It’s not quite as if I played with Boogie Down before the nerf, but I’m still pretty confident that Boogie Down was buffed. It’s the best card in the deck. Most of the time Keeper’s Strength is about as good, arguably better, but some of the time it’s near worthless, e.g. against Warrior or any other non-board deck. Keeper’s Strength is feast or famine, Boogie Down is always top tier.
Foul Egg is by far the best one mana minion in the deck. In a Sludge Warlock/Control Warrior meta you don’t even need to draw buffs for it every game.
I also confirmed my hypothesis that Paladin is an aggro deck NOT a combo deck. If you hold your Garden’s Graces for the meme turn of turning a 1/1 into a massive Windfury, then you WILL lose games that were otherwise winnable against decks like Sludge Warlock and Control Warrior that can clear your boards; you need to hope that Grace will protect against removal. Similarly if you hold your Shroomscavates too much; if the extra shield + attack is enough to clear the other board vs not being able to clear it, then it’s probably best not to hold it. A “combo deck” that can and should blow its combo pieces for additional tempo isn’t a combo deck at all, and if you play it like it is one then that delusion WILL cost you winnable games.
Speaking of Shroomscavate I saw at least one other Paladin in Diamond cast this on a Divine Shield minion, attack into my guy, then attack into my other guy. Don’t be this Paladin. Attack into my guy THEN Shroomscavate then attack into my guy. Obviously.
So really as far as things I said from the data analysis armchair, all I can say was I told you so. The only thing I feel I was significantly ignorant about was how bad botting had become during my absence from ranked play. Interestingly my first two opponents in Bronze seemed to be human (and I embarrassingly lost my first match lol, vs Taelan Brann Warrior) but after that it was like 1 human in Silver, 1 in Gold, 1 in Platinum and EVERY other opponent was a bot and a win, and the only other human I lost to before Diamond was the Platinum human. Something like 21-2 record at the start. I normally say “over 80% winrate doesn’t exist” but I should have said “over 80% winrate doesn’t exist vs humans” because these bots are running Worgen Infiltrator and similar garbage, I don’t think I could lose. Diamond was essentially reversed, like 1 bot the rest human, and FAR more difficult.
Like, I don’t even know what to say with a straight face to players who say they’re stuck below Diamond. I don’t know, play a deck that doesn’t get rolled by neutral Murlocs. It’s just not that hard. I think I did it in like four hours, maybe 5. I can’t imagine it’s ever been easier to hit Diamond.
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Yeah I don’t remember exactly but it was 10XX. Almost top 1k, not quite tho
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So atleast i’m wasn’t dreaming of plague DK becoming tier 1.
With that said i’m got the “why” really wrong.
Also i’m cooking a new mage deck that is probably the final form of rommath mage but i’m really didn’t know much from generating coins as mage other than my personal experience so it does not really help.
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It’s a really tough matchup for Excavate Paladin. They can pop Shields for days and once they drop Primus I’m pretty locked down unless I have Finley, so it normally comes down to me making a big Grace minion and just praying that they don’t have Pit Boss. If they do that’s normally the whole game.
We have a class 3 meta
That’s no good. This is when we start losing Jaegers and pilots.
Before long we’ll start seeing class 4s, then 5s and probably two at a time. And before long they’ll be coming two at a time through the breach.
The Becket Boys (Pacific Rim Complete Score) - YouTube
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It got nerfed for being a top tier deck that relies on random generation, I would say.
I think plague DK’s rise has a lot to do with nerfs but also corpse bride buffs and miner casualties. Casualties makes it easy to stockpile corpses and get an on curve corpse groom at 8+ and follow that up with a free corpse giant.
Thats a really strong proactive curve.
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If it’s not Mining Casualties, it’s those freaking weird undead gnomes with the Y-pose. Truly unsettling art.
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It’s flexible enough to be aggro, tempo and aggro-control, sometimes combo
What server are you playing on? America or EU?
But how do you decide when to take that stand? Between bladestorms, 3-part ping removal, brawls, renos and executes, how in the world does one decide “now is the turn to try to make my minion stick”?
I haven’t had much luck against warriors playing like that. I play it full tempo against warriors with 46% win rate. My best win condition is Azerite ASAP - the faster I get to all minions being 4/4 and 5/5 the higher chances I have of winning.
There is way too much versions of that warrior deck running around. Some play boombots, some don’t, some have brawl and excavate brawl, some don’t. I don’t even know what removal they have until they play it (or not).
It’s just a matter of knowing the removals and calculating how they’d work against you. Like you’ve already seen them Forge so you reckon they have Bellowing Flames or Sanitize, well if you can make anything a 6 Health Divine Shield then you know that’ll live through either, unless Hammer can pop the shield first (Taunt is your friend).
You can also math out whether a Grace will allow Trial by Fire to not quite clear your board, or still clear it. If it still clears then maybe you don’t, but having anything, even a 2/1, survive a Trial still gives you face damage options the next turn plus 4 face from the Grace itself, so that’s worth.
