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A menacing creature with no requirements, but with a punishing drawback.
He will cancel card draws cause by any effect (including Ysera), not just your turn's card.
He will not stop fatigue.
Edit: changed name from Zombie Giant to Zombie Titan, since Giants in hearthstone are a specific cycle.
20
Aggro always seem to be a thing that works, that's the only constant with Hearthstone.
I don't mind really, but it got me thinking. Midrange, control and combo have times when they are completely trash and you would be a fool if you played one of them during their dip, but never aggro. No matter how good of control cards Blizz release aggro, like life, finds a way. Even during the dominant cubelock era aggro still did at the very least okay.
What is it that makes aggro so fantastic in this game compared to other card games? Sure, aggro works there, but it's rarely as strong and reliable all of the time as it's on Hearthstone.
here's a few reasons. ANd there's a Summary at the bottom. Just look for the Bolded letters if you don't want to read an essay.
1. The attacker has the priority choice of target. This makes it much more viable to focus on tempo as you can more easily tear down opposing minions or ignore them to hit the face. The simple fact that if I send a 8/1 out against you and can be sure it hits your Lich King or your face and not your Silver Hand Recruit is a big factor in making actually fighting aggressively worthwhile.
2. The old triangle never really works out properly here. In MTG, the original balance triangle was Aggro -> Control -> Combo -> Aggro.
(yes note that 'Midrange' isn't in the original trilogy.)
Thus the original idea is that Combo decks are meant to keep Aggro at bay. But true combo decks have a tendency to tear EVERYTHING up outside of the most greediest on Control. The combo decks we allow nowadays are more 'control-combo' that drag the game out rather than rush through their cards. They honestly fit more of the Control mindset than the Combo mindset (thus they die to fast aggro).
In any case, this means we don't really allow many decks that reliably kill Aggro. When we do they tend to result in cries of "OMG NERF!"
3. The ladder demands speed.
Someone a long time ago calculated that it's faster to play an aggro deck that loses a lot than a higher winning control deck. The simple raw number of games you can run through makes it the better choice. Also when you're playing hundreds of games at a time you want your deck simple so you don't burn out.
Thus even when aggro doesn't win well, you're best off playing it until the upper legend or tournaments when every game counts.
4. aggro is a newbie killer.
Aggro was dead in 2015. Patron Warrior killed EVERYTHING that wasn't Handlock or Fatigue Warrior. There really wasn't a point to playing any other deck competitively at that time.
What were the forums complaining about? Zoo. Tempo Mage. Secret paladin (though that was a tempo deck. See #3). Decks that couldn't hold a candle to Patron. Why? Because most players don't play well enough to reach that competitive level where Patron slaughtered all.
Aggro is VERY good at killing bad decks. It's also very good at killing bad players that would rather rant than play decks that can deal with aggro or play in a way that lets them deal with it. Over 95% of the player base plays badly (not an exaggerations. you REALLY get a distorted view of the 'average player' when you hang around forums like these and just watch key streamers). This makes aggro always viable as it always has easy targets to hit.
5. We keep changing what 'aggro' is.
This time last year, aggro decks relied on Bonemare as a key card.
That line should make no #*$()#$#) sense.
Bonemare was a 7 mana card. Why, in all that is good and right are we declaring a 7 mana card a good AGGRO TOOL!? And it wasn't even a finisher most of the time!
Seriously, go find some 2014 face hunter decks or click on the link I'm providing right here for an example. Aggro, when not held back, kills you by turn 5. THAT was why we made things like the Face Song back then.
The 'aggro decks' that we are seeing nowadays aren't what aggro used to be. They are tempo decks. Decks that rely on constantly threatening you from turn 1 to turn 20. They sacrifice absolute aggression for staying power but still having the ability to end games quick if the opponent can't hold them. That's why 'aggro' decks either have that constant 'reload' where wiping the board means nothing or are 'sticky' where you can't seem to ever remove EVERYTHING and grab the board from them. They are also more than willing to fight for the board if it means more damage next turn.
Old Paladin is a lot slower than old style aggro decks. Odd Rogue is probably the closest thing and only the fastest versions.
The community has a habit of marking whatever the fastest deck at the time as 'the aggro deck'. It's due to every game having a 'beatdown' or 'aggressive' opponent and a defensive or 'control' opponent, and that's determined by who's the faster deck. When it's Shudderwock Shaman vs Hadronox Druid, the Druid will be the 'aggro' deck. And teh Shaman, if they lose, will come to the forums complaining about 'aggro never going away'.
