I know a “little” about programming too. Over 10 years of experience in three different companies, along with a Master’s degree in CS and several years of teaching in different universities.

Guess what? You don’t have a clue as to what you are talking about.

I couldn’t have said it better myself Zombie.

I think you have some confusion as to how “for profit” companies work.

Yep, the VS guys understand it. Most of the larger HS community is totally unenlightened. Classic case of the blind leading the blind.

Not 100%, I guess. But 99.9% seems like a reasonable estimate.

“Whether you love or hate decks built around the idea of removing threats and turtling up, it’s the only efficient way to beat aggro in Hearthstone”

What Aggro decks? There are so many “efficient” removals in HS right now, there are virtually no Aggro decks in HS relying on minion damage. The problem with removal based Control decks is that they lack opponents, not answers.

Toxic? Look in the Mirror, fool.

If they did that, cry babies like you would just find something else to cry about. Spoiled little brat.

“Bringing original deck designs and skill expression is more challenging than ever, and the setup of the competitive scene (brutally top-heavy in a game with high built-in variance) doesn’t build viewer goodwill in the long run.”

I’m a bit confused about “skill expression is more challenging than ever”. Are you saying the skill cap in the game is lower now than before? If so, you have lost your mind. Garrote Rogue is by far the highest skill cap deck HS has ever seen.

Stick to Arena. Play Curvestone. HS has passed you by.

The data on HSR is a little suspect. In general, balance changes are not handled well by the site, but this time around the decks they are listing as the best performing are quite fishy. I would wait from the curated data from VS before making any conclusions.

In any event, plenty of FAV non-hero cards are seeing play now. The Mage 1 and 2 drops are both good cards, and with the buffs, Ping Mage is finally a real deck. Shaman has a couple of good Freeze-related cards. Vindicator is used in every Paly deck. Thief Rogue relies on the Gnoll, plus a few other cards from the set.

And look at that. A player hit Rank 5 Legend with Shadow Priest. The deck is a little different from the UiS Shadow Priest, but even the “redesigned” witch makes an appearance in it.

No way!

And you love crying about her nerf. Get over it. Grow up.

Illucia was broken from day one. There is no way that Priest should ever be allowed such a tool.

I suspect the nerf won’t ever get reverted, even when she is rotated to Wild.

Why is Garrote Rogue not mentioned here? The nerf at the end of UiS didn’t kill the deck. And it’s even better now because of Scabbs.

QL Hunter does NOT have an answer for turn one Trogg. That is basically GG.

Duels is intended to be and will eventually be a Wild format. The developers already made it clear that sets will not rotate out.

There are very few Wild cards included in the best Duels starter decks. Power creep is a thing. And the treasures and passives tend to have more synergy with the newer cards.

Didn’t they remove all requirements on the Passive/Treasure choices?

Yep. QL is too slow. Owl them Control Warriors down! And don’t forget to emote “Thanks for the free win”.

The change is totally irrelevant as the card is competitively unplayable regardless of whether the summons minions were elementals, demons, beasts, or anything else for that matter.

Stop expecting handouts.

This deck is utter trash. The synergies are nowhere near consistent.

Why is it being published here? Because some guy Hugh rolled with it? To get from 15 to 8?

We KNOW this archetype is totally irrelevant in the competing Meta. There is NOTHING new with this build.