Hearthpwn

Quote from MojoJojo21619 >>

Shudderwock shaman is the best combo deck the game has ever seen because of the lack of counters at the moment.  Past decks had counters like iceblock then reno, dirty rat etc. 

First off, I don't concider Reno being a counter to OTK decks. Against former standard freeze mage I did, but not against strategies, which can inflict tons of damage in a single turn. I played various control decks back in the days. I also ran 1-2 copies of Dirty Rat there. Maybe I'm a bad player, but I rarely managed to counter the exodia mages and disrupt their combo. Most of the time I pulled useless minions (acolyte, loot hoarder), because my opponents purposely held onto some of them. Countering Raza Priest with the rats was just impossible - I don't remember ever removing an important piece. This is because in the 2-card machine gun combo there was only one important minion to target and the priest always played it as soon as they had the mana. Velen was not always needed, in order for the priest to ping us down. QR was countered by dirty rat hard in the first few days, but once they included more minions into their decks, pulling out that important combo piece turned out to be difficult.

Regarding Lightning Storm - Yes, I am mad enough to call this AoE weak. It's maybe cheap, but its outcome is really unreliable and it overloads the player with 2 mana crystals, which hinders their next plays a lot. If you think that this is strong, then dunno what to say. Volcanic Potion and Demonwrath are just broken then. Defile is better, because it's 1 mana cheaper, it doesn't overload the player and it clears all kinds of boards (especially against aggro) regardless if those minions have Divine Shield or a Deathrattle effect. Duskbreaker doesn't really hinder the deck build - well, it does now, because priest doesn't have Netherspite Historian or a good dragon package, but this was the best cheap removal priests had before the rotation. And LS can't compete with them - they don't overload you and instead they make your next turns smooth. Tempo decks also don't mind a 2-damage AoE, because many of them run sticky minions.

It also runs zola so both zola and grumble need to fail.  It does happen but it's not always a game loss if it does and it usually doesn't happen.  Against aggro you don't even need the combo.  Shudderwock with a handful of BC's is usually enough to win.

Yes, it's true that Zola is also played and it's unusual for 2 cards to whiff at the same time. There were cases, when my opponents went for the Shudder play w/o waiting to play Zola and got terribly punished. My point was, that the combo can fail, even if you played all of the combo pieces - something, which could never happen with the past combo decks. As for Shudderwock itself against aggro - well, the shaman player prolonged the game. It's not a surprise, if a control deck wins against aggro in the late game. This is where the big toys come into play. We warlocks have Bloodreaver Gul'dan/ Twisting Nether, priest has Psychic Scream/ Shadowreaper Anduin, big spell mage has ...., shaman has Hagatha.

"Shudderwock with a handful of BC's is usually enough to win." And sorry, but how is it possible for a shaman player to play Shudderwock replaying the most important battlecries against aggro. This sounds as if the shaman player had the nuts draw to survive that long.

 Smart people concede the second they see shudderwock go back into the hand for 1 mana. There is no way of winning the game at that point unless you can otk them.

This sounds like Freeze Mage with Emperor Thaurissan before the fatal turn. It's not something new. I also concede, because I know the game has ended, I accept it and I queue into the next game. But you can't deny that you can try to kill them, if you have the needed tools. You don't have to OTK the opponent necessarily, because they can't heal to full with 1-2 shudderwocks and mosquito bites.
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Ok, you can try to argue with me all you want, but nothing can change my PoV about Shuddershaman. I played against many annoying decks and I know what I'm talking about. It's true, that there aren't any real tech cards for it (except for us warlocks), but this doesn't mean it's problematic, because it has a slow strategy, it has mediocre board clears and mediocre draw tools. The combo is not even an OTK - since you have to make your Shudder cost 1, before you can kill your opponent. Since all of this happens very late in the game and since it gives the opponent plenty of time to develop a board, I don't see the problem with this.

Quote from MojoJojo21619 >>

 

The overload is irrelevant? If an aggro player overcommits to the board and its control opponent uses a board clear, then of course the aggro player is going to have a bad time. But this is the aggro player's fault for playing too much stuff into the board clear. A good player would spare some minions in their hand, then after the wipe they can come back into the board and will have an advantage, because the shaman player will have fewer mana crystals and won't answer their plays next turn.

