Hearthstone Players!

SebastianBludd wrote:

Hex Sinister wrote: Right now I'm tripping out on how many cards I thought were classic but are actually from TGT. Like Bash. There are a fair number of cards I'm so used to that are rotating out. I guess I opened more packs of that than I realised...

I started playing my favorite noncompetitive deck, Resurrect N'Zoth Priest, after Onyx Bishop came out of Karazhan and after reading your comment I checked out Resurrect to see how close it was to rotating out. I was hoping it was Old Gods or newer but nope, it's Blackrock Mountain. Holy crap, the Standard rotation is going to be a bloodbath.

Control is going to be limited to Control classes like Paladin, Priest, and Warrior, because it doesn't look like other Heroes have the recovery needed to hang with the aggro cards. Shaman Control loses Healing Wave, Warlock loses Reno and Demonwrath, Mage loses Reno and Ice Lance. Druid still has long game, but that's always been about Ramp more than Control, per se. Rogue and Hunter have never had much in this domain.

• Gluttonous Ooze won't see tons of play—it's pretty narrow. Man it will be nice to hit that against a Gorehowl though…
• Mirage Caller fits right into that Priest theme of making shitty versions of their own creatures. See also: Herald Vol'jaz. Yeah, looks like it's there for Deathrattle Number.
• Lost In The Jungle seems fucking good, man. Compare to Alley Cat.
• You don't mention if Living Mana is an Epic, but come on, anything that weird is an Epic, right?
• Molten Blade is going to be a riot. Cursed Blade rotates though.
• Vilespine Slayer is a great Arena card.
• Volcanosaur… I am throwing this game away when my opponent rolls Windfury and Untargetable.
• That Hunter thing looks bad ass, but it'll be tough to get that going and actually win. Nice design. Going to make folks think for this one.

Living Mana is, indeed, an Epic. The Marsh Queen quest results are clearly part of the latest attempt at combo/control Hunter. Think about how many cards have been thinned out of your deck by the time you finish that quest and have enough mana to cast the Queen (8). Then you drop 15 "Battlecry: Draw 1 card." 3/2s into your deck. You could play that a couple different ways, but aggro isn't one of them. That's a control thing the whole way. The question, as always, will be if you can stay alive long enough to pull it off. Magic 8-ball says: "This is Hearthstone? Doubtful."

So I was playing my crappy "Hip Priest" deck and everything was going alright until this guy poops out Brann and three T.E.Vel'kors. I had a big hand and a few different ways to approach it but I decided to steal Brann and play Faceless Manipulator thinking I would get two T.E.V's. Duh, no it doesn't work that way. So that was messed up but a good learning experience. I could've dropped two giants instead. Oh well. Faceless Manipulator is badass though. Cheap Ragnaros or whatever.

Almost made it to Rank 10 with garbage decks. Giving up after three attempts at 11.4 though. Saw a new Un'Goro card today: the prize from the paladin quest is Galvadon, a 5/5 for 5 with Battlecry: Adapt five times.

That'd be what? 9/6 untargetable, stealthed, windfury, divine shield? Seems pretty good. I hope their quest is "Play an 11-cost card."

Made it to Rank 10, going 7-1 from 12.3 or thereabouts. With Hunter! I swapped out a rarely used Hunter's Mark for Acidic Swamp Ooze to help deal with Pirate classes. Man, where is the joy in that, folks? Any, here's the deck if you want to mix things up or have Hunter quests, it's decently competitive:
Alleycat x2
Secretkeeper x2
Acidic Swamp Ooze x1
Cat Trick x2
Explosive Trap x1
Freezing Trap x1
Kindly Grandmother x1
Quickshot x2
Scavenging Hyena x2
Snake Trap x1
Snipe x1
Animal Companion x2
Cloaked Huntress x2 ("Come, Midnight.")
Eaglehorn Bow x2
Kill Command x2
Unleash the Hounds x1
Barnes xL
Houndmaster x2
Savannah Highmane x1
Call of the Wild x1 (Leeroy Jenkins might be better)

You need to be Trap savvy. Setting up Scavenging Hyena to exploit UtH and Snake Trap is how you beat Druids.

Scrapping all of BRM, TGT, and LOE got me about 9000 dust. Combine with the 3200 they'll be doling out for Sylv and Rag and I should be able to craft just about whatever I want. I have a few hundred gold for packs, as well. The only cards that really pained me to dump were Argent Horserider and Keeper of Uldaman, because I've been using them regularly in my Protection Racket deck. I think that one will still survive with some of the new tricks that Paladin can play. They stuck a ridiculous number of late game cards in there for Priest Purify, too: Bittertide Hydra, Frozen Crusher, and especially Humongous Razorleaf. They were just determined to make a stupid card viable, I guess. It took a 7 mana 4/8 to make Windfury worthwhile, too... although it still might not be played except for the fact that it's an elemental.

