The guide is a bit outdated, but I wanted to change the decklist, because the previous one didn't address the meta after the nerfs. I will try to update the guide in the following days.
[edit] For those, who aren't aware - I've cut 2x Maelstrom Portals, 1x Eater of Secrets and 1x Plague of Murlocs for 2x Crackle, 1x Zilliax and a second Devolve. After the nerf patch I barely face swarm decks in wild, so imho the portals are useless. Crackle helps us deal with larger threats and can be used as burst. I've made the deck more vulnerable to burn mage with the removal of the secret tech, but in my games playing as Thief Priest I rarely faced that archtype. I prefer to run something flexible and generally useful. Big Priest isn't popular anymore, so there's no real need for the plague. If you need to transform buffed stuff, Devolve will be more helpful. The plague is better against Kabal Crystal Runners, Giants, Voidlords or other big minions, but it's really bad against aggro decks. I also prefer having a board, which can trade into the opponent's weakened minions than to hope RNG saves my life and gives my enemy weak murlocs.
I know, that I should have destroyed my Convincing Infiltrator a turn earlier, so it's a misplay from me, but I really enjoy denying Mecha'thun boards by taking advantage of the inability for the warlock player to clear their board.
Like Bersak said, cards with a specific discover condition (burgle, class spells/minions) won't get affected by this change. So let's exclude them from the list. I want to mention some (previously) popular cards, that will suffer from this nerf:
Wild now has the smarter deckbuilding functionality that can auto-build good decks!
This should be interesting. Really curious to see what the best wild decks are according to Blizz stats. Tomorrow I am going to have fun experimenting with the improved wild auto-deckbuilding feature. I will add some random cards like Renounce Darkness and see what the game has to offer.
Wow, wow, wow. This is huge. I don't know how I've missed this update - thanks for sharing it. Control and Bomb Warriors aren't the only decks, that get hit. In wild odd paladin won't be able to find Sunkeeper Tarim from Stonehill Defender that often, dragon decks running Netherspite Historian will generate their op class dragons more rarely (priest), some N'zoth priest decks might not even consider Museum Curator anymore, Dark Peddler will give Power Overwhelming, Soulfire or other op 1-mana demons seldom, the value from Archivist Elysiana gets worse, in arena Golden Scarab gets weaker.
[edit] Oh, the update was released a few hours ago. I have closed the game before the new patch arrived.
Well, dunno about you, but I'm glad that I won't have to deal with more than 2 Omega Devastators in a single game anymore.
Finally. After playing against so many combo decks the following decks, I finally faced 4 burn mages in a roll - the thing I built my deck against. Went on a nice win-streak and I'm rank 2 again.
Ever since I fell from rank 1, I got stuck in rank 3 and I'm currently trying different builds for the N'zoth thief priest. Back when I started laddering with this deck in the early days of September, I had a lot of success, because I countered the dominating burn mages with relative ease. Now that the meta has "settled down", people bring more Reno decks and counters to the Reno decks (i.e. combo) on the ladder, so I decided to make my deck greedier.
Currently I run 1 Shifting Shade instead of a Mechanical Whelp, because I want to stick to the theme, but I think that the mech will be more beneficial to you. It will make the outcome of N'zoth and Twilight's Call significantly better. In addition to that I've added Psychopomps, which will accelerate the quest completion progress and grant you more value. I had to cut the Loot Hoarders for those, but the deal was totally worth it. I've won a game, where I resurrected Zilliax and gained a ton of life from him. Speaking of which, I added Zilliax, in order to narrow down the deathrattle pool and to make usage of the mechs. If a Khartut Defender dies, I want to resurrect him instead of a Baum, because I get two taunt bodies at the same time (and in the case I summon 2 defenders => four taunts).
I recommend Thief Priest to anyone, who struggles with burn mages. It has a lot of ways to deal with them and I only lose due to bad card draw RNG. However if someone stumbles upon a variety of decks on the ladder, I would recommend them to try Quest Jade Shaman. It does a wonderful job against slow decks (incl. combo).
