Hearthpwn

Seems like a really cool deck, but has anyone used it to climb high? I'm missing a lot of the legendaries here and wouldn't want to blow dust on a sub-par deck. Thankss

really love the decklist, but i have one issue. why rafaam? i get that you're reaching 9 mana earlier than normal, and you want something powerful for the turns between ancient of war and n'zoth, but why a 9-drop over an 8-drop or just another 7-drop? rafaam's a lot of value i guess, but it's incredibly slow. you spend all of turn 9 summoning a 7/8, then you have to spend all of turn 10 just to use the artifact, and the artifacts are not even good. the one that fills your board with mummies is decent, but at 10 mana it's almost certainly just a worse n'zoth. the mummies don't have deathrattle and they are perfectly statted for dying to basically every midrange AOE spell in the format — hellfire, flamestrike, excavated evil, lightning storm, abyssal enforcer, even thalnos + blizzard. you spend 10 mana summoning 7 minions that can be removed for 4 mana, then your opponent has 6 mana to summon emperor thaurissan or sylvanas, which your deck has trouble dealing with. how do you ever regain tempo from that point on, and beat the control decks in the format?

and the other 2 artifacts are absolute trash, the +10/+10 would be much better if it was just a 4 mana +4/+4 or something, because a 15/15 sylvanas is dying to all the same hard removal that would kill a 5/5 sylvanas. its only decent function is basically equating to a pyroblast when you have a minion to use it on, and they have no taunt to stop it. and the clock artifact is by far the worst, wouldn't even be worth 5 mana except in situations where it represents lethal damage. it's like c'thun, avenging wrath or the new "volcano" shaman spell, deals a ton of damage yet somehow manages to leave every minion at 1 hp. only this artifact costs 10 mana, so when it falls flat and kills nothing, you just have to concede because you have no mana for a follow-up swipe. so.. the only decks i can imagine rafaam being good against are the old-school anti-aggro decks like elise control warrior/priest. the popular control decks now (basically kazakus decks and jade decks) have no problem countering any of the value generated by rafaam, and they can do it for way less mana than you spent so you're almost guaranteed to fall behind on tempo.

there are a whole host of greedy cards in wild that either represent more value and better tempo, or simply fit the deck better. even a second Ancient of War would probably be better, certainly against pirate warrior and secret paladin, which monopolize wild. there's Cenarius, Malorne, even Chillmaw is nice to resurrect with n'zoth. but what i really don't get is why you're not just playing Dr. Boom. why play ramp druid in wild if you're not gonna play the best 7-drop in the format? the fact that boom doesn't have taunt is the only thing that's ever stopped me from playing it in a wild n'zoth control deck, and in this case we're talking about replacing rafaam, which doesn't have taunt either. i can see ancient of war being better than boom right now because it can potentially brick-wall a huge amount of damage that would otherwise kill you. boom is great at clearing boards, but not when you're going to die before the boombots explode. but rafaam has an even lower chance of saving you against aggro, it's a lot less pressure against control, and it has no synergy with n'zoth whatsoever. the one thing ramp druid does better than other control decks is playing the big greedy minions FAST, so you aren't likely to be worried about summoning boom bots instead of sylvanas, cairne, etc. you're trying to go wild growth into shredder into belcher into sylvanas into boom, and then play n'zoth as soon as possible and win the game. with that kind of curve you're almost always forcing out twisting nether before n'zoth, and winning the game afterwards. this is one argument for why Dr. Boom is better than Ragnaros the Firelord in this deck. the other argument is that, in wild, the boombots are better in terms of value and defense than rag's 8 dmg end-of-turn effect. you're running into decks like secret paladin which generate a lot of tokens, so you'd much rather have two random 1-dmg effects than a single random 8-dmg effect. but hey, even ragnaros is better against secret paladin than rafaam is.

