The two big archetypes that seem to have come from the expansion were Dragon Priest and Totem Shaman. Dragon Priest seems solid against aggro, but lacks the bodies to hang with control. Totem Shaman seems super unrefined right now, but have faith that over the next few months - a viable combination will surface. Token Paladin with the Murloc Knight seems to have the most promise to me.

There doesn't seem to be a broken, must craft legendary either. So that's a plus. Justicar Trueheart and Gormok the Impaler seem to be the more useful Legendary neutrals. Nexus-Champion Saraad seems to have potential too.

@c0v3rt said:

No, I don't think so. But thank god, right? Dr. Boom is such a son of a bitch and Blizzard has had their fingers in their ears for almost a year now. I think I'd rather have a bunch of decent-to-good legendaries than 1 or 2 broken ones that Blizzard insists are fine.

I think top 5 I'd say are:

1. Varian
2. Justicar
3. Rhonin
4. Chillmaw
5. Saraad

My thoughts went as follows

Oh hey a new expansion, maybe I will give this thing another try.

...oh wait, I've got to spend, lets see...200$ at the least to be competitive at all in multiplayer, or spend a year worth of grinding, cause yah know I started late..and 2 more expansions will be out by then so I'll really never catch up so its back to 200$ or nope.

So nope. Nope. I instead spent about 50$ on Magic Duels, cause I'm better at that game and, as it turns out, can get access to the whole card library with that one time investment and about 30 games won. Woot.

Hats off to anyone who has stuck with hearthstone up until this point but the game is beginning to reach the point of losing people.

Part of the reason card rotation exists in Magic the Gathering is that it lets some one new join the game and not have to, you know, go back and try to work for/pay for 3+ years worth of cards. Unless we see Hearthstone impliment some sort of feature like this, the barrier for entry is going to be to much for anyone new to over-come.

Arena functions in much the same way, without rotating cards out of that format, you only make the results more and more random to the point that, again, if your lucky and get 4 flame strikes(or class/rarity equivalent) , you win! Otherwise, well 3-3 is not bad right? Right?

That's a pretty big misnomer. There are a good few highly competitive decks that are also very cheap to make in terms of both gold and dust. Coincidentally, they are usually the very aggressive decks like zoo warlock and face hunter, hence why they are so common on the ladder as well.

Other more expensive decks can usually be budgeted down as well into less expensive variations. You might not hit legend with them, but you can still have plenty of fun with them.

@turambar: And I would reply "That responce is also a Misnomer" to a degree. "You can totally play Hearthstone on the cheap*......"

"*.....if you play these 1 or 2 decks that are actually attainable. The rest of the game? Eh..tough shit, should have started playing during the beta".

Like yah I get what you are saying. There are methods to grind my way through the game, but the F2P model is getting more and more untrue. I'm not even bashing the game by saying this, its just imperical fact. The bigger the card-pool you lock behind a pay/grind-wall, the more time and money it takes to unlock everything, and so the more time/money it takes someone just starting out to get the full experience. At some point when your options are "Spend 200+$ or spend infinite time, cause the gold-cap won't let you ever actually catch up at the rate we release new expansions" things begin to become a problem.

Without a doubt this is an issue that will get dealt with in some manner. But to dismiss my complaint out of hand by saying "Well there are these 2 decks, that you will get shit on by the community for playing cause everyone does it! (for exactly the reasons I am dicussing btw), you can still play so technically you can't be critical of the model as it stands!"

Which ok, I'm putting words in your mouth there a bit just..Yah. That is the response I've gotten the most when expressing the opinion that "Hey, you know, the more expansions of a thing you have to buy before you can actually play..the harder it is for new people to get in".

Your point: you can't actually have a fun experience playing the game any more due to too many things locked behind a pay wall.

My point: here are the various ways that you absolutely can, which goes well beyond "two decks", though I used two specific ones as examples for brevity sake.

Your concern is based on a true problem. Hearthstone is also not nearly there yet unless you intend on playing at a highly competitive level.

As for arena, I'll give the same response as I did previously: there are overarching strategies in terms of card selection and actual play that affects how well you do well beyond any luck of the draw. That's what allows for the existence of people that do well in arena fairly consistently.