[edit] I feel like a better version of N'zoth Priest would utilize Stalagg and Feugen, because we have tons of ways to abuse their deathrattle - we can fetch them with Dead Ringer and summon them with Twilight's Call, Psychopomp, N'zoth and Wretched Reclaimer. I haven't played in the Naxx era, so I don't have those cards. I will appreciate if someone replies to this comment and shares their thoughts on those legendaries.
I agree with you, but I don't promise that I will make the rap better with the next update, I'm really bad when it comes to composing music, but I will at least give it a try. In Eminem's song and in the LK's version of it there are a lot of references to be found, which I can't recreate. I made the Andy song with the intention to entertain, not to create a magnum opus.
Warning: Yesterday I faced a lot of combo decks on rank 1 and I dropped to rank 2. I think people wanted to counter-queue the players, who counter-queued Burn Mage with Reno. I haven't made any changes to the deck in the game yet, but I'm planning on cutting 1x Excavated Evil and 2x Doomsayers for 1x Seance and 2x Deathlords.
[edit] Other decks, that beat Reno decks beat it somewhat consistently. I've seen users recommending odd warrior too.
Man, I don't know what I do, but whenever I face a SN1P-SN4P warlock on the ladder, the opponent always finds their combo pieces by turn 5.
There was an exception and I won against them, but literally all of my other opponents killed me on turn 5 because of their stupid starting hand.
[edit] Immediately after I wrote this post, I queued against yet another [Hearthstone Card (snip-sn4p) Not Found] warlock. And guess what - turn 5 lethal........
Well... the current build doesn't offer any ways to deal with combo, but I don't see any combo decks on the ladder. Ever since the new season started, I've played against one Mecha'thun warlock and it was today. Against SN1P-SN4P Warlock we have a lot of taunts to protect us, so you should be fine, unless your opponents are as lucky as mine and manage to assemble all combo pieces by turn 5. If you stumble upon many combo decks, you could add a Dirty Rat, but I don't think it's worth it. Burn Mage has the biggest impact on the wild meta and the combo archtype is pretty much non-existent. Allow me to summarize the class specific MUs:
Warrior - 1) Boulster Quest, 2) Pirate, 3) Odd, 4) DMH. This season I've played against 1 DMH and 2 Pirate Warriors.
Hunter - 1) Mech, 2) Reno. This season I've played against 1 Cube and 4 Mech Hunters.
Paladin - 1) Odd, 2) Handbuff Magnetize, 3) Tip the Scales. This season I've played against a lot of odd palas, 2 Mechs, 1 Tip the Scales and 1 Big Pala.
Rogue - 1) Odd, 2) Cutlass Thief, 3) Mill. This season I've played against a lot of odd rogues, 4 mills, 1 cutlass thief and 1 pirate kingsbane.
Druid - 1) Jade. This season I've played against 4 jades and 1 N'zoth Keleseth Dudu.
Shaman - 1) Even Overload, 2) Murloc (quest or questless), 3) Shudderwock. This season I've played against 6 shamen - most of them were even, 2 were murloc.
Warlock - 1) Reno, 2) Sn1p-Sn4p, 3) Darkest Hour, 4) Mecha'thun, 5) Zoo = Even = Cruel Dinomancer = Cubelock. This season I've played against a lot of warlocks - most of them were Reno, 3 were Darkest Hour, 2 were Sn1p-sn4p, 1 Mecha'thun, 1 healzoo and 1 cubelock.
Mage - 1) Burn, 2) Reno, 3) Miracle, 4) Exodia. This season I've played against 20 mages - most of them were Burn, 4 or 5 were Reno and 1 was miracle.
Priest - 1) Big, 2) Inner Fire. This season I've played against 2 priests - both of them were IF.
So as you can see, I don't see any reason to run this tech.
Well, last month I managed to reach legend with my homebrew Quest Jade shaman deck in wild and shortly after I decided to goof around in standard with Whizbang the Wonderful. To my surprise, I had a lot of success with his decks on the ladder.
