Hearthpwn

Im convinced minisets are a mistake at this point. With so few cards being introduced at a time, chances are the top decks will just find upgrades while the crap strategies dont get enough to become viable.

Give us 4 expansions a year damnit, MUCK FINISETS!

This is way better than most people realize imo. If you're pressuring early enough, your opponent will never have time to waste 6 mana on 2 useless 3/3s, and if he removes it hes gonna have to deal with those 3/3s! The only other option is silence, but still leaves a 5/4 on the board.

No matter how you look at it, your opponent will always have to trade 2 for 1 to completely deal with this, always a lose-lose situation for them, this is VERY good. I can see this being played in aggro decks to top the curve, really cool design on this one!

Update: ok i forgot polymorph does deal with it 1 for 1, but who even runs polymorph effects these days? Doubt it will be widespread enough to make this card bad.

Quote from JollyCroquet >>

Honestly, in my experience it's best to just go aggro for the last leg to legend. Undead priest, or any zoo-like deck that can still burst you down at the end are just always gonna be a difficult fight for a deck like this. 

However, answering your question, I'd probably stick in a possible tempo-spammy arcanist, grimoire of sacrifice for the same reason (and for quick Darkvein activation) and finally probably a Zola incase I don't need either one and wanna go deeper into the control/greed plays 

 So far I have Immolate (perfect for my strategy, wins long games on the spot cuz they can no longer keep full hand against curses), and Starfish (what slow deck doesnt like aoe silence? Saved me a few times), and now im deciding the last spot for an undead priest tech, but there seems to be none apparently. 

Cant stop their dmg even when clearing their board, not sure grimoire would help there. Spammy is interesting though, they leave 1 hp minions up cuz of reborn and i get a body left to trade, could be an option, thx!

Cant get past diamond 2 with my Chaddius Curselock, Undead Priest is gatekeeping me hard, terrible matchup. What can I get out of E.T.C that could help me? 

Any ideas? Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

As far as I can remember, the most balanced meta in HS history was Journey to Ungoro.

In that meta, everyone had at least one competitive deck except Warlock, and most importantly, no deck had above 52% winrate, meaning no class was tier 1 (I dont recall this ever happening again). One of the best and most memorable metas ever for sure.

So yeah, the peak of HS balancing can only be reached when all classes have below 52% winrate, i think thats mandatory. When there are no tier 1 decks opressing and warping the meta around them, all strategies have a reasonable chance to succeed.

Something i dont see being mentioned is how Rogue now has easy access to Deadly Shot off concoctions multiple times per game, which would be cause for riot in other metas.

Rogue should never be THIS efficient at removing minions w/o damaging them, it was supposed to be part of their weaknesses (a meme at this point, but still). Randomly drawing cards, dealing dmg, summoning small stuff and grabbing cards from other classes are all things Rogue is known for, things they are supposed to be good at. But FUCKIN DEADLY SHOT?

That should be removed from the concoction pool, period. Replace it with anything mediocre, Wildpaw Knoll to 6 and bam, rogue still good but not oppressive.

Zach0s suggestions in the VS Podcast seem good mostly.

Wildpaw Knoll to 6 mana;

Unleash Fel and Sinful Brand to 2 mana (UF should be manathirst 7 too imo);

Glacial Advance discounts next spell by 1 instead of 2 to prevent OMEGALUL burst from hand;

Astalor goes to 3/6/9 mana, with stats and battlecry buffed accordingly (manathirst stays the same);

The Astalor change is great cuz it kills the Anub'rekhan combo in druid and slows down Shadowstep abuse in Rogue, while still making it a great tool for slower decks.

My personal take is that Frostwyrm's Fury should cost corpses up to 5 to summon the 5/5 dragon. I mean, you're literally raising an undead dragon for fucks sake, this card not costing corpses doesnt make sense. This prevents the card from winning the game alone against board based decks when played back to back, as Frost doesnt have the corpse generation to create 5/5s over and over, usually.

Abyssal Depths tutors both, so Vanndar becomes active. Trader is there cuz Unleash Fel is busted af, if you're not abusing it you're not playing DH.