@turambar: Eh, you may be right. Its late, and I am basing my opinion mostly on some rather annoying 'Derp derp you must not know how to play derp" sorts I got into an arguement with about this the other day.

Double Bonus points for taking the high-road and not falling to the level I did in response to you.

@bladededge: I think Trump is starting another Free to Play series, where he essentially creates a new account and tries to get to legend rank only with in game gold and dust. Those have always been pretty fun to watch.

@turambar: There isn't really much strategy to deck building in arena post TGT. There is one deck (zoo) that rules everything else, and if you don't get a good draft for that you're screwed. With the diluted card pool aoe spells are harder to get, while TGT introduced even more cards that help you flood the board with minions. Even if you have good minions you can't clear fast enough and they can just keep going face and race you down.

@ares42: What's funny is if you listen to ADWCTA's overview of how arena will impact the expansion he said it would slow down by a full turn more or less, and nope it's still a straight up tempo game in most cases; just Paladins have Murloc Knight.

I just realized that Sea Reaver only hits your side of the board due to Tavern Brawl and thus is even more terrible than you'd think.

Not trying to sound like a dick, but could someone explain why you'd ever pay for anything in this game? Is it purely a completionist, get specific cards thing, or is it for really high level players? Seems like casual players could get away with never paying, and that's (probably) most people that play it. If you do the challenges/win enough, you could get a pack or 2 a day anyway.

@rongalaxy: You can't build most of the competitive decks as a free to play player unless you've been playing the game forever. You can build asshole decks that aren't very interesting to play and aggravate everyone though (aside from Totem Shaman; that actually seems somewhat thoughtful for the time being). Starting from the initial level it is also exceedingly difficult to win with the basic cards that the game gives you; but I guess there's tavern brawl so you can theoretically get there someday, maybe.

You can do free to play unique deck building and that's usually pretty fun but don't expect to achieve more than a 50-52% win rate.

To be clear free to play WOULD be fun if 99% of the playerbase wasn't netdeckers.

@rongalaxy: Even when you spend money, you aren't directly buying specific cards. You're just slightly accelerating the grind, wherein any duplicate cards you get (through money or otherwise) are turned into a pitiful amount of the currency that is used to create specific cards.

It's a horrendous waste of money, because the conversion rate from money to card-creating currency is abysmal.

Don't spend money on Hearthstone.

@hansolol: It's absolutely a good thing. :) The only Legendary on your list I'm personally still out on is Chillmaw. It feels a lot like Sylvannas in that it seems really easy to play it at the wrong time and negate it's value. Most decks that run it (Dragon Priest) don't have a ton of great silence targets, making it a great candidate. It's not a huge body, and 3 damage across the board isn't going to do a ton against something that's not Patron or Aggro.

I don't know if I'd put Varian that high just yet. He's a mixed bag and with the meta in it's current state, you're probably dead by turn 10 if you're trying to play greedy. I think the sisters have a ton of untapped potential.

If you simply do the dailies and nothing else, you'll on average end up with enough gold for about 4 packs a week. 5 if you include the one from the weekly brawl. Saving up gold between the time an expansion / adventure gets announced to the time of release also usually lands you with enough gold for about 20-30 packs on day one or the ability to pay for the bulk of the adventure immediately.

Spending money on packs is definitely something with diminishing returns as time goes on. The best time to do so is when an expansion just launches and pretty much 80% of your cards will not be duplicates.

@fredchuckdave: are you talking about ranked matches, or casual? I don't feel like I'm losing all that much playing casual, and even when I do its not staggering defeats. What I'm saying is, I'm having fun with it and I haven't put in a cent. I understand if you're trying to go for high level play. That's not my thing, but to each his own.

@rongalaxy: I believe casual puts you together based on your total wins, so once yours gets high enough it'll just be identical to ranked play on average; casual for me is virtually the same as ranked, sometimes more cancerous. So casual might work for a little while but eventually it breaks; hence why Tavern Brawl exists.

@bisonhero: Not that I encourage it, but if you spend money in a reasonable way you can get most of the cards you need without spending too much. Like if you pre-ordered the packs for TGT (which was $50) you'd end up with an estimate of about 50-60% of the cards and a good handful of dust to create the epics and legendaries you really want. Sure, overall it's still a bad deal, but if you're not able/willing to grind it out it's not like you have to pay that much to catch up in an adequate way. It's only if you "have to" have the full collection that it becomes absurdly expensive.