No, Purify is bad. As long as Silence exists, it is demonstrably awful. They could make a card that says "0-mana, you win the game if Purify is in your deck" and I would take convincing.

Hunter looks like Shaman 2016. It is getting some big old buffs. Got some playable removal in Grievous Bite, a Babbling Book for Beasts in Jeweled Macaw, an improved Lock-and-Load with Stampede, and good aggro beasts in Crackling Razormaw and Raptor Hatchling. The Quest is sketchy, but unnecessary because you'll be putting such pressure on them with Kill Command, Houndmaster, and all that.

Warrior, man. They are immune to rotation. Pirate Warrior still looks awesome for them. Folks can hate it with the Crab and all that, but those narrow answers never really succeed. And Control/Taunt Warrior got a bigger push than Purify did by a longshot.

I didn't say it was good. I just said they were determined to make it viable. That doesn't mean they succeeded. No, Priest is going to be awful again. It lacks any kind of tempo, the base set is still poor, the new legendary is a 3/5 Lock and Load that might end up giving you Purify or a useless Potion of Madness.on turn 9, and their quest is the only one in the game that doesn't provide any kind of win condition, to say nothing of the auto-win condition that most of the others provide. Furthermore, it encourages Priests to play a type of card that actually countermands their hero power, since in most cases you actually want your Deathrattles to activate, not heal them to prevent that from happening. This is why N'Zoth Priest never really took off, either. That doesn't even mention the fact that the all-time best Deathrattle minion ever has just been removed from Standard and there aren't enough good Deathrattles left in the format to want to play something like N'Zoth or Awaken the Makers, anyway.

Druid: Eh. They've kind of shifted Druid from "Adapt (ahem) to any situation" which was obviously OP to "PLAY BIG MONSTERS." Aviana rotates out, Barnabus rotates in. Plus their legendary is the very uninspiring Tarantus. Would have been godlike back in the day, but the game is too fast now for that. No one plays Soggoth, either. Living Mana is a cool allegory to the old Creature-Lands from Urza's. Might be interesting, but is probably a trash Epic on the ladder. The two quest minions added (by "quest minions, I mean those clearly added to further the quest which would otherwise only see play in Arena (and still might), like Elder Longneck) are pretty bad, though: unplayable without condition and RNG. Bleah.

Hunter: The trend toward Beasts is, uh, apparent. Stampede is vastly superior to Lock and Load in a game focused on minions, which is the current game. Dinomancy and Dred both contribute to control Hunter, although the latter is too easily trolled by your opponent. The Marsh Queen you'd think has "insane Control Hunter" written all over it... IF you can take the risk of playing that many 1/1s in a control deck, which you really can't. That means playing an aggro deck in the hopes of getting ridiculous hand refill and endless 3/2s. The rest of the cards are kind of all over the place: quest minions here, random Deathrattle enhancers there. Jeweled Macaw is less than it appears, since there are so many awful Beasts (like, say, Captain's Parrot.) I think Dinomancy is, by far, the most interesting card for Hunter in this set.

Mage: Pyros is a curiosity and nothing more. It'll be good in Arena. Open the Waygate is just godlike when it comes to things like Freeze Mage, since it enables you to get another turn's ammo out of Antonidas. Primordial Glyph is Portal for spells. Molten Reflection could be good, since it summons the copy to the board, unlike most other Mage copying spells before it. And the two early game minions both have constructive (and Constructed) use unlike, say, Priest's... Mage only got better.

Paladin: Sunkeeper Tarim is just... difficult. Yes, if you play control and somehow manage to fill a board with Recruits... they're still just vanilla 3/3s. Yay? I mean, the reason that Patron worked wasn't because they were 3/3s. However, the quest is awesome, not only because it's easy to do, but because it provides the closest thing to an auto-win condition, considering what you can build with 5 Adapts. But the best Paladin card of the set, without question, is Primalfin Champion. Go ahead and dump 3 buffs on him. When they kill it, because they have to, you get all of them back. You could finish your quest by turn 6 or 7. I've never liked Paladin Murloc, but this may be a good excuse to play it. Vinecleaver is an interesting attempt to displace Truesilver from the top of the weapons pile. It won't, because it's too expensive and the effect is too slow. Imagine getting Ligthfused Stegodon off of Jeweled Macaw. I think Paladin has some interesting stuff to toy around with, but nothing that says "Tier 1 this season."

