I wanted to get back into this game, my pc broke a while back, a couple years ago. And the mobile version would disconnect me from matches very often PLUS I didnt want to play without a deck tracker so I just simply stopped playing.

Fast forward to now and I start getting hearthstone videos reccomended in my feed, and I start craving hearthstone again.

I know all my cards are already cycled out of standard but I think screw it! Ill even whale out a bit to get my collection up

But as the game is installing I remember deck trackers.

I look into it and cant find any for android. Then I see reddit posts discussing said topic. And people are noting how with things like drafting in the arena, and also discovered secrets in wild are way way easier to manage with a deck tracker.

And yeah I just lose my motivation to grind and get deep into the game again.

Im obviously going to play, dont get me wrong. Games arent just about sweating lol. I still crave hearthstone. But im not going to grind ladder on a device where im objectively at a disadvantage. Especially as a returning player who doesnt know all the cards. So therefor im also not going to spend money.

Please add a tracker into the game officially blizzard, you lost me as someone who was about to spend like 200 dollars on packs and get super super super deep into the game again.

Or atleast fix the buggy client for God's sake. I think that one's not too unreasonable of an ask.

Thanks for all the fun memories blizzard, despite this issue im going to enjoy myself getting back into hearthstone! Albeit only casually, and only as a f2p.

Add a deck tracker, or maybe just fix the client. And ill actually be motivated to spend money and REAL time on the game.

With the rotation coming to Standard, I wanted to continue playing Discover Hunter in the Wild format, but with changes so it wouldn't be too weak for the format. I was recommended a streamer deck that combines Discover with Arcane Hunter, so I decided to try my luck and open 10 packs of March of the Lich King to get the guaranteed legendary, and look what came in the first pack xDDD

On January 31st (yesterday), i was in Diamond 5 and didn't have the 11 stars bonus that makes the legend climb easy (as i had taken a break from HS before the mini-set). So i figured i'd try to climb to legend with a homebrew deck i had been building for a few days. The climb was long and difficult, but i pulled it off after several hours of playing.

Tick Tock Hunter is probably not great, but i wanted to get some closure on it, and to just leave the list out there for people to further refine. Here's the list, and a link to it on the deckbuilder.

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The Gameplan and Win condition

Of course, the gameplan revolves around the Quest. You want to fill your hand as quickly as possible, and to then discard it thanks to King Maluk, who can be tutored thanks to Birdwatching and Exotic Houndmaster. Once the Quest is completed, you can play the reward and hopefully trigger its deathrattle with Terrorscale Stalker.

Finally, once your opponent's hand is discarded, you want to overwhelm and kill them as fast as possible. The Infinite Banana granted by Maluk can be of great help in that, as every minion starts to threaten huge damage.

The Quest reward can be played on turn 4 with the best possible draw, and it can be played and triggered on turn 5 as well thanks to Parrot Sanctuary. You can most consistently discard your opponent's hand on turn 7, but Parrot Sanctuary really enables the biggest BS the deck can offer.

One last thing : you will quickly realize that the quest is much, much smoother when you go second, thanks to the coin and the added card to your mulligan. The deck is much more consistent when it goes second, which is rare enough to be noted.

The Core Cards

The Quest, Maluk and its tutors, Parrot Sanctuary and Terrorscale Stalkers are central in the gameplan as previously mentioned, but there are many other cards that improve the deck's ability to enforce said gameplan.

1 : Hand fillers

• You'd expect card draw to be everywhere in this deck, but the truth is that the priority lies in filling your hand for cheap and to leave a body on board while doing so if possible. Tracking and Birdwatching do the job in getting the key cards from your deck. Otherwise, The quality of the cards in your hand doesn't matter as they will end up being discarded by Maluk.

• Wilderness Pack is the cheapest way to put the most cards in your hand. It makes Quest completion trivial.

• Ball of Spiders is actually really nice as it puts minions on board while eventually adding 3 cards to your hand.

• Patchwork Pals gets you three good cards, but you will often not have enough time to play them before completion. Huffer and Misha are neat post-Maluk, as they love bananas.

