Demons and Totems require far too much support in order to make happen.
Totems; Must have a full board to benefit from buffs, can't defend themselves, die to a stiff breeze, and do nothing on their own (Sure they buff stuff, but by themselves they just eat up space).
Demons: Horrible stats, awesome effects, must be buffed to do anything, synergy is just "+1/+1" type buffs and "doesn't deal damage".
Both of them are basically "Priest the Deck" where you're reliant on drawing combo cards to empower your threats, but your threats are worthless without your combo cards so you're so likely to get screwed via getting too much of one or the other. The reason why these two classes' main gimmick is so horrible (totem and demon synergies) is because none of the totems or demons are worth playing unlike Dragons, Murlocs, beasts, or anything else.
Totems are just too weak to stand up by themselves; they need to be given some way to be given attack (That doesn't happen after T6) and the only way to reliantly flood the board with them in a single turn (To set up a next turn Bloodlust) is Wicked Witchdoctor, and she requires you to commit almost your entire hand to fill the board with easily wiped 0/2s. Totems, in order to be a thing, need more Totem Golems, or a Totem Only mass Inner Fire. At least that would give you a way to actually keep hold of board control.
I get that the Demon Synergy cards can act as removal if you need it, but in a dedicated Demon deck using said cards as removal means you no longer have any threats! If Blizzard wants Demonlock to be a thing, it's going to have to pick what it wants demons to do and stick with it. Demons are supposed to be buffed and sacrificed? We should probably get another form of Dreadsteed so we have threats to do so with. Demons are supposed to be dealing damage to you while being over stated? We need another Mistress of Pain to offset the damage if we draw/buff them, because that amount of self damage can't sustain itself in a game with Shaman and Hunter Aggro doing what they do (Coming from a Shaman main).
But as of right now, Totems and Demons require way too much with not enough pay out, and as long as those flaws aren't fixed there are NEVER going to be decks.
And yet 2 copies of Totem Golem, Flametongue Totem, Mana Tide Totem, Thing From Below, and Thunder Bluff Valient are in every Shaman deck. 1/3 of am entire deck dedicated to totems or totem synergy isn't enough?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else's mistake.
And yet 2 copies of Totem Golem, Flametongue Totem, Mana Tide Totem, Thing From Below, and Thunder Bluff Valient are in every Shaman deck. 1/3 of am entire deck dedicated to totems or totem synergy isn't enough?
If they are going to give Shaman cards like Totemic Might, Primal Fusion, Draenei Totemcarver, Tuskarr Totemic, Wicked Witchdoctor, or any of the other nigh useless Totem only cards, at the expense of any sort of theme they come up with for any expansion (No C'thun Shaman cards. No Dragon Shaman cards. Two Mech Shaman cards and only one Murloc, all at the expense of getting Totem after Totem or Totem centric cards), then yes, I do expect to be able to play 2/3 or even 3/3 of a deck based around nothing but totems.
wait how the hell totem synergy is too hard to run ?? Both Thing from Below and Thunderbluff Valiant are run in tier 1 decks and the totem witch thing is also run in spells heavier one. Heck even Totemic Might was run sometime in aggro Shaman last year as well
The demon synergy is also very strong already. Void Caller and Mal'Ganis alone are more than enough to run already and both are included in previous seasons Zoo/DemonHandlock/DemonZoolock. Heck even some current Zoo run Demon Fire
And how the totems and demons have poor stats, 5 mana 5/7 charge is not enough ??? 1 mana 3/2 ??? and all the 0/something special totems are not supposed to be slammed on the board randomly.
Theme decks are not supposed to be just Demons or just totems. Even in Dragon decks the strong card are mostly non-dragons
Your entire argument falls apart when we look at a card like mysterious challenger. Pre-TGT, one could've argued exactly what you are saying. Secrets require far too much to make work. They are too gimmicky. Blah blah blah. And then MC comes along, and suddenly one card has made almost all of the paladin secrets, previously regarded to be the worst secrets, extremely viable. One card was able to turn a pile of crap into the backbone of one of the greatest decks ever seen.
