I have a question for those of you that play a lot of HS. I play here and there, but most of the time I don't make it out of the gold bracket.

How much patience do you have for games that look unwinnable? I just played a Demon Hunter deck and drew EXTREMELY poorly. At the beginning of the game, my hand was Illidari Inquisitor (8), Skull of Gul'dan (6), Skull of Gul'dan (6), Discover an Outcast Card (1), coin, and Watchpost (3).

That's a pretty bad draw, considering you don't really have a way to get the 8 mana dude out of your hand, and you've got 2 skulls sitting there in the middle of your hand, waiting on the 8 mana dude. Turn 4 came around and I played the Glide that I had discovered a turn or two earlier. It got Oh My Yogg'd and turned in to some Mage secret that summons a water elemental when one of your minions is attacked. I just conceded at that point. Bad draw, looks like Glide is the only way to have a shot this game, Glide gets countered... I just lose interest.

I like playing games where I feel like I have a chance to win. Often times, like in the above case, I assume that I have close to 0% chance to win, which makes the game way less fun. I have stopped caring about getting credit for quests like "Play 3 games as a Demon Hunter." Whatever the hidden extra criteria are (number of turns played, number of cards played, overall health gained/lost, whatever), it doesn't seem worth wasting the next few minutes getting blown out. I feel like I could better use that time in the next game. I could be on turn 3 in a game where I actually have a chance to win, instead of turn 7 with no board, staring down a bunch of Paladin secrets that are going to further buff up their buffed up 1 drop that's killed anything you might have played.

I assume there is some major leakage there when it comes to winrate, since conceding begets a lower winrate than playing it out. So I guess the question is: where do you guys draw the line at cutting your losses in a game?

Yeah tickatus is quite annoying. Priests can attempt to steal it but it’s not always easy or possible. Even so, jaraxxus destroys priests and has no downside now.

My take - if you only care about grinding as high as possible on ladder, then yes, you should be conceding early in that game, or any game where you know it's basically impossible to win. The extra minutes you spend pounding your head against the wall as you lose are better spent in the next winnable matchup. I'd also say if you start tilting just watching your opponent pummel you, then conceding is also probably wise.

With that said, if you're trying to really improve at the game, I don't recommend conceding ever. You can still learn in the games you're losing, either from different lines you can take or how your opponent is playing their deck vs you. There are also the games where you think about conceding, say "nah", then play it out and miracle a win, or your opponent disconnects, etc.. Those are more rare, but it can happen.

Meta is pretty fast right now. I'll pretty much never resign a game when I'm in a current streak. Ill resign fairly aggressively if I am on a stoppage point

Tickatus sucks and is only good against decks that don’t try to kill their opponent. If you’re losing to tickatus, you’re playing a garbage deck and/or have a fundamental misunderstanding of how to play hearthstone.

Or you are playing priest like I said. 10-12% winrate. Stats don’t lie.

I think priest falls squarely within what I said.

Anduin might put up with your crap, but Tyrande is going to smite your ass.

Hit 150 legend with this list today, figured I'd share it.



Not sure if it's better than the alex/tenwu package, but does produce some surprise lethals because your opponent is comfortable leaving little minions on the board, especially the aggressive decks like weapon rogue & face hunter that just give up on board at some point.

I'd say this list is better vs aggro, the tenwu/alex package is better vs control

Yea priest just can’t beat it. I just had the ideal game where I stole corrupted tickatus and even got 2x corrupt tickatus from raise deads. Destroyed half his deck and still lost. Stuck multiple 8/8 dragon that summons a 7 drop. Even if you do all this warlock has plenty of removal (and then some) and jaraxxus pressure beats you in the end. I got us down to both of our last cards and lost. New jaraxxus is very powerful but I don’t think it’s a problem. Tickatus however should be 8 mana to force a jaraxxus before they can tickatus and at least give me a fighting chance. Combo decks will not exist anymore while this is a thing.

Priest has no real way to pressure (outside c’thun clock - I dont run cthun anymore because it sucks) outside of dragon discoveries really or hoping to divine shield/copy the “power in trinkets” 2/3 dude and snowball the game from there, but I still doubt that works because priest spells are mostly removal/healing. Removing thoughtsteal from the game was a huge mistake, it’s gimmicky but at least lets the priest generate some cards to do some real damage with.

Priest is fantastic against everything else though. Just melts all this aggro.

It turns out that they ARE giving refunds for Kasrgal Battlescar in addition to refunds for the watch posts. Way to go, Blizzard! Feelsgoodman

I think I can justify "swapping" my regular Deck of Lunacy for a golden version. And we're going to make Kargal pay for it!

Thanks for the reminder, just dusted!