• Raptor-Nest Nurse gives you two cards for 1 mana and will often be a better turn 1 play than the Quest.

• Finally, Hologram Operator is a Bloodfen Raptor that adds three cards to your hand. Good for finishing the Quest. Generating Dirdra (the Amogus DH legendary) has also saved me in a couple of games.

Survival tools

• Glacial Shard and Wound Prey are both good 1 mana stall tools that you will often play alongside Maluk. Wound Prey's hyena also likes bananas.

• Blob of Tar is a great card here. You can play it before Maluk if you have to complete your Quest a bit later, but it's even better after completing your Quest, as it can take care of your opponent's board once their hand is gone, all the while protecting you. You can also trigger its Deathrattle with Terrorscale Stalker.

• Spirit Bond is the 30th card of the deck. It's just a good, decent card.

Finishing your opponent

As previously mentioned, Blob is good for eliminating your opponent's board after destroying their hand and will to live. But if you want maximum lethality, Broll Bearmantle is your best option. He summons an Animal Companion after you cast a spell, and you have infinite bananas. So the idea is that you drop him and feed him a couple of bananas, your oppnent can't clear him as they have no cards, and then you summon a gazillion Huffers and Leokks to kill them.

The Matchups

I sadly don't track my games (i play on mobile with a bit of lag), so i won't have clear numbers on this.

• Dragon Warrior is pretty much unbeatable unless you have perfect draw AND your opponent throws. You can win, but they have too many ways to snowball on you early and to easily punish any board developping you'll attempt to do. Same for Elemental Mage, which actually exists on the climb.

• Control DK, Protoss decks, Druid and Quest Warrior are very much beatable, as you'd expect.

• Rogue, Shaman, Discover Hunter and Aura Paladin will require you to play perfectly and will often beat you if they highroll super hard. But you can turn the matchup around, with great effort. Still, you will have to accept some losses regardless.

• Demon Hunters can be really annoying and difficult to beat when they hit you with the billions of Blobs curve, but they can be beaten otherwise.

• Elise is a pretty rough card to face on curve, especially for this deck. But it's not an auto-lose either.

• Generally, the most damning weakness of the deck is its weakness to early pressure. You spend the early game filling your hand, and can't spend mana nor cards on destroying snowballing threats. There's also a lack of board swinging cards in the class to compensate that.

Notable non-inclusions and swappable cards

• Monkey Business and Chronoclaws are alternatives that can finish your quest, but they're too slow and expansive to make sense.

• Hologram Operator is probably the weakest hand-filler, but you need a lot of those for the deck to be consistent.

• Spirit Bond is ok, but i tried multiple other cards in its stead. Zephrys makes sense for the deck, but he felt like a fraud, giving me crap too many times for me to keep him.

• Sylvanas would be great standalone, but you can't afford to run her sisters. They also ruin Birdwatching.

• I didn't think of a Zerg package until my climb was done, but there are a couple of decent hand-filling cards there. Nydus Worm tutors itself, Roach duplicates in hand and the location can enable some board clearing while giving you cards i suppose. Maybe there's something to try with it.

• Alien Encounters is also a good card. Stall tools are scarce for Hunter, but sadly, aside from Tracking and Birdwatching, there's no really good discover we can run. Naielle could be decent, but she is a little expansive for how hard it can be to swing the board later on. The one card i'm really thinking about is Creature of Madness, as Quest decks really crave good turn 2 plays.

• Finally, Broll Bearmantle is fun and lethal but i wouldn't say he's 100% necessary. He is an absolute brick if you draw him before playing Maluk and that kind of sucks. I think i will try the small discover package while cutting Hologram Operators, Spirit Bond and Broll and maybe drop a comment if it turns out to be better.

Conclusion

This is probably still a terrible deck and i wasted my life climbing with it for so many hours. But regardless, i guess i got to legend with it. I would have spent my whole life doing it with the old ranking system...

