Learn Hearthstone Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Learn Hearthstone Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Tuesday, March 20, 2018 |
- Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Tuesday, March 20, 2018
- Back from the Dead: Aggro Shaman In-Depth Guide
- Beating Kingsbane/Mill Rogue as Big Spell Mage
- Combo Priest vs Cubelock Matchup Guide
- [Article] The Raven Takes Flight - Effects of The Upcoming Hearthstone Rotation, Part 1
| Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Tuesday, March 20, 2018 Posted: 20 Mar 2018 08:00 AM PDT This is an open thread for any discussion pertaining to Competitive Hearthstone. This is a thread for discussions that don't qualify for a stand-alone post on the subreddit. This thread is sorted by new by default. You can ask for deck reviews, competitive budget replacements, how to mulligan in specific matchups, etc. Anything goes, as long as it's related to playing Hearthstone competitively. Has your question been asked before? Check our FAQ to see if we've got you covered. Or if you're looking for an educational hearthstone read, check out our Timeless Resources There are a few rules:
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| Back from the Dead: Aggro Shaman In-Depth Guide Posted: 20 Mar 2018 11:27 AM PDT Hello! My name is Jonahrah, I'm one of the North American Qualifiers for the Wild Open Final and today I'd like to share an in-depth Wild Aggro Shaman guide I have written for Fade 2 Karma. Guide Includes:
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| Beating Kingsbane/Mill Rogue as Big Spell Mage Posted: 20 Mar 2018 07:22 AM PDT I've been playing Hunterace's Big Spell Mage on NA legend ladder a bit recently and have run into a number of Kingsbane rogues. I find this matchup to be an intricate one that, while unfavored, is very winnable with a bit of planning, so I'm offering my observations of what works best as the Big Spell Mage. Please add yours in the comments! Limiting their weapon buffs is key. An early Skulking Geist can take out 1-2 Deadly Poisons and Doomerang. Polymorphs should be saved for Southsea Squidfaces. I've been keeping Geist and Polymorph on the mulligan as a result. If you can keep the attack on Kingsbane fairly low through these means, the Rogue will have to abandon plan A (stab you in the face with a big Kingsbane) and shift to plan B (mill you to death), at which point you... Dump your hand to avoid getting your key cards milled. Since they don't have a ton of minions, use your board clears liberally to deny chip damage and empty hand space. Save your Dirty Rats to deny Coldlight Oracle. Keep careful track of how many minions they've played and are likely left in their hand. If you can yank both out of hand and kill them before they play their DK, you will avoid getting aggressively milled. Toward the end of the game, Rat-Rat-Blizzard or Rat-Rat-Dragon's Fury can really ruin their day. Don't be afraid to draw cards. You want to get your key cards in hand ASAP (Geist, Polymorph, Dirty Rat, Jaina). Don't worry about fatigue. Your win condition here is to prevent them from getting theirs online, with a backup plan of repeatedly freezing their face with Water Elementals if you can't counter the "big Kingsbane" plan. Most of your draw is through Raven Familiar, and even the 2/2 board presence is enough to frequently kill a Shinyfinder or Minstrel, denying chip damage while simultaneously drawing you closer to your key cards. Be careful with your Doomsayers. The Rogue will likely drop a Squidface into a Doomsayer if he's got the mana and Kingsbane up. If you're going to proactively Doomsayer, do it on 2 (or if you're sure they can't get Kingsbane and Squidface out together). Most of the time you'll nab their Shinyfinder on 2 with your Doomsayer, and trading 1 for 1 with a deck that doesn't run a ton of threatening minions is good enough. EDIT: Grammar. [link] [comments]  |