if we're so concerned with getting maximum value out of n'zoth that we cut dr. boom, then why don't we just use Sneed's Old Shredder or Kel'Thuzad? Sneed's is the premiere value deathrattle card. It's among the greediest, slowest cards in the game, right up there with rafaam, but unlike rafaam it gets resurrected by n'zoth. the only thing about sneed's that concerns me is that its deathrattle might summon anomalus. it's an extremely small chance but yes, i shit you not, it has lost me more than one game. so maybe we run kel'thuzad instead, it wins certain matchups outright when we have a sludge belcher on the board, and in other matchups it at least duplicates our deathrattles, increasing the power of n'zoth and giving us a 6-minion n'zoth pull way before most n'zoth decks. if you have some minions on board on any late-game turn and you play kel'thuzad you're almost certainly baiting out twisting nether. and then you can just immediately follow that up with a game-winning n'zoth or aviana + kun combo.

finally there are cards like Alexstrasza, Malygos, Soggoth the Slitherer, Y'Shaarj, Rage Unbound, and Yogg-Saron, Hope's End. I don't see any of these cards really making the cut in this deck, but i'm almost certain they're all better here than rafaam. you probably don't want to play aviana + kun + yogg, so it's not really filling the same role, but it gives druid some defensive reach, which is why it was played in virtually every druid deck prior to its nerf. it's still pretty decent post-nerf. it's the only way druid can ever get a really strong board clear without playing poison seeds.. which is unfortunately only available in wild, the format in which it's really bad because most boards you want to clear are either strong deathrattles, or tiny minions the 2/2 treant is actually stronger than. so yogg is really your only twisting nether-like effect. it's worth considering but i think druid doesn't need twisting nether because it's just trying to play giant minions before the opponent can, so your giant minions can always trade into theirs and prevent you from ever falling behind on board. but one way you can fall behind on board is if you spend 9 mana playing a 7/8 and they spend 1-4 mana removing it and 6-9 mana playing their own threat. anyway, the other cards are all good to combo with aviana + kun. y'shaarj is a crazy card, it can pull n'zoth out of your deck and fuck you but as long as you baited out twisting nether in advance, summoning a 10/10 and a 5/7 and threatening to free-summon more minions is good enough to win so you don't really mind losing n'zoth's battlecry. alexstrasza and malygos both give you burst potential and giant value, and soggoth is... well... mildly better than rafaam. actually it's pretty solid in wild, it brick walls a TON of decks which are popular in the format and nobody plays any of the cards that can really deal with it. it's not cheap enough to save you from pirate warrior so i'm absolutely certain that ancient of war or even sludge belcher is better, but we're talking about filling the slot for a greedy 9-drop and we already have 2 sludge belchers.

personally i am testing this deck with Dr. Boom because i think it's the best big minion in the game, but i will switch it out for Sneed's Old Shredder, then Malorne, then Chillmaw because i'd really like to test them (particularly malorne, which i've never played in any deck, period) and they synergize with n'zoth. malorne's ability really interests me, fatigue is not a relevant mechanic right now in either standard or wild but maybe it will be important sometime in the future. chillmaw's ability is totally irrelevant because the deck does not even play azure drakes, it's just the deathrattle and taunt tags which are important; in standard you often can't afford to spend 10 mana casting n'zoth because your opponent is threatening lethal with his/her board. this led to relatively inefficient cards like infested tauren and chillmaw being played, simply because they make your n'zoth more defensive. in wild we have sludge belcher and that is great, but 3/5 is a lot less pressure than 6/6. so i think chillmaw is a bit of a middle ground—it doesn't leave behind a 1/2 taunt so realistically it's not stalling nearly as well as sludge belcher, but it still has taunt and it has high attack. finally sneed's old shredder, it's probably better than malorne right now because tempo is far more important than fatigue advantage atm. but it's probably worse than chillmaw because it's more expensive and doesn't have taunt. sneed's is a minion that just gets ignored by most decks. the ones that aren't aggressive enough to ignore it will usually have polymorph, hex, or entomb for it. being 5/7 it's really not hard to ignore. by that i mean it'd take 6 turns of ignoring it, at minimum, for the opponent to die. so it's probably pretty bad but i'm going to test it anyway. malorne is interesting if only because it's bizarrely overstatted. 7 mana 9/7 is pretty absurd, its effect is not going to come into play but it's an extremely threatening minion.

