Gaming → Hearthstone - FOR THE ALLIANCE!

Even in casual mode the warlock zoo decks are all the rage. I had to use my hunter deck for my dailies so good chance to test my skills.

In all honesty hunters are in a good place against the zoo deck, but it requires a lucky draw as you'd expect. You need to fight fire with fire especially in the first couple of turns. Arcane Shot will wipe out early minions with 2 or less health, Ironbeak Owl will silence the more annoying effects and the Stonetusk Boar will do 1 dmg with charge. It can be buffed with Timber Wolf. Finally an Explosive Trap will devestate a zoo which seriously puts paid to the early offense.

From turn 3 you get even more options. Animal Companion will either give you a powerful taunt, high DPS with charge or a minion which buffs others. All options are great and need dealing with asap and often the only way to kill it is for the lock to waste a high level card. Kill Command is good for getting rid of the worst minions, 3 dmg or 5 if you have a beast. Finally Unleash the Hounds will turn the tide, especially if you can get it buffed with a timber wolf.

I run with a couple of River Crocolisks for DPS and Ironfur Grizzlies for taunts. I also have Houndmasters / Oasis Snapjaws as I like the flexibilty they bring. The houndmasters can also be used on the Crocolisks or on any beast to up DPS/take pressure from a more valuable minion. The snapjaws are usually ignored but the 7 health means once you get a taunt on them, you can buff them with Dire Wolf Alphas and Timber Wolves for a low cost, hard hitting minion.

I'm up to rank 10 and now seeing the miracle rogues

They do very little then for a while, then out comes gadgetzan auctioneer and the pain starts and often never ends.

The annoying part is that the answer for losing to miracle rogue is to move to play a very specific deck, and a different class, something with a lot of aggro.

I started playing a version of Mage that I really like where I use a lot of frost spells to control enemy minions. I only am at level 12 ATM so am not sure how it will do at lower levels but so far it is fun. You get a lot of rage quits from the other side because it is incredibly frustrating to have 3 or 4 turns in a row where all your minions are frozen and useless.

As a side note, is there a way to see all you statistics? Like % of games where you start first, games agains mages, etc?

there is at least one probably more utility that runs on your desktop that inspects results as you play, and accumulate stats.
But nothing for ipad because the tools to make that type of assist are just hacks not using an API or the server etc.

Well I hope Blizzard is accumulating the stats like they did/do for WoW. And one day they will implement that functionality. I can't remember when Blizard did it, but it was a nice surprise to see on day how many murlocs you had killed or chickens you had clicked at. It would be nice to either confirm or deny my gut feeling that I hardly ever get the coin and when I play X class I get an unusually high number of matchups against y class.

Far too many zoo warlocks and miracle rogues about. I can beat them easily, either by a zoo warlock deck myself or with other rush decks based on AOE (hunter with explosive trap, paladin with Consecration, shaman with Lightning Storm) but more often than not you are reliant on getting those AOE cards along with the 1 cost minions yourself.

Yeah the new season started so all the higher level guys are floating around 19/20 :P.

Yeah, getting past 20 - 19 seemed extra tricky. Finally got thru to 17 again. In the past I usually float around 16, never getting higher than 15.

At least my rainbow card backs are secured.

I was rank 14 last season and it put me at rank 20 to start this season.

I'm getting killed this season too... Last season I made it to 10 before falling back to 16 after trying some strange hands (Pirate deck ftw). This season no matter what class I try I can't break 18 for more than a game. It's incredibly frustrating.

I know it's just the gods of RNG plotting against me, but I miss the 10 game winning streaks I had last season.

Sorry for the QQ.

Play a tried and true deck and just grind it out. Control Warrior, FoN-SR Druid, Zoolock of Handlock, Miracle Rogue, etc. Both Zoo and Handlock will always be good as long the Warlock spells stays as is. There is an entertaining super aggro Paladin deck that has been floating around as well.

I use my own version of it sometimes. It's crazy good. Lots of divine shields and +3 to lowly minions.

I keep meaning to try a shaman windfury aggro deck but never getting round to it.

I've been trying a priest lately and have crawled my way up a bit to rank 13. Priest is fun, but the only problem is I will sometimes lose very quickly to a strong aggro deck if i don't get the right card draw.

On another note: was there any explanation why the maintenance yesterday lasted 12+ hours (I didn't log on yesterday)?

Priest is still my favorite. I outlasted a rogue full of low-level minion cards, many of which spawned other minions. It would have been a lot quicker if my second holy nova card had popped up.

It seems a lot of my decks are based on crowd control and lasting until the end. More than once I've played until we were both out of cards.

What type of priest deck are you guys using?

There is really only one viable Priest deck with a couple of small variations based on play style. I would guess it is similar to the standard Amaz priest.

Wild Pyro, Soul Priest, CoH, Injured Blade Masters, Clerics, Holy Nova, Thought Steal, Pain & Death, maybe a Mind Control etc.

Basically you play to survive, try to steal good cards, have a few super late game choices yourself (generally Rag & Ysera). It is an out last and out control deck.

I'm pretty close to that, though I continuously tinker with the balance of minion cards versus non-minion cards. I've had some purple minion cards drop for me that are hard to exclude so, for example, Big Game Hunter edged out one the SW: Death cards, but I sometimes play with all three.

BGH isn't a bad card, I'd totally run BGH is something like Druid, especially with Mark of the Wild, but in Priest? No, I'd stay with two SW:D and one SW:P. SW:D is infinitely better than BGH. Sure, you don't get a minion out of it but it kills anything with 5 attack and up, instead of needing 7 and up like BGH.

