I don't want to be negative - the last 3 sets have been really exciting for me - but the Witchwood feels rather underwhelming. I understand this set has to be weaker... they can't just powercreep the crap out of the game with each set. But the Witchwood brings very little new to the table, and what it does bring is problematic.
For starters, the top 2 decks are Cube Warlock and Aggro Paladin, and while the aggro paladin list has changed a little with Baku the Mooneater, it's not really all that different from Dude Paladin before. In fact, because of the Odd-only restriction, that deck selects cards that have been in the game for the last 4 years out of necessity :/ I mean, Raid Leader? I didn't buy 130 packs to play Raid Leader. That's not exciting to me. I don't care how effective it is.
Hunter runs almost no new cards except for Baku - a card they don't actually play. It also plays lots of older cards due to the odd-only restriction too, and we've seen this deck before, almost card-for-card. For the cards we haven't seen often, they are just vanilla interchangables.
Tempo Rogue runs almost no new cards except for Blink Fox, which basically does what other cards in the last rotation did.
Mechanically, Priest is still playing the same decks as before - Spiteful, Dragons and/or Combo. The only new cool card they got mechanically is Nightscale Matriarch. It's seeing play, but the "healing matters" theme didn't become a thing. Lady in White is also seeing play, but it doesn't fundamentally change the deck at all - nobody is willing to risk playing new cards to focus on her, so they just play the same low-attack minions they were playing in these before.
Warrior still lacks a good win condition for non-control decks, so it has all of these pretty decent yet completely unplayable Rush cards. People are actually playing Quest Warrior instead of Rush. To me, that's just a failure of design.
Elemental Mage isn't a new concept, but it does feel a little different with the Hand mechanics, so I guess that's a small win? You can play Giants in Mage now.
Hand Druid feels pretty new, and it works surprisingly well - didn't expect that. Still, the Spiteful version is doing marginally better, and we've seen that, so it's not likely the Hand-variant will actually see play because it's worse.
Shudderwock Shaman is a new archetype - and that's good - but I strongly feel that this was a mistake, despite it being at 42% win rate. For the next 2 years, Blizzard won't be able to make any strong defensive cards for Shaman out of fear of this deck approaching real viability, and if it ever has a positive win rate, the meta is screwed - we'll be seeing Baku rush decks for 2 years. I just don't understand why Shudderwock couldn't have been an insane value card - why did it have to an OTK deck? Blizzard could have used this expansion to give Shaman some good tools to replace Jade, and take Shaman into a new direction mechanically - this is *their* set after all :( I feel like Shaman is going to be the worst class again for a long time, just because of Shudderwock's existence.
As a whole, it feels like while there's at least 14-15 viable decks to play right now because people are still figuring things out, and that's great, but almost all of those decks are things we've seen before. Other than Baku (which is a card you never actually play), I don't really get a sense that the Witchwood has really affected Standard in any significant way at all. :( In fact, danger of rush decks is just around the corner.
I was hoping for more midrange decks in the meta so that rush minions would actually matter. As it stands, your minions do nothing because either your opponent is playing little weenies that you'd be better off AOE'ing, or they're playing Cubelock and don't play minions for the first 5 turns. All of these warrior cards are going to waste right now.
I was hoping for more midrange decks in the meta so that rush minions would actually matter. As it stands, your minions do nothing because either your opponent is playing little weenies that you'd be better off AOE'ing, or they're playing Cubelock and don't play minions for the first 5 turns. All of these warrior cards are going to waste right now.
Yeah, it's a real bummer :( I gotta think this was predictable by Blizzard's play test team... Warrior was never on playable terms before the expansion - just like Shaman - so they had every reason to make sure this new rotation hooked Warrior up with what it needed to playable and fun. And again, that didn't happen. It's so disappointing. The rush package looks good.
I play Casual to try things and run jnto the same boring decks from last meta. I'm more annoyed the single player campaign is delayed so Blizzard can cash in.
I love this expansion. Dude paladins are week. Play like 2 taunts and you’ll be ahead on board. Cubes are nothing hard either, we have had so much time to create counters it’s like cutting through butter. Also if you are really struggling against an agro hunter you need to learn how to control the board better (firefly is your friend). I have played like 9 different decks since the expansion all with fairly good results. You just need to realize how to play around the meta decks.
