Learn Hearthstone Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Thursday, March 22, 2018
Learn Hearthstone Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Thursday, March 22, 2018 |
- Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Thursday, March 22, 2018
- Gaining 1%: Finding the Weird Ways to Win
- Witchwood Card Reveal Discussion 22/03/2018
- vS Data Reaper Report #85
- Playing the long game with Spiteful Priest (Rank 4 - Legend)
- From Rank 5 to Legend with Kathrena's Secrets Hunter - A guide.
| Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Thursday, March 22, 2018 Posted: 22 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:
If you would like to chat about Hearthstone in real time, then you should check out our official Discord channel. Do you want help from dedicated teachers? Check out our partners - the AskHearthstone Discord Server. [link] [comments]  |
| Gaining 1%: Finding the Weird Ways to Win Posted: 22 Mar 2018 01:45 PM PDT Hello, r/CompetitiveHS, my name is Lappyzard, and I wanted to bring you this article to talk about a small concept that can help you squeeze out those extra couple of games here and there. As per the rules of the sub, here is proof of my recent high-legend performance. I'll be frank: this concept isn't going to come up very often, but that's the nature of trying to improve when you're already at a high level. The closer you get to mastery, the harder it becomes to continue gaining win percentage, and the smaller the gains start to get. But even 1 extra game out of 100 is an extra % for your winrate. This article is meant to help people who feel like they've hit a wall when it comes to getting better. Every so often, you'll find yourself in a game state where it is pretty clear that if you continue trying to execute your deck's normal game plan, you will almost certainly lose. The concept of this article is that in these situations, you should find a non-normal way to win. Most of the time, your new wonky game plan won't work. But if the normal game plan has a 0% chance, and the wonky game plan has 1% chance, craft that wonky game plan. To explain what this looks like, I'll provide several examples. One non-normal way to win is playing a control style as the aggro deck. Back in the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan meta (pre-nerfs), Aggro Shaman gained a bit of a reputation as "an aggro deck that could outvalue control decks." Occasionally, against a control deck, it would become clear that the aggressive plan was going to fall short. They would be able to run you out of cards via efficient AOE and stabilize outside of your burst range. In these spots, Aggro Shaman could occasionally become the control. Single-card threats could force awkward, multiple-card removal turns and net advantage. Healing Totem could extend your ability to value trade. Finley could take a value-oriented Hero Power, such as Priest or Paladin. In these odd spots, you could actually grind out the control deck and win via last-threat-standing. Again, this was a very small percentage of games, but "small" is still greater than zero. A more current example is the Combo Priest vs. Spell Hunter matchup. I first saw Firebat using this game plan (which, unlike my other examples, should just be the primary game plan for the matchup, but I'm including it because it's abnormal for how the deck usually functions). Normally, Combo Priest wins via midrange board control into an eventual combo kill--with Potion of Madness, if board control fails. Against Spell Hunter, the plan is much different. If you simply never attack face until the turn you kill them, you invalidate most of the Secrets and the Eaglehorn Bow, which typically carry a lot of weight. If you never attack face, the only threats are Y'shaarj (meet Twilight Acolyte) and Emerald Spellstone (meet Duskbreaker). Simply hold back, check the two threats with their appropriate counters, and then kill them with a two-minion board. Swing with the smaller-health minion to proc Freezing/Wandering Monster/Explosive, then combo the other minion for lethal. I have had a very high success rate with this approach. Granted, this should be your primary game plan against Hunter and not the "weird" game plan, but I bring it up because it exemplifies how you can turn a game on its head by doing something out of the ordinary. At some point, someone said "the midrange plan isn't good enough. How can I play this differently to win more often?" That's exactly the mindset needed for this technique. My third example is a play from one of my recent games. It was a Combo Priest mirror. I recognized that I had a lethal setup as long as he left me his Radiant Elemental at 6 health, so to guarantee it, I healed up the Radiant and threw my Cleric into the Talonpriest. As long as he didn't play Tar Creeper, OTK me himself--which required Shield + Spirit + Spirit + Fire--or sniff out my plan and Inner Fire it, it was a guaranteed lethal setup. I recognized that my hand didn't play for board very well, and if I didn't find that opportunity right then, the Radiant might never go back to 6 health, at which point I need to either win board somehow, or draw a Twilight Acolyte and survive another 7ish turns. Both pretty unlikely. "Heal opponent's minion, sacrifice