Dean Ayala on Shudderwock: Revisiting the Topic Early Next Week
Dean Ayala tweeted this evening that the team is going to be looking into Shudderwock feedback early next week.
How do you feel about Shudderwock? I can definitely agree with the animations being a bit on the long side and would definitely at least appreciate a less excruciating death.
Quote from Dean AyalaWe’ll be reading more feedback over the weekend and will revisit the Shudderwock topic early next week. Checking out both animation timings and feedback on the deck playstyle itself. Let us know what you think and enjoy Witchwood!
No problem with the card, but please decrease the animation time
Nerf is not needed. Shaman is 42% win rate as a class. Class #9, still the worst for the last year. Nerf Shudderwock, then Shaman is not played, because the other cards are not competitive yet. Look at the numbers on HSRep..y <<not promoting, this site is the best. Heck, when Quest Rogue was nerfed, at least Rogue had other decks that were competitive. Shaman does not. The 90% winrates were first 1/2 a day when no one expected Shaman to be any good, since Shaman has sucked for a year now. I don't have the card , nor have I played the class, so I'm not hoping it is saved for my benefit, but dang, some people have Shaman as their favorite class, and they have been suffering long enough. Just fix the animation, and be able to concede before it ends.
Priest players had to wait since beta for their favourite class to become relevant...i don't see why Shaman players are special and should be catered to differently.
I agree with you mr
Why are people writing "fixes" to a nonexisting problem, shodderwock is actually kind of weak and needs 10 mana to complete. Sure if you manage to stay alive until turn 10 and have played a Lifedrinker and Saronite Chain Gang Murmuring Elemental into Grumble, Worldshaker you can win the turn after you play Shudderwock
It´s slow and alot of conditions you have to fullfill....as many have pointed out, have a look at Cubelock instead. (but sure do something about the animationspeed)
Most Cubelocks actually have more conditions to fill in order to win...and those conditions need to be met in a specific order.
So they need to have Skull of the Man'ari and Doomguard on hand...or Possessed Lackey and Doomguard in the deck + a way to destroy the Possessed Lackey before it gets silenced.
and of course have a Carnivorous Cube and a Dark Pact/Greater Amethyst Spellstone to triple them and finish you in 3 turns...meaning turn 9 (you can't get the initial doomguard down before turn 6)
They also need to play 0 other demons in their deck (in order to guarantee the pull from the Possessed Lackey....and they need to stay alive when the cards in their deck ( 2 x Hellfire 2x Kobold Librarian ) and tapping (2 hp per use) usually costs them half their life total...if not more.What are the Shudderwock requirements?...play battlecry cards...avoid elementals if you want guaranteed pulls...and play shudderwock. Best case scenario for the Shaman...turn 10 win...without any way for the opponent to avoid defeat.
There is no way to misplay the setup nor is there a way to punish it by design..all you do is focus on staying alive until Shudderwock arrives.
Cube lock wins many many games just by playing early giants/dragons, smashing face with them and then wrapping things up with Hellfires and Doomguards from hand.
As for Shudderwock I kinda see it like Quest Rogue, it might get nerfed/changed because it is painful to play against, not for power level reasons.
I like the card.. my hope is that if something gets changed it's some other part of the combo kill.
I like Shudderwock too...but it needs to be changed.
A way to do it would be this:
A) Have it respect the sequence of battlecries it is copying. That would mean that you would have to play Saronite Gang before Grumble if you want a copy of Shudderwock to be returned to your hand. Forces staggered plays instead of dumping cards
B) Change Lifedrinker text to "Deal 3 damage to a target.Restore 3 Health to your hero" . Makes Shudderwock target randomly every time it triggers the Lifedrinker battlecry.
C)Have it cast the battlecries only if it is still on the board. If Shudderwock kills itself (only way to achieve this is by casting the Lifedrinker battlecry on itself twice) its battlecry is disrupted (like Yogg)
(My train of thought behind this is that Shudder Shaman is supposed to be a meme deck...so i looked to introduce RNG to the finisher)
A) might make the deck stronger....but it introduces points were the player can "misplay".
B) 4 mana.. 2/2 "deal 2 damage/heal 2 health to your hero" is a more balanced version of the lifedrinker.
