Hearthpwn

Hello guys,

My name is Fon. I used to play Hearthstone ranked in its earliest days. Most people knew me thanks to my dedication to Handlock and "weird" techs like the 6 drop cow with taunt, and ooze. My best cred is top 200 only Handlock.

Due to life punching me in the face harder than aggro Rexxar, I had to quit Hearthstone. Since last week I come back to Hearthstone. However, the game has grown to be something completely different:

1. Many game modes. I'm lost. Mostly grinding arena now since it's what I know. But playing the same guy twice makes me think. Is the player base of Arena shrinking?
2. I like Ranked/Standard. However, I'm not sure I would spend much on this. Pokemon TCG is gentle to returning players. I could buy 2 sets of League Battle Decks to come back to the game with an S Tier deck.
3. Decks and strategies are also super scary to me. If the barrier to get "moderately good" at the game is high, I'd rather not come back to Ranked.
4. Open to other game modes. As long as they don't ask me to grind through stuffs. I have gone past that age...

Have a good day.

Please upvote the deck so it will become the deck of the week guys.

Quote from Khennen »

Quote from Azutael »

I have doubts that you would gain much more insight from coaching, that you couldn't just get from watching high skilled players.

Depends on how you yourself learn the best I suppose, I for one think it would be a waste for me personally.

I'm totally agree with you, if you're a smart guy you will get a lot just by watching high skilled players. I think if you need help to progress since you are at an intermediate level, the best option is finding someone as good as you or better and play regularly with him, pointing each other mistakes and way to improve your plays, the more ppl you play with and get feedback the better you will play. I would never pay a coaching session because it's a no-guarantee and I don't want to spend money for that but if you have nothing better to buy than HS coaching session, have fun.

Yeah I confirmed this. It worked wonder for me (when I was training in other card games tho, not hearthstone, because we don't have spectator mode). We were constanstly having a third person to look at the game from a complete fresh point of view, for the sake of pointing out moves that even the 2-in-game players didn't recognize.

How can you identify them?

Are you ready to ride the train of BM?

Quote from DhiKhey »

Current problem with Jarraxus is the fact that resetting hp to 15 won't help you with all those combos like Leeroy + shadowstep/FoN+ savage roar/mage's frostbolt+ ice lances. 

It's hard to blatantly say it like that. Of course if you are facing these bursts next turn, and you have the magic of swapping your Jaraxxus for another card, which card will you take instead then? And what are your 29 other cards doing if they can't slow down the advance of your opponent? 

Last season I played Jarr very often and iirc I have won multiple games because my opponents always want to burn me while I'm behind taunts, but Jarr simply says no.

Good because people don't see it coming from a zoo deck.

Paladin is my worst matchup lol. My winrate vs paladin is hella low according to my tracker. However I do remember there is a pattern that works well against them: you need to have some extra  strong drops with more than 4 hp, and they arent taunt. The reason is because truesilver cant kill it, and TBK is dead vs them. Sylva and Cairne are great fit here.

Yeah the definition of being a good streamer needs to be revised. It depends on what you are expecting/wanting to see. If you want to become a perfectionist at playing etablished decks, Dog, Forsen... are good for you to learn about mulligan, decision making etc. If you want to be ahead of the meta with new decks or tech, these above streamers aren't suited anymore (not completely, but to a certain extent).

Interaction with viewers is something that I personally don't take seriously when I evaluate streamers. Some are overly nice and want to shout to all followers, while some are jerk who don't care about that. What can you learn from that? Nothing, and no harm anyway.

Reynad is good and is known because of his deck making skill. His decks are widely considered as effective for laddering/tournament. As in tournament his result is a bit flawed though, but I'm pretty sure we prefer to listen to his LeaXAmsterday experience anyway.

OP is somewhat correct and somewhat not. Cutting owl is (i believe) ok cuz freeze mage isnt popular in ladder. But cutting it also means you have to use your taunt givers earlier (only 1 taunt instead of 2), and you rely more on other drops. Your deck also loses tempo for not having that owl watcher play.

Quote from LegacymtgsalvationUser68356 »

Miracle rogue is still probably the best deck in the meta. To my knowledge, it doesn't consistently lose against much of anything (though you're right, ramp druid does do well against it). But the meta has been weird this season. As a zoo player, I've found it extremely difficult to advance because of the insane saturation of warrior control, miracle rogue, handlock and freeze mage,

That said: I don't have the dust (oddly enough), to craft the 7 or so rares in it, but face hunter seems extremely well suited to the meta. It matches up decently against zoo, races most other face aggro decks, almost auto-wins against freeze mage, and can be very effective versus handlock. I would say the other most viable deck is Warrior Control, since you say you're struggling against aggro. That deck tends to just win versus aggro, especially if you can pull a fiery war axe.

Actually anyone who want to ladder with warrior control is got guts. Warrior control atm doesn't have any great matchup, save freeze mage and shockadin. And they aren't very popular in ladder.

Quote from Banquetto »

Quote from Zealot1906 »

They are probably streaming that is why the moves took so long.  If you are getting to rank 2-3 each season you are a good player just not elite.  

