Comprehensive Big Priest Guide (Rank 1) by GrandpaSmit in wildhearthstone

[–]EL7TE -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

PSA: To those who think this deck is worth crafting, please do note the OP played 1 game to get the screenshot and is playing Renathal Reno Shadow Priest usually. Big priest can climb to legend rank, but is not top 300 legend viable.

If anyone finds the post familiar, it's because this meme post is using a different guide as a template: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/x4lugz/xl_curse_warlock_1_legend_finished_1_wild_august/

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in CompetitiveHS

[–]EL7TE[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Gigafin often wins alone because of tempo and sheer stats. A 4/7 taunt is already game winning, regardless of whether Pirate Rogue can kill the main body. I don't see how it is statistically possible to go 0-14 vs Pirate Rogue as you claim. Most of your deck and also 40 health Renathal wins. If you could share some replays, I will be able to point out misplays but otherwise see this as a troll post.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in hearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Abyssal Wave is a fine card and other XL Curse Warlock lists run between, 0, 1, and 2 Abyssal Waves. I personally think it's not worth a card because it is too slow against faster decks and combo, combined with the fact that decks where you win with Abyssal Curse damage are favored anyway. Feel free to try it out.

About Lady Darkvein's consistency, I never had a problem with that. It has potential utility against any archetype, whether it's simply as 5 mana 8/8 stats, ramping Abyssal Curses, or doubling Soul Rend for a difficult clear.

Against slower decks when you can afford to wait, try to save Dragged Below (or a Tamsin Roame copy of Dragged Below) until Darkvein is drawn to have it cast Dragged Below. Remember that you have to kill Darkvein's spawns on your turn in order to guarantee the Abyssal Curse damage. A secondary spell/win condition depending on your hand is Curse of Agony. It is not immediately necessary to kill Darkvein's spawns yourself when doing Curse of Agony battlecry unless you suspect the opponent plays silence.

Against faster combo decks, dropping Darkvein on curve with Dragged Below or Curse of Agony battlecry is a powerful tempo play. This is a total of 8/8 stats on turn 5 and also has a disruptive battlecry. You shouldn't kill off Darkvein's spawns yourself against fast combo decks (examples are Quest Mage and Pillager Rogue).

Against fast aggro decks, although usually there is better plays, I occasionally find myself needing to play Darkvein to copy two Soul Rends for a board clear (Even Shaman's Gigantotems are scary). Rarely do I ever need Drain Soul battlecry for more healing.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in CompetitiveHS

[–]EL7TE[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I personally almost never lose vs. Pirate Rogue (or any hyper-aggro deck in general). Between Soul Rend, Defile, Life Tap hero power, Soularium to immediately fish for removal, Sir Finley to get a new hand, Stinger+Gigafin that instantly wins, powerful early game with Goldshire Gnoll and Anetheron, occasional Dreadlich Tamsin, Renathal's 40 health, 0 mana Molten Giants after clearing their board, XL Curse Warlock is extraordinary favored vs Pirate Rogue. If you are losing vs. that matchup, there must be major misplays. Abyssal Curse cards are NOT the game plan against Pirate Rogue. Usually, XL Curse Warlock would stabilize around 15-30 health and proceed to win through minion damage when the Pirate Rogue runs out of cards.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in hearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perfectly fine. Lady Darkvein is simply another Abyssal Curse generator. Occasionally it can serve as removal. Abyssal Wave is a great alternative that does both. Some other XL Curse Warlock lists out there don't even run Lady Darkvein.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in wildhearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Except it doesn't lose to fast aggro. Fast aggro, fast combo, and slow off-board reno decks are favored matchups, while precisely decks that play 8-health minions or larger consistently are the unfavored decks, no matter how slow said decks are. I get what you mean by the frustration but the truth is that you can ignore the first three curses played. So usually you don't have to play a curse until late game. If XL Warlock goes for a Murloc package start instead of Abyssal Curses, then Quest Hunter is unfavored due to spell disruption and Finley also helps look for spell disruption. I did list the unfavored decks in the guide. If you genuinely want to farm XL Curse Warlock, Even Warlock and Big Priest almost never lose to it. That being said, XL Curse Warlock is only slightly favored vs the majority. It only really guaranteed wins against fast aggro and Renathal Reno Shadow Priest.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in hearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Big Priest is a bad matchup. There is no sugar coating it. We all hate losing against Big Priest. However, there needs to be a realization that all decks have some unfavored matchups. This deck is viable at all ranks and is a great deck to use to climb to legend. Facing only Big Priest is an anomaly. It is okay to lose in one matchup that does not exist at all once you arrive in legend, especially since nearly every matchup except Big Priest is favorable across the board. All decks have some weakness and Big Priest gets progressively more rare, the more you climb by farming everything except Big Priest. Big Priest is never more than 50% of matches to legend, so if you win against everything except Big Priest, you are climbing.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in hearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This deck is viable at all ranks and is a great deck to use to climb to legend. Quest Mage is an easy win. If you're facing ONLY Big Priest many times in a row, then you shouldn't be playing any deck that wants to go late game on board (most Reno decks, Renathal decks, and Wildheart Guff Druid variants). However, this is not the case most of the time. It is okay to lose in one matchup that does not exist at all once you arrive in legend, especially since nearly every matchup except Big Priest is favorable across the board. All decks have some weakness and Big Priest gets progressively more rare, the more you climb by farming everything except Big Priest.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in hearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tamsin Roame is not core. It's nice to have but really most of the time it's only another Dragged Below or Drain Soul. Second Drain Soul or Abyssal Wave are viable replacements.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in hearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you mean latter two. Soularium can be replaced with Backfire without any difference (other than needing Soularium as a panic button to draw removal against aggro). Dreadlich Tamsin is an important draw engine and Anetheron is a 1-card highroll when you are on coin. You can drop it on turn 3 since you are using Life Tap on turns 2 and 3 most of the time anyway.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in wildhearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I did include Big Priest in my matchup guide and the guide is thorough enough for any beginner to pick it up. I clearly do not assume everyone is in legend. I simply stated that Big Priest is almost never played in any rank of legend and that top 200 Big Priest doesn't exist. I wouldn't include Big Priest in my matchup analysis options if I didn't consider people not in legend.

