Hearthpwn

You can see the interview here: https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/9242/hong-kong-player-blitzchung-calls-for-liberation-of-his-country-in-post-game-interview

Though it is in Chinese.  Basically, he said "Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times."  They even fired the casters who happened to be in the shot as well.

For making comments calling for the liberation of Hong Kong from Chinese oppression, Blitzchung has been kicked out of grandmasters, will receive none of his winnings and is banned from competitive, pro play for the next year.  Do you think this is a fair decision from Blizzard?  Should they be banning pro players for reasons such as this?

https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23179289/

If your original deck can't stand up against the top meta decks, then your "original idea" is just bad.  If it can stand up to those decks, then why are you complaining?

The nerfs were probably fine.  Raiding party is basically too bad to be played in any serious tempo rogue deck now.  4 mana to maybe be able to draw 3 cards is just too bad.  Prep nerf probably won't be super influential at least for now in tempo rogue, since the only spells that cost more than 2 are Myra's and Raiding Party.  Raiding Party probably won't be played anymore and Myra's will still be strong at 3 mana, just probably not quite as insanely powerful.

Tempo rogue to start with isn't really even that oppressive and at the moment its winrate puts it quite squarely in the range of a tier 2 deck.  It doesn't need to be nerfed into oblivion, just adjusted in a few minor ways as it was.  Guess we'll see once they go live, though.

Mainly the eggs are too slow against anything aggro, playing out a 5 mana card that does literally nothing and has zero attack just isn't good enough most of the time.  It's also quite weak against sap and needs something else to help activate it (a magnetic, buff, etc) while mechanical whelp can turn into a 7/7 just by trading on its own.  The eggs are definitely good in a matchup against a slower deck like control warrior, but this deck is already good enough against control warrior that we want to build it so that it is more effective against its poorer match-ups, and the eggs do nothing to help us beat rogue or mech hunter.

And yeah, Rhyssa isn't key to the deck, but she sure can be nice when you can manage to get a double revive on an annoy-o-tron/zillax, or even doubling never surrender.  She usually ends up just being a must kill card from the opponent at the least, which means they can't ignore her and just go face.  Which is always nice.

Quote from WeyounsLastClone >>

Quote from StarbuckTheDeer >>

It is most definitely one of the strongest cards in the game at the moment, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem.  Everyone has access to it, and since it can be played in pretty much any deck, it doesn't do anything to promote a single archetype above all others (ie Patches only worked only in pirate decks, so gave rogue and warrior a big advantage over other decks).  Since everyone has access to it, it kind of balances things out.

 While not as annoying as Pirate-decks, Zilliax does clearly benefit certain decks (Mech-hunter, Warrior Boom decks next to being already ridiculously beneficial in any deck. 

 Well sure, but there aren't really any dominant mech decks at the moment.  Mech Hunter is tier 2 and mech paladin is probably tier 3 if not tier 4

I've been playing mech paladin a lot recently and made it to legend last month using the list that Atramentar suggested above.  It's a good list and the secret package is definitely a strong way of dealing with aggro, especially when you have the strong early game secret cards like mysterious blade and sunreaver.

The issue though is that the mech paladin lists haven't really been refined anymore, since there aren't any popular streamers or high level players working on improving the deck and getting those improvements noticed by lower ranked players who pull their decklists from hsreplay.

The changes I went with the deck was to remove both of the aldors since they are just bad, 1 consecration since token druid and zoo are pretty uncommon now and 1 never surrender! since this deck doesn't tend to go wide on the board all too often, decreasing the usefulness of this particular secret.

Instead, I replaced them with vicious scalehide and blessing of might.  This deck is still going to be highly favored against things like control warrior, but these two cards in particular seem to significantly improve the matchup versus aggro.  Scalehide can be early removal and healing, or midgame healing/removal with blessing of might or blessing of kings.  It also improves the consistency of Countess Ashmore's draw by adding more lifesteal and rush minions.  Blessing of might is also quite versatile, adding an extra 3 damage to zillax's healing or giving you some cheap damage to help push for lethal.

In regards to those 3 legendaries you mentioned that you are missing, you don't necessarily need to replace them.  Ooze should work in place of Harrison, you can replace Rhyssa with a bronze gatekeeper, and Countess Ashmore... is a pretty strong card in the deck for later game refill, but could potentially just be replaced by a bronze gatekeeper or another draw card like Lay on Hands as you suggested earlier.  Additionally like Atramentar said, you could use a spellbreaker too.  Silence works well against a big Edwin or against a magnetized mech from mech hunter.

(https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1274745-mech-paladin here's a link to my deck list.  I'll be adding some more info once I'm back home next week and can start recording statistics for my games again.)

It is most definitely one of the strongest cards in the game at the moment, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem.  Everyone has access to it, and since it can be played in pretty much any deck, it doesn't do anything to promote a single archetype above all others (ie Patches only worked only in pirate decks, so gave rogue and warrior a big advantage over other decks).  Since everyone has access to it, it kind of balances things out.

