A well played control warrior should never, ever lose to the standard zoo deck. There are zoo variants that are better against warrior, but since warrior's strategy is "stall until turn 8," that means if the zoo hasn't pretty much killed the warrior by then, the warrior is going to win. And the standard zoo deck does not have enough early game pressure to both maintain board control and bring the warrior's damage down enough to do that.
Note I did say "well-played" warrior. An inexperienced player who messes up can easily get overrun without enough armor/board removal.
It's less a question of whether it's the best deck, and more a question of whether it's the best deck that is also cheap.
In Magic, everyone who is playing in any competitive way is buying the cards they need to build the deck they want, at least in Type 2 (do they still call it Type 2?) constructed. In Hearthstone, we have pretty wide disparities in the level of commitment among players.
Players who have been earning their daily gold for five or six weeks, or players who spent $20 or so can generally put together the zoo deck or a hunter deck. So these decks are going to be predominant in the meta of online play.
Expensive control decks are just not an alternative for the majority of players. When we see an inexpensive tempo rogue deck or something start trouncing zoos, things will start to change.
It's less a question of whether it's the best deck, and more a question of whether it's the best deck that is also cheap.
In Magic, everyone who is playing in any competitive way is buying the cards they need to build the deck they want, at least in Type 2 (do they still call it Type 2?) constructed. In Hearthstone, we have pretty wide disparities in the level of commitment among players.
Players who have been earning their daily gold for five or six weeks, or players who spent $20 or so can generally put together the zoo deck or a hunter deck. So these decks are going to be predominant in the meta of online play.
Expensive control decks are just not an alternative for the majority of players. When we see an inexpensive tempo rogue deck or something start trouncing zoos, things will start to change.
can those expensive control decks (for those that can afford to create them) perform even/better than the cheap zoo and hunter decks or are they also actually inferior?
I will have to disagree. The overload is a known factor and you shouldn't fire these spells off too early if you can't guarantee a nice follow-up. That is true, but I reason that you shouldn't be playing it that soon! The power of these spells is that you can resolve it in one turn AND do something worthwhile too! Early on you should rely on rockbiters and maybe a lightning bolt if you can afford it, and just play good creatures to chip away at the onslaught the warlock will try to drop. I have played this match-up plenty of times to know it is favorable for the shaman, assuming the shaman has a deck that tries to get on the board asap.
What I will agree to is that the mage also has the right tools to deal with zoo. Their hero power alone is rather troublesome for warlocks to fight through.
Overload isn't a problem for shaman against Zoo, because the card advantage more than makes up for the overload penalty. Shaman wrecks zoo. The problem is that shamans need to develop their totems, and the totems feed hunters. A big part of why the zoo deck is so powerful is that its best counters fare pretty poorly against Hunters.
For example, hunter is one of the worst matchups for handlock, because both the hunter's hero power and the warlock's hero power are eating the Warlock's health early in the game. By the time the handlock gets his taunt wall up, the hunter can often finish the game with hero power and kill command.
Control Warrior wrecks the aggro hunter, but struggles to keep pace with the zoo.
In order to shift the meta, something has to have a strong advantage against both aggro hunters and zoolocks.
It's less a question of whether it's the best deck, and more a question of whether it's the best deck that is also cheap.
In Magic, everyone who is playing in any competitive way is buying the cards they need to build the deck they want, at least in Type 2 (do they still call it Type 2?) constructed. In Hearthstone, we have pretty wide disparities in the level of commitment among players.
Players who have been earning their daily gold for five or six weeks, or players who spent $20 or so can generally put together the zoo deck or a hunter deck. So these decks are going to be predominant in the meta of online play.
Expensive control decks are just not an alternative for the majority of players. When we see an inexpensive tempo rogue deck or something start trouncing zoos, things will start to change.
can those expensive control decks (for those that can afford to create them) perform even/better than the cheap zoo and hunter decks or are they also actually inferior?
Well, a Handlock will tap on turns 2 and 3 if it goes first, and just once if it gets the coin, so it will have nine cards on turn 4.
The deck carries 2 Ancient Watchers, 2 Twilight Drakes, 2 Mountain Giants, 2 Molten Giants, 2 Ancient Watchers. 2 Sunfury Protectors, 2 Defender of Argus and 2 Hellfires, Most variations only carry one Shadowflame and one Owl. I've been running 2 of each to do better against Aggro.
