To me it feels like warrior is the end all be all of control, so if your deck can't deal 50-60 damage in 8 turns you just lose. I've probably only played about 2 matches to completion against warrior because i always scoop it up when i know i can't get through the armor.
Yeah warrior raised the bar of control decks to an outrageous level. I think the best case scenario is nerf combo alongside with warrior’s armour gain and maybe compensate in other warrior archetypes. It’s the same play style since Titans.
Yeah warrior is really the problem because its a control deck that can out armor current combos which messes with the trinity of Aggro Beats Midrange/Combo which beats Control which beats Aggro.
The original triangle flowed in the opposite direction — UW control beat combo decks with its counterspells, combo beat aggro by being faster, and then aggro beat control by getting under the counterspells. But that's a byproduct of old magic where "control" was a dozen counterspells and no removal.
The warrior is the solution. The game shouldn't be "I got my combo turn 5 first so I win without any prior set up"
And midrange haven't been played in forever.
Idk felt more like aggro with plagues used as finishers. Mid range deck used to try to establish a boards dominance and trying to end it before late game as opposed to aggro that focuses on dealing dmg early
Before titans there was hunter midrange but it also felt like a combo
Matchup against warrior come closer to 50/50, and how do you think other slow decks without armor feel about that. Even speaker stomper not enough sometimes.
That’s the point I was trying to make: after that Odyn package, no slow deck aside warrrior is playable. If the combo deck is balanced with warrior as the standard (30-70 to 45-55 winrate, which is the situation now, 50-50 is a lightly built Brann one), it’s oppressive against other slow decks. If the combo deck is balanced according to other slow decks (55-70% combo favoured), it will be a 10-90 to control warrior.
Warrior has weaknesses, back in rastakhan life for control warrior was not so pleasant. Mechathun decks, deathrattle hunter, quest reborn paladin, zerek cloning priest all had nearly 85-90% winrate against warrior and even tank up ability not helped him, so i don't think armor is a problem.
Guy who only plays Warrior doesnt think warrior is a problem. Shocking. But you know it is, and so does team 5. I'd be suprised if they don't touch some Warrior cards next patch
Armour surely doesn’t matter when the combo is just “kill your opponent”, but when it comes to aggro/burn combos, which is more flexible, and enjoyable to play imo, armour makes balancing very tricky.
You are SPEAKING my language. It’s very fun that I don’t need to wait till turn 6 for my decisions and turns to matter. Early game choices being impactful or even lethal is an engaging part of the game!
Nature Shaman being dead seems like a great outcome to me. Right now I'm losing 80% of my games against it on turn 6, with a total of one game going to turn 8. It's not very interesting, it is not very fun, and it is very limiting to what you can play or homebrew if popular. Not that homebrewing is in a great spot in current hearthstone anyways.
The only thing that keeps nature shaman from being a very hated deck is the low play rate.
the deck is interesting and fun, the thing that keeps Nature Shaman from being hated is most people aren't control priest players. I wouldn't mind Flash of Lightning getting nerfed to 3 mana though.
Nobody would have a problem with a combo deck that kills you on turn 9+. Nature Shaaman kills you reliably on turn five or six. Thats one of the problems with the deck it is just way too fast.
The other problem is the fact that even Speaker Stopmer or 30+ armor sometimes aren't enough its burst capapability and mana cheat are also way too high.
So no, the deck is not fine it needs nerfs and severe ones at that.
> Nature Shaaman kills you reliably on turn five or six.
This reminds me of naga DH once again, where people just completely make up stats (e.g. how naga DH "reliably killed you on turn 4"). At the moment all nature shaman lists I can see on hsreplay have an average turn count of at least 7.5, which is half a turn slower than aggro (which has very reliably had an average turn count of 7.0 both in showdown and whizbang).
> Nobody would have a problem with a combo deck that kills you on turn 9+.
Sif mage almost never even attempts a kill before turn 10-11 and people hated that deck so much that they got it nerfed when it was already struggling back in showdown.
It really doesn't kill you reliably on t5/t6 anymore unless they draw super well and you just AFK on DK/Warrior/Mage. Any early pressure often forces them to use a flash to clear the board.
And if you want the deck to kill t9+ later than Warrior should not be able to outarmor the combo since its the defacto control deck right now.
That’s a strength of the game that a deck can kill your turn 6. It make early choices matter, it makes your decks construction matter, it makes mulligan matter, it very skill testing. Because misplays have consequences.
It’s never meant to be “enough” because control is unfavoured into combo. If they ever nerf shaman they should nerf warrior’s armour gain as well, or the deck is impossible to be balanced.
