That the DoD decks will continue ruling the meta.
Galakrond Rogue, Dragon Hunter, Embiggen Druid, Ressurect Priest, etc.
Maybe some kind of Demon Hunter gets added to the mix (which should help Druid replace the Galakrond Warrior matchup).
That the DoD decks will continue ruling the meta.
Galakrond Rogue, Dragon Hunter, Embiggen Druid, Ressurect Priest, etc.
Maybe some kind of Demon Hunter gets added to the mix (which should help Druid replace the Galakrond Warrior matchup).
I think the biggest impact we’ll see from the addition of Demon Hunter is that it may push the current Gala Rogue in a new direction. That deck is very weak to highly aggressive openers unless it pulls off a big Edwin or Questing Adventurer (for the versions that use Questing). Embiggen Druid, Dragon Hunter and Galakrond Warrior are (in my experience) it’s worst current matchups, if another aggro deck becomes popular, the deck could suffer.
Galakrond Warrior is not doing too well after losing AoP and Leeroy to the HOF. AoO doesn’t really provide replacements for those cards so I doubt it will fare well in AoO.
DH seems poised to replace it.
It’s been very interesting to see what a huge difference the loss of Leeroy has made to the meta, and I think losing Zilliax is going to have a similar huge impact.
Demon Hunter looks to be the new gold standard of aggro decks, and i reckon aggro could reshape the meta.
At the moment Gala rogue has time to set up their big tempo turn, but better aggro and no Zilliax could be bad news for that style.
Dragon Hunter definitely looks like it is here to stay, so perhaps with Demon Hunter too some sort of anti-aggro deck is possible (with less Rogues around to punish it).
I also think Demon Hunter will get nerfed in some way pretty quickly, because it does look overtuned to me, and that will shake things up again.
Gala Warrior has lost a few tools with the last HoF patch, but I think it gets some nice new pieces with AoO release, (the new 1 drop that does 1 dmg and gives a bubble looks perfect) so a slightly different Gala Warrior could definitely be a thing.
Personaly I reckon there’s enough significant changes to shake the meta up, I’m pretty sure there will be a Gala Rogue and warrior deck and I’m certain there’ll be Dragon Hunter too, but there will be plenty of other stuff to compete with these archetypes and some of them will look very different to account for a more aggressive meta.
It’s fairly likely that Rogue, DH, and Hunter will be the top 3.
I have no idea what could be the hidden gems, but I’m definitely interested in seeing what people like Kibler come up with. He’s always got some shenanigans that aren’t just “Face is the Place”.
I’m also curious about Galakrond Priest and control Galakrond Warrior using 7+ Bulwark of Azinoth. It’s probably garbage.
Galakrond Rogue and Dragon Hunter will not lose anything in the card rotation but Leeroy. In addition. AoO expansion only brought strong cards to Rogue, Hunter and Demon Hunters - so I guess they will remain tier 1.
Seriously, I don’t understand what team 5 of Blizzard is thinking.
Making OP cards to Rogue and Hunter, and instead of balancing them or enhancing the weak classes for next expansion, they just make the dominant classes even stronger
Honestly, I think Highlander Mage looks like it’ll be sitting in a better spot than previously. The only high impact card it really loses is Luna’s Pocket Galaxy, but will get things like Imprisoned Overseer, Maiev, Evocation, and Solarian.
Losing Leeroy is huge for Rogues though. I played a bit with Galakrond Rogue post-rotation and it’s a completely different deck when you just can’t ever get that additional reach, especially with Shadowsteps. Some games go a bit longer, Res Priest is now exclusively a fatigue matchup (before you could hoard burn and Leeroy+Shadowstep and sometimes burst after a Plague of Death turn).
I’m not saying those Stealth cards aren’t sweet, but “Everybody loses Leeroy, Valeera most affected.”
don’t forget it also loses town crier and eternium rover, galakrond warrior won’t survive
edit: also zilliax and snipsnap
I see rogue having the strongest post rotation deck.
I think it all depends on when the new decks pop off — drawing 6+ 0 cost cards makes rogue disgusting after 7 mana (and the duplicate killer card).
Honestly though, I think rogue might also be hit the most by losing zilliax, especially with DH entering the fray.
I get the feeling a lot of people may be surprised at how the rotation ends up. There’s too many factors to account for everything, but here’s some of the biggest ones
–No more Zilliax, no good taunts. Khartut Defender is the ONLY neutral healing. Loss of Dr Boom, eternium rover, and other major stabilization tools make slower strategies significantly weaker.
