Hearthstone Shaman Decks

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Shaman Decks.

[dsjoerg 0]

Hi, nice forum!  Windspeaker is in there twice.  What was supposed to be in there instead?

[Guest Deathbringer]

@dsjoerg The extra Windspeaker is above the 30 cards cap per deck. So if you ignore the extra you get a full deck.

[Damien 1,514]

Thank you guys, it's been fixed

[Guest Cory]

Literally have not won a single game with this deck. What am I doing wrong? It's supposed to be based around getting lots of minions on the board mid game right? I find myself having NO fucking minions to put up in the mid game. Or if I do they just get removed and I get shit on.

[Guest Holt]

Literally have not won a single game with this deck. What am I doing wrong? It's supposed to be based around getting lots of minions on the board mid game right? I find myself having NO fucking minions to put up in the mid game. Or if I do they just get removed and I get shit on.

 

 

I'm on my 7th game with this deck, same results. Can't get anything on the board long enough to do anything. Oh and this deck has no board clearing power either.

[Vlad 411]

Literally have not won a single game with this deck. What am I doing wrong? It's supposed to be based around getting lots of minions on the board mid game right? I find myself having NO fucking minions to put up in the mid game. Or if I do they just get removed and I get shit on.

 

There are 20 minions in this deck, not counting the 2 Flametongue Totems. Note also that your hero power summons more minions. So, I'm not exactly sure how you can have issues putting up minions on the board. In fact, 12-14 of the minions are mid-game minions.

 

You are not expected to achieve board superiority by just playing a bunch of minions. You need to do it by carefully and strategically taking out the enemy minions while keeping yours alive. Your healing totem allows your minions that survive to be healed up, and Rockbiter and Flametongue Totems allow your hero power minions to kill actual enemy minions.

 

I'm on my 7th game with this deck, same results. Can't get anything on the board long enough to do anything. Oh and this deck has no board clearing power either.

 

This deck has no board clearing power because there are literally no Basic Shaman cards that allow you to deal damage to more than one target. Likewise, no Basic neutral minions allow you to clear the board either.

 

I'd also like to note that since the patch, competition appears to be much more fierce in constructed mode than before. Prior to the patch, you could do very well at whatever your MMR was with an all-basic deck, but post-patch it seems much more difficult to do so.

 

In any case, we are not recommending this (or any other basic deck) as being "the best" or even "a very good" deck. All we are saying is that if you are building only out of basic cards (because you haven't been playing for long and/or haven't invested any real money into the game), then these basic decks are probably the best you can play with.

[Guest magnaangemon01]

This deck is crap. Tried this one and the warlock deck as well. They can barely even touch the opponent. They even get stomped in the Normal AI practice mode. Maybe these guys should go back to what they know best, WoW. Because they definitely don't know Hearthstone.

[Vlad 411]

This deck is crap. Tried this one and the warlock deck as well. They can barely even touch the opponent. They even get stomped in the Normal AI practice mode. Maybe these guys should go back to what they know best, WoW. Because they definitely don't know Hearthstone.

 

Thank you very much for your post. It has allowed me to pin-point the issues people are having much better. Let me explain.

 

Your complaint is that this deck is so bad that it "gets stomped" by the Normal AI. That, I grant you, sounds pretty bad. So I went and played some matches with it against the AI. Here are my results.

 

Normal AI:

 

Mage - win

Hunter - win

Warrior - win

Druid - win

 

Expert AI:

 

Mage - win

Shaman - win

Priest - win

Rogue - win

 

So, not only did I not get stomped, but the AI was never a threat at all, even in Expert mode (with the exception of the Shaman, who had a strong start that left me at 14 HP before I recovered and won). In fact, I found the AI to be pretty bad indeed, with the Mage habitually using Fireblast on targets that they then Polymorph, for instance.

 

Now, given that you and I are both playing the exact same deck, against the exact same AI, with completely different results, it is obvious the the problem lies elsewhere. You could make an argument that you had the unluckiest possible draws, and I had the luckiest possible draws, but I think the far more reasonable conclusion is that you're just not very good at the game. And in order to get stomped by the Normal AI with this deck, I think you must be truly inexperienced (or making very poor decisions). And there's nothing wrong with that - don't think that I'm being condescending. We're all here to try to learn, teach, and get better together.

 

It is, perhaps, not ideal that we decided to publish basic deck lists before we published the actual guides that teach people how to improve their gameplay, but since writing guides of that sort is far more time consuming than putting the decks together, we felt that it was better to start with the decks to give people at least some guidance even now.

 

So, yet again, I admit that these decks are not especially strong. They lack many tools that a deck without a basic-only constraint would have. In the case of Shamans, I think that their Basic cards are especially poor, lacking practically any spells worth using. But this doesn't change the fact that the deck we provide here is, I firmly believe, among the best (if not the single best) Shaman deck you can construct using only Basic cards. If you feel this deck is weak, then you should raise the issue with Blizzard, and not with us.

