Hai and welcome to my ‘Powerhouse Shaman’ guide, Enjoy !
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In season 2 I got to legend with 80 wins with this deck, IÂ did rank up quite late which is partially why its so impressive, but that is still very very quickly compared to the average.
In season 3 I got to legend in 11 days, I played fairly casually in my opinion because I am limited in my time, but this shows how consistent this deck can be.
Important note – If you are struggling vs zoo you should obviously put in storm for something that isn’t working out, but it completely depends on the matchups you are facing.
Card Choices
This deck runs many of the standard shaman deck cards, IÂ will explain these choices below:
Best 1 drop for shaman in my opinion, it is sticky because it requires 2 hits to kill, it buffs your blood knight and is also a minion that can utilize Flametongue to trade up.
Utility spell, has multiple uses when buffed with spell power, can kill twilight drakes, silence taunts, when this card is in your hand you should attempt to play around it because its value can vary greatly depending on how you use it.
Removal / Finisher when combined with doomhammer or alakir, 1 mana for 3 damage is very good, it can also be put on totems to avoid damage if you wish.
Removal card, used optimally when you have spellpower and can buff your unbound elemental, does cost 2 mana when you consider overload.
Cycle / spellpower boost, any card that has an effect and cycles itself is extremely powerful there is no reason not to run this card you have a lot of cards that benefit from the spellpower.
Used to let your totems / tokens trade up, consider it a mini bloodlust if you get 4 damage from this it has done its job, 2 mana for 4 damage is fine and then it will eat a removal or minion attack although it is best used when protected via taunts.
Even though this card costs 3 mana it does actually cost 5, beware playing this on turn 3 it can set you back quite hard if they get removed, very good late game for soaking big hits and allowing your big damage dealers to do work.
Standard shaman 3 drop, you run 8 overload cards in this deck so it is better than harvest golem, can eat removal because people get scared of its potential so it usually trades for more than its own value.
Shaman hard removal, run 2 no questions asked.
Strong body that buffs spellpower and cycles, best 5 drop for a shaman by a long margin.
Shaman signature card that everyone loves to hate, you want to make sure and get good use out of the battlecry, avoid using this for face damage unless you are pushing for lethal.
Multi use card, strong as a finisher or board clear, this is the birth child of leeroy and argent commander as it combines both of their strengths into 1 card.
Unique Card Choices
Without storm in this deck early removal is key so you dont fall behind, this card is godlike vs zoo and can also bait ooze to make way for the doomhammer later on.
You run squires which gives this card some immediate value, but a lot of other decks in the meta also run divine shield minions and even if you know your opponent doesnt play divine shields then this is still a 3/3 for 3 which is fine, if this card gets value it will eat removal the violet teacher or fire elemental would have taken later on and this is a very big tempo boost.
This deck is lacking just 1 source of draw without this card and in longer control games it can also net huge value, if it draws you a card and your opponent wastes a removal on it then it has also done its job perfectly.
Bread and butter of this deck, lava burst gives shaman immense amounts of reach, it is very good at bursting out handlocks or even killing off innervated yeti’s, it is one of my favourite cards in the game because very few people expect it.
This could be any 4 drop as the mana curve is what i am playing around here, but this card sacrifices 1 attack from yeti for the ability to spawn 1/1 tokens, this is amazing with shaman becasue it gives you targets for flametongue and you have a lot of spells (12) in total
Officially renamed the donghammer on my stream I love drawing this card, it puts people on a clock and can do a massive 16 damage for 7 mana, if you use double rockbiter on it it translates to 28 damage for 3 cards and 9 mana.
Side note – Shamans do lack card draw so it is extremely important to squeeze value out of cards this is why the majority of card choices exist in this deck and it is why it works so well as there is a lot of synergies in this deck.
Playstyle
This deck is designed to be offensive, once you get a tiny bit of board advantage you really want to make it count, you should obviously make good trades and focus on keeping the board in your favour but especially when running lava burst you must be careful of when you have lethal especially over 2 turns.
Things to watch out for
Overload, this is either loved or hated (or both) by shaman players and their foe’s if you overload you are basically committing to this turn and the next, while this on paper sounds easy you need to have a vast knowledge of what plays you are likely to see from your opponent in order to minimise the risk you get countered. I believe once you master this you will see a noticable difference in your win rate with this class not just this deck.
