Probably Tomb Pillager. However, The Curator is just one wing ahead of the Swashburglar, so you can also hoard 700 gold and buy the next wing of Karazhan :p

Yes, yes it does, fixed. Pirates have lots of similar names and I’m messing them up sometimes, sorry!

Thanks! I’d go for either Feral Spirit or Healing Wave if you face a lot of Aggro and Mana Tide Totem if you face a lot of slower decks.

Yes, STB definitely gets out of the list – it’s too weak right now. And you have a plenty cards to pick from.

If you own those cards, you obviously want to go for one of the Legendaries – Patches, Leeroy or Sir Finley. When it comes to the Epics, you can also play Southsea Captains.

If you want a cheaper option, Naga Corsair or Bash would be the best ones.

If you have any more questions, let me know!

It might actually be a good time to pick up Doomhammer again – most of the decks have dropped Ooze, as its only strong against Pirate Warrior now. Replacing Spell Damage might not be the best idea, though. The deck still runs tons of spells – Bolts, Portals, Lava Bursts and Jade Lightnings.

I would probably try getting rid of 2x Spirit Claws and 2x STB and replacing it with Doomhammer + Rockbiter. It would slow the deck down significantly, but the meta has also slowed down a bit. I haven’t playtested that, because frankly I’m sick of Aggro Shaman at this point, but let me know how it works if you try it in the end.

That said, Aggro Shaman really needed those STB to have a powerful and snowbally early game. It’s falling out of the meta a bit, because it’s really hard to replace those. Argent Squires are meh, because they only work well with Flametongue – without it, 1 damage is just not enough right now. The deck is technically not “dead”, but I feel like both Pirate Warrior and Aggro/Water Rogue are better Aggro decks right now.

No problem 🙂 Updating lists so late into the expansion is usually pretty easy. Most of the “best” lists have been figured out already, meta is pretty “stale” and if not for the recent nerfs, most of the lists wouldn’t even need an update at all. I’m looking forward to writing about the new expansion. Writing new guides right after new cards are released is a more difficult, but at the same time very enjoyable task.

But thanks, I’m glad that you like my content!

Sorry to disappoint you, but I believe that this might still be the best list in the current meta. Even though The Curator list was being tried a bit, G2 has gone back to this list again in the latest Trinity Series. We’ll need to take a closer look of how the meta exactly shapes up post-patch, but I think that this and The Curator lists are incredibly close in terms of power level anyway.

The only reason I like The Curator list over this one is Stampeding Kodo tech, which gets much more useful with so many people running Finja, the Flying Star in different lists. Sometimes Finja wins the game for Aggro deck, if you can counter it with Kodo it should be an easy win. But I’ll need to look further into that and see how popular Finja gets on the ladder after all.

It wasn’t among the cards that were confirmed in the video, though. But I bet that he will also get that tribe, it would be weird if he didn’t considering he has “Elemental” in his name…

Rogue wants to play Beast, because of The Curator.

Then the deck wants to play a Beast that’s in Stealth, because it’s much more likely that it will survive to next turn, so you can get a trade you want or it’s a good Cold Blood target.

And when it comes to Beasts with Stealth, you have two options – Panther or Stranglethorn Tiger. Tiger is great, but when it comes to damage compared to mana cost, Panther clearly wins. It’s 4 damage for 3 mana, compared to 5 damage for 5 mana. Of course, it has its flaws, like playing into the AoE, but it’s better than Tiger in such a deck list.

I’m personally playing both, so if I draw one I could still pull the other from The Curator.

I’ve heard that way too often. Yes, I’m familiar with the game development’s cycle. But it’s not an excuse, not at all.

Whole community was going nuts about Aggro decks as far as 2 months ago, after the Gadgetzan meta has already stabilized. Considering that the new expansion should come out early April, that’s 3 months in total between they’ve realized that something’s wrong with the Aggro and the new expansion. 3 months.

They can tweak some cards. They can remove some cards that might be problematic altogether. For example, Gadgetzan would be much more healthy expansion if they just released 1 less card (no Small-Time Buccaneer) in total. No one would notice and yet everyone would be way more happy.

At the same time, it’s enough time to add some strong anti-Aggro tool. Like you’ve said, they design stuff months ahead. They can just pick one or two strong cards from the future expansions and add them to this one (of course, changing their theme a bit and possibly tweaking them). But even releasing a new anti-Aggro tool. If it turns out to be powerful and completely stops Aggro from being playable, just release a hotfix and change it. What’s the big deal?

“We’re planning stuff 8 months ahead so we can’t make instant changes” is a terrible, terrible excuse. Have you ever heard that in any other game? Let’s say League of Legends. They don’t say “oh, we’ve released a new, overpowered champion, but it’s fine, because 8 months from now we plan to release something that will counter it”. No, it’s not fine, and everyone knows that.

It’s not about whether they can or can’t do that. Because it’s clear as the day that they can. It’s about whether they WANT to. And before, they didn’t want to. They took a very lazy design approach and said “you guys play in that terrible meta for a few more months and we won’t do anything to fix it right away”. Instead, if something is clearly problematic, just fix it immediately. Don’t wait 6 months because “things might fix themselves”. We need more hotfixes like the one we’ve just got, we need Blizzard to care more about “now” and not “2 expansions later”. And after seeing their recent communication, answers to the questions, even a hotfix and – in general – making some changes, I really hope that they will keep it up and constantly make the game better.

