Hearthstone

[Chiropteran]

I mostly agree with HumblePie's rankings. With a Warlock deck, it feels like I have to work really hard and get lucky to win, even with some of the ridiculous cards like jaraxxas. Shaman also is very random and unreliable. I find as a shaman how well I do depends greatly on the ability of my opponent to deal area damage, anyone with consecrations or hellfires or similar spells hurt bad because of the potential to wipe out all totems for free while killing real creatures.

For a long time priest was my top deck and favorite. Since the mind control nerf it's been only slightly diminished, the 10 mana cost does hurt.

Hunter I feel is incredibly strong as well, lots of "2 for 1" kill cards and some ridiculously strong cards like savahna highmane that just win you the game if your opponent isn't ready with a polymorph or silence. I don't like playing the hunter though, it's just not my style I guess.

Paladin is my current favorite, I like the combination of direct damage, card draw, and efficient lifegain combined with powerful buff cards (which are much stronger in hearthstone than they ever were in MTG).

 

[HumblePie]

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=109694 wrecked millstone decks, not that anyone really played them.

I never heard of any mill decks placing in tourneys until turbofog, which was a fairly recent development. Was there some serious millstone deck that was winning major touneys that I missed?

I had one. But you used it conjunction with other lockdown combos. You basically need to prevent the player from playing cards or doing anything while remove their deck to the graveyard. Oh, and early tournies weren't exactly published or can be looked up online.

 

[HumblePie]

Sounds like your rating is heavily influenced by your personal taste for the class vice what most players actually think.

Yes if you played a lock or shammy with a random deck or tried to make a deck out of the basic cards, it's not going to be pretty. But once you've got all the basics and have started collecting others, they both make powerful chars.

Uhh, dude, I don't need to play against all the cards to do a card by card comparison and look up all the current cards in the game. There isn't that much and there is this thing called wikis that tend to have all the information you need on cards in this game.

I'm not basing anything off personal taste at all. I just went through every card combination for every class possible in the game and did a full card pros/cons analysis. The results led me to my conclusions. It's a time consuming but simple thing anyone can do. Look at the current gameplay mechanics. Look at what is required to win games. In this case taking your opponents health down to zero is the only thing that wins this game. Then look at the ways to achieve that goal. There are only so many ways to do so with this game. Unlike MTG where there are 3 ways right now to win. Kill the "person", inflict enough poison counters, or force them to run out of cards in their deck. Since there are 3 different ways to win, there are 3 different routes of analysis.

Look, I've been doing this kind of shit for a very long time. If you don't want to believe me then fine. Don't. Go play with your warlock or shaman deck and think you are king of hearthstone for all I care. For those looking for solid advice on what will increase their winning potential without just copy-catting someone else's deck, I'm dishing that out right now. I rather a person learn what makes a deck better over another so when mechanics change or new cards are introduced then they can adjust as well.

 

[lupi]

Forgot to mention a match I recently had, was priest v priest. He had stocked both of the mind control cards while I had one and 2 face mips. Early in the match he used 2 of the card copy spells and I eventually found out he had copied a troll taunt and mind control from me. At one poibt I had a beserking trolls out at 10-5, he used MC on it. I did a MC to get it back. He then burnt his second MC on it. At this point I dropped a face mip to copy then hit shadow death to kill his. Couple turns later I dropped down an azure drake and holy nova which along with a couple minion attacks wiped his side. He then used his third MC to take a taunt from me as I had been beating him up the last couple of turns. But I just silenced it and finished him off the turn after.

Almost had a good story as a mage last night, was deciding on playing minion copy secret or another card. Didn't do the secret and the first card he drops after was rag.

 

[darkewaffle]

Warlock can be strong but the only difficult ones I've played against are murloc/rush decks or the giants/watcher/twilight drake/sunfury/argus decks. It can be very difficult to outrush or outlast a rush lock without quite fortuitous draws. Seem to be fewer of them since the blood imp change though. I haven't seen them be particularly successful with actual "demon" decks however or those that rely too much on their discard or self-damage cards.

Shaman I really like but if your opponent has a usable 'counter' card, overload can really put you behind. Almost every earth elemental I play is instantly Black Knighted or Tinkmastered (into a 1/1 90% of the time of course lol) or Big Game Huntered. And the amount of "rng" to playing shaman is annoying, I do wish Forked Lightning and Lightning Storm cards were tweaked to be less random and had their costs adjusted accordingly. And totem summoning I think could be re-worked - maybe allowing you to pick the totem you want but you can't select the same totem twice in a row or have two of the same one etc.