If the handlock is holding the coin, it can field a 4/10 Twilight drake on turn 4, a 3-mana mountain giant on turn 5, and then give them both taunt with a Sunfury protector. This isn't a typical play against Zoo, because the Zoo is hitting the handlock in the face on turns 3-5. So the Handlock will probably try to play something a little faster.
A Watcher+Sunfury or Watcher+Owl early on generally trades for 3 cards, and really checks Zoo hard. Watcher+Shadowflame clears the Zoo's board for 2 cards and 6 mana. Handlock generally runs a few other tricks; a mortal coil will get rid of a sergeant or a young priestess for a net cost of zero cards. If you combine Mortal Coil with Bloodmage Thalnos, then you can kill off a Flame Imp, a Timber Wolf, or a Knife Juggler.
Even if the zoo hits hard for the first couple of turns, the handlock can turn it around by dropping free molten giants and giving them taunt. This is why some zoo players are running with The Black Knight.
The zoo has to draw really well and be very aggressive out of the gate to beat handlock: Something like Coin+Voidwalker+flame imp on turn 1, followed by Timber Wolf on Turn 2, because if the game isn't sealed very quickly, the handlock will get his big taunts up. But if the Zoolock overextends, the handlock can wipe his board out with Shadowflame or Hellfire.The handlock doesn't have to draw quite as well, because he is tapping early for extra cards, and also, he has a lot of ways to stop the Zoo's momentum..
Zoolock is easy to play and cheap, which is the main attraction.
Sorry i had to fix it for you :)
There's shaman, mage and druid decks out there that are very good and as cheap as zoo. The problem is they are not as strong, and let's be honest, require much more thinking then "do i buff the juggler or the shieldbearer"...
Im sorry but you are so wrong. Mage Shaman and Druid decks if you want to play a version that is on the same tier as Zoo ( Mage just isnt ever on that level unfortunately ) will cost you so much more.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH This is so wrong in so many levels I cant even begin to comprehend and understand, I will just go ahead and say that Shaman Midrange altho 592305839458395838 times harder to play than Zoo, is cheaper, but still not as played as Zoo just due to the fact its harder to play. I will even go ahead and say that its better than Zoo. BUT people will disagree, because its not as automatic as zoo is. A good Shaman player has a lot more chances vs all the decks in the meta than a Zoo player, because the shaman player will have a lot more options to get out of a lot of diferent and dificult situations than the Zoo will. An deck being automatic doesnt mean the deck is better than everything else, its just so easy to play (skillfloor being very low) that everybody will be playing it.
I am currently working on a mage deck to solely counter Zoo. I don't even care if it's bad against everything else....I am sick of seeing Zoo and am going to devote all of my time to finding a deck that can consistently defeat it.
It's not the best deck. Like any rushing face-bashing deck, it's cheap and brainless. It's the cancer of any card game, and it's a shame that Blizzard is falling into the trap of letting this happen. Rush decks should be less and less encouraged.
I love playing Control decks, but I just can't do it. That's why I barely play Constructed anymore. I've got no incentive at all. More than half the games you play are against face-bashing mindless players. Unfortunately this is the bane of Hearthstone. I'll stick to Arena until something is done to prevent this epidemic of rushy decks is on. GG Blizard (yet freaking again...).
It's not the best deck. Like any rushing face-bashing deck, it's cheap and brainless. It's the cancer of any card game, and it's a shame that Blizzard is falling into the trap of letting this happen. Rush decks should be less and less encouraged.
I love playing Control decks, but I just can't do it. That's why I barely play Constructed anymore. I've got no incentive at all. More than half the games you play are against face-bashing mindless players. Unfortunately this is the bane of Hearthstone. I'll stick to Arena until something is done to prevent this epidemic of rushy decks is on. GG Blizard (yet freaking again...).
I agree Blizz should do something about mindless rush being so viable, but I just don't see what they can do. I made a Zoo deck....I played exactly how I hate to be played against and I ripped off 8 wins in a row. I felt super dirty and deleted the deck then started to create a deck to counter Zoo and other mindless aggro decks. That is about all you can do is try to find a counter.
