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!
Its not about WIN RATE! its about FEELS BAD ... when someone gets the combo off it can take 5+ minutes of animations and you are helpless to stop it. It is the almost infinite loop that is created with grumble, saronite, and mururmering that create a slow and agonizing death.
Simply drop the battecry on Shudderwok and replace with "when played,..." so it doesnt trigger its own battlecry when played a second time and maybe make grumble only return elementals to your hand and the combo is reigned in and we can then see more interesting Shudderwok play rather than the degenerate 5 minute OTK.
And I went 3-0 with it beating a baku hunter, cube lock with gnomeferatu, and an agro warrior and just felt dirty and felt like I wasted an hour of other peoples time as well as my own. I had to stop and play something else.
i have a zero percent win rate against cubelock with shudderwock. only beat control lock with it
I've played the deck and also dealt with the combo being done to me. Also, you can think its every "edgeboy on this site but it's also the pro players saying that it isn't broken. The combo can be avoided and you can absolutely beat the deck prior to turn 10. Yes, I agree that it is an annoying combo but it surely isn't broken. If you took your hostility into thinking of a way to play successfully against this deck maybe you too can beat it.
The sad part is that this deck needs to exist right now to combat the real problem of Warlock. Animation certainly needs changed but the deck itself is fine because aggro beats it very easily and it's a hard counter to Warlock.
The only problem with Shudderwock is the animation times. Wock Shaman is far from the strongest combo deck we've ever seen. It's not as powerful as Exodia mage was, and it's much more inconsistent. Everyone crying about the deck seems to have forgotten about a week ago when mage could ignore anything you do and Fireball you to death after an extended game of solitaire. This deck is on the level of Anyfin Paladin in that you need to draw and play several cards before your big Turn 10 finisher, except for Wock Shaman you need another turn after 10 to cycle all your other Shudderwocks for the kill. It's really not that crazy. It can be beaten. I agree that the animations are ridiculous but the deck is not this Tier Zero juggernaut that the community is making it out to be. I know I'm practically begging for downvotes here but please try to have some perspective before you go completely hyperbolic in your hatred of this deck.
most boring card: ever
1. faster animations
and..
2. Dont let him copy himself
3.Battlecry maybe only 5 Effects - not all effects in the the whole game
4. or Battlecry only works once in the game.
Change the text to: "...then destroy all OTHER Shudderwocks from your deck or hand" Just like the Skulking Geist text for Jade. Then if you want to do weird combos with multiple Shudderwocks you'll have to return it to the hand (with shadowstep like effects) after the battlecries (so, no Grumble) and THEN pay 9 more mana to play it again.
I love this card - if it goes off once. So, tighten the battlecries of other cards to prevent them being abused, and tweak the Shudderwock card text so that it finishes with "Your turn ends". That way, you don't get to hurl out the Grumbled 1-mana version in the same turn - and you only get to play one of them the next turn, too. You still get to do potentially interesting things, you can try for the double battlecry combo, and that's as far as it goes. Oh - and fix the animation issue too, obviously.
It's not enough that the deck gets destroyed by aggro, or we'll enter a world of only aggro vs. Shudderwock (with a splash of Cubelock) because more value-oriented control decks simply cannot compete.
That is not exclusively Shudderwock's fault, that's also because there are literally zero tech options against the deck. Think about how many anti-aggro cards there are in the game, all of the taunts, the heals, the armor gain, the weapon removal, the AoE, etc. Yet there is not a single card in Standard that disrupts an OTK deck like Shudderwock (since Dirty Rat is gone), other than changing deck completely from control to aggro.
As much as I love OTK control decks, this one seems to be the most elaborate execution, on par with dead mans warrior. The only problems I have with this OTK control deck are
1) Slow animation (given)
2) Odd interactions (While in the second loop, I had two shudderwocks on field. One of them got a divine shield from that 3mana 2/4, gain taunt and divine shield if this is the only minion. There was another shudderwock on-field.)
3) Too cheap for the effect. This minion should be 10. The effect is WAAAAY to powerful
4) Should consider giving the same treatment to shudderwock like Yogg was given. If Shudderwock is removed from the field, break the battlecries.
5) I do not agree with randomly playing out battlecries. For other intricate strategies, which are now RNG based, can't be pulled off unless the battlecries fire-off in a certain order. The current setup doesn't matter which battlecries fires off and doesn't matter in what order
I love the card otherwise. An interesting take on how cards interact with each other. It really tests the games spaget code (jk) and really pushes on how you think, and what you've played. Great job :)
In my experience, Shudderwock stops the battlecries at least when he evolves himself with DK Thrall Battlecry, dunno about other cases though
I am guessing this happened when you played multiple Shudderwock. if you do this, the first one plays as if it was the only minion on the field. because technically it does all it's effects before it plays the second one. this is why you might experience weird things because it seems like there is 2 on board, but really there is only 1 and the other one is being queued up to be played.
This already happens, though its rare for it to die since it replays all the battlecry that you had used. but why would you ever play a battlecry that could potentially remove him? and also if you some how give him away, it'll start playing the battlecrys for your opponent instead.
To all the people saying that the win rate sucks because the deck isnt refined yet and its totally OP. Once it gets refined other decks build around the meta and change themselves. When cubelock became a thing people started running weapon removal, poly/hex and silence.
Everyone needs to just chill for a couple weeks to see what happens. The animations are annoying and need to be fixed but other wise the card is not broken. when i tried the deck i got smashed by aggro and against cubelock they cheated out some doom guards and nearly otk me with cube pact. I personally think cubelock needs nerfed. eventhough i like the deck. Shudderwock is the hero we need.
Shudderwock allows me to go tinkle or get a drink without the fear of missing a turn because the animation is still going when i return 😂
how can all you hypocrite control players hate on this? your decks remove all your opponents stuff/outheal/build a wall, until your opponent has no way to win. shudderwock decks are just as slow and it removes opponents stuff/outheals/builds a wall, until their opponent can't win. it's not anywhere near as fast as quest rogue was, or even is now. doesn't have anywhere near the stall quest mage had. it's only oppressive to the most greedy control decks who's win condition/play style is similar to shudderwock. a lot of other decks repress a larger variety of decks than shudderwock. i hated quest mage and quest rogue, this is nowhere near that power level.
Control != Combo
Shaman could have had a sweet unique control game with Hagatha generating random spells and a N'Zoth-like Shudderwock as a bomb that does more things than just create a big board. Now instead it's a boring stall into OTK combo deck like all the ones we've had before (Quest Mage, Anyfin Paladin, Malygos Druid, etc.).
we need decks that are control counters. a lot of other control killers also had a pretty good win rate against midrange, this doesn't. which i think single handedly makes it way more balanced. even the current nerfed quest rogue and non-ice block quest mage are on the same if not above the power level of this deck. we have a bigger issue called cubelock, which by the way destroys this deck.
An archetype doesn't counter an archetype, your specific card inclusions should be what decides the outcome of a game. There is no such thing as "X archetype has X% winrate against another", because every deck within that archetype is different.
The counter to control are many. OTK's makes you favored, having threats that line up well against the opponent's removal makes you favored, silences typically makes you favored if the control deck relies on taunt, having more value than they do makes you favored. However, the catch is that the control decks should also be able to counter these counters, and the problem with Shudderwock is that there is no counter for control.
It is like pre-nerf Quest Rogue, and god forbid we get that horrendous OTK vs. hyper-aggro meta back.
MY JAWS, THAT BITE. MY CLAWS THAT CATCH! These words are forever imprinted in my mind now. This is the new grim patron, so dam annoying.