Discard Zoo Warlock Standard

[positiv2 952]

44 minutes ago, Allegro said:

I've found that slower decks tend to have the least RNG problems. They're made to play for a longer game, and over the course of it things tend to even out. My current favorites are dragon priest, dragon warrior, and tempo mage. 

Not sure if you are joking or not. You listed decks that are considered to be highly inconsistent and heavily RNG- and draw-reliant.

4 hours ago, Guest Klazik said:

Or is this game just purely RNG no matter the deck? I know that you sometimes get bad draws. That's a part of it. But I just want a consistent deck.

Hearthstone is extremely RNG reliant and you will face issues tied to RNG very often, even if we disregard draw as RNG, since you will face opponents whose decks are full of RNG effects, such as Flamewaker or Swashburglar. The most consistent decks are often midrange decks, such as midrange shaman or midrange hunter.

[Paracel 165]

10 hours ago, CodeRazor said:

Just a little note. You don't crush either Tempo mage or Freeze mage with zoo. You win against tempo mages based on their build (if for example they play the minion based tempo mage, with Flamestrike and Arcane Explosion, you are going to have a bad time).

As for Freeze mage, the matchup is 80-20 for them. You cannot pressure them enough in the early game, and a Frost Nova + Doomsayer combo is almost a guarranteed board clear. 

I will give you my current stats from ladder. I was bored of standard (rank 9 there) and decided to play wild the last 2 weeks. Currently rank 7 on wild, playing only Freeze Mage and Zoo.

Maybe I've overexaggerated a little bit. But hey, confidence is everything!

Spoiler Alert : probably very obvious things that don't require vast explainations below.

I would define Tempo Mage as favorable based either on ViciousSyndicate data chart or on the strategical evaulation. Numbers suggest Zoo wins 55% of games, which is slightly better than "close" if you consider four digit samples. 

As for the theory, Tempo Mage tries either to leverage advantage by efficiently trading removal or straight out grinding. Zoo minions are not exactly good targets for kill spells, and grinding matters less because of Warlock offensive speed and Life Tap. Flamewaker and Arcane Missiles are good, but so are Imp Gang Boss and free Silverware Golems.

As for Flamestrike and Arcane Explosion concerns, latter is not exactly popular, but I admit this card makes sense to play and I would probably run it myself, but it's that fluctuating tech that you pray to dodge and curse your opponent as he draws it and gets rewarded for a correct deck building decision. Flamestrike is a definitive card for the matchup, but Zoo can and should create enough health deficit before turn 7, and/or utilize Life Tap for refill. Discard does it less effective thanks to the absence of Forbidden Ritual, but the strategy remains the same.

You are right, Freeze Mage is as lopsided as it can be. A good thing it doesn't see enough play.

As for the Wild mode, I don't think a Standard Zoo thread is a place for this discussion. These decks are fairly different, and so are Standard and Wild Tempo and Freeze Mages. Having access to Loatheb makes a huge difference and you approach those matchups from different directions.

6 hours ago, Guest Klazik said:

Okay. So can somebody point me in a direction of a deck that doesn't require luck? Tired of having worse luck compared to my opponents... Or is this game just purely RNG no matter the deck? I know that you sometimes get bad draws. That's a part of it. But I just want a consistent deck. I get max 1 hour of game time since I work full time, so I really want to come home to have a good time, just winning here and there. Don't want to spent several days getting facerolled just because I have bad luck.

All meta decks enjoy a certain degree of consistency. That's exactly why they are proven good and popular. Zoo is among the most consistent ones because it has a firm game plan and a lot of redundancy to support it. Combine it with a 30-card deck size, and games are going to be pretty much the same, over and over again.

RNG is a core concept to Hearthstone. Even decks that don't directly have ugly, game deciding cards with the word "random" in them rely on draw quality more often than not. Don't focus too much on it, this is a long standing circlejerk that's not going anywhere.
 

3 hours ago, Allegro said:

I've found that slower decks tend to have the least RNG problems. They're made to play for a longer game, and over the course of it things tend to even out. My current favorites are dragon priest, dragon warrior, and tempo mage. 