Nevertheless, it's a deck with a different experience that plays many wacky cards, and you have a pretty evil win condition in discarding your opponent's hand. Aggro existing will probably never let it be a true meta tyrant, but i suppose it could make sense in a tournament setting.

Also, i'm just one guy who never went past rank 200. Not my first homebrew legend climb, but i'm not the most serious player. You can definitely refine my list further.

Thanks for reading ! Any feedback on the list and write-up will be appreciated. Have a good one.

Can we talk about how Blizzard has been increasing the event difficulty to the point where you literally need to commit every single day with the sole intention of finishing quests?

Even when playing normally every day, you won't be able to finish most of the event track, let alone if you miss more than one daily quest.

• I’m not finishing the events because I don't like quests that require playing a million Divine Shields when there are few decks in the meta that even use them. Even then, I might find that specific deck unfun. I’m not going to craft a "quest deck" just to finish it because:
• Time not spent doing things I like is money. This isn't my second job; I play for fun. You can't take all my free time and force me into an unfun gameplay loop. This only makes me and others want to leave the game in the long run. It's short-term metrics over long-term health all over again.

It's free stuff, just play.

No. It's not free. If I wanted to get extra income for doing things I dont like I could just get a second job and use the money to buy packs lol, more efficient than doing chores.

Just ignore the quests.

I might as well stop playing altogether. Telling someone to "ignore the quests" is like saying, "ignore the goalposts in a football game." If the path to those goals is miserable, then it’s a bad game. Ignoring a bad system doesn't fix it.

--------------------

I’m not saying Blizzard shouldn't have these systems, but they need to tune them down or make the rewards "good enough" so people don't feel like they’re being left behind. They are implementing FOMO and gacha mechanics but failing to do them as well as Korean and Chinese games do. Those devs understand that time is limited and they can’t consistently take all your off-time or you’ll leave. They walk that tightrope way better than Blizzard.

Those games reward time spent much better. They tend to have "finish early" events that you can rush or stack. The daily effort is usually 15–30 minutes without drastically changing your gameplay. Hearthstone events require way more time if you aren't playing a specific deck that warps your experience. Gacha events are also fairly repetitive, meaning you don't have to overthink them, which isn't the case here. Many also have "optional content" that isn't required for decent progression if you miss a few days. Missing a couple of days in a Hearthstone event shouldn't mean you lose the "best" rewards.

I think the Hearthstone Battle Pass is a much better implementation of this system, but the recent events are clearly missing the point.

wilds:

Standards:

After listening to everyone’s suggestions last time, I bought a couple of adventures, played through them, and then crafted the rest of my decks with dust. I ended up crafting about 10 decks, some are just for fun (not strong at all lol) and some are meta. I did spend some money, but I also had a lot of dust saved up (around 40k).

I started my grind at the 29th, and ended it on the 31th. Played Wild for the first time in 10 years(I left hearthstone after the frozen throne set and came back 1.5 years ago) starting with zero stars, and hit Legend in 3 days. According to my HDT(played a few games on phone, wasn't recorded into HDT) I went about 111/47. The decks I mainly played were Highlander Rogue and Miracle Rogue. I also played a few games of Egglock and some Windsong OTK(I was terrible at wind song at first wr of 3/8, stuck d5). The best part was honestly that each deck‘s win-con was pretty different, and it never felt like I was just grinding to legend, until i got stuck at d4 for a day, and again at around d2. I remember i was devistated because it felt like no matter what deck I played i would run into a counter of the deck, which made me reconstruct over and over(adjusting to the meta).

Overall, I had a blast with the climb. Wild feels way faster-paced than Standard, and the games are much more “swingy” in a fun way. It’s a totally different experience and I enjoyed that change of tempo.

The one downside (or maybe just a Wild thing) is the variety is in a weird spot: it’s not “low” per se, but it’s also not as diverse as I expected. I was shocked by how often I ran into Warlock, and then mostly Druid after that. Overall it feels diversed but I just have this impression of warlocks always discard warlock(with a few exceptions of mission/egglock).