What's really more concerning is the abundance of people that keep paying their way into the arena.

I've ended up with about 5000 dust, and it's proving difficult to resist the urge to wait for the meta to calm down before crafting some TGT epics and legendaries.

From my 60 packs I opened I got Eydis Darkbane, Icehowl, Confessor Paletress and a bunch of useful epics.

@rongalaxy said:

When I started playing Hearthstone I thought that Mage and Priest were overpowered. And mind you, this was back in early 2014 when Priest and Mage were the 2 worst classes in the game in terms of tournaments and ladder. Why did I think they were overpowered? Because Mage had Flamestrike and Priest had Mind Control. That was basically the long and short of it. I was convinced those cards were overpowered and should have been removed from the game. I was finishing each month at rank 19-16 and only had a handful of cards. I had no idea about any strategy beyond "put minions on board, play spells, hit face, win." Mind Control and Flamestrike wrecked these basic strategies at lower ranks and I couldn't figure out any way to beat them with my limited collection.

Right before I decided to give up Hearthstone I looked up some deck guides and tournament videos to see how broken Mage and Priest really were. I watched the entire ESGN Fight Night series and Deck Wars King of the Hill and realized there's a lot more to Hearthstone than I had thought. Once you have more cards you're able to build to more complex strategies and tech your deck against what you're facing on ladder. I figured out how to play around stuff like Flamestrike and Mind Control and discovered that there is almost always a counter to what is out there.

I'm not trying to say, "if you don't have the full collection you're just a loser who isn't playing the 'real' game like the rest of us." But the game really opens up once you have more options and if you play more and decide you like the core gameplay, I'd suggest spending some money. I think it's worth it.

@ares42 said:

The preorder is enough for basically 99% of the commons, a good chunk of the rares, and a completely arbitrary number of epics and legendaries. As someone who caved and got it, it didn't even generate enough dust for a legendary, and I got a lot of duplicate rares. The amount of dust to make legendaries is really obscene; assuming you already have every common and rare in a set, then if you buy 40 packs for $50, it gives you exactly 1600 dust for a legendary (though obviously you will open some epics and legendaries in there so it skews it a little bit depending on whether you have them already or not). It basically costs $50 to make a specific legendary, or playing Arena for like 3-4 hours a day over the course of a few weeks, which basically only a handful of streamers have the time for.

Attempting to get the full collection is crazy unless you play the game 8 hours a day, but honestly, even wanting to get like 3-4 specific legendaries takes a long ass time or like, hundreds of dollars.

To be fair, it could be worse. It takes about as much grind to make a legendary in SolForge, except SolForge allows up to 3 copies of a card in a deck. Any card.

Here's some of that Murloc Knight skill in action:

On the first turn the murloc knight summoned another murloc knight, on the second an old murkeye, on the third another old murkeye, and on the fourth a siltfin whatever. Shockingly my opponent didn't concede.

My deck also has 3 SHUSHes (only one murloc knight), pretty good card.

Next game I got just a 3/2 and a 2/3 and that was sufficient for the opponent to concede.

Another archetype has appeared. This time people have finally figured out that secrets paladin is very viable. Mysterious Challenger might be the sludge belcher of the set. It's the card no one was excited for but has turned out to be a very good card. I find that dropping down 3-5 secrets in one turn tends swing the game one way or another. At the very least it makes your opponent play inefficiently because they are afraid of what secret you may have.

I've been seeing secrets paladin every other match now. So this may mean that I need to run double kezan now that 3/9 classes run secrets. Flare for hunter is also looking very good right now since taking out 3-5 secrets is the very definition of value. As of this moment, half of the ladder is playing secrets paladin and for good reason: it is a really fun deck. Usually people know that mage and hunter play only 1 or 2 secrets but with paladin it could be anything. The only exception is the beginning of the game where it is avenge or the "get down" secret.

Another thing that I am facing on ladder is the grinder mage. This mage is alot closer to the giants mage. The only difference is that the deck is not trying to play duplicates of molten giant but to outlast the opponent with multitudes of healbot and illuminators. I really don't like people against these people since the matches can stretch on for long periods of time.