| Combo Priest vs Cubelock Matchup Guide Posted: 20 Mar 2018 07:28 AM PDT I've been playing a ton of combo priest on ladder recently, and when I briefly played cubelock I was winning against priest way more than I should've been. So I decided to make a guide for the matchup from both sides. I'll be referring to this guide that I collaborated on for combo priest mulligans. Thanks to hamiero ,who wrote the combo priest guide, for helping on this guide. The lists I've included are the combo priest I have been laddering with for the last few weeks, and a Cubelock teched for this matchup. Card choices If you want to tech against cubelock, play more Twilight Drake than Book Wyrms. Drake provides a good minion on curve that can also be buffed, while we don't want to use Wyrm against Voidlord when we can steal or silence it instead. Shadow Ascendant is a popular inclusion over Tar Creeper for this matchup but I disagree with this tech. It may be slightly better in this matchup, but is much worse in the others. Even against cubelock, ascendant is worse against AoE removal, especially defile. Tar Creeper can also be used aggressively by buffing it or by protecting your other minions and allowing them to go face. Mass Dispel is far better than silence against cubelock as it deals with Gul'dan and N'zoth boards. Mulligan As the full combo priest guide says, you want to play on curve against warlock. For dragons I'm only keeping Twilight Drake on the coin right now. If you have Netherspite Historian you can consider keeping an Operative or Duskbreaker with a good hand to guarantee the historian battlecry. Talonpriest and Power Word: Shield are keeps with 1 or 2 drops, Inner Fire can also be a keep with a cheap minion into Talonpriest. Gameplan Tempo: The best way of beating warlock is to win as soon as possible. The best way of doing this is to get a minion over 5 health quickly and inner fire it. Cubelock can't deal with a minion above 5 unless they draw their 1 of spellbreaker or upgrade their Spellstone twice which is very unlikely. The best way to do this is to play a cleric or 2 drop, Talonpriest it on 3 and then inner fire it to make a 6/6. This way you've only spent 1 combo piece if they have the Spellbreaker. Don't be afraid to make the biggest minion possible though, 1 Spellbreaker is not worth playing around. This very early stage of the game is fairly simple, go fast and 6 is the magic number. If they don't have the spellbreaker, keep healing and buffing the health on your big minion to play around Spellstone, Hellfire and Defile. Combo: First off let's clear up what the combo is and how it works. The goal is to steal a Voidlord, buff its health and one turn kill the warlock with it. The actual steal is 4 mana, 18 damage from a full health Voidlord takes 7 mana. Adding a power word shield takes you to 22 damage for 8 mana and 2 divine spirits gives you a guaranteed 36 damage kill for 9 mana. Radiant Elemental reduces the cost of the combo significantly, making the full combo 7 mana and allowing a mass dispel for a 10 mana guaranteed lethal. My general rule with the combo is to save at least 1 inner fire and 1 of all the other pieces in my deck. An early big minion will use no more than 1 divine spirit anyway so this isn't too difficult. The best wait to Shadow Visions the turn before you want to combo so you can pick the 1 combo piece you know you don't have. Key Cards Netherspite picks: Drakonid Operative, Cobalt Scalebane, Twilight Drake. Temporus is also a good pick if the cubelock is not on the aggressive, if you have mass dispel and a few combo pieces temporus becomes almost guaranteed lethal. Mass Dispel: We really want this for voidlord and Gul'dan/N'zoth boards. I wouldn't use it on Lackey unless you can set up lethal. I would never use this against Doomsayer unless I could buff a minion in the same turn, which is very unlikely because Doomsayer will come out early. If you have a small board let the Doomsayer go off. If you have a minion big enough to kill Doomsayer, save the mass dispel and trade, their only answer is Spellbreaker and if they Doomsayer into a buffed minion, they don't have Spellbreaker. Duskbreaker can be used aggressively in this matchup to clear up taunts and allow you to keep hitting face, as long as this doesn't play straight into hellfire. The card is obviously also good for clearing Voidwalkers but we don't want to be in a position where his Voidlord dies in the first place. Drakonid Operative: Operative picks are a very difficult part of this deck, they might not seem like a big deal but I think people make a lot of mistakes here. Keep in mind that you can play operative without the battlecry. It's good pressure and warlock has trouble removing it, but you often want to keep a dragon in hand to activate twilight acolyte. Obvious picks: Spellbreaker is the best choice, nobody wants to deal with voidlord. Doomguard is a good choice for tempo, mainly used for a lethal or lethal setup as we don't want to discard combo pieces if the game might