Unless you have a magic crystal ball, you don't know what the quality of these tribal cards will be. All it takes is one or two crucial cards to make all the pieces fall into place. It is ignorant to assume that every one of these cards released will be Wicked Witchdoctors.
Also, Demonlock was very good for a considerable period of time. And I would argue that we currently have a totem shaman, or at least we did a few months back. So, you have no legs to stand on.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I returned to this game much like how a recovering alcoholic can relapse.
Well I mean /you're right in some aspects. Because blizzard hilariously but sadly prints cards that are so broken that they alone make archetypes or decks work, even over strongly synergistic effects. You want to a run a Demon-lock? its gonna be tier three because as much as blizzard claims they like making 'fun decks' viable, running simply the good (frankly overpowered) cards will more often than not be better that the synergistic ones. This was much more prevalent before standard, with EVERY SINGLE DECK RUNNING Shredders, haunted creepers, Knife juggler, any secret class played mad scientist, control played sludge belcher, midrange ran literally all of it... Its really interesting going back to make wild decks because you can make a fun synergistic one, which can be okayish...probably, or you can fill about 20 cards in your deck with ones you literally need to run to make it competitive because everybody else is also running the broken cards.
wait how the hell totem synergy is too hard to run ?? Both Thing from Below and Thunderbluff Valiant are run in tier 1 decks and the totem witch thing is also run in spells heavier one. Heck even Totemic Might was run sometime in aggro Shaman last year as well
The demon synergy is also very strong already. Void Caller and Mal'Ganis alone are more than enough to run already and both are included in previous seasons Zoo/DemonHandlock/DemonZoolock. Heck even some current Zoo run Demon Fire
And how the totems and demons have poor stats, 5 mana 5/7 charge is not enough ??? 1 mana 3/2 ??? and all the 0/something special totems are not supposed to be slammed on the board randomly.
Theme decks are not supposed to be just Demons or just totems. Even in Dragon decks the strong card are mostly non-dragons
You've named three of the four (out of 11) of Totem cards that are playable and called that "good amounts of totem synergy". You've named two of the three demons that are played (The two most over stated ones, btw) and called Demons completely playable.
Please tell me what else you're supposed to do with a Flametongue Totem when you already have two totems on the board and can easily clear the opponents two minions, only for them to play a Fiery War Axe or similar and kill the Flametongue, rendering your totems once again inert?
Yes, not every card in a Dragon Deck is a Dragon, but how many of them don't get better by having Dragons in hand? Because watching Kibler and looking at his list, the non-dragons and non-dragon synergistic cards are "Wild Pyromancer, Ivory Knight, and Brann Bronzebeard".
And once again we get to the problem; once you look past the few examples of playable cards that just so happen to have the typing, Demons and Totems have horrible synergistic strategies within themselves.
The Totem synergy cards (eg. Primal Fusion are actually not bad, but unlike Thing from Below, you would need a pure Totem deck to have decent consistency, moreover there's currently no reason to not just play Midrange Shaman instead.
As for Demons, unfortunately Blizzard is worried about giving Warlock good class cards because of their Hero Power.
I wish Demons were like Bloodcraft minions in Shadowverse, i.e. have conditional Battlecries which require your hero's HP to be <= 50% to activate (10hp in Shadowverse, 15hp in Hearthstone equivalent), eg. Battlecry: If your Hero has 15 or less health, gain Charge. This would synergize with the Warlock's Hero Power and class cards, but also not be straightup overpowered.
In fact, I really love the design of Bloodcraft in Shadowverse. You need to balance between sacrificing health to gain tempo, card advantage or board control, but at the same time keeping your health high enough to not die. Simply dumping your hand will kill you, but at the same time you'll need to take certain calculated risks (constantly staying just out of reach of lethal) to win.
I feel like this is a wasted opportunity that Hearthstone could've capitalized on.
