
Played some more games with this over the weekend, currently at 9-1 with the only loss coming to dragon inner fire priest, and only because my dumb self forgot about the combo despite correctly predicting it was in his deck.
Part 2 of the video coming tomorrow. I plan to replace the Drain Souls with something and tinker further.
As we've discussed earlier in the thread, I'm not really looking to put in Gnomeferatu or Skulking Geist. Gnomeferatu is, most times, a 2/3 that does absolutely nothing to further the goals of this deck, which are to control the board and win with Bloodreaver Gul'dan, with the slim chance to randomly do something cool against a deck that only makes up 10% of the meta (Razakus). Skulking Geist is only truly helpful against Jade Idol, but again, Jade Druid only makes up about 6% of the meta right now (all stats from from hsreplay.net, compiled from people who use hearthstone deck tracker).
Also, I think Twisting Nether is maybe secretly a "bad card". 8 mana is _so much mana_. It's a powerful effect but usually you can't do anything else on the turn you play it besides Hero Power or Doomsayer. If the deck were to add a second Nether, I think we'd also have to add Medivh, the Guardian back in, and maybe even a Dirty Rat or two for synergy with the Nether / Doomsayer.
New idea (should have said this from the beginning): If you want to suggest a card, you must also suggest what card you would cut, and why you think your card is better. Hopefully this will help to spur discussion about the deck and the card choices and _why_ we choose them beyond just naming cards that could go into the deck.
The Zealot is just better than Thalnos purely because of Defile, and you have enough draw from your hero power. Medivh beats Elise because quite often your hand is full when you finally draw the Un'Goro Pack in the matchups you need the additional value -- Medivh is much more impactful in those matchups. The Bolt beats the Drain because it just kills more of your opponent's minions (especially when combined with a Zealot), the Drain _always_ needed to be combined with another card to actually kill anything important. Right now, Hellfire beats Valanar because I wanted one more early clear, but honestly I can go either way on this and might switch it back... in my testing Valanar was pretty good in this deck, often healing you for 8-10 (even if it's insta killed by minions, it lifesteals and "heals" you via taunt) and that is nothing to sneeze at. Finally, the Crawler is a good inclusion in this deck over Earthen Ring Farseer, in that it "heals" you by killing an opposing pirate, and then the 3/4 body "heals" you by cleaning up the board. That is usually more relevant and better bang for the buck than just a 3/3 heal for 3.
So, today I got some daily quests to do some Warlocky things, and I'm a bit burned out on Tempo Rogue, so I decided to build a Control Warlock to ladder with and do a video series on. I thought it would be fun to build it together. So, here's the starting point:
Part 1 of the video is coming soon, I've recorded two games with it. The main cards I think that can be swapped around are Medivh, the Guardian, Prince Valanar, Drain Soul, and Shadow Bolt, though other cards are up for debate too, make your case. I think I'd like to find room for Golakka Crawler because there are still a ton of Pirates in them there seas.
What do you think? What cards do you want me to try out in this deck?
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM
All warlock decks should always auto-include x2 Gnomeferatu cus it's V
And at least 1 Treachery Defile and Howlfiend. Cus why ust only clear your opponent's board when you can also clear their hand?
Does Felfire Potion work better then a second Twisting Nether?
When I die, I want to go peacefully and in my sleep like my Grandpa. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car.
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM
2 Earthen Ring Farseer seems a bit excessive + Skulking Geist is something you should at least consider. One Dirty Rat is really strong as well.
Here's video part 1 showing a little bit of gameplay with the original decklist.
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM
First round of changes -- took out Medivh and Felfire for Elise and Lich King.
I added a bunch to the writeup, click through to see it. I added the set of what I think are core cards, and various suggestions for different options for the tech cards. I'm hoping this deck can spark discussion, because more so than most decks, Control Warlock is a deck with a relatively small set of "core cards". We have like 10 slots we can tweak however we want, compared to, say, Tempo Rogue which has 3-4 mutable slots at best. We can tech this deck to be better against control, or better against aggro, or better against combo, with relative ease. It's a powerful and mutable deck, which is why I think it would be interesting to discuss together.
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM
Since control warlock is my favourite deck, I can't help but notice your thread. I want to say, that I would like to talk about some of your inclusions, what you could change for better results.