Priest. Sigh. What a fucking nightmare. This is the third expansion in a row that Priest's legendary will see little to no play (Raza showing up in Reno decks being the lone exception.) If Lyra was "... add a copy of a spell from your deck to your hand", it MIGHT be playable. But the RNG is just too much. One of the drawbacks of Priest has always been the extremely situational nature of its spells (in contrast to, say, the almost universal applicability of Mage spells.) At the very least, they've finally recognized what we've been saying since, oh, the beta: healing effects don't win you the game. They mostly just delay the inevitable. Binding Heal is like Flash Heal, squared. But it still won't see play because it simply doesn't do enough and,just like the fucking C'Thun decks, it's a dead card for the player in many circumstances because you can't go past 30 life. Mirage Caller is a half-assed Volazj that's still not worth 3 mana in the same way Volazj wasn't worth 6. Maybe if it was a 2 mana 2/3 or 3/2 like every other class gets? Crystalline Oracle is actually a cool minion, mostly because it lets Priest use another class' cards.

Rogue: I think they're trying to be too cute with Rogue in a manner that suggests they still haven't really figured out the class. To date, the only archetype that has ever been successful is Miracle and it requires a neutral card. In the same way that control suffers from lack of deck manipulation, Rogue does, as well, since Combo requires playing cards in what are frequently sub-optimal scenarios. In short, they're still trying to get Combo and Stealth to work properly without blowing up the game. This is the same problem they had with Overload and totems with Shaman until LOE. I mean, Caverns Below is cute, but by the time you get it in play, are your 5/5s going to matter against the 7/7+ Jades hitting the board? I like Vilespine Slayer as the one decent combo minion to replace Assassinate in some time. I like Biteweed in that they've finally acknowledged the seeming necessity of Edwin in every Rogue deck. I love the idea of Obsidian Shard and Envenom Weapon. But I still don't see anything here that breaks the dominance of Miracle.

Shaman: So, Shaman didn't really need any help, even with the loss of Trogg. Wow, man. Elemental decks are going to be some fun with the best legendary in the set. Kalimos is almost an excuse for Priest to play Elementals just for the off-chance of getting him from a Forbidden Shaping. (Don't do this.) Unite the Murlocs is at least cool for Murloc decks, since pulling it off will somewhat patch over the problem they've had in the past (running out of steam.) But, OMG, the control possibilities introduced in the rest of the cards...! Two viable Epics! WTF? Volcano! Harbinger! Hot Spring! Control elemental, here we come. I thought the archetype was going to take a serious hit without Healing Wave and Destruction, but both of those had real drawbacks. I might actually enjoy this.

Warlock: I hate random discard. Well, I mean, I hate random discard when it happens to me. As some of you may remember, I favored Black in MTG (Once you go...) and especially Black control, which means discard. There's no greater music in all the CCG world than the Hymn to Tourach. But I've never been able to get into Warlock in HS because I don't like throwing away my own cards, but even moreso, I HATE throwing away my own cards randomly. The Clutchmother does nothing to change this. Lakkari Sacrifice might be cool, but it strikes me as a late-game card without a late-game effect. And what is with all of the self-damage stuff lately? Did they decide the best way to neuter the best hero power in the game was to encourage you to not use it? Bad design! Sad! /Trump. Feeding Time is the return of Imp-losion except, like, reliable. But the rest of the cards are Arena stuff.

Warrior: We really want you to play Taunts! I mean, that is, whenever you get bored of winning by killing your opponent on turn 5 with Pirates. Then can you try out our Taunt deck? Please? Seriously, look at that list. 5 minions: 1 legendary and 4 Taunts. Plus Sudden Genesis, cuz everyone knows Taunts get damaged and often survive. None of them are cool enough to displace Pirates and the legendary is completely counter-intuitive to the Taunt theme, but whatevs. Molten Blade is actually kind of cool, depending on how it works, since you can wait for something great, like Gorehowl, or you could just keep getting one use out of any of the other good weapons, which sounds like a neverending weapon, so it probably works the first way and has only one durability (barring Upgrade, of course.)

