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That feeling of "I-made-good-choices-but-it-doesn't-matter" is rough though. I lost a game to Zoo when their empty hand topdecked Sneaky Devil and then Hero Power into Doomguard to take me down from 19 life with their dead-in-my-hand board. I lost to a Quest Warrior when he hit three Ragnaros shots to my face in a row at 1:3, 1:3, and 1:4 odds. Like... come on.

I switched over the Wild (Rank 17) and killed some Spell Hunter with Baku Priest. It helps me cope. I am a firm believer in switching modes.

I'll play Rez Priest and let you know how it goes. I will try to line up to your list as able. I only have one Obsidian Statue.

Oh, and I decided to dump my gold (new expansion is a ways away and I'm earning enough off dailies to be in a good spot by then) and pick up a few more packs of WW. Last pack I opened handed me the exact legendary I was looking for: Dollmaster Dorian. Not quite sure what to do with it yet, but it feels like a Priest card, since you'll doubtlessly be rezzing stuff that gets killed as 1/1 copies. Questions are: 1) How long can you keep him on the board, such that he feels like he's worth including; and, 2) are there any other classes that he'd be worthwhile to play with?

jeb wrote: I'll play Rez Priest and let you know how it goes. I will try to line up to your list as able. I only have one Obsidian Statue.

Believe me, I sympathize with the luck swings. RNG is replayability!

I was thinking you could play your version and I could play mine and we could just compare notes. Like I said, I really like the idea of Dragonhatcher, but you said he's not necessary to play the deck (I don't have one.) But every time I see someone playing him, he makes a ridiculous contribution.

www.hearthpwn.com/news/5549-six-card-ner...a-sea-witch-spiteful

I think all of these changes are reasonable except the Spiteful Summoner one. Changing it to 7 mana doesn't really impact the most powerful current version of the deck, which is Druid. I think the changes to Warlock are significant enough that Cube/Control will at least be slowed down enough for people to put them in a more precarious state if they don't draw the right cards soon enough. What most people don't get is that the problem isn't Cube. It's the cards that enable Cube to make its combos. If Cube were that awesome, it would be in other classes, ESPECIALLY in Quest Priest. But it's not that awesome, because Priest doesn't have a good way to kill it and neither do most other classes. Warlock, OTOH, has removal up the ass, which is what makes the deck work. And it will still work. It will just "only" heal for 4, like many other worthless cards in the game.

For folks that can't click the link, here are the announced changes to cards:

• Naga Sea Witch – Will cost 8 mana. (Up from 5)
• Spiteful Summoner – Will cost 7 mana. (Up from 6)
• Dark Pact – Will restore 4 Health. (Down from 8)
• Possessed Lackey – Will cost 6 mana. (Up from 5)
• Call to Arms – Will cost 5 mana. (Up from 4)
• The Caverns Below – The quest reward, Crystal Core, will read: For the rest of the game, your minions are 4/4. (Down from 5/5)

Did they do all this just for me? I am pleased with every one of these. Naga Sea Witch was making Wild dumb. Once you got to decent collections (say Rank 10+), every other deck was 8x Giants and the game was about who could Shadowflame or Lightbomb at the right time. It was stupid, so I am glad to see that.

Spiteful Summoner... well, it's still cheating stuff out, but every turn I get is a boon. I feel like a lot of these changes are to make me Hunter again. I will oblige, of course.

Dark Pact + Possessed Lackey... Man, good. Anything to just tone down the presence of this deck on Ladder, God. No lie, I think it is over 50% of decks around Rank 8/9. MORE THAN ONE HALF. It is mind-boggling. I can beat the deck, I am familiar with the matchup, but it is a slog, every time just because it's so damn routine. Warlock would routinely drop down to the danger zone to pull off these tricks, but the 16-health of recovery for 1-mana, plus the whole, oh-hey-here's-12-in-board-stats-too effect made this card very obnoxious.

Call to Arms is a huge deal and I like the fix here a lot. You can play Odd Paladin -or- CtA Paladin, because CtA can only get 1-drops in an Odd deck. That was a very elegant solution. CtA is still amazingly good and I will still eat a lot of juggled knives, but this makes it more palatable.

