Hearthstone

Lightning Lord Rule said:

This expansion is really weird so far IMO. I just don't really know what direction the meta is going. It almost seems like everything is sort of viable, with the usual caveats applying to you drawing poorly or your opponent getting a god draw.

• Hunter seems ok to good. The quest maybe not so much, but midrange seems ok, face is probably good, and I bet some version of deathrattle is ok.
• Druid seems alright. I've seen jades still doing ok as long as it's not vs aggro. The quest seems ok but not great. I've seen some ramp style decks and some pretty nasty looking token/egg type decks.
• Mage is in a mediocre spot. I think there's some version of quest mage that will work, but it's not exodia. Perhaps something between freeze and elementals will work. There's also aggro secret and tempo decks out there that are decent. But nothing seems OP. They'll likely end up in the middle ranks somewhere.
• Priest has several decks that are good. Quest priest is ok, with many variations on that deck, including highlander decks. Dragon priests are still out there. Silence/purify priest is legit and fun. And several variants of spell(? unsure of what to call it) priest with Lyra Sunshard.
• Paladin seems bad, but I've seen control decks, murloc decks, buff quest decks (which seem bad), elemental handbuff decks, and weird combinations of all of the above. So there might be something viable out there that someone finds.
• Rogue seems strong right now, with many decks being tried. Malygos, miracle, tons of quest rogue variants, stealth decks, and jade decks.
• Shaman is in a good place with elemental decks and murloc decks. Both seem very strong. I bet there's also some control decks to be discovered too. And aggro shaman is probably still lurking somewhere. Shaman's flexibility is still a strength.
• Warlock seems limited to discard/zoo and handlock variants right now, and the quest seems bad. It seems like people aren't experimenting with Lock as much as other classes.
• Warrior is in a strong place right now with taunt warrior being very good. I think it isn't optimized yet though. Pirate warrior is still out there, but I think it won't be quite as oppressive as before since it seems like classes have a lot more counters for it now.

So with all of that, what the hell do you craft? With each class having multiple archetypes that all seem to have potential, at least at this early point, I have no idea. I really don't want to drop any more money on the game, but it seems like if you want to keep up with the meta, you have to. I really don't like the concept of pay to win in these kinds of games. It used to be only a few control decks that were that way about a year ago, with costs in the 10-13k dust range. Now everything costs like 7-9k dust, and each variant has a DIFFERENT 7-9k dust you need, since everything seems to take class specific legendaries and tons of epics which are almost as rare to open, at least for me.

So play wise, the game seems to be in ok shape, especially compared to the pirate meta we just had, but cost wise it's terrible.

Click to expand...

Pretty good summary! I think Taunt warrior will be tier 1 for sure and would recommend people work toward that deck, it's not terribly expensive, only Quest/Curator are Legendaries, Deathwing is flex. There are a lot of epics but it's stuff you'd typically have already, or want to have.

The Quests definitely add to the cost, there's a ton I'd like to try but need to save more dust. I don't have Legendary or Quest for Priest, Shaman, Warlock, so those classes are basically out for me right now. I also don't have Elise which seems good in Lyra Priest & Handlock & perhaps even Taunt Warrior.

I crafted a bunch of shit that's probably bad, but it was fun for the first few days at least, and I still have Taunt Warrior to climb with.

HSreplay stats, only looking at decks with >10,000 games.

--------------
Summary:

Pirate Warrior (61%) (less than 10k games)
Taunt Warrior (60%)
sMORC Druid (60%)
Face Hunter (55-60%)
Elemental Shaman (56-58%)
Sherazin Rogue (57%)
Aggro Mage (57%)
Quest Rogue v2.0 (56%)
Discardlock (56%)
Handbuff Paladin (55%) (less than 10k games)
All Priest Decks (55%) (less than 10k games)
Handlock (51%)
Quest Rogue v1.0 (50%)
Exodia Mage (45%)

--------------
Links to Data:

Decks - HSReplay.net
Top played Warrior decks are all Taunt Warrior, all ~60% win rate. Some Pirate in there but not as many games played.

Decks - HSReplay.net
sMORC Druid deck is top played ~60% win rate

Decks - HSReplay.net
Hunter top played is 55%, but 2nd most played is 60%

Decks - HSReplay.net
Exodia Mage are all ~45% win rate, Aggro Mage is 57%

PALADIN:
No Paladin decks with >10,000 games, Handbuff deck is 55%

PRIEST:
No Priest decks with >10,000 games, all their top played decks are around 55%

Decks - HSReplay.net
1st version of Quest rogue is most played and exactly 50% win rate, the FireFly version is around 56%, Sherazin Rogue is 57%

Decks - HSReplay.net
Elemental Shaman are 56-58%

Decks - HSReplay.net
Discardlock (No Quest or Legendary) is 56%, Handlock is 51%

Morrow said:

I'm sorry but LOL at the person that thinks it's totally cool for cards to have totally random meanings and arbitrarily mean one thing in one case and another thing in a different case and for players to have no idea which way is up because there isn't any consistency. But yeah, sure, I'm bitching about random pointless things when I dislike a lack of consistency and clarity in the rules of the game.