Neutral: The legendaries are all kind of janky. Without deck manipulation, Hemet is not viable. Umbra might be useful in that awesome Priest quest deck. (Don't do this.) Primordial Drake is a-ma-zing for control decks, in principle, but on turn 8, you generally want a win condition like Rag, not something with 4 attack. It'll be a bitch for Priests to deal with, even though it might push along that awesome Deathrattle quest deck (Seriously. Don't do this. Don't even think of spending money or dust on this.) Fire Elemental's big brother might be workable as a one-of in Elemental decks (and, seriously, what does it say about how weird the past year's meta was in that what was once considered the best creature in the game, Fire Elemental, needed a whole new set to make it reappear?) Gluttonous Ooze = Please stop playing Pirates. Emerald Hive Queen = Gotta have at least one trash Epic in every set. I like Servant of Kalimos a lot for Elemental decks. In contrast, I'm not sold on Tol'vir Stoneshaper because it's not an Elemental. What does it say about Team 5's design approach that they made a last-minute update to Golakka Crawler to make it anti-Pirate only after seeing how MSOG turned out? It's impossible to predict everything but, jeebus, man. I don't see a ton of Must Include Me (a la Acolyte of Pain or the former Knife Juggler) among the lower reaches except for things like Igneous Elemental (too good as a 3 for Elemental decks) and Giant Wasp for Hunter. Volatile Elemental is quite good, though.

But look at Ravasaur Runt: You're paying 2 for a 2/2, which is bad for the stats. Then the reason you're paying that much is a conditional, requiring you to have two other minions on turn 2 of the game if you want to keep tempo. The battlecry for succeeding in that next-to-impossible condition is a 2/2 with Divine Shield. Or Taunt. Or Poison. Or a 5/2. And, yes, you could play it on turn 6 with a 4-cost if you've managed to keep something else on the board. But then you still have a 2/2 with some random effect. I mean, it's clearly an Arena card, but it's not even a good Arena card. It's basically Magma Rager, but slightly better. "If everything works perfectly, this'll be awesome!" I'm just baffled as to why they still think stuff like this is necessary in the game. It just takes up space.

So, yeah. There's some cool stuff here, if you like theme decks or you hate Priest. Not sure how/if I'll fill the Paladin void, but control Shaman should be a lot of fun.

I'll talk about the impact of the rotation on Standard Ladder here, and cover the new set in another post. There's obviously cross-talk between these two topics, but bear with me. I note the sets rotating away and then a few "extras" from each that are also heading off to Wild. Given some obvious themes in the Journey to Un'Goro (JtUG) expansion, I also note some cards that would have been pretty crazy if they'd stuck around. I'm not talking about Arena, which I know little about, and I'm not talking about Wild because who the hell knows what's going on there.

With the rotation of Blackrock Mountain (BRM), you can see Dragon decks take a massive hit. (More on this below). Blackwing Corrupter gave classes that lacked targeted damage access to it at a very efficient cost, Twilight Whelp was one of the best 1-drops in the game, and Drakonid Crusher was a staple in aggressive Dragon builds. Blackwing Technician and Dragonkin Sorcerer would be in the mix depending on your commitment to theme as well, and finishing with Nefarian wasn't a bad idea here or other in greedy builds.

BRM also sees Flamewaker put out to pasture, neutering Tempo Mage utterly. Warlocks lose aguably their best 3-drop (Imp Gang Boss) and one of their decent early game clears in Demonwrath. Combo decks in general take a hit from the loss of Emperor Thaurissan, and Paladin loses a decent 5-drop (Dragon Consort), and affordable card draw (Solemn Vigil).

Druid's Egg builds had been clipped when Nerubian Egg and Echoing Ooze rotated away, and this idea takes more lumps with Dragon Egg and Druid of the Flame heading out as well. You'll still be able to build an Egg Druid, but it probably won't have Eggs in it anymore. That loss of "stickiness" makes this deck tougher to work with. Hunter loses Quickshot, which seems crazy. Like, what are they without Quickshot?! Priests lose the cheap Resurrect for those builds, and Control Shamans will need to work without Lava Shock. Warriors lose Revenge and gimmicky Gang Up and Patron decks will have to be built in Wild only from now on.

More huge impacts on Dragon decks here in The Grand Tournament. Twilight Guardian, Wyrmrest Agent were critical to Priests, Alexstrasza's Champion made the theme worthwhile for Warrior, and greedy builds all over used Chillmaw, especially in concert with N'Zoth. I've built plenty of greedy N'Zoth decks that ran Chillmaw without running other Dragons--it's a 6/6 Taunt that causes misplays and comes back. I'll miss this one.

Aviana-Kun is gone, and good, because that shit was genuinely unfair. I think this would have been a bigger deal, but no one wanted to craft Aviana so close to rotation. Druids also lose Mulch, their best Big Target removal, and more eggs: Living Roots (best small removal) and Druid of the Saber. Their more robust builds would have seen Savage Combatant in a JtUG world for sure.

