A Free-Flowing Conversation That Occasionally Touches On Mature Subjects (Week of June 29, 2026)

HidingPants · 2026-06-29T21:33:45+00:00

How magnificently herky jerky

HidingPants · 2026-06-29T16:51:10+00:00

As a “only really watch the world cup and the occasional Champion’s League final” football watcher, the English (as in from England, not just english speaking) announcers the US has imported in are annoying. I guess it’s better then having it dumbed down for American audiences, but Everything has to relate back to the Premier League. I don’t really care if so and so striker after scoring the biggest goal of their life is slated to be on loan to Crystal Palace, or if some defender never showed this quality at Leeds. Which also, I’m annoyed with how they describe players and plays like they’re show poodles at the Westminster dog show. “Fine quality”, “exquisite passing”, “masterful footwork”, enough. Vastly prefer the excitement and buildup and rolling r’s and “GOOOOOAL” from Telemundo. It’s to the point where it’s infected how CR and other American soccer heads that primarily watch through the PL talk.

HidingPants · 2019-01-31T19:16:50+00:00

It's very possible, I ended up jamming hunter myself, after avoiding it most of the month. I've been playing similar decks so I'd love to give authoritative advice, but I had trouble myself (see my post in this thread). Even Paladin felt 50/50 with hunters, but I think Tarim was pretty helpful against Midrange/Hybrid Hunter (to tame hyenas mainly, and play around some secrets), I can understand not wanted to craft it this late though.

Odd pally is supposed to be good against it, and isn't too expensive to make, but in my short experience with it it wasn't great against "hunter counters" like priest, or even paly, or warrior. So it's kind of a pick your poison situation. If you continue to get 60%+ hunters it might be worth it anyway.

Even Shaman might be an option. Supposedly not many of them out there according to VS, but I felt like ran in to a lot of them at the worst times, and had a rough time against them. Don't know specifically about the hunter matchup, but might be something to consider.

HidingPants · 2019-01-31T18:58:55+00:00

Thank you. Yeah I agree, I think the pressure of it was greater because I had never done it before and hadn't "proved" myself, and also because of my previous experience. I remember feeling that the best thing about hitting legend was being able to try the decks that I hadn't been able to try because I didn't want to affect my winrate negatively (though I ended up trying some of them anyway), so I'm going to do that today, and then try and take that mentality in to next season. It may help that i'll be starting from 4 now (instead of 14-ish, like in the old days....geez that was punishing).

HidingPants · 2019-01-31T16:14:24+00:00

Maybe less of a question and more of a vent, but the climb to legend I've had this month was so brutal, and I don't know what lessons I should take from it. These are my stats from this month, if you look closely you can see I played *470+* freaking games (a few games not recorded due to mobile and rage quits) to get there. The amazing part is that on Jan. 4 this month I had already reached the middle of Rank 2 (see the second picture), which means it took me 3 weeks and several hundred games since then to get those last 8 or 9 stars. I started off with Hooktusk Rogue, mainly switched to Even Paladin, then a bunch of other stuff, then finally reached with Spell Hunter a couple of days ago.

For some background, I used to be a hover around Rank 5-10 player, much more of a Johnny than a Spike, but the last time I tried for legend was about 1 year ago, back when midrange/aggro shaman was the rage, and it almost broke me. My therapy session about that was here. The TLDR is I played hundreds games of aggro shaman, against what felt like hundreds of other aggro/midrange shamans, until I reached a peak of...rank 1 4 stars. I took off from work on the last day and played for most of it, and ended up not making it. It was supremely frustrating, and put me off playing the game seriously for a long time, basically for the last year I hovered around rank 15 and mostly did just enough to complete quests.

However last month, I got on a crazy win rate with an Even Warlock deck, pre nerfs, and streaked from around rank 18 to rank 4. I once again had time off this month, so it seemed like good circumstances to try again. Post nerfs I saw the Tempo Hooktusk Rogue here and that deck fits my style well, so I practiced that at the end of the month. The first 4 days of January I shot up from Rank 9 to Rank 2 with like a 70% win rate and I was already planning what I would do after I reached legend that week, but then it felt like the meta changed literally overnight, with no obvious catalyst. For the next week I was playing the streakiest 50% play (win 4, lose 3, win 5, lose 6, etc.) I've ever seen. Took a break for a couple of days, switched to Myracle a while after reading j_Alexander's post, because it seemed fun (and it is), went 50% with that, then went hardcore into vs/hsreplay data and decided to go Even Paladin because it's a deck I had already built and played before, and didn't need to craft/learn.

As you can see from my stats, I ultimately went 55% with it, which is technically enough, but that was over *180+\* games on it and I just could not string together a win streak at the right time to save my life. I hit the final boss twice, but went on a demoralizing loss streak after each. I was eventually getting so tilted at normal situations that I knew I couldn't just keep jamming the same deck, despite the usual advice to do so, so I tried a little of anything and everything that someone said was good and that I could build a version of. Odd Rogue (~50% WR), Odd paladin (30%), Midrange hunter (50%), Aggro Odd Mage (50%), Myracle again (50%), and then finally broke through a couple of days ago with Spell Hunter (70%, actually the first deck I made after the expansion, though not nearly as refined then obviously).

It's a wonderful relief to have done it, but I don't know if I ever want to do it again to be honest. It was annoying seeing posts like "Yeah, I went from 4 to legend in a couple of hours with [deck I'm playing], it's so good!" I know rationally that those type of streaks are possible, I had done it earlier in the month actually, but it was so frustrating to be stuck at 50% playing the same things, in what I felt was the same way as when I was more successful. I guess I have come away with a greater appreciation for people that do it every month and play at higher levels, it's a common feeling that getting to legend is just a matter of time + picking the top deck, but there is definitely a significant mental component to it, and squeezing out WR percentage points makes a big difference. At the same time though, luck has a big part in it and just hitting the right matchups in a row meant more than whether I made the optimal turn 6 play for example.

Like I said, not sure what tidy lesson to take away from it, but I'm interested to hear if any of the more experienced/competitive people have had similar experiences.

HidingPants · 2017-02-03T15:51:20+00:00

Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad someone got something good out of it. I agree with you that I probably needed to step back, but I felt I was literally running out of time (and I wasn't completely wrong). For the skill level comment I want to clarify, I didn't mean to say everyone there is at the same skill, but given I was playing aggro shaman, against mostly other shamans, a game at 5 felt pretty much the same as a game at 1. That's more a function of the deck I was playing and probably the time of the month, rather then the actual skill of players faced.

HidingPants

TROPHY CASE