@acura_max: I tested both Grinder and Moltens Mages a while back and I think Grinder is more consistent. Moltens doesn't have a ton of pressure aside from that one big Echo combo after you pop their block. And if you can get around the taunts or they don't have the second Block then they're pretty easy to beat. Though they were really hard to beat with Patrons.

Strifecro's been testing a new version of Mage on his stream recently. It doesn't try to go super late game and instead just tries to get a bunch of value with Coldarra, Justicar, Effigy and Fallen Hero. It's pretty cool.

Yo f'real, Gormok in a Murloc knight based Pally deck is pretty alright. I've gotten 50% or so of my wins just using it to get round a taunt for the last bit of damage, and when I play it earlier in the match it just bodies stuff. Turn 2 hero power, turn 3 muster, turn 4 Gormok ain't nuttin' to fuck with when the stars line up properly. I wouldn't consider it a tier 1 legendary, or even close, but it's fun and I'm not as bummed out about only getting that + Dreadscale in my pre-order packs. Plus I opened a pack with Justicar Trueheart in it today, so everything's coming up Milhouse.

@planetfunksquad: More like Thrillhouse.

Well, Ranked was fun for a week or so, I guess that's the longest it has been interesting since Naxx. Now it's just Secretadin all day.

Secret Paladin is the answer to a question that no one asked. It's like Ben Brode sat in a room and said, "Let's make Paladin secrets finally playable by giving them a 6 mana card that plays all of their secrets for free." Just like with any fad, the meta will adapt and you'll learn how to counter it - just frustrating. I got up to rank 2 - 4 stars before I tanked because literally the main 3 decks I ran this month can't answer it.

@c0v3rt: It almost feels indignant on Blizzard's part. As if they're saying, "fine! You guys don't wanna use these cards? We'll hit you over the head with a card so good you'll be forced to use them now!"

Same thing happened with Mad Scientist. Secrets as a whole were a complete joke before he came along. Now it's impossible to play Mage or Hunter without using them.

Flame Leviathan is hilarious in this meta.

Well I did it, I mean freeze mage beats paladin at like an 85-90% win rate and does above average against everything else except anti secret hunter so pretty simple. Probably pretty easy to get to legend from rank 3ish right now as well if you have the time.

Also incidentally the first "expensive" deck I've made where I didn't have to craft anything for it (don't have Antonidas) so maybe playing hearthstone for 2 years is worthwhile. Was stagnating at rank 8 or so with Totem Shaman, which does beat just about everything just not face hunter and secretadin.

Grandmaster in SFV and best ranked chest in HS, hurray. Freeze Mage will still be pretty dominant for at least 3 or 4 days so shouldn't be too hard to rank up next season either. Too many people are playing that Paladin deck so even if the matchmaking doesn't want you to play counterdecks you'll still run into them.

Only the second time I've ever made a serious ranked push, mostly just arena for me.

Pre-TGT tempo mage seems to hold its own too.

It was the second real ranked push I've made too. The last time I did was when Miracle Rogue was still broken and Handlock was a hard counter. I finished at Rank 1/ 3 stars but never got over the hump. My goal for next season is to learn Oil Rogue and work on Shaman. I feel like Shaman was given too many tools not to succeed.

Side note - though we all probably have card backs coming out the ass by now, September's is amazing.

@c0v3rt: I got up to rank 2 4 stars first time (then lost like 8 matches in a row), though my decks were pretty original back then so it was a more gratifying experience; now it's all piloting and so on. Shaman is legit though I think ultimately you need to run some sort of direct damage or bloodlust for it to really shine, pretty much always get the opponent low it's just a matter of finishing. The deck is not super simple to play either which is certainly appealing. As I've said before elemental destruction as a one of is virtually mandatory. Tuskarr Totemic into Mana Tide is so hilarious considering Mana Tide itself is 3 mana. You'd think Totem Golem from it (6/7 for 3) would be game winning but its just pretty good, however early Mana Tide can be.

I run Mistcaller since I have him and he only really works against slow decks so probably not the best idea; I think he's more dead then Bloodlust most of the time.

So what do you guys think of the Joust mechanic?

