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I've only played Highlander Secret Rogue and Highlander Mage this season and I have just one question : what the hell beats Highlander Dragon Hunter? My rogue deck has like a 10% win rate against it, if that, and my mage doesn't seem to fare much better. On the other hand, I eat priests for breakfast as rogue, but I still hate those games because they take 15mins or more (unless I pull a Tekahn from an early Dragon's Hoard - one opponent last night had the decency to concede on T5 when I dropped that). My mage deck is more fun to play (I love the box), but all those priests just toy with it because it doesn't have the infinite supply of threats and higher pressure of my rogue deck, outside some bomb Reno RNG, which is admittedly hilarious but, like, the opposite of consistent.
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Jun 4, 2020 01:25
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Ah, well, if Priest has a rough time against it too then I don't feel so bad. I only started playing HS again just before this year's rotation, and one thing is as true now as it was years ago : the more Priest suffers, the better the health of the game. I played enough in the last couple of weeks to make it to Diamond and I was pretty happy with the variety of decks I was facing. I felt like my Rogue was favored more often than not, outside Hunter and the eternal Aggro vs Control struggle. Strange that I didn't see much Warrior though, either Pirate or Enrage (or are they the same thing?) Of all the decks I've faced, the one I most want to make and also the one I feel the most sympathy for is Pure Paladin. They do so much stuff every match, to no avail.
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Jun 4, 2020 06:03
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I would guess the reason they haven't stopped Altruis hitting face is because they'd have to change the animation (it would look a bit odd swiping across the portrait and doing nothing) and getting the art team involved is a lot more work than simply changing a few numbers.
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Jun 5, 2020 00:13
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So I tried something new tonight against Quest Priest as Highlander Mage. I played so that there was no damage on the board until I hit 10 mana, at which point I out-greeded them. Easiest game of my life, but is that a valid tactic or did I just get lucky? Obviously it would only work in a control vs control match.
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Jun 6, 2020 14:49
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Shockeh posted:As a 10 mana spell, I find Puzzlebox distasteful as an effect - ‘Hey, I’m losing, so let’s flip the loving table and play Pachinko instead’. As something that can come out of various discounts or random effects, it can get into the loving sea. Adding randomness is one of the key ways to make game experiences different, and thus memorable, and HS does overdo it but it makes sense for Blizzard because first and foremost their games are designed to be prolific, and the RNG in HS lets bad players beat good ones every now and then, and so it keeps them engaged (in Overwatch it's the existence of ults, and I would argue their drive to make the game prolific is the sole reason they've doggedly stuck to the MMO trinity of tank/damage/healer roles, but that's another topic). As another poster mentioned, the RNG ship has sailed long ago in HS and it used to annoy me too, but then I stopped worrying and learned to love the Box. And I really miss Tess Greymane. Hopefully when they do another incarnation of her they'll retain some of that original design. fake edit : I think I remember reading here a long time ago that statistically (based on numbers crunched from the original Yogg) playing ten random spells gives you a favorable outcome about 66% of the time. I wonder if I remember that number right, and whether it's still true with the current card pool.
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Jun 9, 2020 00:52
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Mayveena posted:VS shows DH as Tier 1 Looking at D4 to D1 I'm surprised Spell Druid is so high. Facing it, it feels like if you can survive the first wave of Glowflies you have a good chance of beating it (I played control to D5) but now that I'm trying other decks I've been playing it myself and boy does it fall over in a heap if you don't draw any ramp. I'm trying the Dragon version from a few pages ago though, not the more token focused one.
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Jun 12, 2020 08:58
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Oh yeah, I'm sure I'm playing it badly, I just had a string of games with zero or one ramp card in the first five turns and it's like, I guess I'll just do some removal and wait? I feel like burning through removal to stay afloat is probably fine because of how much draw there is, but when you end up playing your minions on curve it doesn't feel good (which is the whole point of having ramp, I guess). I know I haven't learned how to mulligan yet. Do you keep Innervate? Do you keep Breath if you have no dragon in hand? Do you keep Breath + Dragon if you have both? If you have Breath but don't find a dragon within the first few turns do you just play it for draw?
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Jun 13, 2020 03:09
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AnacondaHL posted:Note that the good mull data is locked behind the Premium paywall, so you'll see inexcusable things like Bronze to Gold players keeping Fungal Fortunes only 90% of the time, while Legend players keep it 98%. Ah, that's good to know. I watched Firebat browse to the Premium stats a few times and figured it wasn't worth using the general ones so I didn't bother, but now I will bother. On another topic, I think it was in one of these threads that somebody mentioned the Pokemon TCG Online game, and I picked it up the other day and I'm having fun with it (now I know what all those kids were doing 20 years ago when I played MTG) but I'm surprised there isn't a thread somewhere on SA for it since I always thought it was a mega-popular game. I found an old thread in TG that died in 2018, but is that it or am I missing something?