The good part about that strategy is that it makes Boogie Down pull a full board that’s immune to Aftershocks, so if they used different removal earlier it can make Aftershocks dead.
But the bad part about that strategy is that there’s no way to drop Dragon before turn 6, and that’s with a VERY Excavate-heavy hand that includes a Kobold on turn 2, very low early pressure. Usually it comes online more like turn 8, and the later the game gets the worse your odds are. You’re practically begging to walk into a devastating Reno when you depend on Dragon.
I think I won on the back of Dragon maybe once vs all the control warriors. But I won a lot more often by trying to win without Excavate, focusing instead on Holy, and trying to get the job done before they get to turn 8.
It’s both.
But decks weren’t running Crop Rotation until Mining Casualties for some reason.
I mean I was, I’ve been singing the praises of Plague Strike-Grimwalker-Mining Casualties-Tour Guide for forever. Even Army of the Dead I think was good when Paladin was super popular. Turns out Acolyte of Death is a great addition to that package.
Well look at that. The Warriors all reverting back to good old fashioned Odyn Warrior. Tired of losing to DK.
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Hi Melph, pls dont take this wrong or anything, not my intent.
I am just wondering why you create these (mostly useful) threads titling them as “VS Syndicate ABCDFGE”
You dont need to include the word Syndicate. VS is Viscious Syndicate, so adding an additional “Syndicate” is unnecessary - VS is VS, not VSS.
Syndicate is already covered by the “S” in VS. You dont need to cover it again by using the word Syndicate.
Sorry, nothing but respect for you, it just triggers me that you do this. Its an automated teller machine (ATM). Not an automated teller machine machine (ATMM) sorta deal.
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Because by design this game was more about board. That’s ehy combat is much simplified compared to mtg. Same with interaction in your opponent’s turn or more lack of it.
Yet they keep pushing either crazy control cards like 2 mana deal 3 to all which is absurd or some solitaire decks like sluge warlock.
The core design is limiting. Yet they still pushing those super control or otks.
I’ve listened to pretty much the whole podcast, and here is my take based on it and what I know of the meta.
Zach0 is just wrong. He’s overconfident in his aggregate data (EDIT: or perhaps working with outdated data.) In broad strokes, as one can expect, he is correct, Sludge warlock, plague DK and the two Warriors make up a sizeable chunk of the meta, but he omitted one critical player: 30-card Odyn-Reno warrior running duplicates.
This is a relatively new development, but the 30 card Odyn-Reno warrior has the following properties:
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Annihilates sludge warlock better than control warrior. Probably 60-40 or 65-35.
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Annihilates control warrior AND reno warrior. Probably 60-40 again.
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Goes nearly 50-50 with plague DK. In reality its probably 48ish-52 in favor of the DK. If plague DK makes up the entirety of the meta, can swap one minion for ETC + steam cleaner to improve matchup by probably 5-10%, making it favored in this MU. Probably would lose 2-4% overallwinrate by making this swap in every other MU, so have to be very careful and make the swap only if DK is prevalent.
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Annihilates pretty much any aggressive deck, including naga DH, can stack more armor than almost any deck in the game.
So… can someone say Tier G (for godlike) deck? It clearly sits above sludge warlock in its spread, and sludge warlock is supposedly Tier S.
This is not my decklist, its actually Meati’s and he hit rank 1 legend with it with a winrate of 44-11.
Ive been running this deck through D10-legend and am on a 10-1 streak. The 1 loss is my very first game I played and didn’t know how to drop odyn best.
Sooooo yea. Zach0, DEAD WRONG on this one guys.
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Wait, so he is wrong based on a relatively new development that was unlikely to even be a blip on the radar when he made the podcast???
No, when the podcast was cast he can only go by the data he has access to. He cant realistically be expected to account for “relatively new” decks. You set your bar far too high if you expect that.
Okay fair point, I think the deck was put together by Meati around the same time the podcast was released. So maybe he is working on outdated data.
VS will always lag behind the “actual” meta. Its unavoidable. They could post on Meati’s deck with a small sample size over a small amount of time, or they could report on the data they have over a weeks worth of data. Which method would you prefer?
You either lag behind, or dont have enough data.
E: the pros (like Meati) are the ones playing the decks in NEXT week report/pod cast. The scrubs are the ones playing the deck in the most recent report/pod cast. I am firmly in the scrub bracket, like 99%+ of the population.
I don’t know how they say plague DK is bran absolute counter… played to legend using bran war and I crush DK instead of getting crushed 
It’s just so sad they choose warrior again for the spring championship qualification season.
I’d rather drop dead than play it.
I mean, what does the Warrior mirror match up even look like? 1 hour games? Who needs that from a card trading game? I don’t get it.
Why are we competing with dota and lol or even worse? Even their matches are faster than this now.
I don’t believe that wall of text for a second, the meta is very diverse to me and every hero sees play