Hearthpwn

Quote from RepoMan0077 >>

Quote from Wiggy_HS >>

Quote from RepoMan0077 >>

Quote from Wiggy_HS >>

You already have to draw and play a 7+ mana card to activate the corrupt effect. There are few enough of those that you can get away with playing in standard, and outside of Y'shaarj I can't really see realistic options at 9+ mana. So you just want the card removed from the game? OK, say that then. Upping the requirement to 9+ mana is less about "deckbuilding and normal constraints", and more about making the card actually unplayable. Pretending you want to "balance" the card when you just want it nerfed into unplayability is just disingenuous.

 That’s not true at all. Tickatus is usually discounted to 4 mana, thus providing easy fulfillment of conditions.

Casually claiming that you "usually" get to play both Demonic Studies and then drop Tickatus with no demons in between, all the while surviving the tempo you're inevitably giving up... smh. The decent Tickatus decks don't even run that card as far as I know. If you want to dream up ideal scenarios for a card, then you can make the argument for nerfing a whole bunch of them. Luckily we live in the real world, where the numbers show he's not a balance problem at all. He feels bad to lose against, yes, and that's true for most late-game, set-up power cards - I personally felt a lot worse when jade and Hadranox druid would start running away with games. 

 I’m not talking about Demonic Studies, I’m talking about Free Admission, which is run in 2’s.

 And how many lists play Free Admission? None, or nearly none. The thing is you need to play mostly demons to get the discount consistently and on top of that you can't play too many minions or you won't draw Tickatus (it's also worth to remember that y'shaarj is not a demon). And I say this first handed cause I played 2x Admission list and only  about 1 in 10 Tickatuses I managed to draw was 4 mana. 

To be honest after reading comments from this thread and few similar ones my eyes started to bleed.

Is Tickatus overpowered - probably yes but it's also the only thing keeping control lock in the meta (and it's still tier 2 at best).

Is Tickatus counterable - yes, quite easy actually. Just play anything that generates extra draws (primes, c'thun, or the most obvious Elysiana). I can't even understand while adding up to 4 weapon removals in a control deck was considered perfectly normal but one Elysiana nope, not going to happen. And don't even start with her getting burned, on average you loose 10 card out of 30 so it's only 1/3 chance + you can keep/get her from mulligan.

And last but not least my favourite "control and combo is dead because of Tickatus", "aggro is everywhere because of..." and so on. Let's start with combo shall we. The best combo deck in standard at least in my opinion is Mazaki mage, which on average cycles though deck up to turn 6 and then OTKs you on turn 8 which is way too fast for Tickatus to do anything meaningful + mage can replace any piece apart from Mazaki herself which even in best case scenario for warlock is still 1/3 burn chance. Personally I would say that's the hardest matchup for warlock, way worst than any aggro. Similarly combo DH and ETC warrior both have only one irreplaceable card while enrage warrior 0. So apart from C'thun which is way too slow whether Tickatus exist or not, combo is quite fine.

And finally control. First of all something that doesn't exist can't kill you. Tickatus warlock makes only about 5-8% of ladder (depends where you check). Event if we assume that games agaist warlock are unwinnable control should still get their wins against remaining 92-95%, mostly aggro matchups, shouldn't it? Well that's the main issue. Aggro decks nowadays have so much draw/card generation that they don't run out of steam, which was their main weakness vs control. In other words pure control decks have no favoured matchup and that's the main reason why they are dead. To wrap up my boring rant, yesterday I wanted a break from warlock so I played few games as stealth rogue. I lost most aggro vs aggro games (I really suck as aggro player), but I went 4-1 vs control priests and even that one loss happend only because my opponent got Nozari from Alex.

I've played a lot of Tickatus lock, and it's very vulnerable to mage and hunter. Rogue is a very tough matchup. Warriors now seem to draw very quickly and often use the etc combo to win. Paladin is a 50/50 game, they can often put lots of pressure on you, and have ridiculous refill potential. Demon hunter is a tough match too, very easy to put together the lifesteal combo. Shaman has tons of burn, so no go there. The only deck that really sucks against tick lock is priest, and even they pull off wins with all the RNG and value they generate. You guys are overreacting. If there was a powerful combo deck in circulation, priest would lose to that all the time too, just like control always does. 