It's not the best deck. Like any rushing face-bashing deck, it's cheap and brainless. It's the cancer of any card game, and it's a shame that Blizzard is falling into the trap of letting this happen. Rush decks should be less and less encouraged.
I love playing Control decks, but I just can't do it. That's why I barely play Constructed anymore. I've got no incentive at all. More than half the games you play are against face-bashing mindless players. Unfortunately this is the bane of Hearthstone. I'll stick to Arena until something is done to prevent this epidemic of rushy decks is on. GG Blizard (yet freaking again...).
I agree Blizz should do something about mindless rush being so viable, but I just don't see what they can do. I made a Zoo deck....I played exactly how I hate to be played against and I ripped off 8 wins in a row. I felt super dirty and deleted the deck then started to create a deck to counter Zoo and other mindless aggro decks. That is about all you can do is try to find a counter.
This fix it as such: Stop letting warlocks draw 2 cards a turn. Stop letting hunters put you on a clock, and increase unleash the skill to 4 mana cost.
I put this deck together and *it's awesome* it doesn't win every time,no but it is quite strong. I think gimmicky paladin and priest nonsense should be discouraged because it is so boring and the game takes forever. The only thing Bliz can do is to add more cards to make a variety of decks more appealing but get this there will always be rush so deal. I play it, it doesn't win every game - if a deck was a sure win then everyone would play it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
I put this deck together and *it's awesome* it doesn't win every time,no but it is quite strong. I think gimmicky paladin and priest nonsense should be discouraged because it is so boring and the game takes forever. The only thing Bliz can do is to add more cards to make a variety of decks more appealing but get this there will always be rush so deal. I play it, it doesn't win every game - if a deck was a sure win then everyone would play it.
No deck wins every game. But nobody can argue this deck is more than just viable. You watch online tournaments with very high-level players, and everybody has a Zoo Warlock and/or a Facebasher Hunter. Add the fact that it's super cheap and requires little to no practice, and you have yourself a problem. There are a lot of poorly skilled players in ranks 7 to 3 that ONLY use decks like these, otherwise, they'd be stuck below rank 10.
Adding more cards to the game might fix this. But that is still months away, and in the meantime, we're stuck with this pathetic metagame.
zoo lock is plenty awesome. cheap, easy to play, and strong. but not the best. up in the top 5? maybe. but not the best. i'd say kolento's midrange variation hunter is the best. it's cheap, wins more games than zoo, and is far more entertaining to play.
zoo lock is plenty awesome. cheap, easy to play, and strong. but not the best. up in the top 5? maybe. but not the best. i'd say kolento's midrange variation hunter is the best. it's cheap, wins more games than zoo, and is far more entertaining to play.
I don't think anyone is denying what you are saying there.....it's just the fact that it is too strong. For the majority of the player base....those in the 17-10 range all we are seeing is zoo zoo zoo....and facebash hunter. It's super boring and mind-numbing to just play those two decks over and over again. Like I said....I made zoo and without any effort or thought I ran off 8 straight wins. Got bored...felt dirty and deleted it. I play this game for fun interesting decks....not to climb the ladder, but playing fun interesting decks and having fun with zoo so prevalent in the meta is near impossible.
i like throwing out my aggro mage deck when zoo/huntard is being spammed (shameless plug, sry). it counters other face classes, because it outdamages other face classes far earlier. also i'd say it's pretty fun to embarass the popular aggro decks and nuke past well thought out control deck's taunt walls for the win at the same time.
i like throwing out my aggro mage deck when zoo/huntard is being spammed (shameless plug, sry). it counters other face classes, because it outdamages other face classes far earlier. also i'd say it's pretty fun to embarass the popular aggro decks and nuke past well thought out control deck's taunt walls for the win at the same time.
Yeah....the mage deck I made has got to be infuriating to Zoo and Huntards.
I am also on the Hunter > Zoolock bandwagon for 1 sole reason: there is currently NO hard counter against traps. Unless you are a hunter with Flare or a Priest that steals it, it is literally a card that cannot be removed that forces players to play around it. There is not a single card in the game that draws that sort of singularity other than traps. While a zoolock may flood the board, I can at least decide how to deal with it. As any class but hunter, if I see a trap I know my option is to activate it. Since a good hunter will hold their traps to see if a player is running heavy aggro, it often trades at a 3/1 or higher.