Caverns Below.. nerfed AGAIN. That's impressive. This whole deck is just loathed and I hope Team Five has done the deep dive on why. I never want to see this kind of card again. It's not fun or interesting and it makes the game bad. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Seeing as Spiteful Druid is currently my main deck, obviously I'd prefer Summoner not to go up but, whatever. I'm not convinced the card is all that OP. It looks it on paper but like odd/even decks you have to make a big sacrifice (no cheap spells) to get it to work. Plus the number of times I've drawn both Infestations before either Summoner is unreal. We'll see if it stays viable after this: it was a very meta-dependent deck so ironically it may be the other changes that do for it rather than the Summoner nerf.

The rest all seem good: Jeb gave the reasons. The Call to Arms switch is super clever: my first instinct is that it would still be a big boon to Odd Paladin but half their 1-drop cards have Battlecries and it'd replace Funalmancer or Level Up which are huge cards in that deck, so my guess is it won't get a look in. You might see a resurgence of old-fashioned dude Paladin though.

I haven't seen much Warlock of late, but I know how dominant it is and it needed something. The matches are just so dull, if for no other reason.

Also haven't seen much Quest Rogue and my guess is, again as Jeb points out, that the archetype is hated so much that even power players don't want to contaminate themselves with it. Dreadful, dreadful card. I wish they'd do something about Reno too, which I'd put in the same basket. I refuse to do any more than noodle in Wild while that fucker is still in relatively common circulation.

I watched the omnistone podcast yesterday to see the reaction to nerfs. Firebat says that quest rogue may still be able to easily beat control. With the caveat that the Rogue must save his vanish for otk not using it to complete the quest. I think the spiteful nerf is ok but for me the issue was Tyrantus being in the pool. So many games I am sitting on my single target removal saving it for Spiteful summons and then Tyrantus ends the game. Seems like even pally is dead, no call to arms, no divine favor means they have to play really efficiently on curve and have good midrange late game stuff.

What really shook me up and I found depresssing was that Firebats dad is F2P pally player. He made legend in wild. I can’t even make legend with a solid collection. I am really struggling to get anywhere this month. Because of the new reset method I had the luxury of starting at 5. I climbed to 4 many times, but losing streaks knocked my back to 5 no stars several times. When I try hard I go with tempo mage, spiteful Druid, or Control lock. Lately I am sticking with the latter. I feel like it’s the one deck where when I lose there were plays I could have made better. You lose with Spiteful Druid and it’s just because you drew cards in wrong order or opponent had the nuts. But I see quest rogues all the time at this rank, and you can’t beat that deck with control warlock.

Yeah, Tyrantus was the main thing on my mind when I suggested that the nerf doesn't impact Druid that much. The downside to that deck is that there's only one spell to play, unlike Priest, so that if you end up like Matt says, drawing your two cards first, your Summoner is then just a 6-mana 4/4.

I think the line to draw between you and Firebat's dad is one of focus: He's F2P, which means that he doesn't spend any money on the game and probably doesn't play anything but Paladin. That leads to some pretty intimate knowledge, not only of your own deck, but of all decks interacting with it. I have a friend who also got to Legend in Wild basically doing the same thing: he played nothing but Control Warrior from the beginning of the Standard/Wild split to a couple months ago. Nothing. But. Control. Warrior. I'd hop in to watch a game and roll my eyes at the fact that he was playing the same, damn deck. But that did give him total awareness of every single game. He was a very good Magic player before giving it up ($), so he knows his way around card games, but he doesn't even mess with Standard because he doesn't want to spend money. The smaller playerbase and long-term viability of cards in Wild just suit his pace and Firebat's dad was probably the same way.

I know that I never get very far in the rankings because I just get too discouraged too easily. I find some cool new idea (like the post about Kripp's Cubelock variation that just went up) and I'll try it for a few games and then the shine will come off and I'll move on to something else. If I could focus, I'd probably get farther, but no luck so far. That's kind of why I was hoping to tempt Jeb into climbing with Big/Rez Priest with me, so I'd have something to keep chasing other than rankings.

