Old Guardian's Comments
Old Guardian's Control Warlock (Witchwood Theorycraft)
If you need to specifically tech for the Warlock mirror, yes, but teching that heavily for one class only seems questionable. Perhaps it could also help vs aggro by healing from a Voidwalker, but I’m not sold on that yet.
Shaman in The Witchwood: Elementals, OTK, or Perhaps Snowfury Giants?
I tried to build an Even Shaman list for this piece, but I could not find a win condition for it. Murkspark Eel is obviously great, and I tried to fit in Totem Cruncher to make good use of that one-cost Hero Power, but then what?
The deck just has nowhere to go. You’d want to use Grumble and Kalimos, maybe, but without odd-cost cards, you cannot put together a solid Elemental package. There are no Totem synergy cards left in Standard, you cannot do anything with your Hero Power. You can’t even put Bloodlust into the deck and play a token game. Seems like a dead end to me.
Shaman in The Witchwood: Elementals, OTK, or Perhaps Snowfury Giants?
“Shudderwock plays the battlecries in a random order, so it depends on whether it plays the Chain Gang before or after the Grumble.”
https://twitter.com/LegendaryFerret/status/983570022898458625
Quest Decks in Year of the Mammoth and The Witchwood
I’m sorry. Cataclysm is your best chance if you want to give it a try, but as I wrote in the article, Cataclysm without Malchezaar’s Imp and Silverware Golem is just so much weaker than it was before – if those tools stayed and everyone else lost things in the rotation, then maybe.. But Quest Warlock loses even more than everyone else.
Quest Decks in Year of the Mammoth and The Witchwood
Is it that strong in Priest? Maybe with Spirit Lash? Priest does not have an obvious way to trigger the effect, unlike Warrior and Mage, for example.
Old Guardian's Giant Spellstone Shaman (Witchwood Theorycraft)
I don’t expect the deck to work as it is, but it’s a starting point for playtesting. Need to find the right mix of survival tools and overload. But yeah, the Giant + Ancestral Spirit + Spellstone combo looks fun.
Quest Decks in Year of the Mammoth and The Witchwood
This is asked a lot. This statement from Peter Whalen is the clearest official word so far:
“Despite the visual timing of the trigger, both Genn and Baku check your starting deck. This makes it much more clear what the rules are and means things like Malchhezaar won’t mess them up. So quests won’t work with Genn.”
https://twitter.com/LegendaryFerret/status/983722198375383040
Will The Witchwood Bring Warrior Back into the Meta?
I see it mostly as a tool for midrange decks: aggro decks want to go face, and control decks usually have board clears in the form of spells. Midrange decks that want to establish board control and use that momentum to win the game benefit from Rush the most both to come back from behind and to protect key threats.
Will The Witchwood Bring Warrior Back into the Meta?
You may even sling 16-damage fireballs in The Witchwood! (I’m not sure if those Hero Power synergy cards make the cut though)
Will The Witchwood Bring Warrior Back into the Meta?
Cards that generate more resources are generally awesome in that kind of game plan. Big Priest, for example, when it is not highrolling the win on four and has to play the long game, really leans on Lich King and Ysera.
There is of course also the charge route with Grom and perhaps Charged Devilsaur, but for the more Control Warrior type of experience card generators are great.
Will The Witchwood Bring Warrior Back into the Meta?
Dragon Priest loses a lot in the rotation. Priest may still need to run Dragon synergies for Duskbreaker, but without Netherspite Historian and Drakonid Operative, the deck is far less oppressive. I have faith in being able to challenge that.
Warlock, on the other hand, well, I’m not sure how to challenge that one. It will probably be the measure when building new decks post-rotation: can this deck take on Warlock, and how?
Will The Witchwood Bring Warrior Back into the Meta?
Togwaggle Warrior kind of works, not sure if it will be good enough after the rotation – but the power level overall goes down a little, which should help it.
Control is in an awkward spot. What is the win condition? The times of Ysera/Grom/Cairne are long gone and N’Zoth is rotating out. Recruit Warrior may be the closest thing to pure control we’re going to see in the near future.
Will The Witchwood Bring Warrior Back into the Meta?
Why not? Classes go in and out of the meta all the time, it is not impossible for Warrior to return – and eventually Blizzard will create good enough cards for it to do that.
Will The Witchwood Bring Warrior Back into the Meta?
I have high hopes for Tempo Warrior thanks to Rush. I realize that I may be in for a disappointment, but it will be fun to try it.
Will The Witchwood Bring Warrior Back into the Meta?
Rush is copied from Shadowverse, and it is not that bad there. It’s not flashy, but it is not useless either.
Cards That Are Leaving Standard Will Help Shape The Witchwood Meta
Have you played a lot of Blizzard games? That’s the way Blizzard works with all of their games, you never get the detailed information from within the game itself or even from the official site.
As for how do we know, well, we test, we ask, and the developers respond. All of the information is in hundreds of Reddit comments and Tweets made by the developers in response to individual questions: I have asked many of them myself and received responses that have then become widely circulated.
For example, here’s one Tweet confirming the Discover mechanic weights (question not asked by me): https://twitter.com/bdbrode/status/666359351980920832
Cards That Are Leaving Standard Will Help Shape The Witchwood Meta
That’s cool!
(although I reserve the right to believe it when I see it)
Cards That Are Leaving Standard Will Help Shape The Witchwood Meta
I actually once saw a Spell Hunter win a game with Dinomacy – first using the regular Hero Power and then switching over to Dinomancy to also buff a beast on the same turn for another two damage.
Rhok’delar goes down from 33 spells to 27 – plus whatever comes from the new set, probably two new spells. You were likely to only get around one of those bad spells on average, but yeah, it does become a little better.
Cards That Are Leaving Standard Will Help Shape The Witchwood Meta
The percentage is of course preliminary. That said, as class minions are heavily weighed, it will not change much if there are no Priest taunts in the set. Even if there are, it will be higher than it was with the three rotating sets in the pool.
Thanks, I’m glad that you enjoyed it! Even Paladin has been the best deck I’ve played so far – there are still tens to try, of course – and it feels really solid.
There are also plenty of ways to tweak it in the future as the meta evolves, I tried to discuss some of the potential cards in the guide to give you a glimpse into what can be changed if the current list stops working as well.