Control decks lose Justicar Trueheart's Armor and Healing buffs, and Refreshment Vendor generically, and specific Heroes lose Bash (Warrior); Flame Lance, Spellslinger (only decent 3/4 for 3 in Mage?), Arcane Blast (Mage); Healing Wave, Elemental Destruction; Thunder Bluff Valiant, Ancestral Knowledge (Shaman); and Flash Heal (Priest).

Aggro decks lose one of their best 2-drops (Flame Juggler) but I think they get an equivalent back in JtUG. Nothing can really replace Argent Horserider though, that card was undercosted. King's Elekk was a great Beast and likely needs to go before JtUG hits (see also Mukla's Champion), and I think everyone will be OK with Totem Golem heading off for Shaman.

Fun decks that used Dreadsteed, Lock and Load, Ram Wrangler, Murloc Knight, Confuse, Astral Communion are all done. And Timmy staples like Rhonin, Nexus-Champion Saraad, and Varian Wrynn head off. Bolster combos with like half of the new Warrior cards in JtUG, so we might see that deck in Wild. TGT had good stuff for just about everyone. In hindsight, this was one of the better developed sets.

Hey, MattDP can play HEARTHSTONE again! Reno Jackson heads off to Wild, taking his janky RNG clown fiesta decks with him. He takes Brann Bronzebeard, Elise Starseeker and Sir Finley with him as well, they always seemed to work together when you were searching around for decent singletons. Some Priests will probably still play 30 1-ofs for Kazakas and Raza though.

Priests take lumps with the loss of Excavated Evil, Entomb (!), and Museum Curator (right before the cool Deathrattle Quest), and Rogues are going to miss 5/4 for 4 in Tomb Pillager very badly. Zoolock decks see Huge Toad, Dark Peddler and Reliquary Seeker shuffle off. Mages lose Forgotten Torch and Ethereal Conjurer. Basically every hero but Hunter takes a big hit, and even Hunter loses Desert Camel, who's stock was going to rise with JtUG's weenies. Druid:Raven Idol, Warrior:Fierce Monkey, Paladin:Keeper of Uldaman, Shaman: Tunnel Trogg.

I, personally, will miss ganking n00bs with OTK Priest (Djinn of Zephyrs) and confusing the hell out of folks with Moonkin Druids. I usually had something cooked up with Unearthed Raptor too, alas. I won't be missing Anyfin Can Happen at all, and Everyfin is Awesome had to go before JtUG came in and made things weird.

I want to note Devolve is still around, and Murloc Tinyfin rotates away. Wisp is a guaranteed hit at 0-mana.

BOOM: Dragon decks are tough to build now. Azure Drake was a staple there, and pretty much anywhere you needed a 5-drop and/or wanted to punish Priests. The other changes here have been explained more fully elsewhere. Control loses two standard go-to cards (I guess this makes Bloodmage Thalnos the #1 what-do-I-do-with-my-dust answer now), and some cheap cheaty shit moves over to make games last a turn longer.

Without much comment on what Standard is gaining, the impact of what it loses is pretty profound.

For anyone interested: www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/63...on_available_on_the/

Journey to Un'Goro Review

Coming right up, HEARTHSTONE's latest expansion, Journey to Un'Goro (JtUG), is released and it's bringing rotation along with it: consigning some earlier sets to Wild, along with a scattering of Classic cards that have been skewing the game for too long. I discussed the impact of cards rotating away in an earlier post . Here, I will discuss my initial thoughts on the new set, and the cards I think will be having an impact on the Standard Ladder. Again, I don't know much about Arena, and Wild is such a free-for-all it's tough to say anything meaningful there.

Many thanks to Jackwraith for his earlier post on this topic, too. It gives me a couple of chances to comment on his thoughts, and I obviously welcome his feedback on this. He is MUCH more a Standard Only expert, please weigh his words more than mine. I try to play decks outside the mainstream; but I know the mainstream exists, and build my decks with those as the background I need to be competitive with. I've tried to stay naive to the opinions of others by and large. I read Jackwraith's post, and saw Hotform talk some stuff up, but these are largely my own thoughts.

The themes of the set are Quests, Beasts (with Adapt), and Elementals. There are some sub-themes like Taunts in Warrior (we get it, Blizzard), but most of the design of the set is in these three ideas. Quests are collectible Legendary 1-cost spells, one for each Hero, that always appear in your opening hand if in your deck. They are tracked with a visible marker (akin to Secrets), and fulfilling it (say, by playing seven 1-costs minions) makes something cool happen. You get an undercosted minion with an awesome Battlecry, or some infinite value engine or whatever. Some are a lot more achievable than others, and some have much better payoffs than others. I like the idea here, it can compel people to play suboptimal cards to satisfy the requirements of the Quest. Anything that keeps folks from just looking up "85% Rank= 5 to LEgend OTK PiratePreste" and playing that is good in my book.