drag on. Hellfire is another form of burst damage that can also clear off voidwalkers and other taunts like tar creeper. Kobold Librarian is good as this is a combo deck where you want to draw cards as fast as possible. Beware of playing into defile though. Combo Picks: When you think of combo priest and voidlord, the immediate thought is to kill them with their own minion. But what if you have the cards to steal the Voidlord but can't kill them with it? Then you can kill the voidlord yourself by taking Dark Pact or Cube from operative. Not only do you get rid of the taunt, you get 3 1/3s for it, and maybe even more Voidlords on your side with cube. If you have Twilight Acolyte and Potion of Madness in hand without the full kill combo I would recommend Dark Pact and Cube as top priority picks. This also opens up the option of picking Gul'dan and N'zoth from later operatives so you can beat the warlock with their own deck. If these options don't come up you can take a Voidlord off Operative to buff yourself, then you can go for the Gul'dan and N'zoth high rolls off later Operatives. Card Choices Tar creepers are good for disabling the priest combo, as twilight acolyte ends up buffing a tar creeper, so the priest has to clear or silence them. Spellbreaker is a must for the reasons I mentioned in the combo priest section, this is a 1 of because it doesn't' have much value against paladins, mages and other priests. Umbra is a massive power card for this matchup, specifically if you play it on 4 after playing doomsayer on 3. If you get Umbra on an empty board, the priest has to waste the 1 Mass Dispel or leave it up and hope Lackey doesn't come out on 5. Mountain Giants are not good in this matchup as priest can get a huge board swing off it with twilight acolyte. However, if this does happen to you as cubelock and you can clear the 8/4 acolyte, the priest now only has 1 left for the OTK combo. Mulligan Doomsayer and Spellbreaker are the best matchup specific keeps. Umbra can also be a keep with doomsayer as priest doesn't have an effective answer to Umbra on an empty board after a doomsayer turn. I almost never get my buffed minions silenced by cubelocks, so I assume people are not keeping it even though it's your only real answer to a big threat. You still want to be keeping Skull and Possessed Lackey to get demons out early. Keeping 1 drops is risky as they give priest a free card if they have Northshire Cleric to contest and they don't really contribute to your gameplan. Tar Creeper can be a keep with a good hand but I think you really want Doomsayer and Spellbreaker to halt the priest's gameplan and Skull and Lackey to be proactive. Gameplan In the early turns you want Doomsayer to stop the priest from making a 6/6 on turn 3 or 4 that you can't deal with. Normally you want to be safe with doomsayer and play it on 2 if the priest has a Northshire Cleric or Radiant Elemental on board. This can be followed up by playing Umbra or Lackey onto an empty board. Many players are scared of playing Lackey against priest, but a priest won't mass dispel it so the only threat is potion of madness. This means that you can play Lackey safely if you have no other minions on board, as the only punish is Potion of Madness into Duskbreaker, which is going to make it easier for you to clear board if the priest had any minions damaged by Duskbreaker. Cheating out Doomguard is also useful for clearing board, but this is less of a win condition and more of a way to stall. Cube is still a power card, and it won't often get silenced. Playing a tempo cube is viable against Priest to contest board as you don't need it for extra value. Clearing board is difficult against combo priest, but combinations like Hellfire into Defile kill off Talonpriest and Twilight Acolyte and can sometimes deal with the 6 health dragons. Hellfire also buffs spellstone which clears Operative and Book Wyrm when fully upgraded. Priest won't give you free defiles, so think about saving minions like Kobold Librarian and Mistress of Mixtures for Defile turns. The matchup is normally won by naturally out valuing the combo priest, when they either run out of cards or are unable to answer a Gul'dan or N'zoth board. Voidlords and playing around the combo So far I've only covered how to play cubelock against the tempo gameplan of combo priest, but what can you do to stop the combo? The main goal is to avoid having Voidlord as your only taunt on the board. The obvious best way of stopping