Learn Hearthstone Wild Legend Metabusting OTK Priest (58% winrate)
Learn Hearthstone Wild Legend Metabusting OTK Priest (58% winrate) |
- Wild Legend Metabusting OTK Priest (58% winrate)
- Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Friday, March 09, 2018
- As a community, let's talk about diversifying the posts on /r/competitiveHS.
- Why ladder doesn’t make you a better player effectively
| Wild Legend Metabusting OTK Priest (58% winrate) Posted: 13 Mar 2018 07:21 PM PDT Deck Stats, proof of legend, and a couple examples of the combo in action: https://imgur.com/a/LnMMk Always BarnesClass: PriestFormat: Wild2x (1) Holy Smite2x (1) Power Word: Shield2x (2) Mind Blast2x (2) Resurrect2x (2) Shadow Visions2x (2) Spirit Lash1x (3) Shadow Word: Death1x (4) Barnes2x (4) Eternal Servitude2x (4) Mass Dispel2x (4) Shadow Word: Horror2x (5) Holy Nova1x (6) Emperor Thaurissan1x (6) Lightbomb2x (6) Shadow Essence1x (7) Lesser Diamond Spellstone1x (7) Prophet Velen1x (7) Psychic Scream1x (9) MalygosAAEBAa0GCAm0A9MKkg/WEYW4AujQAuPpAguXAqEE5QTJBtYK+hGhrALRwQLlzAK0zgLwzwIA Are you sick of the stale meta in the waning months before Witchwood? Do you want to challenge yourself with puzzlestone instead of curvestone? Do you wish Hearthstone had a graveyard matters deck? Do you want to put the "Wild!!!" in wild? Well, look no further, friends, as I present you with: Always Barnes Wild OTK Priest! This season, I've exclusively played this OTK deck from rank 5 to legend and had more fun than ever playing this game. Its hard to learn, perhaps impossible to master, but rewarding as hell! Best yet, it's in fantastic position in the current meta! 58% overall win-rate (179 games logged) from 5 to legend, 58% against paladin, 65% against warlock, 52% against mage, 76% against priest. It's a combo deck, as the name implies, that walks a fine line between meme and dream. The plan is to cheat out the fuel for your fire (Velen and Malygos), have them die, then revive them in a turn to launch massive damage spells at face. With 5 revive spells (possibly more with Shadow Visions) and three ways to cheat out the fuel quickly, this deck breaks the rules of old-school OTKs. A few Thaurissan ticks enable simply insane combos. And, with only 4 minions in the deck and an abundance of board wipes, this is no high roller but a very consistent deck with practice. Fair warning, Loetheb is common in this meta and when dropped usually just wins the game. Loetheb is cheat. As I didn't see a single mirror on the ladder, nor have I heard of a popular streamer playing this deck recently, I've prepared a lengthy guide to help you begin to tackle it. And so, lets jump into Always Barnes. THE CORE These are the cards that simply must be included. If you're missing any of them, craft them or don't play this deck because there are no replacements. The things they do are too unique. The Fire *Mind Blast – Okay, so this is the deck. Get your spell power, fire these suckers off. *Holy Smite – Yeah, this will often go face. But, this is also very versatile. Against tempo mage it takes out Sorc's Apprentice. Against paladin it rids you of those pesky jugglers. The Fuel *Prophet Velen – Obviously, get this guy into the graveyard however you can so that you can bring him back at a fraction of the cost. Plan A is to cheat it out. But sometimes you gotta pick your spots and just hard cast him. Important to remember that he doubles your healing effects, too. When you're going for the OTK, after the first copy of Malygos, he is always the better choice to revive… turns out "doubling" effects are preeeeety good. *Malygos – The peanut butter to Velen's jelly. The same strategy applies, get him in the yard and bring him back to life. A key lesson to learn is that sometimes a 2 or 4 mana 4/12 is good, even without spells to fire. Especially in the tempo mage or pally matchups where your opponent will struggle to remove it. The Cheat *Resurrect – Half the reason where the deck gets its name. If it can hit Barnes, it will hit Barnes. This is also one of the cards that can separate the good from the great. The hidden text of this card is that you can have duplicates of a card in your "graveyard" of targets. For instance, if your Malygos died twice and your Barnes died once, you have a 2/3 chance of hitting Maly… I mean, you will ALWAYS hit Barnes, but the math tells us otherwise. *Eternal Servitude – Resummons your dead fuel to launch massive fire at the face. Or brings back your Thaurissan to cheat the stuff in your hand harder. *Lesser Diamond Spellstone – This was initially a tech choice that I came to love. There's only four minions in the deck, so fully upgraded this will guarantee to bring both Velen and Maly out of the graveyard (if they're there, and nothing got poly'd or poison seeds'd). Seven mana seemed a bit steep at first, but 7 + 2(Mind Blast) + 1(Holy Smite) = 3 cards, 10 mana, 34 damage out of hand. Usually, this is the card that gets you over the hump (with a Thaurissan tick) against combo and jade druid (and all that armor). *Barnes – God do I hate this card and wish I could take it out. But