A well played control warrior should never, ever lose to the standard zoo deck. There are zoo variants that are better against warrior, but since warrior's strategy is "stall until turn 8," that means if the zoo hasn't pretty much killed the warrior by then, the warrior is going to win. And the standard zoo deck does not have enough early game pressure to both maintain board control and bring the warrior's damage down enough to do that.
Note I did say "well-played" warrior. An inexperienced player who messes up can easily get overrun without enough armor/board removal.
It's less a question of whether it's the best deck, and more a question of whether it's the best deck that is also cheap.
In Magic, everyone who is playing in any competitive way is buying the cards they need to build the deck they want, at least in Type 2 (do they still call it Type 2?) constructed. In Hearthstone, we have pretty wide disparities in the level of commitment among players.
Players who have been earning their daily gold for five or six weeks, or players who spent $20 or so can generally put together the zoo deck or a hunter deck. So these decks are going to be predominant in the meta of online play.
Expensive control decks are just not an alternative for the majority of players. When we see an inexpensive tempo rogue deck or something start trouncing zoos, things will start to change.
can those expensive control decks (for those that can afford to create them) perform even/better than the cheap zoo and hunter decks or are they also actually inferior?
Overload isn't a problem for shaman against Zoo, because the card advantage more than makes up for the overload penalty. Shaman wrecks zoo. The problem is that shamans need to develop their totems, and the totems feed hunters. A big part of why the zoo deck is so powerful is that its best counters fare pretty poorly against Hunters.
For example, hunter is one of the worst matchups for handlock, because both the hunter's hero power and the warlock's hero power are eating the Warlock's health early in the game. By the time the handlock gets his taunt wall up, the hunter can often finish the game with hero power and kill command.
Control Warrior wrecks the aggro hunter, but struggles to keep pace with the zoo.
In order to shift the meta, something has to have a strong advantage against both aggro hunters and zoolocks.
I don't think it's the creation of "Zoo" that makes the deck so ungodly.
The real heavy-lifter for the deck is Warlock's flip ability.
Brian Kibler wrote an article addressing it. I can dig it out, if you like. And as much as I am not a fan, he makes some very compelling points.
It's not an accident that Warlock can field two very different iterations of incredibly strong decks.
That said, a very articulate and well-presented OP.
Well, a Handlock will tap on turns 2 and 3 if it goes first, and just once if it gets the coin, so it will have nine cards on turn 4.
The deck carries 2 Ancient Watchers, 2 Twilight Drakes, 2 Mountain Giants, 2 Molten Giants, 2 Ancient Watchers. 2 Sunfury Protectors, 2 Defender of Argus and 2 Hellfires, Most variations only carry one Shadowflame and one Owl. I've been running 2 of each to do better against Aggro.
If the handlock is holding the coin, it can field a 4/10 Twilight drake on turn 4, a 3-mana mountain giant on turn 5, and then give them both taunt with a Sunfury protector. This isn't a typical play against Zoo, because the Zoo is hitting the handlock in the face on turns 3-5. So the Handlock will probably try to play something a little faster.
A Watcher+Sunfury or Watcher+Owl early on generally trades for 3 cards, and really checks Zoo hard. Watcher+Shadowflame clears the Zoo's board for 2 cards and 6 mana. Handlock generally runs a few other tricks; a mortal coil will get rid of a sergeant or a young priestess for a net cost of zero cards. If you combine Mortal Coil with Bloodmage Thalnos, then you can kill off a Flame Imp, a Timber Wolf, or a Knife Juggler.
Even if the zoo hits hard for the first couple of turns, the handlock can turn it around by dropping free molten giants and giving them taunt. This is why some zoo players are running with The Black Knight.
The zoo has to draw really well and be very aggressive out of the gate to beat handlock: Something like Coin+Voidwalker+flame imp on turn 1, followed by Timber Wolf on Turn 2, because if the game isn't sealed very quickly, the handlock will get his big taunts up. But if the Zoolock overextends, the handlock can wipe his board out with Shadowflame or Hellfire.The handlock doesn't have to draw quite as well, because he is tapping early for extra cards, and also, he has a lot of ways to stop the Zoo's momentum..