Edit: duskfallen is really fun to crush agro decks with. Highly recommend it
Tbh, Im suprised by the amount of fun Im having with the expansion, so many decks to try with even and odd, taunt warrior is becoming a thing again (having a 75% winrate vs cubes). People are just whining like every expansion.
It's only been 2 days. Just give it more time, there are a lot of fun decks that may need refinement. All in all, I don't think it's that terrible, it just seems that way because of the Shudderwock problem ;)
I'm having fun with the expansion thus far but I do find the Shudderwock animation brutal. Not sure how many more I can sit through before a) I just concede to a Shudderwock deck or b) take a break from the game. Exodia Mage when they pulled off their combo, and Lynessa, were both bad / boring but this is just getting ridiculous. My idea of fun isn't sitting there watching the same boring, repetitive battle cries and sound bites over and over and over again.
I actually like it when raid leader-type (low power level basic) cards finally get a chance in good decks Its pretty cool to see stormwind champion in odd pally and, back in ungoro, stonetusk boar in quest rogue etc.
meta overall might be polarising, best decks look to be aggro pally and cubelock and no midrange list I know can compete with em consistently. but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and wait to see what shapes up when the optimal decks to emerge
I want midrange lists to be good again.. I miss those lists they weren't good for so long.. I think the last midrange list was murloc paladin in KFT before they had to go full aggro to beat cubelock.
I was hoping for more midrange decks in the meta so that rush minions would actually matter. As it stands, your minions do nothing because either your opponent is playing little weenies that you'd be better off AOE'ing, or they're playing Cubelock and don't play minions for the first 5 turns. All of these warrior cards are going to waste right now.
Yeah, it's a real bummer :( I gotta think this was predictable by Blizzard's play test team... Warrior was never on playable terms before the expansion - just like Shaman - so they had every reason to make sure this new rotation hooked Warrior up with what it needed to playable and fun. And again, that didn't happen. It's so disappointing. The rush package looks good.
And all that being said, the package is still great. I've had some great games against hunters, priests and rogues in standard. In wild, the meta is (and always was) just dude paladin, giants/cube warlock, secret mage, maly druid and maybe a few offshoot decks. Pretty much nobody is interacting with the board or they're doing so with just small minions that aren't worth using a rush into. I think I might restrict my warrior plays just to standard for that reason.
I have to disagree here. I think this is a very good expanion, not in term of power level, though on the other side, right because of the power level.
It is lower than lther expansions, so indeed not many new cards are played, but there are also no new broken combos which are simply unfun (except Shudderwock, which was just dumb). Especially as there are no infinite value cards (except Shudderwock), Classic Control decks might have a chance again, and if that happens also classid Midrange.
so I do really like this expasion, also playing now is really fun, but we‘ll see how the meta evolves.
I've made 3 decks this expansion: Secret quest paladin and Dragon priest in white for standard, and Thief rogue for wild, and they've all performed fairly well (not high rank, but still); in fact, the rogue has a 100% win rate after about 4 games in casual, so yeah, that deck is Invincible :P
I was hoping for more midrange decks in the meta so that rush minions would actually matter. As it stands, your minions do nothing because either your opponent is playing little weenies that you'd be better off AOE'ing, or they're playing Cubelock and don't play minions for the first 5 turns. All of these warrior cards are going to waste right now.
Yeah, it's a real bummer :( I gotta think this was predictable by Blizzard's play test team... Warrior was never on playable terms before the expansion - just like Shaman - so they had every reason to make sure this new rotation hooked Warrior up with what it needed to playable and fun. And again, that didn't happen. It's so disappointing. The rush package looks good.
And all that being said, the package is still great. I've had some great games against hunters, priests and rogues in standard. In wild, the meta is (and always was) just dude paladin, giants/cube warlock, secret mage, maly druid and maybe a few offshoot decks. Pretty much nobody is interacting with the board or they're doing so with just small minions that aren't worth using a rush into. I think I might restrict my warrior plays just to standard for that reason.
