VS Data Reaper #303: Shaman Supremacy Edition

Multiplayer Discussion
42

I did some thinking and I think I understand why I rate high skill the way I do.

I mainly play homebrew non-meta decks. These are much harder to pilot and have a positive win rate with because you have to do a lot more work.

When I play a meta deck, it feels like I switched the game over to “Easy Mode” if such a thing existed.

So perhaps the decks that are meta decks that are considered higher skill are higher skill compared to the rest of the meta decks, which I agree, but aren’t higher skill compared to when playing something that is completely off meta.

For example, people on here posted Reno DH decks. I can’t play it and do well. They are extremely hard to pilot because the course to victory is not clear. It takes a LOT of playing and testing the deck. I played the deck lists people here have posted and even after 20 games it still isn’t clear HOW to win a lot of times.

Then I pick up a meta deck and it just works by itself. I know immediately within 1-3 games how the deck operates. It’s clear how to win because the win is practically handed to you in your hand.

So perhaps I’m judging a bit too harshly on the decks.

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43

Obviously, the better the ranks you play in, the harder it gets to pilot anything, especially decks like Sonya

The thing about Sonya isn’t memorizing the combo (it literally enters your muscle memory after 2-3 games) but knowing your win conditions at every point and against every opponent (AND realizing those in time to execute your move, which requires high APM).

Do I go for OTK? Do I go for outsustaining/outvaluing?

The higher you go, the thinner the line between the two win cons becomes, as your opponents also get better at realizing both their own, and their opponent’s win cons.

I never played the deck myself, but seeing top 100-200 people play it made it look so easy if you only know what your win con is.

“Look, my opponent doesn’t have OTK potential, which means I can just keep healing every turn and clearing the board until I win”, or

“Look, my Griftah was so nice to give me deal 6 dmg, let’s OTK them real quick”

From my point of view, this is 100% right

From their point of view, watching All ranks, not just better ones, they do have a point. It’s very hard to pilot properly because you have to balance strategizing with mechanics and you have to do it real quick, which sucks when you’re clueless about the game and win because you can spot a pattern or two which works most of the times.

EDIT: In that short time of Sonya Rogue dominance, I have never played two similar games against it. Every game (except for the first 4 turns or so) was entirely different. What more do you need as proof it’s hard to pilot?

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44

Kinda dumb that they advertise to people to play big shaman. That deck is expensive and not the easiest to play; people who struggle to go legend or mediocre players of legend (people who play 24/7 and go legend by brute force) will jump into it and plummet its win rate; the streamer they say who popularized it is an extremely calculated and calm and smart person who is not fooling around.

But I’m not surprised; it’s VS; I’m used to them suggesting dumb things to players.

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45

The deck is ridiculously easy to play

It has only 2 combos (1 is of major importance, the other one is mechanical) and it plays like any other rainbow deck

The only downside I see to it right now is that, like many strong decks which are underplayed, it’s linear and gets boring very fast. You literally depend on drawing Hagatha before Cliff Dive and Walking Mountains AND having a transform location on the board, that’s the whole wisdom behind it.

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46

Cliff Dive alone, will plummet the win rate by like 10%, if it’s played by a mediocre pilot.

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47

Which part of that do you consider to be hard?

Take a look at VS Tier lists based on rankings from:

  • D10-D5
  • D4-D1
  • Legend
  • Top 1K

and see for yourself what you can conclude.

Answer:

It’s the strongest deck in whole of diamond and only losing winrate the higher you go with ranks, which means it’s spectacularly easy deck to pilot which has upper limits in its strength defined by the odds of drawing X card before the Y card.

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48

Kind of?

I don’t expect blizz to fix it the right way, and those kinds of fixes even if they started making the cards now would be about a year out, so in the meantime, while the interactions don’t exist, I think blizz should refrain from promoting the archetype.

It’s a both things in, or both things out kind of deal.

One of my Mage’s preferred matchups! :slight_smile:

Another deck I welcome growing in popularity because throwing 4x water elementals at their face makes them sad with their ginormous weapon.

Yeah, had plenty of games against it I just conceded because I knew they could infinitely loop rush minions and heal face for 12 while they waited on damage.

