Summary of the 7/10/2022 Vicious Syndicate Podcast (Second one of the Renethal meta) – July 11, 2022 at 12:18AM

Listen to the most recent Vicious Syndicate podcast here – https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-podcast-episode-95/

As always, glad to do these summaries, but a summary won’t be able to cover everything and can miss nuances, so I highly recommend listening to their podcast as well. Next VS Report will be out on Thursday July 14th with the podcast coming sometime next weekend. Special thanks to /u/Zergo66 last week for subbing in and doing the summary! I thought they did a phenomenal job.

General – We’ll likely see 2 more VS reports come out before the expansion launches. ZachO is very appreciative that all cards should be revealed 2 weeks before the expansion launches, giving him extra time to work on the card preview and theorycrafting articles.

Podcast broken into 2 sections this week – talk about the current meta and talk about card reveals thus far. Expect the next couple of podcasts to focus primarily on the new expansion and less on the current meta, unless there are substantial changes that happen to it.

Rogue – Most popular class. Play Okani in every Rogue deck other than Bomb Rogue. ZachO says the Smokescreen build of Bomb Rogue is the best version of the deck, but it’s not a well positioned deck in the current meta. ZachO notes there’s a fairly high skillcap in Smokescreen Bomb Rogue.

Druid – Class is declining in its popularity, likely due to Prestor Druid’s actual winrate not being that great. ZachO calls Prestor Druid a “quest deck,” just because like with other quest decks you are guaranteed to have your win condition/quest reward (Prestor) in hand on curve. Hat and ZachO both point out how backbreaking Okani is against Prestor Druid by pushing Prestor back a turn. Alignment Druid is the strongest Druid deck, especially at higher levels of play. It beats Prestor Druid, other Renethal decks, and quest decks. Running Renethal in Alignment Druid is matchup dependent. The extra health helps in the Quest Hunter matchup (which is rising in popularity) and other matchups that put early pressure on you. There are quite a few matchups where playing Alignment on 8 mana will win you the game, so having consistency finding Anacondra doesn’t matter. Both the 30 and 40 card list are in the report, but you need to run Okani in both. Some people are playing Vanndar Druid, which isn’t a terrible deck.

Priest – Renethal Quest Priest has risen in popularity. You’re not bothered by the downside of Renethal in the deck since you’re only concerned about the cost of the cards. ZachO even says a lot of the cards that are put in the deck don’t even matter, so you can play different cards without having a negative impact on winrate. The deck is stronger at lower ranks because it punishes inefficient decks, but struggles at higher ranks where you’re more likely to run into Alignment Druid, Big Spell Mage, and Prestor Druid. The deck overall isn’t great (Tier 3), but it’s the strongest it has ever been and is no longer a complete joke. Naga Priest isn’t played much, but it’s still okay. Play experience of the deck is probably why it’s not played much since the deck is so board reliant. Boar Priest is not well positioned in the format right now with Alignment Druid seeing a significant amount of play. Big Spell Mage is also a terrible matchup for the deck.

Mage – It’s a weird thing to say, but ZachO says Big Spell Mage is the most consistent deck on ladder. Matchup spread looks incredibly solid. The only matchups that soft counter the deck are snowball-y tribal decks (Murloc decks, Mech Mage, etc), and these decks don’t see much play at higher levels of play. This is probably the “safest” deck to play on ladder right now. Strong deck in tournament lineups too since it’s hard to target. Wildfire Mage is just a worse version of Big Spell Mage. Fun to experiment with though. Mech Mage was Tier 1 at most levels of play in the format last week, but nosedives to Tier 4 at Top Legend. Like Quest Warrior, it performs strongest in an unrefined format at lower ranks, but ZachO predicts it will drop further as the deck’s current performance at Top Legend will trickle down (probably Tier 3 at Legend, Tier 2 at Diamond).

Shaman – Control Shaman is probably the second safest deck to play on ladder right now. Deck is unfavored against Big Spell Mage and gets hard countered by Quest Priest and Curse Warlock. Against everything else, Control Shaman has a better matchup spread compared to Big Spell Mage. The deck has much stronger defensive tools compared to Mage. Bloodlust helps the deck in its bad matchups. Murloc Shaman is the biggest counter to Big Spell Mage. It’s still a good deck, but its matchup spread is much more checkered compared to Control Shaman. Burn Shaman isn’t bad, but it’s outclassed by the other Shaman classes.

Warlock – As mentioned in the podcast last week, Renethal is bait in Curse Warlock. The extra health gets negated by making your deck much less consistent. Curse Warlock is not a good deck in the current format though. Quest Hunter rising in play has made the deck significantly worse. The only relevant matchup it beats is Control Shaman.