TL:DR summary:
Aggro has a slight advantage due to the nature of the game from the getgo.
Decks that naturally eat aggro in other games don't balance well here, thus our balance triangle is messed up.
Even when aggro is weak, you will want to use it to rank up faster with it in the ladder,
Even when the meta makes aggro worthless despite all of that, it still makes a great newbie and bad deck killer, thus most players will still see it as a problem
And when the meta is so absolutely lobsided against aggro thus that, despite ALL OF THE ABOVE, aggro still fails, we simply move the goalposts and name the current fastest deck 'the aggro deck' even if it wasn't considered aggro before.
And that is why aggro stays around.
5
Quote from heyimapanda >>So King twoggle said DONT TOUCH ANYTHING. Get it? So literally you just end turn from the start and eventually you win by fatigue. I feel dumb after losing to this boss.
But didn't the other guy just say he can drop a 7/7 on turn 4? That will for sure kill you before you fatigue him and if you play something to kill it, the secrets will start popping.
9
The reason Jade Druid deserved nerfs, rather than say, ramp druid, which sadly got hit as well, is that the mechanic was life sucking terrible to play against. Playing against rakazakus priest is pretty fun, so no nerf is needed there. If any priest deck needs nerfing it is big priest, and it has nothing to do with winrates, as percentage wise, highlander priest is superior - It isn't so blatantly unfair and soul crushing for the opponent as big priest and it's turn 4/turn 5 BS. Hearthstone is supposed to be fun for both players in a match.
3
Seriously this is ridicules...
http://metastats.net/deck/75309169-03d5-4935-80d4-ea2340a8a221/last4/
70% win rate ????
That's for one specific player.
3
Quote from Biohazard_Q8 >>What you posted is not about winrate but about class frequency. The explanation for that is rogue is the most difficult class to play. Most players are turned off by it. That's why you rarely see it on ladder. Makes me proud that it's my main.
about the class's viability, it has always been legend viable. The only time it fell to tier 3 was during TGT. I honestly have no idea why do you think it sucks.
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"Hearthstone hits a new low on mobile. Hearthstone marked its lowest point since releasing on both Android and iOS smartphones. Revenue is down significantly year-over-year and month-over-month. Recent gameplay decisions have been unpopular with the Hearthstone community, and the result has been a sharp decrease in conversion on mobile. Desktop revenue is also down."
https://www.superdataresearch.com/us-digital-games-market/
Cough *Small-Time Buccaneer* cough.
Edit: Fixed link.
5
Best card ever released. turn 3200 Dust into infinity dust xD
so funny that echo giant/freez amage has now a chance vs controll warrior and controll priest.
This card will be played in ANY deck, cause its just awesome. People who dont believe this, doesnt read the card correctly:
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Quote from DragonConsort >>Man above gets it. This thread is lol though. However if anyone takes the time and thinks of the cards (not just, oh this is what I see all the time), of all the classes there are many devastating combos out there. So something as simple as 14 damage combo for 9 mana, too strong, well a ton of things are too strong then.
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Thought? Too much potential to be abused? Not fun?
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Not flashy, but is extremely good. It's at pre-nerf Fiery War Axe level of power in a deck w/ couple rush minions. The deck does not have to be build around rush...just couple rush minions and this will be enough to control the early game.
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Insane in class like Warlock or Druid, but for Hunter? It's unplayable.
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My Quest Mage is at 72% (37-14) win-rate against all Warlocks since the expansion release.
2
It's perfectly possible, if not likely, for Blizzard to manipulate the match-making system to make players more addictive to the game.
Given millions of match data Blizzard gathered over years, Blizzard could have discovered a consistent player behavior pattern and then shape the match-making system to exploit the pattern. This is nothing new. For example, in 2014, Facebook face government probe for an experiment to control user's emotions with news feed and publicly apologized later.
Though, unfortunately, without statistically significant sample, you never know.
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LOL. I like how people are focusing on Gladiator's Longbow. It's like once you play a bad card in a deck, the whole turn 4 10/10, 2 5/5 and 1/2 on board is suddenly fine or something.
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I beat it with 2 double health treasure (200 health hero) and Rod of Roasting =/.
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Don't do anything (not even hero power) until you have enough mana to deal with bunch of 3/3 or opponent has 7/7 and you can deal damage to it. Otherwise, just wait until fatigue. It's actually one of the few less RNG dependent easy boss.
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For the 9-mana cost, you have to cast at least 2, preferably 3 or more 5 or mana spells to get any value out of this. That makes the card extremely hard to use even with Deck of Wonders.