he's necessary. The best place for him is in your hand and sometimes that's where he should stay. I quickly learned that in some matchups you can't just drop him on 3 or 4 if you have him. Instead its better to save him to use as a 4 mana Velen/Malygos when you're going off on your OTK. Or, similarly, to combo with a spirit lash to save your skin from a full board. Edit: Its a love/hate relationship and perhaps I've shown too much hate. When you play him, he's a 4 mana Thaurissan or Velen or Malygos for a turn, and fills your graveyard. When you land the Thaurissan effect with him and then chain revive him, you get the results you see in my example pictures. And, not for nothing, the 3/4 and 1/1 help you stave off critical points of damage against aggressive decks. I hate him. But he's too good not to cut. *Shadow Essence – The second half of the deck's name. Its usually best to wait until you've drawn Barnes but sometimes you gotta try to highroll (ah who am I kidding? It's a guaranteed Barnes). Its good to cheat your Fuel into the graveyard, and its good to hang onto it to get the Fuel at low cost for on the OTK turn. *Thaurissan – He transforms the deck from a gimmick into a legitimately competitive option. He enables so many intricate and fun ways to combo out. Seriously, if you end up trying this deck, you'll come to appreciate how busted he is. The Vision *Shadow Vision – Belongs in a category of its own. This is the card that makes the man (or woman). Learning what to pick is hard. Learning when to use it is harder. Used late, you're often digging for that one piece you need for the combo probably the next turn. Used early, you're just trying to pick the best card to formulate a winning strategy. Used on turn 2, you're probably playing against paladin and desperate to find something (there are many somethings) to stop the constant onslaught. You have to know the matchup you're in, how you intend on winning, and what remains in your deck. For instance, against warlock, if they drop their giants on 5 and you don't have lightbomb you lose. SV is in your opening hand. You save it for turn 4, to thin out your deck as much as possible of the irrelevant spell, then pray for the bomb. Or, if you draw lightbomb on turn 3, now you're saving SV for a combo piece. The point is, your use of this card is going to dictate whether you're stuck at rank 5 or pushing for legend. THE TECH Obviously, this will shift to combat the meta. These are the cards that are either removal (to keep you alive long enough to pull off the combo) or draws (to hasten your ability to combo out). Currently, this list is tech'd to beat Paladin (31% of my opponents this season). A few tech changes turned that matchup from bad (end of last season) to very winnable this season (32-23 in my favor). Removal *Shadow Word: Death – Just a fantastic card in this meta. Tons of targets and is cheap. A single copy is enough because mass removal is the primary tactic of this deck. *Spirit Lash – Probably the best non-combo piece card in the deck. SL will literally steal games for you, especially against paladin. Cheat out a Malygos or a Velen and this will wipe the board and bring you back to full health. It's the only source of healing I run. *Shadow Word: Horror – What beats Call to Arms on curve? Well, nothing. But this helps, a lot. In a world without paladin I'd tech this out. In a world of 31% of decks running CTA, I'll play 2. *Holy Nova – Its listed here because it technically is a board wipe. But, as it can also hit face, it can be expensive piece to combo out with. I've found it just too flexible, that's why I tech'd in two and tech'd out excavate evil and a second lightbomb. *Lightbomb – Necessary to beat today's flavor of Naga Sea Lock. Its just super strong removal. *Psychic Scream – Banish them to the shadow realm! This card is amazing unconditional and flexible removal. One of my favorite plays came after my opponent killed my 1/1 but left the Barnes that pulled it alive. Remember when I said the best place for Barnes is your hand? Wrong. The best place for Barnes is your opponent's deck. Draws *Power Word: Shield – I use this on enemy minions more than my own (there's only 4 in this deck). I think effectively reducing the size of the deck to 28 cards, even with the drawback, is worth including this card. Priest doesn't have much else to cycle cards. I wish this was arcane intellect. *Mass Dispel – Is sneaky good. Gets rid of those pesky demon-cheating deathrattles. Cleans up the call to arms that bring out nerubian eggs. Also replaces itself, which is why I have 2 instead of silence. Matchups/Mulligans (Always keep Barnes, and if you get him keep a revive spell, too.) Mulligans are tough, there's a lot of "if you have X, then you can keep Y." This is a lot of instinct, and even after over 100 games this season I'm still struggling on mulls each game. I'll just give advice, but I'm not the final word. Paladin (32-23) – Favored. Keep SW:H, spirit lash, shadow visions. You're no longer a combo priest, you're in pure survival mode. Most games end in concedes after you clear