The guide is a bit outdated, but I wanted to change the decklist, because the previous one didn't address the meta after the nerfs. I will try to update the guide in the following days.
[edit] For those, who aren't aware - I've cut 2x Maelstrom Portals, 1x Eater of Secrets and 1x Plague of Murlocs for 2x Crackle, 1x Zilliax and a second Devolve. After the nerf patch I barely face swarm decks in wild, so imho the portals are useless. Crackle helps us deal with larger threats and can be used as burst. I've made the deck more vulnerable to burn mage with the removal of the secret tech, but in my games playing as Thief Priest I rarely faced that archtype. I prefer to run something flexible and generally useful. Big Priest isn't popular anymore, so there's no real need for the plague. If you need to transform buffed stuff, Devolve will be more helpful. The plague is better against Kabal Crystal Runners, Giants, Voidlords or other big minions, but it's really bad against aggro decks. I also prefer having a board, which can trade into the opponent's weakened minions than to hope RNG saves my life and gives my enemy weak murlocs.
Feels nice to outplay a SN1P-SN4P Mecha'thun player:
https://hsreplay.net/replay/PrFAU9HEqZniGUrMstB7Tc
I know, that I should have destroyed my Convincing Infiltrator a turn earlier, so it's a misplay from me, but I really enjoy denying Mecha'thun boards by taking advantage of the inability for the warlock player to clear their board.
List of cards, that feature the discover keyword:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/cards/?collectible=true&has_mechanics=13
Like Bersak said, cards with a specific discover condition (burgle, class spells/minions) won't get affected by this change. So let's exclude them from the list. I want to mention some (previously) popular cards, that will suffer from this nerf:
- Frightened Flunky (already mentioned)
- Omega Assembly/Delivery Drone (also mentioned)
- Stonehill Defender
- Netherspite Historian
- Dark Peddler
- Museum Curator
- Golden Scarab {arena}
- Tomb Spider {arena}
- Archivist Elysiana
Wild now has the smarter deckbuilding functionality that can auto-build good decks!
This should be interesting. Really curious to see what the best wild decks are according to Blizz stats. Tomorrow I am going to have fun experimenting with the improved wild auto-deckbuilding feature. I will add some random cards like Renounce Darkness and see what the game has to offer.
Wow, wow, wow. This is huge. I don't know how I've missed this update - thanks for sharing it. Control and Bomb Warriors aren't the only decks, that get hit. In wild odd paladin won't be able to find Sunkeeper Tarim from Stonehill Defender that often, dragon decks running Netherspite Historian will generate their op class dragons more rarely (priest), some N'zoth priest decks might not even consider Museum Curator anymore, Dark Peddler will give Power Overwhelming, Soulfire or other op 1-mana demons seldom, the value from Archivist Elysiana gets worse, in arena Golden Scarab gets weaker.
[edit] Oh, the update was released a few hours ago. I have closed the game before the new patch arrived.
Well, dunno about you, but I'm glad that I won't have to deal with more than 2 Omega Devastators in a single game anymore.
Finally. After playing against so many combo decks the following decks, I finally faced 4 burn mages in a roll - the thing I built my deck against. Went on a nice win-streak and I'm rank 2 again.
Done.
[edit]aaaaaaaand again.
GL on the ladder. Hope you reach legend.
Creator's notes
Ever since I fell from rank 1, I got stuck in rank 3 and I'm currently trying different builds for the N'zoth thief priest. Back when I started laddering with this deck in the early days of September, I had a lot of success, because I countered the dominating burn mages with relative ease. Now that the meta has "settled down", people bring more Reno decks and counters to the Reno decks (i.e. combo) on the ladder, so I decided to make my deck greedier.
