Hearthpwn

Quote from Christonya >>

AND WHEN IT CURVES PERFECTLY and being a paladin it has the best mana per slot of all cards in the game (Mini bot -> mustard -> shredder -> loatheb -> MC -> Boom -> tirion) you auto win. The only class that can even come close to countering that, is freeze mage. But only if it has the forsight to pre doomsayer.

Tempo originally comes from chess, and it means how many moves you are ahead. If you make a move to your advantage and force your opponent to make a defensive move that doesn't advance their position, your board is one turn stronger, you've gained a "tempo".

Tempo in Hearthstone is ultimately just mana.

Everything has a "real" mana value, unrelated to the "actual" mana value. Basically you can calculate it as 1/1 of stats or a single point of damage being worth about just under 1 mana. So if you have two Spectral Spiders and a 3/1 Fiery war axe on the board and your opponent has nothing, you're about 4-5 mana up, and then on their turn they will play or kill your stuff leaving one or other player ahead. In arena this is most evident when stuff on the board lets you "trade up", i.e. sending your 2/1 into a 3/2 and gaining a mana in tempo because you spent less to put it out then them. Your board gradually snowballs as each tempo you gain lets you answer what your opponent plays with more efficiency.

Tempo is good because all the excess tempo you've generated in recurring damage creatures that isn't spent dealing with the opponent's board can go to face. In fact, if you have substantially more on board, you're winning the race and each turn you can then trade in your tempo for damage while your opponent is left trying to dig themselves out and mop up your tempo advantage.

What makes a good tempo card?

1) Playing any overstatted/undercosted card immediately generates tempo by giving you more than you paid for it. For example, Piloted Shredder costs 4 mana but gives you a 3-mana 4/3 and on average a 2-mana random minion (somewhere in the range of 1.5-2.5). Mysterious Challenger puts out up to 11-mana worth of cards. Dr. Boom is worth 8-mana of stats and bodies and then an extra 1-6 mana worth of damage. Backstab is basically just a free 2 mana worth of tempo when used effectively, the only cost is its limitations.

2) Cards that 2-for-1. Killing a 7/7 with BGH and getting a 4/2 on the board is a 9 mana swing in tempo. AOE scales really well on tempo because it doesn't matter how far behind you are on mana, because each extra minion means your AOE does more more damage and counters more tempo of your opponent. There's plenty of late-game 2-for-1s like Fire Elemental that are not reliant on having board control to generate tempo. Any card that can have an immediate effect falls in here.

3) Cheap threats that support the tempo playstyle. Mana wyrm is the best example. Even on its own it can usually trade into a 2 or 3 mana creature, but when you lay it down on turn 1 and then burn every creature they play, you can do 10-15 damage just by staying even on tempo and trading off cards from that point on.

4) Win-more cards. Sure, these get disparaged a lot, but having something that can help secure a win is great. Ideally you want cards that are good on their own and crushing with a board. Mysterious Challenger again does this well. It's fine on its own although vulnerable to BGH, but it's devastating with 3 other minions out. Kelthuzad is a slow card, but midrange decks in the past made great use of it to secure the win by turning tempo trades into freebies.

5) Multiple threats. This comes up a lot in arena, you might have one big dude who given enough turns could kill all their minions, but you're still going to be taking 5+ damage per turn and losing. Spreading stats over multiple bodies gives you trading flexibility and slows your opponent down. Imagine if muster for battle summoned a 3/3 and light's justice - it simply wouldn't be as good. This again supports the tempo playstyle - over the 3 turns they spend killing your guys off 1-by-1, you can do a ton of damage with your 1/1s and weapon. Zoo used to play exactly like this every game, and you were so busy trying to kill their stuff by the time you actually did you were dead.

6) Tempo killers. Sludge Belcher does a good job on defense by killing off small minions and giving you another turn to get more mana. The thing with tempo is it scales badly over time. Having a 3/2 Flame Imp on the board on turn 1 could be worth 9 damage before its dealt with, the same on turn 5 is probably just going to get eaten for free. This is why Innervate is so good, because it generates tempo at a point where tempo is very hard to deal with as none of the higher-cost answers are online yet. Any minion that must be dealt with can get you back in the tempo game. Even something like Murloc Knight can be played out against weak minions because if you don't kill it you might just lose the game right there.

Actually Patron Warrior is really good on the ladder right now, gone from rank 8 to 4 in two days of casual play. Really cheap deck too, all you need is Grommash.