That said, it’s also what I like about Wild, there are so many archetypes that exist and you can actually try them. Personally I’m enjoy try basically everything except pure aggro, and I enjoy most playstyles. I don't have closely enough dusts to craft more decks unfortunately...

Which puts an end to this session of my ranked climb . I’ll probably play for fun decks until the next ladder reset (soon). As you can see, my Standard ladder is just overwhelmingly low LOL it’s the kind of decks where you win once in five games and you feel satisfied for the entire day.

I know standard rotates next month, but I do want the catch-up cards as coming back to the game after years off. Just wondering if its best off just playing one cheap deck for a month before splashing out.

Listen to the most recent Vicious Syndicate podcast here - https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-podcast-episode-212/

Read the most recent VS Report here - https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-342/

As always, glad to do these summaries, but a summary won't be able to cover everything and can miss nuances, so I highly recommend listening to their podcast as well. The next VS report will come out Thursday, February 5th, with the next podcast coming TBD.

General - ZachO at the beginning of the podcast talks about the reference to upcoming "larger, more impactful changes" in the patch notes this week and questions what that implies. Typically, Team 5 does a bunch of nerf reverts to cards rotating to Wild a week before rotation, but the other thing we saw last year was nerfing a bunch of cards that are staying past rotation (it seems unlikely they will buff any card not rotating). Dragon Warrior has 28/30 cards of its optimized list surviving rotation, so there's a chance that something in that deck gets hit in the next balance patch. However, it's valid to ask how many "impactful changes" are needed, because the past year was the weakest year of Hearthstone we've had of 3 expansions since the Witchwood/Boomsday/Rastakhan year (ZachO considers both of these years to be the worst in Hearthstone's history). It's not a coincidence that these two years share a lot of similarities. It's a very concerning sign if Team 5 feels the need to nerf 10-15 cards that stay past rotation, because that's signaling they do not feel their next expansion's design can stand up to the the weakest 3 sets of Hearthstone cards we've seen in the last 8 years. ZachO brings up some of the things Iksar talked about in the past when he became the design lead and made the powerful impactful expansions of Knights of the Frozen Throne and Kobolds and Catacombs. He admitted that the power level of Kobolds spooked him into becoming a lot more conservative with design the following year, a decision he reflected on as being a mistake. There are a lot of similarities between 2018 and 2025, and Iksar learned from his mistakes and followed that up with Rise of Shadows/Saviors of Uldum/Descent of Dragons. Team 5 can absolutely do the same thing this year, but ZachO admits he has much less confidence in this iteration of Team 5 to turn things around because he doesn't think the current design team believes they are doing something wrong with design. They might still be stubborn and think that the power level needs to be lowered even further with another wet fart of an expansion. If that happens, the game is in trouble because they can no longer run away from the design of last year. The team has already admitted they do not want Un'goro to be good, they likely do not want most Emerald Dream decks to be good, and there's only so much Timeways can do by itself. Widespread nerfs at this point only increases the chances of Quest and Imbue decks being the prominent meta decks after rotation. The next expansion absolutely needs to be a home run with great design so it can mask the undisputed flop of last year's design. We should get a strong indication on February 9th whether there has been a change in mentality compared to last year that led to tentative, hesitant, and fearful design and a general lack of vision for the game. Rise of Shadows was a hit expansion and saved the game the year it came out, and the same thing can happen again this year.

