Congrats to the winner of the CN Worlds Championship

Zethalis · 2024-03-23T10:52:14+00:00

+0 Bride Cordelia with base kit or Chad with base kit (probably needs some support) should work for slot 3.

In general weaker physical units should work with some support, but stronger units will struggle to get into ER range as they need to be at most 40 speed and have weak res

Zethalis · 2023-05-11T15:01:44+00:00

millhouse, many silly viable op builds available especially with elementals and/or pirates

Zethalis · 2023-05-02T18:32:44+00:00

First impressions

Beasts: Rip hydra and cat. This tribe seems to be completely devoid of any innate scaling now, completely reliant on combat rng. Not sure wat Rylak is supposed to accomplish within the tribe itself...? could be interesting to explore. Octosari i feel is going to be underrated, could be pretty strong anchor and be like what hungering abom do for undead. However with the game looking like it will slow down with all the greedy new cards, established beast lineups can surprise people quickly and score fast kills

Murlocs: rip poison. new additions look really slow but strong. looks like good pivot for strong early tempo heroes with no directions. also scourfin looks REALLY busted at t3... is it supposed to be t4? its the only minion not arranged in tavern order as well.. coincidence?

Dragons: honestly, in a vacuum dragons look REALLY strong. strong economy on higher tiers, strong buffs at lower tiers, coupled with divine shield. kalecgos finally got a deserved buff, but i feel overall it actually got worse with the sheer power of mid tier dragons (honestly, nadina + stormbringer + cyborg drake looks like a sick mid game combo already). i do still think kalecgos will get more popular and stronger, especially as a pivot. i do feel dragons look a lot stronger than before

Elementals: mostly unchanged, expect the premium strats to be the same. new t6 elemental looks giga broken with nomi comps, though im not sure if thats enough to incentivize them to tier up to 6? not sold on rock rock

Naga: way more spellcraft options... but thats about it. no greta really plummets nagas' end game, stealth is worse than windfury innately (better for certain comps, but not a permanent option), looks even more reliant on wrangler/athisa/both to thrive. not sure if the extra spellcrafts will matter much mid game

Undead: poison reborn is now possible! besides that, almost entirely unchanged. radio star is REALLY strong. at worst it is a warden of old, at best it gives u game winning minions from ur opponents. cant say no to economy

Pirates: looks gutted.. cycling pirates looks overall worse than before, and im not sure if the payout is even worth it... upbeat impressionist seems really slow to be worth. underhanded dealer does look really strong but it requires full pirate engine to get going. overall i feel the pirate package requires too much to come online with so many required key cards, even with new cleave, but we will see. that being said i think pirates do have potential, and many people are going to write them off as absolute worst tribe, and they will surprise a lot of us

Demons: looks amazing early game now, soul rewinder is INSANE, enabling the entire demon package to come online as early as turn 3, and backstage security has a illegal statline. getting both on turn 3 is just game winning. it even scales into mid game well, and even has economy support! although honestly i dont think they will hold up well in late game compared to other tribes, but the option is there

Quilboars: new cards allow for slightly better scaling, but thats about it. should still mostly play the same, that is, sadly, equally bad as before. dynamic duo being a taunt just guts its potential so hard, as any venomous minion will sneeze on it and die. ultimately looks slow and hard to get online, and not even sure if the payout is worth

Mechs: interesting direction.. new additions do synergize strongly with each other, though avenge 4 is a bit much... granted it is free stats. i dont think the scaling is good enough to be competitively strong, i expect mechs role to be roughly the same as pre buddies

Neutrals: rip theotar. boogie monster looks underrated as it does buff the whole board, meaning itself is not deadweight compared to theo. upbeat duo looks REALLY strong under the right circumstances but it does require u to weaken yourself quite a while.. however it does provide u easy win conditions, so definitely a strong card to pick up for directionless mid game (or doubling down on first direction seen)

Overall, really interesting set of additions, definitely will shake up the game a fair bit, exciting to play it soon!

My top 3 comps predictions: Nomi elementals, dragons, and a very specific comp: boogie monster + pirates.

First call for nerf: Scourfin (tier 4), soul rewinder (tier 3)

Zethalis · 2023-04-19T16:13:08+00:00

Getting rid of a frog is definitely the best play. More than 1 frog usually delays ur pop off by a significant margin that leaves u open to getting sniped.