Quote from lv426a11 >>

 

Quote from OoZuNoO >>

Brann is not being played in Quest DH, Miracle Rogue, Frost DK or Frost Mage, the 4 strongest decks atm. If anything, it is one of the few strong cards available to players refusing to play these decks. How ppl are still complaining about Brann when running minions is becoming a liability (thanks Sinful Brand) is beyond me.

 Just because other decks are also broken doesnt mean Brann isn't.  Druid/Brann has basically removed all control decks from viability.  Also - isn't it weird how non-battlecry decks don't run a minion which doubles battlecries..../s.  I think he might be used in Quest DH if you could consistantly get either of them discounted, but you can't.  He would also push the minion count up beyond 3 which would make scythe less consistant.

tl;dr Brann doesn't need to be included in all decks to be OP.  OP decks do not need to include Brann. 

 

 Read the last VS report dude, your opinion is outdated. Battlecry abuse is now the only way most minion based decks can compete with spell burn ones, which are heavily opressing the meta after the death of Renathal. Right now Brann is not the problem, hes the SOLUTION. A sign of how degenerate the meta has become? Absolutely, but even poison can be used as remedy, and rn this is one such case.

Brann is not being played in Quest DH, Miracle Rogue, Frost DK or Frost Mage, the 4 strongest decks atm. If anything, it is one of the few strong cards available to players refusing to play these decks. How ppl are still complaining about Brann when running minions is becoming a liability (thanks Sinful Brand) is beyond me.

Quote from Bengalaas >>

Frost doesn't use corpses as much by design. It just happens to be the most powerful of the DKs with the existing cards.

Before Renathal's nerf Blood was the only playable DK and some of it's most important cards use corpses. As for Unholy, It's problem isn't the corpse mechanic but rather that it has weak cards altogether. It's just a bad version of token Druid.

The mechanic isn't the problem, it's the cards.

 Unholy feels weak cuz it requires corpses more than any other dk. Try the deck once and you will understand how bad the mechanic is. There are corpse taxes everywhere, and they give you NOTHING more than other classes get for only paying mana. Frost doesnt need to pay this stupid unnecessary tax to access its best payoffs, so it feels and performs way better.

Quote from Joshbuckler >>

Quote from OoZuNoO >>

 The class has just been released, with an entirely new and exclusive mechanic at its core, and the first ever great dk list found decides the best course of action is to cast it aside entirely? If thats not an indication the mechanic is failing, what is then?

An indication of the mechanic being a failure would be it never being used in any strong decks. 

You're talking about one deck, one that's doing OK after the most recent round of nerfs. 

Maybe next expansion they'll print some strong Unholy cards and then Frost will be a FAILURE. 

Or maybe, like every other class, DK will have multiple archetypes and which one's best will vary from expansion to expansion. 

 What raised the red flag for me was Frost dk not using Defrost. Why? What kind of burn deck would refuse to draw 2 cards for 2 mana?

Thats cuz Defrost never draws 2 on turn 2. Hell, it draws 2 on turns 4, maybe 5. The fundamental flaw of corpses is that it is a resource difficult to generate yourself, most of the time you must wait for your opponent to remove your minions first, which always delays your payoff by 1 or 2 turns. Allowing your resources to be easily manipulated by your opponent is just bad no matter how you look at it.

Frost will ALWAYS be the best dk deck if the corpse mechanic keeps working like this. Why pay double taxes in a game that encourages us to evade them as much as possible?

Quote from Hearthsam >>

Quote from OoZuNoO >>

 Frost cant generate many corpses cuz its spell based, so lets make the class work great w/o any need for them? Does that make sense to you?

 

 Yes. That makes sense to me, and I'm 100% fine with it.

There's more pressing matters with DK right now such as its ability to discover rune cards outside of its deckbuilding (triple blood DK getting shit like scourge/frostwyrm fury as a control deck is a bit silly), leading to DK decks being 1/3 discover cards (vizier, pandaren, school teacher, scorpid, vulpera etc). Also the complete unusability of corpse cards from spell generation marks the first in cards that can never ever be used no matter what else you could possibly steal in the game (army of the dead, corpse explosion will forever do nothing in any other class).