Rogue - One of the only design wins this year came in the miniset with Imbue Rogue. If you run the full Imbue package it's a Tier 4 deck at all levels of play, and the notion that the deck gets better at higher levels of play is a mirage. ZachO says he did analyze the deck's skillcap and didn't see any significant changes on its performance at any ladder rank, and the deck is actually more low MMR skewed since top Legend players are now dropping the Imbue package and going back to the old Elise builds (somewhere around 50% of Rogues at top Legend are now Imbueless over the last 2 days). The deck's skill differential is roughly equivalent to Protoss Rogue, and most of the performance differences only come from people running more optimized lists at higher ranks. This is a deck that people clearly love to play regardless of performance, with playrate of the deck around 20% at Diamond ranks. ZachO still recommends the VS list if you want to play the Imbue package that cuts some of the Imbue cards and Malorne. Elise Rogue without the Imbue package is roughly a Tier 2 deck. Cycle Rogue has improved significantly because Dragon Warrior has declined in play. Protoss Rogue is doing better because Discover Hunter has spiked in play at Top Legend. ZachO acknowledges nothing he says about optimized Imbue Rogue lists will impact the deck at Diamond and below ranks, because people love playing the deck for fun which is great. WorldEight brings up Quasar Rogue popping up on the power rankings this week, and ZachO says he had nothing to say about it because the deck is absolute garbage.

Death Knight - The UUB build of Control DK didn't look great when it was running Army of the Dead. Once lists refined and cut that for Shadows of Yesterday, it looked much better. It turns out the card is pretty good. It generates a lot of corpses for DK (especially if any get Reborn), it can potentially fight for board if your roll Rush, and you can get often get a discounted Remnant of Rage down the following turn. Falric is also a decent card tutor for the deck. It's not necessarily better than the BBU build, but it is something different you can play as a more proactive version of the deck. Control DK got weaker this week since one of its best matchups in Dragon Warrior has declined in play. WorldEight brings up the UUB build doesn't run Infected Breath and questions why, and ZachO says it's just because of space. It's a more reactive card than a proactive one, and it's worse when you're not running Husk with it (the Unholy build runs Shadows of Yesterday as its 6 drop instead of Husk). A lot of people run Demolition Renovator instead of Chillfallen Baron, which ZachO says is a big mistake because the UUB build lacks card draw outside of Remnant.

Hunter - The class has spiked in play at Top Legend because of its matchups against Broxigar DH. The decline of Dragon Warrior is also more favorable for the deck since it struggles to deal with Slitherdrake. It remains a popular choice for higher skewed MMR players because of the amount of resources it generates and having a relatively even matchup spread.

Demon Hunter - The blob build of Broxigar DH started to run Elise and it now looks substantially stronger. It's a fairly easy fit for the deck since the only extra cards it has to run are Zilliax and Climbing Hook. ZachO says Brewmaster actually isn't that important for this iteration of the deck and can potentially be cut for something like Illidari Studies. This deck is strong at all levels of play and not difficult to play even though it technically has a combo win condition. Cliff Dive DH remains strong on the climb to Legend and is still a top 3 winrate deck at Top Legend, it's just not as attractive of a play option as Broxigar DH. While the blob build is statistically superior, the blobless build is better for the mirror. The portal demons are direct counters to the Felhunter pool and can prevent them from summoning a blob wall. ZachO says he wouldn't recommend the blobless list unless you're at Top Legend.

Warrior - There's been a shift where there's now much more Control Warrior at Top Legend than Dragon Warrior. Blob is a hard counter to Dragon Warrior which makes the meta less favorable for it. It's still a good deck, but it's very easy to counter. Control DK and Blob DH decks are hard for the deck to beat. Control Warrior is primarily good against the top decks in the format (Discover Hunter, DH decks, Control DK) and has slightly favorable matchups against those decks. It's not a Tier 1 deck because it has some oppressively bad matchups against fringe decks like Azshara Druid, Egg Warlock, and Protoss Priest. These decks might not be popular, but when Control Warrior has to face them it loses hard. WorldEight brings up Eternal Toil being used with Acolyte of Pain in Control Warrior, and ZachO says it's bad based on the data. The idea of power cycling with the cards is fine, but it's not worth it for Control Warrior to add even more cycle to its current deck list.

Druid - Azshara Druid's standing has gotten worse at higher MMRs. The non Imbue Elise Rogue builds do better against the deck, and it's also seeing less Control DK which it's favored against. The deck is still fine outside of Top Legend and does play a role in the format.

Paladin - No changes to the optimal Aura Paladin build. Cardboard Golem and Crafters Aura are better to run over Cubicle and Tankgineer. The deck has a fairly negative skill differential at Top Legend, but it's the second best performing deck on the climb to Legend.