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Jun 14, 2020 01:52
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I hit Diamond 2 a few days ago mostly from doing dailies as Highlander Mage, and I figured what the hell, maybe I should play some more and get legend since it's easier to get now than in the past. So I switched to Libram Paladin because it had a higher winrate and faster games and I knew I'd still be in for a grind. I didn't make it, but I did experience wild swings of 4-5 wins in a row followed by about that many losses, and in the end I felt like I was somehow doing worse than with my mage deck. I swapped between two versions of it, one that used Libram of Justice and Consecration, and another that dropped them for Kings and Shotbots. I liked the second one better, but I know there are some paladins here that are purer than me so what would you say is the best version of the deck to rank from D5 to legend? I can make just about any deck so I'll probably give legend another shot if I get close again, I just have way more fun playing mage/rogue control. Also, gotta say, Face Hunter is a brutal matchup. Freezing Trap in particular feels like I skipped a whole turn.
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Sep 1, 2020 03:19
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Well I'd say I lucked out - four legendaries (one golden) from 41 packs, including both Mage cards, which is good because it's the only class I have a proper deck for at the moment. Is this menagerie warrior good against Priest? I prefer control decks (usually Mage/Rogue) but nothing kills my desire to play this game more than playing against Priest so I'm hoping it will be bad for this meta. It sounds like it got a few busted cards though, so who knows.
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Nov 18, 2020 09:25
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Yeah, that's what kills it for me. All the other control decks play threats and value generators throughout the game and there's an interesting back and forth, but Priest just removes everything for the sole purpose of drawing out each and every game, hoping to win via bloody-minded attrition. It's really the only example of egregiously poor design in this game (release DH being its only recent competition to my mind).
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Nov 18, 2020 10:07
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Played with my Highlander Mage for a few games before being reminded that control decks generally have a rough time at the beginning of an expansion, so I switched to Pure Paladin. I stopped using Two Shields when this thread suggested it a while ago, and I've been skeptical about Braggarts for a while now, so here's my current list. It kind of goes all-in on filling the board with stats and using them as your removal. The Dragontamers are in place of the Braggats, which are kind of dead draws in the early game (though I can't deny they're More Stats in the late game). ### Pure Paladin # Class: Paladin # Format: Standard # Year of the Phoenix # # 2x (0) First Day of School # 2x (1) Aldor Attendant # 2x (2) Hand of A'dal # 2x (2) Libram of Wisdom # 1x (2) Murgur Murgurgle # 2x (2) Redscale Dragontamer # 2x (3) Bronze Explorer # 2x (4) Blessing of Kings # 1x (4) High Abbess Alura # 2x (4) Lightforged Zealot # 2x (5) Aldor Truthseeker # 1x (5) Amber Watcher # 2x (5) Blessing of Authority # 2x (6) Devout Pupil # 1x (7) Lady Liadrin # 1x (7) Lightforged Crusader # 1x (8) High Exarch Yrel # 2x (9) Libram of Hope # AAECAZ8FBoiuA5uuA/y4A4TBA8PRA4jeAwyvB5CuA5yuA/24A+q5A+u5A+y5A8rBA57NA7/RA8DRA/neAwA= # # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone # Generated by HDT - https://hsreplay.net
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Nov 18, 2020 12:45
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Having played Highlander Mage almost exclusively last expansion and Pure Paladin since MDF came out, I'm really enjoying how the tables have turned when I face Hunter decks. Demon Hunter is 50/50 so far. It feels like if they get two Skulls off I won't win (the last game that happened my opponent had to do over 70 face damage to kill me, which they did almost effortlessly) but otherwise it seems fair, except maybe for how effectively Blade Dance can wipe out a board of large minions. I have only faced Lapidary DHs so far, though. Still looking forward to meeting the OTK version. I've won all of my Priest games so far, but it's been against what I assume are unoptimized decks. Then again, it's hard to tell with Priest. My first few Warlock games were push-overs, but then I faced one which was sort of midrangey and it kept removing all my stuff. No big deal, I'll just keep playing more. Then they played Tickatus and Y'Shaarj. Oh, so that's what people have been talking about. Still almost won, but the next couple wiped me out and it's definitely a bad matchup. Paladin is pretty interesting at the moment and looking at HSReplay there are a bunch of different decks. I'll try one of the control variants next, starting with that list above.