Before I continue, I would like to share my own deck. just to use it as a reference.
inb4 sorry that this is not in English, my PC is too buggy to use the deck-tracker. Inb4 the deck is far from perfect, I also go through the inclusions and decide which would stay and which won't. I.e. I'm not one of those guys, who are promoting their decks.
In my opinion the LK is not good anymore, today I made some changes to the deck, which included cutting him and Sunfury Protector for 2x Stonehill Defenders and tbh I liked this change. Now I have the opportunity to play more minions early one, the expensive ones were dead draws most of the time. The value out of him will get better after the next expansion hits, but for now just the ability to play cheap stuff and to stall the game, until you play the game-wining DK, is worth it imho.
I would advise you to put back Medivh, since most of your spells are expensive and when you use them you won't have the mana to play something on the board. + The good thing about him is how he makes the reactive cards into proactive ones. I don't have the needed dust/coins for him, but if I had, I would include him in the deck.
Tbh from the start I was never impressed by Drain Soul. It's a nice heal overall, but imho control decks need something more impactful. This card on its own can help you clear a low-cost minion, it can heal you for a bit, but against bigger minions you have to use some kind of a combo, and at the end of the day spending 2 cards (e.g. shadowbolt + this) just for a 2 heal (3-4 with spell damage) is not impressive enough to spend a card slot. I personally went with Felfire Potion, because I needed a way to clear bigger boards, stickier and wider. I;m not going to recommend you do so necessarily, jainaishot also commented on the risk you take with this AoE. So I will also advise you to use Hellfires; don't be afraid to take some damage, the healing in warlock is the damage we inflict to ourselves just to prevent the bigger one from the enemy's board.
1 spell damage is more than enough imho. I would go for some techs. Right now I am using the crabs, but personally I think I'm overdoing it, since I feel I have enough anti-aggro tools in my deck. Now, the following I will say may insult some people, but I am willing to play the Treachery Defile and Howlfiend meme combo just to have a chance against those combo decks. And as stupid as this sounds, I'm really aware of this, but there is no real tech against that arch-type as a control deck. Since we are playing the defensive game, we aren't really aggressive, so they will have enough time to find their pieces. Dirty Rat and Gnomeferatu are RNG based, you can't reliably discard their combo piece, I'm actually willing to use this in my deck just to improve the chances against Raza and Questmage.
Inb4 normally people go with the strategy of improving their chances against the MU, where this deck mostly has good chances to thrive (the current tempo and zoo decks). They improve the one MU over the other (Raza). So don't take the paragraph above that seriously. But memes are memes.
[edit] don't take the statement for the howlfiend combo seriously, i was just fed up with all the combo decks i faced today
of course including two clunky cards will make the deck function bad against everything else.
control lock need value. i cant control board after clear. impossible to win against zoo. and too slow vs exodia mage,razakus pri.
I'm not running Prince in my own list but surely, oh surely, I wouldn't run Blastcrystal potion, not in a million years
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM
I mean, your statement is logical. Come to think of it most of the popular decks in this meta are minion-centered, so kill the threats, then you win.
Yeah, you have a point there. Maybe I was thinking about the time, when control decks were more popular and running a bit slower cards was profitable. But those times have passed, haven't they?
Right now I can think of the following decks:
* Warrior (super rare encounter for me) - Dead man's hand, Pirate. The Pirate version would be the most common case, so yeah - Medivh isn't needed.
* Hunter - mid-range hunter. Same case.
* Paladin (rare encounter for me too) - mostly murlocadins. Medivh is slow.
* Rogue - almost always tempo....
* Shaman - token.....
* Druid - jade, big and token. Of all the mentioned classes until now running Medivh would be beneficial, if you play against jade and big druid too. But if you clear the finite bodies of big dudu, then you have won anyway, not to mention, that the third popular deck is the aggro one, which would be devastating for a starting hand with expensive stuff.
* Warlock - zoo and rarely control. Zoo is the most popular deck from that class, so yeah Medivh is out.
* Mage - quest, secret and control/grinder. The first case is a combo deck, Medivh doesn't act as a tech there, in the second case he won't do anything, for the third case - Gul'Dan was always the game-winning card.
* Priest - Raza and Big. The first case is a combo deck. Unlike quest mage Medivh could be helpful in a way, if you constantly pressure your opponent until the finds their winning pieces. Gul"dan would also act like the game-winning card, since keeping your health as high as possible would help a lot. In the Big Priest MU - well, finite threats, nothing more to say. The timing of Twisting Nether is crucial.
tl; dr - So yeah, you have a point there. Medivh doesn't really achieve anything in this meta (for warlock).