The Adapt keyword is a flavor of Discover, where you get to select some small buff for your minion from a pool of 10, of which you'll see three random ones. It might gain Taunt, or +1/+1. Or more situational things like Divine Shield or Poisonous.

Beasts, my god, the Beasts. There are lots of them. Thirty-four! There's 135 cards in the set, and 1/4 of them are Beast Minions. The classic Beast classes (Druid, Hunter) got some cool new things to play with, and they've thrown a bunch over to Warrior (? Trying to keep The Curator relevant after Fierce Monkey fades away?) and Warlock (?!). Ok, sure. Most are Arena fodder outside of Druid/Hunter, but a couple could see play on the Ladder. I want to call attention to Gentle Megasaur (5/4 Common Beast for 4, 'Battlecry: Adapt all your Murlocs.') Holy crumbs this will be obnoxious. Bluegill Warrior, Murloc Warleader, then this could be a surpise 8 to the face from an empty board (Windfury), and maybe making Warleader have Stealth. And 5/4 for 4 is totally playable--ask Rogues. We will also see Bittertide Hydra (8/8 Epic Beast 5, 'Whenever this minion takes damage, deal 3 damage to your Hero'). That's Fel Reaver stats and that's dangerous.

Some Heroes left in the cold by Beasts get Elementals, especially Shaman. Twenty-four make their debut, and a number of minions from earlier sets are getting this type. Mages and Priests also benefit here, getting a few playable options. Check this one: Crystalline Oracle (1/1 Priest Rare Elemental for 1, 'Deathrattle: Copy a card from your opponent's deck and add it to your hand.') That's awesome. Cards that replace themselves are awesome. Cards that replace themselves with GOOD cards are even better. A lot of Elementals seem to look backward for their cool effects--did you cast an Elemental last turn? shows up a lot. Shaman gets 2x Mini Cenarius with Stone Sentinel (4/4 Epic Shamana Elemental for 7, 'Battlecry: If you played an Elemental last turn, summon two 2/3 Elementals with Taunt.') I think Deck Tracking software will become popular with the Elemental crowd.

Paladins? You are out in the cold, thematically. You have Tirion though, so quit moaning. Jackwraith has a lot of Paladin experience and the only thing he sees there is the Quest for Galvadon. Galvadon is amazing, and will likely win the game for you, but you need to play a bad deck to get there.


What's the current meta?
At the level I play (Ranks 15 to 10), the meta is:

• Pirate Warrior
• Midrange Shaman
• Jade Druid
• Dragon Priest
• Renolock

...roughly in that order in terms of popularity. Checking in at TempoStorm , they rank these as the most competitive builds:

• Aggro Shaman
• Renolock
• Pirate Warrior
• Midrange Shaman
• Jade Druid (Dragon Priest is the next one)

...So, I'm not too far off! Mind you, I have been playing: Control Shaman (#8), Secret Hunter (#24), and Dragon Paladin (#26) builds, so I see these top-level decks a lot more than I actually pilot them.

The most obvious changes here are to Dragon Priest and Renolock. They just disappear. Blackrock Mountain (BRM) was carrying tremendous weight for Dragons in general, and with Azure Drake out too there is no way a Priest can find success here. Renolock loses its life recovery with League of Explorers (LoE) headed out, not to mention cards like Dark Peddler and Demonwrath, which were universally present. Warlock has options to explore from the Control side, but Priest thematically using Dragons is a non-starter.

Pirate Warrior: This deck was pretty good, and then it got better, even though Warrior got no Pirates in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan (MsoG). And it's going to stay about the same, even though JtUG has no Pirates at all! The only cards it loses are Bash, which was optional, and Sir Finley Mrrgglton, which would get you about half-a-turn per game. This very aggressive deck will stay that way, but some answers in the new set should make it tougher to consistently get those turn 6 wins. The Golakka Crawler (2/3 Rare Beast for 2, 'Battlecry: Destroy a Pirate and gain +1/+1') will see play, even though it shouldn't--it's far too narrow. The more troublesome cards are Hunter's Grievous Bite (Hunter Common for 2, 'Deal 2 damage to a minion and 1 to adjacent ones') Lost in the Jungle (Paladin Common for 1, 'Summon two 1/1 Silver Hand Recruits') and good cheap Taunts in Tar Creeper (1/5 Common Elemental for 3 with 'Taunt, Has +2 Attack on your opponent's turn') and Stonehill Defender (1/4 Rare for 3 with 'Taunt, Battlecry: Discover a Taunt minion.') Everyone has access to some decent board in the early game. Pirate Warriors really need to win by turn 6,7,8, because they are out of cards by then and looking for topdecks. If you can hang on, you can turn it around. I think we'll see a Foxes & Hares plot as this plays out, with folks playing whatever and losing too much to Pirate Warrior, tuning against it to make Pirate Warriors flee, then going back.

