I mean even if the community discovered 2 or 3 of the strong decks that could compete with Shaman early on (if we trust Blizzards playtesting that there were those), that wouldn’t change the fact that all these 3 or 4 decks (including shaman) would have had an incredibly high powerlevel.

This would have meant people play 3-4 decks exclusively on ladder and everything else would be unplayable. I mean we kind of had that feeling with shaman anyways, but 2 or 3 other strong decks competing with shaman wouldn’t really have edthe ladder experience, since 4 or 5 classes wouldn’t see play at all.

I think inner fire combo priest might do the trick. Besides the combo pieces you run a lot of card draw, silence and boar for the otk.

I used Highlander Mage, ResPriest and Combo Priest. As mentioned in the article, ResPriest is very solid against the auto-attack encounters, but it is also very effective against Rotwing, especially if you run Albatross, had a ton of fun with that. Wild boar combo priest I used for the Skruk encounter and for the remaining encounters Highlander Mage was decent enough.

@Garotilde

Well, Rogue is the best class right now, the matchup for sure is difficult (I have about 45%-50% against it), but if you target Rogue specifically, you are weak in other matchups.

There is a list on hstopdecks now that somebody hit legend with:
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The new 3 mana spell instead of extra arms is definitively interesting. Personally I do believe Scorchers have way better synergy with the deck than Evasive Wyrms, not sure what I am missing here. Running Acolyte/Mass Dispel, thats kind of personal preference I guess.

Anyways, the inclusion of Galakrond was a try on day 1 of chapter 2 to play something fun, but data suggests if you want to build a Dragon Combo Priest competitively you should take the shell from regular Combo Priest and include about 6 dragons and Cleric of Scales. Bwonsamdi, the new 3 mana spell and not running Acolyte, I am not so sure about, but thats all things you can experiment with.

Well, hsreplay stats are now available and we basically confirmed once more: Galakrond Priest is a meme and s……!

Therefore I adjusted the list and made it more in the spirit of the already existing combo priest decks, but still keeping the dragon synergy and this version works way better now (71% WR so far). Ahmet is such a huge card against Druid, you wouldn’t believe it! 😀

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Still I am not sure about Matriarch, just testing stuff, but the list really feels good now.

Update:
HSreplay statistics are available now:
https://hsreplay.net/decks/N8pgyh2wKqLCpHJXFOzWne/#tab=overview

The deck doesn’t perform in the current meta. Most decks find their powerful stuff faster than we find our combo it seems. Kind of expected that, but I wanted to try the new Cleric of Scales minion and had some hope it might work. I still think the deck is fun and not easy to pilot, but at this point I can’t recommend the deck for ladder this month. So if you want to try the new 1/1 anyways I still think you should start with this list and maybe remove all the Galakrond/Invoke cards and add some of the other regular combo priest cards like Tolvir, Ahmet and maybe Extra Arms.

good luck testing 😉

This replay might be interesting for you as well, using Galakrond this time!
https://hsreplay.net/replay/8dWggdWZED7yywt4r24QDK
Of course my opponent should have won that game if he just cleared my last minion, but even Legend players do these mistakes and get greedy sometimes.

Hey there, butterkase here.

I saw some people were wondering about this deck, how it works, so here is a replay I played at Legend and might explain things. https://hsreplay.net/replay/YMnViZySeJFWALVhgPpoH9

Greetings Traveler

Hey there,

so I made a very similar list when the expansion came out, but it was just a good meme (scored about 50%). Now with the new adventure cards I hope its a bit more consistent due to the faster cycle/spell discovers. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t claim this deckversion is now good enough to compete with Druid and Rogue, the new cards are 2 days old and I wasn’t able to test it much, but since it is the last days of the month and the deck is really fun to play I wanted to share the list so people can try it out.

Also you shouldn’t underestimate the power of the deck. With invokes and discovers you keep a good handsize for the Twilight Drakes and often you just win the game on turn 5 if you have combo in hand already. In the current meta decks are pretty fast and I would recommend not waiting too long with the combo, even if it is not lethal yet. If they don’t have silence or removal the game is just over. So combo priest ist never easy to pilot, you need to find the right timing for your combo and need to manage your draw with Clerics and Acolyte well. There is no particular minion you have to use for combo, just anything that has enough health. That can be Dragons or minions you discovered from Invokes/Galakrond.

In general it is just a really fun deck, that can beat everything if you find combo in time, so as you could say about every combo priest, the deck is really strong, but its a question how consistent you can pull it off. I am going to try to hit legend with the deck upcoming month and if I do I probably write a guide about it.

I hope that answers your question good enough.

Cheers

Thank you for posting, Token Druid worked very well for me against Cultist Dawnshatter, didn’t have all cards you suggested, but included some Standard Token druid cards instead and worked as well! For all other encounters I used Highlander Mage, took 2-3 tries on average.

