Hearthpwn

I'm sure that if the match history (and/or the text under the cards as they're played) showed the "created by" FULL CHAIN under some of the generated cards, people would fucking stop crying about DH and start raging about the true enemy of the game - fucking generation RNG especially in Rogue and Mage

Yeah, because when you lose yet another game to High Priest fucking Amet IN ROGUE you might think "heh, shit happens. But sure this guy Amet shows up often in Rogue huh. Oh well"

But if the game actually showed you the entire fucking BS chain of events like High Priest Amet generated by Dragon's Hoard generated by Ethereal Lackey generated by I don't know whatever fucking invoking card did it, you'd be fucking THANKING those DH players for crushing you on turn 6 in a 5-minutes game, at least they're not wasting your fucking time like those Mages and Rogues pretending to play Hearthstone while they're actually just flipping a series of coins for 20 minutes

Yeah I'm salty af. Also just lost to a Mage that cleared 3 full boards (one DQ Alex, one Nagrand Slam and one Zixor Prime + some other shit), all threatening like 10 damage over lethal, respectively with:

1) Puzzlebox-generated Brawl

2) idk-generated Flamestrike

3) Reno hero power fucking BRAWL NUMBER 2

And negating me the last lethal chance with a Power-of-Creation-generated taunts (Hogger to add insult to injury, but any taunt would have done it). Fuck Mages. I used to like the class ffs.

Quote from Grorrem >>

hearthstone replay shows that the top 7/10 decks are aggressive decks, all tier 1 decks are aggressive decks and furthermore it shows that priest and gally warlock are tier 2 and tier 3 respectively. Their win rates are significantly lower overall at 5% lower than the top rated decks. Now that doesn't sound like a lot, but when thousands and thousands of games are being played, 5% is a significant number. But people shouldn't complain, aggressive decks have historically shaped the meta from the very first Smorc hunter decks. Not everyone likes to play control, many people don't want to play 20 minute games. This is understandable. I think that following 2 years where control was the meta, the HS developers are trying to speed the game up so have printed a lot more aggro tools than control tools. I like to think that whats going on is that after all those hall of fame rotations and card changes they made, that we will see balance within the next 2 or so expansions. Control isn't dead, we are just in the middle of a transition and control has been heavily nerfed. I myself am a fan on control matches because I like to think during my matches, but I plan to be patient and see where they take the game in the future.

Wait, you consider Tempo Warrior and Galarogue aggressive decks? Or Highlander Hunter?

As a returning player, the only issue I see right now is that DH is a bit too strong. But the control cards some classes have at their disposal, compared to the good ol' days (since you mentioned the first smorc hunter decks), are absolutely in-fucking-sane. Back in those days when you faced aggro you had to PRAY to draw your Fiery War Axe on time; or say Hellfire (which often killed you too) for Handlock - or pray that you got some sort of wonky Ancient Watcher+Shadowflame combo; or Auchenai-Circle combo in Priest because Holy Nova was too little too late.

Now Warlock has stuff like Dark Skies and Plague of Flames and thinking of old cards like Dark Bomb compared to Nether Breath makes you laugh. Priest has now so much redundancy in his tool set that you're basically guaranteed to get a 2-dmg AOE by turn 3 or 4 and a 3-dmg single-target spell earlier (Holy Smite, Penance, both possibly discover by Renew and you're also healing yourself). Warrior has now stuff like Sword and Board, and can tutor for weapons which in turn tutor for combo pieces that allows him to clear the board and gain 20-armor at the same time.

Imho as soon as DH dies down a bit (either by nerfs or by some counter being found - Warrior decks seems to be almost there) Control will easily shine again.

If dust is no worry, you should look by archetype / current top decks you might enjoy, not necessarily by class imho. ie my most played classes used to be Rogue and Warlock (I'm a returning player too), but I quickly learned that I despise everything Galakrond-related and I don't like the current iteration of Zoolock (not much positional play / clever trading and a lot of luck involved in drawing Imprisoned Scrap Imp asap).

But yeah, as other people already said, Galakrond Warlock is basically your only option if you're set on the class and you don't like Zoo either, but it's not terribly performing after the Sac Pact nerfs. 

I came back to the game exactly like you, except I stopped playing a bit sooner (just before Witchwood). Also picked the Mage deck for Alex and Zephrys, I don't regret it at all - although I learned pretty quickly that I hate the class now (I actually stopped playing because I was tired of dealing with Yogg BS, so you can imagine how I feel about current Mage decks).

