Here we are again, thief rogue is tearing up the meta. Maintaining 75% win rate, without breaking much of a sweat, VS severely underpriced thief rogue by putting it in T2, I believe they might not know how to play it. Also decklist is a homebrew, (not sure if similar to VS decklist but likely similar.)
Positive winrate vs both miracle rogue, quest DH and bless priest, the most annoying decks to play against in meta atm.
Doubt I can push for legend rank 1 without getting really sweaty, I hear thijs is trying for it this month and so are a bunch of other top players.
Top 100 NA server, less than 1 day of play (maybe 4hrs?)
Proof: i.imgur.com/b1QBqnR.jpeg (can’t link, but its a screenshot so SFW)
There’s multiple broken things right now with the deck. I think Rogue having access to Astalor as a win-con to do damage from hand and Shadowstepping it if need be again is quite the problem. Rogue was already good and controlling board through tempo and removing minions, so now that it can do that easily, it makes it extremely hard to not take 16 damage to the face from Astalor over and over.
Secondly, Trickster discounting to (0) is too much. And, once you cheat out something super early that’s super powerful, being able to recast all of it for 5 mana is just double dipping into the already broken combo.
I had a Rogue just cheat out a big minion turn 3 and then just repeated it on turns 4 and 5 because of Stash.
But none of this would be possible if it wasn’t for the constant mana cheat. Serrated Bone Spike is a major offender as is Trickster.
There is so much mana cheat in this deck that it basically wins because it’s playing things for super cheap that are super strong over and over again.
The entire deck is basically 1 massive mana cheating deck. Look at the entire card list. Like 90% of it is mana cheating.
I won’t really contest anything you wrote it’s all pretty much on point. But I’ll add some notes from my experience on the climb to leg.
I think statistically I had 1 win (over tens of games) where Astalor actually won me the game. In this deck its used as more of a last ditch clear, and an end-game THREAT, but it rarely ever pans out as a WC, since every deck has like 101 responses that never end, its really hard to exhaust pretty much any deck.
I actually think this is a big factor in this deck being competitive, without the spot removal that concotions allow, this deck would probably lose several win-rate points. For example, dropping a large taunt minion vs a rogue is basically a losing play these days simply because of the strong possibility that minion will be removed for less than 3 mana. I actually think this is slightly too OP in rogue, rogue never had access to such good single removal, and it really makes it harder for decks to go tall vs them.
Yea… this is pretty much the whole point of thief rogue in whatever form its existed. Get some good heavy cost spells and repeatedly abuse them with trickster + recast. What this expansion has added is access to yet more spells + minions from other classes in the form of concotions. I had a game vs a shock-spitter hunter on the climb where by turn 6 I had 2 Ragnaros Lightlords healing me and each other… the guy conceded turn 6. Lightlord was found through a concotion. The ability to high roll has really gone through the roof with the addition of concotions.
Yeap I’m guessing this was through a concotion rather than the more traditional reconnaissance. The best pay off is typically from queen azshara but hardest to complete + can whiff horribly if you get the octopus collosal.
As I said, I don’t really contest the fact that it is mana cheating. Analyzed in a vacuum it certain seems ridiculous when you see how much mana it is really cheating. However, when compared vs other meta decks, its far from the worst offender.
For example, Big Spell Mage is still a thing, I ran into quite a few and consistently lost to BSM because they cheat out more mana MORE CONSISTENTLY. Its absolute bonkers how much mana they cheat throughout the game, each and every turn they are cheating anywhere from 9 to 10 mana sometimes twice!
Then there are the decks that are built around cheating insane amounts of mana in one or two (typically one) turns: quest DH, bless priest and miracle rogue. These are all horrendous to play against.
Unlike thief rogue where it does “moderate” (by comparison) mana cheating over the coarse of several turns throughout the game, Quest DH is a deck entirely built around mana cheat (discount) + draw, then unloading in one (maybe 2) swing turn(s). I personally find this more “offsensive” in the sense that theres not much you can do as the opponent, a lot of the game is based on how they draw, with a god draw they may be able to OTK you turn 6 or 7 if you have any minion with more than 4 health on board.
Miracle rogue: same concept as quest DH, draw + unload your swing turn to create a massive board out of nowhere hoping to overwhelm your opponent. Its fairly consistent at what it does and it also feels obnoxious. Much higher on the mana cheat scale than thief rogue once again.
And of course, bless priest. I’ve had bless priests literally get something like 15 raw mana crystals turn 6 (after stealing shadow steps) plus getting 2-3 mana discount on every spell in thier hand that they draw, cheating probably somewhere in the range of 50-100 mana in one turn! Absolute bonkers.
So that thing I will say about this deck is that, yes, it can be obnoxious to play against due to all the value and cards it generates, but its one of the few decks in the game that gives you a fighting chance against nearly every deck out there, including the awful decks I just described lol.
So its really a matter of what poison do you hate more, if you really hate mana cheating then the big three to hate are quest DH, bless priest and miracle rogue. If you really hate value generation, then thief rogue is awful. If you hate both, then BSM is probably the worst offender in both categories.
I honestly wouldn’t mind if they toned down mana cheat across the board, including in thief rogue. It is getting out of hand, and a decks can’t be competitive without it.
Word of warning for anyone wanting to play this deck, the two worst MU in my experience are
Frost DK: they burn you down very quick.
Big Spell Mage: they out-cheat mana and value
I’ve won MU vs Frost DK (faced a handful), have not yet won vs BSM (only faced 2).
Now that frost DKs are more prevalent at <100 leg, thief rogue might be a poor choice.
To win:
Frost DK: you need an uber roll, need lifesteal everything or armor to survive, not easy to roll enough.
BSM: I think to win you’d have to out-value them (double up on queen azshara thru spell copy or shadowstep or both.) Even if you land a good Scabbs they can just repeat spells almost in an endless loop. Generally you can’t pressure them because they have too much HP gain through armor. Overall very hard MU. I think the only way to win here would be to tech Theotar to steal discounted spells (like Rune.) But theotar is a terrible tech in almost every MU.
That’s just a card killer. Like when 0 cost cards were drawn by the nerfed Galakrond the Tempest, but they now costed 1 mana. Galakrond became unplayable.
That would be a permanent destruction, for the rest of Hearthstone, to the Miracle Rogue archetype.
Or more realistically it wouldn’t matter because they would give you mana instead of discounting cards. Gain 10 mana for the next spell only. Preparation, Gain 2 mana for the next spell only. Serrated Bone Knife, Gain 2 mana for the next card only.
I’d also like to toss in I’d love to see Shadowstep taken out once and for all. OR, at bare minimum, give the card an actual cost above (0) and/or remove the discount
that really not that terrible it a 5/5 minion and 5dmg to the face hardly something you cant come back from esp since he was on the coin means you will be at 4 mana on your turn, there are alot more powerfull things you can get from it.
and it a risky thing to recast with tess/stash since it doesnt say enemy it can easly kill his stuff hit his own face also.
I despise this style of play and this deck specifically.
I think the ability to replay a bunch of stuff that cost waaaay more than five mana for five mana is broken in almost any game. I honestly don’t understand how this card isn’t more complained about.
It usually isn’t the first set of cards from different classes that causes the issues for me, but when it all comes right back down for five mana, that’s too much.