own minion for no gain" is the kind of weird line that I'm talking about that can pick you up those extra games here and there. The last example I want to provide is a video of a game from HCT Toronto. This is a swiss match between Purple's Big Spell Mage and Muzzy's Spell Hunter. Normally, you would consider Rexxar on 6 too difficult to ever outvalue, and you would attempt to pressure them out of the game, but Purple finds a lot of unusual lines to balance pressure, removal, and stretching value that you normally couldn't find out of his cards. This approach lets him bring the Hunter all the way to fatigue and claim the victory. My closing thought and biggest caution regarding this concept is not to over-apply it. If you take this too far, you'll start throwing away games where the normal lines of play would still have let you win. This is just something to keep in the back of your mind and pull out in those 1-2% of games where making normal plays simply isn't good enough. Please leave any questions, comments, or feedback. Good luck, and happy grinding! [link] [comments]  |
| Witchwood Card Reveal Discussion 22/03/2018 Posted: 22 Mar 2018 10:00 AM PDT Reveal Thread Rules:
In case you want to catch up, here's the previous card reveal discussion thread Today's New CardsClass: Warrior Card type: Spell Rarity: Common Mana cost: 2 Card text: Echo. Deal 1 damage to all minions. Source: Hearthside Chat with Peter Whalen: Echo Class: Rogue Card type: Minion Rarity: Legendary Mana cost: 3 Attack: 2 HP: 2 Card text: Echo. Battlecry: Add a random Legendary minion to your hand. Source: Hearthside Chat with Peter Whalen: Echo New Set Information
NEW format for top level comments:**[CARD_NAME](link_to_spoiler)** **Class:** **Card type:** Minion Spell Weapon **Rarity:** Common Rare Epic Legendary **Mana cost:** **Attack:** X **HP:** Y **Dura:** Z **Card text:** **Other notes:** **Source:** [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Mar 2018 09:01 AM PDT Greetings! The Vicious Syndicate Team is proud to present the 85th edition of the Data Reaper Report. As always, special thanks to all those who contribute their game data to the project. This project could not succeed without your support. The entire vS Team is eternally grateful for your assistance. This week our data is based off of over 3,300 contributors and over 50,000 games! In this week's report you will find:
The full article can be found at: vS Data Reaper Report #85 Data Reaper Live - After you're done with the Report, you can keep an eye on this up-to-date live Meta Tracker throughout the week! As always, thank you all for your fantastic feedback and support. We are looking forward to all the additional content we can provide everyone. Reminder
Thank you, The Vicious Syndicate Team [link] [comments]  |
| Playing the long game with Spiteful Priest (Rank 4 - Legend) Posted: 23 Mar 2018 02:33 AM PDT Spiteful Control PriestOver the last 4 days I climbed from rank 4 with 1 star to legend using a spiteful/control priest deck. I had a 65% winrate going 43-23. This deck feels very powerful vs the current metagame as it has a lot of tech cards for what were previously some of the decks tougher matchups, and has the most value out of any deck I have seen while still having lots of huge tempo swings. AAECAZ/HAgSKB5nIAqDOAtDnAg0IkAKNCPIMgrUCursC8LsC4b8CysMC3sQCy+YC/OoC1+sCAA== Game PlanThe general game plan is to run your opponent out of resources. Most control decks achieve this by using lots of removal spells. This decks summons minions to do the job instead. Past iterations of this deck have used a more aggressive list, aiming to tempo out the opponent. This plan works well, but runs the risk of losing a lot of value against board clears. This version of the deck has a clear plan for how to outvalue other common control decks such as control warlock and big priest, which is to steal any cards which the opponent plans to resurrect. Card Choices2x Mistress of Mixtures -- This card has excellent stats for a turn 1 play against paladin, and also is very good against tempo mage. It completely cancels an explosive runes which can be otherwise quite annoying to deal with, and sometimes the mages are running mirror entity these days too! 1x Acidic Swamp Ooze -- Deals with skull and aluneth, which is important since we are not applying very much early pressure. I chose this over harrison because sometimes you need a 2 drop to help fight off aggro. The 3 attack can save you against a mana wyrm or kirin tor mage sometimes. 2x Twilight Drake -- This is definitely the weakest card of the deck, but we need to have 6 dragons and the deck doesn't have any other solid 4-drops. Also worth considering is book wyrm, however ideally we are playing spiteful summoner or kabal shadow priest on turn 6. 2x Kabal Songstealer -- Silencing is very powerful vs warlocks, and this card is a perfect answer to possessed lackey. Against paladin I often silence the argent protector that was pulled from call to arms in order to trade favorably. 