Introduction
Hello everyone and welcome to the latest and final eddition of The BRM Nuba Report!
During the last month I made a series of articles, in which after every week of Blackrock Mountain Release I was able to make a small breakdown of the metagame, talking a little about the happenings of Each week, including Boss fights, Card Impact, etc… I also was able to post the newest playable Deck Lists as well as Theorycraft about possible lists for the next week.
Here in this last article, however, things are going to be a bit different. Instead of the usual stuff we’ll instead make a whole monthly review, starting with individual Card Impact, following by the Most Notable Deck Lists (the most powerful decks that showed up, or that got upgraded by BRM), and at the end of it all we’ll be talking about my personal opinion on the metagame post BRM.
Shall we begin?
Card Impact on Each Class
This section was supposed to talk about each card individually, but this job was already taken in a beautiful way by our writer K3lv, so instead of making what I originally thought about, I decided it would be more informative to talk about the impact of the BRM Cards on each class, and which cards each Class ended up benefiting from after BRM got fully released.
Druid
Druid got buffed more than other class with the globally used All-Star card, emperor-thaurissan. The card added consistency and redundancy to already powerful existing Druid strategies, making the class a lot stronger even though it only got one card added to its main strategy. druid-of-the-flame caused some small changes on Hard Control Druid lists, but those lists aren’t as power or consistent as our standard Combo Druids, so we can’t say the impact the card had on the class was big. Everything else added to the game is just too inconsistent for an already stablished consistent strategy.
Rogue
Rogues felt a little nerfed after this expansion. Emperor Thaurissan did added some power to the Class, not as much as Druid but still some power. What I mean by saying “nerfed” is that other classes got buffed a lot more than Rogue. Usually when we talk about how good a class became, we like to talk about the Class’ main strategy and how much it got buffed or evolved and whenever a new strategy comes up, it can only be called “the defining one” if it is better than the already existing one. Mill Rogue did get buffed, but the strategy is fringe, inconsistent and unreliable to a point I wouldn’t recommend using on the ladder.
Hunter
Hunter is another class that got buffed just by having 1 card added to its core: quick-shot. The main core of both the Class’ Decks (Face and Mid-range) got significantly buffed by the addition of this card, and no further adjustments were needed in order to keep the Class competitive.
Usually, consistent strategies such as both Hunter’s strategies and Combo Druid don’t need major buffs to remain competitive, just small adjustments.
Mage
Mage’s core strategies aren’t as consistent as other class’, but overall Freeze Mage got a significant buff with Emperor Thaurissan as well. However, new strategies are now Possible with flamewaker, and it’s still impossible to determinate which Decks are the best Mage ones.
Shaman
Shaman’s strategies are very inconsistent by nature, due to its immense number of Random factors and lack of Card Draw. fireguard-destroyer was the Class’ only addition, and although it’s a very strong card it did not fix any of the Class’ problems, therefore the impact of the card wasn’t big, regardless of actually being the strongest 4-drop in the entire game. Mech Shaman got a big buff with the addition of this card, and it’s probably the only deck that has chances of being a Tier-1 deck, but I highly doubt it.
You all know Shaman is my favorite Class, so I will be testing some different builds so maybe we’ll have a nice Deck to take over the ladder later this season!
Warrior
Warrior Control was killed on purpose by Blizzard. Something tells me Blizzard doesn’t like consistent strategies very much, and would rather have a game filled with unreliable Decks, hence Classes that tend to go Control like Shaman, Priest and Warrior didn’t get anything this expansion to address their consistency issues. Warrior Core deck stopped being the consistent Control Warrior, that was barely breathing last season due to its lack of Card Draw, and is now the Combo deck featuring the new card grim-patron. The card added a whole new strategy to the class, and even disliking it (because I really wanted Control Warrior to be buffed) I have to admit the strategy is currently very popular. Regardless of all the good results its been having, I believe it only does so because of the high number of people using it due to the “fun” aspect of the deck, but this is just my personal opinion and the deck is currently the second most played deck in the game.
Warlock
Handlock is still the most consistent Control deck in the game, even after only getting Thaurissan as a card, the deck is still a powerhouse on the ladder. Due to Handlock’s Natural weaknesses and difficult gameplay it’s not a very played deck on the ladder, but in case you want a nice deck to play, Handlock is one of the decks I recommend you playing. Zoo got a massive buff in the form of imp-gang-boss. The card not only added power to the deck, it Resurrected the deck completely (Zoo was pretty much dead before BRM was out), giving it new life and a whole different playstyle by giving it ways to hold on the board until the late game, transitioning Zoo from an Aggro into a Mid-range deck.
Priest
It’s really hard to think on Priest’s card impact, because of how hard it is to Build a nice Priest deck. resurrect was a nice addition to Priest, but it didn’t fix Priest’s inconsistency problem. Because of this, the class is bound to remain a Tier-2 class (at best).
Paladin
Paladin is the Class that is bound to Change the most with BRM. Dragon Paladin is still something that hasn’t stablished yet, because of how hard it is to build a whole new strategy, and we still need a couple of weeks before the most consistent Paladin Dragon list shows up. dragon-consort is the name of the card that made the Paladin Dragon build a thing, and is so powerful that even when you are not playing a Dragon list, you’ll still want to use this card on your Paladin deck.
