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Random_duderino

That deck is why I don't play standard this month.


thetruetoblerone

Run flood paladin, you beat everyone but mage and sometimes lose to the fast warlock.


Professerson

Answering paladin with paladin has been the best meta strategy for like 6 expansions now


TheMegaSleeper

6 expansions ? Not in a row right ? Because Pal was definitely one of the worst class during Titan and not that strong before Badland’s mini set. But yeah, since it got excavate, it has been top tier


Lauritz109

Uhhh, paladin was literally at the top in the beginning of badlands? After the need, sure it wasn't particularly good, but it's almost a fact that it has been super suppressive at some point in almost all the recent year


ConcertDesperate3342

Paladin has been nutty forever now. It gets crazy strong when new cards drop them gets nerfed. Then the other classes get nerfed and paladin is back on top.


Vesper77

Playing flood paladin - 10 loses in the row ;) stacked at diamond 5 Shamans, warriors with skirmishes, excavate rogues are pain for me now


thetruetoblerone

Are you winning on turn 4 or 5? You may not be mulliganning properly.


Ap0colypse

I have winstreaked all the way from chicken to gold 5 without losing once with flood paladin. I lost once or twice while trying the new class and my old decks


Vesper77

Using premium hsreplay :) no, not winning


Key_Poetry4023

Yeah but who tf wants to play flood paladin


Insane_Unicorn

Fighting cancer with cancer


CivilerKobold

I lost 3 games yesterday to a buffed doubled power zilliax on curve (one coined out) Was playing wheelock, so not a good deck, but I think it’s fair to argue that hopewrenching gameplay like that isn’t fun and shouldn’t be designed around. Every deck (bad decks included) has cheese right now, it’s ridiculous.


Random_duderino

Yeah, everybody complains about unkilliax but this one is way more BS. It's just a coin flip, if you can't remove it, you lose.


BryceLeft

Remove both* you lose, which sucks more IMO Often times I do find myself able to remove an early ziliax, but only one of the copies lol. The next one is smacking me for at least 10 next turn, potentially up to like 15-20 It stings more me knowing the best I can do to not instantly lose is to remove half of their card


yams8

I tried and genuinely felt like I was cheating, I lost maybe 2 games outta the 10 I played before I stopped playing it cause it’s just so boring and unfun to play against. Any mirror I got into relied completely on who drew weapon/ played it first


ennui95

8hr legend? Disgusting I hate that so much. Where's the deck code?


adrian8520

Had a 48 game win streak from Bronze, only losing at Plat 1 to Excavator(?) Rogue. Then streaked only losing again at Diamond 5. Handbuff Paladin seems crazy good.. it might be easy elo but I'm not sure if Hearthstone has a lot of bots now? It seemed like in Bronze/Silver many of the players didn't play like humans. Ended the run at 72-5*, which, I have no idea, seems pretty good. I haven't played in so long (I'm mostly a magic the gathering player) so I just have no idea if this is normal or crazy or what. But yeah I think if youre trying to make legend try handbuff paladin? It seems like a very straightforward deck. *EDIT: The run was actually like 83-3, the app wasn't on for about a dozen games and recorded a friendly game between me and my friend. Also I was legend already during Un'Goro, and previous sets - it was much harder to reach back then. And yes, after Gold there appeared (?) to be no more bots. In Diamond 5 and higher the games got much tougher. But the deck is very strong and I am an old-school multiple set Legend player (maybe means not that much) so there were not many losses. For the record I've been playing 20~ games in legend right now and I lost about 6 so the games are definitely getting harder.


Grumpyninja9

The deck is definitely very strong, but yeah considering where you placed in legend and how long of a break you took, you probably were facing not great opponents/bots.


Lunchbox39

94% winratio over 70 games and being placed in 5 digit legend. I cant comprehend how terrible his MMR was to begin with


Gebnut

Yeah, I've come back to HS after long years absence and tbf, with competitive but even with non meta decks, achieving diamond seems rather easy. After that things are different and you can struggle reaching Legend (I did), but people on gold and below... idk. Your deck is busted rn though.