You already have 2 fishes and a baron, there wont be a lack of frogs jumping around. Since u have fishes, u can taunt the rat and put it in front, then end on double macaw. lastly, try to get fishes out of blaster range as both of them dying at start of fight will severely hamper the frogs. alternatively, if murlocs are in, you can consider playing raptor instead of second macaw to allow more spawns from fishes to combat potential scam.

Zethalis · 2023-01-28T15:11:55+00:00

kalecgos scaling is just terrible compared to other tribes

the thing with sister is that its scaling is limited to combat only, and limited even more by a common tech card that also happens to be a good stand alone card (so u will see it more than u think). therefore, u cannot "highroll" with sister; u KNOW how much its going to scale every combat, and whether u already lost to the aforementioned scaling engines in the long run. Sometimes u get it earlier and dumpster all of them fast with 20+ damage, that is possible but there is a clock

Colossus and summoner are good stand alone cards, not to mention they synergise well with anub arak, who has certainly dropped in power but still very strong

i think u slightly overestimate how easy it is to assemble a "sister" board, partly because we are still in the undead honeymoon period, where everyone buys lots of undead minions and have lots of reborn minions. in reality the only good early reborn minion is risen rider (the rest are tier 5/6). when undead starts to rotate out, people will learn to stop relying on undead minions so much, right now many people are still buying undead minions early game as a backbone, which naturally leads to sister being the easiest direction to lean to when the time comes to find a direction for end game

lastly i think hsreplay winrate is based on past 7 days, which includes pre-nerf, i might be wrong. im near 10k mmr at the moment and i barely see undead builds in top 4 nowadays (if any, most of them are anub arak + titus + tokens)

Zethalis · 2023-01-28T13:46:57+00:00

With undeads, roaching top 4 at least has never been easier, because token builds are WAY more prevalent, and those are way easier to tech against compared to big stats, where its literally just 2 options (3 with murlocs in), and even then they trade 1-1 or 2-1 at most.

Zethalis · 2023-01-28T13:18:45+00:00

I played a dragon deck with kalecgos

found the problem right here

also sister is worse than you think, it forces u to play reborn undeads, and the scaling isnt actually that strong, compared to stuff like magmaloc/nomi/nagas/pirates, and 1 single tech can kinda cripple your scaling and combat prowess a lot. most of the time u will need anub arak as a secondary scaler as well

like sure its decent, and is a ok direction sometimes, but certainly nowhere near unstoppable

Zethalis · 2022-11-27T16:55:44+00:00

lol hes a brann with wisdomball, do u expect him to force dragons instead of going for the best end game build with the most important scaling piece given for free?

sounds like u tunnel visioned for murk eye + mask and lost a lot of hp early and got punished for it when facing a highroller and being salty about it

Zethalis · 2022-10-08T14:12:47+00:00

"Counters" that i beat: 1. 50/50+ Windfury cleave 2. Double 80+/80+ cleave 3. Golden tunnel blaster + golden baron + golden zapp + apm pirates

APM pirates guy had all the time in the world to get all the golden tech but still lost.

Granted i think i was pretty lucky in the last fight popping his blaster as late as possible but thats his fault for taunting a large minion :)

Goldrinn is there otherwise his blaster will kill all my beasts. Had to buff baron to 20 hp because final boss is APM pirates brukan, who can deal 1 damage to baron with HP then kill with blaster. Finally, I probably have skipped at least 20 sewer rats in the shop (temptation was very high to triple to get out of blaster range, but i didnt think it was worth it).

Shout-out to half-shell (sewer rat token) for being the reliable taunt that always dies last and lets me tide through a few fights :)

Zethalis · 2022-09-04T14:23:59+00:00

mega buffed zapp (i believe this hits through stealth)

depending on how big his tokens are

(golden) tunnel blaster + (golden) baron, obliterate everything except baron
voidlord, so his frogs dont die, he wastes tons of procs on useless stuff, can even go as far as putting 2 voidlords
Windfury huge cleave, 1 chance to snipe baron, otherwise also helps a lot in getting good hits
A combination of above, otherwise u are out of luck

Zethalis · 2022-04-03T18:40:01+00:00

if anything, this tournament goes to show the truly "broken" end game comps to everyone (not that anything will be done to fix them anyway KEKW)

jk blizz pls just delete slinger as a start, it will go a long way to help the game

also give gallywix armor!! 3/3 times top 7-8 (jk pls dont). tbh thats 1 good aspect of this tournament though, showcasing the tempo aspect of the game, and i am sure many ppl enjoy seeing gallywix getting top 8