But decks you mention are not built for slow games! And Dragon Priest has Netherspite Historian, Tempo Mage has Firelands Portal and Babbling Book, and Dragon Warrior constatly gets screwed by not drawing any Dragons! And Control Warrior has Golden Monkey and Brawl to be uncontrollable, destroying its name in the process!

On the side note, if we talk about consistency and not RNG, I would argue that in Hearthstone, proactive decks in general have more redundancy than reactive, because there are always more threats than answers. Having to rely on having a specific card to get you through early or mid game to your teens is the definition of an inconsistent gameplan.

[Keizoku 185]

19 hours ago, Guest Klazik said:

Okay. So can somebody point me in a direction of a deck that doesn't require luck? Tired of having worse luck compared to my opponents... Or is this game just purely RNG no matter the deck? I know that you sometimes get bad draws. That's a part of it. But I just want a consistent deck. I get max 1 hour of game time since I work full time, so I really want to come home to have a good time, just winning here and there. Don't want to spent several days getting facerolled just because I have bad luck.

As multiple people have already mentioned, you will never escape RNG. I will just point you toward this deck amongst those I personally play which is in my experience the least RNG-dependent. There are only four real (*) sources of potentially frustrating RNG: your Hero Power (COME ON, SPELL POWER TOTEM!); Barnes (but you can cut him out if he fails you, he isn't really crucial to the deck), Ragnaros the Firelord (Because Ragnaros ALWAYS goes face!) and...

Your opponent.

Whatever you do, even in a deck with very little RNG of your own; there's always your opponent. Which is often the absolute most infuriating of all.

(*) Mentions to both Wicked Witchdoctor and Maelstrom Portal; but you will often be interested in just getting more board presence/damage when playing those; and rarely a specific totem/1-drop.

[Guest Hearthstonenoob]

Hey guys i dont own any expansion packs , so i dont have :
2x Malchezaar's Imp
2x Possessed Villager
2x Imp Gang Boss
2x Silverware Golem
this means im missing 8 cards for my Discard Zoo warlock :/ 
what can i put in place of these cards ? that are still craft-able for me ?

[positiv2 952]

9 minutes ago, Guest Hearthstonenoob said:

Hey guys i dont own any expansion packs , so i dont have :
2x Malchezaar's Imp
2x Possessed Villager
2x Imp Gang Boss
2x Silverware Golem
this means im missing 8 cards for my Discard Zoo warlock :/ 
what can i put in place of these cards ? that are still craft-able for me ?

Malchezaar's Imp is what made the deck viable. You should rather stick to regular zoo. You can include second Voidwalker, 2x Harvest Golem, 2x Dark Iron Dwarf and one Mortal Coil in place of the 6 adventure cards. As for the Possessed Villager, I recommend you to craft it. Until you have the card, use 2x Flame Juggler.

[Zagrash90 4]

What's expected rank to get to with this deck and what's good win rate %?

[positiv2 952]

2 hours ago, Zagrash90 said:

What's expected rank to get to with this deck and what's good win rate %?

You *can* reach legend with this deck, but requires more skill than regular zoo, especially thinking about a few turns ahead. From what I've seen in your replays, ranks 15-10 should be reachable if you try hard enough. 
Good winrates differ from ranks (ranks 20-15 should have much higher WR than 5-1), current meta and how familiar you are with the deck. 55%+ is generally accepted to be a good winrate. 

[Zagrash90 4]

1 hour ago, positiv2 said:

You *can* reach legend with this deck, but requires more skill than regular zoo, especially thinking about a few turns ahead. From what I've seen in your replays, ranks 15-10 should be reachable if you try hard enough. 
Good winrates differ from ranks (ranks 20-15 should have much higher WR than 5-1), current meta and how familiar you are with the deck. 55%+ is generally accepted to be a good winrate. 

I miss  Malchezaar;s imp but even without him i get to rank 10 w/o problem tho when i get it from Dark peddler i win much easier when i can discard cards and still have cards left. Also i have made small changes on this deck. Current winrate with this deck is above 61% and played around 35 matches with it.