GothGirlsGoodBoy

Handbuff Paladin is pretty much just better than other decks at the moment, while also being easier to play than most of the runner ups. Hearthstone has been like that for a few years now, where it seems there is a tier 0 deck lying around in most metas. However, handbuff at least has counters (aka a worse deck overall but maybe 53/47 in that specific matchup) so the “competitive meta” at high legend is technically balanced, just warped around a couple of decks. In general it means the ladder is a shitshow though, and people playing seriously will get these insane winstreaks. That said, only 5 losses to legend is still an outlier.


BoKnowsTheKonamiCode

Yeah while the deck is good, this big of a win streak is indicative of you facing bots and very low level players. You likely got legend before your internal mmr adjusted to the point of you facing players of similar skill. This is what happened to me when I took a step into wild with even shaman, and went on a 30 match win streak to d5. By the next season it adjusted and I faced more actual players with meta decks.


Mephisteemo

Similar story here. Reached Diamond 5 by playing whatever I liked and then randomly climbed to D4 3 stars and thought that I would like to test Paladin. I had seen a post of a guy asking what Paladin’s weakness is, since he could not seem to lose with this deck. Won every game until Legend, 2 people conceding pre turn 3. Like what the actual fuck. The Balance lmao.


YeetCompleet

it's a bit ridiculous for climbing this season. I did something similar. I was struggling at diamond 5 with a homebrew origami Druid and getting only around 60%WR. Switched to Handbuff Paladin and sleepwalked to legend in a few hours. edit: I should mention this was before the patch that changed how matchmaking worked


HG-__-

Wow, exactly same story here; I was struggling with Diamond 5 because I was refusing to play with those kinds of decks, "Pain warlock, handbuff and flood"


euqistym

I think handbuff being OP at 10k+ legend seems pretty normal. It’s possible you met only bots, your rank doesn’t say anything about MMR and considering you haven’t played last few years it’s possible your MMR is very low so it means easy games, enjoy!


adrian8520

Wait really? It's possible I played against only bots for all my games on my climb to legend ? Does my MMR not adjust as I climb? Why would it stay low while I've made it into Dia 5 for example..?


WjadetearsL

The bots have really obvious names like oliveViper on your gold 8 match. Its usually color + animal.


greendragon00x2

For real? I noticed a large number of opponents with that name algorithm. Had me wondering, then I remembered that my name is the same combo. Now I am having an existential crisis! Am I ...am I a bot?! 😭


Present-Signature-81

Try and do a captcha! The only real way to find out


DommyMommyKarlach

I can see at least three obvious bots in the screenshot, there may be more


SickRanchezIII

Like how could you possibly determine that based off the information available? Genuinely curious, basing off of name alone? My name is ‘SwankyPants’ auto generated, like i imagine a lot of folks are


Oniichanplsstop

It's not 100% accurate obviously, but the vast majority of the time it is. And outside of apprentice ranks, Blizzard bots are gone so you can rule out intended bot games.


DommyMommyKarlach

Color + animal is a bot name. Olive Viper, Inky Wight, Gold Wisp are most likely bots.


euqistym

Because ranking doesn’t say anything about MMR, for example the top 100 MMR players are meeting other top 100 MMR players towards and in legend, but they also climb the ladder like you do. Except you will never face them bcs of the MMR difference . The ladder is just a visual grind so you have something to grind towards to in legend. Being diamond 5 doesn’t mean you match ALL other diamond 5 players, it means meeting other diamond 5 players around the same skill level. MMR does increase, but it doesn’t increase much in 8hours.. it will increase over time. To add you probably also played against real players, but at that MMR handbuff pala is just really strong


Its_Big_Fungus

Not enough games. Generally it takes 30 or so games for the system to start figuring out your MMR.


GigaKoala

After coming back from a few years of break I made it to diamond before seeing a player that wasn't a bot.it takes a long time for MMR to adjust to real players after leaving for a long time.