You "pay" 1/1 for 2 hp healed to your hero as opposed to Fire Plume Phoenix
C) Should be "active" by default on every card that has battlecries with multiple casts not just Yogg (eg. Tess, Shudderwock).
The only people who seem to be asking for a nerf are control players who don't want to have any highly unfavourable matchups, even though ANY aggro deck crushes Shudderwock.
Seriously, you can't just expect your favourite playstyle to be good in every matchup, especially given the prevalence of control decks in KnC.
The "but you can't tell us to play aggro if we want to win against this deck" argument just isn't valid, especially considering that it's not even a hard counter to, say, control Warlock, with winrates under 70% against that type of deck.
Nerf aggro and Cubelock before you nerf Shudderwock.
Its a combo deck as much as cubelock is a combo deck....which it is not.
Combo decks require the player to draw through (some of) their deck, while retaining in their hand combo pieces...thus sacrificing hand space and having to manage defence while they collect the combo pieces...which are then played in a specific sequence (eg. Sorcerer's Apprenticex2 into Molten Reflectionx2 into <extra turn> into Archmage Antonidas)
Shudder Shamman can throw everything on the board whenever they have enough mana, they DO NOT have to sacrifice hand space and thus have no need to stutter plays or sacrifice cards in order to not overdraw...just throw whatever part of the "combo" costs as much as your available mana and eventually drop Shudderwock for the OTK finish...
It is impossible to take anyones opinion seriously when they don't even know what kind of deck they are talking about....let alone when it comes attached with a rant about Cubelock (which is off topic)...while Aggro Paladin doesn't seem to bother you at all...no matter that it has a similar win % to Cubelock in multiple flavours (odd,even,dude).
If anything , the whole rant, and all those like it, point towards an aggro player that hangs with other aggro players that refuse to spec appropriately in order to beat Cubelock. One that has no opinion on Shudderwock - and nothing to offer to the discussion- but saw that the light was on and decided to drop by and complaint about Cubelock.
First let me apologise for taking out on you the frustration that should have been pointed at a general direction. That being said...numbers don't lie and i will show you that your issues with Cubelock are based purely on personal preference and nothing more.
About Shudderwock:
I'm aware of how the Shudderwock Shaman works...Its a combo deck only if you use the broadest of definitions "it requires the player to play X card before Y to win" (with X not even being on the same turn as Y)....and its too easy to pull off.
The only thing slowing you down is bad draws (eg. Shudderwock or Grumble being at the bottom of your deck / having 2 hex, 2 healing rain in hand by turn 5 etc etc).
That and being too greedy with the choices they make for the rest of the deck is what makes Shudderwock players having difficulty to survive vs Midrange or Control matchups. (eg. choosing Farsight over any minion that offers card draw)
Sure it's not the most succesful deck...but its a deck that mimics ice mage in that when played optimally the opposition is irrelevant. Ice Block just went into the hall of fame due to this crap...do we really need this in standard so soon?
--The most succesful Shudder deck atm has 52.1% WR ...more than half the games played.
Warlock vs Loladin:
Cubelock can be shut down just as easy as Agro Paladin...or just as hard. (In both cases you need to have the right card(s) in hand to counter pivotal plays or you are screwed).
In fact Paladin is no1 atm with 54.5% winrate with Warlock 2nd at 53%
info available here
The most succesful decks in the last 30 days are:
Paladin (by wr%) : Odd (Aggro) 64.7% / 3.000 games...Secret (Aggro) 64% / 6.000 .... Even (Aggro) 63.1% / 7.200
Paladin (by popularity): Odd 61.4% / 89.000 ... Odd 63.7% / 60.000 ... Odd 60.4% / 60.000
Warlock (by wr%) : Zoo (Aggro) 62.3% / 1.100 ... Cube 61.8% / 1.200 ... Control 58.2% / 1.300
Warlock (by popularity) : Cube 61% / 79.000 ... Cube 59.2% / 53.000 ... Cube 59.7% / 15.000
When you (or others) come in and complaint about Cubelock and defend Aggro Paladin...i'm sorry but... its really hard to take your opinion as anything else but pure bias. Aggro Paladin has a higher WR% and is more popular....so if you (and others) do know what you are talking about, how can Cubelock be the issue?