Edited December 16, 2016 by Zagrash90

[positiv2 952]

3 hours ago, Zagrash90 said:

I miss  Malchezaar;s imp but even without him i get to rank 10 w/o problem tho when i get it from Dark peddler i win much easier when i can discard cards and still have cards left. Also i have made small changes on this deck. Current winrate with this deck is above 61% and played around 35 matches with it.

Alright, that's solid. In that case I guess you can reach rank 5 if you play enough games and try hard enough.

[KingMe 289]

19 minutes ago, positiv2 said:

Alright, that's solid. In that case I guess you can reach rank 5 if you play enough games and try hard enough.

Heart of the cards, heart of the cards. :P

[Erdluf 6]

So for a budget Ungoro version of this (no clutchmother), what would you substitute?

I'm thinking a second Argent Squire (sticky, cheap).

[positiv2 952]

5 hours ago, Erdluf said:

So for a budget Ungoro version of this (no clutchmother), what would you substitute?

I'm thinking a second Argent Squire (sticky, cheap).

It might be better to play the budget version instead - it has the same core and has a very similar playstyle, but does not contain Clutchmother Zavas.

[Guest DaveG44]

Why no Devilsaur Egg (best target for Pterradax)?

[L0rinda 307]

19 hours ago, Guest DaveG44 said:

Why no Devilsaur Egg (best target for Pterradax)?

I ran this in testing for a decent sample of games and found that, although when you got the combo off it was fantastic, in general it was slowing me down too much in the bad matchups compared to the gain in the good matchups. I wouldn't argue with anyone who wanted to run the card, but I did test it quite heavily. As always with Hearthstone, milage may vary.

[Sableflame 5]

Is there any legitimate answer to Murloc spam decks?  I swapped Ravasaur Runt out for a Hellfire... because this deck can recover tempo better than most others, but once a Murloc deck has board control, the only answer is a wipe.  Warlock Wipe = Hellfiire.

Also, for the sake of the discard engine, I replaced the Voidwalkers with Succbui - I'd rather tag them with DoA and make them bigger taunts than deal with the pint-size pingy purple people.

[positiv2 952]

32 minutes ago, Sableflame said:

Is there any legitimate answer to Murloc spam decks?  I swapped Ravasaur Runt out for a Hellfire... because this deck can recover tempo better than most others, but once a Murloc deck has board control, the only answer is a wipe.  Warlock Wipe = Hellfiire.

Also, for the sake of the discard engine, I replaced the Voidwalkers with Succbui - I'd rather tag them with DoA and make them bigger taunts than deal with the pint-size pingy purple people.

Hellfire sounds fine as a tech swap.
Succubus might not be the best swap, as you do not want too much of discard either, and since you are having issue with murloc decks, a 1/3 taunt on T1 to counter T1 and T2 murlocs is definitely a card you want.

[Sableflame 5]

21 minutes ago, positiv2 said:

Hellfire sounds fine as a tech swap.
Succubus might not be the best swap, as you do not want too much of discard either, and since you are having issue with murloc decks, a 1/3 taunt on T1 to counter T1 and T2 murlocs is definitely a card you want.

It was probably just a pure win draw for him...

T1 (me): Voidy

T1 (him): pass

T2 (me): hero power draw, VW -> face

T2 (him): Blowgill Sniper (ping VW), Shadowstep

T3 (me): ... at this point, I honestly don't remember - but I did not have a legit answer in hand, I think I HPD again.

T3 (him): Murloc Tidecaller, Free Blowgill (ping VW), Other Blowgill (ping VW)...

T4 (me): ... staring at a 3/2, 2 2/1s, and a handful of heaven knows what else... played out 1-2 more turns, concede to overwhelming numbers.

Edited April 13, 2017 by Sableflame

[Aexra 5]

I like to include Fire Fly. It is such a good one drop. Even on turn two, you can play both elementals.  

It synerziges  well with Knife Juggler, Darkshire Councilman, and Ravasaur Runt during mid-game.