Hearthpwn

Yo dude, I've played about 20 games today with control Shaman and can say it's amazing (about %65 atm). Keep Shudderwokk. He's the game winner in control matchups like warrior, mage, priest, and Shaman. Stormsurger is a big deal to get to your Hagatha's Scheme, for which I've also found the Swarm of Toads  to be a useful 1 of. Seriously, the Scheme is the MVP of the deck (one me many games single handedly).  Do everything you can to get one in your hand early.

I find losing to be exciting and fun so long as the matchup was competitive (i.e. both of us had the cards we needed to pull out the victory and the win came down to better plays).

Where the saltiness comes in is with the sensation I'm playing rock paper scissors, or that lady luck has bent me over makin's sure I won't be able to sit for a week. Repeatedly going against opponents that you've teched against, but never seeing the cards you need when you need them is about the most frustrating thing to lose to.

What I'd love to see hit ladder is a "class ban" mechanism, making it so you could greatly reduce the rock, paper, scissors element, along with limiting what needs to be teched against. I think saltiness would be reduced dramatically if one could simply say "no more dude pally today, Blizzard!"

Hey ptorlak,

I'm noticing very few comments posted in this thread give any specific feed back, so here is a short list of skills that high level players often focus on in order to help them overcome the RNG associated with the game and prove there is a significant element of skill involved:

1) Constant lethal awareness. On literally every one of your opponents turns I recommend calculating total damage available on your turn supposing best case scenario (that means including your upcoming draw potential). This information should always be the first information registered consciously at the beginning of each of your turns. I can guarantee you that if you develop the habit of saying your max damage out loud at the beginning of each turn, you will have fewer missed lethals (none, if your calculations are always accurate).

2) Inverse the 1st rule; know your enemy's class/deck well enough to predict the worst possible outcome (absurd RNG scenarios excluded). If you are mentally tracking the cards your opponent has played (of which you should pay closer attention to that than the cards you've played), then you can make reasonable guesses as to the likelihood of a scenario and subsequently can turtle or set up for lethal appropriately. A very common awareness of this concept is with Druid and the inevitable Force of Nature/Savage Roar combo and the incoming 14+ damage it brings. Invest knowing your opponent's likely combos and their damage output and this will become an automatic calculation, reserving more time on your turn for the next rule.

3) Play out your next two turns with the worst possible responses from your opponent as their following turns (Dr. 5, Dr. 6, Dr. 7, Dr. 8, GG type curves). Put yourself in your future shoes and you'll regret far fewer of your plays. Maybe that Mountain Giant is very much intimidating you and your meager 16 life and the Big Game Hunter in your hand seems like a no-brainer response, but you do have enough board presence to remove him with your current resources (obviously not so efficiently). The realization that his playing a Mal'Ganis in an upcoming turn would seal your fate unless you lucked into an immediate response, it becomes prudent to save that BGH.

4) Overcome tilt. The ability to Command one's emotions is the single most valuable asset in RNG control. If you've ever watched someone else play a game while on tilt, you'll likely have noticed that their misplay count begins to soar. Skilled players never remain on tilt. If they feel themselves entering that state, they very powerfully and immediately resume control of their emotions and, subsequently, rational thought. A few practices to help make this an automatic response:

• For every expletive you release, you forfeit one turn before continuing to play the match with full attention and intention of winning. The realization that you will likely lose is precisely the factor that is going to skyrocket your skills; in order to win after such a grievous loss of tempo will generally require both flawless play on your part AND miss-plays on your opponent's. The wins you derive after such a practice will be a very powerful reminder that all is never lost, and the losses will help to separate you from the importance you've associated with your rank (a truly skilled player doesn't care what rank he/she is; they're already and always Legend in their own minds. The game and the satisfaction it produces becomes about performing each turn with a perfect elegance, rather than the excitement of a win streak).
• Always have one (1) purely RNG driven deck (at least 20 cards have RNG effects; better yet with a full 30 cards) ready to play. If you ever end a game on tilt, your next match must be with this deck, it must be played on ladder, and you will continue to play with it until you win. This will serve as a constant reminder that first, the game is not RNG defined (you will very likely lose a LOT more than you win with this deck; you'll begin to trust that your wins are very much the result of your skill). Second, this will help to calm you; you're already expecting a string of losses to be the result and so, as what might otherwise be frustrating circumstances, because you've separated your wants/hopes from a win those seemingly insurmountable obstacles no longer hold sway over your emotions. Lastly, it will prove to you that anything CAN happen in this game, but the absurdly fortuitous events that your opponent's always seem to have really don't occur all that often and that they do indeed also happen for you. It's luck. Sometimes it's playing more strongly for the other guy. If there was nothing you could do, why did the loss matter anyway? You still had a blasty blast proving your resource management skills against unthinkable odds.
• Take brief breaks when you enter tilt. Stand up, get a glass of water and read a post on something exciting for you, tell your room mate a joke, do a quick but super intense workout, whatever so long as it demands attention that is strong enough that your attention can no longer be shared with your frustration. Make sure this is simply a break and that you don't end the session on tilt. That might be the most unhealthy habit/relationship you can develop with this (or any) game.

I hope this gives you some food for thought as of how to improve your skills with the game. If I get enough up-votes on this post, I'll write up a more official and cleanly formatted guide for beginners/intermediates/veterans that goes into deeper concepts that will streamline your thought process in-game and delve into recommended tables/charts/statistics/probabilities to have memorized when attempting to play on the highest levels. Please take everything I say with a grain of salt; I am not a pro-player and have mastered none of these concepts (though I am quite good at them). I'm simply deep enough in my understanding of problem solving, games, mathematics and specifically Hearthstone to be able to see the mind of a master clearly.