Deathdragon is correct, aggro is overtuned and there's no downside to playing it as it has a very good chance of beating control, and that's why you see it everywhere.

Quote from DeathDragon >>

Quote from RepoMan0077 >>

Quote from Wiggy_HS >>

Quote from RepoMan0077 >>

Quote from Wiggy_HS >>

You already have to draw and play a 7+ mana card to activate the corrupt effect. There are few enough of those that you can get away with playing in standard, and outside of Y'shaarj I can't really see realistic options at 9+ mana. So you just want the card removed from the game? OK, say that then. Upping the requirement to 9+ mana is less about "deckbuilding and normal constraints", and more about making the card actually unplayable. Pretending you want to "balance" the card when you just want it nerfed into unplayability is just disingenuous.

 That’s not true at all. Tickatus is usually discounted to 4 mana, thus providing easy fulfillment of conditions.

Casually claiming that you "usually" get to play both Demonic Studies and then drop Tickatus with no demons in between, all the while surviving the tempo you're inevitably giving up... smh. The decent Tickatus decks don't even run that card as far as I know. If you want to dream up ideal scenarios for a card, then you can make the argument for nerfing a whole bunch of them. Luckily we live in the real world, where the numbers show he's not a balance problem at all. He feels bad to lose against, yes, and that's true for most late-game, set-up power cards - I personally felt a lot worse when jade and Hadranox druid would start running away with games. 

 I’m not talking about Demonic Studies, I’m talking about Free Admission, which is run in 2’s.

 And how many lists play Free Admission? None, or nearly none. The thing is you need to play mostly demons to get the discount consistently and on top of that you can't play too many minions or you won't draw Tickatus (it's also worth to remember that y'shaarj is not a demon). And I say this first handed cause I played 2x Admission list and only  about 1 in 10 Tickatuses I managed to draw was 4 mana. 

To be honest after reading comments from this thread and few similar ones my eyes started to bleed.

Is Tickatus overpowered - probably yes but it's also the only thing keeping control lock in the meta (and it's still tier 2 at best).

Is Tickatus counterable - yes, quite easy actually. Just play anything that generates extra draws (primes, c'thun, or the most obvious Elysiana). I can't even understand while adding up to 4 weapon removals in a control deck was considered perfectly normal but one Elysiana nope, not going to happen. And don't even start with her getting burned, on average you loose 10 card out of 30 so it's only 1/3 chance + you can keep/get her from mulligan.

And last but not least my favourite "control and combo is dead because of Tickatus", "aggro is everywhere because of..." and so on. Let's start with combo shall we. The best combo deck in standard at least in my opinion is Mazaki mage, which on average cycles though deck up to turn 6 and then OTKs you on turn 8 which is way too fast for Tickatus to do anything meaningful + mage can replace any piece apart from Mazaki herself which even in best case scenario for warlock is still 1/3 burn chance. Personally I would say that's the hardest matchup for warlock, way worst than any aggro. Similarly combo DH and ETC warrior both have only one irreplaceable card while enrage warrior 0. So apart from C'thun which is way too slow whether Tickatus exist or not, combo is quite fine.

And finally control. First of all something that doesn't exist can't kill you. Tickatus warlock makes only about 5-8% of ladder (depends where you check). Event if we assume that games agaist warlock are unwinnable control should still get their wins against remaining 92-95%, mostly aggro matchups, shouldn't it? Well that's the main issue. Aggro decks nowadays have so much draw/card generation that they don't run out of steam, which was their main weakness vs control. In other words pure control decks have no favoured matchup and that's the main reason why they are dead. To wrap up my boring rant, yesterday I wanted a break from warlock so I played few games as stealth rogue. I lost most aggro vs aggro games (I really suck as aggro player), but I went 4-1 vs control priests and even that one loss happend only because my opponent got Nozari from Alex.