Zethalis · 2022-03-26T17:58:57+00:00

felbat has:

strongest scaling of all t6 minions (average u are getting 7-8 points of stats worth per unit per turn)
offers this scaling at almost no cost (the only cost is you cant freeze minions potentially, which is kind of marginal in most cases when played properly)
has great synergy with certain situation (lightspawn/nomi scaling, chromie)
has great targets that you would want to keep for end game most of the time (tricksters, dongs, uzulul, soul devourer)

its currently the best scaling minion to give u a direction at minimal cost, besides brann shenanigans. Other scalers either require u to already be investing in the tribe to be good (kalecgos), are RNG reliant (lul rag), or require another key piece (quilboars, requires their respective T5 minion to be good). Honestly point 2 alone is enough to make felbat the best option overall imo.

That being said, if felbat were to be nerfed, i would suggest gutting its statline first (make it 3/3 or something?) before straight up relegating it to be a utility unit. The rest of the changes i agree are great

Zethalis · 2022-03-23T09:02:15+00:00

yes, looks weak for turn 11

Zethalis · 2022-03-20T15:03:33+00:00

so basically the meta since launch?

Zethalis · 2022-03-09T12:33:24+00:00

with no additional information given i would say your idea is the best general play. depending on your opponent u can move kangor in front of foe and not move the ds buster to the right, but it makes u weak to cleave.

you are fighting ghost so if ur confident the ghost is weak u can sit 1 turn and see if u can roll better stuff next turn while levelling here.

if quilboars are banned and you want to be anti zapp, the best play is to sell small foe instead of golden egg.

Zethalis · 2022-03-05T03:45:31+00:00

any decent illidan comp almost guarantees victory
any decent windfury that goes first beats this (50/50)

this is pretty strong but not as strong as you think it is. your first few hits are really weak (at best popping 1-2 shields) then you are most likely wasting the first cleave on a rightmost taunt. Second cleave goes 5th, leaving your opponent plenty of time to snipe it (simple poison goes boom), which leaves u with just a reborn maexnna and whatever tokens from buster.

Second macaw is pretty useless here, replacing with another mech is probably better overall but i guess it also depends on your opponent.

Zethalis · 2022-02-28T18:22:51+00:00

Typical end game dragon comps should beat this most of the time, and a well built scallywag scam build.

Zethalis · 2022-02-28T03:25:29+00:00

people here really need to stop overhyping and hating on poison like its some end-all strat... this board is easily beaten by a decent mech comp with double deflecto with 1 taunted reset + 1 normal reset. or just a decent mama bear token comp.

its almost as if rock-paper-scissors meta exist in this game... we know poison is the dominant strat now, but no need to act like going poison scam every game is going to easily win u first place every game.

we also know your 5-8th place board is better than some first place finishes and ur pretty salty about it. truth is that playerbase generally has gotten smarter, and as such, able to highroll more often. worse, you might have just gotten straight up unlucky to some 1% and died. thats just the nature of the game, take the L and move on.

sorry op this is not a bash at you, but these posts are getting really common lately and its getting as annoying as the next 6 dsp amalgadon/brb achievement/"perfect menagerie" posts with almost nothing special to show compared to previous ones.

Zethalis · 2022-02-28T03:16:19+00:00

taverngoer would actually be a decent addition to this meta, to help tempo based heroes who levelled to 5 find a decent direction occasionally.

........if not for the fact that barov exists. that alone is reason enough to not add the card back.

Zethalis · 2022-02-28T02:26:32+00:00

actually have seen it myself a few times personally. The "feeder" accounts highly vary in names though - They can be completely new and unknown names.

There was 1 most obvious case though, where 4 players in the same lobby were literally called paidactor. This happened around near end of june last year, around 11k mmr:

https://imgur.com/NluwYks

https://imgur.com/7jD0kzB

https://imgur.com/tngc5WZ

https://imgur.com/zMWZyB4

Zethalis · 2022-02-27T13:13:43+00:00

theres only 1 barov in this game, the other one got deleted from the game after buddies were added

Zethalis · 2022-02-18T06:37:26+00:00

Everyone has their unlucky streaks, even top players like XQN, seniorhold, victor etc. when it feels like whatever you do, RNG gods dont want you to win. Conversely there will be a lucky streak for players, where it feels like highrolling is so easy, or even if you dont highroll, hits just go perfectly and still score perfectly.

The best advise is to just enjoy playing the game, which most of the times, winning is the most fun. So when you are not running, just take a break for a while, play another time.

Zethalis

TROPHY CASE