Yeah, walk away, play a different game, play a different mode, think of a crazy card to build a deck around and hit casual with it. Whatever you find fun and that will take your mind off things.

All of this doesn't apply as well when you're in a tournament or pushing for legend at the end of the season though, so in those cases, you have to be really objective. Sort the things you can control from the things you can't, look at your mistakes, use a match recorder and try replaying the game from your opponent's perspective now you know what cards he had in hand. Sometimes you'll take the right line but still lose, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do exactly the same thing next time it arises.

Work on your technical skills, mulligans, playing around cards, trading optimally and seeing alternative trading options. Probably the best way is to have someone coach you or watch streamers. Some arena is really good for working on basic skills.

Are you just playing all your cards out every turn? Sometimes the right move is to do nothing, not to attack, not to trade, not to go face.

When you're losing, do you play to your outs or do you just hope for the best? Sometimes you have to go for that top-decked fireball.

Are you playing well against specific cards? Do you know how to defuse paladin secrets? Clear Dr.Boom while hitting face with as many minions as possible? Minimizing the hit from Sylvanas? Look for cards that ruin you and ask yourself what you can do to beat them.

Think I've had 12 with every class except hunter, and had 2 back-to-back 12 win runs. The last six months have been pretty tough going though, people know how to play, people go face when by all rights they shouldn't and you get unlucky and can't punish them, people come along with completely obscene decks, super greedy decks, or decks that happen to counter yours. Ultimately you play well and hope to not to lose too often in the same run.

Quote from acosper >>

 I don't see how qualifying a statement in attempt to avoid having this turn into a discussion about  whether or not a particular deck is 'overpowered' in order to allow for a discussion about how and why people react when playing against that deck qualifies as using weasel words. Is it not in fact the case that many people have expressed frustration about Secret Paladin (or Undertaker Hunter etc)? Does having any small bit of consideration for the enjoyment of other players while making your deck selections mean that you are a scrub? You seem to want to read an intention into my original statement simply isn't there.  

Last season I hit legend with Secret Paladin to Rank 3 and Raptor Rogue Ranks 3-Legend.

SP is powerful for a reason, even if you don't intend to play long-term, you should still learn how it works.

Raptor Rogue is a very fun deck with a lot of meaningful choices and good SP match-up.

Renolock is a top tier deck, the variety also means games vary a lot. I would be playing it right now if I didn't already have golden warlock. It can actually get some really Zoo-like starts too.

Freeze Mage is good and powerful but quite hard to play and games are slow. Definitely better at higher ranks where you want to steamroller your way into legend.

Midrange Druid is a powerful and consistent deck that'll always be in the meta. The mirror match feels really shitty though, and I don't think it has enough card draw -  if you don't draw ancient of lore you often lose against control, and every now and again you'll have a bunch of cards in hand that do nothing. Definitely worth playing and learning though.

Dragon Priest is fun but it's just a value deck, nothing particularly unfair about it that pushes it above and beyond.

Quote from dancof >>

I have just open Golden card : Hogger

Could you suggest some deck best with this card ??

Adding on to the above... These are just rules of thumb, you'll want to think about what each card specifically does because you might want to keep one particular minion alive. Also bear in mind that your opponent might be able to kill a minion to change adjacency. While constructed has fewer things to worry about, these are all really good habits for arena, and positioning is probably the number one skill when playing any zoo deck.

Explosive Shot - Lowest toughness in the middle mitigates the most damage.

Betrayal - Lowest attack in the middle again prevents damage.

Foe Reaper 4000 - You're in real trouble if this thing attacks, but taunts at the edge of your board next to weak minions, otherwise highest attack in the middle.

Defender of Argus (and to a lesser extend Dire Wolf Alpha and Sunfury Protector) - While you often have obvious targets you want to taunt up to higher toughness or things like Nerubian Egg that will get turned on, try and also make sure you have variety in attack power. If you have the flexibility to have a lot of different numbers then you can deal with any size minion with best efficiency, whereas if all your minions have even-numbered attack or 3 attack for example, then you're going to have to run multiple minions in to deal with threats. The other thing to bear in mind is AOE, Defender is one of the best tools for playing around it and ensuring your board survives. Also, if you have 3 minions including 2 identical minions on board, always line them up AAB, not ABA. This gives you the choice of AA or AB rather than being forced to take AB.