 The only deck that runs copious amounts of discover is 3B, which sucks. Hardly a balancing issue atm, and will balance itself out further as the class card pool increases with each expansion.

You dont think unholy and blood having to pay double tax to play cards and frost not needing to pay it is unfair?.. Ok then, lets aggree to disagree.

Quote from sanchogrande >>

I’m not sure yet if it’s just a balance issue. Time will tell, I guess.

It’s also true that no one plays hybrid DK decks, right? All red, all blue, or all green. I think the intent was to make hybrids viable, but that hasn’t worked out.

 

 That one is the Rune systems fault actually, as it doesnt apply to cards you discover.

Why dip into a different rune when I can play triple rune, get all the best payoffs possible, and then discover cards from other runes if I need them?

Discover makes rune dipping in dk completely pointless. Its something that can be fixed with time though, they just need to release good payoffs that require rune dipping (cards with 1B/1U tags, for example). Not sure if time can fix corpses though, the mechanic seems too flawed in its current state.

Finally someone who gets it. Made a whole thread to discuss it, but ppl there failed to understand something so simple!

Adding another tax to a card effect only makes sense if the payoff is worth it, which hasnt been the case for corpses AT ALL. None of the top Frost dk lists are playing Defrost and they are better for it, thats just baffling.

Quote from Hearthsam >>

Quote from OoZuNoO >>

Quote from Hearthsam >>

Forcing DK into "everything must use corpses" is also terrible design? That's like saying "rogue decks MUST all use some combo cards" or "demon hunters MUST use lots of outcast cards" when the top decks of them hardly use any, if at all. Defrost and marrow manipulator aren't even bad cards, I don't see why a frost DK can't also be successful with those.

 When DH was released, Outcast was THE best mechanic in the game. Skull of Gul'dan remains to this day one of the most powerful draw engines ever made. Even after everything was nerfed, Outcast remained a great mechanic for many expansions. They got it right multiple times, same with combo. They didnt get it right at all with corpses, its been a failure, and im wondering why.

 But they did get it right. Both blood and unholy DK heavily use corpses, just because one archetype of the class isn't using corpses doesn't mean the class has just failed design wise. DK has a really tiny card pool, and until it stops having like 1/3 the current card pool that other classes do, I wouldn't expect much in terms of new developments, If it had 3x the available cards you bet your ass there would be some more cards that use corpses in frost.

Frost was also designed to be spell heavy so it would make sense corpses aren't heavily involved, since you'd need minions to actually get them. Unholy by design has heavy corpse generation in plagued grain, meat grinder, etc. Not all DK runes have to use corpses as aggressively as unholy does.

 Frost cant generate many corpses cuz its spell based, so lets make the class work great w/o any need for them? Does that make sense to you?

Neither rune should need corpses for the same reasons, that would go against their flavour in the first place. But they all should be required to spend corpses in some way, somehow. Otherwise the mechanic is just pointless, cuz rn the archetype that doesnt give a shit about it is the better one for it, thats just failed design.

Paying a second tax for a card only makes sense if that cards payoff is too strong if it costed only mana. Thats not what we're seeing in dk right now. Hope it doesnt become another Overload, which suffers from similar issues.

Quote from Banur >>

Quote from OoZuNoO >>

Quote from Banur >>

Quote from OoZuNoO >>

I attached a print of the best Frost DK deck on HSReplay for reference.

[...]

What do you guys think?

No. You have a screenshot of the deck with the most games available to non-paying

 Its Thijs list, the same list everyone is using everywhere, even Zach0 recommends it in the last VS podcast.. Can we discuss the topic? For real?

Let me try to rephrase it: how come is dk performing great w/o any corpse cards? Wasnt this mechanic the core of the class design? What makes it unique compared to others? 

It's a really strong deck because Renathal was nerfed and the majority of decks are back to 30 health.

That means Frost can ignore corpses and just burn you down. There were no buffs or anything. That doesn't mean that the corpse mechanic is a failure. Revert Renathal and Frost goes back down.

Corpses are a DK mechanic but it's not like you have to use them.

 The class has just been released, with an entirely new and exclusive mechanic at its core, and the first ever great dk list found decides the best course of action is to cast it aside entirely? If thats not an indication the mechanic is failing, what is then?