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49

Yeah, this was what I did. Didn’t get the 6 damage, but got the heal. Easy to stay alive. It’s what I do now with Amalgam DK :rofl:

Griftah is super good. Being able to bounce him is pretty nuts which is why Rogue could do the things it did (and of course Sonya)

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50

Like the first line in VS:

People on the forums:
Still find something to argue with each other about and tearing into each other.

Won’t be put it past the community to start another “game’s boring/dying/devs are terrible” thread :joy:

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51

Balanced doesn’t mean fun.

It just means it’s balanced.

You could balance the game by giving every class a turn 4 OTK that they all can draw at about the same rate.

Would that be fun?

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52

Is fun even quantifiable?
It’s so subjective that I say no.
Ask two people what they find fun.

53

Giving every class the same thing isn’t balance. Balance is DIFFERENT choices all having the appearance of being potentially optimal.

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54

I mean, it really IS the most diverse. I’m having fun, for the most part. There are some cheesy interactions I’d like to see go away, most of which involve Marin, but other than that I’m ok with the meta and the diversity.

But, I also think we’re in a meta that is a very power crept meta with a slight inclination that if everything is broken, nothing is broken. Marin scams way too many games…but it’s ok because everyone is using Marin.

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55

I mean, that’s basically how every major deck plays right now…

Early tempo into true or near OTK burst from hand. Sometimes they replace that with a massive board swing turn like early giants or a razzle dazzler/evolve.

We don’t have a wide variety of deck strategies going on. It’s mostly just waiting to see who gets the blowout turn first.

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56

Tourist mechanic is making it look balanced, but it really isn’t xD

You got a broken Druid ramp + dragon package which is included in every Druid deck, so that’s 15% of the meta = one dragon ramp package (dragon part of it also makes Zarimi strong).

You got a broken Rainbow package which is shared between DK and Shaman, so there goes another 21,2% of the meta.

Finally, you got the strong, consistent self-dmg package for Warlock, which makes up another 15% of the meta.

So basically, more than 50% of all decks are due to 3 packages and them being able to share cards between each other

All the other decks can also be explained by 1 or 2 packages shared between classes

The meta is diverse…yes, it is. It’s nice not knowing which version of a deck you’re playing against until a differential card drops.

But at the end of the day, it’s still just 4/11 classes allllll the waaaayyyy

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57

They should call ‘rainbow shaman’ ‘unicorn shaman’ because I dont think I’ve seen it… It also seems like an awful list.

I would wager that a nostalgia shaman list would be so much better because 3+ random legendaries on turn 4 or 5 is much better than trying to finagle a turn 7+ otk with skirting.

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58

Both of them!

Well, that’s Evolve shaman, and they’re pretty much equal in all aspects xDD winrate and playrate

Although I guess you can put it in any list if you really wish so, although I wouldn’t recommend. You have to have a board control to have a reasonable chance to come out ahead, and that means being 5 mana ahead on board than your opponent is.

59

Strange… how could rogue be one of the worst classes when i have been assured many times on here that preparation and shadowstep are completely busted cards? xD
It shows how weak the Rogue set was when lamplighter, pupil and Griftah were the cards carrying the class through the first few rounds of nerfs
I didnt really like the Sonya deck, but i do think it is pretty skill intensive. It isnt just memorizing one or two combo lines; there are a lot of different ways you can play any turn and i see a lot of people trying to downplay the complexity of it in here. I still think the Garotte deck was better because it had more flexibility in the tempo lines you could take.

Pupil was definitely the right nerf target. If you watched the masters tour, that card was everywhere wreaking havoc

The Shaman turnaround has been pretty impressive.

Kind of annoying that Druid is the only class that can make reno work right now because ramp.

Maestra and eudora continue to dissapoint. Games are just too fast to kill your tempo on turn 5 for a play that does very little on that turn. Especially if the response for your opponent is to play a 6 mana card that summons 3 or 4 5 drops. Most decks are trying to set up 2 or 3 turn lethal while these cards are 2 or 3 turns away from paying off. It just seems obvious that they would still be bad at 5 mana

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60

Wait…Wait…I was just informed that Handbuff Paladin is a bad deck and sees no play because it’s just awful tier 7 deck. These Vs Data Reaper guys must be all Bronze 10 players.

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61

It’s time for them to tell us about how Shaman is tier 7 and doesn’t exist…

…which they have.

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