Jackwraith wrote: Yeah, Tyrantus was the main thing on my mind when I suggested that the nerf doesn't impact Druid that much. The downside to that deck is that there's only one spell to play, unlike Priest, so that if you end up like Matt says, drawing your two cards first, your Summoner is then just a 6-mana 4/4.

The problem for Druid, ironically, isn't that nerf: it's the Warlock nerfs. Control Warlock is currently dictating the relatively slow pace of the game and, if that slides out of favour, aggro is likely to burst back into the game in a big way. Spiteful Druid has no AoE and is just terrible against fast decks, it's only become competitive because it's got time to survive until it can snowball in the mid-game.

Jackwraith wrote: I think the line to draw between you and Firebat's dad is one of focus: He's F2P, which means that he doesn't spend any money on the game and probably doesn't play anything but Paladin.

Serious question: if he's F2P surely he has to play a wider range of decks in order to tick off quests? That's always been the big barrier to me picking a deck and sticking with it. I'm forever chopping and changing just to keep pulling in quest gold. It's better now that many of the quests are easier, but that's a relatively recent change.

No idea. My knowledge of the F2P game is pretty much limited to that friend I mentioned. When he got into the game, he played Mage. Just Mage. When he got a little farther in the game, he spent all of his time and gold on building up and then playing Wallet Warrior (which he didn't spend a dime on; ironical!) Quests were immaterial. If they could serve the overall goal or just be endured until completion ("Play 30 Shaman cards." I think that one is still endured, rather than enjoyed, by the majority of the playerbase even now when it's down to 20), great. If not, they were rerolled. It means that they're closer to my method of dealing with quests, which does mean that it's a much slower progression, but if they're OK with doing that and his dad has basically spent the last two years doing nothing but grinding out Legend in a single class, then it's more of a testament to patience (cum disinterest) than F2P usually is.

Ya the meta should change. Control Mage can kill quest rogue 4/4. Priest should get better. Hadronox Druid might be more prevalent. Murloc Pally comes back with a vengeance. Maybe Zoolock pops up.

Because I don’t want to lose ranks I play half my games casual which can be fun because I play against wacky decks not just the same 5-6 meta decks that comprise 90% of ranked games. The problem is the quality of play and players just quiting. No skin in that so the wins are very hollow. I wish there was some middle ground

I don’t know if this should bother me. But I am likely older than Firebats Dad

I'm in the Jamie Wakefield school of CCG-playing: Play your deck. Don't make mistakes. I lose games to mistakes, and it's important to look back and recognize them. I bounce around a little bit, but it's mostly Priest (Control), Hunter (Midrange), and Shaman (??). Lots of Shaman of late and I see how things are going to play out. I know if Volcano is good (Druid: Yes, Warlock: No), what needs to get Hex'd (Doomguard!), when to play rando Elementals (need Tol'vir next turn panic mode), &c. I know how things are going to play out and just do my best to execute. This also means I insta-concede against Quest Rogue, but c'est la guerre.

Some folks can pick up any old thing and win with it: TerrenceM, Firebat, Zalae, &c. Other folks know their roles and win with what they're good at: Kibler, Zetalot, Fibonacci, Ant. I am not as generically good as any of these players, but I can do my best and plug away.

@Jackwraith: I went 3-7 with RezPriest. Doing a little better swapping in a Holy Nova, I was seeing Paladins and lot and they were ending me by turn 7 without a ton of struggle. I only have the one Obsidian, so if I don't roll it with Shadow Essence or sneak it out with Coffin Crasher my ability to recover is loooow.

On a funny note: In a casual game, I got OTK'd by a Druid that played Umbra + She's Immune Guy + Witching Hour to bring back a cycle of Hadronox into Abomination and the gain-4 life-Taunt. It was neat.

Speaking of the 4 health taunt guy. Rotten applebaum. Isn’t that a tad anti-Semitic? Baum suffix on surname it’s gotta be a Jewish Apple. So why does it have to be rottten?

Cuz it’s an apple

Baum means "tree." You associate this with Jewish names because Jews fled Germany in massive numbers, but there are plenty of goyische "--baum"s in Germany and elsewhere.