Oniichanplsstop

There's also the recent matchmaking change that makes this even easier. You'll never fall into "rank-based matchmaking" ie Diamond 5 vs Diamond 5, it's always MMR-based now. So if you're bad at the game, or in OP's case you haven't played in years and decayed to really low MMR, you're going to easily be able to farm your way to legend playing strong decks, but place in the dumpster like he did.


Fabulous-Category876

They changed this system a patch or two ago... so people shouldn't be running into bots anymore. Especially if they keep winning.


yardii

So if I take a long break, I get to pick a free loaner deck and possibly farm bots to legend? That seems like pretty good.


Fabulous-Category876

Drank 9 beers last night and hit legend with handbuff Paladin as well. Went from D5 straight to legend, I threw one game but overall it was fairly easy. I always judge a deck based on how well it can be piloted to legend while intoxicated, and this one did not disappoint. If I can be that inebriated and hit legend with a deck, it should probably see a nerf or two. Final win rate BTW was 27-13


KvxMavs

Paladin doing paladin things. Tiresome.


destonar

I have a similar story. Haven’t played since the start of Boomsday, came back last season, netdecked flood paladin, got legend. This season same story, but starting with high plat I played insanity warlock, because I got bored from playing aggro and hate highlander warriors with passion. Idk if that’s just me, but getting legend feels easier now, than it was back then. Maybe it is because of bots. I don’t have any stats, cause I play on my phone, but both times I’ve hit legend, it was around 5k, if anyone interested.


TheOneJerander

What do you use to track matches and win rate, because I just started playing again a couple days ago using death knight loaner deck made it d3 and there are no signs of slowing down.


Roykebab

This deck is actually ridiculously broken. They “nerfed” it but it still throws down 16 damage charge minions from hand on turn 5-6. Not fun.


xxPYRRHUSxEPIRUSxx

My dog hit Legend in 6hrs with that deck.


EdwinVanJenkins

Deckcode?


Ethrillo

/u/RidiculousHat Direct result of the new matchmaking. As a surprise to no one who actually understood it. Maybe you can change it back now? Ppl shouldnt get handed free Legend because of low mmr.


RidiculousHat

my man - i know this means a lot to you, but can we avoid jumping to conclusions six days after a change with no internal data and then pinging me on the weekend? i am well aware of the concerns here, as are other members of the team. we are not here to say "this is the way the game will be forever now, deal with it" - but i would also hope that you are willing to try to play yourself without making up your mind first and working backwards from an initial conclusion. that will give us time to analyze how things are going at a holistic level. it is not clear to me yet if this particular result would have happened if a skilled lapsed player did this a week ago prior to the change. this is a case study that we're going to specifically analyze along with other examples that we'd like to compare to prior climbs from a variety of player situations. i think it is fair to ask for that time - and it's quite difficult to maintain constructive conversation when you're also telling me that i don't understand the system or the potential problems that you've raised. is this reasonable? i really hope you're able to give this a try yourself without spending every game thinking about how the system is screwing you and rewarding other people. that'll be a self fulfilling prophecy if you go into your games with that mindset. i'm hoping that instead we can explore this with data on our side and compare it to player experiences that we see here and elsewhere.


Ethrillo

Firstly, I apologize for writing to you on the weekend. I assumed this was a corporate account and not a private one. Since youve responded, I hope this follow-up is okay. If you find it annoying, please feel free to stop reading and ignore this message :D The thing is that this is not something that requires testing or experimentation; its like adding 1+1=2. Unless theres information that wasnt told us yet, the problem lies in the logic. Matching players by MMR but rewarding them based on having more wins than losses is inherently problematic. Its a fundamental logical and mathematical error. I dont know of any other game with such a flaw in its ranking system. And again this kind of issue doesnt need testing (though I know that bonus stars mitigate this slightly, the wide MMR ranges within the same bonus stars make it insufficient. Also grinding can still get you very far even without them). > I really hope youre able to give this a try yourself without spending every game thinking about how the system is screwing you and rewarding other people. Thatll be a self-fulfilling prophecy if you go into your games with that mindset." I already know Im at a disadvantage. Im just shy of getting 11 bonus stars, meaning Ill have to face tough opponents from D5 to Legend with probably around a ~50% win rate. This will be much harder compared to before when my opponents were average D5-Legend players. Achieving 15 more wins than losses with a 50% win rate is a mathematical nightmare. And all of this because of my mmr. Being a good/decent player no longer rewards me. Its just depressing. Of course, I could play meme decks every time I reach Legend to make the climb easier next month, but playing poorly or using meme decks shouldnt be a strategy for maximizing rewards, in my opinion. I can make more and different examples to show the flaws in the system but i believe Ive already told you most of this, so Ill leave it at that.