the board and get to full health for the 4th time. Save a spirit lash if you can for velen/maly combo. I've considered firing Mind Blasts off whenever I have nothing else to spend the mana on to give them less divine favor draw. I have never done so, though. Warlock (28-15) – Very favored. Mulligan hard for Lightbomb (or SV to find it), if you have it you can keep Mind Blast and go for a quick lethal. The more control-y the meta, the more you farm this matchup. If you lightbomb the Naga Sea Bitch turn you win the game. Whenever the 3/9 demon lands, you rejoice because you're a turn closer to comboing out. Mage (13-12) – Even. Keep SV and lash, but really mulligan hard for Barnes. Honestly surprised this was so even. I hate this matchup. Like paladin, you're no longer a combo player, you're in survival mode. You clear the board and your win condition becomes Aluneth (seriously, most wins are from fatigue). Priest (16-5) – Farm status. Keep Mind Blast, Shadow Essence, SV (but don't use on 2), Thaurissan. This is the first class with diversity in archetypes. Big Priest is by far most common. Laugh as they revive their useless Obsidian Statue against you a million times. The only way you lose this is if they Barnes on 3 or 4 and draw Rag or Y'Shaarj and revive it 4 times. Psychic scream is the MVP, lightbomb can save you if you save it. Don't Barnes on four unless you're holding Velen AND Maly. Spiteful Priest is less common, but another great matchup. You can be extremely greedy in early revives because there's no punishment doing so until after turn 10. Inner Fire Priest popped up maybe twice. Which is great because it WRECKS this deck. Druid (10-8) – even. Keep Thaurissan, SV, Shadow Essence. Jade and Combo druids play out the same, with jade being a bit better for this deck I think. There are a lot of ways to accomplish it, but your game plan is to pull off a dream combo to break through all that armor. Poison seeds is cheat so you're going to have to play around it by not committing too hard to the board (looking at you, Barnes). If your opponent plays seeds, and you have Psychic Scream, banish everything to the shadow realm and move on. Hunter (2-4), Shaman (0-3), Warrior (0-2) – unfavored. Probably should just hard mull for Barnes and lash. I put these all together because SMorc decks just SMorc you till you're dead. I'll note that Shaman is the worst because when you finally manage to clear the board they throw spells at your face. But hey, this deck is a response to the meta and thankfully warlock is keeping the SMorcs at bay. Rogue (3-2) – Favored, I guess. Keep Mind Blast, Thaurissan, SV. Surprising few of these on the ladder this season, after this seemed to be last season's flavor of the month. It's a challenging matchup but a winnable one. You have to find your line to win early because these are more on the fatigue side these days. Get your combo pieces in hand before they can be milled away and do whatever it takes to fire them off at face. [link] [comments]  |
| Ask /r/CompetitiveHS | Friday, March 09, 2018 Posted: 09 Mar 2018 07:00 AM PST 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]  |
| As a community, let's talk about diversifying the posts on /r/competitiveHS. Posted: 08 Mar 2018 06:26 PM PST It seems a lot of people are sharing this viewpoint - the same old "I hit legend, here is my deck, here's some basic mulligan trees and matchup tips" posts have been recycled here over and over, and they have a certain ceiling for how much knowledge they can impart to readers. In my eyes, these posts have gotten stale and don't offer much competitive insight anymore. I'm not suggesting they be banned outright, but we, as a community, should call upon content creators to produce different content. When I post (as a community member, and not as a mod), I try to build a post that isn't just a guide on how to play a deck. The proper way to learn a deck is to watch it in action and practice playing it (in my opinion). A guide will only get you so far. Instead, I aim to teach people about the principles behind the success. That's ultimately what this subreddit is about. I wanted to start an open discussion here - what does the community think? What kind of content do you think would be more interesting to read, and what would you like to see? Do you like the guide threads? Do you like game play articles? Are your favorite reads in our Timeless Resource vault? Edit - I'm going to sleep and have a long day at work tomorrow - I promise I will read your responses when I have some free time :) [link] [comments]  |