–Demon Hunter, Dragon and Face Hunter, along with the new beast hunter cards will put serious pressure down early
–Galakrond rogue will have to adapt to not having leeroy, snip snap, or zilliax by adding stronger early game if it wants to not auto lose to aggro. Possibly even adding neutral taunts which will slow it down.
–Without Leeroy simply burning your opponent from hand becomes vastly more challenging. Board centric aggro will likely be stronger than burn based aggro
–There will only be one class with an abundance of healing - Priest. But there’s also quite a bit of ressurect hate and ressurect is still slow.
– Almost all mechs are rotating – period. Magnetic is completely disappearing.
With that said, my take on the AoO early meta will be a lot of strong aggro decks; demon hunter, many hunter variants (face, dragon, beast are all viable), zoo warlock, and the return of pirate warrior utilizing the new 1 drops that ping as well as damaged minion synergy (neutral 2 drop fits right in with it too).
On the slower side you’ll have highlander decks and control priest. Yes, I do think priest will still be in a good spot. Ressurect is still perfectly viable, and the zoo cards they added make a fantastic early game. Highlander dragon priest and pure galakrond zoo priest both look viable. A zoo opening with midrange healing could counter a lot of the early aggression.
On the combo side you’ll still have druid drawing their entire deck and token variants sending out endless armies of treants. Embiggen, token, and quest druid all look very strong come rotation.
We’ll see how many of those predictions come to pass.
One thing everyone is forgetting about gala rogue and gala warrior, they both take cards that are already existing in the deck and make them better.
Warrior my be losing a solid draw mechanic and a good finisher, but they have plenty of charge options available and many classes are losing a lot of good tools.
With a little experimentation gala rogue and gala warrior are likely to always remain relevant because both decks just give you better versions of what you were doing anyway, and we don’t really have valid anti galakrond tech cards.
Rogue is obviously in a better position to remain meta defining because between shadow step, toggwaggle, and galakrond they can be drawing 10+ 0 cost cards in a game. That’s just absurd.
I will, however, say that if we don’t see significant changes at the top of the ladder we can probably expect to see rogue nerfs as the first balance patch of AoO.
They seem to not prefer for the top of the meta to remain relatively unphased after releasing new cards.
Gala rogue will remain relevant no matter what just because it draws so many cards and generates so many resources. The rogue secret package looks extremely powerful too. More than likely Rogue is going to be forced into using those secrets to shore up its early game, but that isn’t a bad thing. It’ll probably end up cutting some of the top end to add in the cheaper secret cards to survive against the incoming aggro meta.
Galakrond warrior looks weaker than pirate warrior to me though. Pirates and damaged minion synergy got a ton of support in the expansion. Of course if warrior finds a way to effectively combine both archetypes you could have a very strong aggressive deck there too. One way or another, AoO looks like it’s going to be extremely aggro heavy. far more than previous metas.
I think galakrond warrior and highlander mage will probably take a big hit as they’re both losing most of their card drawing ability on this rotation and that’s going to hurt them both a lot.
Galakrond Rogue will need to make some changes but they got a good secret package and a good stealth package to choose from as possible replacements. Personally I think the stealth package is a bit stronger as it’s more early game focused and Akama Prime has a good chance of costing 0 mana but either one could work.
Hunter will likely just keep doing what they’re doing as they lose very little and gain a possible beast hunter deck.
Demon hunter looks like it will be best as a very aggressive face deck
My prediction is gnome Hunter, tempo/aggro DH, and treant/token along with some sort of zoolock will be the aggro choice for the first two weeks. In that order of strength.
Control will be Rez/Galakrond priest, some demon based handlock, highlander mage, big shaman.
Mid-range will be DH, galak rogue (secrets and value packages), quest shaman and liber Paladin. All will be marked by high, endless value generation.
All of those decks are fairly slow. Aggro DH and midrange DH will force then to change, or die before their good plays happen.
Besides zilliax and snip-sn4p, embiggen druid also loses witching hour which is kinda a big deal tbh.
There are some embiggen variants that don’t even run witching hour. So it’s not as big a deal as you might think.
Just hear me out… Librim pally is just a better version of embiggen druid. If it’s good at all embiggen won’t find a home in the meta
I would expect the meta is still going to revolve around highlander cards and galakrond decks. There just isn’t anything in AoO that threatens to be as strong as those cards.