I Played Solitaire to Legend

Multiplayer Discussion
1

Just hit legend playing Nature Shaman. The meta has gotten a bit slower with Demon Hunter effectively a dead class. I saw 1 on my D5-L run as Shaman. Rainbow Death Knight is running rampant right now, so warrior is at an all time low. This created a perfect meta for Nature Shaman to shine.

I will give some thoughts on the climb before I talk about the match ups. The deck is insanely powerful. This type of damage output is something I thought I would never see in standard. The fact that there were games where I did 30+ damage by turn 4-5 honestly made me feel a bit bad for the other player. For 99% of games I did not interact with my opponent or their board unless I was going off and winning. There were a few times where I would kill a minion or put some frogs up to block. But, those moments were few and far between.

Is the deck too good? As much as I complain about the state of the game… no, it is not. For a very simple reason. There are 2 neutral cards that 100% gimp the combo. I had a WheelLock play Speaker Stomper against me and it was a blowout. I died to 8/8s before i could find my 2nd Flash. If you barely ever see Shaman then don’t tech them in. if you are seeing it all the time, put those bad bois in. It is tradable, making for a low investment for getting to massively hinder a strong deck.

Good Match Ups:

Warlocks. Both pain and wheel Warlock crumple to Nature Shaman. PainLock allowed me a couple turn 4 wins on the climb. The very very very odd thing is that TWICE, WheelLocks traded Speaker Stomper on turns 1 and 3. I was absolutely dumbfounded.

Death Knights. Every DK I ran up against was running heavy control and never put me on much of a clock. The couple times I lost to a DK were from either terrible draws or the most unlucky frost plagues. For the most part though, they are easy wins.

Priests. Unless the priest gets an insanely aggressive start they are often 1 turn too late with their free turn. Not a free win, but definitely in Shaman’s favor.

Druids. So slow that you can go off turns 7-9 building up a perfect hand. Even if they gain 10+ armor a curated hand can do enough damage. If they get numerous armor spells you do get into some serious trouble. I had to kill a couple over the course of two turns.

Rogues. They draw for a bit and then you kill them. I think I dropped 1 game to rogue from never seeing Flash of Lightning.

Demon Hunters. I literally saw 1 or 2 on my climb. The weapon putting them back a turn just made them too slow. I don’t know if it is a good or bad match up since I have so little data.

Mages. They draw cards and then you kill them. Literally every game went this way. I dropped a couple games to a hyper aggressive elemental Mage build which I couldn’t even be mad at. Put that pressure on!

Paladins. I think I saw 2 during the climb. Too slow. They buff their hand then die.

Bad Match Ups:

Warriors. Just… all of them. You can steal a game here or there if they get bad draws and do not see armor gain. For the most part just assume it is a loss.

Hunters. The aggressive variant can mop you up on turn 4-5 if you do not disrupt them a little. It is nowhere near as bad as the warrior match up. Egg hunter is too slow and dies. But, I barely see egg Hunter.

Other Shamans. These are neither good nor bad match ups. It is just a game of who gets their combo 1st. I went with a more aggressive build, so I often got mine 1st. Surprisingly, I barely saw any.

Here is my build. I completely disregarded the long game in favor of making sure I assembled Exodia as fast as possible. Will answer any questions.

OTK

Class: Shaman

Format: Standard

Year of the Pegasus

2x (1) Flowrider

2x (1) Lightning Bolt

2x (1) Lightning Reflexes

2x (1) Novice Zapper

1x (1) Overdraft

2x (1) Pop-Up Book

2x (2) Amphibious Elixir

2x (2) Ancestral Knowledge

1x (2) Bloodmage Thalnos

2x (2) Cactus Cutter

2x (2) Dryscale Deputy

2x (2) Flash of Lightning

2x (2) Kobold Geomancer

2x (2) Needlerock Totem

2x (2) Wandmaker

2x (5) Crash of Thunder

AAECAaoIApegBL+eBg7q5wOjnwT5nwTE0AXN7gXK+AXL+AWzjQbrmAatnQacngbmngaopwbv5gYAAA==

To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

2 Likes
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Hi would you mind speaking a language that someone who hasn’t devoted their life to this game would understand? What the hell is " Assembling Exodia"

3

Considering I came back after a 5 year hiatus, I would not say I have devoted much of anything to this game. Exodia is a reference to the card game Yugioh. If you get all 5 pieces/cards in hand at the same time you automatically win the game.

4

So how do you do that in this game with this deck?

5

You draw until you have a bunch of damage spells and +spell power minions in hand. You play Flash of Lightning. The next turn you cast damage spells till the opponent dies.

1 Like
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That is weird. I was playing some Wheel Lock over the weekend, and I always dropped my stomper on 5 and followed up with a big threat if I had one.

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and game algorithm gives you all warriors once you switch to nature shaman.

8

If that was true, how did it get to legend?

