Zarimi Priest isn’t working at all. Makiah has over 2k games on it and has given it up. Even d0nkeytop, owner of hsguru, gave it up.
Spell damage shaman (what I call the normal version) doesn’t work at all. I’ve tried it for 50+ games on EU and Asia, mid-legend, can’t win a game if my life depended on it, so +2.6% on that is cope.
What they call Nature shaman is what I call Jive, insect one, is working for Norwis, but it’s no longer OTK deck, but a full-blown control one. I spectated him for hours today.
Zoo Hunter seems to really be good, but it’s a hit or miss deck and will probably fall out of the meta again once it stabilizes.
All I see in top legend are warriors, rogues and druids.
Once again, stats show a picture very different from reality.
EDIT: at least the popularity stats work, if winrate ones don’t.
I don’t have a fully formed theory on why the data is what the data is. Zarimi Priest is a rather low sample size deck so maybe you’re right and they’ve just been unusually lucky. I think it’s best to not get too carried away and we’ll check up on the data again later. If it’s actually bad, it should go down.
I mean, rather comically Amanthul is currently listed as the highest drawn winrate card in Zarimi Priest for D4-1 and the lowest drawn winrate card for T10KL. That’s just nonsensical.
Yeah, it will go down until people find a way to make 8 dragons condition work. As it stands right now, the old decklists are unplayable, because you can’t count on ever attaining the 8 dragons, let alone playing them, until the game’s over.
Much of it depends on your 2 mana 2/3 surviving for 1-2 turns longer than it should.
Also, warrior was NEVER a favorable matchup for Zarimi, because if you snowball and lose the board, you’re donezo, so you depend on drawing your combo pieces one by one until turn 7 and OTK-ing him, which happens once in 50 games. And 20% of the ladder being Warriors now don’t help it much.
I still see potential in the deck, but it will require some time to fix.
And I can’t believe how wrong I was about Nature Shaman. I expected it to be stronger. Everyone did. I got laughed off 2 streams yesterday when I claimed I can no longer win with it, but the changes hurt a lot.
Used to be you can just control the board until you draw your combo pieces, but now you can’t do nothing before 6 and that’s only if you flashed turn before or get lucky with 1 mana discoveries from reflexes.
And whatever was in their mind when they nerfed Forge of Wills and Snake oil is beneath me. How do you sit around a table seriously as a group and decide “hey, let’s make a card which costs 1 mana and deals 0 damage!”
I agree regarding the previous incarnation of the deck, but that’s something that can change with decklist. It’s possible for the deck to OTK for 67 without random Windfury magnetic or handbuff, if it focuses on Playhouse Giants, gets one lucky forged Creation Protocol on a Giant and runs Alexstrasza. I don’t know how much the deck can commit to that without sacrificing too much to faster decks, but I feel like it’s a situation not unlike the problem Burn Shaman had vs Warrior which Photographer Fizzle happened to solve. I’m not saying it has been or will be solved in this case, but I know that we will see.
Priest doesn’t have infinite damage combos
Priest couldn’t infinitely repeat the extra turns
8 dragons is much harder than even 8 “random” spells
Zarimi isn’t a spell and can’t be cheated out like Mage’s can.
My experience is that excavate rogue is probably the best deck in the format. It was a decent to good deck before nerfs, but now is t1 easily if not higher.
Also it’s a deck that’s incredibly hard to target as it can generate nearly any out it needs.
Once the meta got slowed down the excavate decks were allowed to breathe and play their game. Pretty much all the excavate decks are good to play right now.
When you slow down every deck without addressing warrior’s inexpensive armor gain, it’s inevitable that warrior dominates.
My question is: Did they truly not anticipate this outcome? They talked about “player agency”, yet they left Brann Warrior untouched, and some could argue buffed.
I genuinely believe they made a mistake. While the previous meta may have lacked the supposed “player agency”, at least every class had a playable deck capable of reaching Legend. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
Warlock is still hard countering warrior. It’s only the first day so the general overall meta players haven’t caught on to the fact that the excavate packages are very good to play right now.
If warlock manages to hold its ground despite the nerfs, it will indeed continue to serve as a counter. However, I keep hearing concerns about the effectiveness of Wheel Warlock post-nerfs, so its ability to remain a counter is uncertain.
Wheel warlock is dead. That’s not the deck that’s beating the warriors it’s snake warlock. The azerite snake deck got buffed in the expansion because of the card End Game. That basically allows warlock two snakes to create during the game and they only have to play five to win so they need to bounce three times.
That’s only against warriors. Most players all you have to do is play the snake four times because you only need to do two damage to their health total to create lethal with the snakes.