Flametongue Totem - Put deathrattle on the outside of your board so that a Haunted Creeper doesn't interrupt your totem dance. Also bear in mind you can place charge minions next to it after you've attacked with the outer minions to get extra damage or damage in a different order when going through taunt. You can also kill your own minions with earth shock or similar to squeeze out extra damage for lethal.

Quote from pg8 >>

Always place your Piloted Shredder where you want Dire Wolf Alpha or Flametongue Totem to pop out. 

It's poor sportsmanship to waste someone's time when you have agreed to play a game together. Imagine if you were in the same room, if you were playing some other card game or board game, would you still do it? Would you rope a stranger but not a friend? How rude would it be if you just got up and walked around the room doing something else while it was your turn in a board game?
I would say that even pushing the play button and going to the toilet while the game loads and wasting 20 seconds of your mulligan is a violation of the social contract that you and your opponent are there to play a game.

I notice you've used a bunch of weasel words so you can divorce yourself from the comments you're putting forward as fact (e.g. "that many believe imposes a cost (frustration, loss of enjoyment) on the rest of the Hearthstone community"). Playing a strong deck is the smart thing to do, as soon as you say that you refuse to use a certain style of deck, or play a particular card for reasons other than related to gameplay, i.e. subjective judgements on whether a card is "unfair", "OP", "cheap", "cheesy", etc., you are a SCRUB. There are plenty of good reasons to not play secret paladin, especially given how big a target it has painted on its back, and how the mirror-match is a coin flip, you don't need to go around belittling the players who play it to feel good about yourself.

Is it a question of "ethics"? Probably not, using bots or cheating is clear-cut morally reprehensible, but using within game tools to mess with people is not any different from bluffing in terms of trying to get an advantage. There's a subset of players who'll use emotes to either bluff or cause an opponent to tilt out or make bad decisions and they work to get good at those skills and apply them well. I remember getting owned by a magic player who turned up at draft night and was whining about his hand and draws all game, but was really baiting me into over-committing because he had a board clear. Did he cheat for lying in a friendly atmosphere? Was the tactic underhand? Or was I a muppet for not being prepared for someone using every tool at their disposal to win. While it's not obvious that this is a part of the game as it would be with a game with betrayal as part of it like BSG or Mafia/Werewolf, it's still there for those who want to try it (at the risk of giving away more information if an opponent sees through you or gets a read on you).

So, if you are trying to boost your win rate by roping them, you're welcome to try, but I don't think that most people would care or play much worse, even assuming they're not alt-tabbed or browsing on another screen. If anything, a good player would thank you for all that extra time you're giving them to plan out future turns.

Ultimately though, if you're roping them when you've already lost or already won, or just on principle because you don't like their deck, then you're wasting an equal amount of your own time, which is surely more valuable then that of one of a million random chumps on the internet.

Nice concept and I had some fun, but this deck is horrible, it runs so many bad cards and has very little plan for protecting its minions or what to do against removal/silence, and when it runs out of cards it has no way to draw more.

I'd drop the secret package, blessed champion, healbot (why?!), and throw in Eydis and Muster for a start. Acolyte of Pain also buffs well.

Great deck, have you tried updating it with new cards? I understand that the good patron match-up was a key thing to this deck being good, but I love the style of play and it would be great to see it viable again!

I've crafted Kelthuzad, Ysera, and Jaraxxus in gold, all pretty awesome with extra value in the additional gold cards they create. Nefarian is gorgeous in gold so might be the next one, but Loatheb probably has the most use.

Hit legend with raptor rogue this season. I love the deck, it plays like a more mana efficient zoo, and as a hardcore arena player also it's easy to get in the right mindset.

I felt I did well because people lack the experience against it, whereas I must have played so many games against all the main archetypes.

You have to get really good with mulligans and sequencing, make sure you think about your next turn and your opponent's responses. As a whole I'd say it's tough to pilot well, or at least it's not obvious what the best play is in any given situation, and you usually have two or three substantially divergent options.

While a 3-mana 3/4 Deathrattle: Summon a 4/4 is pretty busted, I felt that overall the deck tended to have very good and very bad match-ups. It's also very easy to hate out if it gets too popular. Cabal Shadow Priest and Shadow Madness completely wreck you, warrior can clear your board before you kill them with a decent draw. It's a nice counter to Paladin though imo, my win rate against secret paladin was phenomenal, and the midrange match-up is a bit drawn-out but winnable with solid value play.