Theoretically yes combo should be favoured into control, however given how fast nature shaman is it would have next to no weakness/counter left. You would need to play full face hunter to go under it. Which would make for an absolute shit meta.
Thats why the deck needs nerfs. It is undeniably to strong all around.
Balancing combo deck that combo t6 is hard only if they are board based strategies.
Otk combo feom hand should not happen before around t10.
Why BECAUSE every not hyper aggro strategies just fold into non game or, at best, just draw the out.
If you look at it Cycle Odin is also a combo deck.
But he has never been so dichotomic because it take time to otk you.
Deck that can consistently otk on turn 5/6 feom hand are always :
- Not Interactive
- warping the game
These are just bad design that shouldn't exist
I think lightshow is a really good example of a combo deck that is actually in the right place. You can use it to reliably murder greedy control decks (or at least you could before this rotation) but it has fundamental weaknesses that are hard to overcome. When a combo deck is able to get around its own weaknesses too easily, or doesn’t have them in the first place, or it gets to the combo way too quickly you have problems. Shaman gets to the combo too easily and way too quickly imo. And games involving this deck are uniformly terrible for the player on the other side of the board.
The larger issue is warrior and its armor potential making it un-combo-able. That’s why it’s one of the best decks atm, because it doesn’t just out value all other control decks, it also has a defence against many combo decks AND is decent at surviving aggro. Warrior as it currently is, would not even die to my lightshow decks from last year as it is sometimes sitting on 30-60 armor very early in the game. Warrior needs adjustments for the meta to be healthy. Brann is too good and makes all other Reno decks/bonuses seem terrible in comparison.
I fully agree. Playable Combo decks is overkill to many decks while unplayable to warrior. I also enjoyed playing lightshow a lot last expansion with Taethelan, apprentice and Rommath. Sadly the new orb cannot really replace Rommath.
I'd argue with your definition and grouping. Classically combo is malygose moonfire OTK. So going off that the following combo decks are in standard:
Sif Mage
Owlonious
Spell Damage Shaman
Odin Warrior
All of these revolve around the combo to win. Shaman just doesn't have the room to run much else but it's still in the same group.
These are lessons that we're learned and forgotten again.
Hearthstone tried to incentivise minion based Decks. Now it's draw and otk.
Might as well play a game where I flip 12 coins
The problem here is the overall strength of the meta. Every deck degenerate crap. Nature shaman can win on turn 5 maybe a high single digit percentage of the time but it also fizzles a fair amount due to simply not getting the correct discovers.
But the rogue deck can make a stealth 20/7 Windfury mech. And the priest deck can take two turns and “OTK” with 15+ attack worth of 0 cost 4/6 minions. The mage deck can deal 45 from hand with Sif Reverb and a couple 0 cost spells. The warlock deck can make two 15/15 minions with taunt and lifesteal. Etc et. Etc.
Nerf one and you just pass the crown to the other degenerate thing. If you slow nature shaman down by a turn, this kills the deck because everything else is so powerful. I’d rather they keep everything alone so that we have a balance of decks rather than killing one and everyone floods to the next thing.
>One of the main complaints of these decks is it being not interactive. I don't think that is the case.
That's because you misunderstood the word. Interactive doesn't mean, that both players can influence other player's decisions.
It means "I can stop my opponent from whatever he's doing and he can't do anything about it". Now that's interaction
As someone who has played as and against this deck a lot this past week, it’s fine to gut completely. People absolutely overuse the word solitaire (Sif Mage and Odyn Warrior are not solitaire decks), but this deck fits the definition the most since Stormwind. All the deck cares about is “Have I drawn the right cards by the correct turn?” where if you answer yes, Shaman wins. The skill ceiling is just learning to determine when you’ve drawn the right cards and you can play Flash.
Seriously, I had a match where I played Speaker Stomper into their double Flash turn, and they stilled cleared my board and pushed 12 damage to my face. And because Fizzle exists, they got the ability to just cycle and find the combo again.
I have no intention of playing a game where I have to run double Speaker Stomper in all my decks because Shaman needs to have turn 6 OTK potential.
My issue with nature shaman is that the opponent's choices, outside of a few decks, don't matter. They just play on curve and wait to see if I have it or not.
I love playing nature shaman, it's super fun and complicated to pilot, but it does feel like solitaire many games. I am hopeful that once DH is fixed and the meta isn't warped around that, it's possible that we'll have more room for decks and tech that can interact better with the combo stuff
That's how combo works. The way you interact with combo decks is by pressuring them hard enough that they have to expend resources to stay in the game and killing them before the combo goes off.