RidiculousHat

man, i asked for a chance and this doesn't feel like i got one. just to reply to your claim about "no other game does this" - my understanding is that this is pretty typical for systems with visible rank and invisible mmr, including (but not limited to) every riot game, dota, marvel snap, overwatch, etc as well as in battlegrounds in this client. all of these games use hidden mmr to determine opponents and then use a visible rank to determine progression. this is an extremely common practice in digital games with monthly resets. league hides mmr and it looks like their "lp" is similar to how battlegrounds handles this (which also uses a hidden mmr) - the equivalent in hs here would be bonus stars: https://support-leagueoflegends.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405781372051-MMR-Rank-and-LP#:~:text=Your%20Matchmaking%20Rating%20(MMR)%20is,Lose%2C%20and%20it%20goes%20down. dota lets you see your own mmr only and has a seasonal rank that isn't used for matchmaking: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Matchmaking_Rating snap has some collection gates (somewhat similar to how hearthstone gates apprentice) and then appears to use hidden mmr except for a +30/-30 rank range limit: https://marvelsnapzone.com/matchmaking/ these other games use mmr based matchmaking the same way hearthstone has for years in both the bonus star section of the climb and the legend portion. i really, really hope you can give this a shot next month without making up your mind beforehand that this will dramatically hold you back. maybe it will, maybe it won't, but it will be impossible to get a fair read on the reality of things if you cannot go into it with an open mind.


Ethrillo

Yes there are other games that use hidden MMR and ranking systems to display progress. It's pretty standard, but that wasn't my point. In these games, the hidden MMR is closely tied to ranking, and the ranking is tied to rewards if theres any. There is no easy way to manipulate these systems. If you play poorly, you will have a bad ranking and receive fewer rewards. This close connection between rank and mmr is exactly what the new matchmaking is trying to remove. Let's take Overwatch as an example: You cannot achieve Grandmaster rank with bronze MMR or bad MMR at all. You can't lose much MMR if you want to stay at that rank. Furthermore, you cannot drop your MMR and use the lower MMR for an easier climb next season. Your rewards will also get worse if you drop MMR, and your ranking will suffer. But all of these issues and many more are present in Hearthstone. In other games, every time you achieve a new, higher rank, it's because you played against people of that rank and earned it. Hearthstone, however, allows you to play for a certain rank against people of your skill level. This would be completely ridiculous in any other competitive game. Imagine one player having to play against average Silver-ranked opponents, while another player has to face average Diamond players, both aiming for master rank. This is exactly what Hearthstone does. Your ranking in Hearthstone is determined by the number of wins you can get against people of your skill level. That's it. There is no mechanic that forces you to fight stronger opponents (in the sense that its the same strengh for everyone, so ranks get a meaning to begin with) for higher ranks. As seen in this Reddit post with a ridiculous climb to Legend on low MMR. And people can get low MMR through various means at all ranks. Sometimes it's just the result of grinding and bad play, other times it's a Legend memer or whatever. And again this would be unthinkable in other games.


swiftmen991

Bro it’s just a game. Let the person enjoy his legend win


joahw

I don't know if it's related to the matchmaking change or not but as an enjoyer of meme decks it seems SO much better now. Before I would reach 1x multiplier and all of a sudden every match was against the Paladin deck du jour but now I'm still facing an actual variety of interesting decks. I guess casual was an option before but that always feels like I'm beating up on newbies and people trying to farm dailies. So yeah, great change (if it isn't just my confirmation bias) and people "getting to legend without earning it" doesn't matter at all.


