Hearthpwn

       I'm sure everyone is sick and tired of seeing this kind of post. I'll probably sound like a broken record at this point; I guarantee if you look up "Cubelock nerf", you'll find thousands of posts complaining about this very topic. With this said, I wanted to put my own two cents in on the subject. Personally, I find Warlock quite frustrating to play against. This will be a long post, so if you're planning on reading the whole thing, grab your popcorn and find a comfy seat. I'm going to try my best to highlight what I believe to be overpowered about Warlock right now and how this makes the game unfun. The main problem is how flexible the archetype is. With cards like Doomguard + Carnivorous Cube, Warlock can set up for super easy lethals (even getting up to 3 doomguards on the board at once in some instances). It has completely insane hero sustain. Warlocks pretty much mitigate the damage their opponent does for the first 5-7 turns as well as the damage they take from their hero power, and set themselves up incredibly well for extremely potent tempo plays in the late game. It's essentially like the warlock gets to block most of the damage coming towards them, and they get to quickly whittle down the opponent while simultaneously building their board and gaining tempo. Something about this seems unfair right? Shouldn't the Warlock have to sacrifice something in order to gain all of these overwhelming advantages? Yes, I agree Warlocks do sacrifice life totals from time to time. However, they can get up to 30 health in healing from just the 2 cards I mentioned above. This means that if Warlock is able to play them at full value, you essentially have to kill that Warlock twice. Considering the additional value they bring, it is very strong (overtuned in my opinion) in tandem with the other parts of this deck. 

      In the past, control Warlock archetypes have been balanced by limited healing options. Back before Kobolds & Catacombs, Warlock didn't have cards like Dark Pact, Lesser Amethyst Spellstone, or Bloodreaver Gul'dan. Dark Pact is LITERALLY just a better version of Sacrificial Pact, as it heals for 8 and can target any minion. The only drawback is 1 mana, but this is miniscule and its pros heavily outweight the cons. The closest we had to something like  Lesser Amethyst Spellstone was Siphon Soul which cost 6 mana compared to Lesser Amethyst Spellstone's 4. Basically, the healing cards from the newer expansions are just better versions of ones from past expansions. This alone does not make Warlock overpowered or anti-fun. 

On to the minions. If I had a dollar for every time I've played someone who got a Voidlord on turn 6 or 7, I'd probably have enough preorder every single new expansion for at least 4-5 years. People's answer to Voidlord in particular is always something like "Why didn't you play Spellbreaker", or "GIT GUD". Realistically, if you don't draw those 1 or 2 answers in your deck, your opponent can fish for Voidlord and suddenly you're looking at a 9 health taunt on turn 6 that spawns 3 (3) health taunt bodies. I hate to say it, but if this happens to you, you're pretty much SOL my friend. Now, if this happened every once in a while, I'd be perfectly ok with it. However, Warlock can consistently pull Voidlord turns before 9, and this is a major problem. With cards like Possessed Lackey and Skull of the Man'ari, it's quite likely that Warlock can have a Voidlord out before turn 9. Just in case you haven't had enough of Voidlord or Doomguard, Warlock has Carnivorous Cube to literally multiply their value, and Bloodreaver Gul'dan to bring back those evil purple menaces or multiple Doomguard for smorcing. 

     Just in case you somehow managed to build a board amidst all of the lifestealing shenaningans and  Doomguard or Voidlord, Warlock has about 6-8 "fuck you" removal spells. Good luck trying to play something with threats like Lord Godfrey, Defile, Hellfire, Mortal Coil and Doomsayer around. If you somehow do manage to get a few minions to stick, they'll just pop out a sick Voidlord on turn 6 and then proceed to Carnivorous Cube you into oblivion. I already mentioned this bit before, but figured I'd say it twice for good measure. 

To wrap it all up, Warlock as a whole is just too damn consistent. It has a plethora of options that makes it so that anyone who isn't playing a control deck with tons of removal loses a lot more often than not.  It's wide variety of healing in combination with rediculous tempo plays on curve and ressurection of major threats makes it oppressive. It's not fun to play against, and it feels real shitty when your opponent has something like 2 Doomguard cards and 3 Voidlord cardson the board. Again; I'm pointing out some of the more extreme situations, but believe it or not they happen more often than you might think. I wanted to mention that I didn't talk about a lot of the tech cards you can add because that stuff is pretty common already in other decks. Feel free to disagree with me or to start a discussion. I put a lot of time into writing this post, I hope you guys found something you thought was worth taking note of in this long post. If you made it this far, congrats. I hope everyone has a fantastic day/evening ;).

TL;DR Warlock is too consistent, flexible, and has too many answers for it to be considered balanced.

Cool deck. I'll let you know if it works. Also, I don't have keleseth or soulthief so I think I'll replace those with jeweled macaws.

 Hmm. I have 55% winrate with this deck and I actually got to rank 7 on a winstreak. Not too bad, I'm going to try and theory craft some changes and test it out in casual matches. I'll let you guys know if it works and I can create a decklist. Super fun though, I love this archetype and it's actually not too costly because I already had most of the cards even though I'm free to play. 

Thank you! I would be happy if even one person could learn from it, but I am so grateful for all the attention this deck is getting :). I'm glad new players can learn from it. 

Thanks for the spotlight! Hope you had fun with it :)

Ironbeak is good for those voidlords :P. Thanks for the feedback. 

I haven’t actually lost yet to odd warrior. Warlock is a difficult matchup I agree.

I'll try that out. I'm currently struggling at rank 9 xD. Don't have time right now but later I will test it. 

Lol Jaturna 

Yeah. You can definitely substitute a few wing blasts or a hunters mark and a candelshot for 2 hunting mastiffs! I haven’t tested it because the deck is doing really well for me as is (I’m at rank 12 already — climbed from rank 20). I’m gonna craft it in an alt and test this though.

Im sure the other 999 Warlock nerf threads needed another to be complete.

 This is a great deck for all beginners like me.. Thank you !

I haven't played this deck (though I will...), but I just wanted to say a big thank you to Memestone for the VERY detailed write-up and explanation of the deck. THIS is why newb players like me come here. Well done!

Trying this deck with Deathstalker Rexxar, will let you know how it goes.

21-5, from rank 7 to 3, good job

Thx for the deck.

Finally i reached rank 18 kkkkk.

EZ Clap

No success at all with it... Gets rekt by everything, when you are about to win, they pull out some amazing healing that came from gods know where! And being out of steam at that point, no way you can come back after. Not for me, I'll go back to my control decks ^^ 

Nice budget deck, just went from rank 18 to 15, beating an odd paladin, an elemental mage,a random spell generating chaman, ...

Really fun to play and well constructed, I just switch the bonemare for a Thundra Rino.

Keep up the good word and thanks for that deck !