The nerfs are definitely positive for the class overall, but you’re absolutely right that they might not be enough to bring it back. I have some hope for the Mage class. The aggressive Odd Mage builds might be more promising than the slow, Control-oriented Big Spell Mage. I think that the meta might become pretty late-game oriented, and we will need a solid Aggro/Burn deck to punish slow strategies such as Mecha’thun decks or Resurrect (Clone) Priest.

But so far, most of the nerf patches had some surprises when it comes to the meta. One new deck that has a bad matchup vs Big Spell Mage popping out and becoming Tier 1 might be enough to bring slow Mage back to the table.

Branching Paths is so good, because it can be used as draw vs Control OR Armor vs Aggro when you need it, other cards sadly don’t have the same appeal.

Another issue is that playing a small card draw minion like Novice Engineer or Loot Hoarder in the late game can be risky, since you also need a way to kill it off yourself. A good player would just leave it there on empty board (1/1 or 2/1 is not threatening anwyay) and make your Mecha’thun combo useless. Plus it makes your Oaken Summons worse. Thalnos is the only one I’d consider because the Spell Damage can be useful sometimes. But then again, it’s not really a “budget” option if someone doesn’t already have it.

I would probably rather go for a second Oaken Summons and a Claw as the replacements. 2nd Oaken Summon is obvious, since it both thins your deck and gains Armor (so has similar use to Branching Paths) and Claw for the sake of Auctioneer/Pyromancer synergies.

On the one hand, I agree with nerfing the Basic/Classic staples, because that makes new expansion more exciting.

On the other hand, I can’t imagine how bad it might be for more casual players, who get the cards they were sure of taken from them time and time again.

The concept of Basic & Classic is just not as good as they initially thought, but they’re (for a good reason) scared of making a big revamp of the system, so they slowly nerf the evergreen sets. It’s the biggest nerf target by far for a while already. And that’s a terrible approach in the long run. They will eventually make those sets nearly irrelevant if that trend continues, but they will also make millions of players angry on their way.

My guess is that they want to make the meta less reliant on Basic & Classic sets. The less evergreen staples we have, the easier it will be to make expansion cards that aren’t too strong, but see play.

I’ve been repeating multiple times that the current Basic & Classic sets add more problems than they solve, the whole thing should be rethought a long time ago.

Hahah, no worries, it started in a new line so it kind of looked wrong 🙂

Thank you for sharing, I’ve added it to the post!

Thanks! I will try to create one for Epics, but probably not for this expansion. The January has been very busy for me and adding one so late into the expansion doesn’t make that much sense. I’ll do it after the rotation.

Thanks, I’ve added it to the post!

List of “Safe” to Disenchant Legendaries was updated for Rastakhan’s Rumble. Comments below this one might be outdated.

And just a reminder – we do know that no card is truly safe to disenchant, every single one can see play at one point, so don’t bother repeating what has been said hundreds of times. Read the first few sections before commenting.

Update: It’s the second time we see this Brawl. Comments below this one are old, but can often still be relevant!

I do think that Uther absolutely makes the deck much stronger (and it’s basically the only way to win against Odd Warriors), but crafting Legendaries that will rotate out in just over 2 months feels bad. If you’re mostly F2P, then I would probably save the Dust, but it’s really up to you.

You’ve described every card game ever. You have thousands of possibilities, but only a few actually work.

Heck, not only card games – games in general. Let’s say MOBAs, even though some have a hundred Heroes/Champions/Whatever, realistically only a bunch of them works competitively.

Probably not, that’s why Cube Warlock is much more popular than this deck. This version is more tempo-oriented, while the Cube version is more combo-oriented. A big upside of this deck is that you can usually play Doomguards from your hand without worrying about discarding key cards (especially Bloodreaver Gul’dan). It makes the Turn 5 much more consistent if you don’t have Skull. But with Skull on curve, Cube version is WAY better.

Epic Crafting Guide was updated for the Rastakhan’s Rumble Post-Nerf meta.

Comments below this one refer to the previous version of this article and might be outdated.

Really depends. You don’t actually lose anything card advantage-wise, it’s like you’ve played a 4 mana 8/8. Sure, it might feel bad to hit Equality or Holy Wrath, but the card could as well be at the bottom of your deck and not when you wanted it. Then again, stuff like Crystology, Potion of Heroism, Blessing of Kings doesn’t really matter. I’d rather drop an 8/8 on T4 than have those, the big minion will do some trading, saving you other removals and letting you play solitaire for longer, or it will put pressure on the opponent and force them to deal with it instead of pursuing their own game plan. And in the best case scenario it can even win you the game if your opponent doesn’t have a removal and you let’s say Steed it.

I’m not saying that hitting Giant with Lens is always good, but “it’s never worth” is plain wrong.

I haven’t climbed from R20 in ages, but it used to take me ~10 hours to get from R16 to R5 with the old system. And then another ~10 hours from R5 to Legend. Of course, it depends on how late into the season I did it – the climbs were much harder early (because all of the Legend players were reset back to R16) and easier later in the month (because most of the great players already climbed).

You can’t ignore streak bonuses, because that’s the main thing that drives you forward at lower ranks. Plus, assuming you’re good and you pick a solid deck, you should have a really high win rate until like rank 10, which means that you can get A LOT of extra stars from win streaks.

But yeah, there’s no point in grinding ranks just for the sake of grinding. The rewards aren’t worth it for the most part. I hit Legend every season simply because I enjoy competing and laddering, not for the rewards.

But there isn’t a lot of Aggro on the ladder. Current meta is rather light on Aggro decks. It’s heavy on Midrange and Combo decks. Peanut Shaman is okay against the former (but only okay) and terrible against the latter. At Ranks 4-1 (the most competitive ones next to high Legend), the real Aggro decks are maybe 15% of the meta. That’s not enough. Just to prove the point, HSReplay currently puts the deck at roughly 40% win rate, and that’s really bad.

In tournament, you can counter-pick, you can’t do the same thing on ladder (outside of the high Legend situation where you queue into the same player twice in a row, but that’s also not guaranteed). In HCT EU, nearly every player has brought at least one Aggro deck, and some of them had full Aggro lineups. And you have to win only once with each deck, meaning that it was rare to not have something to counter.

Different strokes for different folks. I actually enjoy playing against the classic, value-oriented Control decks without any combo finishers. For example, Odd Warrior is one of my favorite decks to play or play against.

But Peanut Shaman won’t be popular on the ladder simply because it’s not a great ladder deck. Tournament meta is much different, it doesn’t work as well on the ladder, plus it’s expensive and difficult to play. If it was meant to be popular, it would already be after 2 weeks.

I’m going to update it next week, sorry for the delay, but I’ve been really busy lately!

Yeah, and also how to make 0 mana 8/8’s. Dropping one on Turn 4 can be worth having a dead spell.