The current tier 0 deck runs 10 totem cards. Thank god totems are bad.
Totem DECKS.
Jesus, why don't people have any amount of reading comprehension on forums.....
The problems are a) you already have enough tools to do something with your totems, as has been stated by others above b) when you strengthen totems that you can get so easily from your hero power, you make a class unbalanced that is already quite strong.
In my first full season after starting HS I played ranked with a totem deck with bloodlust as primary win condition and it worked quite well (not much dust needed, beginner-friendly, of course not top-tier).
And synergy is more like discard, deal damage to your hero, destroy other minions to make him bigger, call other demons or summon imps. Don't just look at spells.
For the totems, there is card to summon more totems that help you doing combos.
And yet 2 copies of Totem Golem, Flametongue Totem, Mana Tide Totem, Thing From Below, and Thunder Bluff Valient are in every Shaman deck. 1/3 of am entire deck dedicated to totems or totem synergy isn't enough?
I don't quite get your logic here. First, what do you mean by "a powerful card that so happens to be a Totem"? What's wrong with that? Doomguard is a powerful demon that happens to be a Demon. Second, a handful of things are useless on an empty board. Defender of Argus for example. I just takes a little brainpower to realize "maybe it's not time to play him yet".
Plus, Mana Tide Totem useless on an empty board? Your opponent is required to remove it unless you want to give your opponent free draws, you're guaranteed at least one draw, and it discounts Thing From Below.
So the poster thinks that Flame Imp is a bad card o_O It is great and is in most Warlock Zoo decks. Sacrificial pact might be awful, but power overwhelming and shadow flame go great in Warlock decks, although shadowflame is more for the control ones
if you build a deck pure of dragons no way in hell it's gonna work, the reason to play dragons is that you can play 4 mana 3/6 taunt and 5 mana 5/4 deal 3, not just to play a bunch of 9 drops. if you want a vanilla 5 mana 5/4 or vanilla 4 mana 2/6 5 mana 3/6 or 2 mana 1/3, 3mana 2/3 then fine have fun i guess
As i mentioned b4, theme decks doesn't mean that you run every card with dragon/beast/murloc/mech tags, you cherry pick the good theme cards cuz running a 80% dead card Rend Blackhand is not a good ideal and running a bunch of vanilla 3/2 and 2/3 beast is also a very bad ideal
There is no fundamental problem with demons, Blizzard just hasn't given us enough synergies to make the deck viable, and most of the current demons are bad.
Demons are supposed to be dealing damage to you while being over stated? We need another Mistress of Pain to offset the damage if we draw/buff them, because that amount of self damage can't sustain itself in a game with Shaman and Hunter Aggro doing what they do.
Demonlock just has bad matchup against aggro, playing cards with bad tempo to compensate for the drawbacks just weakens every other matcup without really helping against aggro.
I'm curious what your solution would be for totems and demon? My issue would be is you really can't change the Shaman's hero power to make it better or it can be overpowered or make other hero powers weaker.
No deck runs every tribal card out there, or completely load their decks out with synergy cards. Not even the C'Thun decks of April 2016 when it's first released. Sure a few players in rank 25 runs Twilight Geomancer, but that's a minority.
Anyways, you can play a deck with 2/3 of the deck totem and totem synergy cards. The cards that didn't make the cut aren't horrible. It just won't be a tier 0 deck.
Demons and Totems require far too much support in order to make happen.
Totems; Must have a full board to benefit from buffs, can't defend themselves, die to a stiff breeze, and do nothing on their own (Sure they buff stuff, but by themselves they just eat up space).
Demons: Horrible stats, awesome effects, must be buffed to do anything, synergy is just "+1/+1" type buffs and "doesn't deal damage".
Both of them are basically "Priest the Deck" where you're reliant on drawing combo cards to empower your threats, but your threats are worthless without your combo cards so you're so likely to get screwed via getting too much of one or the other. The reason why these two classes' main gimmick is so horrible (totem and demon synergies) is because none of the totems or demons are worth playing unlike Dragons, Murlocs, beasts, or anything else.