Quote from aRc_x >>

The impact that Naxx and BRM had in the meta was massive. I have no idea what you are talking about...

Hey Brodos, first would like to say I appreciate your effort in this, it's truly something benefical for new players and helping the Hearthstone community skill up at a quicker rate. I have been playing since release, have every card in the collection on my NA account and have done EU and Asia as FTP and have earned a decent collection in each as of now, enough so that I was able to make the tier 3 version of this deck with a small investment of 400 dust (and even have a few cards beyond).

Though I don't consider myself a deck architect, I am not unfamiliar with the process (primarily I'm too impatient to pay attention to the meta and subsequently my ability to design a sustainable curve without compromising either win condition or tech). With my collection that is likely much larger than for your intended audiences (I've unlocked all three adventures in entirety, along with having roughly 10,000 dust acquired all cards considered), and I have made very few changes. They are listed below:

(1) Acidic Swamp Ooze ---> Big Game Hunter

(1) Sunwalker ---> Onyxia (mostly gimmick, because I have her)

With that being said, I wonder what you would swap out from the adventures, if anything (Kel'Thuzad is on my mind).

The deck has being working quite well for me, carrying me with a 83.33% win rate from 18 - 15 (6 games), and then dropping fairly dramatically to a 59.6% (52 games).S

Something that would be invaluable for new players is a dynamic guide that breaks down the general strategy (i.e. win condition), the ideal mulligan's and how they are likely to be countered, likely turn by turn plays per class and the best case scenario for playing around them (maybe formatted simply as a reminder of what the common powerhouse cards/combos per class as each mana crystal and what your ideal response would be, thereby creating an effective sideboard criteria based on the meta the player is encountering and their subsequent power plays).

Regardless, this guide is stellar and I know I'm not alone in appreciating it and anticipating what you post for the other classes!

By the way I choose to interpret OP, in reference to individual cards it will mean that it demands a specific and unlikely counter.

For Undertaker, the rationality for it being OP was that your opponent NEEDED to have a (3) damage card or a silence in hand usable on turn 2 (or in other words, drawn within the first 5 cards/16.67% of your deck) or else the game was likely forfeit. This card was only OP due to the fact that it was a (1) drop. Imagine if they had made it a 7/8 for seven with the same effect. Would anyone have ever found it OP? By turn seven you will very likely have drawn into an effective counter for it. It's much more difficult to make an OP late game card.

OP in reference to combos are any that can create 20+ dmg directly from the hand CONSISTENTLY (read 70%+ of games, before T10). The mechanic that enables a broken combo is card draw. Nothing else. There are a multitude of ways to OTK that have always existed, but they are not considered OP because of two factors: it is unlikely to draw into them in a timely manner, and by having the combo/card draw necessary too much survive-ability is sacrificed.

When making a serious push on the ladder I find it effective to make a few variations of the same deck, the differences all being in the form of tech.

For instance, I have a control warrior that has (2) Brawl and (2) Whirlind for when I'm seeing a lot of aggro. When I see more control I use my variation that has Ysera and a Big Game Hunter. I have a variant that uses Kezan Mystic for when I'm seeing a lot of Hunters and Mages.

The benefit of playing this way is that you stay in the same mindset/playstyle and so develop of feel for the deck more effectively than swapping decks all the time. It's essentially like playing with a side board.

Lava Shockt says this card has mad value; also, Elemental Destruction is for a later stage in the game from Lightning Storm. I anticipte this to be at least a (1) of staple in all Shaman Control decks from here on out, much like Brawl for Warriors.

I think you're thoroughly off base with this analysis. The only place where expansions effect the cost of the game comes in the form of the collection element.

A new player only needs to have 30 top tier cards in order to have a competitive deck and likely those 30 cards are going to average out to 4k dust (some top tier decks cost more, others, such as Grim Patron, can be significantly less expensive). Adventures are the points where expense of the game to be competitive tends to increase due to the fact that the cards cannot be created with dust.

There are no amount of expansions that would change this fact, or the amount of time/average amount of packs it takes to earn said 4k dust. Blizzard doesn't ever have to worry about making this game inaccessible to newcomers, especially if they reserve adventures to gimmick mechanics, such as dragons, and allocate all of the heavy hitters that redefine the meta to expansions/first wings of adventures.

Though these are excellent suggestions that really would help the class, I feel the fundamental problem with Shaman is the Hero power. Ideally it would be changed to a "choose one" option (really, no other hero power is random; you pay two mana and know what you're paying for), but that might be slightly overpowered. I think the simplest way to modify it is still to keep the random element in there, but you can always see which totem will be dropped next (not unlike Rend Blackhand's Hero power).

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You can't use it with DK. Just beasts that cost (5) or less are in the pool for DK.

I see some combo potential. 

these are completely different mechnics. you cant compare banker to emperor wraps - like at all.

Quote from DarkTycon >>

This card may or may not be good but we'll see. If it is played it will only be in druid decks

 It's a druid card what are you expecting?

Quote from twoplustwo >>

Don't worry, HellOnslaught, Hearthpwn is filled with normies that don't know any cross-game terminology and only read your first sentence. 

 It's obvious this card can be very powerful in Murloc decks.  It won't be underplayed, unappreciated nor fly under the radar.  This will be a staple 1 drop for any aggro deck, not just murlocs.  This may end up being one of the most powerful 1 drops of this expansion, how can you call that a "sleeper."

Will see play. Possessed Villager did.

It's not a sleeper, it's 2019, everyone knows one-drops like this see play.

Nice effect but all the legendaries that force you to have no duplicates in deck are unplayable, here's why: BOMB WARRIOR. 2 bombs in your deck and bye bye your battlecry.