But dunno. I still think we need to put some sort of tech in our decks. Something against those combo decks, because I feel how we have a spare space to tech against them as well. For me the treachery howlfiend meme combo would be the most effective way, as you can discard a lot of cards from their hand and this the chances of discarding a combo piece would be so high. The problem is, obviously, how top-decking one of those card (or why not both) against an aggressive deck, while you fish for taunts or AoEs, would end up with a lost.
The other techs are dirty and gnomeferatu. And tbh, especially with the rat, I really hate when you have "1 shot" to pull an important card and to kill it with your tools. And once again the timing is really frustrating. Keeping track of which minions have already passed and cross your fingers, that they will perform their combo only when the other minions have been played. Else you may end up pulling off a card-drawing minion (Acolyte of Pain), and your one and only try ended. Not to mention, that against aggressive decks, especially when Bonemare is so popular, you are just signing your doom if you make them summon a minion for free. Atm Gnomeferatu seems the least disadvantageous in comparison to the previous tech, because you can always play the fatigue game and you may win from there (mage being at 1 health just before the fatigue damage), but that's still not reliable enough, because you hope that their combo pieces are on the bottom of their decks.
The reason for me writing yet another unnecessary post is to ask you how you think about this, how you think we could prepare for those MUs?
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM
Played some more games with this over the weekend, currently at 9-1 with the only loss coming to dragon inner fire priest, and only because my dumb self forgot about the combo despite correctly predicting it was in his deck.
Part 2 of the video coming tomorrow. I plan to replace the Drain Souls with something and tinker further.
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM
Gnomeferatu.
As we've discussed earlier in the thread, I'm not really looking to put in Gnomeferatu or Skulking Geist. Gnomeferatu is, most times, a 2/3 that does absolutely nothing to further the goals of this deck, which are to control the board and win with Bloodreaver Gul'dan, with the slim chance to randomly do something cool against a deck that only makes up 10% of the meta (Razakus). Skulking Geist is only truly helpful against Jade Idol, but again, Jade Druid only makes up about 6% of the meta right now (all stats from from hsreplay.net, compiled from people who use hearthstone deck tracker).
Also, I think Twisting Nether is maybe secretly a "bad card". 8 mana is _so much mana_. It's a powerful effect but usually you can't do anything else on the turn you play it besides Hero Power or Doomsayer. If the deck were to add a second Nether, I think we'd also have to add Medivh, the Guardian back in, and maybe even a Dirty Rat or two for synergy with the Nether / Doomsayer.
New idea (should have said this from the beginning): If you want to suggest a card, you must also suggest what card you would cut, and why you think your card is better. Hopefully this will help to spur discussion about the deck and the card choices and _why_ we choose them beyond just naming cards that could go into the deck.
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM
Video part 2
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM
Here's the current decklist after playing some more games on ladder:
Took out 1x Drain Soul, 1x Bloodmage Thalnos, 1x Earthen Ring Farseer, Prince Valanar and Elise Trailblazer for Tainted Zealot, Golakka Crawler, Shadow Bolt, Hellfire, Medivh, the Guardian.
The Zealot is just better than Thalnos purely because of Defile, and you have enough draw from your hero power. Medivh beats Elise because quite often your hand is full when you finally draw the Un'Goro Pack in the matchups you need the additional value -- Medivh is much more impactful in those matchups. The Bolt beats the Drain because it just kills more of your opponent's minions (especially when combined with a Zealot), the Drain _always_ needed to be combined with another card to actually kill anything important. Right now, Hellfire beats Valanar because I wanted one more early clear, but honestly I can go either way on this and might switch it back... in my testing Valanar was pretty good in this deck, often healing you for 8-10 (even if it's insta killed by minions, it lifesteals and "heals" you via taunt) and that is nothing to sneeze at. Finally, the Crawler is a good inclusion in this deck over Earthen Ring Farseer, in that it "heals" you by killing an opposing pirate, and then the 3/4 body "heals" you by cleaning up the board. That is usually more relevant and better bang for the buck than just a 3/3 heal for 3.
What do you guys think?
Catch me on YouTube and Twitch: https://www.youtube.com/c/Hindered https://www.twitch.tv/hindered_
My take on the Patches Raza Bonemare Creeper nerfs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wysTG125huM