Hearthpwn

Not quite, almost all the cards you mentioned are simply too slow to see play right now. 5+ mana to remove ONE thing is just awful. Hell, Rogue has 4 mana Assassinate but it wasn't used in any deck ever since core set. Same with Twisting Nether, 8 mana to stale the game and live for one more turn (or maybe not, since heavy burn from hand is everywhere these days) is so much 2017...

The only decent card on your list is Hysteria, but for 4 mana it's not as good as it used to be in Warlock (however, Priest is a different story). On top of that, many of these cards will soon rotate.

No really, look at current Warlock's matchups against aggresive standard decks. His removals are mostly damage-based and have rather limited reach (usually 1-3 single target damage), so big dudes are problematic. On top of that, his healing potential is based on enemy minions, so without targets, he's pretty much dead on arrival. That's why true Control Lock wasn't a thing for about 2-3 years.

I would say no and no, but that's just my gut, so I might be wrong.

Devoured minions are certainly not dead until Maw's deathrattle triggers, so the first part seems rather obvious. But even when it does, I don't think deathrattles will go off as it would be very awkward to summon minions or deal damage... from his belly :).

it seems we are going to get MurLock this expansion :). But jokes aside, it looks like meme. For now at least.

It's like Soulciologist Malicia but much worse since the number of minions depends on the enemy board and you can't focus Imps on single target. Won't see play unless there's more synergy with this card.

Quote from emicampo>>

If its like you said then you not even take out the achievement in the first place, those things in an AAA company gets double checked, triple checked, quadruple checked. You dont offer a functionality if you dont know how to code it. And it top of that if you offer something you run debugg process before you implement on the runnng version.

Sure, and that's why AAA games from AAA companies don't have bugs at all these days :). If you've ever been a game developer, you should know that it's almost impossible to get rid of all the bugs before launch, especially in live-service games like HS.

And i dont know how you receive that amount of vote up, people here are all blizz fanboys?? Defending a company who shits on you not even caring in the most simple things they offer abd hidden behind ridiculous excuses??

Thye not got time? they are lizards who only care for the cash grab mechanics, the other stuff they dont care

Its amazes me how they even get people who defends them, an army of brainless monkeys

You get it wrong, I'm not defending Blizzard or its policies, I'm just explaining how it all looks like from a developer perspective and how difficult it is to get things right sometimes.

Well, I am programmer and I can tell you, that most of the time it's not that easy. Sometimes bugs are caused by very small oversights, such as the lack of a comma or minus sign in a single line of code (among thousands), but sometimes issues lie much deeper, in a flawed (limited) design from years ago, when the developers weren't even aware that some mechanics would be added to the game in the future. Sometimes you have to rewrite an entire system to fix one little thing, which is quite difficult, especially if you didn't design it yourself, but developers before you who don't work there anymore.

Quote from YourPersonalGuru >>

BTW: I'm pretty sure that Rise of shadows introduced a solid Zoolock (Viber almost won worlds with it). And post Edwin nerf in Darkmoon Faire was maybe a tier 2 (just what I remember at least)

In the final VS report for RoS, Warlock was the least popular class in the meta (2,51% play rate), with only one "viable" deck (zoo) and it was placed at the bottom of T3.

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-136/

On the other hand, at the end of DF, zoo was considered a high T2, so it wasn't too bad.

https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-191/

Quote from YourPersonalGuru>>

Question is if they should continue with the anti-control/salt-miner path at all?

I sincerely doubt they will. Judging by the last expansion, fel is their new idea for Warlock development. It kinda sucks so far, but we'll see.

I kind of miss Zoo :)

And I don't, because I think zoo is one of the most boring and redundant decks in Hearthstone today. Paladin is better at buffing hand, Druid is better at buffing board, Hunter, Shaman, Demon Hunter and Warrior are better at SMORCing. It does a little bit of everything, but it's also outclassed by everything... I don't even remember the last time zoo was a T1 deck.

Lol? Warlock has literally one playable deck in standard (Handlock) and it only works thanks to The Demon Seed, Flesh Giant and Raise Dead. After Runed Mithril Rod has beed nerfed twice (which eventually made the card pretty dead), Warlock has no access to true mana cheating, only some minions with built-in, conditional discounts.  On top of that, this year's rotation will kill the deck, probably alongside the whole class.

Sure, that's why Owl Lock and Fatigue Lock, according to HSReplays, are T4 decks with a 45% and 40% win rate after the nerf?

https://hsreplay.net/meta/

Fatigue Lock is based on Rod too, so if Rod is too slow for Owl Lock now, so is for Fatigue Lock.

Quote from AngusEef >>

 Depends on the Warlock. You have Quest, Owl and Fatigue.

 It doesn't, because we talk here about Owl Lock.

Quote from FortyDust >>

Quote from Papocopelo >>

Destroying both weapons without discounting anytime its probably a 99% wr, the issue is to have those weapon removals in time

 If the Warlock knows what they are doing, they play Rod + Tap + Backfire in the same turn, so good luck with that.

But that's 9 mana and in most cases Warlock can't afford to wait that long, because his survival tools are rather limited. Hell, in some games he can be dead at this point.

It's not my favourite expansion, but aside from the ever-growing polarity of matchups, I definitely like it. We have multiple playable classes in standard and many viable decks, but none of them dominate the rest. There's less hyper aggro, control is finally back on the menu, combo is beatable.