It's only been a week and it may be unfair to call it this quick but I think it really sucks. I personally tested Master Jouster, Tuskarr Jouster and Healing Wave. And I've had Gadgetzan Jouster and King's Elekk played against me. I've lost so many Jousts to Face Hunters and Aggro Paladins by revealing stuff like Cruel Taskmasters and Shielded Minibots that I eventually just threw up my arms and decided the mechanic is terrible.

Master Jouster just isn't worth it at all. Getting a +1/+1 Sunwalker isn't worth the risk of losing the Taunt and Divine Shield. Same with Gadgetzan Jouster, you can't risk losing that 3 health. King's Elekk is okay I guess because at least you're paying for 2 mana worth of stats if you lose the Joust.

The only deck I've seen it consistently work in is using Healing Wave in Zeus/Malygos Shaman. And it only works there because your minion curve starts at 5 and has about 4 minions total in the deck, so you pretty much always win the joust.

I think ideally it would say something like, "average the total mana cost of minions/cards in your deck. If it is higher than your opponent's, do X." I know they would never do anything like this because it would be seen as too complicated but at least then you could strategically build your deck a certain way instead of just crossing your fingers each time you play these cards.

@hansolol: Healing Wave works well in Totem Shaman; but Healing Wave is such an obviously overpowered card. Tuskarr Jouster definitely seems worse than healbot right now just because it's so unreliable. King's Elekk is good. I mean basically the Joust card has to be good by itself anyway and a vanilla 5/5 doesn't cut it in constructed.

The main thing with Joust that people weren't considering pre TGT is that ties don't count as victories, and ties are by far the most likely individual result (vs losing by 1 or winning by 1 etc.).

Rank 5 Chest Rewards:

Not too bad aside from the 5 dust; I really like Holy Champion and a golden epic is much rarer than a legendary so hard to complain no matter what the epic is.

Healing Wave is still okay without the joust and wins you the game against aggro if you get it. I've had some succes with Master Jouster in ramp druid, but it doesn't make that deck better in my opinion.

@gundogan: Healing Wave for 14 wins the game against every aggro deck except Facehunter. At best it makes facehunter a like 40% winrate matchup instead of a 20% winrate.

Won the first 3 games of the season vs rank 5 equivalent players, 0 paladins and 2 of the players failed miserably at playing around ice block/ice barrier. So yeah, play freeze mage.

I got myself a pretty good chest from the ladder rewards. I got starving hyena, freezing trap and ancient of lore. I already have one golden ancient of lore, so this makes it a complete set. It's pretty lucky because I was hoping that I would get this card.

Everyone: OMG joust is going to save the game from aggro

(one week after TGT release)

Everyone: Let's never use any of the joust cards.

The value in joust for me remains the information you gain from the joust. I ran midrange hunter for much of last season and Kings Elekk on turn 2 dictated my line of play. It's so valuable to reveal if you're playing against Patron or Control, Ramp or Combo - it influenced so many games.

Another counter to the Secret Paladin I've been kicking around is Mill Rogue. The deck pulls out chunks of cards at a time, and seems like would be advantageous to clog up your opponents hand with garbage minions and mill away.

@c0v3rt: That would actually be really awesome if the Rogue archetype of choice in the new meta became Mill. I would love that. Would probably be decent against Patrons? Assuming you mill their Thaurissan and other combo pieces? Then you've got your big Blade Flurry clears against a Patron board. Hmm. I might have to try that.

@hansolol: It might be. The other pro is with mill, you seldom have anything on your side of the board with the exception of Coldlights, Deathlords, or Doomsayer. You still run into consistency problems with the deck, and if you don't mill Frothing you're still probably boned. If you try, let me know how it goes!

After having faced quite a few secret paladins lately I have to conclude that the deck is far from as good as people think. It just relies heavily on people spazzing out when you play the challenger. All you need to do to deal with him is attack once then use removal, it's not that complicated. I've met way too many people that play him out without any support and all he does is just die. The only time it's really good is when you can play him on a board you already control, but then it's just a "win more" card.

Used up my saved gold on like 60 packs after returning from vacation. Got pretty lucky... Death Knight, Kragg, Fjola, Wilfred, Dreadscale, Saraad, and Rhonin, along with a bunch of epics. Crafted Justicar and have been trying her out in Paladin with decent success.

