How to beat hunters (quick tutorial)

Multiplayer Discussion
1

I think it’s about time this playerbase evolves.

Step 1: Mulligan

Make sure your deck has early game minions and early game removal (1-3 mana cost).

Basically, if your deck doesn’t have it, it’s not viable and you should not be playing it anyway. You need 4 to 6 1-mana cost cards, and you need in total 20 1-3 cost cards, be it minions, draws or removal spells. That’s the current meta. Every class has enough of those:

  1. Druid has 3 mana swipe and a lot of 1-2 mana cost minions
  2. Warlock has defile, crescendo and a lot of 1-2 mana cost minons
  3. Rogue is a scam class which has access to absolutely anything she wants, so make sure you’re running her excavate package to get anything you want whenever you need
  4. Shaman has so much removal it’s disgusting - lightning storm is AoE for 3 mana, not sure if any lower cost removals are worth running, but basically shaman has totems and 1-2 cost minions which are fine enough to survive until you can play his gift + storm (4 mana) or just storm (3 mana)
  5. DK has threads and 3 mana summon 4 rush minions, or if you’re a plague DK, you have the 4 mana 4/3 aoe minion or 3 mana finale aoe minion
  6. Mage has heatwave and early drops
  7. Warrior has anything you want and then some
  8. Paladin has prismatic beam and strong early drops
  9. Priest only has strong early drops
  10. Don’t play demon hunter at all
  11. Hunter is a mirror, so there’s no skill involved here.

Against hunter, you hard mulligan for strong 1 drops, 2 drops and if you get a 1-3 mana cost removal, you keep it, to remove his tokens and/or to counter Rampage.

The goal is to get on the board early and take value trades. Now, what are value trades?

Step 2: Value trades

Value trade is when you use your minions to trade into their minions with a goal of going 2 for 1, which means the goal is that your minion survives so you can run it into another one next turn, even if it means you take 1-2 extra dmg face on your opponent’s next turn.

This is a crucial mechanic in this game. Knowing when to value trade and when to just push for tempo and go face is the literal only skill which differentiates a legend from non-legend player. Hunter is a good deck to practise that against and see how important and strong that mechanic is.

So practise value trading.

Step 3: Maintain board control

The goal here is to keep removing his token minions so he can’t saddle up more than 2 of them. If you do that successfully, you have around 80% chance of winning the game.

And now you just repeat step 2 until your hand or board threatens lethal. At that point, unless you’re low on health (hunter can do at max 13 dmg to your face with no minions on board, and that’s with kill command + HP + buffed huffer + 1 banana), you can push for tempo and finish the game, knowing he has no cards to swing the board in his favor anymore.

Congratulations, you beat hunter. Was that so hard?

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I don’t know, but number 1 with above 60% winrate on the diamond to legend range, maybe there’s something to the deck?

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Yes it’s very hard for people to learn how to play. They don’t even realize what they are doing wrong and assume they always play perfectly and blame everything on something else being wrong such as the game being rigged.

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That’s why I hope those players will approach this topic with interest, instead of contempt as they usually approach this forum

But we’ll see

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The main punishment of hunter is playing it. It’s only ~60% win rate; it’s extremely sensitive to the first 2-3 draws going bad; I personally refuse to play it anymore since it constantly makes me feel a slave of the first few draws while the win rate isn’t even that good across ladder for anyone.

What are you on about; it had a modest nerf before everything was nerfed other than a few highlander decks; the only reason it’s not played is people consider it old (the stats sites show it easily at a similar tier with all the other ~60% win rate netdecks (nothing is more than ~60% currently on stats)).

6

As a player…

You’re not wrong in the fundamentals still Hunter is overpowered.

I would nerf It simple as removing stealth from the snakes.

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Two things are true simultaneously:

  1. This is correct.
  2. I hate it.

Just another meta warped by the slow deck that wrecks all other slow decks, and the fast decks that are fast enough to get under that one slow deck.

Like you noted, Shaman actually has insane control tools and can mop up Hunter. But Warrior is right there…

1 Like
8

How to beat people trying to beat Hunters.
Play Ball of spiders and get more value early to keep the pressure on your opponent. Hunter has a tutor card in the base set that is very playable but sees little or no play in the cookie cutter decks. Ignore the standard lists you see online and be a bit more creative with your builds.

Tell players that think Hunter is a “brain dead” deck to try harder with their insults.

Technically correct but the full maximum possible is with a Canvasaur played instead of the HP that hits Huffer with WF. There are other combinations as well as long as you kept a snake on the board stealthed as well as with decks playing Leeroy. Could be a jungle gym in play as well adding a few more points to face.