 

[ewdotson]

I mentioned that previously in my write up about any deck. That one can stay with heavy neutral cards. Which a "neutral" deck can be very powerful. I was trying to show relations to MTG for the class cards that would build a heavy class deck, and how those decks play out and fare in the current gameplay setup of hearthstone. In my opinion the warlock deck is the worst deck in the game based off the current available warlock class cards. Most of them have big drawback side effects that hurt the warlock for a possible gain that may be counters. Which doesn't lend those cards to being very action efficient at all.

Fair enough, but that's an odd way to go about it, imo. Focusing so strongly on the class-specific cards to the exclusion of the neutral cards, I mean.

Also, many high level shaman decks go with the murloc heavy neutral deck. Which is probably a better deck compared to the warlock murloc heavy deck due to the shaman being able to really throw out some good buffs to the all murlocs on the field easier and more often than the warlock.

I just don't think that this is true. Neither are really A-tier decks though.

Just because you've seen a warlock of shaman deck crush all the other decks out there...

Now you're just making things up. I never said any such thing. Now if we were talking druid decks in the current meta, that would be an entirely different story. Still hyperbole, but a lot closer to something vaguely resembling accurate.

 

[HumblePie]

Oh, one thing for the old MTG players reading this. One of the ways back in the day I built up all my decks/money to play the game was I had my box of unbeatable decks. Literally unbeatable. How do I know? I setup a few tables at some tournies and did a fun little gamble setup with my decks. Anyone could challenge to play the unbeatable box of decks in the best of 2 out of 3 matchup. To play they had to either pay $10 or so, or offer up their entire deck, put up a decent trade card, or offer up so many packs of cards (which all depend upon which packs they were offering). I would let them roll a 1d6 sided die which would chose which deck I played from my box. If they won they get to keep that deck.

Short story in the hundreds of challenges I had, I never lost a deck. These were decks full of moxes, lotus, timewalks, and other stupid powered cards at the time. But setup to my flavor. They weren't all that bad, but most as a theme to them for winning as well. All were for the most part unbeatable if played in the right person's hand.

I would also do anti games all the time. Not always top of the deck antis, though I did those too, but straight up put down the best card you own versus mine. Winner takes all. I didn't use my unbeatable decks in those challenges usually. I did still win most of the time

Deck building was a skill in itself. Some people had it and some didn't. Playing a masterfully built deck also took another set of skills not everyone had either. I remember a kid getting pissed off after losing to my unbeatable deck challenge. He said only another unbeatable deck could beat those and then it's just all random. I said "You think so? Well, lets do a different challenge then. You can play one of my unbeatable decks and I'll play another. If you win you get back what you just lost from me. If I win I get nothing. Hows that?" We did another 2/3 round and not surprisingly I won. He then said it was because the deck I picked was better balanced to counter the other unbeatable deck I lent him to use. So I swapped decks with him and did it again in another 2 out of 3 session. Same outcome. I won. Not sure if he learned his lesson enough after that though. He got all huffy, looked like he was about to cry, and ran off. I did get a nice Ali from him for what I won earlier

 

[ewdotson]

My conclusion: you hung around in a meta full of terrible players. No, there is absolutely no such thing as an unbeatable deck.

 

[lupi]

Not to mention who cares what you could do in magic since so little of it would apply to hearthstone.

 

[HumblePie]

Fair enough, but that's an odd way to go about it, imo. Focusing so strongly on the class-specific cards to the exclusion of the neutral cards, I mean.

I'm not excluding neutral cards at all. Neutral cards though are open to all classes. I look at what combo's the class cards work in conjunction well with neutral cards. Some neutrals work better with some class cards than others. Like pirate neutrals work really well with the Warrior and Paladin, but not so much with others.

As for the overall rankings, I should have tiered them instead of numbered them.

New player tiers:
Tier 1 = Mage, Hunter, Paladin
Tier 2 = Rogue, Cleric, Druid, Warrior
Tier 3 = Shaman, Warlock

Experienced player tiers (high level decks):
Tier 1 = Mage, Hunter, Paladin, Druid
Tier 2 = Rogue, Cleric, Warrior
Tier 3 = Shaman, Warlock

Is that a bit better for understanding what I was stating with my post previously? I thought I did this with what I gave for the descriptions of the decks along with the number ladder I put.