Overall I'm really happy with how things are turning out. Refreshment Vendor and Tuskarr Jouster absolutely shit on aggro. The Secret Paladin is annoying but it looks like people will easily tear it apart, it's just a matter of time. Patron is still a thing.

Secret Paladin certainly takes an understanding of sequencing to play around the secrets in an optimal manner. If you don't have any removal, you're kind of boned. I agree it though, it will go away soon. Knock on wood, I don't have problems with Patron anymore. Once you know it's Patron, it's the green light to turn up the tempo and race or get them low before they can go off. Justicar in Warrior feels really strong and once it hits, it feels difficult to come back against in most cases.

I've been dicking around with Rogue and Shaman (my least two played classes) and Shaman has been a surprise. I used to be of the mindset that Bloodlust was just win more card. It still might be, but with the addition of Thunder Bluff Valiant, totems pack a punch. My prediction that Rogue would become the worst class in the game seems to hold true. There isn't really any viable build outside of Oil. Reynad built a new take on Miracle using Cutpurse that was neat, but lacked consistency. Beneath the Grounds feels almost good, but seldom see a single ambush get cycled into play.

@c0v3rt: I had such high hopes for Rogues due to Cutpurse and Beneath the Grounds, but Beneath the Ground played just slightly different then I thought it would, so it wasn't as great. For some reason I got it in my mind that when they draw the ambush, you get the 4/4 AND that counts as their draw for the turn, thus the tempo play makes the card nicely powered for an epic. That does not in fact happen, and they still get a normal draw, which I feel is kinda dumb but oh well.

I've been playing a lot less since TGT launched, which is sad cause I played insane amounts before it launched, but I don't know, the new card additions don't feel that fun to me, and most everyone went back to their old decks with a few new tools, or is just rocking Secretdin. I'll probably check out until the next adventure set comes out.

Trump has started a new F2P run to see if you can get to legend on a Free 2 play account. I haven't watched the new videos but i hear he plans to accomplish this within a month and without buying any of the adventures. That's a pretty tall order considering that TGT still has not produced a deck like mech mage where you can make it without any of the adventure expansions. Even secret paladin and totem shaman have naxx cards in them (avenge, zombie chow, haunted creeper etc)

I kind of mentioned it before but I played too much Hearthstone last month grinding for legend (in addition to finishing up my golden Hunter and Druid hero portraits) so this month I wanted to play my least played classes for the first couple weeks then just climb up to 5 near the end of the season to get the chest. Week one mercifully came to a close which was Shaman week. It was the class I was most excited about post TGT so I dove in and played 4 versions of the class.

-Mech Shaman
- Midrange Shaman (w/ no emphasis on totems)
- Midrange Shaman (w/ emphasis on totems)
- Totem Shaman

Mech Shaman didn't really get anything in TGT so I stopped playing it after a couple games. Midrange Shaman with no totem synergy left me feeling like I was just playing a midrange deck with a class that had a hero power that was crappy. Midrange Shaman with totems did the worst because it was too far in the middle between Midrange and Totem - so I primarily played Totem Shaman. The only real difference in the two was Totem Shaman runs Thunder Bluff Valiant, Tuskarr Totemic, and Bloodlust in place of other midrangey cards. Every game I played felt like the game was on the precipice of slipping away from me. Playing around every AOE is rough, and trying to take back the board late game is near impossible. There were only maybe two or three games where I was able to just snowball board control and win by turn 7 or 8 with Bloodlust.

I don't feel like I'm too bad of a player. I know how to play every deck archetype, and usually finish a season with a win rate between 60 and 70 percent. Shaman finished with a 48% win rate for me going 25-30. So that's a thing. I don't think I'll be playing Shaman anytime soon until I get the cards needed for "Zeus Shaman" which is just cycle and stall until you can use Emperor to discount your hand, use Ancestor's Call to pull out Malygos, and damage face for 30+.

Next week is Rogue and am kind of bummed I don't have a few cards I want to make Pirate Rogue. Instead, I'm going to spend the first part of the week trying Aggro Rogue and seeing how far that will take me then switch to Oil Rogue and work on that.