Anyways, you might want to check out this thread https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/card-discussion/205920-legendary-tier-list-crafting-guide

I'm not sure Kanrethad Ebonlocke was a good craft for you, you seem like a control enthusiast but the card is mostly used in zoo-ish decks right now, you should have waited a bit... the rest of your crafts seem pretty solid.

Quote from AssumedNewb >>

Quote from HMcCool>>

 

And now the "are you serious" disagreements

 

Hunter : Nagrand Slam - In standard, it gets some playtime in some highlander hunter. In Wild, it is very great with Spiteful Summoner and allows for a playable hunter deck. Meanwhile, Helboar or Imprisoned Felmaw sit on the shelves

 

Mostly agree with your post, but Imprisoned Felmaw is seeing a lot of play actually in Highlander and Boar combo decks. I don't like the card and I mostly don't play it in my Hunter decks, but sometimes it's a pain to deal with when played against me.

I haven't seen a single Beastmaster Leoroxx instead. People are mostly trying to combo it with copied/buffed King Krushes, but the exact same plan with Boars seem faster and more effective, so...

Disagree on Nagrand Slam, it has a natural home in Highlander Hunter, very versatile card and has won me many games. It's a "board-in-a-card" that doubles up as possible removal for small/medium boards AND a 6 to 12 damage reach/finisher, which also allows you to play Dinotamer more freely without fear that you'll run out of reach if properly responded. Coming after a DQ Alex turn it also means that an opponent (like priest for example) has likely spent some resources dealing with a huge board already, and might not have an answer for another one (and yet another one if you're counting Zixor Prime). Being able to play 0-cost dragons from Alex on the Nagrand turn is also pretty good.

If you want to pick Hunter cards that are underperforming and have seen little to no play, you should look at Helboar and Beastmaster Leoroxx.

I also think Vivid Spores isn't as terrible as you make it out to be, I often pick it in Totem Shaman from the spell lackey. I think the problem is atm Shaman is so weak that can't afford to run yet another card that requires you to be ahead on board otherwise is a dead draw - Totemic Reflection and Splitting Axe already are that way... but in a deck whose win condition is basically to make small minions/totems stick to the board to buff them and possibly finish with Bloodlust, a card like Vivid Spores would be basically a win condition. Soul of the Forest does the same in Druid to threaten Savage Roar and is played right now, the difference is that Druid cheat mana like nothing and can afford it, Shaman can't... yet. I wouldn't be surprised if Vivid Spores becomes viable when more tools are added in the next expansions.

Well it's not like every highlander is the same. Highlander Mage is a control, while Highlander Hunter is a straight up midrange deck for example, it has a reasonably balanced mana curve and you're usually playing 1 minion per turn on curve, no praying-for-answer involved. Of course you can draw badly and be aggroed early. It's a bit slower and more value-packed than your usual midrange-ish hunter builds such as Dragon Hunter, but it's not uncommon to actually wrap up straight on turn 7 with Dinotamer.

Quote from Ravza >>

I think the rogue deck is REALLY strong but in my opinion it's ok since there are clear counterplays. There are decks which have really high win rate against gala secret rogue. It has some obvious weaknesses being board clear and lack of healing. This means it just dies to aggressive strategies.

 That's simply not true.

First of all, some healing is present in the deck - the 5 armor on the Galakrond hero card and Kronxx deal5-heal5 option. It may not seem much, but it's VERY significant against aggro, especially at turn 7-8 when aggro has hopelessly lost the board and plan to finish with burn from hand.

Secondly, a lot of extra healing can be discovered via spell/dragon lackey, Hanar pulling an Ice Barrier or some other defensive secret, and random lifesteal/heal minions being generated (ie Karthut from Pharaoh Cat). There are so many options for generating some form of heal that it'd be surprising for them to NOT generate at least one per game when needed.

Last but not least, Rogue can and often DOES out-tempo aggro decks in the early game. And AOE is absolutely not one of their weaknesses. They don't care about those 1/1s that already generated value for them, and also because they easily always have at least one minion outside any early/midgame AOE damage range. This is not an aggro swarm deck that instaconcedes at the first AOE clearing, they can go the distance.

The issue is exactly that there are NOT clear counterplays. Galarogue is a complete jack-of-all-trades, which is the #1 reason why it's a tier1 deck right now.

Quote from funkhelmfriedel >>

Quote from RushingMonkey >>

...

 for those reasons you listed i love playing rogue. so much games feel different because of the unique styles (edwin<3, lackeyspam (i do admit spell & Dragon are problematic), gala, secrets, …) and cards you can generate. 

I understand that's the appeal of the deck, and I won't even deny that there's some skill involved in adapting to what you got. But it's waaay too frustrating to play against.