Ty for pointing that out. Actually I havn’t seen the Leeroy/Dragonmaw combo and wasn’t aware, but you are absolutely right, that’s a neat usage! However I am not sure what to cut for Dragonmaw. I still face many Rogues at legend (Rogue is still the best class) and I don’t think the Leeroy interaction is good enough to justify running it in the normal version, since Dragonmaw is really bad against non-dragon decks. It’s just a very good anti-druid tech and I would probably run it instead of Shellfighter and (maybe) Godfrey. I don’t like cutting a 3-drop like Rager for it, but I havn’t tried it yet to be fair.

I agree, 21-13 is my score against embiggen druid at legend even without the Dragonmaw tech! So I am not even sure that inclusion is worth it. In this specific matchup Dragonmaw is better than Godfrey for sure, but the matchup is already favoured for us, so if you still run into rogues as well, you shouldn’t run the tech. If you face 80% druid its fine, but its not much better than Rager, so I’d probably make the Godfrey-Dragonmaw switch, only, in that case.

Interesting replay! So I would have probably setup lethal on turn 6 with Breath instead of LifeTap, so that we can Leeroy+Soulfire+Soulfire on 7. I know thats risky against taunts and discarding soulfire, but we don’t have much time against druid anyways, so I take that risk. If we LifeTap on 6 as you did, we play the control game and defitively want Dark Skies on 7 and play the Twilight Drake as well. Like going for the Tap on 6 and then going for the leeroy burst on 7 instead of the control game is defintively inconsequent and not correct.

I used 2 decks:
PapaJasons #29 Galakrond Warrior W1 and Standard Highlander Mage.
Galakrond Warrior was able to beat most matches by pure aggression. The bosses where aggression didn’t work, especially the high Health Bosses, Highlander Mage with Alexstrasza came in handy. You don’t really need to attack them, just build a board, wait for Alex and finish them off.

The obvious choice would be Twisting Nether. Its weaker against Deathrattle and Reborn, but Godfrey on the other hand doesn’t clear all boards. A second Shadowflame you could also consider.

In general Godfrey is a card that sometimes gets you back into the game when you lost your board somehow. Therefore you could also just accept losing the games where you lost board and add tools that protect your board instead! So instead of replacing Godfrey with other removal like Twisting Nether, you could also add another Shellfighter or Sunfury Protector securing your board. If you mostly face Rogue you could also try a Dragonmaw Scorcher to clear their lackeys.

Currently testing this version: ### Awakening Handlock
# Class: Warlock
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Dragon
#
# 2x (1) Soulfire
# 1x (2) Neferset Ritualist
# 2x (2) Nether Breath
# 1x (2) Sunfury Protector
# 1x (3) Bad Luck Albatross
# 2x (3) Dark Skies
# 1x (3) Faceless Rager
# 1x (3) SN1P-SN4P
# 2x (3) Scalerider
# 1x (4) Shadowflame
# 2x (4) Twilight Drake
# 2x (5) Crazed Netherwing
# 1x (5) Leeroy Jenkins
# 1x (5) Snapjaw Shellfighter
# 1x (5) Zilliax
# 2x (6) Abyssal Summoner
# 1x (7) Lord Godfrey
# 1x (7) Siamat
# 1x (7) Valdris Felgorge
# 1x (8) Zzeraku the Warped
# 1x (9) Alexstrasza
# 2x (12) Mountain Giant
#
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Coil didn’t feel strong enough recently, so I included Sn1p instead. Solid 3-drop and great synergy with Zilliax. Drakonid did save some games, but often it was played out of desperation to stay alive somehow. Zzeraku is a (maybe too greedy?) value tool I am testing now instead, Amalgam would probably be the responsible choice adding even more synergy to Sn1p and Zilliax, while keeping dragon synergies the same time.

Have a closer look in your own games, what cards underperform against the new decks and try to make changes accordingly as well!

Shellfighter is not required, Warlock got great burst cards this expansion and therefore you want to build a big board and burst your opponent down! The idea of Shellfighter, Ritualist and Sunfury Protector is to maintain your board and keep it safer against Aoe-spells or inferior trades.
However the new adventure is out and we got quite some new cards. Depending if you see a lot of Taunt Druid, Highlander Decks or Mage freeze effects, you could think of all kind of different tech cards, like Spellbreaker, second Albatross etc. It is too early to predict what will be the best deck each week, so until we have the full adventure released, I recommend experimenting yourself and try different tech cards against the new decks.

I am afraid the new cards of week 1 won’t impact the meta too much. Rogue, Warlock, Hunter still dominating, Hunter probably the only one of these that might run new cards. Druid also got some support and might see more play as well as Warrior and Paladin, but nothing seems really metabreaking.

Hey everybody,
probably not everybody has faith in cards like Shellfighter, but let me tell you, this list is very strong and all cards work very well together. My score in top 1000 Legend is 82-69 (54%) (34-28 against Rogue) currently. You do need alot of experience with the deck and archetype, though. Therefore I highly recommend to check out the guide I made couple days ago, especially if you are new to the Handlock archetype. You can find the guide here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveHS/comments/en9515/nongalakrond_handlock_to_legend/

Also if you have any questions about matchups/gameplay etc. I am happy to discuss with you about it.
Cheers Butterkäse

Thx for your reply!