 

Finally, I would like to ask you, and anyone else posting negative feedback about the decks to go ahead and suggest what changes would actually make the decks better. Without such suggestions, there really is not much we can do to improve the decks.

 

Thank you.

 

P.S.: Your claim that "we don't know Hearthstone" is false. First of all, while we certainly don't claim to be top players, we (Damien and I) are both pretty good. We've both achieved 9 wins in Arena on a regular basis (pre-patch), as well as reaching 3-star Master rank in constructed (again, pre-patch, not that that really means very much).

 

Second of all, you should know that our Hearthstone content is created with the very involved participation and assistance of a player who we do believe is a top player. According to this post from Blizzard, they were ranked 9th in all of Europe a few days ago.

[Guest David]

Settle this argument by logging your games with Hearthlog and posting the link here.

 

http://www.hearthlog.com/

 

If you think the deck is crap, play a game with it and post the game log.  Then, if others think you didn't play it right, they can show you exactly where you made the wrong play.

 

 

I'm not affiliated with Hearthlog, I just think it's a great tool for settling these kind of silly discussions.

[Guest hydrolon]

this deck is actually quite nice

could you tip what expert cards could make it better?

was thinking about master swordsmith, maybe injured blademaster (maybe its cleric only card)

priestess of elune could give a minor heal, and pint sized summoner might also work.

sadly im still a noob so no legenderys in my inventory...

stormforged axe is also an option since i see it everywhere in pro decks, but no real idea what overload rly does

[Stoove 347]

stormforged axe is also an option since i see it everywhere in pro decks, but no real idea what overload rly does

 

Overload locks some of your mana out on the next turn. Example: If I have 10 mana crystals and I play a card with Overload (2), the next turn I cannot spend 2 mana crystals; I have only 8 mana to spend.

 

Does that make sense?

[Vlad 411]

this deck is actually quite nice

could you tip what expert cards could make it better?

was thinking about master swordsmith, maybe injured blademaster (maybe its cleric only card)

priestess of elune could give a minor heal, and pint sized summoner might also work.

sadly im still a noob so no legenderys in my inventory...

stormforged axe is also an option since i see it everywhere in pro decks, but no real idea what overload rly does

I think the best cards to start crafting for a Shaman deck are Stormforged Axe, Forked Lightning, and Lightning Bolt. Then, possibly, Unbound Elementals and one Mana Tide Totem, as well as Earth Elementals and Doomhammer (these last two are very good, but they're epic so they'll cost a lot of dust to craft).

 

From the neutral cards, I wouldn't craft any of the ones you said. I'd look into cards like Spellbreaker and Defender of Argus. In the future, we'll be providing a lot more information on this topic.

 

Thank you, and good luck!

[Guest Guest]

What have you been smoking man?? No celaring? Fork lightning and electric storm? After mage shaman has the best clearing options in the game.. Lafa overflow and hex.. Cmon..

[Vlad 411]

What have you been smoking man?? No celaring? Fork lightning and electric storm? After mage shaman has the best clearing options in the game.. Lafa overflow and hex.. Cmon..

Excuse me for using caps lock in this reply.

 

THIS IS A BASIC-ONLY DECK. FORKED LIGHTNING AND LIGHTNING STORM (may want to get the names of the spells right when you're telling someone they don't know what they're talking about) ARE NOT BASIC CARDS.

 

I don't smoke.

[Damien 1,514]

Lafa overflow, lol.

[Puma 1]

This is an amazing deck. I had trouble at first, but after getting an idea of it's strong points I started winning a lot more. And the way I win with this deck is usually pretty fun - earlier today I took down a hero from 30 to 0 hp in a single turn with a couple of minions, bloodlust, windfury and I forgot if there was flametongue or rockbiter totem. Anyway, pretty much every game is won like this - just survive and maintain board control until you can dish out bloodlust and windfury and smack him in the face.

 

Also ... totems! I noticed that most players just ignore the totems (except for the snake) in Play mode (not so much in Ranked mode) and it usually gets back to them horribly :)

 

So after playing around with this deck for a few days I got some questions. I have unlocked several expert cards and I'm pretty sure that I have to include them in my deck, but I'm not sure what to remove. Everything is really useful in that deck. So I have:

 

- Earth Shock

- Forked Lightning

- Lightning Bolt

- Dust Devil

- Stormforged Axe

 

I tried putting 2x of each of these in my deck, but it was terrible.

 

Also from the Neutral cards, I was thinking about dropping the 2x Swamp Ooze for Abusive Sergeant and Ironbreak Owl.

 

All in all - which are the weak points in this Basic-only deck and how it can be upgraded?

 

* And may the odds be ever in your favour! *

[Vlad 411]

This is an amazing deck. I had trouble at first, but after getting an idea of it's strong points I started winning a lot more. And the way I win with this deck is usually pretty fun - earlier today I took down a hero from 30 to 0 hp in a single turn with a couple of minions, bloodlust, windfury and I forgot if there was flametongue or rockbiter totem. Anyway, pretty much every game is won like this - just survive and maintain board control until you can dish out bloodlust and windfury and smack him in the face.

