What deck archetypes benefit most from the lack of patron warriors?
I don’t play all that much constructed but I always had a horrid winrate vs Patron with my Zoo Warlock. I’d imagine that any zoo-like deck would be better these days.
Rank 5! Golden epic here I come 
I’ve always stopped somewhere around rank 9 or 10 since rewards were instituted. I hadn’t done any ranked play this month until Saturday, but things were going so well that I just kept going.
I used an aggro Druid deck that seemed to work okay (59% win rate). My matches against Paladins and Hunters pretty much came down to who drew better (47% and 53% win rates respectively); but the deck kicked ass against all other classes but Rogue. I actually lost every game vs Rogue, but I only saw 3 on the ladder so no big deal.
I did run into a couple of warriors trying to make Patron work … it did not go well for them. One warrior must have been trying to make a Bolster deck work but I think warriors are down to just Control as their sole effective archetype.
Okay, so I can disenchant that golden alex.
My current legendaries (also all naxx/BRM)
Cenarius
Antonidus
Voljin / Velen
Jaraxxus / Malganis
Leeroy
Gazlowe
Sylvanas
Dr. Balanced
Kragg
Troggzor
Ragnaros
Alex
Decks I have good cards for:
Tempo mage, Midrange demonlock, dragon priest, control priest, zoo lock, face hunter, secret paladin.
I’m considering:
Rhonin. Fits with my tempo mage deck and generally good for mage decks.
Confessor Paletress: Don’t really think it fits into my dragon priest deck but could work in it. Works okay in control priest. Just a really fun card. I like RNG elements like unstable portal. A guaranteed random legendary would make for a very random result but could be a lot of fun.
Varian Wrynn: The card is just crazy powerful and I’m kind of interested in trying a control warrior. But can you have a viable control warrior deck with just Rag/Alex? Seems like I’d probably need Grommash too.
Nexus-Champion Sarad: Fits with tempo mage. Anything else?
Gormok the Impaler - seems like it could fit with my demonlock or zoo decks. Demonlocks put out a lot of tokens so it definitely seems like it could give a significant power swing on turn 4. Would work with any sort of aggro paladin and druid deck too.
Justicar Trueheart - potentially useful in my priest and warrior decks. Maybe even tempo mage.
Thalnos. Seems to have fallen out of favor, but it seems like he could definitely fit into my tempo mage deck.
Lightbane or Darkbane - fits with control priest.
The Black Knight - also seems to have fallen out of favor, but killing a taunt is very often a useful ability. I don’t know why it isn’t used more commonly.
Tirion Fordring - I’m not sure I really want to play Paladin, but this fits into basically every Paladin deck if I do. One of the best cards, period.
Cairne Bloodhoof - seems ot have fallen almost entirely out of favor but I’m not sure why. Still great value and useful in a lot of midrange decks.
Chillmaw. Pretty much only fits dragon priest (are there any other viable dragon archetypes now?) and lessened need with patron warrior gone.
Ysera - could fit in control warrior, although I wouldn’t have Wrynn if I crafted this instead, and a viable addition to dragon decks.
Without Patron Warrior, there are two Warrior decks: Control Warrior and Dragon Control Warrior. Both run 5-10 legendaries. If you want to try Control Warrior, I would save your dust until you open a Justicar Trueheart or Grom Hellscream, then craft the other one.
If you’re considering Gormok the Impaler, try playing a few games and counting how many times you actually have 5 minions on the board (i.e. 4 + Gormok).
Tirion Fordring would be my pick. As you say, if you play Paladin, you play Tirion.
Is it just me, or has ladder become a lot harder over the last 3 or 4 months? I used to be able to get to level 8 pretty easily with a few different decks, and up to 5 or 6 with my good ones, but now I’m struggling to stay at 9.
Just had my second 12-win arena run. Went 12-1.
Had a paladin deck with plenty of 2-3 mana value. Shielded minibots, shattered sun cleric, muster for battle, ogres, raging worgens. A couple of avenges. Pretty much dominated the board early in every game with that.
Won all gold. 500 in total. Kind of dissapointing.
It could be worse; my last 12 win awarded 345 gold and a golden common. And my month end award for Oct was a golden Enter the Coliseum, a card which I have never even seen played.
So I just got started playing again, drafted what I thought was a thoroughly mediocre Paladin deck, and discovered that those Murloc Knights are ridiculous bomby bombs from bombville in Arena.
Yeah, Murloc Knights are my favorite arena card. I remember I had 3 of them in my deck for one run, and sometimes they spawn other Murloc Knights. I’ve had 4 on my board at once which was so many I couldn’t even crank out units since my board was full constantly.
I’ve tried to make a Murlocadin deck work but I’m not willing to spend the dust on the epic murlocs I need to make it work.
Confuse + Murlocs. Best troll deck ever.
Loses hell of a lot, but hey! Can’t argue with a board of 5/5 Murlocs.