I just don't think that this is true. Neither are really A-tier decks though.

Just said a shaman would have a better time with their class cards working in a murloc deck than a warlock. But as you said, neither version is really super great and relies heavily on neutral cards though.

Now you're just making things up. I never said any such thing. Now if we were talking druid decks in the current meta, that would be an entirely different story. Still hyperbole, but a lot closer to something vaguely resembling accurate.

I wasn't responding to you specifically, but You in the general sense. I was talking about those that think warlock or shaman decks are better than the ranking I put them at just because they seen one of those decks crush other decks. The point I was trying to get across in my posts was relative power and winning potential of the various decks. As it currently stands, the shaman and warlock are the least powerful based on their current hero power mechanics and class card abilities.

 

[HumblePie]

My conclusion: you hung around in a meta full of terrible players. No, there is absolutely no such thing as an unbeatable deck.

HAHA, you don't get the point I was trying to give

 

[HumblePie]

Not to mention who cares what you could do in magic since so little of it would apply to hearthstone.

You don't understand the point I presenting here.

They are both card games. They play by certain rules. There are a limited number of cards and power available. Only certain combos exist. Everything is finite, but play possibilities are not.

 

[lupi]

And you don't get what we're saying. Because of the differences in this game, combos have a much less significance on game play. Your reviews are also heavily skewed towards such combos which invalidates much of the data. Not to mention if playing arena, such discusion of combos is pointless.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Still doesn't change that while it may have some use as a tactic in magic, building a deck for it in hearthstone will see you losing most of the time.

Actually I have found that it can be VERY useful. I mean, I wouldn't setup my entire deck to perform draws, but I have a Priest deck that has uses two "draw one card when any minion is healed" cards. My deck is a mix of taunts and cards that buff others. One game I had a 3/7 taunt card plus one of the 1/3 "draw cards when minion healed". The opponent had 3 or 4 minions out that had 2-3 health and 2 that had 4+ with only 1-2 attack. I played my second 1/3 "draw cards on healed", attacked with all my minions, and then the do 2 damage to all enemy and heal all minions on field (including enemy minions that lived), I then proceeded to draw 8 cards. I won 3 rounds later by being able to overwhelm the opponent with multiple cards that buffered every other minion, while being able to play multiple cards per turn as well... This deck lets you do things like that and just beat the crap out of people because you have almost all your combos available to you.

 

[HumblePie]

And you don't get what we're saying. Because of the differences in this game, combos have a much less significance on game play. Your reviews are also heavily skewed towards such combos which invalidates much of the data. Not to mention if playing arena, such discusion of combos is pointless.

No, I do not look at combos as the be all end all setup in Hearthstone to winning. I said specifically that the be all end all winning strategy in hearthstone is ACTION EFFICIENCY. That is the current winning meta. Period. Get a clue.

 

[jimrawr]

My conclusion: you hung around in a meta full of terrible players. No, there is absolutely no such thing as an unbeatable deck.

Yeah this guy pretty much said it. MTG there is no such thing as unbeatable, now or during alpha and beta. Just the fact that STATISTICS say that in 100 games there is no way you will not get mana fucked 2/3 games to lose a match.

 

[ewdotson]

Actually I have found that it can be VERY useful. I mean, I wouldn't setup my entire deck to perform draws, but I have a Priest deck that has uses two "draw one card when any minion is healed" cards. My deck is a mix of taunts and cards that buff others. One game I had a 3/7 taunt card plus one of the 1/3 "draw cards when minion healed". The opponent had 3 or 4 minions out that had 2-3 health and 2 that had 4+ with only 1-2 attack. I played my second 1/3 "draw cards on healed", attacked with all my minions, and then the do 2 damage to all enemy and heal all minions on field (including enemy minions that lived), I then proceeded to draw 8 cards. I won 3 rounds later by being able to overwhelm the opponent with multiple cards that buffered every other minion, while being able to play multiple cards per turn as well... This deck lets you do things like that and just beat the crap out of people because you have almost all your combos available to you.

Improving your own card draw is *absolutely* a useful thing in this game. lupi is saying that a strategy that tries to get the *other* guy to draw more cards and take damage from running out is currently not competitive in hearthstone.

