It’s possible this is a skill issue, but griftah rogue seems to be purely bait. Would love to hear other top players weigh in on this, I might be missing something.
Here’s why.
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It actually has a slightly favorable matchup versus swarm shaman when played correctly. But you can still get over run if you draw wrong. This is probably why people think this deck is good, because it’s one of the few decks that can boast this property.
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Versus every slow deck none of its threats are effective. Both druid and dk can get obscene amounts of armor and health and ramping up to 45 damage from hand plus change (depending on griftah rolls) around turn 9 doesn’t cut it, often that falls far below the required damage from hand.
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It simply falls over to a ton of other decks that don’t have to try very hard to topple it over. For example asteroid shaman. This is because there is very little damage mitigation or heal in this deck, it’s intended to clear the board every turn or nearly so, hence take very little board damage. This still leaves it open to tons of decks that can ramp damage other means (asteroid shaman.)
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It can simply die to a dk if they eat your deck before you draw your combo pieces that you need (typically shadow step or breakdance).
Overall, this seems like a terrible deck to try to climb with.
I’ve maintained an overall positive winrate with this deck over a few tens of games, but it’s felt horrible to play against anything but swarm shaman. Thankfully swarm shaman is the flavor of the month to stomp on as it’s like 30 percent of the meta.
And I’ll add this last point as more of a personal gripe, the mirror absolutely sucks as with most draw heavy decks as the winner is nearly always the one with better draw RNG.
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I’d say the best rogue decks currently are:
- Sonya/Griftah/Cutlass 3 in 1 Rogue deck but only in top top legend,
- Weapon Rogue, and then
- Combo Rogue.
Probably all competitive.
2 Likes
Both cycle rogue and starship rogue uses Sonya and Griftah, asteroid shaman is favorable matchup in cycle rogue, due to how easy to draw cards early and putting down giants by turn 6-7 with Sonya(you could use griftah as tempo by turn 4 to get card draw, or use it against them by stealing incindius).
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Weapon rogue seems weak to me. It’s one of those decks where if you switch to it you’ll see a decent bump in performance as you catch ppl off guard, then when they realize you’re trying to swindle them for race-face wins, your going to get targeted and not be able to win a single game. Heck, even griftah rogue runs the 1 mana freeze elemental to curb stomp weapon rogues when they are in fashion (yup all it takes is one tech card.)
What is Sonya/Griftah/Cutlass rogue, how is it different than the VS Griftah rogue list? Is this running spectral cutlass for sustain? If so thats intriguing. I tried a variant of starship (armor) to get sustain, and it works well vs swarm shaman (even better than VS list) but still falls over to asteroid shaman.
What is combo rogue? Lol could literally mean anything.
I’m running a Shaffar OTK deck pretty successfully to legend at my MMR with like an 80% winrate, dunno if thats combo rogue, but that would track with me.
This is combo rogue - simple, yet effective:
Summary
### Combo
# Class: Rogue
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Pegasus
#
# 1x (0) Backstab
# 2x (0) Preparation
# 2x (0) Shadowstep
# 2x (1) Deafen
# 2x (1) Tar Slick
# 2x (2) Eviscerate
# 2x (2) Fan of Knives
# 2x (2) Oh, Manager!
# 2x (2) Quick Pick
# 2x (2) Tentacle Grip
# 2x (3) Ethereal Oracle
# 2x (3) Pressure Points
# 2x (3) Record Scratcher
# 2x (4) Dubious Purchase
# 2x (4) Elven Minstrel
# 1x (4) Sonya Waterdancer
#
AAECAaIHApGfBIqoBg72nwT3nwT0wQXA+AXI+wXJgAa1mQa9ngbungbZoga2tQaM1gbz5gbk6gYAAA==
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
Yes. It’s been a while since I’ve played against top 200 people (on NA earlier this month), but those who were the hardest to beat for me ran something along the lines of:
Summary
### RNG Rogue
# Class: Rogue
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Pegasus
#
# 2x (0) Preparation
# 2x (0) Shadowstep
# 2x (1) Breakdance
# 2x (1) Dig for Treasure
# 2x (1) Stick Up
# 2x (1) Swashburglar
# 2x (1) Valeera's Gift
# 2x (2) Kaja'mite Creation
# 2x (3) Ethereal Oracle
# 1x (3) Velarok Windblade
# 2x (4) Dubious Purchase
# 1x (4) Griftah, Trusted Vendor
# 2x (4) Hench-Clan Burglar
# 1x (4) Sonya Waterdancer
# 1x (4) Spectral Cutlass
# 2x (5) Sandbox Scoundrel
# 1x (7) Tess Greymane
# 1x (0) Zilliax Deluxe 3000
# 1x (0) Zilliax Deluxe 3000
# 1x (4) Twin Module
# 1x (5) Perfect Module
#
AAECAaIHBoukBY6WBsekBoqoBqfTBpDmBgz2nwT3nwTuoASMpAXfwwXo+gXIlAatpwazqQbuqQa2tQbk6gYAAQP1swbHpAb3swbHpAbu3gbHpAYAAA==
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
Now, that’s not the original list of the deck. That’s my take on Mogkupopo’s list, but it’s close enough.
EDIT: I remember they also run Photographer in this attrocity
1 Like
It’s literally the best deck, no way its bait. Whenever I want free wins I just play it, then switch back to fun decks when my win rate is high enough. If my win rate on fun decks falls too low I just hop back on cycle rogue.
2 Likes
It’s the second best at top legend. There is some truth in saying it benefits strongly from the context of the meta right now. Its matchup spread, even when played fully correctly, isn’t perfect. Druid in particular gives it a bad time, but druid isn’t having a particularly good time in the meta either, so that’s not a concern for the deck.
It benefits from well-rounded matchups, a pretty good matchup vs swarm shaman and the fact that the decks that could steal its lunch are being eaten alive by shamanstone.
Definitely not bait but not exactly a meta tyrant either. Swarm shaman is still the best deck in almost all contexts imo.
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With cycle rogue though the tricky part is even if you identified your win condition to use Sonya and griftah sometimes it might not work out due to opponent board presence (since 6 damage and mind control sometimes is not reliable enough to get from the discover pool), and had to use incindius instead or giants for win condition, the one matchup I still am struggling atm is dungar druid, it’s the only matchup I am clueless how to close the game right now, my general strat against them usually tried to cycle and draw as many cards it takes to be followed up by giants breakdance Sonya swing turn but due to the amount of ramp spells druid has atm I always late by 1 turn to create that setup, I was thinking to disrupt them with speaker stomper over and over by playing shadowstep and breakdance but it’ll hurt my chance of closing out the game if I happen to get Sonya griftah incindius later on.
Quark could you please help me how to overcome dungar druid matchup.
I don’t see any druid really, maybe 1 in 15 games.
In case anyone is interested from my above post, currently at rank 107 with this otk rogue deck which seems far better than griftah/cycle rogue IMO. Tho, I hate playing meta decks and I nearly always tech or homebrew, cause I dont find this game fun otherwise so YMMV.
Summary
otk
Class: Rogue
Format: Standard
Year of the Pegasus
2x (0) Backstab
2x (0) Preparation
2x (0) Shadowstep
2x (1) Breakdance
1x (1) Deafen
2x (1) Dig for Treasure
1x (1) Southsea Deckhand
1x (1) Tar Slick
2x (2) Fan of Knives
2x (2) Lucky Comet
2x (2) Oh, Manager!
2x (2) Quick Pick
2x (3) Bargain Bin Buccaneer
2x (3) Knickknack Shack
1x (3) Nexus-Prince Shaffar
2x (3) Raiding Party
2x (4) Dubious Purchase
AAECAd75AwTI+wXJgAar6gbJ9AYNkZ8E9p8E958E38MF7p4G2aIGracGwKgGtrUG8skGjNYGvOUGkeYGAAA=
To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
2 Likes
Cycle rogue seems to have a very high skill cap compared to the average. I somehow managed to win with it but I didn’t expect it. Or maybe how you play is easy and it depends on how you draw.
