Hearthpwn

Depends, what rank have you been seeing this transition to Handlock? With the advent of Control Warrior retaking its throne after a short hiatus as one of the tier 1 control decks, the rising popularity of MCT, and naturally strong match-ups like Hunter roaming around, it becomes tougher for Zoo to thrive compared to a deck pool full of Midrange or slower paced aggro decks.

If I were to guess I would say Xixo's (Implosion/Sea Giant) deck has fallen out of favor, a combination of all the issues above alongside BGH being frequented.

That's not to say you can't climb with it, but I personally think Hunter does a much better job at ending games before they get too long. Zoo never really "dies" so much as drops down a tier because whatever it does is outclassed by another class for the moment.

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That's what I did as well.

Also you're back : O! I haven't seen your beautiful icons in a while

Thanks for the kind words, been busy as of late, but I'm always lurking around and drafting fun decks in casuals.

Remember that classes get a huge boost in viable cards when they finish unlocking their set of basic cards after reaching Level 10. If you ever have trouble with a class early on in expert or other AI, best believe that unlocking those extra cards will help.

Went through everything with a Mage deck, all basics unlocked.

Can't ask for a stronger basic set, and often times they just play straight into Flamestrike.

I don't mind King Mukla in an aggro deck, but two huge issues when you get to more competitive ranks:

- Feeding cards to Miracle Rogue
- Upgrading hand size of Handlock for Mountain Giants

Which account for more than half of the decks you'll be facing until any substantial changes. For all intents and purposes, King Mukla still is a net value of 3 for 3/3 in terms of raw stats, considering this method is a perfectly fine general gauge of value - many effects shift around the value of a card, but it's as good as it gets for a standard of comparison and luckily it's quite good. There's a reasoning to Murloc Tidehunter being a net 3/2 for 2 and Dragonling Mechanic being a net 4/5 for 4, it provides a method which let cards conform to some standards.

Yes, at worst The Beast is a very powerful yet risky card, but you have safer alternatives with more versatile impact. There is no "hidden" trick to making him viable in this meta unless you're expecting to be the first player among hundreds of thousands to discover some amazing new tech to push him into viability, if he was as predictably strong as he appears, he would be played much more than currently (which is not at all). 

Strictly speak, The Beast has an base stat spread of 9/7, removing value from it for a 3/3 creature, the net attack and defense of the creature is 6/4.

A 6 mana 6/4 is bad in terms of stats, but my personal qualm against The Beast is that it actually opens up options for your opponent. Cards like Sylvanas and Cairne force the state of the board into a potential negative for the opponent, where the opponent must find the correct counterplay for it and usually lack the leisure of using damage removal or sacking minions if unprepared. The Beast on the other hand, encourages the opponent to remove the card at your expense - they can sack creatures to a point where they are returned value because one of their creatures are effectively replaced by the resummoned 3/3. Playing The Beast over either of the two legendaries mentioned above will create a target for the opponent as most legendaries do but it's one that shifts the momentum in the favor of the opponent once dealt with and creates more options for favorable trades.

The situations where The Beast are useful is few and far between, the first I can think of would be in a mid-range Hunter deck as a game-ender with Tundra Rhino where it requires a two turn set-up for a 9 attack burst. In general situations, it's about as useful as an Ancient of War placed as a 10/5, where the goal of the game is to push for the win while the opponent is lacking counterplay. Of course, we never see this because the rare occasions a 10/5 Ancient of War is useful would be a situation where we are already winning and the opponent is most likely topdecking or locked down.

With that said, The Beast is an inefficient card in terms of mana-to-stats, acts as a "win more" card where another card would have won you the game more just as easily as well as in a safer fashion, is volatile to shifting the momentum into the opponent's favor, and offers the opponent more options to trade to return value.

Edit: Oh right, it's too soon to tell in terms of Naxx card reveals currently, nothing interesting too far. It has a negative deathrattle and most of Naxx was centered around manipulating deathrattles (which are usually positive). Unless they throw us a curveball, all the character specific card reveals have yet and will probably not support The Beast. I'm holding onto mine for any possible changes they make to it for #MAXVALUE disenchants.

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Any relationship goes through..........

Hahahah.

I've heard people comparing hearthstone to poker, but to relationships? :P
+1

Eats into my bank account like one, that's for sure.