Click to expand...

You are bitching about pointless shit, same as how it's pointless for me to bitch about your bitching. Bitch.

Your comment was asinine, I'm 100% sure you just read about those interactions on reddit and decided you hated it. You say "it's annoying" like you even ran into any of those situations. Now you put words in my mouth because you got called out on it.

I do think it's inconsistent, I do think Blizz should fix, but it's not annoying and doesn't affect 99.99999% of the games being played, so I'm not going to get all bitchy over it. I'm also not certain if Innerfire is actually a bug or not, you could argue that Innerfire should work the way it does.

wormie said:

Those stats look silly. If everyone is above 50% win rate, who is losing?

Click to expand...

Not everyone is playing those decks. Those are the top played, and ~50% win rate means you're not ALWAYS winning... 60% is only winning 6 of 10.

50% is exactly equal win/loss ratio so Idk what your comment means tbh

Amzin said:

Uh... it's pretty obvious what he means? You can't have every single deck be above a 50% win rate, because for someone to have a positive winrate means someone else has to have a negative winrate. If there were only two decks and they were both 60%, the data would obviously be wrong because you can't have everyone at a positive rate. However, as you point out, this is just the most popular decks. But it does imply that if you aren't playing the popular decks, you're in a rough spot, because those are all crazy high winrates over that sample size.

Click to expand...

I mean, yea, I know not everyone can have over 50%, but that's not what the stats are showing anyway, just the most popular decks, as you've mentioned.. but another thing to look at is games played. All the classes have decks in the 10K-50K range and Quest Rogue v1.0 has 260K games, and it's the deck with 50% win rate almost exactly, so plenty of rogue losses out there

I haven't had as much time as I want to play, but I'm loving the Priest Quest deck. It does so many things, and you can win in some many ways and it's just plain fun. It so often end up with opponents conceding after the Amara turn, or the N'Zoth turn, especially if he pulls 2-3 taunts.

It's my favorite type of deck...it might not be the best, but it's one of the most fun so far.

I really want to try something with Lyra since I have her too, it looks like it will be fun too.

Amzin said:

Uh... it's pretty obvious what he means? You can't have every single deck be above a 50% win rate, because for someone to have a positive winrate means someone else has to have a negative winrate. If there were only two decks and they were both 60%, the data would obviously be wrong because you can't have everyone at a positive rate. However, as you point out, this is just the most popular decks. But it does imply that if you aren't playing the popular decks, you're in a rough spot, because those are all crazy high winrates over that sample size.

Click to expand...

Oh... last point on this topic.

Keep in mind these stats are from HS deck tracker, which not everyone uses, in fact people with more HS experience are probably the ones using it most, so higher win rate for experienced players is likely expected here. And of course it's going to be PC users only. Manually entered games (from mobile devices) won't go to HSReplay obviously.

Lightning Lord Rule said:

Just saw Disguised Toast post a video about a new combo. It's a paladin deck that boasts Hemet, Holy Wrath and Molten giants as the only cards costing more than 3. Play Hemet, ideally with Holy Wrath in hand. Next turn you have a 66% chance to draw a Molten Giant for 25 damage to the face using Holy Wrath. Pretty lulzy

Click to expand...

sounds fun, sucks if you draw giants before hemet

Lusiphur said:

Regretting crafting the Warlock quest now. It looked fun in discard lock but most lists have cut it. It's too hard to get it to trigger. Oh well, such is life.

Click to expand...

I crafted like 7 legendaries and I think all of them are shit except warrior quest. That's the risk by doing day 1 crap, you know 99% of the cards will be crap but it's fun anyway...

Valishar said:

I think inner fire combo priest might be the strongest it's ever been.

Click to expand...

The meta is pretty crazy right now, changes daily almost. It's slowed down a LOT. Now you get Silence priest being a force, taunt warrior, and hunter is back with a vengeance. It's like old-school meta with the Hunter / Warrior / Priest trifecta.

I played 4 games of taunt warrior before work and faced a Hunter (won), Jungle Giants Druid (loss), Hunter (won), Silence Priest (won). I tech'd in a Black Knight into my Warrior and it paid off in the nick of time... had a 16/16 shambler that won Brawl hit my face once then I drew BK to cripple him.

Yesterday there were 7 minions on board, but most important was 20/20 shambler and he won the damn brawl, and the game.

Meta is slowed down a ton for sure. If all these big minion decks continue to surge then I have a feeling Control Paladin will be coming back soon. Also Black Knight is in almost every deck now, even Hunter, and Rogues are using Vanish.

It's been the most fun week of Hearthstone for sure... how hilarious the 1st reactions were to the "cancer" decks which are now nowhere to be seen.

Start watching Global Games and it's Taunt Warrior vs Taunt Warrior. LOL.