Outside of Midrange Shaman during the post-Karazhan, nothing defined the meta this year more than Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End. It would be remiss of me not to give airtime to the tentacled terror. Maybe one day people will learn that you don’t take on the master at his own game, but for now, it seems like Lifecoach’s reign of terror will continue. The trend continued with Freeze Mage overlord Laughing losing his hair to Lifecoach, and further wagers with StanCifka and Ostkaka over winrates at events. They covered the day together in a vlog, which is a great watch, if not for the jump itself, then purely for Lifecoach’s wonderful “it doesn’t seem like you can die” psych out. Despite being the underdog in most people’s eyes due to his slow playing “Ropecoach” reputation, Lifecoach emerged victorious and packed Thijs off to face his fears. This whole event was Hearthstone at its most fun: a stream-driven event that engaged viewers and had amusing consequences. The first and most memorable of these was his wager against teammate Thijs, who he raced to legend with a terrifying bungee jump for the loser on the line.
#Hearthstone meta decks december 2016 series#
When he wasn’t spending 10 hours a day grinding the best decks with SuperJJ, Lifecoach still had time to return to his gambling roots by making a series of novelty bets with other top Hearthstone players. In classic Ekop fashion, the master troll was not going to let the moment pass unmarked, so he bluffed playing Yogg despite having lethal on board-much to the anguish of the crowd, including yours truly on the mic. In 2016, Ekop finally laid the hoodoo to rest with his triumph at Insomnia against a stacked field of the best players from Europe and beyond. This gave birth to the Reynad-crafted meme of “Ekop’s in everything”, due to Ekop always receiving invites to big events without ever winning them. Much like Chakki, Ekop is a player who has been around since competitive Hearthstone’s inception, and has consistently put in solid tournament showings without ever taking home a big one. The self-proclaimed "best Hearthstone player in the world". Ekop finally wins a major and trolls everyone No, I have no idea what I mean there either. Overall then, a solid 4 Mana 7/7 out of 10 for card releases.
Even Miracle Rogue is back with a new eyepatch-wearing bang. Mean Streets cards were strong enough to birth new archetypes like Kun Combo Druid, Jade Shaman, various Reno decks, and bring about the rebirth of Pirate Warrior and Dragon Priest. This is better than a situation where players think: “Hey, this new card is sweet, I’ll just add it to my existing tier one deck”. Say what you will about the current power of aggro decks (and who could have predicted that?), but the ladder is packed with new decks. Salvation was finally found on the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, which threw another grenade amongst the pigeons. Very few classes got anything approaching the power level of the new Shaman cards, and so the era of Shamanstone was upon us. One Night in Karazhan was largely underwhelming and ushered in a period of absolute Shaman dominance due to the inexplicable decision to give Thrall the Spirit Claws weapon. The sets that have followed Whispers of the Old Gods can best be described as hit and miss. To add to the surreal air, after so many near misses Chakki walked away the winner with a control-heavy line-up.
At Dreamhack Austin-the major tournament that immediately followed Standard’s arrival-excitement abounded with new deck archetypes as far as the eye could see. The Force of Nature-Savage Roar combo bit the dust and briefly left Druid floundering for an effective play style, and the demise of the face-loving Leper Gnome gave control fanatics even briefer hope that aggro might struggle.
While that hasn’t been the case, combined with the new set’s arrival and huge swathes of cards leaving Standard simultaneously, it gave us a huge metagame shake-up. The demise of the face-loving Leper Gnome gave control fanatics brief hope that aggro might struggle. Previously, Team 5 had been more careful with nerfs than Kobolds are with candles, but to lay the ground for the first Standard rotation the designers unleashed an unprecedented wave of adjustments that gave us hope that they would continue to tweak power levels throughout the year. The start of 2016 introduced a largely unprecedented concept in terms of Hearthstone’s design philosophy: Changing a lot of cards at once.
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