I'd be ok with some rng if the lackey pool was smaller and more consistent (let's say you could only get the 2-dmg / taunt / rush ones). But the pool is what, 7 different lackeys? With more than half of them generating even MORE rng - spell, dragon, transform, random 2-drop... The variance is too high, and it feels terrible to play against high-rolls. 

Especially considering even something simple like a 2-dmg one in the right scenarios (ie early game against a 3/2) could already be an high-roll. Add Bamboozle, Pharaoh Cat and Dragon's Hoard to the mix and sometimes the games can be ridiculous.

As for Gala Rogue, I'll copy-paste a post I've written a couple of days ago with some additions

Rogue is not in a balanced state atm, mostly because they do too many things and too well at once. ie their boards can go both wide or tall; it's not like you can tech AOE or removal to deal with something specific, because one game they'll have a super wide and sticky lackey board that makes you feel you're playing against a Shaman; the next they could drop back to back a gigantic Edwin followed by a Winged Guardian generated by Pharaoh Cat (happened to me yesterday) and suddenly you're playing against what feels like a Druid. Every game is different, and it's too much to deal with. Today I've had one that I basically lost against a generated High Priest Amet that I couldn't deal with right away. Wasn't the first time either.

The secret package is problematic. They have early game tempo secret plays that makes you feel you're playing against Hunter (an early Ambush + Blackjack Stunner can be devastating especially to other tempo-based classes). They also have those late game Shadowjeweler Hanar turns that feel like good ol' Secret Pala Mysterious Challenger turns. Except they didn't have to fill their deck with otherwise BAD secrets to enable that combo.

In fact, secrets aren't even that big of a win condition for them. It's just a strong addition to an already strong deck: even if there were strong anti-secret tech in the meta, they wouldn't be suuuper relevant imho - it's not like, for example, those old times against Secret Pala, when anti-secret tech would completely destroy their main gameplan, like hitting a Flare on that Mysterious Challenger turn. Rogue doesn't care that much (not just theorizing here, I'm playing Hunter a lot and I'm putting a Flare in most of my builds, I do get good value too sometimes, but it's not like it's a game-winning tech).

They can fend off aggro (which were historically a weakness for Rogues), they can go the distance against slower decks, they can find and/or build annoying taunts to stop combos. They have way too many win conditions (early Big Edwin, early tempo secret plays, going wide with lackeys, going tall with generated cards, lategame Hanar, and of course Galakrond... not to mention DQ Alex for Highlander Rogue). On top of all this, the inherent RNG of lackeys feels incredibly bad to play against, both if you're playing aggro/tempo (hitting that perfect 2-dmg or taunt lackey at the perfect time for example) or control (hitting those big drops with the dragon lackey).

It's a bit too much packed in a single deck. With that said... I'd rather Rogue being the top dog than some other classes I hate (*cough*priest*cough*).

Quote from BerserkerBladerX1 >>

Totem Shaman actually was Tier 1 for a while but I'm pretty sure that fad died out after the meta settled after the second round of nerfs.

....It's better than nothing...

 

Totem Shaman was never really tier 1, it's just that people didn't know that allowing an on curve Totemic Reflection could possibly snowball the game reeeal quick and were playing badly against it (ie wasting removal on your 1-drop and allowing an unresponded EVIL Totem on turn 2). Now everybody has experienced that snowballing, and they're Frostbolting your f-ing Searing Totem if necessary lol. Very opening draw-dependent deck overall, feels like a combo deck (it kinda is). If you get out-tempoed and lose the board in the first couple of turns (which easily happens against classes like DH and Rogue) you can quickly concede on turn 4 or 5. Does very well against Priest tho, especially if you manage to keep your board outside of 2-dmg AOE range.

The deck will need new Totem tribe cards in the future to be really competitive, like the good ol' Totem Golem or Tuskarr Totemic (well not necessarily that strong lol, but stuff like that) and other totem supporting cards. Personally I'm looking forward to that.

Quote from Ravza >>

People who say DH can be stopped by control are bad at DH. It is generally s 48.4% vs galakrond warlock and 48.6% vs res priest (and only res priest, the deck absolutely smashes completely any other priest deck including highlander priest). So basically 50% vs their hard counters. They are also unfavoured vs spell druid. However, it rips everything else to absolute shreds. I mean it's an aggro/tempo deck which smashes faster aggro decks to pieces (zoo warlock does very badly vs it).