Midrange/Aggro Shaman: Midrange is a Jade build one that tops out with Aya Blackpaw and Thunder Bluff Valiant, usually winning with a Bloodlust'ed pile of dudes. It has Hex. Not to be confused with Aggro Shaman, which is also Jade and tops out at Aya Blackpaw. That one packs Pirates for early game and tries to burn you out with Lava Bursts, Lightning Bolts and Jade Lightnings to the dome. Hex-free. Both builds lose Totem Golem and Tunnel Trogg, and Midrange is further insulted with Thunder Bluff Valint and Azure Drake leaving the scene. Aggro Shaman is not as vulnerable to Grievous Bite as Pirate Warrior, but it's also not as fast. It's also losing Sir Finley Mrrgglton, which is a blow; as anything-but-Spell-Power totem is trash in that build--they desperately wanted a better Hero Power. This one loses some oomph, for sure. Midrange though, they just need to rebuild, and they will do so with Elementals. That theme is HUGE in Shaman, with several Shaman-Only Elementals, and even an Elemental Legendary in Kalomos, Primal Lord (7/7 Legendary Elemental for 8, 'Battlecry: If you played an Elemental last turn, cast an Elemental Invocation'). Those Invocations are either: Deal 3 to all minions, Fill your board with 1/1s, Deal 6 to the enemy Hero, or 'Restore 12 Health to your Hero.' Half the damn set is decent Elementals, so this will be a thing. I hope you're not tired of losing to Shaman, because it's going to keep on happpening.

Jade Druid: Still going to be a thing. This build is pretty flexible outside of the Jade suite (Idol, Blossom, Behemoth, Aya) and Gadgetzan Auctioneer. The rest is Ramp and board control. They lose Mulch, Living Roots, and Azure Drake for those that ran it. They don't get replacements for the damage spell or cheap minion removal in JtUG, but they can still make lots of dudes and could drop Evolving Spores (Druid Rare for 4, 'Adapt your minions') to make things tough in the mid-to-late-game. This will still die to Aggro, even with the slowdowns mentioned earlier, but it will still act as a check on Grinder decks that relied on Fatigue for the win.

So, the big shakeup for the existing meta is Renolock and Dragon Priest evaporate, Midrange Shaman changes direction to an elemental focus, and Pirate Warrior is probably a half-step slower and held in check by Hunters, who will be everywhere...

Yeah, Hunters. Absolute garbage tier for a while now (since the Call of the Wild nerf, right?) Secret Hunter is playable, but man, it is not very good. I played this a lot last season, and I would rank my good-draw games about equal to the abovementioned decks mediocre-draw games. If they curved out, even a little, I was dead. If they didn't make any obvious misplays, I was dead. Looking over JtUG though, Hunter is back in a big way.

Think about what Hunter traditionally needs to do: get board control and punish turn over turn with better minions, applying pressure with Hero Power. Jackwraith notes Fire Elemental is one of the best minions in the game, but it's no Savannah Highmane. I think StrifeCro said, "you can't lifegain away from Highmane." Once that hits, you need to deal with it (twice) or it will kill you. The midgame curve for Beast Hunter builds is going to be crazy, Houndmaster brings 11 points of stats for 4, Bittertide Hydra will get 16 points of stats for 5, and then Highmane plops down 19 in stats for 6. It's just BLAM, BLAM, BLAM. They do all this while having the best early board control in Grievous Bite, and can refill their hand with theme using Stampede (Hunter Epic for 1, 'Each time you play a Beast this turn, add a random Beast to your hand.') Then they get to buff their cool stuff with Dinomancy (Hunter Epic for 2, 'Your Hero Power becomes "Give a Beast +2/+2"') if they desire. Fragile Beasts with cool effects can now get a targeted buff and become more resiliant on the play (Scavenging Hyena) or use the buff to be better overall (Rat Pack). The random nature of Hunter's handbuffs in MSoG made that theme too risky to pursue, and Dinomancy fixes that.

