Hey everyone, I wanted to create this thread so that we can talk about the new strategies since the Pirates patch. I am personally struggling to fit into the new meta and would love to hear what strategies are working for the rest of you!
Tell me all your secrets!
illidan is pretty good with pirates
Yeah i managed to play a good game with him, utilizing the cannon; however, I find he can be quite inconsistent. It seems that Pirates right now are the go to for late game builds. haven’t really seen anyone win with anything else.
Beasts with Macaw are broken and need balancing. Macaw needs tier 3 its just broken itself as well. Pirates are way too good in midgame as well and obliterate ppl. Mechs suck and need junkbot back to 4. Murlocs crush ppl late if they live that long. Dragons are still dragons doing dragon things. And Saurolisk/WW build with hooktusk also needs balancing as its rediculously op to top 4.
Yeah, Murlocs will always rain king of the late game due to the divine shield poison; however, I find pirates hit face for so much early game that to pull of a proper Murloc build is quite difficult right now.
Some solid points with the other strategies
I also like to point out that arcane cannon seems a bit op as well and utterly destroys poor deathwing. Maybe a small change like make into a 0/2 or 1/2.
Currently playing a demon juggler build as rat king. It seems to be good with a cannon and just mass ping your opponent
I did win with mechs yesterday with 40 health as shudderwock (I think it was my first 40 health win)
In the next game I won again as mech as vancleef (again another personnal record, I won without any triples)
but pirates are doing pretty good really, usually half the lobby is going pirates and all of them are doing good
it was at 5,9 and 6,0 MMR respectively
Congrats, I’m still yet to win with 40 health. But interesting with mechs, as I have had such a rough time with them. I am assuming you went Pogo.
mech is the tribe I have the least amount of wins, I was surprised too
not pogos, just big zoobots lol, I should report this match as a bug, my opponent had golden brann and poisonous murlocs and didn’t win
h ttps://imgur.com/a/SsFUk3T (remove space in https)
the second win with vancleef had a pretty similar board
I have just gone shudderwock because of you, wish me luck haha
curiously, the only other time I saw another player finishing with 40 health (I know he finished with 40 health because I was 2nd place) he was shudderwock lol
Mechs have pretty much nothing. Junkbot is junk. Deflectobot is all they got.
Demons are pretty trash as well except in sauro builds or with juggles.
Murlocs are still the god late game but good luck surviving the pirate and beast onslaught.
Dragons still scale great late but again you have to survive the pirate and beast onslaught.
Beasts got an omega mutant level upgrade with macaw and are the 2nd best tribe as gold macaw goldrinn cave hydras is extreme levels of power and doesnt require tier 6. Macaw in general is absurdly busted and getting a gold one is easy.
Pirates just destroy ppl midgame. Siegebreaker G is just nuts when you discover it on tier 4 and utterly dominates ppl at that stage.
So my tier list goes:
1 Pirates
2 Beasts
3 Dragons
4 Demons
5 Murlocs
6 Mechs
I just won the lobby versus big pirates with not-so-big dragons and two maexxnas
I think the biggest problem with pirates is that outside of battle stage the only buff they have is that plus 3 attack battlecry, also they are too dependent on goliath to attack first and kill stuff to snowball, if he rams into a bigger minion with divine shield is goodbye pirates
Edit: oh there is that girl that gives +1/+1 and that pirate that grows when you play a pirate, the one that grows with golden minions…you know, forget what I said about the buffing part
Go for stats early game, decide your strategy based on your tier 3 offerings, watch what others are playing and know what counters you might need to find for them.
If you are being fed one tribe early, don’t be afraid to switch directions to something completely different. Especially when there are more than one other person chasing your dream.
Poor little guy was my top 4 grind fav. Now he just can’t hang anymore.
Just play menagerie or divine shield comps can usually top 4, don’t always have to force a tribe unless you’re offered good minions to.
Mechs could at least benefit from the Macaw. Put Macaw(s) on the left and death rattle mechs on the right. It’s not game-winning, but Macaws activating Kaboom Bots is something I wanna try now.
Illidian definitely did get better but he is not generally good like nozdormu (who now also is a bit less good then before). He needs specific situations so you need to be bit lucky to get the cards.
He is ok-ish with pirates but he is very good for synergys with the macaw early in the game.
Macaw on the left end,macaw on the right end and then a spawn of nzoth in 2nd spot is very strong in the midgame (and if you only have 1 macaw then macaw left and spawn right).
It allows you to easily level and go for the macaw goldrin baron composition relativly safely but you need a macaw and a spawn (and you can not roll often in the early turns so you kinda need to get them in the shop).
The other card that works in early game with macaw is bomb and to a lesser extend selfless hero but spawn is best by far and always attacking first with illidian is a huge advantage. Macaw is the best card you can buy on t3 with ilidian,maybe even more important then bomb or spawn since there is 2 of those and other deathrattles,while far less good then spawn are still ok-ish.
Macaw can work with mechs (bomb) but deathrattle spawns are a bit clunky for the parrot,its basicly all about spawn (and goldrin later when you can slowly switch your comp to full beasts).
Then there is the lizard strat,hooktusk is king of this strat so if hooktusk is in the game you can kinda forget about the lizards unless maybe you find 2 in your first shop though even then it will be dificult to get the lizards before hooktusk and there is only so many.
Flurgle for murlocs,similar to patches for pirates are both pretty ok for forcing a tribe. You need a murloc (or pirate) early on else you will fall behind fast and then you need lots of luck to catch up.
Both these heroes can stay at tier 1 slightly longer to get the tribe going so you dont have to level on t2.
For example with flurgle if you start with tidehunter and you find a rockpool on t2 i like buying the rockpool and roll,to see if there is another murloc for next turn.
The meta is fast and volatile,it is very unforgiving if you make mistakes.
If you level to early or dont optimize board and minions every fight then you can take a lot of damage (20 is not uncommon).
On the other hand you also can not afford to stay at low tier improving marginally to try stay alive either because you will fall behind quickly.
Only saurolisk can do that since they improve a lot every turn,saurolisk is very resilient against this volatile meta.
Saurolisk is weaker in a slower meta where the other players dont knock eachoter out fast,then more players have the change to get to an endgame comp that can beat saurolisk but in current volatile meta saurolisk naturally floats to the top and then stays there very often.
Demons are very weak,nowhere to be seen other then as a semi tier 1 strat with darryl,pyramid and sometimes hooktusk. Mechs are also weak and dragons do feel kinda slow. You need get kalcgos early else you wont be able to build up.
Beasts are good and have many variations but the ultimate endgame is with the parrot which is easy to get.
Then there is the cannon. Personally i dont like the card at all and i rarely buy it because it somehow distracts me from my plan but that is probably is a mistake. The cannon seems solid and good when you have 4 minions or more. Somewhat similar to spawn and bomb but without any scaling potential.
Its strong up to the point where your minions dont insta die when they attack which is usually at the border of tier 3/tier 4.
Pirates are difficult to get going,they dont have that much synergy with non tribal cards and you also can not easily transition with them i feel. Like you can late transition to beasts with a mama bear or a goldrin and a baron. You can go murlocs with a bran and a bargurgle.
Pirates dont really have those options to get into them later on in the game,in that aspect they are kinda similar to the big demon meta we had before if you dont have them early with a good start then its near impossible though some of the individual pirate cards can still be ok for a temporary spot.
Have a look. https://imgur.com/8s6kAJO