Warlock I think has been the most consistently strong class in the game and the current cubelock deck is losing virtually nothing in the rotation. Though it was the same case with pirate warrior in the last rotation and that died pretty quick so we'll have to see how the meta shakes out next month.

I think druid has been the most consistently good class in the game. Warlock was legit trash for 2 expansions last year.

Had a pretty funny moment where a warlock tried to play around freezing trap with his lackey, so he doesnt attack with it, dark pacts it, and his doomguard gets kicked back instead.

Shoulda thought that one through buddy

Feel like they got away from this the last couple xpacs, but this odd/even thing is just as bad as anything they've ever done

I too would like if they just printed cards and not pushed mechanics. anyone remember when they tried super hard to make beast druid a deck?

there are supposedly only like 8 or 9 forced even odd bs so it's not a huge deal

If there's only 8-9 of each total then the whole mechanic just never sees play, surely?

depends what support it gets later. remember this xpac will see 2018 #2 2018 #3 2019 #1 2019 #2 2019 #3 before it's rotation. that's a LOT of cards

Big priest is actually the deck I have the most scorn for. it's literally a deck you wait until turn 4, and either they highroll and have barnes and you lose 90% of the time, or they dont and just draw cards and lose. its a pile of **** deck that shouldnt be a thing

it's way more complicated than that

way more complicated being "I hope they kill that 1/1 Lich King so I can res it on curve since I just coined Barnes"

I mean, I’m sure there are complicated turns and cool things you can do with the deck, but Bobbo is right - the deck derives the majority of its power from Barnes on 4.

shadow essence is a much more powerful card. barnes is really only super strong if you can pair him with a rez.

shadow essence curved into is extremely powerful especially on coin because you can often get a clear board to launch the minion into. For instance, turn 5 coin dragonfire into shadow essence basically any minion wins games. getting a 1/1 ysera on 4 does nothing for you really unless you can rez it the next turn, which most of the time you cannot pair rez with barnes because you rarely should keep eternal servitude in mulligan unless your hand is already extremely strong. against aggro I would rather have a shadow word horror over barnes most of the time if i had to pick between hard mulliganing for one or the other. the discover spell card is rarely a keep either so frequently barnes is just a 3/4 with a 1/1 with a maybe nice effect like getting y'sharrj (if you didnt draw him). That's the only "instant" barnes win and it's honestly not that common.

you win almost every game through stabilizing with your rich supply of board and minion removal + healing, and then get one large minion to stick with no answer from your opponent. Against paladin for instance, you don't need barnes at all, you hard mulligan for shadow word horror, potion of madness, and dragon fire on the coin. some matchups you need an explosive barnes opening to have any shot in - particularly against certain control decks.

I just looked at my stats. 36-23. I won 80% of the time i drew barnes, but only played him 11 times.

so barnes gave me 9 of my 36 wins. Where are the rest coming from? i think i should expect to win with him slightly less than that in a larger sample.

i have more data if i aggregate all my different versions of this list but they're all going to say the same thing. I'm not trying to be argumentative but I've played soooooo many games with this deck and I know the list better than probably any other list I've ever played. It frequently gets criticized for the wrong reasons.

the problem cards in that deck are the 7 mana resurrect and psychic scream.

priest already had a bajillion ways to clear the board and then they give them the best AOE removal in the game and that insane rez card which gives them late game power, before those two cards the deck was kind of memey.

i think people like the ***** about every deck. it's just how this game is.

@jmakin

obv it's more complicated than play barnes on 4 and win, but look at your own stats from a small sample - you are 80% to win if you have that card, and way less than that without him. to me that speaks about a problem

you guys bitched about prince 2 for days. you were clearly wrong, it's not a very good card--the deck was just strong. i think jmakin knows what he's talking about.

if you subtract my 9 barnes wins i am still 27-23. not awful.

looking at a card's played winrate while ignoring the rest of the deck is bad for reasons that i argued about passionately about keleseth as well.

like i said i don't think barnes is the scary card in that deck. it's straight up awful in the mirror and you need to have a perfect hand or y'shaarj pull to blow out a game with him, which rarely happens.

the combo of shadow essence, dragonfire, horror clears, scream, healing and mass resurrect are what make it a bull**** deck. no other archetype could get away with running so much removal and so many spells, but big priest can because of shadow essence, shadow visions, and how powerful the 4/8 taunt is (and to some degree, lich king).


barnes is a bull**** annoying card in spell hunter. Totally, totally bull****. i don't know the deck as well, but my understanding is you almost throw away everything but barnes with that deck. that is totally, totally not the strategy when playing big priest. it's just a nice starting hand card for the priest, and hunter winrate purely relies on that barnes/yshaarj interaction to squeak it over 50%.

and i think that's fine in theory, if a deck wants to play 1 card that makes the deck suck if you don't draw it. the problem was old tempo rogue had a >50% winrate even when not playing keleseth. That is total bull****.

my argument isn't that big priest isn't bull**** it's that you're oversimplifying it and saying it's bull**** for the wrong reasons. it isn't easy to play optimally and barnes isn't the problem. "good" big priest hands play pretty linearly so it can appear it's easy when everything goes right, but not everything goes right with that deck, and when things go wrong they can go really really wrong. that's what makes the winrate, is how you play the ****ty big priest draws, which there are many of.

this is obviously a touchy subject, i've just taken a fair amount of **** before for playing the deck on stream and it's annoying because it's a really intricate and "mathy" type of deck. EV decisions are everywhere and on the fly calculations of how likely you are to pull X card from an essence and how likely that is to give you Y minion/spell from it's end of turn effect, or how likely it is you pull a taunt, or how likely it is you pull an obsidian destroyer and it kills the problem minion on the other side of the board.. i could go on for days

/end essay

Example of a great ev decision that comes up:

I’m in a game against a paladin and he has a moderately annoying board i can deal with next turn, or i can take a 50% gamble on binking the 5/5 lifesteal taunt where if i miss i take a crapton of damage and maybe die.

Is my equity if i opt to self heal with a potion and tank the face damage < 50%? Sometimes yea. You can force spots where you improve your equity in a ****ty situation to basically a coinflip.

That’s not a perfect example but you get in weird gambool spots where you need to figure out your approximate equity on a whiff or on a hit.

A lot of times it’s as simple as, “well if i shadow essence barnes here I just lose immediately. So i won’t do it and take a safer line because I have strong minion turns coming and a lot of removal in hand.”

this is the same ****ing semantics argument as keleseth

Let’s all pls not do this again

I played some murloc paladin at rank ~20, pretty ridiculous deck.

The Un'goro meta was probably the best and most balanced, but I liked quest rogue.

Starcraft Tavern Brawl this week!

http://www.newsweek.com/hearthstone-...e-packs-851864

Heh "kinda" is the understatement of the life cycle of the game. At the very least WoG, UnGoro, and Gadgetzan were about nothing but archetype pushing.

Decided to play DMH warrior because I hate myself. Legitimately faced 0 aggro paladins in 20 games. How is this even possible?

lol, i was like ~400 legend, took 2 weeks off from the game, come back, rank 3525

oh sure