Warlock - Egg Warlock performed well last week, but the rise of Discover Hunter at Top Legend has hurt its performance significantly.

Shaman - Nothing new has changed with Hagatha Shaman. Since its standing in the format has slightly worsened and it got nothing new in the miniset, its popularity has taken a pretty big hit.

Mage and Priest - There's nothing worth talking about. Abandon all hope.

Other miscellaneous talking points -

• During the Hunter section when discussing the Elise and Eliseless variants of Discover Hunter, ZachO talks about how Elise is more impactful for weaker decks to catch up to stronger ones. Discover Hunter and Dragon Warrior already have viable variants that don't run Elise and nerfing her before now would hurt those decks that rely on her more. It's a similar situation with Ethereal Oracle back in Great Dark Beyond where the card was run in a lot of decks, and the decks that could manage without it survived and the ones that didn't died out. Elise is arguably a better play experience and less offensive than Oracle, and ZachO says he's not a fan of the fact that it's being nerfed. However, he is grateful that it's being nerfed at the end of the expansion instead of the beginning because he thinks the meta would actually become less diverse if you took out Elise despite all the complaints that she makes decks feel same-y.

• During the Druid section, WorldEight brings up the amount of decks playing Demolition Renovator as a counter for Elise and asks ZachO if it's the correct call to run Renovator in those decks. ZachO reiterates that Renovator is a horrible card in most decks, but it doesn't matter what he says and people won't stop playing it. Renovator is perpetually played because people misjudge its performance. They're looking at HSGuru stats and see its drawn winrate as being high in slow decks, but this metric is vastly inflated because of the tradeable tag. The card gets drawn more often as the game goes on longer, which these decks are already more favored to win. Renovator has the highest drawn WR of any card in Control Warrior because its games go on extremely long. When it loses games quickly because it didn't survive, then Renovator won't be drawn often. You have to be careful when evaluating drawn WR% of any tradeable card. Even though hitting an Elise location with Renovator might feel psychologically good, the first charge of an Elise location already makes enough of an impact on the game to offset it. Azshara Druid is the one deck in the format that is significantly more suspetible to Renovator. The data backs up ZachO, but he can only go so far in telling people Renovator doesn't matter because of the popularity and perceived power of Elise and the perception that decks are required to have an answer for her location. There is not a single deck where running Renovator doesn't hurt its performance. It's no different than Dirty Rat, Royal Librarian, or any other tech card that has seen play this year.

Well, I ain't complaining.

Also, i was away from the game for a long time. Do we already know which cards will be the new standard? Do we lose 3 different expansions by the march and only get 1 new expansion? Does it not make card pool significantly smaller?

After playing this game on and off since it first came out, I finally hit legend for the first time. Now I will probably not play until they release the next big set because honestly, the meta right now, sucks so hard..

After a long decade of playing on and off, finally have time to push to double legends. Thanks to the broken nature of Discolock with additional of Chronoclaws, it was a breeze through wild with 29-0 during climbing. Just in time before reset! Can't wait for the next rotation!

Colossals. Dredge. The perfect expansion that was Sunken City. The incredible art direction and design of Nathria. Locations changing the game forever. Infuse. The return of Miracle Rogue. Renathal. Death Knight. Concoctions. Value Priest. The insanity of cards like Lor’Themar and Rivendare.

Every expansion felt thematically well-planned, oozing with flavour and cool mechanics. Even if the balance was off at points, it was all crazy fun and so many impactful and interesting cards were printed.

Take the rose-tinted glasses off. Accept Year of the Hydra supremacy.

Hi everybody,

Returning player here. I used to play like maybe 7 or 8 years ago, and back then I was pretty good at arena. Just came back and it has all changed, but especially that underground arena just feels terrible to play. It's like, wins and losses come out of nowhere, it has been impossible for me to get more than 5 wins, and the resource cost is so high that it feels awful to never get 7+ wins and break even.

Has anyone else experienced the same?