It should be working correctly right now!

I apologize. That’s a side effect of printing new versions of the same, or just similarly named cards again and again. If I try to remember all of them, I mess them up sometimes 🙂 Fixed it.

No, it’s not bad. But it’s just not good enough to force itself into every deck.

People played sub-optimal cards like Bloodsail Corsair or Southsea Captain just to get the Patches out. Before, it was worth it. Now, without the Charge, the card got significantly weaker, so it’s not worth it.

Plus, in decks that just played 2 “activators”, the chance of drawing Patches was significantly higher. Before, it was already bad, but not the end of the world – you still had 1/1 with Charge. Not drawing it is even more punishing, as it’s often completely useless – you can’t even use it to finish off a 1 health minion or something.

Right now, Patches servers the purpose it was supposed to serve – it’s a nice addition to the Pirate decks. If you make a full Pirate deck, you STILL want him, as he’s a free 1/1 most of time. If you run 10 other Pirates, the chance to draw him before you can summon him from the deck is significantly lower, so the risk/reward makes it worth it, as opposed to any deck just running “Pirate package”.

Same goes for Dirty Rat, actually.

He’s referring to Azari, the Devourer from Rin, not N’Zoth.

Either with an early/mid game aggression, if you curve out right, or with the repeated Val’anyr value later in the game. Having an infinite 4 attack weapon that buffs something every other turn is more powerful than a lot of people think, even Warlocks might have hard time dealing with it. You just want to bait Silence with BoK or Steed first.

Warlock is not necessarily the best matchup, but it’s winnable.

By the way – OF COURSE you want to play Divine Spirit in that deck. Playing Inner Fire without Divine Spirit doesn’t make any sense, you’re just limiting your combo potential.

Just saying, in the end you can play whatever you want and feel like, but Divine Spirit would fit much better than that Faerie Dragon or Cobalt Scalebane. And if you don’t play Divine Spirit, it would probably be better to replace Inner Fire with something else (e.g. Shadow Ascendant would probably fit it better).

At this point, there are no new meta decks, because the meta was already figured out a while ago. But people still want to see which decks are played at the higher ranks, so lots of them are getting reposted.

And I always say this – the name in the title does NOT necessarily imply who created this deck, but who piloted it to a higher rank. Reaching Top 100 Legend with a relatively weak deck like this one is a solid achievement.

It is good. People are teching against it and have learned how to play against it, but it’s still good. I think that the problem lies somewhere else, maybe you’re playing a bad build (the one in the article is a general one – you might want to adjust it to the meta you face), maybe the meta you play against is not friendly for Warlocks, maybe you aren’t playing it optimally, etc.

Of course, you can never “know” for sure, but it boils down to the meta knowledge. For example, take a look at the deck stats from Vicious Syndicate: https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-84/

And now you face Paladin. Significant majority of the Paladins on the ladder are playing aggressive decks, so you mulligan vs a fast deck. You CAN be wrong, let’s say 1 in 15 games you will meet a Control/Exodia Paladin, but majority of time you will meet fast decks.

On the other hand, look at the Warlock. 16% is Control and 3% is Zoo. So it’s safe to say that you want to mulligan vs a slow deck, because that’s what most of the Warlocks play.

You also need to be aware of the meta around the rank you’re playing, because it differs. E.g. in lower ranks, you might meet more Zoo, so you need to be ware of that (just an example).

Sometimes it’s impossible to determine that, e.g. back in Un’Goro, there was a point where Pirate Warrior and Taunt Warrior was 50/50. In such cases, you generally want to mulligan for the faster deck. You can recover from a bad mulligan vs a slow deck, but if you keep your greedy cards and throw away removals / cheap stuff against Aggro, you will have a very hard time. In general, reading the meta is one of the most important skills to learn when playing Hearthstone.

I think that playing 5 games and calling the deck terrible isn’t fair, given how this game works. Between matchup RNG, draw RNG and the fact that you don’t know how to play the deck (sorry, but even the easy decks take more than 5 games to learn), this sample size is far from enough.

Playing off-meta, “fringe” decks has a specific reason. You usually use them to counter the meta you’re facing. Those are rarely good in lower ranks, when people play basically every deck existing. But they’re great at the “choke points”, such as Ranks 3-1 (where people tryhard to get into Legend and usually play the same 2-3 top tier decks), or high Legend (similar reason).

If the deck didn’t work, someone wouldn’t hit high Legend with it. But the fact that the deck “works” under specific circumstances doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work when played vs any meta.

Azalina is far from a Control-oriented card. You would never want her in a Control deck. It’s a bit like saying that “Divine Favor” is a control oriented card, because it draws you cards.

Aggro decks are actually her place, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s pretty bad, because of the high mana cost, weak stats and effect that is only useful vs slower decks.

The point behind this deck seems to be “play your hand as fast as you can and then play Azalina to refill”. Needless to say, that’s not a great plan and this deck doesn’t look strong at all.

I might not remember correctly, but I thought that he was referencing the “drafting based on power level and not on the rarity” part and only that part. Because no one knew that they’re going to increase the average power level along with it – they just didn’t announce that part.

Anyway, it’s not really important. I just wanted to say that the new drafting system is much better than the old one, but increasing power level was a big mistake.

Official post: https://playhearthstone.com/en-gb/blog/21634714/new-year-of-the-raven-celebration

It starts at 23:59 on March 26th, so basically on midnight. It should be the case for every server.

That’s actually something I haven’t thought about. Allowing to search for even/odd cards would also make building such decks much more clear.

On the other hand, you wouldn’t be able to look at all those cards you’re missing when making an even/odd deck and think about your life decisions.

My guess is that the thinks that Highlander means “Velen combo” deck, because nearly every Highlander Priest build was running one.

To the creator, Highlander means no duplicate cards (only singletons, to support cards like Reno Jackson, Kazakus etc.). It’s a reference to the line from Highlander movies, “there can be only one”.

I think the devs have mentioned during K&C reveal season that they don’t plan to print more Rogue Secrets soon, it was just a thing in that expansion.

But they might have obviously changed their mind!

I’m quite sure that the deck was drafted before hotfix. I drafted like 3 or 4 decks after that and they were nowhere near close to the previous insane power level, just like my opponents. Relatively small sample size, so still hard to say, but it feels better now.

But the thing is, Kripp wasn’t really wrong. It’s not the fault of a new drafting system. It’s the fact that they’ve significantly increased average power level of every Arena decks WHILE making that change.

The change about “showing 3 cards of similar power level” has nothing to do with crazy powerful Arena drafts. Kripp was right that it couldn’t get worse, because Blizzard has nowhere stated that the average power level will go up so significantly while switching to the new system.

Edit: Just checked it. Deck was drafted on 14th, hotfix went live on 16th. Draft on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/238780967?t=02h06m23s

It does not matter at all, it will disenchant for 1,600 now and still for 1,600 after it rotates out 🙂

Do you mean Hall of Fame or just regular rotation?

If Hall of Fame, you should wait until the card rotates out before disenchanting it.

If you’re talking about normal rotation, it doesn’t change anything, it will disenchant for the same amount anyway.