Shaman has it pretty good right now. I remember when shaman was considered ‘shaman tier’ because it was the worst class bar none in hearthstone for a long time. It was much more fun back then to build decks to climb the ladder because it was a much bigger challenge than it is right now.
There are a number of options right now to climb as shaman from OTK to highlander to aggro. The problem is other classes do OTK, aggro, and probably highlander better but theres quite a lot more variety now than there has been in a long time. I personally find the game pretty boring right now even with that variety because I dislike playing casinostone but anyone who has played shaman from the beginning can’t seriously argue shaman isn’t in a decent place comparatively and it looks like they can add elemental as a potential new deck next week.
It’s an obsession for calling out fact-denying players. They just so happen to be Paladin players this go around. Could be Rogue players next month.
You see, I was calling out fact-deniers. You see that here:
Notice, no Paladin.
Then the conversation continued further with people who think like this:
Which naturally leads to the conversations we had a month ago with Paladin players.
Now, wouldn’t the other obsession here belong to you with your obsession to defend Paladin no matter how obviously broken it is/was? Notice you didn’t say a peep when I talked about the Mage and Shaman players above…but the second Paladin was grouped in with them, BAM you’re on it.
I admit my obsession with correcting fact-deniers. I can’t help people asserting falsehoods as facts. Care to admit your fascination with defending Paladin?
Reno Shaman is fine, but it’ll put you to sleep. That’s why no one plays it. It’s a curvestone deck, you are topdecking the entire game, but because Shaman actually has some decent stabalization tools, that’s not to much of a problem. I get bored halfway through a game every time I play it, and god forbid you run into something like Reno Druid - that’s 30 minutes you’re not getting back.
I took Nature Shaman to Legend on NA and EU in the first few days, but my winrate has really plummeted after all the Rogues started running Neophyte.
Elemental Shaman is another curvestone deck that no one will play because it’s boring, its requirements are too strict, and it’s too predictable.
I do have some hope that an unrevealed Excavation Legendary will give the class a new deck, but we’ll see.
Wow you are really just slandering people. What have I said that makes paladin my main?
I didn’t defend the class from being nerfed the last round. Heck, I even thought paladins might not be nerfed enough (like many thought) when they only hit the board clears but not their early game (something something boogie down insane win rate)
Or the nerf to tip the scales/alura.
Or all the nerfs in Barrens. I remembering pointed out why Barrens pally was so nutty (e.g all their cards in that expansion were costing 5 or less)
Or penflinger before that.
Or baku/genn/recruit stuff
The one take I have that people mistaken for me shilling for paladins that I call their playstyle “normal”. But I don’t use that term as some kind of positive, or to insinuate other classes as inferior. I have compared that to calling paladins the square. The boring guy.
Think of it this way: most people own dogs as pets. Dog as pet is “normal”. That doesn’t mean Cats or other pets are lesser.
So you say, but again I ask: what have I said that validates your accusation?
Look at my post count. Look up how many threads I actually start about paladins.
Again, show me some actual evidence instead of insults and vitriol.
Oh right, so when I pointed out that it was Sch who brought up paladins in a shaman thread, it’s somehow ME who’s bringing up paladin? LOLOL
This isn’t the first time you bring up those fact denying paladins when they aren’t around.
No, not just “this go around”. You have on multiple occasions brought back up the old story of how the stats show paladins were on top the most often.
You point to how you call out other fact deniers later, but how many times would you REPEAT and REMIND people of this later, long after the meta has passed?
Like, would you remind people that somebody in this thread claimed “shaman is bad” or “mage is bad” months or even years after this?
No, it does not lead naturally. You choose paladins as your example. If you really are so much about fact denying, and so neutral about this, surly you have other examples, and you can spread the love around.
As I said to other guy, point to where I defended paladin. You obsessed with fact deniers? Why not go after him for making such a fact denying claim that I’m defending or main paladins, instead of liking his post?
One obsession I’ll admit to is people who seem to want to attack players as opposed to classes. The notion of pally “mains”, or mage “haters”. The latter is one reason why Mall can’t stand me, since I won’t play along with his game (or if I did, I’d spin it against him :p).
It’s also bad because it lacks draw and a blowout turn/finisher, which are basically prerequisites for a tier 2 deck these days.
