Hearthstone

Gavinrad_sl said:

You can't really put class legendaries in a general 'best legendary' list.

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Actually, I can!

Mures you and I must be running something similar. I too use Harrison with my Shaman and have also yet to lose to that Coldlight deck. Is it just miracle + Coldlight Oracle? I don't think I've ever seen the thing 'go off' so I dunno what these Rogues were actually trying to do with it.

Figure out a way to fit in defias ringleaders and a perdition's blade and it will solve the zoo matchup. My tempo rogue deck did really well against zoo, control warrior, and combo rogue last season (rank 1/2) then all the handlocks and ramp druids showed up.

I think ramp druid is still a bad matchup for aggro rogue too.

Tonight was terrible. I thought after ten days in the new season that the net deck champions would be in the higher ranks! I've been testing out decks and not hitting the ranked too hard but I really like the new deck I put together so I decided to try ranked for a few hours tonight. Wouldn't you know that I ran into a fucking gold avatar bitch at rank 17! If your ass has a gold avatar you should start higher than rank 17 lol. I beat the golden mage though which made me very happy. Aside from that it was net deck after net deck. Just look at recent tournament decks and that's all I saw tonight. Ramp druids and handlock were the flavor of the night. I'm beginning to think that unless I spend a ton of money I won't be competitive for long, which is sad.

I suppose it's not all bad though. It sure does feel good beating these copy cat fags when it happens. Also FUCK leeroy Jenkins! I'd say more than half the decks I played tonight used him.

slippery_sl said:

The Coldlight Oracle Rogue deck I was talking about is just an agro deck, it isn't miracle at all. The only bad match up for it that I've seen so far is Zoo

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I don't think they run abusive sergeant and/or did so its hard for them to make efficient trades and eventually shaman overruns them, but just like other aggro matchups it depends on the right card draw, having a lightning storm at the right time certainly makes things easier, but the coldlight oracles help me as much as they help them. Every game has been close and I think harrison has saved me in the matchup a couple of times. They do, and I've noticed a lot of decks doing this now, run 2 doa's so I did put tbk back into my shaman deck. Oh I also run 2 earthen ring farseers because in the early parts of ladder there is a fuck ton of aggro and I noticed my unbound elementals rarely did anything.

Frenzic_sl said:

Tonight was terrible. I thought after ten days in the new season that the net deck champions would be in the higher ranks! I've been testing out decks and not hitting the ranked too hard but I really like the new deck I put together so I decided to try ranked for a few hours tonight. Wouldn't you know that I ran into a fucking gold avatar bitch at rank 17! If your ass has a gold avatar you should start higher than rank 17 lol. I beat the golden mage though which made me very happy. Aside from that it was net deck after net deck. Just look at recent tournament decks and that's all I saw tonight. Ramp druids and handlock were the flavor of the night. I'm beginning to think that unless I spend a ton of money I won't be competitive for long, which is sad.

I suppose it's not all bad though. It sure does feel good beating these copy cat fags when it happens. Also FUCK leeroy Jenkins! I'd say more than half the decks I played tonight used him.

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If your hell bent on climbing the ladder and you aren't afraid of net decking yourself, just make a zoo warlock deck, its pretty cheap and competitive all the way to legendary. But yeah, I'd focus more on arena until I had plenty of cards.

Frenzic_sl said:

Tonight was terrible. I thought after ten days in the new season that the net deck champions would be in the higher ranks! I've been testing out decks and not hitting the ranked too hard but I really like the new deck I put together so I decided to try ranked for a few hours tonight. Wouldn't you know that I ran into a fucking gold avatar bitch at rank 17! If your ass has a gold avatar you should start higher than rank 17 lol. I beat the golden mage though which made me very happy. Aside from that it was net deck after net deck. Just look at recent tournament decks and that's all I saw tonight. Ramp druids and handlock were the flavor of the night. I'm beginning to think that unless I spend a ton of money I won't be competitive for long, which is sad.

I suppose it's not all bad though. It sure does feel good beating these copy cat fags when it happens. Also FUCK leeroy Jenkins! I'd say more than half the decks I played tonight used him.

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If you're actually interested it getting good at card games, you really need to shed the scrub mentality. Net decking is a healthy, important part of any CCG/TCG. You can ignore the meta all you want, just don't complain when you have bad results with your unique snowflake deck.

Also Frenzic, experienced players have taken brand new accounts to Legendary with several different classes and no money invested. Once you get good enough, you will get off "I'm beginning to think that unless I spend a ton of money I won't be competitive for long, which is sad."

Any suggestions for something to read up on overall strategy? I've p much got ~80% of the decent cards unlocked now but I wanna step my game up.

Hearthstone ladder is just grinding. As long as you can maintain greater than a 50% win rate, you'll hit legend if you put in the time. Maybe the golden mage decided to just mess around this season and not grind again, you never know.

Frenzic, something I've said earlier in this thread but I really think it applies to you.

It's important to realize that you're not going to win every game. What is important is to learn from those mistakes and get better at the game. There are two types of people. The first type loses a game and goes crying on the forums about how unfair it is and they deserved to win. The second type learns from those mistakes and realizes why it is they lost and moves on. It's also important to note that there are some games that, from turn 1, are not winnable. Or other games where you lost on turn 2 because you didn't have an answer to a Knife Juggler or Faerie Dragon (even though the game went on for another 8 turns). While everyone gets upset at these losses the best thing you can do is shrug it off and move on.