Yes, I had “summon” in mind when writing this. But in reality it doesn’t matter. It only makes the card even more powerful in slow matchups, because it matters only with N’Zoth, and N’Zoth is 10 mana. It means that you wouldn’t be able to play the quest reward until turn 11 anyway, at which point the game is already decided against faster decks.

I know that you need to summon not play them. I just often use those words interchangeably, because most of the time it doesn’t matter. I wrote everything with “summon” in mind, so nothing really changes. But okay, I’ll edit and change “play” to “summon”.

And no, that’s not a huge difference. The card is still terrible against fast decks and amazing against slow decks, it doesn’t change.

The card has seen occasional play, it’s really strong in Ramp Druid and decks that combo it with Barnes. However, the current meta is way too fast for it to see play. I’d probably wait for the next expansion before disenchanting it, because the meta might shift quite significantly.

I suspect that Hunter will suffer even if for one simple reason – getting a good minion curve will be harder right now. And Hunter decks have to get it or they suck. If they don’t play the aggressive game, their Hero Power is blank, so if they go Control route, they can’t stand chance against other similar deck from other class like Mage or Priest.

Decks being more reactive also might make Hunter decks weaker in general – more spells means more removal, more board clears, even more heals.

I don’t think that Hunter will straight up suck, mainly because the class has really strong spells and Epics, which we will see way more often. Drafting 2x Call of the Wild (which will be much more common right now) might save pretty much every draft 🙂 But overall I think that Hunters gains and loses almost outweigh each other. But the drafting strategy might change heavily.

If you’re looking for a deck to put Illidan in, anything that can run Violet Teacher will probably be okay deck to play Illidan in too. But the problem is that Violet Teacher is just a better card in general. So Miracle Rogue and Token Druid would probably be the two best decks to play Illidan in.

You know, I’ve tried to make the card work on multiple occasions, but “better play Violet Teacher” was always my conclusion, sadly.

Well, you CAN do that, but at the cost of your win rate :p

Illidan is a Bad card, especially in such a fast meta. If anything, Violet Teacher would be a much better choice.

Thalnos was cut, because it didn’t offer as much power in fast matchups. There are only 3 spells that synergize with Spell Damage (Backstab, Eviscerate and Fan of Knives) and 5 dmg Eviscerate is pretty meaningless in fast matchups. Then, the Thalnos + FoK is too slow without Prep most of the time (by turn 5 you should be starting a counter-aggression against Aggro or you’re done for anyway).

It’s just that the current Rogue’s play style and the meta don’t support Thalnos too much. If a) the meta slows down b) more damage spells are added back to the deck (e.g. Shadow Strike or Shiv) then he might get back.

I mean, to be completely fair, Thalnos is not a bad card and it still fits the deck – it’s just that the second Counterfeit Coin is great in the current meta and SOMETHING had to be cut from the deck (Thalnos and Sap are two most likely candidates).

I dislike Beneath the Grounds. It sucks against Aggro decks and they’re the majority of the meta + your worst matchups, so you don’t want to play a card that’s completely dead in those.

I’d play Beneath the Grounds only if Reno decks were more than 40-50% of my opponents, which shouldn’t be the case in the ladder.

I don’t like Shaku personally, but I’ve seen it being played, because Rogue lacks the 3-drops, especially the Questing version (you rarely can drop Questing on t3).

Congratulations! Matchup vs Pirate Warrior is pretty stupid, because it mostly depends on how well they draw (if they draw perfectly, you have pretty much no chance to win). If they get a nice early game aggression and then something like an Arcanite Reaper + Upgrade! to finish the game, that’s game over. But if they keep drawing “slow” minions and no finishers, you might have a solid chance to win.

Still, the matchup is like 30/70 in Pirate Warrior’s favor, so it means that if you get lucky enough you might win 10 games in a row, but on average you should be losing more than winning.

I’d say that Patches is a better craft, as it fits into more decks right now. However, on the other hand, Leeroy is a safer craft, because the Pirates might see a nerf relatively soon (probably the Small-Time Buccaneer not Patches, but it’s an indirect nerf to Patches too).

I don’t think that completely giving up board control and trying to stall is good. Given how many high health minions Priest has (including PW:S and Talonpriest buffs), you won’t AoE them down too easily. Flamestrike often does nothing against Priest’s board.

Of course, I didn’t mean that you want to waste resources. For example, throwing Ooze into Wyrmrest Agent would be a bad idea, because it gets killed for free. My point was to try to answer the minions right away, Frostbolt this, Torch that, FIreball/Polymorph something else. If you let Priest develop the board, you won’t win it unless you get really lucky with something like Blizzard + Doomsayer that goes off.

Stall tactic is good after you clear some minions, if you don’t, there will be too much pressure on the board. Even a simple 1 -> 4 curve (Whelp, Wyrmrest Agent, Talonpriest, Twilight Guardian) is 10 damage already. For example, Reno is a great stall tool, but if you’re facing 15 damage on turn 6, it won’t really do that much.

Anyway, I think that we can agree that this matchup is horrible and pretty much no tactic works well.