Imo, Blizzard *could* make it a viable strategy if they wanted to, but it would require cards that simply don't exist right now. Specifically, you'd need cards with an actual millstone mechanic, where you're removing cards from the opponent's library from the game (since there's no graveyard) rather than simply causing them to draw more.

 

[HumblePie]

Yeah this guy pretty much said it. MTG there is no such thing as unbeatable, now or during alpha and beta. Just the fact that STATISTICS say that in 100 games there is no way you will not get mana fucked 2/3 games to lose a match.

The point was that there were very powerful decks, and that the skill of the player can increase the odds of winning significantly despite the deck being used. That was the point of the story which you both missed. It's the skill in making the deck, and understanding the decks themselves and how to play them out in every possible scenario that makes their win probability always exceed 66%. The decks would lose a round, but I never lost 2 in a row or 2 out of 3. That was the point I was trying to get across. Not that there were "unbeatable" decks. Calling it unbeatable did too things. It was marketing to get people to think they could "beat" the unbeatable decks. It was also a mental trick that worked on many people. Especially if they watched previous games and saw other people lose while I was running the setup.

So you fail at understanding the premise to that story I was trying to explain.

 

[ewdotson]

Or you may have done a terrible job of trying to make a vacuous point.

ETA: I mean, seriously? There are decks that are better than others and being a skillful player enhances one's chances of winning? Woah! I'm glad you're here to tell us these things!

 

[ewdotson]

No, I do not look at combos as the be all end all setup in Hearthstone to winning. I said specifically that the be all end all winning strategy in hearthstone is ACTION EFFICIENCY. That is the current winning meta. Period. Get a clue.

Also, given that you're under the impression that there are no decks than can consistently deliver a win before turn 8, I don't really know how much you know about the current winning meta.

 

[jimrawr]

The point was that there were very powerful decks, and that the skill of the player can increase the odds of winning significantly despite the deck being used. That was the point of the story which you both missed. It's the skill in making the deck, and understanding the decks themselves and how to play them out in every possible scenario that makes their win probability always exceed 66%. The decks would lose a round, but I never lost 2 in a row or 2 out of 3. That was the point I was trying to get across. Not that there were "unbeatable" decks. Calling it unbeatable did too things. It was marketing to get people to think they could "beat" the unbeatable decks. It was also a mental trick that worked on many people. Especially if they watched previous games and saw other people lose while I was running the setup.

So you fail at understanding the premise to that story I was trying to explain.

You stated you had unbeatable decks and won 100 matches without a loss. I am saying you are full of it. You can try to turn that into "we missed the point", but maybe you shouldn't exaggerate so much and get upset when you get called out on it?

Or are you sticking with the story that you literally won 100 matches in a row.. ?

 

[lupi]

Wow, you such a total fucking god, if the rng gives you cards in a better order than the opponent you can win. Someone write this down and get a book deal ASAP!

I breathlessly await the next cornerstone of this strategy prism.

 

[HumblePie]

You stated you had unbeatable decks and won 100 matches without a loss. I am saying you are full of it. You can try to turn that into "we missed the point", but maybe you shouldn't exaggerate so much and get upset when you get called out on it?

Or are you sticking with the story that you literally won 100 matches in a row.. ?

Go read what I wrote. Because your reading comprehension skills suck at this point.

 

[HumblePie]

Or you may have done a terrible job of trying to make a vacuous point.

ETA: I mean, seriously? There are decks that are better than others and being a skillful player enhances one's chances of winning? Woah! I'm glad you're here to tell us these things!

In your DUH statement at the end, that was the point of the anecdote. And to show, as best as an online forum can allow for something like this, to explain my background in the knowledge of this subject through the story I imparted. Which flew right over your head along with others.

 

[ewdotson]

Go read what I wrote. Because your reading comprehension skills suck at this point.

Pro-tip, if you write something any *everyone* seems to get something different out of it than what you'd intended, the problem may not be with the readers.

I'm just saying.

In your DUH statement at the end, that was the point of the anecdote. And to show, as best as an online forum can allow for something like this, to explain my background in the knowledge of this subject through the story I imparted. Which flew right over your head along with others.

Well, no, it didn't fly over my head. Your "point" was so amazingly trivial that was no reason to comment on it. And we *are* commenting on what you claim about your "background in the knowledge of this subject".