another thing — i don't think living roots is worth playing unless you have azure drakes or malygos in the deck. before the small-time buccaneer nerf i would have said it was absolutely crucial, but right now the 1 mana 2 dmg is not hitting anything important. at best it's something to combo with swipe or wrath, like say swipe on frothing berserker and living roots to finish off a kor'kron elite. but right now i don't think you have time to survive a pirate warrior's onslaught. you can't just wild growth on 2, shredder on 3, and then swipe + living roots on 4 unless you have major healing cards in your deck. realistically the deck is just always going to be unfavored against pirate warrior unless we run terrible cards like healing touch, bite, etc. or simply turn it into a highlander deck and put reno in. so i like the idea of just targeting control. accept that we lose to pirate warrior, stop hedging bets against aggro, and just remove the low-value cards that we hate to draw against control but need to draw against aggro. the reason i say that is just because even if you draw the absolute anti-aggro nuts, you still have a high chance of losing to pirate warrior. they just put out too much uninteractive burst damage, way before you can really react. the only decks that can compete with this are either doing it with really cheap, efficient removal and reliable armor gain (control warrior) or they're just hanging on by a thread until turn 5 or 6 when they can (hopefully) heal for up to 30. the math just works out like that, you're either dying on turn 5 or they're doing like 28 damage to you and then you play reno. so midrange healing cards like feral rage are honestly not even good enough, their damage output grows exponentially until you clear their board, so even if you go 1-for-1 with them and heal for 16 they can just miraculously burst you down to 0 with weapons, upgrades, charge minions, or heroic strikes. they do at least 2 damage on turn 1, then like 5 damage on turn 2, then there's a bit of a lull on 3 while they set up frothing berserker or play bloodsail cultist. then starting on 4 the damage output just gets extreme, you need living roots, wrath, feral rage and swipe just to barely keep up and you've still taken a ton of damage. removing their minions is not even that important, except insofar as removing a pirate would prevent a Bloodsail Cultist activation. what you need to do is remove their weapons before they can upgrade them.

so if we are going to try to improve the winrate against aggro, i would like to see living roots replaced with 2 Acidic Swamp Ooze. being able to remove a weapon will prevent a lot more damage than merely being able to remove a minion. now that small-time buccaneer can be removed with a hero power, living roots on its own kills nothing. all their minions either have 1, 3, or 4 hp. only their leeroy has 2 hp and his battlecry GIVES you the 2 dmg removal to kill him. so like i said, roots is only good when combined with swipe, but that combo is still not coming soon enough to keep you alive. ooze, on the other hand, can seriously nerf their damage. think about how much damage their weapons can actually do. the maximum would be Arcanite Reaper into Upgrade! x2 into Bloodsail Cultist x2. which is a 9/6 weapon, i.e. 54 damage over 6 turns. this never happens in practice, but unless their weapons are removed they can always do over 30 damage by turn 6, like 100% of the time, with various combinations. i don't think adding the ooze even gives you a 50-50 matchup with pirate warrior, which is why i don't think it's worth teching against aggro. but certainly the ooze reduces much more damage than living roots, and gives you a chance to win if you somehow draw into all your feral rages and all your taunts. but the only way ramp druid is gonna get an even matchup with pirate warrior is by turning into a reno druid deck, i think. so i'd say forget the roots. we still need to keep wrath, card draw is always crucial against control, and 3 damage removal is really good in every matchup because pretty much every deck runs a 3 or 4 health creature that must be removed. even against pirate warrior, wrath is better than roots because it can answer a ship's cannon. if they coin out ship's cannon, wrath is your ONLY way to remove it. living roots + hero power costs 3 mana so you'd have to use innervate just to kill their turn 1 play. and if you don't kill ship's cannon you pretty much lose 100% unless they somehow draw bricks, and in all the wrong orders... like draw no pirates except patches, then draw upgrade! with no weapon equipped, and use it, then draw arcanite reaper the very next turn after you've already used upgrade lol. which never seems to happen. but yeah i think even if we are giving up against pirates and just teching the deck to beat control, we still want cards like Wrath and Swipe because they help our shredders and belchers trade up for value, which is one way to win any control mirror. otherwise we have to rely on drawing n'zoth AND a perfect deathrattle curve AND the opponent drawing poorly, or we need to survive to turn 10, play a gnarly combo with aviana + kun + stuff, and pray they don't have twisting nether.