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Nov 20, 2020 02:14
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Ornery and Hornery posted:I was also curious, from some googling and trawling through reddit, I found the awesome site. This site is gold. This Highlander Mage deck is way better than the garbage I was playing. I can actually beat DH now! ### Highlander Mage # Class: Mage # Format: Standard # Year of the Phoenix # # 1x (1) Arcane Breath # 1x (1) Ray of Frost # 1x (1) Wand Thief # 1x (2) Acidic Swamp Ooze # 1x (2) Astromancer Solarian # 1x (2) Doomsayer # 1x (2) Frostbolt # 1x (2) Zephrys the Great # 1x (3) Arcane Intellect # 1x (3) Combustion # 1x (3) Frost Nova # 1x (3) Frozen Shadoweaver # 1x (4) Bone Wraith # 1x (4) Circus Amalgam # 1x (4) Circus Medic # 1x (4) Conjurer's Calling # 1x (4) Escaped Manasaber # 1x (4) Ring Toss # 1x (5) Jandice Barov # 1x (5) Kobold Stickyfinger # 1x (5) Malygos, Aspect of Magic # 1x (5) Rolling Fireball # 1x (6) Khartut Defender # 1x (6) Reno the Relicologist # 1x (8) Deep Freeze # 1x (9) Alexstrasza # 1x (10) Kalecgos # 1x (10) Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron # 1x (10) The Amazing Reno # 1x (10) Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate # AAECAf0EHooBqwTFBMsElgWKB4OWA5+bA4qeA6GhA8KhA/yjA5KkA/KlA/qsA+yvA4ixA4S2A4y2A+G2A427A9a+A97EA5TRA6TRA9nRA53YA7PcA+veA/TfAwAA # # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone # Generated by HDT - https://hsreplay.net
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Nov 22, 2020 02:19
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MinionOfCthulhu posted:Thank you for this. Hilarious fun. I happened to have all the legendaries by chance so I vaporized a gold legendary I would never use and created all the epics I lacked. Tickitus is funnnn. Having been on the receiving end of Tickatus a bunch of times now, the first time I played against it with my new Mage deck was fun : Opponent T3 : Expired Merchant -> Y'Shaarj My T4 : Zephrys -> Earth Shock Opponent : 'Extraordinary' -> Concedes The Y'Shaarj turn always looks like the kind of dumb fun HS is built for so I can never be mad at the deck. Cascading Disaster being so efficient does make me grumble though. Big Coffin Hunter posted:Yeah, here's the version I'm running but there is still some work to be done. I personally prefer Bronze Explorers over the Goody Two Shields most people run at 3 mana. Yeah I prefer Bronze Explorers too but all of the top 100 decks run Two Shields. My only thought is it's better in the mirror or against other decks that have to bump into minions to kill them. I really like generating cards in Paladin because as everyone knows, they have bad draw. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of Two Shields vs BE against different deck types, if there were enough games of BE decks to provide decent stats. I don't know if a HSreplay sub can even show that kind of data though.
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Nov 23, 2020 00:34
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AnacondaHL posted:It sorta has this data, you have to look at each class manually, and can only look at the past 30 days. Thanks for looking it up! I switched back to Two Shields briefly after finding that streamer deck site, and while I suspected the people on the Top 100 decks list were right and I was wrong I just didn't want to accept it because BE is more interesting, dammit! I've also been experimenting with Libram of Justice and Consecration. The deck I've played most has zero copies of either, but now I'm running 2 x Consecration again. LoJ is amazing against Druid and a good general sweeper with Consecration but it just sits akwardly in my hand so often I can't believe it's right. I'm also trying 1 x Hammer of the Naaru, and I've been toying with 1 x Amber Watcher but it's hard to cut something for it.
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Nov 23, 2020 02:13
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Jeza posted:It's just not possible to balance Duels realistically or for it to live up to its fun, diverse potential - not because it's clown fiesta, but because just like Constructed, 90+% of people are railroaded into decided deck archetypes where all that matters is whether you hit the right degenerate and synergistic treasures or not. For all the nutty things that can happen, the player experience is the same exact poo poo over and over. Responding to this old post because I spent a lot of time in Duels over the last few days trying to get the 12-0 XP achievement and my experience is also that it's a waste of time. I started off with net-decks which haven't been updated for the new cards, mostly picking Discard Warlock or Deathrattle Hunter, but I really don't think they're the best in the meta right now. It has to be Demon Hunter and Mage, as they're the most common decks I saw at 7+ wins, which, admittedly, I didn't get to too many times, but they're also more common at the lower ranks. So I just had my best run yet, 11-3 as Elemental Mage with the freeze power and the 'add three elementals to your hand' starting thing (my good treasures were +1 spell damage, -1 spell cost, and the book that does seven damage to every enemy) and I built my deck with a bunch of spell power, cheap removal and some elementals. My deck did some ludicrous things, but my losses were to two mages who had worse treasures than me but each played the Yogg Wheel thing to successfully wipe my Grand Finale turn, and a Demon Hunter because WTF. I actually faced three DHs and was lucky enough to have like 3 x Frostbolt and 3 x Water Elemental within the first few turns each time; I froze the first one every turn from 2-9 then finished with a Pyro, but from my experience as other classes (even a Discard Warlock I thought was busted) I can't imagine any other class beating them without freeze effects. I thought I had a good strategy vs them with 'freeze first, freeze often' but in the game where I lost to one I should've held back until the mid-game to really screw them up (they escaped my GF turn with Glide, which was super telegraphed but I had no other choice). I faced two Deathrattle Hunters with the 'your DR minions have Reborn' and they just collapsed when I kept their board clear on the early turns (costly, but worth it). From playing that deck myself it just seems to have a really slow start and can't recover. I actually saw one Rogue at 8+ wins, which was only the second one I'd seen the whole time playing. Has anyone else played a lot of Duels? What do you think are the best classes/treasures? The mage that beat me at 11 played the 'add a random mage spell to your hand' weapon on like turn two or something and I still only lost by one damage on my final turn like 15 turns later. My deck was efficient and had a lot of interesting synergies, and I can see a shell of a game mode there where you get to explore the drafting side of things more strategically in that regard, but as it is, most games were decided (either in my favour or not) by the luck of the draw. And I know the whole point of Hearthstone is to do stupid bullshit, but when it's cranked this high it's just not a rewarding experience. Kalko fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Jan 27, 2021 |
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Jan 27, 2021 11:44
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Cart posted:So Ramp/N'Zoth/TipTheScales/Noz/whatever Paladin is absolutely disgusting in this meta. I gave it a spin last night, scotch in hand and movie in the background, and still managed to pull off an 11-game winstreak (so close to the On A Roll achievement!) before losing to an Aggro Demon Hunter with an absolute snowball of an early game. This was at legend. Yeah I discovered this deck last night when I went looking for a Duel Paladin list on this great site.  I swear Ramp Paladin didn't exist like two days ago.
