Jaxxarus AND Alex was actually a thing long ago. It was developed for the really slow metas, when you actually have enough time at turn 10+ to play Jaraxxus and then still play Alex after. To be honest, he probably did something wrong if he had to use both against Zoo.
There actually aren’t any legendaries that are good for zoo. My rushlock deck doesn’t have any legendaries at all, the only legendary that kinda fits in an aggro deck is Thalnos, and he only really is worth it if you have at least 4 damage spells.
What about Leeroy? I tried to work him in and he would usually get discarded waiting for the right moment, but now that I roll with voidwalkers, maybe I can protect him from his own whelps when I use him after I’ve cleared their board.
What does Leeroy do that Doomguard doesn’t?
In addition to, not instead of. Three turns of high power charge.
You know, I was thinking about it, and actually Leeroy and Doomguard are opposites.
Leeroy is for face damage. He’s a 6/2, so by itself you never want to hit another minion, and on top of that, he improves your opponent’s board state (by giving him 2 1/1s). If you ever use him on a minion, you’re pretty desperate. This is why Leeroy is almost exclusively used as a finisher.
On the other hand, Doomguard is a 5/7 for 5, with 2 discard. While he can be used for face damage, the fact that he hass 7 health is actually significant. This means that he can be used to kill a Loatheb, Ancient of Lore, Yeti etc with a good sized body left over. This gives you card advantage (you killed his card with your own and still have “change”, could kill another Yeti/etc), and more importantly, is incredibly good for your board (using one card, you summoned a minion and removed his minion, a very big swing).
Zoo generally wants to control the board, so leaving your opponent with a board is actually a significant disadvantage. 1/1s might not look like much, but it enables things like abusive, or buffs like Blessing of Kings, or even just Argus.
That’s not to say that Leeroy is bad, it’s not, but combined with the fact that it’s 5 mana, you could probably find similar cards that don’t have that downside. Aggro decks would probably run Wolfriders instead, for instance. Or Arcane Golem, Aggro hunters have been running those. For these archetypes, giving your opponent mana is better than giving them board.
That said, Zoo does like to go face once they have board control, and Leeroy + PO is 10 damage with no discard (easier to combo PO with Leeroy than with Doomguard), so it can’t be dismissed out of hand. But going by the traditional board control Zoo, I would say Leeroy doesn’t fit that well. In a more aggro Zoo, perhaps.
For example, I’m running a Zoo variant sometimes called Rushlock. Instead of board control minions like Haunted Creepers and Argus, instead I run all the chargers and Hellfires. Notably, it does not run doomguards. Mostly because the discard is a real drawback when you’re trying to go fast, but also because I don’t care about the board. I just hellfire and blow everything up. Leeroy might work in a deck like this…
I wouldn’t know I dusted Leeroy during the nerf and made a black knight. XD
Well, on the plus side, I just hit rank 9, which is a new personal best.
On the downside, I can’t win an arena game. Pre-GvG my arena win rate was about 4.1 games. After GVG, it’s about 1.7. They must’ve installed a new matchmaking system, because everyone I’m playing against is significantly better. Very frustrating - I can’t get the value out of arena this way over buying packs, so I’m taking a loss to have fun with it. But it’s becoming more and more frustrating as I have 1 win runs a lot.
I’m surprised by the lack of feign death decks I’m seeing against hunters. I know it’s an epic card, so sort of expensive, but I’ve seen 400 doctor booms, so people obviously have the dust. It seems to me that it’s a really great card on top of what was already an extremely powerful deck - the hunter/undertaker/deathrattle deck. You’d be popping spectral spiders and nerubians like crazy on turns 3-4 and keeping the original minions too. Throw in a Baron Rivendare on there maybe and you’ve got yourself a stew.
I’d guess that many players shy away from cards that can be dead in your hand, especially if you’re behind with an empty or mostly empty board. And while there are some great combos with it - Egg, Sylvanas, Cairne, etc. - it can also (for instance) end up being just a “summon two 1/1’s” for 2 mana, if you only have a Creeper in play.
Not that I wouldn’t try it if I were lucky enough to own one. 
I think the arena meta just changed a lot with the GvG cards. My first few after the expansion went really badly (ie. 0-2 wins) but now I’m back up to my 4ish win average. And a new personal best of 7 wins (with a pretty meh draft too).