this is copying Voidlord with Faceless Manipulator or Cube into Dark Pact, creating a board that can only be stopped with Mass Dispel. Tar Creeper also prevents the combo if the priest can't clear it on board. Another option is to simply Dark Pact your Voidlord as soon as it's summoned. You don't see this very much as it sounds crazy to destroy a big minion without getting any value off it, but whenever I play combo priest against cubelock, one of my goals is to stop Voidlords from dying by either stealing or silencing them. This is because you get a guaranteed Voidlord from Gul'dan and N'zoth, and with Gul'dan you also get Voidwalkers which stop the combo. The key point here is that this is not a value matchup. You don't need Voidlord to get board value to win, you want to stop the combo priest from doing the combo or winning with tempo. Destroying a Voidlord may seem like a bad tempo play, and it's not ideal, but healing for 8 and getting 3 taunts that only get punished by Duskbreaker should be good enough to stop the tempo from the priest. Cubing a Voidlord without playing Dark Pact after also gives you the guarantee of having a Voidlord to resurrect, but expect this board to be silenced, which is a big tempo loss. Note that hand reading is very important when playing around the combo, if priest only has 3 cards in hand, they can't combo you. Similarly, the combo costs at least 7 mana, so you don't need to immediately Dark Pact a Voidlord summoned on turn 6. Keeping track of your health is also important when playing around the combo. If you damage your Voidlord by trading or playing Hellfire/Defile, the combo obviously becomes more difficult for the priest. If you have 18 health and your Voidlord is on 9 you're in trouble, but if you're Voidlord is at 5 health the priest now needs an extra Divine Spirit to win. Wider Concepts Next month combo priest as we know it will die out with the new standard rotation, but we can see larger concepts that apply to all matchups in Hearthstone when looking at this specific matchup. The main point here is to know whether you are playing for tempo, value or a combo in a matchup. This depends on how consistently you can win with tempo, value, or combo and how effectively the other deck can answer these outs. For example, combo priest should play for tempo against cubelock as this is more consistent than waiting for the combo, and because cubelock can play around the Voidlord steal combo. Knowing this as cubelock, we can counter tempo by playing early Doomsayers and Tar Creepers. We also know that single target removal is a weakness of combo priest, so plays like Umbra or Lackey on an empty board become viable. Even clearing Voidlord with Dark Pact can be used against aggro decks to play around Spellbreaker lethals. You can improve in any matchup in Hearthstone by knowing what your opponent's win condition, strengths, and weaknesses in terms of what their deck can and can't answer effectively. Thanks for reading, hope you found this helpful. I'd recommend Feno's showmatches here and Firebat's Matchup Busters series here for in-depth matchup testing and discussion. Edit Just wanted to mention that I think the matchup is slightly priest favoured (around 55%) but winrates will vary hugely based on how you play it, which is why I chose to look at this matchup. [link] [comments]  |
| [Article] The Raven Takes Flight - Effects of The Upcoming Hearthstone Rotation, Part 1 Posted: 20 Mar 2018 12:56 PM PDT After the success of last year's article, me and a friend got together and wrote an article for this year. It's titled, "The Raven Takes Flight: The Effects of The Upcoming Hearthstone Rotation, Part 1". The article goes through all the competitively relevant cards that are rotating out (from Old Gods, Karazhan, and Gadgetzan— it also looks at the Classic cards moving to the Hall of Fame), covering their role in metagames past. The article also makes some guesses about the future of decks that used the rotating-out cards. The article is here: https://hearthstoneplayers.com/raven-takes-flight-effects-upcoming-hearthstone-rotation-part-1/ We're planning to release a second part in a few weeks, once the new cards are all revealed. That part'll go class-by-class and predict the future of each class after the Year of the Raven rotation— with the new cards from The Witchwood taken into account. I hope you enjoy the article! —Quackles [link] [comments]  |
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