There is one DH list which is so unbelievably strong it's overall win rate is about 65% and its win rate against EVERY deck is over 60% and in the case of mage, shaman, warlock over 70%. The list is absolutely bonkers and absolutely broken. Some people may go on a run of people playing unoptimal DH lists and think well ok this is very strong but I guess it's ok, I can still win this. Wait until you come across a row of people playing the correct list, the one that simply does not have a bad matchup (it's also 60% vs other DH decks). I mean it's so strong its 60% vs res priest, 60% vs rogue and 55% vs face hunter. So there you have it. I am not going to tell you what the list is but its out there and it's hell broken. The stats that show people winning vs DH are including all the decks, even the bad ones. The win rate of the best list is like as good as pre-nerf since the last patch had a huge buff. The nerf to sac pac buffed DH to the extreme since you now couldn't get it off zephyr too and gala warlock now can't hard counter it.

Fortunately most people arn't using the best list. I mean some people are running imprisoned antaen and other garbage so as long as they are doing that we can still win sometimes.

 Dude what the hell are you talking about. Absolutely NOBODY is running Antaens since the first wave of nerfs.

People may change 3 or 4 cards but there are 25-26 core cards that every single Tempo DH deck is running (ofc excluding people experimenting with highlanders and controll-ish DH). The best plays and possible curves up to turn 6-7 are absolutely known and predictable.

You really want us to believe that there's a super secret optimized list people are running at your elite rank, a list that is significantly better that what everybody else is running? lmao

Quote from sxavalentine >>

At this point I'm convinced that this forum is full of DH fan boys that for the first time climbed to ranks that before couldn't even dream of and now don't want to see their beautiful class brought to a fair level. 

LMAO says the guy who's playing Rogue (among other top decks) and opened a thread to lament that he couldn't crush DHs anymore with Zephrys-generated Sac Pacts XD Elitist gatekeeping shitpost at his finest btw, congrats.

You must have been missing the daily 5 or 6 "nerf DH!!1" threads or "fix DH" threads like this one suggesting absolutely outrageous changes. If anything, this forum is full of DH-haters, not the other way around.

Tempo DH is just a strong, very strong (and straightforward) aggro deck right now, nothing more. It can be stopped by adequate Control decks, it can be out-aggroed by other aggro decks if they draw better, usual deal. It can be beaten by Rogues that right now are jack of all trades. I'm consistently beating DHs with aggressive/tempo-based Hunter decks for example.

Tempo DH's gameplan and plays are completely straightforward and predictable (contrary to Rogue for example), you can easily predict what their next play is turn by turn. This makes it easy to tech against them or hell, even make a "fuck-you-DH" deck that crushes DH but loses to everything else, if you really wanted. And it would even be a good idea judging by people daily reporting "bohoho all I'm facing is DH 90% of my matches on ladder"... but people aren't doing it. Guess why? Because DH playrate being THAT high right now is complete bullshit, that's why. So it's not actually a smart idea to do that, not anymore. The meta is pretty diverse right now, Rogue Warrior and Hunter are about as common encounters as DH, with the occasional Warlock and Priest.

Terrible, terrible suggestions. Starting from the 2 mana hero power, unless you plan to COMPLETELY rework the class and BUFF a lot of cards around that. Cards that suddenly become trash because you'd be basically putting a +1 mana cost on them as well - Battlefiend, Satyr Overseer, Furious Felfin, Glaivebound Adept - they'd all basically be playable only comboed with Twin Slice or a pre-equipped weapon.

As for the rest, you're seriously overestimating how easy it is to get Outcast. It's obvious you haven't played DH at all. Your suggestions basically make those cards garbage unless Outcasted. Twin Slice would basically be a worse Moonfire / Backstab and Chaos Strike a MUCH worse Claw. C'mon. Umberwing lol, your suggestion completely kill the card, no one would play a 2 mana 1/2 weapon.

The only nerf that remotely makes sense is the Warglaives one.

Just wanted to drop a comment to say how good this deck is.

I've been trying myself to make a Dragon / Boar combo hybrid for a while, but couldn't find the right balance. I'd never have cut 1 Stormhammer and put Arcane Shots in there lol, but it actually works very well! Those Arcane Shots are saving my ass more often than I thought.

This one's perfect, and it's performing. It's also not as easy to pilot as it may seem. Both in when to start to go face, and Tracking often present you with hard decisions. It's also really fun that sometimes you draw combo-heavy hands and can go for a near OTK. Or viceversa, you can draw Dragon-heavy ones and it feels just as good ol' Dragon Hunter. Also had some games where the "Dragon" part of the plan failed and switched to plan B combo and it worked lol.

Amazing list, good job