As mentioned, I don’t think Zuljin by itself is a bad card or decides the matchup rogue-hunter on its own! We are on the same paper here, indeed I was more referring to the bad experience I have as a Rogue Player, when Zuljin comes down and that is due to the fact Rogue doesn’t have a comparable Herocard (same with Warlock, Paladin etc.) and honestly I think Tess doesn’t match Zuljin even close in strength currently.
Why is that? Well Tess requires you to build a specific deck type around her and you have to generate specific cards first, then play these cards and think about their interactions with Tess. In other words Tess needs a lot of time and smart plays to set her up right, exactly what I want a strong card to be, have some requirements before impacting the game. Zuljin on the other hand doesn’t work with cards you need to generate. You just put the spells you want him to cast in your starting deck! This means you need much less time to set a good Zuljin up! And don’t forget, Zuljin on top of that improves your heropower and gives armor! Zuljin is just a powerhouse doing what you want it to do on calculated bases. Tess can be a powerhouse in very specific decks, but also can screw you up totally if you get unlucky with your card generation!

Enjoyed reading your on-point thoughts alot!

Personally I don’t mind Highlander decks existing the way they are, but I agree on the other parts mentioned in your article!

I want to give some personal thoughts on certain things I like/dislike as well:

Being able to basically find good decks for every class and each of them having multiple archetypes available, currently makes the game a lot of fun when it comes to deckbuilding!

There is three major issues though, I really dislike how they are handled and introduced by Blizzard at the moment:
-Class Identities
-Herocards
-Broken Stuff (Imbalance)

I want to give a short (I really tried!) and quick inside, what I mean by each of them:

I think class identies are basically not existent at the moment. This might be due to the “created by meta” mentioned in the article. Every class having access to healing, armor, weapons, burst, card draw etc. feels weird, especially when these things should belong to certain classes only, and not occur for everybody on a frequent rate. Its not the discover mechanics only though, as mentioned in the article, Paladin for example has a lot of card draw available right now and this is really confusing when you were following the reasoning behind recent changes (HoFing “Divine Favor” to deny Paladin card draw in this case). So in my view basic and classic set should be updated to give every class a clear identity and the other sets should be adapted to that. Before even fixing the existing class identities though, Blizzard decided to introduce new identities in form of “lackeys” and “twinspells”. Don’t get me wrong, I really love the idea behind it! It’s the theme of a certain expansion and in the case of RoS it gives 4 classes the “defender” identity, using “twinspells” and 5 classes the “attacker” identity, using “lackeys”. Well now I go to my collection and type those keywords in the search bar. In case of the twinspells its fine, I find 4 classes, 2 twinspells each, great. In case of the lackeys though, i find 1 card for priest, 2 for rogue, 3 for shaman, 4 for warlock, 2 for warrior and 1 NEUTRAL! Wait what? You might say now in RoS there was only 1 lackeycard for each mentioned class except Rogue (Toggwaggle was a second rogue card introduced that needs a lackey to be active) and yes you are right, but in SoU there is kind of a lackey imbalance between the classes now. Since all lackeys have battlecries and Shaman just got a quest working around battlecries, its not confusing shaman has found a way to abuse this. It really doesn’t look thought-through well enough. So the idea behind lackeys and twinspells, giving an expansion a certain theme and certain classes new identities/tools to work with is a great thing, but in case of lackeys I really dislike the way it is implemented in the game right now.

Same story with Herocards!
I play Rogue vs Hunter. It is an even battle for board with weapons, spells and Minions trading. We are both down to 1 card and 10 mana it is really a close good game. Zuljin comes down, game is over, fun experience! No it’s not! I literally hate when that happens. Why? Well because as Rogue I don’t have access to a “Zuljin” card.. To get this right, I like cards like Zuljin doing powerful stuff on 10 mana, but I hate when there is an imbalance between classes and not every class has access to such tools. It just feels unfair and I want every class to have powerful tools available fitting their class identity! In case of herocards like boom, hagatha, zuljin, just give them to every class and don’t overtune them like some KotFT cards (e.g. Jaina giving Mage access to endless heal and once again ignoring class identities!). I mean Dr. Boom basically shows again how an overtuned Herocards looks like even after the nerf.

Which leads directly to my last point, Broken Stuff (Imbalance). I totally like broken stuff happening, but I want it to be difficult to execute and not rewarding without any sacrifice. More importantly though, it should be somewhat balanced between classes (for example not every class has a hero card available as mentioned before). Other examples would be Jaraxxus who can be destroyed by a 0 mana spell, while all other Heroes can’t be destroyed at all? Especially with a card like Zephrys introduced, its even worse and the Warlock Hero basically can’t be played currently, due to that interaction. Furthermore we have weapon destruction which makes some Weapon based strategies unplayable, again especially with a card like Zephrys around. I think everybody knows some examples here and again, I am fine with powerful stuff happening, but it should be a bit more balanced between classes especially how many (usable) tools are available to each class!