2x Cabal Shadow Priest -- Against warlock and big priest you combo this with twilight acolyte to steal their voidlords and other threats and prevent them from making tempo resurrection plays. Against paladin this card is also quite good. 1x Skulking Geist -- Allows for taking a value game plan vs combo priest and cubelock. Also excellent vs druid if you happen to face any. 1x Free from Amber -- Having a 3rd spell is nice for spiteful summoners, in the event two mind control are drawn. This card is not great on its own, but pulling it with archivist is a huge tempo play. OmissionsShadow Ascendant -- As a 2-drop, you mainly want this vs aggro. However the poor stats make it questionable to keep in the mulligan if you don't already have a 1-drop. Curious Glimmeroot -- Not great vs aggro, large variance vs control. Cobalt Scalebane -- I think twilight drake is better in this deck, and 6 dragons seems to be the right number. MatchupsWarlock -- Mulligan for kabal songstealer, twlight acolyte, drakonid operative, spiteful summoner, skulking giest, and acidic swamp ooze. Usually this matchup is determined by whether you can steal their voidlords, so I highly recommend saving twilight acolyte and cabal shadow priest for this purpose. Playing around defile is one of the trickiest aspects of this matchup, and I believe that with perfect play, my deck should be very heavily favored. Paladin -- Mulligan for a good curve containing low cost minions, and duskbreaker. At all times try to make sure they have as few minions as possible. Your current score in the game is your number of minions minus their number of minions. Mage -- Same mulligan as paladin. The trickiest part of this matchup is deciding which cards you can afford to play around, and when you can afford to start healing your face. Keep track of their secrets, and try to make reads as to which order they would ideally play their secrets in. If they kept a card that is still in their hand by turn 4 then its aluneth, and you need to ignore your hp and apply as much pressure as possible, or have an ooze saved. I thought this matchup was going to be very bad, but my record was 7-4. If it's a control mage just play super slowly and don't draw any cards. Steal anything that says deathrattle in case they play N'zoth. Hunter -- I actually didn't face very much hunter, so Im not too sure about this matchup. Probably you should hard mulligan for duskbreaker and twilight acolyte, which are the best answers to spellstone and barnes. If they don't draw either of those you probably just win anyway. If they have an early deathstalker Rexxar, then applying pressure and going face gets a lot better, as you don't want to give them the free mana to make beasts each turn. Priest -- If its the mirror or inner fire combo then simply play for tempo. If it's control or big then be very careful not to overcommit to boards. I was 12-3 vs other priests so I think this list is stronger than the other ones :) ConclusionOne reason I really enjoy this deck is that all the games I lost felt very close. I think spiteful summoner gets a bad name as being a brain-dead deck, but if you go for the long game it can be much more interesting. Again there are some games where you will summon deathwing dragonlord on 5 and your opponent will concede, but often this is not the case and the other cards in the deck get their chance to shine. Feel free to add me in game if you want to talk, I'm DarkCalculus#1543. Also you can follow me on Twitter! [link] [comments]  |
| From Rank 5 to Legend with Kathrena's Secrets Hunter - A guide. Posted: 22 Mar 2018 09:32 AM PDT Hi there. Wanted to talk about Secret Hunter with [[Kathrena Winterwisp]]. this season I climbed to legend with my version of the deck with around 69% winrate over more then 60 games (some games weren't documented as I played them from phone). I feel the deck is an under-the-radar power house, which doesn't get enough credit for what it does because it's not popular enough and doesn't have enough stats. The most surprising thing for me was the priest match-up. Priest pretty much can't win against this deck. I'm talking about a wowing 15-1 on various priest types. Also, this deck doesn't have a lot of rotating cards which makes it very good for the start of year of the raven, so getting some publication now will probably pay-off hard at the start of the next hearthstone year.
Kathrena's Secrets TheoryThe theory behind Kathrena's Secrets is very similar to spell hunter with a basic change. We leave out cards like [[To My Side]] and the hunter's Legendary weapon, to make room for more consistent late game. by doing that we remove the constraint to have only spells in the deck, which in return makes our secret package and our early game more reliable and tempo oriented, with added minions to support the secrets. The end result is a very versatile deck that can end the game fast with a lot of tempo with the secrets, or allow it's self to also go extremely late and win there. This is why I chose this deck to try and climb the ledder this season. Disclosure: I don't have experience with spell hunter as I don't have Y'Shaarj, which I think that is where spell hunter really shine. So this comparison to spell hunter is theory-crafting only and not experience based, and based mostly on the non barnes highroll. What I can say is that Kathrena's Secrets worked amazing for me, and that is experience based. Also, Y'Shaarj rotates out in a month, and it's pretty based to say that spell hunter isn't as strong without it.