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Jan 27, 2021 20:49
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Glutes Are Great posted:I'm curious, how do you guys ladder the best? Do you just try out one deck and go ahead, stick to it for many games no matter the success, do you build your own stuff and see how it goes or do you swap around to whatever is currently listed as best? I used to do my dailies/laddering exclusively as Highlander Mage (control Rogue/Mage is my favourite archetype) but lately I've diversified into Pure/Duel Paladin, Secret/Whirlkick Rogue, and OTK Mage. I still check in on Highlander Mage though, and it looks like this is currently the top legend variant.
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Feb 3, 2021 10:22
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Haven't seen anyone mention Duels for a while in this thread, which is understandable if you've spent more than five minutes with the mode, but seeing as how I have been persevering with it I figured I'd share what I've learned in case anyone else is also chasing that 12-0 achievement. So, if you don't know how Duels works, you pick a hero from one of four randomly offered options (Casual seems to be restricted to the same four) and hope you get either Mage, Shaman, Warlock, or Hunter, then you select a hero power from three different options, then you select a starting treasure and build a deck of 16 cards from a restricted pool which includes a bunch of non-Standard cards. After each round you get to choose cards to add to your deck from three different 'buckets' of three cards which are themed for your class. After the first and fifth rounds you get to choose a potentially game-changing passive treasure, and on the other odd-numbered rounds you get to choose a regular treasure card to add to your deck. The buckets and treasures you get offered are not completely random, but are slightly weighted towards the current makeup of your deck, so that, for example, if you're playing Warrior and you have a lot of Enrage themed cards you're more likely to be offered an Enrage bucket between rounds. In practice, this means that if you want to keep seeing Enrage buckets you might take an early Enrage bucket even if its contents seems suboptimal compared to the other options. Also, I've found that if you take different buckets of 'good' cards every time, your deck can quickly lose focus and you end up with a pile of cards. But sometimes you have no choice and just have to make the best of a bad situation. Oh, and if you ever get the option to not take any more cards (the empty bucket) that's usually the best choice. They made a lot of new cards for Duels. You can see them in this wiki along with the hero powers and passive treasures. As you can probably tell from glancing at some of this stuff, Duels is a high variance game mode, and it's quite easy to make a powerful deck and then get suddenly and inexplicably blown out by an even more powerful deck. What I've learned about deck building is that you need to make an unfair deck, which means only a few classes are viable, and within those classes, only 1-2 hero powers or starting treasures are viable. And when I say unfair, what I mean is that your deck needs to be able to consistently cheat the mana curve by using cost-reducing or mana-boosting treasures or powers. This means that passive treasures like Rhonin's Scrying Orb or Crystal Gem are some of the best options. You can also do well with treasures that help you dump stats onto the board (another way of cheating the curve) like Unlocked Potential (as long as your deck is designed for it - Warlock and Warrior appreciate this one). It's generally hard to effectively make use of the treasures that provide only synergy for a particular archetype, with the obvious exception being Robes of the Apprentice for a Mage. And if you get offered a couple of mediocre treasures alongside Mysterious Tome, take the Tome. At worst it's decent tempo disruption, and at best it can win you the game on the first turn (at least in the early rounds). So these passive treasures are the key inflexion points for your deck. You can have the most unfair deck in the world, but if you don't get offered the right passive treasures your deck isn't going anywhere. Your second pick in particular will determine whether you'll make it past seven wins, and in my experience if you don't have Double Time or a way to deal with a deck that does, you will lose very quickly because most of the decks at the top end have it. Emerald Goggles can be used to great effect, and I've had some solid games with Disks of Legend but most of the others from the second pool can't compete with Double Time. There are a couple of exceptions, of course, like Mummy Magic is still crazy in Hunter. For actual deck construction, in general I think you're better off creating a midrangey tempo deck rather than aggro or control. Aggro will get diluted after the first few buckets, and control can definitely work but you will have trouble getting through the early rounds when deck sizes are very low. The decks I've mostly stuck to are Mage with Frost Shards and Embercaster or Yogg-tastic Tasties, Druid with Harvest Time! and Warden's Insight, and Warrior with No Guts, No Glory and Auto-Armaments. When I first started playing I was running a lot of Warlock with Dark Arts and Killmox, which is still very strong. I haven't played Shaman myself, but I face a lot of them because Stormcatcher has unfairness built-in and it makes the class a very strong pick at the moment. I would put some decklists here but this post is already too long. My lists are very similar to the recent posts on this site or this guy's Youtube channel. It's actually hard to find up-to-date info for Duels and I haven't found any streamers that regularly play it except for him. So anyway, my experiences with these decks : Mage - I think this is the strongest deck overall and the one I can consistently take to 6-7 wins. One problem is that being so spell-heavy you can end up with too many cards in hand and no way to dump them so that you can play your Discover or other card-generating effects (not to mention the Ice Shards that build up). Grand Finale is a good finisher in the early games and a good speed bump in the later ones. Druid - By far the best deck to rocket up to six wins and then fall over to Warlock and Shaman's infinite supply of board sweepers. I haven't yet experienced Druid with Double Time, but I hear it's disgusting. Warrior - Pretty consistent, with good quality minions and reach. I see a lot of Bomb Warrior and I just don't think it's good, even if I lose to it sometimes. Grom is a great finisher if you can hero power him - I like to think 12 damage (or more) from hand comes as a surprise to most people. Warlock - Discard synergy allows you to cheat out a strong board very early and Killmox is fantastic, especially if you can duplicate him with Felosophy, but I haven't been able to push this deck beyond eight wins or so. Final thoughts : the higher you go, the more board sweepers you need. Shoutout to the two emote-spamming Shamans I faced back-to-back last night that played about ten Double Time'd Lightning Storms and eight Tidal Waves between them but still both lost when I brought them to 14 HP the turn before I would've died and then played LOCUUUUSTS!!!.