Just over two weeks for the classic legend climb. Probably could have shaved off half of it if I didn't mess around with shaman and priest for a few games every time I hit a rank floor.

Love the skill ceiling of counting up every possible damage combo your opponent could have or that you can draw into to minimize your clock. Playing and playing around cards people chose to put in their deck is refreshing.

Druid super OP.

Halfway to legend with control/spell priest, it’s getting easier because hunter/rogue is pushing warlock off ladder I think.

Hunter matchup is very easy except you need to be careful of the OTK deck. Paladin is a little bit rough, unsurprisingly, but if you are able to get minions to stick early you can come out ahead quite easily.

Thinking of playing alexstraza in the deck instead of ysera - ysera is very clunky and slow most of the time. I was playing yogg for a bit but he ****ed me more often than he didn’t. Got self pyro’d twice. Alexstraza doesn’t have quite enough “get there” factor that ysera has. I wish I could play both but there’s not a single card I want to cut, other than maybe the single copy of shadow word death. Illucia could probably go - she’s only situationally good and her played winrate is quite low. I just really like that card.

### Spell Priest
# Class: Priest
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Gryphon
#
# 2x (0) Raise Dead
# 2x (1) Draconic Studies
# 2x (1) Holy Smite
# 2x (1) Renew
# 2x (2) Condemn (Rank 1)
# 2x (2) Insight
# 2x (2) Sethekk Veilweaver
# 1x (2) Shadow Word: Death
# 2x (2) Wandmaker
# 2x (3) Apotheosis
# 2x (3) Hysteria
# 1x (3) Mindrender Illucia
# 2x (3) Palm Reading
# 2x (3) Venomous Scorpid
# 1x (4) Blademaster Samuro
# 1x (4) Xyrella
# 1x (7) Soul Mirror
# 1x (9) Ysera the Dreamer
#
AAECAafDAwbIvgP70QP76APU7QO0igTBnwQMk7oDm7oDr7oD3s wD184D/tED4t4D+98D+OMDlugDnusDhZ8EAA==
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

Had to call it after 5 hours at rank 1 zero stars lol i’m gonna do it! 60% winrate with the deck over a shitload of games. Took out illucia for alexstraza and it’s waaaay better. Sucks in those cthun matchups not to have it but I think the trade off is worth it.

Rush warrior is a little bit of a pain in the ass. Auto concede against warlock. Seriously. You won’t win.

Did it. Diamond 10ish to legend 100% with spell priest. Probably played about 200 games total lol. My sample size is small on this hs deck tracker data because I play a lot on mobile. I think my actual winrate was about 62ish%. Notice how like 20% of our matchups were against warlock, and I auto conceded every one, and we're still at this winrate. That should tell you how ridic this deck is if piloted well. Granted I was against mostly donks so far. Let's see how it does at higher ranks. Paladins with the early windfury murloc were ****ing with me pretty bad at the end.




Deck list is same as above, but -1 illucia and +1 alexstraza. They never see the alex coming, ever. This is one of the most satisfying legends I've ever hit.

Congrats!

That's awesome. I really like that deck.

Is C'thun worth a craft? I'm looking for some versatile, neutral cards to craft to get good value for my dust but Vicious Syndicate keeps saying that it's a terrible card. How about blade master? Or Yogg?

I had enough cards for the miracle priest deck and played that for a bit but miracle decks bore me. I like control decks but unfortunately you need legendaries for them. The control priest deck looks nice. Zanananan is playing one similar to jmakin's on stream now. He has C'thun, Ysera, Malygos, Xyrella and Mindrender in his.

Yogg/cthun not worth a craft in my opinion. Cthun is legit terrible.

Has anyone ever successfully made Cthun go off?

I’ve seen it against me but it’s pretty rare, some of the parts of cthun aren’t bad but it’s so freaking slow.

Yes, I did it for the Darkmoon achievement.

Think Alexstrasza is next up on the chopping block. Best deck (Secret Paladin) is even running it along with a lot of other classes. It's basically Leeroy for a little more mana but deals un-counterable 8 damage to face.

https://hsreplay.net/decks/mtL29gmzOg6hg2aichRV3b/

70% winrate with huge sample size. Good job blizzard.

J Alexander suggested nerfing first day of school so that it only pulls neutral minions, I thought that was a good suggestion. A mana nerf to that card just kills it. Paladin should have good to great early game, they are a board control class. But it's def overtuned right now.

I'd also make crabrider a 1/3. It just violates basic minion math. You shouldn't have 5 stats with two keywords on a 2 drop.

Hard disagree with any nerf to Alex. Stats are totally fine on the card. Neutral burst is good for the game. It's a huge improvement over the original alex.