Currently I run 1 Shifting Shade instead of a Mechanical Whelp, because I want to stick to the theme, but I think that the mech will be more beneficial to you. It will make the outcome of N'zoth and Twilight's Call significantly better. In addition to that I've added Psychopomps, which will accelerate the quest completion progress and grant you more value. I had to cut the Loot Hoarders for those, but the deal was totally worth it. I've won a game, where I resurrected Zilliax and gained a ton of life from him. Speaking of which, I added Zilliax, in order to narrow down the deathrattle pool and to make usage of the mechs. If a Khartut Defender dies, I want to resurrect him instead of a Baum, because I get two taunt bodies at the same time (and in the case I summon 2 defenders => four taunts).
I recommend Thief Priest to anyone, who struggles with burn mages. It has a lot of ways to deal with them and I only lose due to bad card draw RNG. However if someone stumbles upon a variety of decks on the ladder, I would recommend them to try Quest Jade Shaman. It does a wonderful job against slow decks (incl. combo).
[edit] I feel like a better version of N'zoth Priest would utilize Stalagg and Feugen, because we have tons of ways to abuse their deathrattle - we can fetch them with Dead Ringer and summon them with Twilight's Call, Psychopomp, N'zoth and Wretched Reclaimer. I haven't played in the Naxx era, so I don't have those cards. I will appreciate if someone replies to this comment and shares their thoughts on those legendaries.
Nice write-up. Always a pleasure to read your deck guides.
I agree with you, but I don't promise that I will make the rap better with the next update, I'm really bad when it comes to composing music, but I will at least give it a try. In Eminem's song and in the LK's version of it there are a lot of references to be found, which I can't recreate. I made the Andy song with the intention to entertain, not to create a magnum opus.
One of the most insane matches I've ever had:
https://hsreplay.net/replay/2DHteFfg6iCd4tJSA5jdbB
Here's a second one:
https://hsreplay.net/replay/KR9gi8BNSRDmD9vKY4qU2V
<3 Thanks, glad you liked it.
I built a deck specifically to beat Burn Mage and so far I have a positive win-rate against it:
Warning: Yesterday I faced a lot of combo decks on rank 1 and I dropped to rank 2. I think people wanted to counter-queue the players, who counter-queued Burn Mage with Reno. I haven't made any changes to the deck in the game yet, but I'm planning on cutting 1x Excavated Evil and 2x Doomsayers for 1x Seance and 2x Deathlords.
[edit] Other decks, that beat Reno decks beat it somewhat consistently. I've seen users recommending odd warrior too.
https://hsreplay.net/replay/QMZ3NaugFRnMjYLY2QzcB5
Man, I don't know what I do, but whenever I face a SN1P-SN4P warlock on the ladder, the opponent always finds their combo pieces by turn 5.
There was an exception and I won against them, but literally all of my other opponents killed me on turn 5 because of their stupid starting hand.
[edit] Immediately after I wrote this post, I queued against yet another [Hearthstone Card (snip-sn4p) Not Found] warlock. And guess what - turn 5 lethal........
Well... the current build doesn't offer any ways to deal with combo, but I don't see any combo decks on the ladder. Ever since the new season started, I've played against one Mecha'thun warlock and it was today. Against SN1P-SN4P Warlock we have a lot of taunts to protect us, so you should be fine, unless your opponents are as lucky as mine and manage to assemble all combo pieces by turn 5. If you stumble upon many combo decks, you could add a Dirty Rat, but I don't think it's worth it. Burn Mage has the biggest impact on the wild meta and the combo archtype is pretty much non-existent. Allow me to summarize the class specific MUs:
So as you can see, I don't see any reason to run this tech.
My favourite Uldum moment?
Well, last month I managed to reach legend with my homebrew Quest Jade shaman deck in wild and shortly after I decided to goof around in standard with Whizbang the Wonderful. To my surprise, I had a lot of success with his decks on the ladder.
https://hsreplay.net/replay/6rMPvS5kCxe2BpKLfHkpKA
I faced Sn1p-sn4p warlock twice this season and I lost against it both times on turn 5 due to stupid godlike starting hands my opponents had.