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Feb 9, 2021 04:28
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Paladin is the worst class in Duels by a fair margin but they do have one gimmick deck. I lost to it tonight on an 8-win Mage deck and it was so silly I had to try to replicate it. The opponent I lost to had Scepter of Summoning but I ended up with Emerald Goggles, which turned out to be even better! Here it is in action with Royal Greatsword :   My other passive was Crystal Gem so I was able to play multiple mid-sized minions on the first couple of turns (and then resurrect them as they died). A couple of typical Gems/Goggles board states :   My reign of terror was brought to an end at 10 wins when the left side of my hand finally got clogged with big minions. That was a fun ride!
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Feb 9, 2021 13:17
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Sloppy posted:Thanks for the write-up, I've been mostly playing Duels the last few months myself. I've only made it to 12 once with discard Warlock, but have been enjoying trying out new variations. Rogue is very inconsistent. I try it every now and then but you basically need to highroll every game; when you get your weapon buffs and Secret Passages and card draw you can smash someone's face in on turn five, but if the game goes much longer than that you generally lose. Compare it to the pre-nerf DH where they could hit you for 5-15 damage every turn, weapon or not. For overall rankings I'd say Mage > Shaman, Warlock, Hunter, Druid > Warrior > DH, Priest, Rogue > Paladin. I haven't actually seen a lot of Hunters since the patch but the ones I do see are crazy good, and I think the class is still really strong (Deathrattle only, of course). Playing Duels so much lately has reminded me that this game has emotes. I don't encounter them much in Standard anymore but everyone loves spamming them in Duels games. Is it because there are actual stakes? I mean, 150g isn't much, but it's either that or it's a similar mentality to serial gankers in WoW where the thrill of the gank is that you can't possibly lose, and with the power level of some of these Duels decks maybe they feel that same kind of high?
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Feb 10, 2021 01:13
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orangelex44 posted:Of note, this is a significant reduction from the current number of cards in Basic/Classic combined (235 versus 240+143=383) - they're keeping just a bit over a third of each set. Not coincidentally, about a third of the Core set will also either come from Wild or be new. I wonder if this will result in them tightening up the themes of each class. I'm not particularly aware of how many different things each class has going on at the moment but I'm sure a few of them could use some work. Either way, I only want one thing from this : Tess Greymane back in Standard! I guess we will find out what makes the cut next weekend.
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Feb 10, 2021 01:30
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Yeah, that was me, and in like four of my winning games I got the sword in my opening hand (three of them it was in the leftmost slot for the discount) in a deck of 40+ cards. Paladin is the weakest class but when the stars align you can do great things. I'm definitely going to try it again because the Gem + Goggles was actually pretty consistently good for dumping annoying minions early, but in each of the games I lost it was because my expensive cards (which you need to make the deck work) all appeared on the left side of my hand, blocking the Goggles. Here's the starting deck if you want to try it. It was actually the most fun I've had in Duels yet. 
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Feb 10, 2021 02:25
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Quotey posted:i've a conspiracy theory that when they nerfed kilmox, they also reduced the incidence of discard buckets. have you noticed that too? i never bother with discard lock anymore, or lock at all really. To be honest if I hadn't heard it mentioned on Youtube that the buckets are weighted towards your deck contents I wouldn't have known, as I find I hardly get offered the ones I want no matter what class I'm playing or how many of the same type I pick. And yeah, Group Learning sucks.
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Feb 10, 2021 10:35
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Quotey posted:
It's one of six treasures from the second pool which has only a 1% chance to appear. You can see the others here. Still waiting for the day I get the +3 spell power one with a Mage deck.