Hunter – Hunter is the biggest story of the week and saw the biggest change from what was mentioned on the podcast last week. Hunter was probably the class where Renethal seemed like it’d be the least effective in, and it took a while for players to experiment with Renethal in Hunter lists. Big Beast Hunter loves Renethal, because it buys the deck extra time to get to their big power spike turns. Ichman also is good in the 40 card list because you run more threats in the deck. In the 40 card list, ZachO says Devouring Swarm is the weakest card, but it’s played as an out against some niche scenarios like removing Gigafin. Some experimentation with Faceless Manipulator in the deck. Quest Hunter looks like the strongest Hunter deck. ZachO says that the 40 card list they put into the report is the perfect 40 card list and has improved its winrate each day, particularly against the Big Spell Mage and Control Shaman matchups. The first week of the Renethal patch Quest Hunter vs Big Spell Mage was a 50/50 matchup. Over the past couple of days that’s tilted to a 60/40 matchup in favor of Hunter. Running Renethal in Quest Hunter does dilute the ability to draw your damage spells, but the extra health means you can afford to leave up your opponent’s board and direct more damage to face. This might be the best deck in the game, but it loses hard to Celestial Alignment, Bomb Rogue, and Boar Priest (ironically all decks that are even less interactive than Quest Hunter). Hat says if you want to try and beat Quest Hunter with a board based deck, you can play Mech Paladin, but they have almost zero data on the deck at Legend right now.

Demon Hunter – Class doesn’t care about Renethal (both in the class itself and playing against Renethal). Fel DH beats passive decks, it loses to decks that try to outrace it.

Paladin – Holy Paladin loses to jank but beats good decks. ZachO says Holy Paladin is a hard counter to Quest Hunter. Holy Paladin’s winrate will get better as fewer people play decks like Quest Priest and Curse Warlock. Good chance it’ll hit a Tier 1 winrate at Top Legend. Hat says he’d be surprised if the playrate breaks 5% though.

Warrior – Unplayable. ZachO points out that the last quest in the Fire Festival questline is to play Warrior. Seems like a conspiracy from Team 5 to make the quest impossible to complete. (/s)

Other miscellaneous talking points –

• This is an Okani meta. There are so many decks right now that get destroyed by an Okani and have no counterplay against it. Play Okani in every deck you possibly can.

• Some talk about what decks are good with Renethal and which ones aren’t. Contrary to what people probably expected, Renethal is not good in heavy defensive decks. Those decks already have defensive tools, and adding Renethal dilutes your ability to draw those tools. Renethal has shown to be good in decks that have mid to late game power spikes but have weak defensive tools. As covered last week, the other decks that would want to run Renethal are ones where the cards in your deck don’t really matter (Quest Priest, Prestor Druid). Quest Hunter is a bit of an abnormality in wanting to run Renethal, because it does care about the cards in its deck and it already has strong defensive tools, but the extra life means you can direct more of your damage spells to face in the late game instead of having to fight for board. Hat likens it to power leveling in Battlegrounds when you have a hero with a lot of armor to hit your big power spikes.

• Quest Hunter is going to have a big impact on the format. Expect to see a burst of uninteractive decks at high levels of play to counter it (Alignment Druid likely being the most common one). ZachO says whenever Celestial Alignment gets popular, something is not right in the format.

New Demon Hunter cards – While we don’t know anything about Relics, ZachO says he doesn’t like the design of Relic Vault because it seems like the build around tribal style deck that Team 5 will push this expansion for Demon Hunter.

New Druid cards – Hedge Maze is the only card that’s been revealed for Druid, but ZachO calls the card “spooky.” Even though it’s safe to assume there will be deathrattle synergy printed for the class this expansion, this would already be strong in combination with a card like Burning Blade Acolyte. Hat points out we’ve seen cards like this before in Play Dead and Terrorscale Stalker. Ultimately how strong the card is depends entirely on the deathrattle pool of cards available to the class, but cards like Hedge Maze allow the deck to exist.

New Hunter cards – ZachO’s initially says he’s not too excited for Castle Kennels since a lot of the beasts in Big Beast Hunter already have rush, but he points out you can combo it with Samuro to give it 3 attack. Hat says 6 damage for 2 mana is good, and ZachO admits he might be underestimating the card, and then says to forget what he initially said, the card is very good. Both think the Rush text on the card is a bit of a red herring, and the main thing that matters is that the card represents 6 damage for 2 mana.