Peugas424

Love you hat


dillonyousonofabitch

This is a great reply


Dominus786

I quit since the toy expansion, sid they break the game with paladin again? Literally every season man... they play favourites with paladin


Strechher

It’s just goes and goes, not stop tall threats every turn. Busted asf, but soo boring to play, I can’t. I got legend with drill rogue this month but stopped playing bcos of endless hand buff pals and Boomboss warriors.


kuliamvenkhatt

With the recent change to matchmaking, this is not an achievement. You faced terrible opponents and bots because of the long break.


BnBman

It's the best performing deck right now.


A_Flare

Same story here, always mained rogue with decks like maly rogue and OTK but havent played since pirate warrior was cancer back in 2018. Kinda made me rage quit lol. Came back 2 weeks ago and saw pirate rogue was a thing, hit legend for first time in 10 yrs with a 5 yr break hahaha


Delicious-Dimension1

Well have tried this. And to your big minions most decks have answers. Any warrior will clear boards till they get 6x bombs to your deck: you lose to fatigue. Priests? Lol..next. Any DK steals your big minion and hit your face with it till you lose. You kill that minion and the dk steals your next big minion again. Maybe gotta give it a new try. I'm missing yogg so that does kinda hamper the endgame against certain decks.


PoorlyWordedName

Deck list?


Zom2016

Congratz! Deck code? :)


Nugssss777

You didn't get warrior 1 game...that's crazy, I get warrior every other game on my pally.


Tinkererer

It's funny because I got to Legend very quickly farming Handbuff Paladins as Even Shaman.


andrwarrior

Kinda wish DH had glide in standard right now, would be really nice to nerf all of that handbuff


ForNarg

Gib deck code


VanLunturu

Now try to also get Legend in Twist, you have 7 days left 😉


Thrillhouse74

All these comments and still no deck code...


DoubleRoastbeef

Since Un'Goro?! Wow...


Jeth3

Main shaman here, I’m still struggling to get diamond…


Voidelfmonk

Another point to : who needs skill


Naguro

Side note but how do you handle reno warrior with that deck? I lose 3/4 games when facing that, and reno warriors are about 70% of my matches so it's getting a bit old


Scary-Impression1645

Kids under my post wont believe this


Gexm13

You were playing bots mostly bro


yardii

As an also returning player, I'm trying to hold off on buying the Festival miniset just for Magatha, but I may just have to. At least the other legendaries can get dusted (might keep Fanottem)


Easy_Magician_925

Yep. It's a real thinking man's game


Individual_Force1199

dude what is it with people advertising their legend reach after 10 years? the fact u got so late means u are bad at the game still. game is an rng clown fiesta anyways


joahw

They nerfed Paladin like 100 times btw


Lehas1

Deckcode?


G0ldenfruit

Just finished my first legend run with this same deck, 65-12. Thank you for the recommendation! Never played a deck this broken when you get all the buffs and weapon haha


adrian8520

Woohoo, lets go!


takot42

You probably played bots until diamond, but the rest is honest 😂. Congratulations on Legend 🎊 🎊. Now you start the real grind!


Oniichanplsstop

The recent matchmaking change makes it so it's always MMR-based rather than rank-based when you run out of bonus stars. You can farm bots all the way if your MMR is that low.


takot42

That sounds really not well thought, if it works that way 🙃🙃. Maybe mister Hat has to tell us how it works at the higher ranks for low mmr players. You can't possibly go undefeated vs bots to Legend 😂


Oniichanplsstop

? It's perfectly fine. Your MMR is eventually going to climb and you'll get out of bot MMR and face real players again. No one should be surprised that a good deck is shitstomping low MMR, it's literally always been true, and will continue to be true, in literally every card game.


Ethrillo

Hes 11400 Legend. Thats very near the very bottom of Legend. His mmr is quite bad still even after all these games. His good score is the direct result of the new matchmaking. He didnt have to fight good players all the way to Legend. The new matchmaking is ridiculously stupid.