Hunters also have a playable Quest to pursue: The Marsh Queen (Hunter Legendary for 1, 'Quest: Play seven 1-cost minions, Reward: Queen Carnassa.') There's a little tension on turn 1 between playing the Quest, and avoiding any Counterspell effect, and actually getting the game going with your 1-drop-packed deck. Queen Carnassa is a cheap Beast, but she puts FIFTEEN 3/2 Raptor Beasts with 'Battlecry: Draw a card' in your deck.

Warriors will have their Pirate thing going, as noted, and they are also bathing in a sea of Taunt creatures and follow-on effects. I can't believe I am typing this, but Bolster rotating away is a relief. The big push here is the Quest: Fire Plume's Heart (Warrior Legendary for 1, 'Quest: Play 7 Taunt minions, Reward: Sulfuras.') And Sulfuras is a 4/2 Weapon for 3 with 'Battlecry: You're Ragnaros now, pretty much.' Your Hero Power becomes 'Deal 8 damage to a random enemy.' Like, holy shit, man. And the Taunts are good! Cornered Sentry (2/6 Warrior Rare for 2, 'Taunt. Battle cry: Summon three 1/1 Raptors for your opponent.') With Whirlwind effects, this is not a problem. I mentioned Stonehill Defender above, and I think Ornery Direhorn is likely playable too, (5/5 Warrior Common Beast for 6, 'Taunt. Battlecry: Adapt.')

I'll try to get to the other classes soon.

On the contrary, you're probably just as good an assessor of Standard because you actually play the game regularly. I just know what card games are like from too many years of MTG.

I don't quite share your enthusiasm for Hunter just yet, if only because I've tried Beast decks in both Hunter and Druid only to see them come up short because they lacked the spells (former) or minions (latter) to put the game away and would get bogged down around turn 6 or 7. With the current meta, the fact that they may not even reach turn 6 or 7 is another problem. As you say, they are adding a ton of Beasts, but until they reach the utility level of many of the old neutral standards (like Acolyte; where does the draw come from for Hunter?), i can't say I'm confident that they'll produce. Guess we'll see.

The following pixel represents how much I'm going to miss dragon priest >

Gonna open around 80 packs tomorrow. Good luck, fellas!

For me, it's Tempo Mage. Man do I hate that deck. Mech Mage, Tempo Mage--just Mages. Hate that Hero. I think it's because I hate burn as a way to win. It's a minion-centric game, and I hate losing to Forgotten Torch, Fireball, Firelands Portal, Pyroblast, Frostbolt, &c &c as pings take out all my guys. It's like I signed up to play HEARTHSTONE, the minion-based card game, and they opted to play Pin The Fireballs On Jeb's Face And Hope Flamewaker Can Hide Behind These Mirror Images Long Enough To Kill The Board. It's unsporting.

I'm going to open 50 packs here, from saved-up gold. I'll be spending earned gold on JtUG over the next few months, and do the PR on the next one.

Jackwraith left Oil Rogue off his list above as viable Rogue archetypes. That was so good they even banned it from Wild with that nerf. I loved that deck. It was like competitive math.

Jackwraith wrote: As you say, they are adding a ton of Beasts, but until they reach the utility level of many of the old neutral standards (like Acolyte; where does the draw come from for Hunter?), i can't say I'm confident that they'll produce. Guess we'll see.

I expect we'll see players experimenting with Starving Buzzard + UTH, Cult Master + UTH, maybe even Snake Trap + Cult Master, to make it work.

Priest is a mess. Other than some of the anti-Pirate neutrals I have no idea what to even put in a Priest deck.

Elementals are everywhere and I hope it's not to the detriment of the game where it ends up being far and away the best option for one class. It makes me wonder if they went overboard with the tribe when an Elemental build is possible for the Roge Legendary Quest: Fire Elemental, then Spiritsinger Umbra + Igneous Elemental. I'm not saying it's consistent, but it doesn't look too bad as far as Rogue shenanigans go.

Actually, since he would only lose two health upon completion of the quest, that gives me an idea for an N'Zoth Legendary Rogue Quest deck. For instance, imagine N'Zoth summoning a now 5/5 Igneous Elemental whose Deathrattle adds two 5/5 Elementals to your hand. Would it surprise you if I told you that my ultra-greedy Resurrect N'Zoth Priest deck only runs one minion that costs less than 4?

Edit: I have 82 packs to open and I let my daughter open my first dozen, and she opened a legendary in the third one! And it was Sunkeeper Tarim...