Hearthpwn

I'm playing shaman, have been for 2 years. You got a problem with it?

Yeah, you have to choose your direction before adding hammer and trueheart into the deck. As for double earth shock, it's more spells for yogg. It can get buffed to lightning bolt levels in some cases and it's great against X/1 sticky minions. Hex is usually saved for very premium targets like c'thun, tirion, sylvanas, ragnaros (both variants), so I'd rather use earth shock for the early/midgame troublesome minions.

I think there are a lot of directions control shaman can take. I wouldn't put thing from below in the "must haves". Strong option, maybe, but not must have. I think Bloodmage Thalnos is a strong option and Stormcrack is at least a strong option if not a must have. Minions have good health stats now-a-days so we need that extra damage on our removal. I have been really enjoying my yogg saron deck this month. Hallazeal has pulled her? his? weight, though. Like an easy 15+ damage from a good elemental destruction with hallazeal out and the minion survives (so long as you don't have spell power). This list has pretty good game against aggro decks and midrange decks, but struggles against late game warrior decks (tank up just too strong and both decks go to fatigue easily).

That said, there're always the thaurissan + malygos + burn end game for control, dragon control, and inspire control options to look into. There's something to be said for trueheart and TBV is you can get to that stage. Even though shaman isn't the strongest shell for trueheart, there is value in choosing your totem late game and getting multiples of the same kind. Before the expac I was working a lot with mrglton and charged hammer to allow Baron Geddon in control shaman. It was quite effective as another answer to swarm decks like paladin and warlock. On that note, Wild Pyromancer is at least a strong option for control. It has synergy with healing totem and all our spells as another way to clear swarm decks (like forbidden ritual and the X/1 divine shield paladin). I also like Psych-o-tron. I have used ED with it on board a couple times because the shield saves it.

Sylvanas is good as she counters c'thun and yogg and synergizes well with nzoth. NZoth Paladin is a strong control deck, as is nzoth rogue. I'm enjoying Yogg Saron shaman. Control warrior and C'thun warrior are both good. If you want to go C'Thun then get Twin Emporer Veklor.

People can hate on Yogg Saron all they want. But running either yogg mage or shaman gives you tools like hex and poly (if you run poly in yogg mage) with which to nullify tirion and sylvanas. Not only that but my shaman yogg saron deck runs elemental destruction which can clear a n'zoth turn easily enough if I don't manage to clear it with yogg. With or without yogg, the ultra control style with heavy board clears is a good way to beat paladin. Also yogg mage usually goes on the burn plan if it can, so that's an option if they don't draw their healing in time.

• What are your initial impressions of Shaman in Standard?
  Having a blast, Seems very varied.
• Are there any Shaman decks that you love to play as?
  Yogg Saron Shaman
• Are there any Shaman decks you can't stand playing against?
  Nope
• What are some must craft Shaman cards?
  All of them.

This is still one of the best legendaries. I feel like CW can't lose once trueheart is out. Aside from that, there's good usage in other classes like druid and mage (and of course priest). There's been so many cards to try, so give it a couple of weeks and ppl will find where to put her.

Quote from Remy >>

OP is kind of right this expansion so far has brought nothing but Cthun cookie cutter decks for every class. If you lay anything outside of the cookie cutter deck you're going to get wrecked.

I feel like we knew this was coming, blizz gift wrapped c'thun archetype for EVERYBODY. Naturally ppl will play that first. I'm just glad it isn't overpowered. With the exception of warrior, most c'thun decks you can just face against and win before it matters that c'thun is 15/15 and so long as you keep a good form of removal, if it doesn't kill you with battlecry, you just remove it and that was their trick.

That's got a lot of variables to it. If you have a turn 3 overload card in hand, I'd say keep it and totem up, then you can do the t3 play and t4 clear the overload. If no overload in hand and you wanna smorc, play it, if you wanna control, totem.

People still think that reno decks can't have any 2-ofs. The most I would say you can get away with is 4 2-ofs and I typically keep them low end. Like, removing the axe for a second storm crack. 1) It's a removal that can kill most aggro minions, so it fills the same role as the axe but with less damage. 2) You want a higher chance to get those early game removal cards at the beginning (which means you take care of the 2x problem early for reno anyways).

Another problem with this style of deck is inconsistency. It can be hard to get the cards you want when you need them with so many different cards. Usually you either build for redundancy or card draw. As redundancy is counter to reno jackson, you should build more card draw. Like 2x Ancestral Knowledge.

I'm not sure this is a right shell for evolving. Sure the early minions are good to evolve, but without it being core to the strategy, I fear Evolve will just be a dead card (and master of evolution, too potentially). If you try to do too many things, you'll fail at all of them. There's only so much room in the deck so you need to be focused a clear goal of the deck.

Next I would look at "low impact" cards. Again, with all the 1-ofs you need to make sure those cards can do something. If you want to build more control, Jeweled Scarab is great to help keep card advantage to control and Fireguard Destroyer is less impactful because it could be dealt with before it has a change to maintain control. Alternatively if you want to be lower on the midrange spectrum and go for threats, fireguard is good and Jeweled scarab is weak. Mind control tech is also a card with the potential to be dead when you draw him. I get what he's there for, but the stars have to align and as a 1-of that's harder to manage,

Changes I'm confident with:
-1 Stormforged Axe
-1 Evolve
-1 Master of Evolution

+1 Stormcrack
+2 Ancestral Knowledge

Potential Changes
-1 Fireguard OR Scarab
-1 Mind Control Tech
+1 Blackwing Corrupter (more fire ele effects is better)
+1 Lightning Storm (another card you want higher change to draw early and it's super important) or Healing Wave (this deck would probably benefit from healing)

Good Luck!

I would do 2x Eternal Sentinal. It's better at fixing the overload curve early (like on t4 after feral to allow for 2 2-drops). I could see having one lava shock in because that's the kind of card you want to hold on to to fix the later turns overload (i'd rather play a 3/2 then let it sit because I might need it). Then again, later turns for aggro shaman don't care about the overload.

Quote from CursedDeerSkull >>

Remember TgT Shaman Cards? Just wait and see what happens first.

Too many posts to read over. I'm sure forked lightning was discussed, but does this up the value of frost shock? Decent chance of getting spell power, but also you can get a tiny heal on t6 with the 2 cards and stop their biggest creature for a turn. Probably isn't enough value to consider playing, but maybe with yogg saron in mind.

Quote from Griffin404 >>

Quote from Ggjeed >

"Control Shaman doesn't stand well in that format.. if it's about swarming the board over and over."

 That's exactly what midrange is... a continuous stream of threats.

Control beats aggro because once they shut down all the aggression the aggro deck runs out of steam. Whereas midrange tends to exhaust all the removal of the control decks before they run out of steam.