Key problem with Warlock design (in this expansion)

Multiplayer Discussion
1

The primary reason why warlocks are the worse class in this expansion is because a huge clunk of the warlock’s cards goes into two very distinct decks:

Murlock

  • Rock Bottom
  • Chum Bucket
  • Voidgill
  • Azsharan Scavenger
  • Bloodscent Vilefin

Curselock

  • Sira’kess Cultist
  • Dragged Below
  • Za’qul
  • Abyssal Wave

Control-based decks

  • Gigafin

When one deck fails to make the cut, the entire line of cards fails. You can’t really use them in other decks because they are very specific in what they do and cannot be synergistic with other decks.

This is a very disappointingly poor and lazy design.

How I would buff warlock:

Rock Bottom
Summon a 1/1 Murloc. Dredge and draw a card.
Note: This is a replacement for tour guide or kobold librarian that is usable in all decks.

Bloodscent Vilefin
Battlecry: Dredge. Change it’s Cost to Health instead of Mana.
Note: 4 mana 4/4 and paying the health is a reasonable card without the Murloc restriction.

Dragged Below
Deal 4 damage. Give your opponent an Abyssal Curse.
Note: For a 4 mana spell that deals 4 damage. It is not unreasonable to enable the card to hit the opponent’s face.

Za’qul
Battlecry: Give your opponent an Abyssal Curse. For the rest of the game, your Curses heals you for 2 health whenever they deal damage.
Note: Make the effect last for the rest of the game and include other curses. However the healing is capped at 2.

Abyssal Wave to 5 mana.

2 Likes
2

The Za’qul and Abyssal Wave buffs are probably fine (I like making Za’qul more interesting than a one-time heal), the rest is premium OP nonsense. Kobold Librarian is absolutely not a card to look to for balance, and you somehow suggested something even stronger than it.

Dragged Below is too expensive, but instead of just reducing the price you made it face damage which is not something that should get stronger.

3 Likes
3

Proposed Rock Bottom op? Yes. But the class needs help anyway.

Dragged Below hitting face is a lesser buff than reducing the cost by 1 mana so i’m all for it.
But the main reason it needs to hit face is because 7 curses deal exactly 28. So we need the last 2 to come from somewhere. And the goal of the curse deck is direct face damage anyway so it makes absolute sense.

In any case, Mr Smite dealing upwards of 20 damage from hand is the norm nowadays, no need to sweat over 4 face damage for 4 mana.

1 Like
4

Dragged below at 3 is just Shadow Bolt with a Curse. That’s fine since Shadowbolt is way outclassed now. Dragged at face damage is just emphasizing the least enjoyable aspect of the deck: tons of face damage that requires 0 minions reaching you.

5

I would love Za’qul to have the curse healing be for the rest of the game. Good buff.

1 Like
6

Having highly divergent archtypes may be new to warlock this year, but has been a part of many other classes for years. Welcome to the bad discovery meta warlock players.

7

This is true but it’s also great.
Look at mage: they made 2 new archetypes and they both work! They feel new and are fun to play.

Same for warlock, they made 2 new archetypes, nice!
If warlock is worse than mage is because the design team didn’t made these archetypes complete: curse lock seems unfinished, for example, there are only 3 curse generators and 1 is epic, wtf (then there is a legendary…).

They still did a better job than the team who designed DR rogue and burgle rogue :joy:

8

The key problem with Warlock is Life Tap, period.

Card draw as a hero power should not exist. Its too hard to balance around.

9

While I’m fine with the 3 abyssal curses changes, I’d rather wait to see how it fares when they nerf th top decks. Also the miniset will certainly bring a new curse card.

10

I think Murloc Warlock is being under appreciated. I feel it’s so close to being very good. I think it will be once everything is settled and after the first round of nerfs. I believe that currently it can be a viable deck, if only needing a few adjustments.

Here’s my list so far. I’ve removed and added some cards. I think it’s in a better place than some of the more popular Murlock Warlock decks; although due to the nature of the deck, it’s similar.

Summary

Murloc Warlock

Class: Warlock

Format: Standard

Year of the Hydra

2x (1) Murloc Tidecaller

2x (1) Rock Bottom

1x (1) Sir Finley, Sea Guide

2x (2) Amalgam of the Deep

2x (2) Chum Bucket

2x (2) Lushwater Murcenary

2x (2) Lushwater Scout

2x (2) Voidgill

2x (3) Azsharan Scavenger

1x (3) Brann Bronzebeard

2x (3) Murloc Warleader

2x (3) Twin-fin Fin Twin

1x (4) Ambassador Faelin

2x (4) Bloodscent Vilefin

2x (5) Gorloc Ravager

1x (6) Dreadlich Tamsin

1x (7) Mutanus the Devourer

1x (8) Gigafin

AAECAa35Awam7wOwkQTlsAT1xwSbyQSY1AQMk+gDlOgDq6AE9LEE1bIEvrQEgLUE470EssEEnMcE7tME/tgEAA==

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

1 Like
11

Agreed. Sacrificing 2 health for card draw costs way too much. If you play wild with librarian and raise dead that’s -10 or -14 damage alone plus another -4 or -6 with the hero power or backfire.

Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. You just have a vendetta against warlocks. The hero power is fine and not changing. Keep dreaming.

2 Likes
12

Depends on what they release in the mini-set.

13

Once the nerfs hit the ground, Warlock might end up being up on the top.

It has several archetypes, that might drag you there.

14

Nagalock needed near full hand to pull off. Need Tap to do so by turn 5-6.
Hourlock. Same.
Questline was fed by it, as was SoS.

Yes, Lifetp is the biggest problem with the class in wild. No, I dont expect it to change and have no vendetta against the class, one of my favourite and most played. Just pointing out where this issue with the class lies, especially in wild.

The problem is, its NOT a sacrifice in the wild decks that have been hit. It fueled them.

15

So literally a Combo’d Gone Fishin’ plus a 1/1 Murloc. Heck no.

Stealer of Souls is banned in Wild and it’s less powerful than what you’re proposing (selecting the specific card is very powerful).

Not unreasonable. But I’d just make it cost 1 less Mana. Compare to Tidal Surge, a nonproblem card — 4 damage to a minion plus a bonus effect.

If you look at the winrate statistics for individual cards, well nothing in Curse Warlock is doing that great, but Za’qul is already the second best performing card in the deck (just behind Dreadlich Tamsin). It doesn’t need buffing.

I’d rather see Cultist to 2 Mana, and Dragged Below to 3. I think 2 major buffs is the most that could safely be done at once. I think the deck should be allowed to go ham with Tamsin and Brann without needing Runed Mythril Rod (like Mine Warlock does).

It seems obvious to me that you really want Curse Warlock to work, and that you don’t care at all about Murloc Warlock and you wish you could use its cards towards your schemes. I don’t like that, because Murloc Warlock deserves to exist. Both should be buffed IMHO, especially Curse, but that doesn’t mean warping Murloc cards to that end. Even if you wrote an entire OP about it, it’s wrong.

1 Like
16

So literally a Combo’d Gone Fishin’ plus a 1/1 Murloc. Heck no.

Druid has Aquatic Form, 0 mana dredge, draw the card, if you have enough mana to cast it.

It isn’t exactly draw a card due to the condition, but it is really really close, because which druid doesn’t have mana?

In the proposed Rock Bottom, you are paying 1 mana to get a 1/1 and then to Aquatic Form without the condition.

I would say it is quite similar to Aquatic Form.

Stealer of Souls is banned in Wild and it’s less powerful than what you’re proposing (selecting the specific card is very powerful).

Stealer of Souls is banned because of plot twist allowing mana cheat on a massive scale. Observe that single card mana cheats such as Cho’gall and Bloodbloom isn’t banned in wild.

It seems obvious to me that you really want Curse Warlock to work, and that you don’t care at all about Murloc Warlock and you wish you could use its cards towards your schemes. I don’t like that, because Murloc Warlock deserves to exist. Both should be buffed IMHO, especially Curse, but that doesn’t mean warping Murloc cards to that end. Even if you wrote an entire OP about it, it’s wrong.

Murloc Warlock still works with the proposed cards.

Unfortunately there is really no way I can see to change Curse cards to benefit Murloc decks.

I mean if we really want to we could force it like:

Abyssal Wave to 5 mana, deal 4 damage to all non-murlocs.

17

You obviously haven’t played as any good list of Ramp Druid. This happens all the time, because even Guff has trouble getting enough Mana Crystals to cover the 20 cost of Naga Giant. Yet sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

Also, having it create TWO Murlocs is critical for a Chum Bucket follow-up. You can’t just take away the second Murloc to satisfy your appetite for imbalance.

18

As a warlock player, I for one would like to see Murlock viable. I’ve been trying but can’t seem to get it past D4. This probably reveals an issue more on my end than the deck’s.

19

The reason locks are bad is the same as the last few slow locks are like tier 3 ish decks - they can punish greed that take forever to burn people down, but the meta does not have that many greedy decks or decks that can’t burn.

Another thing is that the new cards are no replacements for old removals (or the ones rotated). Locks can perform if their removal suite can effectively deal with enemy threats so that the lock still has ample mana/time to build towards their late game bomb.

Right now the enemy threats are either too hard for removals to deal with (e.g pally wave after wave of buffed minions), or even if the lock could deal with them (e.g run twisting nether), it slowed down the lock’s gameplan enough that the enemy reaches theirs first.

On the flip side, locks trying to be aggressive with murlock faces the same problem why other aggro lock decks haven’t been a thing for a long time - they either are too vulnerable to removals or they take too long to become big (which ironically is the type of boards that locks themselves have an easy time to deal with)

20

Murlock probably needs some buffs, or new Murlocs to work with (come the miniset). Perhaps, it will be better after the first wave of nerfs. Right now, I find that if I draw badly, as in drawing no buffs, for example, I’m screwed. Other decks are simply more reliable at buffing their minions or at summoning/generating large minions (i.e. druid’s Miracle Growth).

I really like to think if I can just get the cards right in the deck I can get Murlock off the ground. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not the best player whatsoever, and so that makes it difficult to pull off, too.