i'm also not certain about raven idol in this deck. it was run in the ramp druid decks of yore because they had cards like violet teacher, arcane giant, and gadgetzan auctioneer which relied on spell synergy. even with malygos it's pretty good because it can get you an extra innervate, living roots, or moonfire. in this deck i can understand running it. it has baseline value in any druid deck because 1) played on turn 1 it can get you a wild growth to play on turn 2 if you couldn't draw one; and 2) you need enough "choose one" cards in the deck for fandral to be worth playing. i'd say maybe we don't even need to run raven idol because we don't even need to run fandral, but actually i really like fandral in every druid deck because, like brann bronzebeard, ysera, emperor thaurissan, etc., it has an ongoing effect. it doesn't just do its thing, it gets you some value, then threatens to achieve even more value but gives the opponent an opportunity to remove it and prevent any shenanigans. minions like this are really useful because the opponent doesn't know what's in your hand. they immediately assume the worst and often put a ton of resources into reacting, even when they didn't really have to. in their mind, it's a minion they absolutely have to kill, even if it's not. playing fandral on turn 4 without anything else is kind of like playing sen'jin shieldmasta, but it has a lot more potential upside than a simple 3/5 taunt. it can save you a ton of life against pirates, AND give you a ton of value against control. so it's arguably the best card in the deck for this reason. emperor thaurissan and ysera have the same sort of effect but they come so late in the game. you're either dead before you have enough mana to cast them, or your opponent can safely ignore them because value is no longer relevant. and obviously brann is pointless in a deck with almost no battlecries.

so if we agree we must play Fandral Staghelm, it seems logical that we must play Raven Idol. i'm not so sure about that, but discovering a minion from raven idol has a lot of meme potential, and also a decent likelihood to just give us a 2nd n'zoth lol. i guess you could even call a 2nd n'zoth "meme potential" too. but i have always liked Mire Keeper, it's a "choose one" card (albeit much harder to combo with fandral) and it fits pretty well here. our only 4 drops are fandral and piloted shredder. a 3rd and 4th ramp card is pretty crucial in a ramp deck, and the 2nd ability (summon an extra body) is really good against aggro and midrange decks. same reason why dopplegangster is often better than a regular 5-drop: three 2/2s can trade into three of your opponent's minions, while a single 6/6 can only trade once. of course, if your opponent has a 5/6 pit fighter you'd much rather have a 6/6 that can value trade into it than three 2/2s which can trade into it and die themselves. but aside from dragon priest, the popular decks on wild ladder are all defensive reno decks or minion-based aggro decks. the 2/2s are so much better against the likes of pirate warrior, egg druid, and secret paladin. so think of mire keeper as a 4-drop dopplegangster against aggro, and an extra wild growth against control. it's much better than dopplegangster because it has the option of ramping into your big threats in those matchups where your opponent is playing his own big minions, while still having the option of trading into two minions in a single turn. i don't know for sure that mire keeper beats raven idol, but i'm going to test it on the wild ladder for sure.

Sorry could you be more specific about what you think of this deck ?

What in the world are you on about lol.

 I read 2 paragraphs and then decided to check how much you wrote before REALLY commiting.  Thanks for making me laugh

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