Other classes and their highest winning decks:
Druid: Spiteful 63.2% / 2.000 , Token 60.4% / 2.400
Hunter: Secret 59.8% / 5.900 , Midrange 56.9% / 4.900
Mage: Odd 58.6% / 1.300 , Big Spell 57.6% / 1.100
Priest: Spiteful 60% / 13.000 , Control 59.4% / 1.700
Rogue: Quest 59.5% / 1.800 , Tempo 58.5% / 2.200
Shaman: Even 56.7% / 6.200 , Elemental 52.9% / 1.800 --------- Shudderwock 52.1% / 2.800
Warrior: Quest 59.1% / 10.000 , Odd 54% / 4.200
Shudderwock is fine, it just suffers from the same problem as all the similar effects before it (Nozdormu, C'Thun, Yogg, etc) in that the animation could be done better. A solution could just be to add an option to disable animations in the client so you don't have to sit through it and can just skip right to the end; if one player has animations enabled and the other doesn't, veto power goes to nonactive player. Another option I heard about would be to just animate the battlecries that actually do something rather than a million Murmuring Elementals and Flame Kin Harbingers that are all redundant.
As far as the deck power level goes though, the deck is fine, not even one of the top 3 decks. Paladin needs a serious nerf; requiring a full board sweeper every turn of the game starting on turn 2-3 is not reasonable especially for classes that don't even have access to those effects, specifically Druid and Hunter.
Shudderwock shaman is annoying to play against in the extreme for basically everybody, but I MOSTLY support it purely because I despise Cubelock that much. Anything that lowers the number of Cubelocks is fair game to me, as long as it too can be preyed upon by something. Ideally many somethings so the meta finally effing breaks open. There is one thing though that maybe Blizzard's developers should look at. Not the balance team, but the actual programmers. I don't know if this is always how it is, but there was this one game where the Shudderwock that was summoned was also activating its battlecry in the same turn. This obviously did infinite damage to me and locked me out of my turn even though I was full health with 20 armor. I don't think that's how Saronite Chain Gang was supposed to work with Shudderwock. If it is, I'd like to lodge a complaint. :P If it isn't, maybe somebody should work on that.
The only reason i support shudderwock is to counter stupid cubelock. Its an easy deck to beat with tempo rogue and aggro pally
it depends on how it was built as u could see firebat smashed RDU purely by the tempo he could build with the shudderwock board swings aka volcano and flood of minions with chain gang these are pretty good cards and shudderwock is atm just a good deck tier 2 or even tier 1 its not that easy of a win if ur aggro against it because it stalls sooo long and easily clears boards but it pretty much autowins vs controldecks and thats a huge deal there needs to be some kind of counter atleast control got gnomferatu to save him sometimes ...
Preach! You guys calling for Shuddewock nerfs are a joke. The deck is hardly consistent. On HSreplay shaman has an abysmal 41.9% winrate. Change the animations. Honestly, that's not even the REAL problem here with shaman. ONLY class with a RNG hero power. Overload is not a FUN mechanic. Example: Lightning storm. 3 mana to do 2 OR 3 damage and overload 2 (again with the RNG) so 5 mana all together. While you have Defile costing 2 mana and clearing the whole damn board for SURE if you play it right.
Last time we had a viable ladder deck with Shaman was the good ol' Tunnel trogg days. Evolve was OK at best. But again....RNG. What's the deal? Why is Shaman the RNG class? First thing that needs to change is the ability to pick what totem we need. Not a dice roll on whether we can make it another round to turn the tides. Second thing is to get rid of Overload. It's not fun. It's basically like getting mana screwed in Magic: The Gathering. No one wants to be set back two or 3 mana. TL;DR shaman class needs a complete overhaul of identity. Shudderwock is a good start. Discuss.
Low WR% goes hand to hand with "the new flavour of the month" decks... 99% of the players playing them don't have a clue how to play them.
Try to recall Cubelock when it first showed up...most Cubelocks didn't know what to do (and some still don't) besides follow the basic premise of play Lackey-->get Doomguard and go face--->Cube Doomguard---> Destroy cube and go face.
If you want to upgrade the Shaman hero power to be as broken as you want it to be...play Baku Shaman or Justicar Trueheart