They really messed that archetype by splitting it for mage and shaman. Shaman should have gotten the draw elemental, the split elemental and the board flood one (summon a copy for each turn you’ve played an elemental). That would have paired into bioluminescence for a decent finishing burst.
Agreed tbh. You Viper the weapon or draw it late game and it feels pretty bad. Imagine making your whole deck a highlander deck just to get dunked on by a common card that’s put into every ETC package
Bloodlust. It can be drawn with Cactus Cutter and Frostfin Chomper puts 4 bodies on the board. Elemental Shaman has a really good early game curve with good stat’d minions, efficient removal, and really strong buff cards like Jam Session and Trusty Companion. Minecart Cruiser also tends to stick around and then you have more wide board cards like Living Prairie and Command of Neptulon to constantly create threats with Bloodlust.
Elemental Shaman I’d say is definitely tier 2. It’s a deck you can get to top 1000 legend with IMO.
Well, yes but…
Ime, paladin players are a little more defensive than others. Hunter is another class with simple mechanics, often just overly powerful cards, and generally high win rates. I’ve yet to see as many defenders of hunter as paladin.
Two, this particular run of paladin did probably set you off a little because they, for some reason, decided to give Paladin all the things that kept getting taken away from priest.
Which is to say there might be a tiny bit more picking on Paladin than usual, for a few reasons. But I certainly haven’t noticed an excessive antagonism on your part.
I’d say the only card you should flex in would be Primordial Wave for any of the druid decks. You could remove one of the Mistake’s and Skarr as a second option to fit in 2 Waves, but I generally think 1 wave is fine since the deck draws a pretty fair amount and you really want sticky boards to actually push for lethal.
Deck has an abysmal time against warrior because they can remove the board almost every turn (the main reason I think this deck is being stopped from being a top tier 2 deck) and you have to be fairly good with aggro decks because there’s a lot of game states right now where you can’t afford to goof on a single turn or you’ll miss lethal. Warlock can be problematic too depending on how your opponent chooses to mulligan. If they keep early removal you’re probably screwed but a lot of players like to keep the excavate cards, in which case you can probably end games by turn 6.
Big difference between ending games on turn 7 and turn 8 is not allowing your opponent to coin Sargeras, Reno, and Twisting Nether. With the right cards you can end games on turns 4-6 depending on if you have the coin. Usually early wins are going to be against paladin, hunter, mage, other shaman decks, death knight. Against all of these decks you want to keep any of your 1 drop minions (just a single copy – you can pitch the rest because you want turn 3 plays and the buff cards like Trusty Companion) and dig for Jam Session. Never try to mulligan for a bloodlust, keep Hopper in your hand if you don’t have a turn 2 elemental (you need to be able to proc Frostfin Chomper and Minecart Cruiser).
Additionally, you can entirely remove Skarr and Golganneth for x copies of Backstage Bouncer or Carving Chisel, but I opt for keeping these two in because you might need Golganneth + Jam Session to clear Dragon Golem and Skarr can reliably get to deal 7-10 damage which clears almost every druid board. I think the deck puts minions down reliably enough that I don’t think there’s a huge benefit to running either Bouncer or Chisel, but I do think these options are better if you are running into a lot of paladin, hunter, and unholy DK/ plague DK specifically. Hex isn’t too bad against paladin either but feels kind of meh against everything else.
First game pure paladin. Started out well enough, got him down to 7 health turn 5 had 3 minions on board. Then he dropped warhorse trainer and a bunch of divine shielded silver hands and that was basically it after he cleared the board with prismatic.
Second game vs treat druid. Again, won the early board and got them down to 8 health around turn 5, but was overloaded and they managed to get an injured tolvir (form the discover a 2 cost spell and summon it) and avert lethal. Then they started drawing through their deck and clearing my board while buffing theirs.
Third game, elemental mage (clearly sliding down an mmr bracket and approaching the diamond 5 floor/testing lab). Beat him quite easily with smart trades and a bit of luck (drew bloodlust). Felt fun, like an old school hearthstone game.
4th game, taunt warrior (still not out of that mmr dip I guess). Managed to clear the on curve taunts and get lethal by turning a minion into ragnoros after getting him below 8.
5th game, excavate control warrior. As you mentioned, basically impossible matchup. Conceded after he cleared my board for the 5th time.