Next up, while Legendary cards are powerful and can drastically affect the nature of the game, they don't win games by themselves. In fact someone who throws in every Legendary without thinking about it's place in the deck will, likely, lose. Now the reason a lot of people get upset with Legendary cards is because they make a fundamental mistake of the game and they confuse life totals with the "score" (i.e. if player A has 25 health and player B has 12 health then, obviously, player A is "winning"). It's important to note that life is not a "score" but it is a resource. The only thing that matters is that your life does not hit zero. Circling back to Legendary cards this is a very important concept to realize because many decks are built around how certain Legendary cards work. For example, a lot of people complain about how they were "winning" the game since they had a full 30 health when all of a sudden their warrior opponent drops Alexstraza to drop them to 15 health and follows that up with a Grommash and Cruel Taskmaster combo to hit the face for 12. In this case, the player was never "winning." The warrior knew what his win conditions were and played the game accordingly.

Finally, net decking is going to happen. In the age of the internet, a really strong deck can spread throughout the meta in a matter of minutes if a popular streamer shows a deck working really well. While it's admirable to want to create your own decks, early on you're better off netdecking to see how the game is played and what cards work (and more importantly WHY those cards work).

Or you can just whine and scream "not fair" every time you lose a game. Up to you.

Yeah, I agree you'll want to netdeck early on so that way you can get a feel for what and why things work, then you can try and shake things up.

Generalizations aside and amidst the randomness of the game, a more skilled player should have the advantage. Knowing the match up and what your opponent will likely play, when to push the face or to trade, when to take a chance on Soulfire or Knife Juggler, when to cycle cards etc are all skills that take time and experience to learn and shouldn't be discounted.

For example, there's a really big difference between a well played Miracle Rogue vs a scrub (i.e. me). I'll watch Hafu stream and there are lots of times where I won't make the same decisions as her. But that's her main deck and she knows it inside and out against all the match ups.

Jesus guys, some of these comments are way off base. Last night was not a play 5 games and lose 3 and cry on the forums night. It was 3 hours of almost constant playing and coming to a realization. I'm used to competitive Mtg playing where if you're the stronger player and create a better deck, you win most times. In this game there are more factors that are completely out of your control. I'm beginning to understand that it is in fact just a grind. If you have a good deck and good skills, it's just a long grind to the top. My first time playing was at the end of last season and I went from rank 25 to 10 in 2-3 days with I'd guess a 80% win rate before the season reset.

At this point I'm rarely making what I'd classify as playing errors. I'm happy with my style and my play for the most part. I'm just not used to only winning 60% and that being acceptable. If that was my win rate in Mtg I'd be fixing my deck.

Edit- Thanks to those who are giving good feedback. Much appreciated!

Just downloaded Hearthstone tracker. I'll play some tonight and see what my real stats are. Frustration might be making it seem worse than it really is for me.

mures_sl said:

I don't think they run abusive sergeant and/or did so its hard for them to make efficient trades and eventually shaman overruns them, but just like other aggro matchups it depends on the right card draw, having a lightning storm at the right time certainly makes things easier, but the coldlight oracles help me as much as they help them. Every game has been close and I think harrison has saved me in the matchup a couple of times. They do, and I've noticed a lot of decks doing this now, run 2 doa's so I did put tbk back into my shaman deck. Oh I also run 2 earthen ring farseers because in the early parts of ladder there is a fuck ton of aggro and I noticed my unbound elementals rarely did anything.


If your hell bent on climbing the ladder and you aren't afraid of net decking yourself, just make a zoo warlock deck, its pretty cheap and competitive all the way to legendary. But yeah, I'd focus more on arena until I had plenty of cards.

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I can sympathize somewhat as I derive the most fun from trying to create my own competitive deck, but as Gavinrad pointed out, the card pool is currently too small to create some meta changing deck-- the best ones have already been discovered. The best I've been able to achieve is rank 10 using a "homebrew" deck, and that was relatively short lived. Still though, it feels awesome to demolish some tourney net deck with something you create on your own. Ultimately though, if you end up being strong against a few types, you're weak against others. For instance, the mage deck I'm playing now demolishes that annoying Leeroy combo rogue deck, but gets raped by Hunter zoo.

What sort of competitive MtG were you playing where you had a deck that was better than 60% vs the entire field? Urza's before Academy was banned?

Drtyrm_sl said:

What sort of competitive MtG were you playing where you had a deck that was better than 60% vs the entire field? Urza's before Academy was banned?

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Local shop tournaments and Mtg online tournaments. When I say competitive I mean money is involved not that I'm playing champions from around the world. Almost always standard sometimes modern.

Drtyrm_sl said:

What sort of competitive MtG were you playing where you had a deck that was better than 60% vs the entire field? Urza's before Academy was banned?

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I know what you are getting at but that is something that happens all the time in MtG. Exploiting the meta has been a thing as long as the meta has been a concept in card games.

But ladder isn't the same thing as competitive play. On ladder you are still always going to play against Leper Gnome. You are going to see decks that make no sense given the environment. There's no weeding out process. You are just going to have to come to terms with a setting in which anyone can play anything at any time.