 

 finally someone seeing the broader picture.

Quote from Sellina >>

Quote from SinAscendant >>

So out of the entire deck, there are only 4 cards which could could activate Tickatus, 3 of which are situational. That means that even by turn 10 you would need to get both tickatus and an enabler, and a chance to use that enabler. Assuming you draw a couple extra cards, that's a 50% chance to get Tickatus (15 cards drawn of 30) and about a 70-80% chance to get one of the 4 enablers. I'll say 80 to be safe. So it's 40% chance JUST for that. 

 Sorry but... No.
In certain matchups, you don't think like that.

Ex : I'm against ETC OTK Warrior. Control deck. The warrior puts no pressure at all : i simply WASTE my galakrond or Malicia, even with no stacks, to corrupt Tickatus, as my win con is Tickatus in that matchup there, and not the other cards.

Of course, in aggressive matchups or mid matchups, you don't wanna waste your high cost cards to corrupt a Tickatus you might not end up being able to play. BUT, in combo / control matchups, you'll want to do EVERYTHING to drop Tickatus as soon as possible.

Along with the stats to draw him : as you simply need to drop Tickatus to watch the ennemy concede for certain matchups, all you have to do is waste all your ressources in hand to always be able to draw as much as possible and get Tickatus nearly every time.

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

 Once again, exact same thing said about Rin.  "They can just wait till turn 7 and dark pact the Rin, and there's no counterplay".

 Having to play, for Rin, the seals and Azari, a total of 41 mana to play mostly non-impactful cards, I would rather say you conterplay yourself by trying to play her. Of course, you might end up winning because of her, but, let's be real : if your opponent's deck isn't able to do ANYTHING while you spend your turn 7 to do nothing THEN spend the next turns to play 25 mana to summon little useless demons THEN spend a whole turn to play a 10/10 with neither charge nor rush, it means your opponent should not have won the game anyways as his deck is simply completely unable to create any pressure, yet winning, or that he plays a combo deck, which means he have already drawn all his deck by the time you play Azari.

 >against ETC OTK Warrior

Lmfao what? Who gives a shit about a deck that no one plays? The only recorded played ETC OTK war deck has 260 plays.

And Gala Lock has a 34% winrate vs Bomb War, 37% vs Big, and 44% vs Pirate. 

How tf are you going to use a bad meme deck as your example of why it's broken? Try a deck that people actually use. The only things that Gala lock consistently beats are:

Priest

Spell Druid

Highlander/Cthun Mage

Gala/Secret Rogue

Quest Sham

Quest Lock.

It is even or losing against every single other deck in the meta.

https://hsreplay.net/archetypes/358/galakrond-warlock#tab=matchups

Lol, just for fun I tried the exact version of Control Lock listed at Tempo Storm.  It went an amazing 5-14.

I don't particularly think the quest version is the best version of Tick Lock, but TS apparently does, and that version is absolutely terrible against the meta right now.  Going to run another twenty games or so with the non-quest version and see if it gets any better, but at the higher levels of ladder so far, there's no way this thing is going anywhere.  Out of the 5 wins I got, 3 were against the Ramp Paladin deck with murlocs and Nozdormu v 2.0, and those were won long before Tickatus showed up.  One was against a Treant Druid and one was against Highlander Mage.

Out of the 14 losses, the average turn I died was 6.1.  That's thru dark skies, netherwings, cascading disaster (as if that had any time to do anything), nether breath, etc.  So anyone still hung up on the "it's impossible to go aggro against warlock's removal" can kindly blow it out of something.  Half the time, there's nothing to remove.  The huge bulk of the damage nowadays is coming from weapon attacks.

Oh well, I will now try the more soul-shard focused version and see if it gets better.  Having ooze may let me live an extra turn, but I seriously doubt the results are going to vary much.  We shall see.

BTW, if anyone wants to do the "you're just a shit player" routine, I started the run at #113 Legend, so . . . no.