Lethal, ever missed lethal, well playing this deck it wont be the last time you manage that, from tricks like hitting face with your doomhammer and overloading your unbound elemental with that stormforged axe you have in your hand even though you have 4 charges of the hammer left, flametongue synergy from trading off tokens / totems, saving earth shock for that taunt when the harvest golem was not that big a deal, there will be a lot of times you look back on a game and see that if you had played a little more greedy or just checked a little more that you actually did have lethal, it is not uncommon with this deck to be able to kill out of no where so pay attention!
Violet teacher, if violet teacher is beside a flametongue totem (left side) and you are about to cast a spell ask yourself do you need the 2 damage from the flametongue first because the token spawns between them, the first time you make this mistake you will remember it for sure!
Approach to Games
When you see your opponent you should know immediately what deck (usually 2 choices) he is playing, you should mulligan for minions as the aggressor (vs control warrior) or for removal vs agro decks (vs zoo)
The choice is usually quite obvious, vs anything except warlock you have a pretty good chance to guess correctly as to what deck people are playing, but vs warlock you should always mulligan for agro as you can beat handlock with a bad draw, but you will not beat zoo with a bad draw.
Card synergies
Here are some of the possible card synergies to look out for when playing this deck.
Violet-teacher and spells – This can generate you tokens to use with flametongue-totem which is a very easy way to generate card advantage and get good trades out of flametongue-totem
Alakir-the-windlord and rockbiter-weapon / flametongue-totem – This can be used for extreme board impact and finishing the game off.
Doomhammer and rockbiter-weapon – This can be used similiar to alakir-the-windlord for extreme board impact and finishing the game off, beware of taking a lot of damage to your health points as you do not run any healing in this deck.
Argent-squire and blood-knight – This can be used to generate extreme tempo early on in the game it can also be used on opposing divine shield minions for a similiar effect and taking resources away from your opponent.
Spellpower and spells – This is a very basic synergy but one that has the biggest impact on the game, using a 3 damage earth-shock on a harvest-golem or 4 damage lightning-bolt to shut down azure-drake or something similiar generates a massive amount of tempo and drastically increases the value of your own cards, you should always be looking for ways to maximise this effect.
Flametongue-totem and totems / tokens – This is one of the synergies you should always be looking for when playing shaman as it drastically stretches the value from you can get from flametongue-totem.
Unbound-elemental and overload – This is the most basic shaman synergy, but one that is quite difficult to master, when the unbound-elemental comes to the field it is relatively weak, if you can bring it to the field as a 3/5 or stronger then it becomes a lot harder for your opponent to deal with.
Mulligan and strategy
View the complete Powerhouse Shaman Match Analysis
Lightning storm
The great debate!
Ok so people are going to be concerned about what I am about to write here, but this is my experience with this card. In the following matchups ‘Tempo rogue / Token druid / Zoo’ this card can do work and can counter some of the more powerful plays that these decks make, like for example –
Tempo Rogue – Harvest golem x2 > Defender of argus / Defias > Defender
Token Druid – Violet > innervate > Power of the Wild
Zoo Lock – Multiple combinations of cards that have 2 hp
Storm is amazing with spellpower as is any spell in the game that hits multiple targets from a value PoV (think Malygos + Swipe), but when you can use this with spellpower you are usually ahead, now vs people who overextend it is pretty awesome, but this is considered bad play for a reason and people presume you run storm anyway, the next few times you use storm outside of those 3 matchs (because it is good in those), look at the ‘effective’ damage that it does and then consider if it is worth for the mana cost.
I understand why people like to have the card because it opens up options and that is nice because you never feel very vulnerable, but when the meta is as fast as what we have now, especially with lots of miracle and handlock i do not feel that it is a justifiable card as drawing dead cards vs miracle is pretty much good game and vs handlock to be honest it just sucks, if you disagree that is completely fine and i respect your opinion and IÂ hope you will do the same with mine.
TL:DRÂ – I think storm is ok in a lot of matchups, i think its ‘Good’ in 3, this leads me to believe it is not worth the card slot in a fast meta.
Closing
Thank you for taking the time to read my powerhouse shaman guide I hope it helps people get to legend and beyond in the near future, I will continue to keep this deck updated as seasons progress and I am available to answer any questions anyone might have so go grasp the power of the elements and destroy some newbs!