I do agree, the Rush minions are really good. My comment about them being unplayable has to do with the class as a whole. It's still the 3rd weakest class right now, and most people are playing Quest.
I have to disagree here. I think this is a very good expanion, not in term of power level, though on the other side, right because of the power level.
It is lower than lther expansions, so indeed not many new cards are played, but there are also no new broken combos which are simply unfun (except Shudderwock, which was just dumb). Especially as there are no infinite value cards (except Shudderwock), Classic Control decks might have a chance again, and if that happens also classid Midrange.
so I do really like this expasion, also playing now is really fun, but we‘ll see how the meta evolves.
I wasn't really commenting on the power of the expansion - just the variety and the feeling of 'change'. There is hardly any change at all :/ We've seen this last Standard rotation, or in other Standard rotations. What did it seriously bring that's NEW. Very little :/ And the one deck that is very new - Shudderwock - is a ticking time bomb for the next 2 years that will deal a severe blow to Shaman. Beyond that, we have one healing-matters Priest cards, some good Warrior Rush minions that still need more mid to late-game support that fit the deck perfectly, and Hand Druid, which will not last after a few days.
I'm just disappointed. I really expected more change and variety. Baku rush decks is a horrible outcome. I don't want to see that for the next 2 years. I really don't.
I don't want to be negative - the last 3 sets have been really exciting for me - but the Witchwood feels rather underwhelming. I understand this set has to be weaker... they can't just powercreep the crap out of the game with each set. But the Witchwood brings very little new to the table, and what it does bring is problematic.
For starters, the top 2 decks are Cube Warlock and Aggro Paladin, and while the aggro paladin list has changed a little with Baku the Mooneater, it's not really all that different from Dude Paladin before. In fact, because of the Odd-only restriction, that deck selects cards that have been in the game for the last 4 years out of necessity :/ I mean, Raid Leader? I didn't buy 130 packs to play Raid Leader. That's not exciting to me. I don't care how effective it is.
Hunter runs almost no new cards except for Baku - a card they don't actually play. It also plays lots of older cards due to the odd-only restriction too, and we've seen this deck before, almost card-for-card. For the cards we haven't seen often, they are just vanilla interchangables.
Tempo Rogue runs almost no new cards except for Blink Fox, which basically does what other cards in the last rotation did.
Mechanically, Priest is still playing the same decks as before - Spiteful, Dragons and/or Combo. The only new cool card they got mechanically is Nightscale Matriarch. It's seeing play, but the "healing matters" theme didn't become a thing. Lady in White is also seeing play, but it doesn't fundamentally change the deck at all - nobody is willing to risk playing new cards to focus on her, so they just play the same low-attack minions they were playing in these before.
Warrior still lacks a good win condition for non-control decks, so it has all of these pretty decent yet completely unplayable Rush cards. People are actually playing Quest Warrior instead of Rush. To me, that's just a failure of design.
Elemental Mage isn't a new concept, but it does feel a little different with the Hand mechanics, so I guess that's a small win? You can play Giants in Mage now.
Hand Druid feels pretty new, and it works surprisingly well - didn't expect that. Still, the Spiteful version is doing marginally better, and we've seen that, so it's not likely the Hand-variant will actually see play because it's worse.
Shudderwock Shaman is a new archetype - and that's good - but I strongly feel that this was a mistake, despite it being at 42% win rate. For the next 2 years, Blizzard won't be able to make any strong defensive cards for Shaman out of fear of this deck approaching real viability, and if it ever has a positive win rate, the meta is screwed - we'll be seeing Baku rush decks for 2 years. I just don't understand why Shudderwock couldn't have been an insane value card - why did it have to an OTK deck? Blizzard could have used this expansion to give Shaman some good tools to replace Jade, and take Shaman into a new direction mechanically - this is *their* set after all :( I feel like Shaman is going to be the worst class again for a long time, just because of Shudderwock's existence.
As a whole, it feels like while there's at least 14-15 viable decks to play right now because people are still figuring things out, and that's great, but almost all of those decks are things we've seen before. Other than Baku (which is a card you never actually play), I don't really get a sense that the Witchwood has really affected Standard in any significant way at all. :( In fact, danger of rush decks is just around the corner.