You talked about zoo - I don't know if you meant the heal deck, but normally zoolock always runs sticky minions. A board clear like LS can't deal with a durable board on its own. Either you have to get lucky to get a spell damage totem from you HP, which by itself is RNG dependent and again not reliable, or to use another LS, which will overload you even harder next turn, or Volcano. But in the cases, where LS can't deal with a sticky board and you prefer to hold onto it and play Volcano instead, then you are giving your opponent free face damage.

It's kinda unnecessary to talk about the board state, because it's different in the different MUs, but I just wanted to point out the flaw in this control strategy.

You can always freeze something or get a taunt totem to stall out for taunts or volcano or the second LS. 

Depends on how good your starting hand is and how good your draws are. Also RNG HP.

Those other combo decks usually had max damage as well with the exception of exodia mage.  Control warrior was a solid hard counter.  As were other mages with iceblock and reno.  Shudderwock is infinite damage/healing combined with many other strong effects and it's tools for reaching a finish state are better than freeze mages with less counters.

And what does it matter if those decks had a max damage capacity and the current Shudderwock has "infinite" one. Only control warrior could armour up and protect itself from that burst, the other classes only had max 30 health points and if a combo deck could inflict that amount in a single turn, then I'm still dead. It doesn't matter if I'm at 0 or -40 health.

I personally don't like mentioning class specific counters, which other classes don't have. But if a mage wanted to kill another one in the mirror, some of them ran Kezan Mystic and Eater of Secrets (few expansions later) in order to deal with Ice Block.

Shudderwock is NOT a problematic "infinite damage/healing combined", because it requires a lot combo pieces, before it can take off.  Lifedrinker - the card responsible for the damage/healing - is actually a super bad play against aggro. It only heals the player for 3, but it makes it quite vulnerable to attacks since it doesn't have taunt and has a fairly weak body on top of it. Against aggro it just delays the opponent slightly. If you get to the moment, where the shaman player starts to heal itself with Shudderwock, then you weren't aggressive enough or the shaman had the nuts draws. Shudderwock doesn't enter the board on turn 9 and ends the game on the spot. This moment comes way way later, until you assemble the most important pieces. And if you can't pressure them as an aggro deck until this point, then sorry, but imho the problem is not within the Shudderwock shaman deck.

Freeze Mage was less interactive, because it had many good freeze abilities, which slowed down the opponent's minions. And if you couldn't unfreeze at least one of them, then the mage player got free turns. And let's not forget dealing with Ice Block, which undeniably had its counters, but if you didn't find them on time, the mage player could have burst you down from a safe position. Not to mention, that a control deck couldn't produce enough damage against them, before they could play the secret tech.

Volcano is amazing yes. It's the best 5 or less board clear in the game. Remove 1-2 big minions or remove lot's of small ones. Divine shields? Not a problem. It's flexibility deals with almost all situations.

Good - yes. Flexible - yes. Amazing - not quite. And definitely not the best 5 mana board clear - that would be either Brawl or Dragon's Fury. The shaman spell is a fair card.

Control shaman would be a great deck if shudderwock combo wasn't simply better than it because it's op.

Or really? Did control shaman see any play before the rotation? It didn't have shudderwock as a win-condition, nor Hagatha as a value generator, but besides that there were other tools in their disposal - Maelstrom Portal, Devolve, Jinyu Waterspeaker against aggro. As a matter of fact it did see some play after Raza Priest was nerfed, but I don't remember this deck being a top tier one. It revolved around the jade mechanic and it ran the DK, Rummaging Kobold and Murmuring Elemental for more value. And despite the fairly good package - it was still bad. It did have some counters to cubelock, mind you, but it wasn't that popular.
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Anyway, I will finish this wall of thext the following way: Why do you still think this deck is "OP" after reading my points. I explained to you how we encountered a lot more annoying decks in the past, which were more consistent and powerful. Currently we don't have a reliable tech card against it, but this doesn't make it broken or problematic. It's very slow, it has mediocre board clears in comparison to other classes and mediocre draw abilities. Shudderwock doesn't win the game if it's drawn and played early, it requires a lot of set up. And one last thing - while I don't like playing against combo, there is nothing wrong with some decks having a win-condition. This is the only way control shaman can compete with warlock, with druid, mage, priest and warrior. Sorry for this annoying novel, but I got fed up with people's constant salty threads here and there, as if Shuddershaman is something new to the game never seen before. It's not.

Shudderwock is NOT an OP deck. If you really hate it, go play Warlock or something. They have all the Combo-disrupting cards