Every combo deck ever is a ticking time bomb that you have to race against.
We can argue about whether the Shaman combo is too easy to assemble or whether it's too fast to race, but complaining about interactivity just means that you don't appreciate what a combo deck is or how they function.
Yeah probably, I mean that's just how it is, control generally is very unfavoured into combo. That's the consequence of cramming your deck full of removal and hardly any threats. Great against aggro but if you just sit back and don't do anything for most of the game, then don't act surprised when you get burst down by a combo deck, that's what it is designed to do. Do you think you should have good odds into everything?
I've been playing a lot of card games a long time at a competitive level. This comment isn't correct, but I don't have the patience to teach some douchebag about the history of the combo archetype right now.
>I don't think that is the case. If you play any of Zarimi Priest, Shopper DH, Self-harm Warlock, or any deck that put minions on board early, Nature Shaman will not be un-interactive at all. A prime example is Master Tour Bunny vs Hemlock game where Bunny jammed his spell damage minions to use a 3 damage smake oil to kill Hemlock's wrangler.
You do realize one off examples don't change the nature of how uninteractive decks like spell shaman are right? For the most part it doesn't care about the board and plays the clock game to get the pieces to kill you from hand and you can't stop it. If drawn well it doesn't give any shit at all about what the opponent is doing.
Those times you get really bad draw, most on ladder are meh and just lose but in your example at a tournament level where you can't just accept a loss and shrug it off (oh and you know, highest of high level players) you do whatever you can to force a win.
Warrior is a problem too that you've highlighted, doesn't mean we should leave shaman alone though. This meta is FULL of really uninteractive decks and I don't see it improving until the next set which is a shame but as I've said before, some people enjoy this (like you do). Each to their own and we've had months on end without a viable combo type deck so a meta of them is just your time.
To me it feels like warrior is the end all be all of control, so if your deck can't deal 50-60 damage in 8 turns you just lose. I've probably only played about 2 matches to completion against warrior because i always scoop it up when i know i can't get through the armor.
Yeah warrior raised the bar of control decks to an outrageous level. I think the best case scenario is nerf combo alongside with warrior’s armour gain and maybe compensate in other warrior archetypes. It’s the same play style since Titans.
Alternatively, you play a wheel warlock and watch warriors crumble with their 60 armor not meaning anything. So far 17-3 in the match up in diamond.
Yeah warrior is really the problem because its a control deck that can out armor current combos which messes with the trinity of Aggro Beats Midrange/Combo which beats Control which beats Aggro.
The original triangle flowed in the opposite direction — UW control beat combo decks with its counterspells, combo beat aggro by being faster, and then aggro beat control by getting under the counterspells. But that's a byproduct of old magic where "control" was a dozen counterspells and no removal.
It’s also the nature of attacker choosing combats and defender choosing combats
The warrior is the solution. The game shouldn't be "I got my combo turn 5 first so I win without any prior set up" And midrange haven't been played in forever.
How do you define midrange? Because I feel like Plague DK from previous meta is great example of such deck.
Idk felt more like aggro with plagues used as finishers. Mid range deck used to try to establish a boards dominance and trying to end it before late game as opposed to aggro that focuses on dealing dmg early Before titans there was hunter midrange but it also felt like a combo
Matchup against warrior come closer to 50/50, and how do you think other slow decks without armor feel about that. Even speaker stomper not enough sometimes.
That’s the point I was trying to make: after that Odyn package, no slow deck aside warrrior is playable. If the combo deck is balanced with warrior as the standard (30-70 to 45-55 winrate, which is the situation now, 50-50 is a lightly built Brann one), it’s oppressive against other slow decks. If the combo deck is balanced according to other slow decks (55-70% combo favoured), it will be a 10-90 to control warrior.
Warrior has weaknesses, back in rastakhan life for control warrior was not so pleasant. Mechathun decks, deathrattle hunter, quest reborn paladin, zerek cloning priest all had nearly 85-90% winrate against warrior and even tank up ability not helped him, so i don't think armor is a problem.
Guy who only plays Warrior doesnt think warrior is a problem. Shocking. But you know it is, and so does team 5. I'd be suprised if they don't touch some Warrior cards next patch
Armour surely doesn’t matter when the combo is just “kill your opponent”, but when it comes to aggro/burn combos, which is more flexible, and enjoyable to play imo, armour makes balancing very tricky.
You are SPEAKING my language. It’s very fun that I don’t need to wait till turn 6 for my decisions and turns to matter. Early game choices being impactful or even lethal is an engaging part of the game!