Random is random my friend, sometimes you see 3 warriors in a row, sometimes you go 20 games without seeing one (and anything in between).

1 Like
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Swapping in Photographer fizzle instead of 1 kobold makes the deck win against warriors, as well, and I guess I can live with seeing a no-titan deck, but it hurts. It’s 6hp heal, sometimes it draws you 3 cards, it can be a game changer as it allows you to use 1 dmg ability for removal to survive, because you’ll get the titan effect to compensate for it.

It’s also a good tempo swing to play titan + flash on 6. At this point not even dropping a stomper does much cuz you still haven’t dealed with a titan on board.

Removing 2x wandmaker and putting titan + 1 spirit claws makes the deck top legend material (it would be exactly the same as Insane’s deck for MT)

10

I explained it in my post. There are currently many DKs on ladder right now. DKs do incredibly well vs warrior. With so many DK around I think warrior has ebbed a little.

@Kassadin - I ran Titan for a bit. But, time and time again it just didn’t do anything or was taking a spot in my hand I just wished were a spell or spell damage minion. If I were seeing more warriors I would put it and Photographer in. But, from what I was experiencing, going all in on ending every game by t5-6 gave me a better win rate vs hunter. I would say 90% of my games were over on t5-6. Making both pretty pointless. This may change as I get into higher ranks, this is just my D5-L experience.

11

I agree with this.

I mostly disagree with this.

In my opinion, a tracker (or a network of trackers) reliably collects data on wins. Personal piloting experience might want to collect data on wins, might try to collect data on wins, but ultimately collects feels on dopamine. That’s pretty much it. If you personally play a deck then you will get feedback on how dopaminergic that deck is for you, and because your brain rationalizes your biases all of the dopamine surges will be falsely interpreted as being “powerful” if you trust your own rationalizations. No, power is winrate, period, end of story. Dopamine is fun, and personal piloting experience measures fun.

Burn Shaman is an extremely fun deck. I think a lot of people hate it purely because they can, on some gut level, sense how dopaminergic it is, and develop a subconscious jealousy. I think it’s the funnest deck in the format hands down. But it’s not too overpowered, and we should actively avoid nerfing decks that are appropriately powerful and extremely fun.

12

The deck is broken because it forces people to play the garbage tech cards just not to die to somebturn 5 grabage easy 0 mana burn spells. And I’m almost sure it’s gonna get obliterated because it’s borken af.

13

I guess it isnt quite cognitive dissonance… but its somewhat ironic that if you want to play a board based aggressive minion deck you have to kill your opponent by turn 5 or you’re pretty much done for thanks to the cheap removal / heal in the game. This is really just the spell version of an aggro deck.

I know people complain about aggro decks whenever they make their way into hearthstone but something like treant druid didnt seem to inspire this intense hatred.

A lot of us want to play something else… but try playing something board based vs say rainbow dk or warrior… its just as dreadful an experience as people seem to say playing against nature shaman is. Until minions can survive long enough to actually do face damage again this is what you get.

14

Yeah, the impossibility of making a minion stick was the first thing I’ve noticed when I returned to this game in November after a few years of not playing, so the change in removals was pretty significant up to then, and it’s not looking to change any time soon

15

It’s funny how people think random exists in a coding generated videogame. :wink:
The so called random is bussiness model random, aka, if a class needs to win according to the statistics, than it will be matched to an easy matchup, if it needs to lose, it will be matched to a counter deck.
Idealisation, the hope and doom of humans.

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Here’s the thing: there is no such thing as a class needing to win. Business model random is true random because true random is cheap and true random is more addictive than rigging. True random isn’t “good,” there are many well documented negative effects that tinfoil fools incorrectly attribute to nonrandom structures.

17

Bud, i told you a couple months ago and you didn’t get it back than so maybe you will get it now.
The goalpost is money, bussiness model is the tool, packs / store stuff are the product.The bussiness model dictates that in order for products to be purchased, there has to be a balance in class decks. In order to achieve that balance, the win rates aka % need to be equal or close in order for people to construct multiple decks … cards are nerfed / buffed for that.
Now, if in your delusional world, a company worth milions of dollars, leaves their product susceptible to “true random”, than you stopped taking your meds.
Keep drinking that Kool Aid.

18

It is always wild to me when people complain about having to run a tech card. Especially when the tech card is actually good against multiple situations, not just stopping a combo. Hearthstone has become far more spell intensive than in the past. I ran Speaker Stomper in my hand buff pally. Not only did it blow out Shaman, but when I played it against warrior it set their board wipe back a turn. That one turn of no/less spells can be a massive tempo swing. Most players plan their next turns ahead, disrupting that plan is valuable.

19

Every standard, non-rigged matchmaking by rank/rating algorithm accomplishes this. Looking at the cards in the decks is unnecessary effort, just pair players who win with other players who win and the inevitable result will be players eventually settling at a rank where they average 50% and stay there.

1 Like
20

You really need to learn the difference between assumption and logic.