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Feb 11, 2021 14:36
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ElectronicOldMen posted:So after finishing my Quel'Delar druid run it ended 12-2 and I now have 690 gold. Grats, I just got my first ever 12 win, with this :  Last two games were anticlimactic. Both were against DHs with Illidari Strike, one of which had the ultra-rare poison treasure. I just didn't play any minions so they weren't able to develop a board or do any tricks with their hero power - burned them both out by turn 6-7 with Double Time'd Mask of C'Thun and a few other bits. Primordial Glyph is ridiculously good, especially with Double Time. That was a 12-2 win but it could've been 12-1 if I hadn't misplayed in an early round. 12-0 is going to take more than just luck. But also a lot of luck.
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Feb 12, 2021 10:13
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ElectronicOldMen posted:So after finishing my Quel'Delar druid run it ended 12-2 and I now have 690 gold. So I was just on like 6-2 with a mediocre Druid deck, then I got the option to make Quel'Delar so I thought, sure, why not. It's your first draw every game.  Just finished the run at 12-2 and none of those games were even close.
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Feb 13, 2021 10:49
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Devo posted:I wish more people played Duels but I know why they don't I had a 12-1 Druid win last night, my third 12 in as many days, and I'm actually about 1500 gold up on when I started around a week ago. I did give up testing the weaker classes recently, only picking Paladin every other game to try to replicate my 10-2 streak from last week, and after six such games of 1-5 wins I'm ready to say that was a freak occurrence. But then I haven't actually had the Gem treasure again, which makes a pretty big difference. One thing I've learned is that you can't just take more big legendary minions straight away - you need to pick cheap, sticky minions like Goody Two-Shields if you can, because most of the time you're not going to get the sword early so you need to play the delay game. But yeah, I pretty much just pick Mage and Druid now because I 'know' how to get 6+ wins with them.
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Feb 15, 2021 03:19
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Those Duels changes are kind of odd. Some kind of Mage nerf was expected, and I guess I'm not surprised they adjusted some class treasures because they like making lesser-picked options more viable just in general, but the classes that don't perform well need more than just their own treasures changed, they need card pool adjustments and passive treasure changes. I thought Double Time would get hit, and I'm surprised Druid got away without any nerfs. If I had to guess at their intended goals for class balance I would say they're using seven wins (the breakpoint where you win more gold than it cost to enter) as their yardstick and not trying to adjust for every class to have an equal chance of getting to twelve. Like, Warlock is one of the most consistent for getting to seven wins but they can struggle to get past that, so the nerfs kind of make sense there if they care mostly about that number. But then Rogue is the most swingy class by far so I would've thought they'd get some attention.
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Feb 20, 2021 02:30
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Quotey posted:i assume they just adjust buckets without stating, so the actual class winrates things to adjust are up in the air. i asked iskar in his q/a session about the group learning bucket but no response, will try to do it until i get one. Here's some commentary on the changes from TeamAmerica, the only streamer I've found who actually plays Duels. I was thinking about the Frost Shards nerf in terms of actually getting the minions for Grand Finale, but he's right in that it was key for letting you curve out every turn. I've had some fun with Duels but it would need an overhaul before I'd want to keep playing it after I eventually get a 12-0 win. I don't even care about achievements in general, I just wanted that one for the XP/gold, but of course I've spent way more gold trying to get it than I'll recover from it now.
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Feb 20, 2021 06:48
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Ok, sample size of one and all, but I'm going to say they did change the way the buckets work. I've had 1-2 Nature's Army buckets after each game, and I've never seen this before : edit : yeah, it's definitely changed. Two games later and I've had another 1-2 Nature's Army and no Group Learning. edit 2 : I'm not so sure Discard Warlock is that nerfed. With these pool changes the ones I've faced have had a LOT of Boneweb Eggs and Silverware Golems. Kalko fucked around with this message at 11:25 on Feb 20, 2021 |
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Feb 20, 2021 07:19
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Hearthstone is interesting right up until the moment a winner is determined, whether it's when a control deck takes over the game against my aggro deck or when C'Thun is hovering in midair above the board and about to land. I concede to get to the next game because it feels like wasted time, and I prefer it when my opponents do the same. Is it really that satisfying to finish someone off when-AnacondaHL posted:unless it's Res/Quest Priest then I finish out the OTK or whatever and kill them Ok, yeah, sometimes it is satisfying!
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Feb 22, 2021 07:50
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 The first time I get a 1% passive treasure (on the left) and my deck has zero synergy for it! Also practically zero for the totem. RNG here I come.
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Feb 27, 2021 04:47
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It's the first time I'm trying it after seeing it listed in a couple of 12 wins decks here (I'm playing this one) : https://hearthstone-decks.net/duels-deck/ I went 5-0 then ran into a discard Warlock with the double Deathrattle treasure who put four 2/1 spiders on the board on his first turn. I'm 7-1 at the moment with average treasures and I'm doing much better than usual with Paladin, but I've only ever really played the sword build before.