The point is that it is hard to tell how much burst a hunter may or may not have from hand if a game actually get to turn 10.

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AND LOSE to every other deck Gratz

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you are totally RIGHT! 1-1 hunter and alot more WL and warrior
who a hell care thats 1-2 hunter do not has 100% winnrate sometime i out value still

after this post 1st opponent hunter …is play everything almost out deck and i stay at end 30 hp and beat it…

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Great guide. I will also add that a value trade can be trading less stats into this better stats and killing it. Like trading your 1/1 into his 3/1. Etc.

The real problem is reno warrior. The true best deck in the game. It has the best kate game as druid in his prime and the best removal and life gain.

Definitely I feel so much agency playing against reno warrior morons.

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12

Bullocks. Priest has one of the most effective hunter counters in the whole flippin game right now. It’s called Injured Hauler, and it absolutely wrecks hunters when you get him rolling. A hidden gem or fan club planted ahead of time, some funnel cakes to keep the overheals going, maybe a bandage or two from careless crafter. There is nothing in any other class that can continuously keep a hunter’s board in check turn after turn after turn as a an injured hauler. The only tricky thing is figuring out how to incororate the right overheal package alongside the zarimi package to make the deck work.

I’ve been in legend almost two weeks ago, and I made it with overheal zarimi priest. It was honestly one of the easiest climbs I’ve had in a while. Food for thought for ya.

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Did you create a deck that can beat hunter?

Hehe face this reno warrior instead for the next 10 consecutive games.

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Is this a comedy bit? Weeks ago zarimi was extremely stronger.

Right now the netdecks are brutally balanced; nothing barely goes above ~55-60% win rate across any part of ladder; it’s very easy to fall into a “50-50” pattern since there’s no deck you can copy-paste and get easy wins.

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I said on “empty board”, so that eliminates a few combinations. There can be slightly more with weapon and/or location equipped, but here I was talking about an average situation against the highest winrate hunter deck, and the chances are, that long into the game both the weapon and the location were spent already.

Nope.

Yes, true, but I omitted that part on purpose, because sometimes you have to run a 3/3 into their 3/1 and call it a value trade, because it prevents them from buffing it or saddling it up.

The main objective when playing against hunters is to keep the board clean because of Rampage and Saddle up. Value trading is just a mechanic which helps you achieve this objective.

Noone cares, noone plays.

Noone cares. Literally noone. Not even makiah plays that deck now, and he’s a one-trick pony overheal priest.

Almost any deck on the ladder beats hunter and it’s not even close.
Apparently, you didn’t even read my post, so why even reply?

Reading your replies makes me feel sad. You keep going around and trying to correct players who were legend first time before you even born. I suggest you to reply less and read more if you wanna improve at this game.

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Nice narcissism of the type you find in elementary school bullies.

If you’re wrong you’re wrong. Bring arguments next time.

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Overheal has game against warrior too. Hate to break it to ya.

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The deck might even be strong, but here I was writing a general guide for the majority of players, an “average” player, if you will, and an average player doesn’t play Overheal priest (at least not according to the popularity statistics)

It’s cool when you’re good at tier 3 decks and surprise people on the ladder with it. I know the feeling, since I do the same with sludgelock. So I didn’t mean to belittle the deck, just to emphasize that this is for majority of players who complain about hunter, that’s all.

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You sure like to pretend you’re special. Sludge is easily above 60% today across any bracket of the ladder.

You’re not doing anything not showing on the average stats.

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O yeah I’m kinda amused by the people complaining about hunter. I mean it’s just a fast token deck. With no real come back mechanism or interesting big brain plays. If you keep.them off the board chances for them winning after turn 6 decrease dramatically.

The real elephant in the room is reno warrior.
It’s the true best deck in the game.

Extremely greedy deck like druids tend to be with the best late game in the meta. ( wheel potentially has better kate game with their straightforward wincin,) but this deck sucks at anything else now and gets deleted by tempo.

Meanwhile warrior laughs at every single board people ate building against them.

Reno needs not to limit the enemy board after its played as it actually takes away the agency from your opponent by denying th thempo for a turn. It’s totally ridiculous that it’s a moni time warp attached.

I would argue because of reno decks are not real decks but just pile of cards that are carried by their reno payoff vards they should be just meme tier decks just to try out for fun and not a top meta picks. They literally are one of the lowest skill cap decks in heartstone. Because you draw the good cards you win, you don’t you lose. This can be also viewed as p2w game as reno decks are very duat heavy.

Definitely they should delete reno warrior from the competitive play. Remove it for the health of the game because there is no player agancy in drawing the good cards.