New Mage cards – Hat says Frozen Touch is an instaslot into Mech Mage. ZachO agrees 2 mana deal 3 is always a good baseline card, and in a minion centric deck the card gets even more powerful. ZachO thinks the strongest Mage card revealed so far is Nightcloak Sanctum. Card was buffed to 3 durability after its reveal, and ZachO thought the card was already good with 2 durability. Freezing a minion seems like an underrated effect, so having a persistent freeze effect that also summons a minion is really good. Kel’Thuzad looks like a good card too as it’s essentially a Blastmaster Boom. Mage will probably try to work in a Skeleton package, although it probably won’t be worth running Volatile Skeleton by itself. Both Hat and ZachO don’t understand why Deathborne was nerfed to 6 mana, but it could have been because Cold Case into Deathborne was too good, or the buff to Nightcloak Sanctum meant they needed to take away power in another card. Deathborne at 5 seemed borderline unplayable, at 6 mana it seems flat out unplayable, but they could be wrong. Both think Kel’Thuzad is unlikely to kill your opponent on the turn it drops, but there is the high copium play of Brann + Kel’Thuzad. ZachO hopes skeletons aren’t a parasitic effect where you’re forced to run as many skeleton summoning effects as possible, but rather a package of cards that you can slot into other Mage decks.

New Paladin cards – Seems like a clear push for Dude Paladin this expansion, and dudes naturally work well with the Infuse keyword. Sinful Sous Chef is just flat out good. Stewart the Steward is even better – ZachO says he expects the mulligan winrate for Stewart to be insanely high. Card demands silence, otherwise your hero power will just keep summoning a 4/4. With Buffet Biggun, if you get the high roll curve of Sinful Sous Chef into the 2x dudes into Stewart into Buffet Biggun, you will summon a 6/4 and a 3/1 dudes with divine shield on turn 4. Hat points out that while Buffet Biggun represents a ton of power and sticky minions, it’s very unlikely to be active on curve. ZachO makes a prediction that Dude Paladin will be a Tier 1 deck that dominates lower MMR brackets but has a low skill ceiling and ends up with a 1% playrate at Top Legend. Great Hall is Dark Conviction powercrept like crazy, but it should be playable. It’s a strong offensive and defensive tool, can likely see play in multiple decks. Elitist Snob is Zilliax that you can run 2 copies of. Hat says he can’t imagine any Paladin deck not running the card. Has strong synergy with multiple cards. The card’s baseline stats are already good enough, but the card gets even stronger with handbuffing. Most Paladin decks are already dense with class cards, so it should be able to slot in very easily. It was probably a very good idea the card was nerfed from a 4/4.

New Priest cards – ZachO calls Cathedral of Atonement broken. Naga Priest would love this card. It could give more consistency to the deck when it isn’t able to draw Wig. Incredibly strong with Samuro. Seems like a card that would go into every Priest deck besides Boar Priest.

New Rogue cards – ZachO and Hat are big fans of Sinstone Graveyard. It’s significantly better than Biteweed because you get 2 charges and your minions are stealthed. Door of Shadows is 1 mana draw a spell as a baseline, which is already strong. Card can give you extra damage or additional Shadowstep/Prep. Both ZachO and Hat think Rogue’s set is going to consist of a lot of low cost cards that will provide hand generation or draw to synergize with Sinstone Graveyard. Might be a build around Rogue deck that revolves around getting a big stealthed minion turn w/Graveyard, and then finishing off your opponent with Battlemaster.

New Shaman cards – ZachO thinks Muck Pools is strong simply because it’s 1 mana. Baroness Vashj has obvious synergy with Muck Pools. Important to note that Baroness cannot be Hexed or Polymorphed because of the text on the card. The 6 health on Baroness means it’ll be hard to remove. Baroness + Muck Pools isn’t as strong as Mogu + Mutate, but it’s still a very strong play. Both ZachO and Hat think Primordial Wave is getting overrated. There are diminishing returns on the double effect, and there’s probably not going to be many scenarios where you would want to evolve your own board while devolving your opponent’s – it’s usually one or the other. You also can’t attack with your board the turn it’s played.

New Warrior cards – Remornia is a really cool card, but it’s probably a worse Crabatoa most of the time. Crabatoa is an insane card, so a card that’s worse than Crabatoa can still be playable. Some additional synergies with handbuffing and Forged In Flame. With both Decimator Olgra and Sanguine Depths it feels like Team 5 might be pushing Enraged mechanics in Warrior this set. Probably a good chance Warrior will get some sort of Whirlwind effect in the expansion, but right now Olgra would need additional support to be viable, and most board states in Hearthstone currently do not involve both sides of the boards having lots of damaged minions. Sanguine Depths seems relatively tame.

New Neutrals cards – Murloc Holmes requires you to get all 3 clues correct in order to get the cards, and the card choices will only be cards that are actually in your opponent’s deck. Likely won’t be good enough for constructed since it’ll be hard to get all 3 clues right consistently. Sire Denathrius is a slightly better Old Gods C’thun. Druid likely runs the card. ZachO also thinks if another class runs the card, it’d be Shaman due to the synergy with Macaw and being minion dense for Infuse. ZachO hates that Celestial Druid is going to play the card for 1 mana.