Indeed. I'd love to see a precise breakdown but I'd guess rank 2-3 repeatedly would put you in maybe the top 1% of Hearthstone players?

There's so many ways to explain why top players take so long to make a (obvious) play: they are evaluating between each possibility to understand which choice is better (play around something, and not to play around something judging by the way and duration my opponent takes to execute their previous move), what to do next during the next few turns (I could foresee 1 turn ahead tbh, while top players like Strifecro could do that 3 turns ahead, back when we were at the watcher druid meta, according to his interview). Of course, you can also gain an upper advantage if you can identify what style of players you are playing as well.

I was rank 152 by the end of last season. I believe if you could do at least 1 out of these indications regularly, you will certainly improve as well. One thing to note: don't play one dimension decks (deck that has only 1 obvious play per turn), because these decks will make your plays very linear and that helps your opponent counter your play with ease.

Quote from MarcoNecroX »

 I have now played until rank 4 with a similar deck and have about 70% win rate now. I might potentially hit legend, however, playing this deck is exhausting, so I usually play only about 0-4 games a day.

Thoughtsteal is a GREAT card. You will love it when playing against heavy control decks, like p2w warrior or freeze mage. Against these, it is very likely that you have nothing to do on turn 3 (unless you got blademaster+CoH). The bad outcomes are VERY rare, these being shield slam and ice lance respectively. However, you can get amazing stuff such as fireball, gorehowl, ice block, slam, etc. etc. Against fast decks you will most likely not use it early, but it's still a good re-fill later.

However I don't understand why this decklist doesn't run The Black Knight . I see almost no way how this deck can win against Handlocks, for example. This card is very important, it is also fairly decent against Zoo, and very good against ramp druid. Yes, this card is NOT useful against Miracle, but neither is Cabal. Having 1 Thoughtsteal and 1 The Black Knight is more convenient than two thoughsteal, considering thoughtsteal is considerably worse than BK against Miracle rogue.

 

EDIT: I also want to point out that this deck is extremely newbie un-friendly. You need to:a) Know your opponents deck (aka know the meta)
 b) Keep track of all cards that have been played. Why? This deck reaches fatigue point fairly regularly. So you need to know exactly what cards your opponent has so you can play accordingly.
 c) Know when to go aggressive/all-in: this is a defensive deck (and class). But sometimes you need to just burn face with spells and win before you get beaten. This is one of the two ways you beat miracle rogue - if you see they haven't drawn into leeroy combo, you might want to take a chance before it's too late.
 d) Know when to heal. This is probably one of the most tricky, and the variables are too many. An example is staying above 14 health before druid's turn 9, +(x+2) per every enemy minion, or staying above 18-26 hp against miracle rogue on turns 8 and after, etc. etc. Sometimes it requires doing less effective plays in order to heal more.

Tbh when you play against handlock as priest you need to be super aggressive and put on board every minion you have, even if it's an Auchenai or a Cleric. You go face and pray that handlock doesn't have Shadowflame. Save Smite for turn 10 Velen Blast Smite (14 dmg) if you can. Experienced Handlock can stop tapping when they reach 15, but squeezing extra damage before turn 10 is easy with Auchenai/Holy Fire/Nova. Not to mention thoughtsteal can be really nice if you get Siphon/Soulfire/Hellfire.

To beat miracle as priest you need to do 3 things: clear all minions they put on board, stay above Leeroy SS SS range, and force them to burn reach spells on your minions.

Vs druid you rely heavily on Thoughtsteal. Because druid is a deck that has near 0 dead cards, every card you steal from them is usable.

Quote from Nuba »

Hello everybody.

So I have been thinking in the last 3 seasons (1, 2 and this one: 3) that the number of people achieving legendary rank is just absurd. Dont take me bad, but anyone who actually tries for legendary rank gets it. Usually I see the real "tryhard" players getting it in the first 20 days or so, then I start to see everybody getting legendary rank, mostly because the competition between ranks 5->1 goes down the pipe in the last 10 days of season.

I think the game would be more competitive if there were less days of season, or perhaps there was no legendary rank but leagues like in SC2.

I know the "casual" feeling of the game would go away, but it would make the game more competitive, always having a rating (and being able to see it) is better than having ranks. Maybe give extra prizes to the top 1%(or 0.5%) players or something would be better than having legendary status currently.

Isn't that people who pursue higher fame should just enter tournaments and win some to be known, then enter a team with sponsor? What's the point of reorganizing the rank between rank 1 and rank 2000 legend, when that title will never be treated equally as an invite to Dreamhack series?

Tl;dr, my point is: if people want to prove their skill, feel free to enter tournaments and fill up their cred, instead of grinding the ladder with average people and think "im good".

The best option for OP is to enter ranked games and lose to some shamans that play Violet Teachers.

Tldr if you still don't get what is going on, 1/1 isn't big but it's a threat, whether with Tongue or Argus. And your Rockbiter on Feral to kill an Azure Drake is a very awful play.