Hearthpwn

I swore that during the holiday break between the last week of Dec and the first week of Jan, there were nothing but zoolock bots on the ladder. I created an anti-zoo warrior that was heavy on 2-damage removal and even ran Millhouse Manastorm because zoo's only spells are soulfire and mortal coil.

I think after I got to legend in Jan with the 11-star bonus (around rank 700) I was only seeing Control Warriors, so I switched to a greedy Paladin deck that can deal with all warrior's threats and still have cards and health left over. My theory was that blizzard has like one person who actions all the "botting" in-game reports and that person was on holiday until the 2nd week of Jan. But of course that's just speculation.

This month, I had the 10-star bonus, and until I got to diamond 5 there were very few bots, a good mix of other players' decks too. Druids and Rogues (which are harder for the Warrior). From diamond 5 to legend it was nothing but bots - all weird ones too (not all zoolock), with basic cards, mostly 1-and-2 drops and stormwind champions. I've heard that when your star bonus runs out (for 10-stars that's diamond 5) you start seeing the other players who are also at diamond 5 instead of players who match your MMR, so I'm guessing that's why it changed so suddenly. Since I got to legend it's back to being mixed, although there are still some zoobots there this month.

If you want a good, multi-purpose deck to get to legend in classic, I've been using this one. It can beat most any zoolock unless you draw all your top-end cards and whiff on fiery war axe. It's greedy enough to stand a chance against the other warriors. If you tech too hard against zoo you will lose all the mirrors. And the other matchups are not unwinnable (although Rogue can almost always draw through their deck before you can pressure them enough or armour out of range of leeroy/cold blood/shadowstep stuff).

### Classic Midrange
# Class: Warrior
# Format: Classic
#
# 2x (1) Execute
# 2x (1) Shield Slam
# 2x (1) Whirlwind
# 2x (2) Armorsmith
# 2x (2) Cruel Taskmaster
# 2x (2) Fiery War Axe
# 1x (2) Slam
# 2x (3) Acolyte of Pain
# 1x (3) Big Game Hunter
# 2x (3) Shield Block
# 2x (4) Kor'kron Elite
# 1x (5) Azure Drake
# 1x (5) Brawl
# 1x (5) Harrison Jones
# 1x (6) Cairne Bloodhoof
# 1x (6) Sylvanas Windrunner
# 1x (7) Baron Geddon
# 1x (7) Gorehowl
# 1x (8) Grommash Hellscream
# 1x (8) Ragnaros the Firelord
# 1x (9) Alexstrasza
#
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#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

I so want a deck like this to work. It's just my style. But I tried a couple of games with it, and it just feels like it loses -- aggro buries it in card disadvantage, control decks can starve it out, and fast combo decks (like the phoenix burn mage) aren't under enough pressure while they assemble pieces. Maybe if there were a fair mid-range deck, or a slow combo, this could play fair against it. I didn't face any hunters, maybe it can thread the needle against a face hunter using a well-timed Apotheosis.

I'm really hoping the un-nerf of Power Word: Shield is going to help out this style of tempo priest. But that's still just "draw 1 card". For tempo priest to take off, it needs some crazy 2-or-3-mana "draw 3 cards" that so many other classes have now (Druid, Mage, Rogue, Warlock, Demon Hunter).

I just tried this and the Grizzled Wizard battlecry does nothing. Neither your hero power nor the boss's hero power is affected.

This is a bug, I thought it was pretty well known. It's been happening to me now and then since around the Descent of Dragons release patch, or maybe the Doom in the Tomb one. One time, I was in the middle of an arena draft and it gave me the non-golden versions of the basic cards because it didn't think I had any in my collection.

Anyway it just seems to be an issue loading the collection where the basic cards vanish. They come back when you close the client and open it up again.

Highlander Hunter will be alive in some form or another, even after the rotation. The core cards: Brann, Zephrys, and Dragonqueen are all surviving this rotation.

Thing is, you don't necessarily need both Veranus and Dragonsbane to make Highlander Hunter work. I made it from rank 8-5 this month with a traditional (non-dragon) Secret Highlander Hunter, going about 12-2 (after plenty of losing with other decks mind you).

Also, considering that all of the top 3 archetypes right now are Hunter, there's a strong chance some part of the current core package would get nerfed or Hall of Fame'd. So it depends on how closely you need to guard your dust -- the Hall of Fame announcement is only a week or two away most likely.

Hearthstone Mathematics does really good analyses of this question, they did one for Rise of Shadows and one for Saviors of Uldum. Unfortunately, they haven't analysed the data from Descent of Dragons yet, but the Uldum video would still have some useful info:

Hearthstone Mathematics

At the time, they said that Saviors Packs were nearly twice as likely to give you cards that you would use in the meta as Rise of Shadows. But when RoS came out, it was by far the most influential set (although that was partially because the entire Year of the Raven had weak expansions and everything else had just rotated out).

There are still a lot of Uldum cards in the meta -- one thing I have noticed about Descent of Dragons is that the epic cards are a little weaker/less represented, which makes it an easier set to craft from.