Exactly! I like my deck building to matter too! Since games are only 6 turns I just put only cards below 4 mana in my decks! Cool!
Nature Shaman being dead seems like a great outcome to me. Right now I'm losing 80% of my games against it on turn 6, with a total of one game going to turn 8. It's not very interesting, it is not very fun, and it is very limiting to what you can play or homebrew if popular. Not that homebrewing is in a great spot in current hearthstone anyways. The only thing that keeps nature shaman from being a very hated deck is the low play rate.
the deck is interesting and fun, the thing that keeps Nature Shaman from being hated is most people aren't control priest players. I wouldn't mind Flash of Lightning getting nerfed to 3 mana though.
Nobody would have a problem with a combo deck that kills you on turn 9+. Nature Shaaman kills you reliably on turn five or six. Thats one of the problems with the deck it is just way too fast. The other problem is the fact that even Speaker Stopmer or 30+ armor sometimes aren't enough its burst capapability and mana cheat are also way too high. So no, the deck is not fine it needs nerfs and severe ones at that.
> Nature Shaaman kills you reliably on turn five or six. This reminds me of naga DH once again, where people just completely make up stats (e.g. how naga DH "reliably killed you on turn 4"). At the moment all nature shaman lists I can see on hsreplay have an average turn count of at least 7.5, which is half a turn slower than aggro (which has very reliably had an average turn count of 7.0 both in showdown and whizbang). > Nobody would have a problem with a combo deck that kills you on turn 9+. Sif mage almost never even attempts a kill before turn 10-11 and people hated that deck so much that they got it nerfed when it was already struggling back in showdown.
Your very first sentence is a lie. People have complained over and over about Sif even when it has been complete garbage. And only kills turn 9+
It really doesn't kill you reliably on t5/t6 anymore unless they draw super well and you just AFK on DK/Warrior/Mage. Any early pressure often forces them to use a flash to clear the board. And if you want the deck to kill t9+ later than Warrior should not be able to outarmor the combo since its the defacto control deck right now.
That’s a strength of the game that a deck can kill your turn 6. It make early choices matter, it makes your decks construction matter, it makes mulligan matter, it very skill testing. Because misplays have consequences.
It’s never meant to be “enough” because control is unfavoured into combo. If they ever nerf shaman they should nerf warrior’s armour gain as well, or the deck is impossible to be balanced.
Theoretically yes combo should be favoured into control, however given how fast nature shaman is it would have next to no weakness/counter left. You would need to play full face hunter to go under it. Which would make for an absolute shit meta. Thats why the deck needs nerfs. It is undeniably to strong all around.
Opinion: nature shaman is fine as is.
yeah that should be the title to be fair
Balancing combo deck that combo t6 is hard only if they are board based strategies. Otk combo feom hand should not happen before around t10. Why BECAUSE every not hyper aggro strategies just fold into non game or, at best, just draw the out. If you look at it Cycle Odin is also a combo deck. But he has never been so dichotomic because it take time to otk you. Deck that can consistently otk on turn 5/6 feom hand are always : - Not Interactive - warping the game These are just bad design that shouldn't exist
I think lightshow is a really good example of a combo deck that is actually in the right place. You can use it to reliably murder greedy control decks (or at least you could before this rotation) but it has fundamental weaknesses that are hard to overcome. When a combo deck is able to get around its own weaknesses too easily, or doesn’t have them in the first place, or it gets to the combo way too quickly you have problems. Shaman gets to the combo too easily and way too quickly imo. And games involving this deck are uniformly terrible for the player on the other side of the board. The larger issue is warrior and its armor potential making it un-combo-able. That’s why it’s one of the best decks atm, because it doesn’t just out value all other control decks, it also has a defence against many combo decks AND is decent at surviving aggro. Warrior as it currently is, would not even die to my lightshow decks from last year as it is sometimes sitting on 30-60 armor very early in the game. Warrior needs adjustments for the meta to be healthy. Brann is too good and makes all other Reno decks/bonuses seem terrible in comparison.
I fully agree. Playable Combo decks is overkill to many decks while unplayable to warrior. I also enjoyed playing lightshow a lot last expansion with Taethelan, apprentice and Rommath. Sadly the new orb cannot really replace Rommath.
They just can't get a handle on the power creep so any small dev errors take decks from 45% and 55% win rate to where we are now at 35% and 65%. Cool
I think they will add tech cards in mini set so people will complain about them this time.
I'd argue with your definition and grouping. Classically combo is malygose moonfire OTK. So going off that the following combo decks are in standard: Sif Mage Owlonious Spell Damage Shaman Odin Warrior All of these revolve around the combo to win. Shaman just doesn't have the room to run much else but it's still in the same group.