Totems are just too weak to stand up by themselves; they need to be given some way to be given attack (That doesn't happen after T6) and the only way to reliantly flood the board with them in a single turn (To set up a next turn Bloodlust) is Wicked Witchdoctor, and she requires you to commit almost your entire hand to fill the board with easily wiped 0/2s. Totems, in order to be a thing, need more Totem Golems, or a Totem Only mass Inner Fire. At least that would give you a way to actually keep hold of board control.
And don't even get me started on Demons. They have either interesting effects (Floating Watcher, Mistress of Pain, Void Terror, Dreadsteed) but have terrible stats, requiring you to buff them in order to do anything. Or their Overstated and actively screw you over when they come out (Flame Imp, Wrathguard, Felguard, Pit Lord). So I'm supposed to buff Demons using Demonheart, Demonfuse, and Demonfire, but I'm supposed to sacrifice the demons I've buffed to Sacrificial Pact, Power Overwhelming or Shadowflame? And that's not even going into how half the demons in the game require you to discard something.
I get that the Demon Synergy cards can act as removal if you need it, but in a dedicated Demon deck using said cards as removal means you no longer have any threats! If Blizzard wants Demonlock to be a thing, it's going to have to pick what it wants demons to do and stick with it. Demons are supposed to be buffed and sacrificed? We should probably get another form of Dreadsteed so we have threats to do so with. Demons are supposed to be dealing damage to you while being over stated? We need another Mistress of Pain to offset the damage if we draw/buff them, because that amount of self damage can't sustain itself in a game with Shaman and Hunter Aggro doing what they do (Coming from a Shaman main).
But as of right now, Totems and Demons require way too much with not enough pay out, and as long as those flaws aren't fixed there are NEVER going to be decks.
And yet 2 copies of Totem Golem, Flametongue Totem, Mana Tide Totem, Thing From Below, and Thunder Bluff Valient are in every Shaman deck. 1/3 of am entire deck dedicated to totems or totem synergy isn't enough?
Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else's mistake.
wait how the hell totem synergy is too hard to run ?? Both Thing from Below and Thunderbluff Valiant are run in tier 1 decks and the totem witch thing is also run in spells heavier one. Heck even Totemic Might was run sometime in aggro Shaman last year as well
The demon synergy is also very strong already. Void Caller and Mal'Ganis alone are more than enough to run already and both are included in previous seasons Zoo/DemonHandlock/DemonZoolock. Heck even some current Zoo run Demon Fire
And how the totems and demons have poor stats, 5 mana 5/7 charge is not enough ??? 1 mana 3/2 ??? and all the 0/something special totems are not supposed to be slammed on the board randomly.
Theme decks are not supposed to be just Demons or just totems. Even in Dragon decks the strong card are mostly non-dragons
Your entire argument falls apart when we look at a card like mysterious challenger. Pre-TGT, one could've argued exactly what you are saying. Secrets require far too much to make work. They are too gimmicky. Blah blah blah. And then MC comes along, and suddenly one card has made almost all of the paladin secrets, previously regarded to be the worst secrets, extremely viable. One card was able to turn a pile of crap into the backbone of one of the greatest decks ever seen.
Unless you have a magic crystal ball, you don't know what the quality of these tribal cards will be. All it takes is one or two crucial cards to make all the pieces fall into place. It is ignorant to assume that every one of these cards released will be Wicked Witchdoctors.
Also, Demonlock was very good for a considerable period of time. And I would argue that we currently have a totem shaman, or at least we did a few months back. So, you have no legs to stand on.
I returned to this game much like how a recovering alcoholic can relapse.