LOL i agree like these expansions are just money grabs that don't introduce things that change decks cubelock is nuts
I was hoping for more midrange decks in the meta so that rush minions would actually matter. As it stands, your minions do nothing because either your opponent is playing little weenies that you'd be better off AOE'ing, or they're playing Cubelock and don't play minions for the first 5 turns. All of these warrior cards are going to waste right now.
We won't see any real change until paladin and warlock get nerfed next month, until then get your easy legend rank with paladin and cubelock
I play Casual to try things and run jnto the same boring decks from last meta. I'm more annoyed the single player campaign is delayed so Blizzard can cash in.
Golden Hero Collections thus far; -
Europe: Druid, Hunter, Paladin, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior (9/9)
Americas: Druid, Mage, Paladin Shaman (4/9)
Everywhere else: Workin on it.. (0/9)
I love this expansion. Dude paladins are week. Play like 2 taunts and you’ll be ahead on board. Cubes are nothing hard either, we have had so much time to create counters it’s like cutting through butter. Also if you are really struggling against an agro hunter you need to learn how to control the board better (firefly is your friend). I have played like 9 different decks since the expansion all with fairly good results. You just need to realize how to play around the meta decks.
Edit: duskfallen is really fun to crush agro decks with. Highly recommend it
Tbh, Im suprised by the amount of fun Im having with the expansion, so many decks to try with even and odd, taunt warrior is becoming a thing again (having a 75% winrate vs cubes). People are just whining like every expansion.
It's only been 2 days. Just give it more time, there are a lot of fun decks that may need refinement. All in all, I don't think it's that terrible, it just seems that way because of the Shudderwock problem ;)
I'm having close to zero fun, mainly because midrange archetypes are very weak, AGAIN.
I refuse to lose to brain dead cubelocks and don't have fun playing aggro.... guess I'll have to wait for the nerfs
I'm having fun with the expansion thus far but I do find the Shudderwock animation brutal. Not sure how many more I can sit through before a) I just concede to a Shudderwock deck or b) take a break from the game. Exodia Mage when they pulled off their combo, and Lynessa, were both bad / boring but this is just getting ridiculous. My idea of fun isn't sitting there watching the same boring, repetitive battle cries and sound bites over and over and over again.
I actually like it when raid leader-type (low power level basic) cards finally get a chance in good decks
Its pretty cool to see stormwind champion in odd pally and, back in ungoro, stonetusk boar in quest rogue etc.
meta overall might be polarising, best decks look to be aggro pally and cubelock and no midrange list I know can compete with em consistently.
but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and wait to see what shapes up when the optimal decks to emerge
No
Don't mind me just passing by
I want midrange lists to be good again.. I miss those lists they weren't good for so long.. I think the last midrange list was murloc paladin in KFT before they had to go full aggro to beat cubelock.
I have to disagree here. I think this is a very good expanion, not in term of power level, though on the other side, right because of the power level.
It is lower than lther expansions, so indeed not many new cards are played, but there are also no new broken combos which are simply unfun (except Shudderwock, which was just dumb). Especially as there are no infinite value cards (except Shudderwock), Classic Control decks might have a chance again, and if that happens also classid Midrange.
so I do really like this expasion, also playing now is really fun, but we‘ll see how the meta evolves.
Annoy-o-Tron: deathriddle: 'Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye'
My battle tag is Fely#.... Can you find all the digits after the #. They're hidden amongst my profile, it's like an easter egg hunt.
<3.14159265359 you!
Now Stop checking my spoilers!
Spoiler
43Fely#2...
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Bonus Spoiler
I've made 3 decks this expansion: Secret quest paladin and Dragon priest in white for standard, and Thief rogue for wild, and they've all performed fairly well (not high rank, but still); in fact, the rogue has a 100% win rate after about 4 games in casual, so yeah, that deck is Invincible :P
but yeah, having tons of fun with witchwood.
I really liked to see Stormwind Champion being played in a meta deck, that surprised and made me smile. He was my fav card when i was a new player.