I have a highly addictive personality and your question is one that occurs very often between myself and other gamers. When a game transcends from a hobby to just playing out of habit, I personally think a break is always healthy. The typical idea of playing to kill time and frantically playing to climb ranks with no real end in sight are two very different things. These thoughts always comes up when you come along during the summertime when I have an excess amount of free time, regardless of the game I play. Simple questions like "am I playing this for fun, or just to play?" and "What's the point of grinding ranks?" always come up. 

Sometimes I get too passionate, procrastinate and try to push back to where I started.
Dropped two ranks? No sleep until I get back to where I started. One more game before bed... no, make that one more win - I want to log off on a high note. Wait, I won, maybe I can push for just the next rank. Hey look, the sun came up, time for bed.

These thoughts are pretty unhealthy and it surfaces regardless of game, personally, it just means it's time for a break. There's no shame in it, the game never really "changes" unless you derived your idea of fun from a single class or deck, your perception of it just changes. Maybe you burnt out? No shame in admitting that.

10/10 would coin first turn

Removing a second Perdition's isn't a bad idea, having two might be overkill at times,  but it allows you to snowball the mid-game at an insane rate. Two Sunfuries might not be the best decision because of the speed of this deck, but I definitely see no problem with a single one. I think Ringleader might be one of your best cards to Sunfury if you want a small front line, susceptible to AoE as it might be.

Looks like the Perdition's <-> Sunfury swap is your best bet to try out.

In truth, my Paladin decks aren't all that good for high-end gameplay, I never got a Tirion so I haven't invested much into Paladin decks as I would like. Maybe when I pick up a Tirion one day I'll be able to make something T1 worthy. It'll probably just be the basic hyper-control deck with a stronger emphasis on burn: Pyromancers, Equality, Avenging Wrath, Tirion, Rag, BGH, Aldor, TBK, Tinkmaster, you know the one.

As for how high you can get? Too many variables, but a consistent deck will climb slowly as they beat out the less consistent ones until you reach a level where everyone has a decent deck and is able to outplay predictable decks. You'll probably run into a snag as you're entering into single digits. Glad you're enjoying it.

Just something to think about: Soul Siphon has some anti-synergy with Molten Giants. It seems like a toss up on how well you can manage your health, considering you may want to rush your health down to get Molten Giants out early, but the healing from Drain Life and Soul Siphon may be counter intuitive.

It all depends on how you want the pacing of your deck to be, if you prefer a more suicidal version of a Giants deck to achieve high-risk high-reward play, you probably don't want to run any form of healing and more health lowering cards like Flame Imp and Pit Lord. Think of your risk on spectrum that is inversely related to reward, the more healing you have, the more it pushes to safer play and reduces the potential reward as you slow down the pace of your deck. On the other hand, the inclusion of cards that deal damage to you push your risk higher, but give way to better game-ending board states where you overwhelming the opponent mid-game.

The strength of the Wolf is in tandem with other 1 cost plays, buffing up an Argent Squire or Voidwalker is a huge swing in momentum. The deck looks incredibly solid - if anything, I suggest you look into reducing a few of your late-game chargers. Are they serving you well, or is two Doomguards + two Argent Commanders too much?

With that said, just a small word of thanks to anyone who has taken some time to read anything I've wrote, you surely keep me engaged as a part of this community. My contributions to forums aren't as frequent as it used to be, but I'm alway happy to receive questions, comments, criticisms, and requests. Don't hesitate to ask!

Yeah, many a player have tried this on Ragnaros, the barrel flinger, Imp Master, and Knife Juggler. You lose stealth from using a damaging effect or losing health iirc.

There's other neat things though, like Young Priestess, Cult Master, Murlocs, Swordsmith!

I can see some unfortunate disconnect though. Keep in mind that Sacrificial Pact only affects demons and humor me on this small thought experiment:

Supposing there is a demon with a good Deathrattle, would that make said Demon too easily pulled with Sense Demons? Would that give Warlock decks too consistent of answer with Sense Demons as the only pull mechanic on the game? (Sans piratebird). Now, if that Demon is worth using Sacrificial Pact over, the question is at what point that overlap be too good for Sense Demons. 

Just something to think about, hopefully the balance team does a good job making Demons a viable card type to build an actual deck around.

Eh, doesn't win without problems. It does get wins and it's a blast to play! It's just the exact copy of my deck I have in-game, which has all my legendaries. This is just a fun deck.

Out of curiousity, ever got around to trying it? =]