| Why ladder doesn’t make you a better player effectively Posted: 08 Mar 2018 01:27 PM PST Hi, my name is Justin Dean "Sacreludus" Biegger and I'm currently working on a Masters in Sports Coaching focusing on eSports. And my super click baity title is something that I want to talk about today. About a week ago, I shot out a question. "How do you practice Hearthstone". I got a lot of responses, so thank you for that. But, nothing struck me as regimented practice that other sports regularly use to improve as casual and professional players. It's my personal belief that if eSports is going to grow as a real competitive outlet, we need to evolve our thoughts and assumptions around how we practice and develop skills/motor programs for the games we play and how we coach the players to improve. Which leads me to a statement that I'm comfortable saying "Ladder doesn't make you a better player effectively". Which I'll unpack. In Sports coaching we are worried about a few things when it comes to progression and acquisition of skills, namely retention and transferability. If you can take a skill from practice, remember and apply it correctly in various in game applications that is a "Learned Skill". To practice skills for retention and transferability effectively you must define the skill that you are attempting to improve and build an exercise around that skill. Let's say you want to work on the skill of being a better Combo Priest player. You have a couple of ways of going about this. You could build Combo Priest in your collection, and start jamming games on ladder, you could get a practice partner and do the same, you could watch some VODs, or read a guide about the deck. And all of these are valid ways to practice, but it depends on the goal of the practice if that type of practice is effective. Example: if I need to improve in my Combo Priest vs. Control Priest match up skill, jamming games on ladder is only so effective. I might get 1 out of 20 games for that match up. I could instead get a practice partner and get 20 out of 20 games. Much more effective. This is one example of why I think ladder is an inefficient use of your time to improve as a player in this game. But mostly from a purely practice planning perspective (alliteration!) this type of practice isn't appropriate for most players. The format of ladder resembles how a coach would construct a variable random practice in a traditional coaching sense. Variable meaning whichever skill is being tested will be tested by variations on the skill (Think of variable as throwing a ball at different or moving targets, rather than one set target) and random meaning any skill in the players arsenal will be tested (Throwing, Running, etc.). So, on ladder, in one game you are testing the skill of your ability to pilot the Combo Priest vs. Spell Hunter match up, the next the skill of Combo Priest vs. Tempo Mage, etc. Random. And because all the games on ladder have card RNG, and different player preferences they will play out a bit different each time. Variable. This type of practice is great at developing retention and transferability in a player, so it meets the goals of learning a skill, but the success of that kind of practice hinges on if the player is at an adequate level. For variable random practice to be successful is to have the foundational background in a skill to perform the normal movements with certainty. You must know your scales inside and out before you can improvise a jazz solo. If you don't have those foundational concepts in a skill concretely a practice that is much more effective is something simple like Block practice. Block practice is testing the same skill, so Combo vs. Control Priest, several times in a contained environment in the same way. This type of practice gets the athlete comfortable with the skill in general, allows them to understand the "Easy 80%" or conflicts that come up in the match up in nearly each match up, irons out easy misplays, and builds confidence in the athlete to pilot the deck properly. In short, it get's the retention portion of learning and skill development started. If you are a player that has the foundations of a skill solid, then you can move into more variable type practice. So, continuing our example still working on just Combo vs. Control Priest but you play with a friend or a coach to start working on how to play in a variety of situations. It will build on the knowledge you gained from the block practice, but it adds in the critical component of skill learning of transferability. In variable practice things don't play out the same route way, so the concepts you started with in block practice start to mold and adapt to the current situation and board state. Of course, all that work is just for one skill. And Ladder demands more than one skill be tested. In a very broad sense each match up is a different skill, so it's ideal to get the most common five or six match ups you'll face under your belt before you start to ladder. TLDR: Ladder is a great tool for practice if you are already a competent player of Hearthstone. As a training tool for new players, or players of some experience but working on a new skill to acquire it isn't a great tool for learning due to its inherent structure as a random variable practice environment. Hopefully this gives you a better idea of how to go about learning this game from a coaching and skill acquisition style approach and how you can use your own training time more effectively't. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, clarifications let me know. [link] [comments]  |
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