New VS is out: Another meta where the best decks are aggro or close

Lost to a paladin who just teched in 2x Ogremancer and curved it, which is obviously an incredibly hard counter to me as spell mage.

super disappointed illucia wasnt touched, that card being deleted is the only thing i really want

buffs seem very underwhelming, which is a good thing imo

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/8233-...s-quilboars-in

LOL as usual they miss by a ****ing mile.

Hysteria nerf? Are you ****ing serious? The first day of school card got ****ing buffed, not nerfed. And the ****ing problem with ****ing crabrider isn’t that it has WINDFURY it’s that it’s a 1/4! Paladins can still curve this into blessing of kings and there’s no cards that can remove 4 health that early!

I’m honestly so ****ing disgusted.

Make no mistake, first day of school’s change is a huge nerf. Paladin doesn’t give a **** about value, it wants tempo. And a 1 mana nerf to a card that paladin wants to play on 1 is gigantic. I wouldn’t be surprised if this killed the card.

Hysteria was in a weird spot. Was it under costed at 3? Absolutely. But by nerfing it, you’re hurting a class (warlock) that was already hurting. It’s probably the right move in the long term, but in the short term, a bad class gets worse.

I like the crab rider nerf? Keeps the integrity of the card as a defensive tool in a rush oriented deck, but takes away its ability to just destroy life totals with even modest buffs. It’s stickiness isn’t really a problem, 4 health isn’t outlandish for a 2 drop, and there are other 2 drops that are even stickier. (Nerubian egg)

I can only surmise from the fact that incanters wasn’t touched is that a move to 3 mana would just kill the whole deck/class. Spring water is the obvious next target if touching incanters is off the table. Deck should still be viable. Kinda frustrating they didn’t hit incanters though, it’s just one of those mulligan for it and win cards, and that isn’t very fun.

Priest has hysteria too.

Crabrider's stickiness is absolutely a problem in aggro paladin. Their entire MO is playing sticky minions. My deck is running nerubian egg and cairne ffs. It's "stick a minion on the board and I win" with paladin, and this does nothing to change that.

I predict their winrate drops by maybe 1% because of the first day of school thing. Maybe. I guarantee crabrider is still played. It's just too many stats for 2 mana.

I mean, I think crabrider should still be played too? That’s a good thing though, nerfing cards into unplayable territory is generally bad.

We will see about paladin, but i think the aggro and secret variants take a big wr dip because of the fdos and crabrider nerfs. I think we see the class go back toward librams. Those were their 2 top wr mulligan cards that enables conviction/adal, which are their other two early game impact cards.

Here’s the weird thing about paladin though. It’s all over ladder, and rightfully so, it’s a great deck. It is not played at high legend. At all. Weapon rogue actually exists at high legend because it’s all priest and mage. You would probably have a 40% wr if you tried to climb with that deck because it’s god awful vs paladin and that’s a huge chunk of the meta. High legend though? Maybe 1/25 games are paladin, if that. Nothing implied by this, just a weird observation.

Tickatus not being nerfed is hilarious

I call it the paladin effect. Paladin is always underplayed compared to how good it typically is. When it's good in the meta people still don't play it as often as they should. The reason is it's a boring ass, poorly designed class that never feels good when you win or lose. It sucks. It's boring.

Surprise surprise there’s more paladin than ever and first day of school is in every deck. 1 drops are extremely powerful and it gives aggro decks more fuel. There’s literally no reason to play anything but paladin right now. Great game blizzard.

I'm still enjoying playing lunacy mage fwiw. Just broke diamond 5 with it.

Theorycrafted this somewhere at one point, but the best decks will always be the ones with multiple win conditions. That's why Paladin is so good right now.

Paladin win conditions:
-Decent chance to outlast aggro and get the win.
-Sticky minions with sticky buffs (Hand of A'dal/Secrets early game, Blessing of Authority) leading to punishment with Conviction/Kazakus.
-"X factors": Hammer of the Naaru/Alexstrasza reach. Murgur Murgurle giving a nearly unkillable board unless you have something like twisting nether.

3 ways to win. Now consider what someone like a mage has to do to win against that deck:
-Outlast the Paladin's early game
-Keep the board clean for pretty much every turn
-Stay above 8 health. If the Hammer of the Naaru hit 3x twice that's 18 of your health gone.

And that's all it takes. Just one of those 3 conditions fails for the mage and the Paladin wins. Paladin is good early, amazing mid, and decent late-game. No other deck is that well-rounded.

I guess TLDR: Everything else equal Paladin has a say 1/10 chance to just win the game in the early game vs. something like Mage that can't win the game in the early game, and that directly adds to the Paladin's win%

Played face hunter this season and it was the easiest climb of my life even without the full star bonus. Crushed every matchup except for a few auto losses against priest. Majority demon hunters at diamond then an even amount of mages/paladins. Everything else combined might have been ten games.

and now at ~3K legend the paladins are in full force. cant stand playing for more than half an hour or so lol, Im going back to classic

I made it to Platinum 5, but I have been stuck there for the last 20 games or so. I have tried a few different decks, but have not managed to get my overall record to +3 in order to get out of that rank.

I have not put much effort in to climbing ladder in a long time, and I am almost positive last month was the first time that I had broken in to Platinum since they revamped the ladder. Either that or the 11-star bonus that I had when they remodeled the ladder got me up there once, but not since then.

I rode the Paladin express train to Platinum 5 right before the crabrider nerf. I started playing a N'Zoth Paladin that is really fun in concept, but it lacks a certain..... 2 mana card that can end up dealing 16+ damage over the course of a game. I put in the 5 mana 5/5 demon that gives your silver hand recruits Divine Shield, but this is about the point in time where I go to the Internet and find a deck that just explodes out of the gate compared to what I build "because it sounds fun."

It's about time for a new Avatar. I had Yogg Saron for a while, now Reno. I typed "There is still a Reno in standard" but then I remembered that he was actually part of Descent of Dragons.

What current Standard cards would make a great Avatar?

I’m playing the paladin n’zoth deck. It’s a little difficult against decks that get a fast start but if you can get a decent start and stall til your big boys it just runs stuff over.

jmakin reminds me of me.

I've only watched the stream for a few hours but there have been several points in time where I think to myself, "yep, that's pretty much how I would react to that."

Or playing Priest and seeing that I've queued in to a Warlock. I really can't blame someone for not wanting to spend the first half of the game trying to figure out if this is one of the 10% of games you have a shot to win.

The avatar game is on point. I never did see Tombstone, but I'll make a point to watch it soon. Can't say I dug Val Kilmer as Batman, but he was a great Iceman (not Mr. Freeze).

I always thought Zephrys looked too dopey to make for a good avatar. Maybe the new Kazakus is where it's at...

I've always liked your avatar. Reno is a funny guy, whether he's in standard or not. He's one of the Battlegrounds heroes by the way, which makes him kind of relevant.

If you still feel like replacing Reno for a minion that's in standard right now, I would recommend:

I was thinking maybe more of a "DIE, INSECTS!" vibe.

Pen Flinger can S a D and DIAF.

My PokerStars Pa handle is Ragnaros. Yeah I got up to 2 diamond but it’s definitely not a fun ride with a ton of pallys, priest and warrior. Don’t see much else.

New mini set.