6th game. Control warlock. Won on turn 6 because he couldn’t draw or discover a board clear (he played symphony but didn’t get the deal 6 to all), and I managed to have the rushers in hand to bulldoze through the 2 7/7 taunts.
So 50/50 so far, but losses against the meta decks. I still feel like this deck needs some from hand damage at the end to be a real contender.
Edit:. Played one more game against dragon Druid. Just an absolute thrashing, but again, being able to do 10 damage from hand might have been enough to win (druid was down to 9 at some point).
I just played 6 games with that deck and it got eviscerated each game. There’s basically no early game to speak of. The mid game is solid and with the bloodlust top deck maybe you get there but without the chip damage early it’s not likely. If the games go to turn 8+ though this deck just has no gas.
Feels like a curvestone deck from 8+ years ago when the game was slow enough for something like this to be playable. There’s just nothing explosive or cheating in the deck and without that you have no chance in the meta. Some discover might help but hand damage is really needed to keep up the pressure. As Rinse said though against control you have zero chance and well there’s a lot of control in this meta. Doesn’t look likely they are going away after the mini either.
I really think that in this particular period of time ragnaros OTK shaman is unironically pretty good. It gets even better I think with the deal 1 damage 3 times in the miniset. It has so much removal and healing that its pretty hard for the no nothing decks of today to kill before the combo goes off. I have been having good luck against casino rogue at least which is all that I care about.
Might just be my familiarity with the deck and some of the nuances with decision making with the deck or maybe could be a factor of some RNG – I didn’t watch any of your games so I can’t really say what happened but here’s some of my commentary on your commentary. Also I think your feedback and experience with the deck is good and I like how you took the time to use it AND come back to post a comment.
As far as paladin goes, sometimes decks just win. In my experience the matchup seems to go pretty well but there are just naturally games that don’t go as planned. I think if you got a friend or managed to play more paladins on ladder I’d guess that you’d probably see a higher WR, but not too much to actually comment on here.
I will say I see treant druid as being kind of a 50/50 matchup. You can usually get them down pretty low but the main wincons here are going to be Primordial Wave if you see them a lot of ladder or Skarr. Skarr you naturally have in your deck and, as I said before, I choose to keep him in as a finisher and board clear. Was just playing the deck before posting this comment and the two games I played him in he did 7 and 10 damage on both occasions to close out against druid and paladin. Also helps that he can be generated via Amalgam and Menacing Nimbus.
But yeah, I’m not keeping a spreadsheet with my match WRs right now but I’d say treant druid is probably around 50% if not slightly higher. I think the last several losses I’ve had to that deck were from RNG and just having access to cards I couldn’t plan around them having but I’m 2-0 this morning against druid, so variance I suppose. I don’t think 50% WR against the best deck is bad but it is an argument for not using it in a climb if you see a bunch of them, which you probably will.
Sounds about right. I’d guess my personal WR against excavate warrior is somewhere in the 20%-30% range.
The one damning thing about warlock players going against elemental shaman is that life tap actually tends to screw them, even if they only use it twice in the matchup. Usually that 4 extra damage is enough to make lethal happen even through cards like Mortal Eradication. Sometimes Eradication comes out to clear a Minecart Cruiser so they can do a turn 4 Drillfist or Anubisath. Drillfist is easier to deal with because the buff cards make the trade possible, Anubisath is actually much worse.
I said in my other post that Hex is usually only good against paladin and while I still think that’s true because huge 12 attack divine shield minions suck, there are actually a fair amount of Hex targets in warlock. Again, ladder tech. Sometimes hard to gauge when you’re playing against a mixed bag of things.
So I’m not going to say you’re wrong, your results are your results and dying on the elemental shaman hill isn’t something I’m willing to do here and I’m not going to say you should tank your MMR either continuing to try and find success. I do think it’s valuable how your report is against mostly meta decks save for like rogue and hunter (hunter I’d put in tier 2 and I personally value elemental shaman over hunter after all the nerfs).
I’m a little higher on ranked than you are right now but I can’t speak for the MMR comparison, but I think it might be a cool deck to continue testing if you do have friends who are strong players. This is coming from a place where my results are just a bit more favorable than yours and again that might just be because I’ve been playing the deck since Showdown day 1 and have had a lot of time fine-tuning decision making and recognizing specific board states with the deck.