The other thing to consider is that the standard meta is currently very light on anti-aggro tools, so without having zillax available, you can pretty much through most midrange strategies out of the window.  They'd just be too slow and not have enough tools to have any chance against the already overpowered aggro decks floating around, like tempo rogue.  I could only imagine a nerf to this card being warranted if aggro decks had almost zero chance of competing, and given that rogue is nearly 30% of the meta right now, that's obviously not the case.

If you're going to be building a budget mech paladin deck, I'd strongly suggest considering vicious scalehide and blessing of might.  Extra healing and board clearing ability works quite well against a lot of decks, especially aggro.  I even run those cards in my main mech paladin deck.

The main fear I have with nerfing dr boom is that with him being weaker, rogue won't really have anything left to contest it.  I don't really want to see a meta where rogue is more than half the decks out there because it doesn't have a reasonable counter left.  This would necessitate a nerf to rogue as well, though I suppose that wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.  I'm just a little cautious about nerfing too many cards and shifting the meta too much, since it's pretty close to the best it's been in a long time, at least in my opinion.

Quote from Litekerosene >>

75% of games are either Warrior, Mech Hunter, or Rogue. The rest are token druids and priest. I have done the 20-5 grind 3 times since rise of shadows, and this is the case. People are saying zoolock is a thing... Not really, Mech paladin I see once every 35 games, I see a shaman probably 1 every 50. But not using my stats it sure feels like every game in these ranks is Warrior or Rogue.

 I wish I could go up against warrior and rogue most of the time, both of those decks are fairly weak against the list I'm currently running.  I've been seeing a lot of weird druid decks (heal druid, mech druid) as well as lots of zoolock and shaman decks (all 3 of the main archetypes).  But that may be because I've been playing at rank 5, lots more people experimenting and messing around at that rank than you'd find in the grind up to rank 5.

I quite enjoy the current state of standard meta in the game.  You've got a good combination of control decks, aggro decks and midrange decks.  The only thing missing really are combo decks, since the two that come to mind (holy wrath paladin and nomi priest) are somewhat underwhelming in their performance so far.  It seems odd to suggest that there are only midrange game plans currently available.

There are plenty of strong, playable decks in the meta currently that don't involve mechs.  The most played and arguably strongest deck in the game right now, tempo rogue, doesn't even run a single mech.  Bomb warrior is rarely even played now, so it seems like an odd deck to single out for a nerf.  It's hard to argue that Dr Boom is a very powerful card, but there isn't really a whole lot of reason to nerf a deck which isn't shaping the meta, isn't commonly played and isn't on the whole all that powerful.

Aggro tends to be most common at lower ranks since most decks are poorly constructed or poorly piloted, making it easy for aggro to take advantage.  It's also a lot faster to rank up, since your games will be 1/3rd or 1/4th of the time length.

But honestly, this meta isn't all aggro.  First to look at legend: Of the top 10 decks in popularity over the past week there are 3 aggro decks (tempo rogue, mech hunter and token druid).  These decks are 36.86% of decks.  Of the other 7 non-aggro decks (control warrior, Khadgar mage, bomb warrior, big shaman, nomi priest, midrange hunter and control shaman).  These decks are 38.31% of the meta.  That makes it pretty evenly represented between aggro and control at higher levels of play.

rank 5: There are 4 aggro decks (zoo deck moves up to the top 10 decks) and 6 non-aggro decks in the top 10.  Aggro decks are 36.16% of the decks played while non-aggro are 32.46% of decks.  Again, aggro decks and non-aggro decks are nearly equally represented.

At lower levels, token druid and zoo warlock are a bit more popular, meaning that aggro's percentages are probably a little higher than control numbers.  But to say that there aren't a fair number of control decks is incorrect, unless you're playing in low ranks.  If that's the case, just beat the aggro decks and quickly rank yourself up to 5 where there are a lot more people playing non-aggro decks.

You need a net of 24 wins to get to legend from where you are now.  If you can keep up a winrate of 60%, after 100 games you will have a net of 20 wins (60/40).  Improve your winrate slightly or play an extra 10 games and you should make it to legend.

It is going to be best to play a single deck, because you get better at understanding which cards are most important in which matchups and therefore improving your mulligan, as well as how to play against the other various decks in the meta.  The better you are at a deck, the better your win rate will be.

I'd suggest you look at some decks on hsreplay, find the one that looks best and just stick to it.  Don't tech your deck at all really, it would most likely just reduce your win rate since most decisions you might make would be on too small of a sample size for there to be any reasonable basis for deciding when a tech card is needed.  Just keep playing and you should have no problem reaching legend, mech hunter is definitely a good enough deck for it. And heck, last month I made legend with mech paladin, which hsreplay says is tier 3 with a 47.5% win rate, so you can get up there with pretty much any deck if you know how to play it well.