My ListMy List is Heavy Based on the version Blizzard published in their Off-Meta Spotlight, with some changes I made. I Wanted to make room for 2 [[Flanking Strike]], as I think it's a very strong card, and wanted to add more AOE to handle paladins, so I also added 1 [[Explosive Trap]]. What was left out is 1 [[Spellbraker]] (which I felt kind of ruins the barnes consistency), 1 [[Snake Trap]] (to make room for explosive) and 1 [[Tracking]] (2 trackings were just too much card loss in the value games, to my opinion).
(don't be alarmed by the nickname, my preferred gaming nickname is Juice) Deck Code:
General Playstyle and HelpAt the early game you want to mulligan for your secret package and minions. Best secret in this deck is, hands down, Freezing Trap. it's the hardest to play around as it doesn't have constraint of attacking minion or your hero. also great for tempo as you can sometime ignore early threats with it. it can be played around with taunts and charge minions, but it's hard (if the opponent has charge minion he can sacrifice before attacking with the minion he doesn't want to be sapped, or by protecting it with a taunt and not attacking with it until he can attack with something else he can sacrifice). Having Spellstone at mulligan is also great. flanking shot is also prime mulligan at slower match-ups. if you are going second and your opponent can kill your [[Secretkeeper] with his turn 1 drop consider saving it to turn 2 to play with a coin and a secret to buff it. Another strong turn 2 is coin, [[Cloaked Huntress]] with a bunch of secrets. Against Priest you pretty much always want Rexxar(though I personally wouldn't keep it in mulligan), so don't discard it to [[Tracking]], and don't be afraid of going late game with it, your endless end game threats will probably get him down. Priest pretty much can't contest you in most cases, early OR late. Beware Barnes is somewhat less good if its not spitefull priest because of Potion of Madness. I didn't face many of the new Control Priests though. I wouldn't consider them meta, although i suspect they aren't as weak against you as the other priest archetypes, but i can't really say. Most of the priests I faced were spitefull, big or dragon combo. Edit: You can play around Spitefull by leaving the summoned minion alone on the board and slipping in a [[Freezing Trap]]. try to save the trap for it. priest doesn't have much to do around this. Warlock is a much tougher match-up as late game he can become really aggressive while protected by it's endless taunts, aim for faster gameplay against it. Remember [[Cloaked Huntress]] is 4 health which make it servive [[Hellfire]]. consider saving spellstone on mulligan to reload the board after board clears. Edit: don't forget your [[Freezing Trap]] can act as a semi silence. when they attack with the possessed lackey it will return to their hand. earning you much time and tempo to rush them down. try saving freezing trap if you can. as i said it is the best secret in the deck by far. Warlocks has a few ways to play around this with killing the Lackey without attacking with it, but I only saw this counter play in the very high levels of play (rank 2). i find a lot of the warlock players just carried hard by the deck and generally not so good at the game xD... or they just think that cause you are hunter they will win you ez and don't pay too much attention to the details... Paladin is very hard but winnable. Pray to the drawing gods. I personally went for all in board controling aginst murlocs (which felt easier to win against then silver hand paladin). but maybe I'm playing too safe against it. Prefer [[Eaglehorn Bow]] on [[Flanking Strike]] if you have them both when no taunts protecting your target as later taunts can protect a prime target and flanking Strike can work around that. Edit: Keep your hand slim. this is very ez to do with this deck as you don't have card draw. this makes paladins unable to play effective [[Divine Favor]] and run out of juice very quick. vs Murlocs i try to control the board as hard as i can not leaving any murlocs on it and use silence to get passed the 1/1 shielded taunts if needed. maybe some other plan will work better but this is what i did. vs Silver Hand/dude pally i also tried to control the board not leaving silver hands out but its much harder and maybe more aggressive is the way to go. Mage if it's tempo - Again, pray to the drawing gods. avoid face damage as much as you can. I personally will go all control the board again. If it's control, laugh your way to victory.
ConclusionWith Kathrena and Rexar your end game is stronger then most control archtypes right now, except warlock's control, which you can win with early tempo. With the secrets your earlygame can contest the most tempo oriented decks out there, with the right card draw. I would say overall winrate against tempo/aggro is around 50%, winrate against warlock is also about 50%, and Winrate against non-warlock non-aggro popular decks is around 95% (seriously). Overall I would rate the deck as Tier 1 (for 5 to 1 rank ladder) as its winable and close game against some of the popular decks and extremely favorable against everything else that is popular in those ranks right now. Thanks for reading. Have fun and good luck. :)
Edit: i would like to add some more specific advice about priests, warlocks and paladins from questions i answered on the thread. i will probably add them within a day or two so pop back if you are having troubles with those match-ups or search my and others answers in the comments. i just don't have time to edit those in right now. Edit 2: i added the further advice for priests, warlocks and paladins. [link] [comments]  |
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