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
This is so wrong in so many levels I cant even begin to comprehend and understand, I will just go ahead and say that Shaman Midrange altho 592305839458395838 times harder to play than Zoo, is cheaper, but still not as played as Zoo just due to the fact its harder to play. I will even go ahead and say that its better than Zoo.
BUT people will disagree, because its not as automatic as zoo is. A good Shaman player has a lot more chances vs all the decks in the meta than a Zoo player, because the shaman player will have a lot more options to get out of a lot of diferent and dificult situations than the Zoo will.
An deck being automatic doesnt mean the deck is better than everything else, its just so easy to play (skillfloor being very low) that everybody will be playing it.
Retired Hearthstone Columnist
No more like this http://www.wowhead.com/deck=40541 but I like what you've done there.
It's not the best deck. Like any rushing face-bashing deck, it's cheap and brainless. It's the cancer of any card game, and it's a shame that Blizzard is falling into the trap of letting this happen. Rush decks should be less and less encouraged.
I love playing Control decks, but I just can't do it. That's why I barely play Constructed anymore. I've got no incentive at all. More than half the games you play are against face-bashing mindless players. Unfortunately this is the bane of Hearthstone. I'll stick to Arena until something is done to prevent this epidemic of rushy decks is on. GG Blizard (yet freaking again...).
I agree Blizz should do something about mindless rush being so viable, but I just don't see what they can do. I made a Zoo deck....I played exactly how I hate to be played against and I ripped off 8 wins in a row. I felt super dirty and deleted the deck then started to create a deck to counter Zoo and other mindless aggro decks. That is about all you can do is try to find a counter.
This fix it as such: Stop letting warlocks draw 2 cards a turn. Stop letting hunters put you on a clock, and increase unleash the skill to 4 mana cost.
I put this deck together and *it's awesome* it doesn't win every time,no but it is quite strong. I think gimmicky paladin and priest nonsense should be discouraged because it is so boring and the game takes forever. The only thing Bliz can do is to add more cards to make a variety of decks more appealing but get this there will always be rush so deal. I play it, it doesn't win every game - if a deck was a sure win then everyone would play it.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
No deck wins every game. But nobody can argue this deck is more than just viable. You watch online tournaments with very high-level players, and everybody has a Zoo Warlock and/or a Facebasher Hunter. Add the fact that it's super cheap and requires little to no practice, and you have yourself a problem. There are a lot of poorly skilled players in ranks 7 to 3 that ONLY use decks like these, otherwise, they'd be stuck below rank 10.
Adding more cards to the game might fix this. But that is still months away, and in the meantime, we're stuck with this pathetic metagame.
zoo lock is plenty awesome. cheap, easy to play, and strong. but not the best. up in the top 5? maybe. but not the best. i'd say kolento's midrange variation hunter is the best. it's cheap, wins more games than zoo, and is far more entertaining to play.
I don't think anyone is denying what you are saying there.....it's just the fact that it is too strong. For the majority of the player base....those in the 17-10 range all we are seeing is zoo zoo zoo....and facebash hunter. It's super boring and mind-numbing to just play those two decks over and over again. Like I said....I made zoo and without any effort or thought I ran off 8 straight wins. Got bored...felt dirty and deleted it. I play this game for fun interesting decks....not to climb the ladder, but playing fun interesting decks and having fun with zoo so prevalent in the meta is near impossible.
i like throwing out my aggro mage deck when zoo/huntard is being spammed (shameless plug, sry). it counters other face classes, because it outdamages other face classes far earlier. also i'd say it's pretty fun to embarass the popular aggro decks and nuke past well thought out control deck's taunt walls for the win at the same time.
Yeah....the mage deck I made has got to be infuriating to Zoo and Huntards.
I am also on the Hunter > Zoolock bandwagon for 1 sole reason: there is currently NO hard counter against traps. Unless you are a hunter with Flare or a Priest that steals it, it is literally a card that cannot be removed that forces players to play around it. There is not a single card in the game that draws that sort of singularity other than traps. While a zoolock may flood the board, I can at least decide how to deal with it. As any class but hunter, if I see a trap I know my option is to activate it. Since a good hunter will hold their traps to see if a player is running heavy aggro, it often trades at a 3/1 or higher.
Reynad's Updated Zoo Deck:
Poetic.
if u want a deck that demolishes zoo/hunter heres your ticket ;P : Saturos new meta aggro mage