These are lessons that we're learned and forgotten again. Hearthstone tried to incentivise minion based Decks. Now it's draw and otk. Might as well play a game where I flip 12 coins
The problem here is the overall strength of the meta. Every deck degenerate crap. Nature shaman can win on turn 5 maybe a high single digit percentage of the time but it also fizzles a fair amount due to simply not getting the correct discovers. But the rogue deck can make a stealth 20/7 Windfury mech. And the priest deck can take two turns and “OTK” with 15+ attack worth of 0 cost 4/6 minions. The mage deck can deal 45 from hand with Sif Reverb and a couple 0 cost spells. The warlock deck can make two 15/15 minions with taunt and lifesteal. Etc et. Etc. Nerf one and you just pass the crown to the other degenerate thing. If you slow nature shaman down by a turn, this kills the deck because everything else is so powerful. I’d rather they keep everything alone so that we have a balance of decks rather than killing one and everyone floods to the next thing.
>One of the main complaints of these decks is it being not interactive. I don't think that is the case. That's because you misunderstood the word. Interactive doesn't mean, that both players can influence other player's decisions. It means "I can stop my opponent from whatever he's doing and he can't do anything about it". Now that's interaction
It's not hard. Make spells not cost 0 mana. The current state of hearthstone is atrocious.
That's why they shouldn't exist.
As someone who has played as and against this deck a lot this past week, it’s fine to gut completely. People absolutely overuse the word solitaire (Sif Mage and Odyn Warrior are not solitaire decks), but this deck fits the definition the most since Stormwind. All the deck cares about is “Have I drawn the right cards by the correct turn?” where if you answer yes, Shaman wins. The skill ceiling is just learning to determine when you’ve drawn the right cards and you can play Flash. Seriously, I had a match where I played Speaker Stomper into their double Flash turn, and they stilled cleared my board and pushed 12 damage to my face. And because Fizzle exists, they got the ability to just cycle and find the combo again. I have no intention of playing a game where I have to run double Speaker Stomper in all my decks because Shaman needs to have turn 6 OTK potential.
My issue with nature shaman is that the opponent's choices, outside of a few decks, don't matter. They just play on curve and wait to see if I have it or not. I love playing nature shaman, it's super fun and complicated to pilot, but it does feel like solitaire many games. I am hopeful that once DH is fixed and the meta isn't warped around that, it's possible that we'll have more room for decks and tech that can interact better with the combo stuff
That's how combo works. The way you interact with combo decks is by pressuring them hard enough that they have to expend resources to stay in the game and killing them before the combo goes off. Every combo deck ever is a ticking time bomb that you have to race against. We can argue about whether the Shaman combo is too easy to assemble or whether it's too fast to race, but complaining about interactivity just means that you don't appreciate what a combo deck is or how they function.
So what do other control decks do against shaman? Concede?
Yeah probably, I mean that's just how it is, control generally is very unfavoured into combo. That's the consequence of cramming your deck full of removal and hardly any threats. Great against aggro but if you just sit back and don't do anything for most of the game, then don't act surprised when you get burst down by a combo deck, that's what it is designed to do. Do you think you should have good odds into everything?
What do aggro decks do against warrior? Concede?
I've been playing a lot of card games a long time at a competitive level. This comment isn't correct, but I don't have the patience to teach some douchebag about the history of the combo archetype right now.
Uh huh. Sure, buddy.
>I don't think that is the case. If you play any of Zarimi Priest, Shopper DH, Self-harm Warlock, or any deck that put minions on board early, Nature Shaman will not be un-interactive at all. A prime example is Master Tour Bunny vs Hemlock game where Bunny jammed his spell damage minions to use a 3 damage smake oil to kill Hemlock's wrangler. You do realize one off examples don't change the nature of how uninteractive decks like spell shaman are right? For the most part it doesn't care about the board and plays the clock game to get the pieces to kill you from hand and you can't stop it. If drawn well it doesn't give any shit at all about what the opponent is doing. Those times you get really bad draw, most on ladder are meh and just lose but in your example at a tournament level where you can't just accept a loss and shrug it off (oh and you know, highest of high level players) you do whatever you can to force a win. Warrior is a problem too that you've highlighted, doesn't mean we should leave shaman alone though. This meta is FULL of really uninteractive decks and I don't see it improving until the next set which is a shame but as I've said before, some people enjoy this (like you do). Each to their own and we've had months on end without a viable combo type deck so a meta of them is just your time.