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Feb 27, 2021 05:11
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Duels update : I've played the buffed Men at Arms/Bring on Recruits Paladin deck a few more times now, most recently this version : AAEBAZ8FD9wD9Q33DYwO2a4Cu68Clc0Dm80Dk9ADgt4Dg94DhN4Dh94Dot4D+t4DAAA= (from this site) It's surprisingly good. I've managed to go 5-0 twice now because it has a distinct advantage in the early rounds when deck sizes are small and you can guarantee you'll draw Men at Arms early. The Duels meta is currently two types of decks : Mage/Shaman/Priest/Warlock running C'Thun the Shattered, and Druid. None of the former can stand up to two or more 3/3s every turn, and Druid will only beat you in these early rounds if they get their god draw. As with all Duels decks, your longevity will be mostly determined by your treasures. Your first passive doesn't matter too much as long as it isn't completely useless, but if your second isn't Emerald Goggles or Cannibalism you probably won't make it past seven wins. For buckets, you want to keep your curve pretty low; secrets can be good (but not too many) and anything with Goody Two-Shields is worth considering. If you're going first, try to avoid playing Oh My Yogg! until your opponent has used their coin because it can give them an Innervate or Lightning Bloom, and because it's usually better on later turns to catch more impactful spells (possibly even a C'Thun spell) especially if they can't afford to test for it first. I'm still trying for the 12-0 achievement, so I'm playing Druid whenever it's offered. Since the patch took Mage down a notch, Harvest Time!/Warden's Insight Druid is the only Tier 1 deck. I took a fairly good one to 10-0 on the weekend but fairly good won't get you all the way (that one ended at 11-2). Nowadays when I reach 10-0 wins with a good deck I click the Find Game button with equal parts dread and morbid curiosity at what I might discover, and sure enough every time I've been completely blown out by the most ridiculous poo poo I've ever seen in this game. If you want to go infinite in Duels you need mostly skill and a bit of luck, but if you want that 12-0 scorecard you need mostly luck and a bit of skill because no matter how good you are, if the game doesn't offer you the right cards you aren't getting there. Pretty much all of the decks I've faced at 10+ wins (and my own as well) have the following in common : 1) Tier 1 treasures, or unusually good deck synergy with Tier 2 treasures (like the Warlock with Disks of Legend who played a Golden Kobold on turn two and then multiple Envoy Rustwix). 2) Lots of good buckets. In my last eight games of Druid there were five games where I wasn't offered a single Nature's Army bucket, despite using the same deck list every time. I still believe they improved upon bucket consistency in the patch but it's crazy how random it still feels sometimes. 3) Card draw, either from in-class cards or neutral treasures. It's most telling in that the classes I see consistently at 10+ wins are the same kinds of Mage, Warlock, or Druid decks, but when I connect to a Demon Hunter at that level I know I'm in for a ride because the only way they make it that high is if the stars aligned for them. As frustrating as it's been for my own goals, I'm not sure having super high variance at the top end is really a problem for Duels in general, but it would be nice if they could somehow make more classes and/or powers viable so that you don't see the same few deck archetypes every time.
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Mar 1, 2021 04:05
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I just started watching Kibler's overview : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbv_NtScJgU (Demon Hunter, Hunter, Druid, Mage) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vscaQimotLI (Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er6DP3gTuxs (Warlock, Warrior, Neutrals) At first glance I didn't really think much of Vanessa Vancleef but now I'm really looking forward to her - she's basically Orderlol : The Card. Just the threat of having her in hand could result in a lot of inefficient plays from your opponent, plus burgle is my favourite Rogue archetype anyway.
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Mar 1, 2021 05:18
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Amoeba102 posted:Why the gently caress are they bringing back coldarra drake? It'll be interesting to see how they support this archetype because the design space seems pretty limited. You would want the hero power to continue to deal damage so it can interact with the 2-drop, but short of reducing its cost or making not-Inspire type effects I don't really see where they can go. Maybe a legendary with a big payoff if you can stick the drake; something like 'Battlecry : Discover a spell each time you use your hero power this turn.'
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Mar 2, 2021 01:26
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Kibler is the only HS streamer I've ever watched with any regularity because 1) I enjoy his laid-back former Pro seen-it-all-before personality, and 2) the deck archetypes he builds are broadly the same ones I like to play (except for his Warlock and Priest decks, two classes which exist mostly as dust in my collection). In his own words, they're 'sweet' decks; not cut-throat ladder climbers, but ones with more off-meta inclusions which are fun to play but still created with a competitive mindset. Having said that, I played a fair bit of Stealth Rogue last month just to boost back to D10 quickly since I've been spending most of my HS time playing Duels lately. I also played a fair bit of AnacondaHL's Elemental Mage deck and that was a fun ride.