Overall I think the class was already a very consistent/strong class before BRM, and now it is only bound to be even more. It’s just a matter of finding the right build (which isn’t something easy to do).
Notable Deck Lists
Here you guys will find a list for every Class to be played on the ladder this season.
Most of these lists were adapted by me, and the changes were done after some playtesting in order to have higher consistency.
Hunter
Starting with Hunter we have Era’s Rank 1 Mid-range Hunter. I did no changes to the list as I believed it is already perfected. We discussed this list before, so there isn’t much to add to it.
In case you want a nice guide, Aware_Protohype happen to have added a nice guide about this deck, with a slightly different list.
Warrior
Grim Patron Warrior is the second most played deck on the ladder this week, and our beloved writer, Th3_RaT gave us a pretty nice guide about this deck!
Druid
This is my personal Combo Druid list. Most of what I had to say about this deck and strategy has already been said before. I believe Combo Druid got buffed a lot by Emperor Thaurissan and in case you need a Druid list to play on the ladder, this is the one.
Rogue
DarkFrost wrote a pretty nice guide on Mill Rogue. Even disliking the strategy, it is the one strategy that got buffed the most by BRM, so I feel inclined to post it here.
Priest
And here you guys can see my Mid-range Resurrect Priest list. I believe that if Priests have some small potential of being good, Resurrect has to be part of its core.
Shaman
Moving on to Shaman, this is my Aggro~Mid-range Version of the classic Mech Shaman. I believe it is nice to play the deck with some cards like hex and lightning-storm so you can have “outs” for difficult situations and not be playing a one-trick-pony. This list is slightly more consistent than other Mech Shaman lists, but also slightly less explosive, so you have less burst power because of this.
Mage
In the Mage directory, we have Freeze Mage as today’s only consistent Mage Build. Our friend Camzee wrote a pretty nice guide about the deck, so make sure to check it out in case you’re looking to play this list in any near future!
Warlock
And here you guys can see my Personal Mid-range Demon Zoo. There is a Premium Guide being worked on for this deck, so keep an eye out on our Premium Section, the guide is bound to be finished soon!
Paladin
Dragon Paladin is something that will still take very long to happen. I adapted StrifeCro’s current Dragon Build, his list’s idea is slightly better than others, but still seems to need some tuning. I don’t recommend trying to tune this list for yourselves though, because of how complex the choices are. In case you want to play Dragon Paladin, this list is something you guys should feel confortable trying.
Writer’s Personal Opinion on BRM
Blackrock Mountain, although bound to fix some general problems in the game, making Mid-range more powerful and Hard Control/Aggro weaker, was somehow dissapointing to me. The main concern of the Expansion was obviously a sucess, as Mid-range Strategies became stronger and more popular, but at the same time the issue of consistency hasn’t been fixed in the game, and the excessive randomness is still a huge factor in the game.
The main idea is that Hearthstone’s developers doesn’t seem to want an actual competitive game, and the biggest focus is on the Casual community. I do not think that this is how they should focus their idea, but still, the “Let us make casual content, the high level players will adapt to whatever we make anyway” type of thought is the predominant idea behind every Blizzard decision regarding Hearthstone.
Hearthstone reached 30 million players this month, but we are still playing a very similar game to the one we played over a year ago, during the Beta stages of the game. The interface hasn’t evolved, and the competitive scene of the game didn’t get any upgrade outside of the not-so-polished spectator mode. Maybe you’re not understanding what I mean in this paragraph, so let me try to explain myself better here: There are still a lot of things that this game need, things that Blizzard can easily do but haven’t done for the simple fact that they don’t feel like they have to, things like:
- Armory: This game needs a live Ladder, where you can go and check the whole list with the top 100 players being updated constantly. This game also needs a website where people can see (if they want to) their stats and achievements.
- Achievements: Something to make people feel rewarded for doing something in the game other than getting to rank 20.
- In-Game Tournament Mode: Why hasn’t this been done already?
These things are needed in order to grant the game a more competitive status. This is, after all, a card game, and liking or not Blizzard has to focus their attention on the high end of the game as much as the lower ranks. But why is that, Nuba? Basically, everyone playing Hearthstone is either a Legendary player, or a player trying to Reach Legend. Seeing a player that isn’t Legend and doesn’t want to be so is very rare, and the Legend players are the ones that define the Metagame: The lists, the playstyle, the Guides, the streams, those are all made by Legend players. These guys are the ones that shape the game, and if you are playing Hearthstone, you want to be part of the Legendary ranks. So why can’t Blizzard just give us some love?
Well, sadly, this love hasn’t been delivered in Blackrock Mountain.
Conclusion
And with this, we finally close the Blackrock Mountain Weekly Report Series!
I hope you guys were able to take some knownledge out of these series, and next week we’re going to be back with the Countering the Flavor of the Week Series!!
Love you guys,
Nuba
 
 
 
 /TheNubaHS
