Hearthpwn

I really do like the mechanics, but I'm already sick of them. Does Blizzard include them in every single game early on when they release a new tribe? Feels like I've played ~10 games and they've been in every one. And there are 17 minions (not including Amalgadon) compared to the 14-15 that most other tribes have.

Eh, these things can be fun. I got to relive my big spell mage days. Had a crazy swingy sequence with Summoning Stone --> Deck of Wonders. Next turn had a Free Admission that pulled a couple more Scroll of Wonders.

I don't think the high legend vs all ranks distribution necessarily favors this deck. There's more Priest which is nice, but there's also a lot more spell mage (tough matchup) and less control Warlock (highly favorable, imo).

Undoubtedly Kibler's really good and gets the most out of it, but the matchup stats on vicious syndicate skew way in the other direction. I'm definitely not a good player, but the notion that mill lock would be highly unfavorable against standard control lock or unfavorable against Hunter seems crazy to me. I think there's some really bad piloting of this deck out there and people drag the stats down and give up on it before they really learn how to play it.

But then, I've been trying to make Shaman work for the entirety of the expansion, so I'm just thrilled to find a deck capable of winning more than half the time.

I think it's legit. I've been watching Kibler dominate with it lately. Took it for a spin today and went 11-5 with most of the losses being either misplays on my part or godawful luck (all win conditions buried in the bottom five against Warlock, for instance).

It's the only deck I've played this meta that genuinely feels like it has a chance in every matchup. It has the end-game to beat control decks and the healing to beat hunter, pally, and mage (though that's generally still a brutal matchup). And best of all, it beats the living tar out of standard control warlock, which is uber satisfying.

My biggest gripe right now is their value generation. You can pack your deck with Guidance, Primordial Studies, and Marshspawn, but you're never actually going to find anything that moves the needle against other control classes. Shaman spells are almost entirely reactive right now. They have no ability to generate board presence through discovers.

Contrast that with a class like Priest, where cards like Raise Dead and Draconic Studies allow you pump out 50+ mana worth of proactive plays every game with no deckbuilding concession.

And hell, I think Instructor Fireheart is a handy card, but it also feels objectively worse than say, Sethekk Veilweaver despite being a legendary.

Trying to build a Shaman deck... It just feels like they're ten cards short of every other class because of how many are either weak reactive cards or tied to a specific archetype that doesn't have enough support.

Vol'jin looks insane. Ability to take an easy scaling minion and swap it with a cleave or DS?

Quote from FortyDust >>

Quote from lv426a11 >>

Quote from Amaranthus >>

 

Mo'arg Artificer and similar effects - Though quite hard to abuse, I think exponential scaling should have no place in a game like Hearthstone.

I never really thought about it until now, but arguably multiple Mo'arg Artificer shouldn't stack.  Compare with Baron Rivendare or Brann Bronzebeard.  They each have an aura which is only applied once regardless of how many copies are present - it makes sense as the condition of the aura is fullfilled regardless of the number of copies.  The same could be argued for Mo'arg Artificer.  That it's a static effect and multiple copies would just try to apply the same effect which becomes redundant because it's already there.  The fact that this doesn't work with Piercing Shot though is just baffling....(but probably for the best!)

 No, there's a big difference between "double" and "twice."

No matter how many times you say something happens "twice," the thing is still happening twice -- exactly what it says on the card. On the other hand, if you double and then double again, that means times four.

If Brann and Rivendare said "trigger an additional time" or "double the number of times this thing triggers," you'd have a point, but that's not how they are written.

True. Though Blizzard screws this up, too. In Battlegrounds, Khadgar's "twice" effect stacks.

Amazing that they're just letting the summon buff bug persist for months. I mean, I get that they don't want to deal with balance or new content. But fix your %&@*ing game, guys.

Raise Dead

Because Venomous Scorpid isn't irritating enough; now I have to remove 14 of them. It makes me want to run 2 copies of Devolving Missiles in every deck so I can fill the pool with Murloc Tinyfins.

I thought it was always tri-class?

 I'd love for it to work, but it's pretty awful. Even Kibler runs a miserable win rate when he's playing it. What little you gain against face hunter gets coughed up by the 0% chance that you ever win a game against Warlock.

It's fine, we just need more healing available to control decks other than Priest.

And the Trampling Rhino/hero power combo is a fairly boring mechanic for classes that don't have spell-based card draw. You essentially spend the entire game top-decking because you can't play low health minions to draw/generate, and eventually the hero power and burn from hand trumps whatever healing you manage to draw naturally.

3 damage to my own face + overload.

Quote from Goodlake >>

Tickatus sucks and is bad design, but he's not the reason the meta is dominated by aggro. The issue is that Blizzard keeps developing aggro/tempo tools and doesn't create enough board clear / AoE for reactive strategies to keep up. And one of the reactive classes (Priest) doesn't have access to ANY class-based win conditions outside of healing/fatigue (which is why Tickatus/Jaraxxus just destroy Priests, even if control priest is good against the aggro meta). 

The devs want hearthstone to be a tempo-based game and that's fine, but if that's the case, then they need to give all of the classes the tools to compete in a game that's perpetually balanced around tempo. Right now, "control" just doesn't fit the paradigm, outside of OTK decks needing to control the game for long enough to draw their combo, and most classes don't have realistic combo finishers either.

Is board clear even the issue right now, though? Or is it lack of healing? Seems like most of the faster decks rely far more on face damage than board presence right now.

It feels awfully nice to play a heal-heavy deck against aggro right now. Priest and Shaman have tools that offer Reno-level healing under the right circumstances, and you can just bleed aggro decks dry. Of course the issue remains that those "do nothing" decks just get farmed by Tickatus.

How about buffs instead? Make Mana Tide Totem a 2-drop. Put Hex back to 3 mana. Increase the Shattered Rumbler AOE to 3 damage. Bump Rockbiter Weapon to 4 attack. Let's take cards that nobody puts in their deck and make them worthwhile.