Oniichanplsstop

And no one gives a shit because no one cares about low mmr or dumpster legend. 11* bonus has been using this system since the rank system change years ago and it's perfectly fine. Does it matter than he had to play bad players to get legend and an 11* player has to play against top legend opponents to get legend? No. Because their MMR is different and trying to combine them is stupid in the first place. Same way no one cared that 10 star players had to play against good opponents until diamond 5 where the matchmaking suddenly dropped in quality until they moved back to legend.


Ethrillo

So its no problem for you that an low mmr player has a much easier time to get to Legend than a good player? For me that logically makes no sense. Almost all Legend players have 10 stars and they will have to fight their own skill on Dia5-Legend. Getting 15 more wins that losses with fair mmr aka about 50% winchance is very hard and can easily take hundreds of games. Meanwhile a low mmr player can just blast through it likes its nothing to free Legend reward (like here where the players is actually stronger than his mmr ofc).


takot42

That's what I was thinking. At this point just make the mmr visible for the player. I 'm a Legend ~3k player, so I will have to play vs marginally better players to get 10 stars as well. (I think 11x stars are <2k rank, guess I have to grind some)


Ethrillo

For you this will be especially punishing. You will have to fight 3k Legend players at dia5-Legend now instead of the Average Dia5-Legend climber which is way worse than that. A much grindier climb will be the result. And it results in stupid strategys. You could dumpster your mmr for an easier Legend climb for example. Which in my opinion should never be a viable strategy. Meanwhile bad players fight bad players for the same Legend rewards and it will take them the same amount of time if their mmr is about their skill since everyone is at 50% now.


Oniichanplsstop

Yes, it doesn't matter? lol. Why do I care that someone is rank 11000 legend when I'll never play a game vs them? Trying to say all 10 star legend players are equal is insane. You're trying to say someone at rank 2000 legend is as good as someone at 11000? Hell no, but that's a possible matchup in diamond 5 when their star bonuses run out and it was rank-based matchmaking. Diamond 5 matchmaking was trash because of that and was much easier to climb through than bronze-d5 for the good 10 star players. Which is now no longer possible, because it's MMR-based the entire way throughout the ladder. So now game quality will be the same throughout your climb instead of dropping off a cliff randomly. OP will eventually have their MMR increased, as it soft resets every month. Then they're going to start facing actual players, and if they're bad, they'll get stuck until their MMR drops again.


Ethrillo

Yea which is exactly the problem that im outlining. It was exactly the point that people have to fight an average dia5-Legend player. Which was easier for good players and harder for bad ones. A fair challenge that was equally hard for everyone as a barrier to Legend. Sure if you think that everyone deserves Legend no matter the skill then ofc this is not a problem for you and we can leave the discussion. Its just that it always made sense to me that better players had a higher rank even outside Legend and even more so it made sense that the better players could get the highest reward(legend) easier and faster. Both of the latter are no longer the case for any climb outside of bonus stars.


Oniichanplsstop

Neither have been the case since the rank rework years ago anyway? Legend saw a massive increase in playerbase as the stars and grind required per month to hit legend was diminished substantially, along with the skill. So why is it a problem now and not in the past?


rupiefied

It should always work that way. Don't need to be beating up on worse players because you want to log off early each month.


DarkPhenomenon

Is it impressive crafting a top deck and getting to legend with it?


Gadgetman914

I was stuck at platinum and am now Diamond 5 strictly because of handbuff paladin. Very fair deck. The worst part is, I don't know how they even nerf it. They can take Outfitter out of standard, but they still have to nerf Painter's Virtue and Muscletron.


Hairy_Acanthisitta25

my man locked in congrats


NewAgeToJesus

Hearthstone has been dead this year, crap first expansion and 2nd expansion looks terrible too. Have barely played this year, excavated were fun tho.


Sammoonryong

I am surpised you got so lucky with warriors. its like 50/50 vs warriors