And, running two Faceless Manipulators with your two SW:Ds means you get two Mind Controls for 8 mana in addition to if you actually ARE running Mind Control.

I think the key to playing Priest well is to have a good start and then to just be able to survive the mid game into late game. Clerics are your draw engines, Blademasters are your heavy lifters. You always have your Earthen Rings to fall back on for that early to mid game, as well as being able to have a better SI:7 Agent if you use it in conjunction with your Soul Priest.

But really, it is just survive and steal. SW:P, SW:D, Shadow Madness, Soul Priest + CoH, Holy Nova, Cabal Shadow Priest, Holy Fire.

All those cards are control cards, and that isn't even all your spells, you still have your PW:S and Thought Steals. All that plus stuff like Wild Pyro, your Clerics and heals, massive draw engine.

Out last and out control. I find variations to be interesting but as someone who plays Priest 75% of the time, I don't think I could justify having a BGH in there. The other babbling was just to expand on the deck for those curious, not aimed at you Six.

I don't like the card that turns healing into DMG. I took control of it once, then did a holy nova.. not fun :P

That would be the Soul Priest. It is one of the most important and valuable cards in the Priest arsenal. Takes some getting used to but when you wrap your head around all the different ways you can use it and don't make little mistakes (like popping a Holy Fire and smacking yourself in the face for 6 damage) it is an amazing card.

For 4 mana you can do an 8 damage full board wipe. The only other card that can do that is Twisting Nether for 8 mana. I mean, sure you're using up both CoHs and your Soul Priest is gonna die but damnit, you will have a clear board.

Especially fun to use against Handlock when they drop double Molten Giant and then Sunfury taunt up.

No worries, good food for thought.

I did craft my first Faceless yesterday. Now that I've finally built up a decent collection of cards, the dust seems to be accumulating quicker. I stopped running Mind Control when Rags dropped for me, and I've always planned on stocking Faceless. Of all the priest-priest matches that I have had, I think MC worked really well for my opponent only once.

I think the only match up where MC is still solid is against the Legendary Parade Control Warrior, and that is only because you need to have more answers than he does Legendaries. And as someone who used to play that deck A LOT, that means you need to be able to deal with a lot. I would never suggest having more than one MC, and with the current Meta (Token Druid, Ramp Druid, Zoo, etc) I wouldn't probably run it at all. Control Warrior is still around, and Handlock will always be around unless they change the Warlock ability, but in almost any other match up it just isn't good.

Do you still think the Hunter Beasts Deck is viable?

This is my only deck I have sunk any real time into. I crafted my King Crush as the explanation point. I think I was 18 or 19 last season and started in 22 maybe this season. I need to get a new IPAD so I can get games in while watching w/e tv series I am in currently. I wish it would run on my IPAD 1.

The Midrange Sunshine Hunter is still viable. They still have the best draw engine in the game with Starving Buzzard and Unleash the Hounds, Tracking is still stupid strong, Hunters Mark is still stupid strong, most of their traps are good. Just add in stuff like Deadly Shot / Explosive Shot, get your Highmanes and hyenas in there, and use Crush as a finisher.

Face Hunter might win some times. But really, I have almost zero respect for anyone who played Face Hunter.

Well I think my deck is closer to the first one than the second. Since you basically spelled out most of my cards. Thanks! Why do they call it a Sunshine deck?

I really like that deck because I almost always have a nice knockout punch either with UtH/TimberWolf, King Crush, or the double kill command.

That face hunter deck card list doesn't even make sense.

I don't remember the exact reason it is called the Sunshine deck.

Face Hunter worked fine. It was a zero skill deck and abused mechanics. And the answer was the nerf UtH mana cost when it is the draw engine in Buzzard, Tracking, Skill Command, and Hunters Mark that made the deck bullshit. I still think UtH should have a set number on the dogs as well. Between Dire and Timber you still have a burst combo or draw engine with Buzzard and it won't make people avoid playing minions, which isn't fun.

It is also the reason Zoo came to be. Zoo destroyed Face Hunter, everyone was playing Face Hunter, then everyone started playing Zoo, cause it was super cheap, super efficent, and unlike Hunter no card nerf will fix Zoo. The Hero Power makes Zoo possible, not the cards.

I played a hunter yesterday that put a buzzard down and the secret whenever a minion is attacked, summon 3 1/1 snakes... guess what, he got 3 cards :P. Some of those are stupid unless you have the spells to get rid of them, silence them, etc. Silences seem more important than wiping cards sometimes.

Snake Trap is always a good one because it is run so rarely you often forget to check for it. The thing about Silence is that it is great situationally and that is it. Keeper of the Grove is probably the best card with Silence in the game because it doesn't always have to be a silence, it can also be a SI:7 Agent without the combo requirement and it is still a 2/4 for 4, which isn't bad considering the utility.

But almost any other card with silence is terrible unless it is built into a deck that needs it for something Owl with Watchers in Token Druid, Face Hunter, and Handlock for example because it can activate a card and can also be used to get around taunt for the FoN / SR finisher or Leeroy.

Whoops, forgot about Earth Shock. Earth Shock is the best Silence in the game followed by Keeper of the Grove.

I think Silence will become more important with the Naxx expansion since almost all the cards revolve around having Deathrattles. It'll be interesting to see the new types of decks that spring up around some of those cards.