Obviously I’m not a fabulous arena player but I found that drafting a more aggressive curve, mulliganing for turn 1/2 plays instead of turn 2/3, and not worrying so much about board clears wins my games now. If you lose board control it seems really, really hard to get it back.
I did have amazing luck on one of my arena reward packs; 1 legendary (Dr Boom!), 1 epic, and 2 rares.
Unstable portal is a really fun card. I think I may build a mage deck just to use it. I’ve got it currently in an arena run. So far it has generated Floating Watcher and Neptulon, which are not ideal, but I deployed Neptulon when I was ahead on turn 4 and my opponent just quit. I’m actually 4-0 so far on this run, it’s the first 4 win arena I’ve had since GvG launched.
Sorcs apprentice/unstable portal seems like the basis for a fun deck. Flamecannons are super useful at 1 mana too if you have an apprentice up.
I got a golden Unstable Portal and so I built a budget mech mage deck to use it. It’s won me a few games that I really should have lost (UP drew Gazlowe and my 2 spare parts drew me a Flame Leviathan and a Force-Tank Max, no one has enough hard removal to deal with that) but then I get things like Young Dragonhawk and Abusive Sargent fairly often too. The card is loads of fun and can give a massive tempo advantage if you get lucky.
“Unstable Portal?”
Are you referring to that new wizard card “Summon Murloc?” Because for me, that’s pretty much what it is. :smack:
I don’t mind the randomness of GvG as much as some of my friends who play, but I was pretty peeved when, in my last Arena run, my Piloted Shredder summoned a Doomsayer which wiped out my far-superior board position, leading to a loss. :smack::smack:
Sure, except it reads “Summon Prophet Valen” for your opponent.
I’m currently hovering around rank 5, wondering if I should try for legend this season. It’s the earliest I’ve hit rank 5, but then the holidays are coming up and I might not have the time to grind up the ranks… =/
I was also trying out a Rogue Ogre deck (Rogre)… those guy? They are idiots.
Ah, damn, I had a 6-1 arena run which was my best start ever, but it petered out there and I lost 2 in a row.
When you use some summon method to deploy minions (like piloted shredders, or anything like that), does it not do the battlecry if it’s some specific targeted battlecry (like, say, abusive sergeant) or not trigger it at all? I assume unstable portal works the same way as other summons in this regard.
Nope, UP gives you a card (with the mana cost reduced by 3) so when you play it you get the benefits exactly the same as if you had a ‘real’ copy of the card.
That was a stupid question. I just used it and knew how it works. Not sure what I was thinking.
Anyway, I’m sitting at level 9 which is my highest achieved rank, and I may go for legendary, not sure how difficult that is, but I’m guessing the number of wins you need to gain per level increases? And you lose winning streaks. So you might win 54% of your games, but it’ll take dozens if not hundreds of games to hit legendary at that rate, right?
I really wish Blizzard would reward achievements in a season other than legendary. Give us card backs or a golden card or something for hitting levels 15, 10, and 5. They could be variations of the monthly card back, just with some sort of indicator of specialness.
Unstable Portal puts the card in your hand, so Battlecries do resolve.
5 stars per rank after rank 10, at rank 5 you stop getting winstreaks, so you definitely need a positive winratio to get to legend. Basically, rank 5 means you’re halfway there.
A Useful Infographic.
http://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/2gkz9n/data_on_how_many_games_it_should_take_to_get_to/
How many total games does it typically take you to reach Rank 5? I tend to reach stasis in the 10-12 range, at which point I become outclassed. (Not necessarily in terms of cards, but by superior players.) This season I’ve played 70 games, and gone from Rank 20 to Rank 11.
(Edited to add: hadn’t seen your links when I posted the above)
What do you do when an enemy puts blessing of wisdom on one of your units? I had a paladin put it on my spider tank 3/4 when he had nothing on the board and about 20 health around turn 5. Is it worth letting him draw a card in exchange for doing 3 damage to him? Should I just let that spider sit idle until he has a unit I can trade it with in one attack?
Is it too situational to say? ie when you can probably kill him in 3 turns via face damage and it’s a 5 damage unit, then attack, but if it’s a 3 damage unit and you’re not sure you’ll kill him soon, don’t, etc.
I compounded my problem when an enhance-o-mechano gave the unit divine shield, so I couldn’t even trade for another unit one one attack.