E.g. I had Sonya but then I figured I had to use some 1 cost cards early, but then Sonya was almost a dud in the deck but I still won so it’s kinda weird.
Legend last 2 seasons, as per December I am still diamond 8 atm. I started to face druid yesterday when I was around plat 4, and stopped my winning streak. Out of 5 games against dungar druid I lost all of em.
I meant what rank in legend end of month, because I have watched many different ranks play this deck and the number of mistakes is staggering even at 1k or worse legend.
The other day I was trying to coach someone who was end of month 13k legend on this deck and it was impossible. I just told them to stop playing the deck because there is nothing I can say other than they need to improve their fundamental knowledge about the game first and the deck is too hard for them right now.
That being said in order to save time replying again, if you are a good rank with this you can disregard the fundamentals problem.
In the matchup vs Dungar Druid if they have the nuts there is nothing you can do early. The best thing you can do is tempo Incindius and don’t shadow step him in most cases if you have time before they Dungar. You can try to pick minion steal off of Griftah as well to take Eonar, Ceaseless if they accidentally pull it or Thunderbringer, then either trade them, go face with them or shadow step/ breakdance them. Speaker Stomper is typically too slow to have any impact because they will ramp before it is playable, but if they somehow don’t ramp then just spam Stomper every turn and u win maybe, but you still need other pressure on the board to do damage so its complicated.
2 Likes
First of all, if you know something, you should be able to explain it to someone who wants to learn, one way or another, if you have the proper patience and motivation.
Furthermore, if those “fundamentals” about the game can’t be clearly emphasized and explained to anyone, then they’re not really fundamentals, are they?
Don’t get me wrong, I just have a lot of experience tutoring people for money, and have learned this from that experience. Also keep in mind I’m not disputing your knowledge, just your teaching skills. But as any skills, that too, can be perfected 
1 Like
Tutoring someone who knows what they are doing vs someone who makes 10 mistakes every single turn are two different things. I’m not there to teach somebody how to play Hearthstone, just to help how to play that Rogue deck and I only have an hour to do so in that situation.
Fundamentals such as basic addition, value trading, counting your damage to see if you have lethal and what not. These are things that are fundamental to the game and I cannot teach someone how to play arguably the current hardest deck in the game when they don’t even know how to do those properly yet.
They should be able to add and multiply numbers together before I can teach them the hardest deck in Standard, so in that case no amount of explaining will help their situation as they cannot count Sonya combos, or Giant combos, or lethal damage with Incindius/ Griftah.
I’m not saying this to make fun of this person, only to refute the argument you made that I can do a better job at teaching them other than saying the deck is too hard for them. You must walk before you can run.
2 Likes
Tbf to them, I have seen plenty of people between 10k and 2k legend at end of season who can’t even tell when their opponent is dead on board. Happens so often that I don’t even concede in these cases just in case they’re blind.
Just to say if these people reached 5k anyone can lol
2 Likes
I mean that’s the entire point of dungar druid, if your not doing everything in your power to pop off dungar, your playing it wrong. Because of this I’d expect dungar to pop off turn 5, 6 or 7 with increasingly high probability.
I can’t say when rogue might pop off consistently with giants (I assume you try to close this game out with giants rather than the big elemental, tho both are valid attempts), but my guess is somewhere around the same time, but probably with less probability on t5.
Also, if giants do pop off, you might feed your board right into yogg on the dungar druid.
From my experience playing my homebrew dungar (mostly before balance changes before it was mainstream, but some after) dungar druid is highly favored, especially cause yogg exists and armor gain can be nuts for druid so there’s not much otk potential (as in the rogue can’t ignore board).
The best attempts I’ve seen from rogues have been clever uses of tar slick plus knives to clean boards very efficiently, then push giants, but, as I’ve said before, yogg exists so you have to play around it. I never ran the ceaseless expanse dude as the potential for him to hit my face for 15 sucks.
1 Like
Yep.
It’s nearly impossible to teach advanced skills to someone who lacks the requisite knowledge base to work from.
I used to concede in those spots, but I don’t if I am still trying to climb because, like you say, people miss stuff all the time.
I know I miss it, too, lol.
2 Likes