 

Also ... totems! I noticed that most players just ignore the totems (except for the snake) in Play mode (not so much in Ranked mode) and it usually gets back to them horribly

 

So after playing around with this deck for a few days I got some questions. I have unlocked several expert cards and I'm pretty sure that I have to include them in my deck, but I'm not sure what to remove. Everything is really useful in that deck. So I have:

 

- Earth Shock

- Forked Lightning

- Lightning Bolt

- Dust Devil

- Stormforged Axe

 

I tried putting 2x of each of these in my deck, but it was terrible.

 

Also from the Neutral cards, I was thinking about dropping the 2x Swamp Ooze for Abusive Sergeant and Ironbreak Owl.

 

All in all - which are the weak points in this Basic-only deck and how it can be upgraded?

 

* And may the odds be ever in your favour! *

 

Regarding the Shaman Expert cards: you should make it a point to fit the Stormforged Axes, Lightning Bolt, and Forked Lightning in (in that order). Earth Shock is pretty nice (makes quick work of minions like the Twilight Drake). Dust Devil is just bad, don't ever take it.

 

Now, as to what to drop from this deck to make room for your cards, I'd say the Wolfriders should be the first to go. They're definitely the weak point of the deck, and they're there mostly as filler since you don't have too many basic options.

 

So, Lighting Bolt (x2) in for Wolfrider (x2) - LB is basically a superior Wolfrider in almost any situation (bypasses taunt, can be buffed by spellpower, is cheaper), if you consider that the Wolfrider hardly ever survives more than one turn.

 

The other weak part of the deck are the Windfuries. Windfury as an effect is of questionable value to begin with, but it's better to apply it through the means of the Windspeakers, since it also leaves behind a minion with a pretty good body (and 4 Windfuries in the deck are total overkill). Stormforged Axes in for Windfuries.

 

You'll notice that with the Stormforged Axes, you've got an excessive amount of 2-drops. So, you can get rid of a Flametongue Totem and the River Crocolisk, and put in the Forked Lightnings. Flametongue Totem is the sort of card that really only helps you when you're already ahead, or as a finisher. As a finisher, one is enough. Forked Lightning, on the other hand, is the type of card that helps you're behind, which is far more valuable.

 

Also, you can safely drop a Bloodlust to make room for one Earth Shock.

 

As for the Sergeant and Owl in for Oozes, I agree generally, though you should probably keep one Ooze.

 

So, you would have a deck that might look like this.

 

Hope that helped, and let me know if you have any other questions!

[Guest guest svk 256]

thanks to this deck i hate playing shaman ... won 1 out of 7 games maybe . This deck is bad dont use it.

[Vlad 411]

thanks to this deck i hate playing shaman ... won 1 out of 7 games maybe . This deck is bad dont use it.

No offense, but I really don't understand why you bother posting such comments. It's been stated over and over again in this thread, if you have a complaint to make about the deck, please be specific about it and come up with a way in which the deck can be improved within the basic-only limitation. Otherwise, your comments are completely meaningless, especially since it could well be the case that, like the other person who posted about losing to the AI, you are just playing the deck wrong.

[Puma 1]

thanks to this deck i hate playing shaman ... won 1 out of 7 games maybe . This deck is bad dont use it.

 

I've won tons of games with this deck, look for the problem elsewhere.

 

@Vlad - I'm just not sure about dropping one Bloodlust, it's a key card for this deck, don't you think?

[Omaric 246]

I've won tons of games with this deck, look for the problem elsewhere.

 

@Vlad - I'm just not sure about dropping one Bloodlust, it's a key card for this deck, don't you think?

 

With the number of Windfury effects I'd definitely recommend having one.  Bloodlust has won me numerous games on my own Shaman deck.  If all you have on the board is a handful of totems and they drop something big, Bloodlust could be your most efficient way to remove the threat.  With 3+ creatures the efficiency of Bloodlust really starts to rise.

[Vlad 411]

I've won tons of games with this deck, look for the problem elsewhere.

 

@Vlad - I'm just not sure about dropping one Bloodlust, it's a key card for this deck, don't you think?

One Bloodlust is definitely needed in this deck, but two is probably going to prove unnecessary most of the time.

[Guest Guest]

I kinda like this deck however it seems to me that once you've lost a board control (e.g. due to unlucky starting hand and high-mana cards in the first few deals which happends to me a lot for some reason) you have hard time getting back in the game.

 

I suspect that this is mostly becuase so far I had no cards that would allow me to clean-up the entire borad such as Lighting storm or maybe I am playing the deck wrong.

 

Any suggestions?

[Stoove 347]

I kinda like this deck however it seems to me that once you've lost a board control (e.g. due to unlucky starting hand and high-mana cards in the first few deals which happends to me a lot for some reason) you have hard time getting back in the game.

 

Well this happens to most decks, I think. An unlucky draw is an unlucky draw, and you can't just remove all big cards, since you'd run out of steam late-game.