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Mar 3, 2021 05:10
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Now that the Duels meta seems to have settled after the recent patch I'm going to do an overview of what to expect if you're just starting out, then I'll comment on a few of the decks I've been playing recently. If any of the three other people in this thread who play Duels wants to chime in with their own experiences I'd love to hear about them. As a general meta observation, I'm surprised at how much Discard Warlock and how little Druid I've seen since the first few days of the patch. I still think Druid is the strongest class, but I wonder if removing Double Time is the reason they're not showing up much anymore. I can't actually find any official mention of it being removed, but I haven't seen anyone play it since the first couple of days of the patch (and it hasn't been offered to me at all) and it used to be very common in the higher ranks. Alright, so if you want to know what kind of deck is capable of getting 12 wins, this site is a pretty good indicator, but if you want decks created by a player who is definitely good I would recommend TeamAmerica, who has a 9.5k rating. Most of my decks are his, but I sometimes mix it up and try one of the winners from the first site. Having said that, here's my tier list based on which decks I've won a lot with or seen most consistently at high ranks : Tier 1 : Druid - Harvest Time! / Warden's Insight, Warlock - Dark Arts / Killmox, Mage - Wyrm Bolt / Embercaster (I prefer Yogg-tastic Tasties for the highroll and extra board clear) Tier 2 : Warlock - Soulcial Studies / Demonizer, Shaman - Stormcatcher / Chaos Storm (Payload Totem Specialist and Invoke the Void are both viable), Demon Hunter - Illidari Strike / Gift of the Legion Tier 3 - Everything else, though Rogue is noticeably worse than the others. In some ways there's almost two separate metas for Duels : the one before your second passive treasure, and the one after. Your first game is always played with a deck of 16 cards and no treasures, and this game is probably the biggest crapshoot of all so don't worry too much if you lose it. You'll see a lot of Priest (and it's just as tiresome to play against as in Standard) and particularly a lot of Priest/Mage/Warlock/Shaman and even Warrior running C'thun the Shattered, because one of the best ways to try to survive these early games with small deck sizes is to remove everything your opponent plays and then win by attrition (though most of these games don't actually end with a C'thun hitting the board). At 7+ wins the number of off-meta decks falls rapidly to zero, along with all of the Priests and Warriors (except those who've won the bucket/treasure lottery) and I'm going to say at this point you won't get much further unless you have a good amount of card draw. I think this is a big reason why Discard Warlock and Mage are top tier; they either have a hero power that draws (Warlock) or good in-class card draw which appears often in buckets (Mage). They also have plentiful cheap removal, and in Warlock's case cheap AoE removal like School Spirits. Removal matters, because the higher you go (and especially after round seven when Wand of Disintegration, Book of the Dead, and even Staff of Scales enter the mix) the more your games will play out as a back-and-forth removal simulator until finally one party gets something to stick. This is the reason the only viable token strategies are Druid and DH; Druid can create a huge board very early in the game and overwhelm you before you get going, while DH can generate full boards out of thin air for as long as they can keep drawing cards (though they really need Cannibalism to make them a genuine threat). Ok, so here's a few decklists I've been playing lately (sorry no HDT code, it makes my task bar disappear when I alt-tab so I don't use it) :  The mage deck is from the Top Duels Decks site, and the other two are TeamAmerica's. I kind of like how the Mage deck runs secrets from the start and has Sayge, but my record with it is not exactly consistent. My first four games were 11-3, 0-3, 1-3, and 4-3, though to be fair in that first game I got Sticky Fingers, which makes the C'Thun spells a lot better, plus it works on all Discovered cards (but not randomly generated ones like from Babbling Book). I think that treasure only works really well in Mage now because of their plentiful in-class Discover cards. The DH deck is one I took to 12 wins a couple of days ago because my treasures were All Shall Serve and Cannibalism. It was the first time I'd tried All Shall Serve and I misread the part where it works on ALL demons, not just your own, so the matches I played against Warlocks were kind of insane. I basically had 10 cards every turn and burned my deck every time, which is a double-edged sword, but I did beat like four out of five of them in that run so I guess it's better on the whole. The Shaman deck is the one I really want to talk about, because I only started playing the class after the patch and I've played it a lot lately without much success (8-3 is my best attempt). One thing I find with my Warlock or Mage decks which is a particular problem in Shaman is that you can end up with a deck that has lots of removal but no threats. Minions like Earth Elemental and Flamewreathed Faceless would be a lot better if Devolving Missiles wasn't so common, which is why I switched from Invoke the Void in the original list to Chaos Storm (another reason is that Shaman card draw in buckets is very unreliable so you have to fall back on generation). Incidentally, Devolving Missiles is also the reason any strategy involving buffing big minions is doomed to fail. The only really reliable win condition I've found with Shaman is Doomhammer. Especially against Priest in the early rounds, you will never be able to stick a board, but with Stormstrike and support cards like Diligent Notetaker, Zentimo, Electra Stormsurge, and Enrage you can do a ridiculous amount of damage from hand. Regarding treasures, if your first is Plaguebringer you will have a very different experience than with any other. But again, if you can't fill your hand up with stuff to cast you will fall over pretty quick. That treasure also makes for an insane Instructor Fireheart turn - it's honestly one of the most swingy cards in all of Duels with it. I think Shaman is propped up by their cheap AoE removal, which lets you survive for a good while, but yeah, closing out a game is really dependant on your bucket quality. And speaking of which, here's what I usually get offered in the 'Draw' category, which would be fine if that 'Wisdom' one appeared more than once every ten games :  I keep trying to make Shaman work because it feels like the pieces are there, but they just don't come together very often. Meanwhile I can push even a mediocre Druid deck to seven wins, or play Mage and watch Wyrm Bolt screw with my opponent's tempo while I amass all the burn I need to close out a game.
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Mar 8, 2021 07:50
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