That’s why you always want either a hard removal or 4 damage on-the-board/in-hand vs a paladin on turn 6. And if he drops a murloc on turn 4 be worried … that just means he has even more :eek: I actually play around Murloc Knight more than I do Flamestrike!
I don’t know what it is, but I still suck at Paladins in arena this expansion. So many good early game cards and I’ve gotten 1.5 games per run worse. The good news is my Mage and Rogue win-rates went up by more than enough to keep my over-all average improving.
And the thing is, even if they get your knight, you still have a 1/1 and a 2/1 or better left over. Never mind what happens if you hit a knight or a warleader with the RNG (1 in 6!)
Why is Hogger considered such a bad card? It drops 6/6 worth of stats on the same turn except spread over 2 units so removal won’t kill it all. It protects itself with a taunt at the end of the turn. And if you manage to survive a turn, you’ve got 8/8 out of it. Seems decent, yet no one ever runs it.
Because a 4/4 and a 2/2 is a really bad stat distribution. These days, if you don’t have 4 spot damage there are worse things on 6 mana. 4 health is a really key number - eviscerate, true silver, frostbolt + ping, etc. you’d rather have a 6/6, frankly.
What is hogger, really? It’s a high priority minion that you can’t ignore,which will get massive value over time. It’s key niche is against aggro - it can’t be ignored by face decks (or used to, anyway) and is hard to cleanly be removed by small minions on the table. But then belcher kind of does the same thing, but one turn earlier. And these days, even aggro has the tools to remove hogger (the divine shield 2/1 charger, abusive a random 2/1 and you’re fine, go face some more.
Against midrange or control, your hogger will likely be removed by spot removal or AOEed incidentally.
Tabby, do you have any opinion on my legendary crafting dilemma in post 1004?
Frankly, between all of them, I would say… none of the above. Closest would be Tirion and Ysera, and maybe Justicar if you want to play control warrior.
The main problem is none of those legendaries other than Tirion and Ysera are “irreplaceable” in the sense of you being unable to play a certain deck without them. Some of them are just flat out not great at all, Cairne, Varian, Confessor, Gormok - all lacklustre, Thalmos and TBK are great but are easily substituted.
Tirion is a must have in most mid to control paladin decks, and Ysera is the premier dragon in dragon decks, but that implies that you want to play paladin and dragon decks respectively. If you do, then I would craft either one.
I guess I would start with asking, what do you want to do next? Do you want to aggressively ladder to get legend? If so, what deck are you going to play? If Dragon Priest, then Ysera. If Face Hunter, then save your dust. 
If you want to play fun decks, then you are likely to have to craft some epics as well, and they often enable decks that legendaries do not - like shadowform, for example. Or Dreadsteed. Or even Skeleton King - I was having fun with a halloween themed Shaman deck recently, and kind of wished I had skeleton king. Don’t craft him unless you have way too much dust tho. Same for Anuburak - I’ve always wanted to play control rogue. Even Twilight Guardians are epics.
So, there are lots of options, but if you’re dead set on dusting Alex for another legendary, I would suggest Ysera. Goes in the most number of decks (control decks and dragon decks).
Complaint/stealth brag time:
I’ve always hesitated to craft anything, knowing for sure that as soon as I do I’ll pull that card, but last month I crafted two Force of Nature so I could play aggro druid.
So what did I just get in my Tavern Brawl deck? Golden Force of Nature, and a second Bane of Doom, and Ragnaros. :eek:
It’s hard to complain about ‘wasting’ the dust last month when you get a pack like that.
Next adventure series announced: League of Explorers
I agree with the top voted comment: “fuck this shit right off”. It’s too impractical to probably ever get played realistically (not to mention needing a murloc deck). But that one time it does… 7 MURLOCS?!
Bah … phooey … spit spit sputter
This is what Blizzard is very, very good at.
The ‘company line’ is: “We want to keep things fresh and surprising so we are making this unexpected announcement of new cards.”
The actual fact is the talk around the water cooler and the conference table was: “A lot people save up gold to buy into the adventures when we announce them early. If we don’t give them time to save up we can convert a good number of F2P players and get them to blow the twenty bucks … and once they’ve entered their credit card info it is very tempting for them to take a shot at buying packs to get the cards they don’t have.”
And just look at the cards … spit spit sputter. They are obviously not tested and ready. This is an early release because of the Patron Warrior followed by the Secret Paladin fiascoes. (And the cash grab, of course … these guys are great at that but they are in over their heads with a flawed game and they don’t know how to fix it.)
And on top of that, I just got my quest for today – Spectate – so I won’t even get the easy gold.
Arrrgghh … they’re gonna drive me away any day now … in actuality the only reason I still play this game is because they are so very good at setting the hook … addicted, I know.
Bah … phooey …
The old Pennsylvania Dutch saying keeps running through my mind: The hurrier I go the behinder I get.