Well I mean /you're right in some aspects. Because blizzard hilariously but sadly prints cards that are so broken that they alone make archetypes or decks work, even over strongly synergistic effects. You want to a run a Demon-lock? its gonna be tier three because as much as blizzard claims they like making 'fun decks' viable, running simply the good (frankly overpowered) cards will more often than not be better that the synergistic ones. This was much more prevalent before standard, with EVERY SINGLE DECK RUNNING Shredders, haunted creepers, Knife juggler, any secret class played mad scientist, control played sludge belcher, midrange ran literally all of it... Its really interesting going back to make wild decks because you can make a fun synergistic one, which can be okayish...probably, or you can fill about 20 cards in your deck with ones you literally need to run to make it competitive because everybody else is also running the broken cards.
Why does Vicious Fledgling exist
The Totem synergy cards (eg. Primal Fusion are actually not bad, but unlike Thing from Below, you would need a pure Totem deck to have decent consistency, moreover there's currently no reason to not just play Midrange Shaman instead.
As for Demons, unfortunately Blizzard is worried about giving Warlock good class cards because of their Hero Power.
I wish Demons were like Bloodcraft minions in Shadowverse, i.e. have conditional Battlecries which require your hero's HP to be <= 50% to activate (10hp in Shadowverse, 15hp in Hearthstone equivalent), eg. Battlecry: If your Hero has 15 or less health, gain Charge. This would synergize with the Warlock's Hero Power and class cards, but also not be straightup overpowered.
In fact, I really love the design of Bloodcraft in Shadowverse. You need to balance between sacrificing health to gain tempo, card advantage or board control, but at the same time keeping your health high enough to not die. Simply dumping your hand will kill you, but at the same time you'll need to take certain calculated risks (constantly staying just out of reach of lethal) to win.
I feel like this is a wasted opportunity that Hearthstone could've capitalized on.
I have played a witchdoctor deck on ladder, the deck is actually pretty good 75% of it is the same cards as classic midrange shaman anyway.
Love the tribes.
Plus, Mana Tide Totem useless on an empty board? Your opponent is required to remove it unless you want to give your opponent free draws, you're guaranteed at least one draw, and it discounts Thing From Below.
If you got the coin, the Mercenaries get going. Vote for The Mercenary for CCC #3.
So the poster thinks that Flame Imp is a bad card o_O It is great and is in most Warlock Zoo decks. Sacrificial pact might be awful, but power overwhelming and shadow flame go great in Warlock decks, although shadowflame is more for the control ones
if you build a deck pure of dragons no way in hell it's gonna work, the reason to play dragons is that you can play 4 mana 3/6 taunt and 5 mana 5/4 deal 3, not just to play a bunch of 9 drops. if you want a vanilla 5 mana 5/4 or vanilla 4 mana 2/6 5 mana 3/6 or 2 mana 1/3, 3mana 2/3 then fine have fun i guess
As i mentioned b4, theme decks doesn't mean that you run every card with dragon/beast/murloc/mech tags, you cherry pick the good theme cards cuz running a 80% dead card Rend Blackhand is not a good ideal and running a bunch of vanilla 3/2 and 2/3 beast is also a very bad ideal
There is no fundamental problem with demons, Blizzard just hasn't given us enough synergies to make the deck viable, and most of the current demons are bad.
Demonlock just has bad matchup against aggro, playing cards with bad tempo to compensate for the drawbacks just weakens every other matcup without really helping against aggro.
I'm curious what your solution would be for totems and demon? My issue would be is you really can't change the Shaman's hero power to make it better or it can be overpowered or make other hero powers weaker.
No deck runs every tribal card out there, or completely load their decks out with synergy cards. Not even the C'Thun decks of April 2016 when it's first released. Sure a few players in rank 25 runs Twilight Geomancer, but that's a minority.
Anyways, you can play a deck with 2/3 of the deck totem and totem synergy cards. The cards that didn't make the cut aren't horrible. It just won't be a tier 0 deck.
People who refuses to play aggro out of principle are even worse than people who play exclusively aggro.
One should seek to become a complete player and play all archetypes, including ones that he despises for whatever irrational reasons.