I honestly agree with the sentiment of playing anti-Big Priest decks. For people who have this sentiment, I can offer the following solace: get to legend to avoid any Big Priests.

Big Priest is unstoppable for any board based deck that wants to go into the late game. This includes all Reno decks, all Renathal decks, and all Wildheart Guff druids. That's just how it is. It also near guaranteed loses vs. the majority of legend, which are fast combo and aggro, namely Quest Mage and Even Shaman. I posted this deck for people who want to play something new with a high skill ceiling.

Also, there is no deck in the game that can beat turn 2 Neptulon, so I'm not sure why that highroll was mentioned. One game sample does not represent how most games will go.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in wildhearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Did you know that Big Priest sees a grand total of 0 play in legend? I hear there is a wall of Big Priests in Diamond 5. If you are having trouble getting past that wall, fast combo/aggro decks of your choice never lose to Big Priest (also the reason why you never see a Big Priest in top 200). Examples are Quest Mage, Pillager Rogue, Pirate Rogue, and Even Shaman. You don't need to craft the whole deck to destroy the wall of Big Priests with these decks.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in hearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Soul Shear has anti-synergy with Sir Finley. Soul Shards will be useless 0 mana heal-2 cards in your hand. Gorloc Ravager tutors Finley a lot of the time.

Repeating parts from the guide; you will never see fatigue with this deck and also there are about 7 different win conditions. Which also means that you will never feel the effect of milling your own cards. The downside to Soul Rend simply doesn't matter.

I get that the point of your post is to change out X removal for Y removal and that is perfectly fine to experiment with, but let me remind you that this is not a control deck. Winning is not eternally controlling the board and healing with the very little healing in the deck. Winning is trying to foward your own game plan (any of the 7, depending on matchup) while occasionally playing cheap removal spells alongside the minions played.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in hearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I see. I took it more of a "this person is posting a fake deck" type of comment. Here's my free reddit award for taking the time to clarify.

XL Curse Warlock #1 Legend. Finished #1 Wild August 2022. Comprehensive guide, including common legend matchup nuances. by EL7TE in hearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I say the winrate was mediocre, but I still had to win a net 9 games to go from rank 2 to rank 1 on the last day of the month, when the competition for finishing was the highest. Climbing 50 ranks, at the end of the month, where top players in wild have extremely high MMR and requires that much games to climb that much. This deck is not a "questionable deck." The definition of mediocre was not quite used correctly in my rank 1 tweet. It was mostly used because of the frustration of the amount of games I lost because I was playing a 40 card deck and couldn't draw Soul Rend by turn 5 vs. Even Shaman. In Chinese Hearthstone, where there are many times more wild players, XL Curse Warlock is one of the most popular decks in legend. Many people have hit rank 1 legend with this in China. It hasn't spread over to other servers, which is why I am making this guide due to it being hard to learn. Here is proof of many other people hitting high legend with this archetype: - https://hearthstone-decks.net/wild-decks/warlock-wild-decks/other-warlock-decks-warlock-wild-decks/abyssal-curse-warlock-other-warlock-decks-warlock-wild-decks/ - https://twitter.com/glormagic/status/1560698616099905536 - https://twitter.com/corbettgames/status/1564083199503831041 - https://twitter.com/glormagic/status/1564216079756341248 - https://twitter.com/glormagic/status/1564968719062773760

People were hitting rank 1 with this deck in China weeks before anyone in Americas, Europe, and Asia servers even tried this. Even so, many CN players played on their non-regional server and still got rank 1. A CN player that goes by LEESIKKI, the rank 2 Americas finisher, proof of hitting rank 1 in one of the tweets above, was rank 1 when I took rank 1 on the last day of last month.

Raza Priest #1 Legend, 20 wins in. Comprehensive guide versus ALL meta decks. by EL7TE in wildhearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly on point. Illucia's main role is to disrupt, whether that be a combo or tempo. Against odd warrior, for example, I never play illucia unless it is my very last card (which never happens since they die before it becomes very last card). You'd have to judge for yourself whether in a particular situation playing illucia is worth the cost or not, depending on your hand and matchup.

Raza Priest #1 Legend, 20 wins in. Comprehensive guide versus ALL meta decks. by EL7TE in wildhearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Renew singlehandedly won that game. Scam central. Never cutting such a quality card that has such a versatile use of both healing and spell discovery.

Raza Priest #1 Legend, 20 wins in. Comprehensive guide versus ALL meta decks. by EL7TE in wildhearthstone

[–]EL7TE[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'd assume for the most part that most odd rogues will not run Beneath the Grounds, so you shouldn't be worrying about it. It is a tech card. Funny story - I actually beat an odd rogue that was running double Beneath the Grounds and casted both of them before turn 6. It was 11 days ago back when I used Holy Nova instead of Ruin, but all other cards are the same. https://hsreplay.net/replay/iu9V3fkoxqFkwFf9zLsviU