by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Yes, you read that right: I’m advocating playing Warlock Aggro at the beginning of each ranked season.

I get it… you hate the deck.  When you see Gul’dan across the screen from your beloved character at the start of a round, you cringe, knowing that your opponent will have Flame Imp and Voidwalker on turn one, Knife Juggler on turn two with a Soulfire to kill your two drop…

Why on Earth would you ever want to join the likes of those Warlock playing “noobs” and “unintelligent FotMers”!?

Because it’s the intelligent thing to do…
Disclaimer: Before I get into the meat of this article, I want to preface it by saying that this is intended primarily for those who view Hearthstone as a competitive outlet and care solely about wins/losses and efficient ladder climbing.  I understand that some people hold emotional attachments (both positive and negative) to certain decks, but for the sake of efficiency and effectiveness, emotions should be minimized as much as possible; just because you dislike that a deck is good doesn’t mean you should avoid playing it solely based on that emotion (again, this is presuming a devotion to efficient climbing and competitive success).
Alright, with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get into the actual content.  Where was I?

Oh yeah…

You should be playing Warlock Aggro… possibly even Hunter Combo/Faceroll.  You can hate yourself later, there will be plenty of time.

In fact, that’s the whole point of this article: time.  Well, time and efficiency.

If you’ve had a desire to make it Legend-rank but have yet to cross that illustrious threshold, then you might want to look at more than just deck selection, matchups, and variance as reasons; while being a good player is important (and mandatory, obviously), another important aspect that often gets overlooked is simple efficiency.

Let me break that down a bit more.

Getting to Legend takes time; even if you have a 60-70% win percentage, it still takes hours upon hours of grinding to get to Legend.  One of the biggest mistakes of mine from last season was trying to run the “F2P” Shaman deck.

No, the deck wasn’t too hard to play nor did it have some ridiculous negative effect on my psyche.  The true issue was the fact that spending time on that deck early in the season prevented me from taking advantage of an unsettled metagame before the ladders settled into what I call “Archetype Peaks and Valleys”.  Basically, when the ladders settle, certain decks occupy certain rank ranges (like how Hunters resided in the rank 5-9 range for much of last season) due to being favored against the decks directly below them in the rankings while having a bad matchup against the decks directly above them.

(By the way, if you ever wonder why you can breeze through 4-5 ranks then get stuck at a rank for a week, now you know.)

Basically, once I realized that I would never have the time to truly get Legend with the F2P Shaman deck in a month where I added “house buying” to my already extensive To Do list, I went back to “regular” ladder climbing.  However, by the time I did this, the ladders had already settled and, while getting from 25 to 8 was relatively easy, at rank 8 I hit a wall of Hunter decks (and my Warlock deck had a rough matchup against Hunters).

If I had “gotten ahead” of the ladders settling and gotten into the top five prior to that happening, I’m sure I would have hit Legend in no time, as the matchups there were quite favorable.  I spent a long time trying to find a deck with a good enough matchup against both Hunter and Zoo that would let me get above the Hunter Levels.

So, what does this have to do with playing Warlock Aggro?

When the season first starts, you should be taking advantage of the unsettled metagame as much as possible, trying to get as high as possible before the ladders settle down and specific decks and players get stuck in certain rank ranges.  While doing this, you should simply play a powerful deck that you know well.

“…but you said to play Warlock Aggro or Hunter; I know how to play Ramp Druid and it’s a powerful deck.  What gives?!”

True… here’s where the “play the decks you hate” part comes in.

If you have experience playing Warlock Aggro or Hunter Faceroll (or even other decks like Warrior Aggro or Paladin Faceroll), you should play those decks early in the season.  The reason, again, is purely efficiency; you get more games in when you’re not entrenched in 30 minute mirror matches with Control Warrior or a drawn out battle against Priest Control with your Ramp Druid deck.  I get that you may win all of your games with Ramp Druid, but if they’re taking 30 minutes apiece, I could get 3-6 games in with Warlock Aggro in that time (depending on how the games go) and, even if I lose one or two, I’ve still accumulated more stars than someone who played a 30 minute game would have.

I tried getting a step ahead of this idea this season; I figured that, if most were going to try to go the Warlock/Hunter route that I would play with Control Warrior to counter that metagame.  Here’s the thing though; even when I beat those decks, the games still lasted 15 minutes apiece.  It was inefficient.

And I wasn’t even seeing that many Warlocks or Hunters.  I was seeing a little of everything due to the unsettled metagame.

I swapped back to Warlock Aggro and started accumulating levels rather easily; it was simply a matter of getting more games in per hour.  My win percentage was roughly the same, but the increased number of games led to faster ladder climbing.

That’s the central theme of today’s article: take advantage of the early unsettled metagame by playing a powerful deck (regardless of good/bad matchups, as you’ll see a little of everything) that allows you to play more than one game per 20 or 30 minutes.  Quantity is much more important than quality when you’re lower than rank 5 early in the season.  Until the metagame settles and you can predict the decks you’re going to see with some sort of regularity, playing a powerful deck that ends games quickly will be much more beneficial to ladder climbing than playing a control deck.

Fortunately for those of us who enjoy complex thought and outplaying our opponents, rank 5 to 1 is filled with midrange and control decks that allow us to properly plan for an expected metagame.  At that point, we can switch to a deck that gives us higher quality matchups instead of getting in a higher quantity of games.

It’s all about having a plan; yes, being good at the game is key and being able to predict the metagame is nice, but early in the season, I’d wager that efficiency and speed are just as important when you’re trying to capitalize on an unsettled metagame.

Also: once the metagame settles down, you definitely need to pick a deck that defeats the metagame that you’re stuck in.  Keep in mind, though, that once you get through those levels, the metagame will change and your deck may become invalidated (this is why I place a premium on early climbing, to get ahead of this particular phenomenon).

That’s it for this week; before I head out, I’ll give you all an updated ShocLock Aggro list that I’ve been using to grind the ladders; it’s on at least a 10 game win streak as of the writing of this article and most of the games haven’t felt close.  Give it a shot to see if laddering gets a bit easier for you.

As always, I’ll see you on the tabletops of Azeroth.

Michael “Shoc” Martin

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