Unlabelled Hearthstone - HCT TORONTO at EGLX 2018 - SURVIVAL GUIDE

3/10/2018 01:14:00 am
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Hearthstone - HCT TORONTO at EGLX 2018 - SURVIVAL GUIDE

HCT TORONTO at EGLX 2018 - SURVIVAL GUIDE

Posted: 01 Mar 2018 06:11 PM PST

HCT is coming to Canada!

 

HCT Toronto, a three day Tour Stop Grand Prix Tournament hosted by EGLX at the International Centre in Toronto from March 9th through March 11th, 2018, is offering a prize pool of $15,000 USD and 191 Hearthstone Competitive Points to the Top 32 players.

 

The Tournament consists of two bracket stages, an open Swiss bracket of up to 256 players and a Top 8, Single Elimination Playoffs. All matches will be played in person at EGLX on the Americas server using a Conquest, best-of-five, one ban format and streamed on the Play Hearthstone Twitch channel. After three days of competitive action, we will crown the first HCT Tour Stop Champion in Canada!

 

Here's what you need to know.

 

Schedule

Important deadlines and the stream schedule are listed below. Competitors should review the HCT Toronto Tournament Rules for a complete Tournament schedule.

 

Deadline Date Time
Registration Deadline March 4th 8:00 PM
Deck Lists Deadline March 9th 10:00 AM
Day 1 Check In Deadline March 9th 2:30 PM
Day 1 Stream Begins March 9th 3:00 PM
Day 2 Stream Begins March 10th 11:00 AM
Day 3 Stream Begins March 11th 11:00 AM

Times are listed in Eastern Standard Time

 

Broadcast

Legendary casters Frodan, Firebat, and TJ Sanders will be at the venue casting HCT Toronto matches on the Play Hearthstone Twitch channel.

 

Select matches from Swiss rounds 1 through 8 will be featured on stream, along with at least 1 match from the first round of Top 8 Playoffs. Semi-Finals and Grand Finals will be played on stream.

 

Prize Pool

Participants are competing for their share of 191 Hearthstone Competitive Points and a cut of the $15,000 USD prize pool. Prizes will be awarded based on final placings in the competition.

 

Placing HC points Prize Money
1st 15 $5,000
2nd 12 $3,000
3rd-4th 10 $1,500
5th-8th 8 $600
9th-16th 6 $100
17th-32nd 4 $50

 

HCT Toronto Social

Competitors and spectators are encouraged to share their Tournament journey on social media using the hashtags #HCTToronto and #EGLX2018. Twitter accounts @HSesports and @EGLXofficial can be followed for updates and announcements on the event.

 

That's it!

Check out the HS Esports announcement article and eglx.ca/hearthstone for full event info.

I'm truly excited to be a part of bringing this event to Canada. Happy to answer questions either commented below or via email at hearthstone@eglx.ca

Cheers!

Edit: Registration deadline updated to new extended time

submitted by /u/Aleirri
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Tavernbrawl is... fun?

Posted: 08 Mar 2018 11:15 PM PST

Why did my opponent think that this was a good idea?

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 05:39 AM PST

Sometimes, a glimmer of hope shines in the hearthstone community.

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 05:29 AM PST

As you low-roll!

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 01:18 AM PST

TIL that the Mountain Giant is actually sitting down and watching birds

Posted: 08 Mar 2018 03:35 PM PST

Another tease by Ben Brode

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 09:22 AM PST

I was a priest, I promise

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 05:00 AM PST

when you get heavily outplayed on turn 5

Posted: 08 Mar 2018 10:25 PM PST

Im soo mad rn you can't even imagine

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 01:34 AM PST

Drawing all of my one drops by turn two

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 05:25 AM PST

9 Classes in 10 Days: #5 Priest, Kraken the Rotation

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 07:00 AM PST

Welcome back to Day 5 of 9 classes in 10 days! Today we'll take a closer look at the Priest class and all the tools it will be losing with the upcoming rotation into the Year of the Raven. Priest entered into the Year of the Kraken as a decent control class that had the tools for various tempo oriented builds.

The first rotation took away Lightbomb which was Priest's best AoE tool at the time and left them with only Excavated Evil and Holy Nova which would ultimately lead to the class becoming woefully underpowered. Priest experienced a decline in both viability and playrate as control decks from Paladin, Warrior, and Mage boasted superior survivability and healing while aggro decks were able to burst through Priests healing and overwhelm their minions. Priest became so bad during the Year of the Kraken that the Unicorn Priest meme was born.

For these write ups I looked at data from both Vicious Syndicate and TempoStorm and their various meta reports. Shoutout to both websites for helping to compile a ton of very valuable data. This community is better with both of you around!

Notable Class Cards
Forbidden Shaping: The forbidden cycle was just interesting and good overall during the Old Gods meta. This card found its way into a lot of Priest decks as it was a great performer on turn 8 or turn 10 with hero power because the pool of 8 mana minions included both copies of Ragnaros and very few 'bad' minions you could hit outside of those. This let Control Priest have a potential huge finisher and the card had the flexibility to be played much earlier if needed to develop a board against early aggression. This saw some intermittent flex play during the Un'goro and Knights of the Frozen Throne meta's.

Shifting Shade: This was an okay tech choice option for Priest and helped to build a 'thief priest' package that could be put into a Priest deck. During the Old Gods meta this saw play in N'zoth as just a decent minion to revive and during Un'goro it saw some limited play as people experimented with the new Quest. Honestly, this card is being showcased because I feel like Priest might miss it even if it never had a huge impact on the meta game.

Darkshire Alchemist: This is another example of a minion that seems bad by today's standards but Darkshire Alchemist was a flexible tool for Priest throughout the Year of the Kraken. Essentially this card is a Flash Heal attached to a 4/5 body which can be very useful when the class needed board presence to compete. The alchemist looked to be designed to curve in with the Priest's C'thun package but it saw play other Priest decks through the meta and into Un'goro before falling off dramatically.

Shadow Word: Horror: Throughout the Year of the Mammoth we've seen this card paired with Pint-Size Potion (which we'll get to soon) to great effect. During the time of its release and really up until the Year of the Mammoth, this card was terrible. I could go into the details of why but the pre-release discussion thread does a better job than I could. Ultimately, it took both Pint-size Potion and Shadow Vision to help give the combo enough consistency to be worth including in today's meta. It is a valuable lesson in not underestimating a card just because it doesn't look useful now.

Embrace the Shadows: This is just a good card for the sake of consistency. The effect is the same as Auchenai Soulpriest but only for the turn you play it. When revealed it felt underwhelming but being able to have access to this card has helped Priest in strange ways since its introduction and that flexibility is worth a mention. Whether that flexibility leads to tech inclusion in some Razakus decks or as an activator for the Corrupted Healbot Combo Priest it is just a solid overall card.

The C'thun Package: Priest was another class that got C'thun support and seemed to be meant to utilize the C'thun package. For Priest the tools were Hooded Acolyte and Twilight Darkmender which looked to push C'thun priest in a value high health minion sort of strategy where you would try and value trade and heal your other C'thun package minions to help push the power of your C'thun up. When the deck could play the Acolyte then curve into the new healing offered by Twilight Darkmender and Darkshire Alchemist, it could really swing the board and allow the deck to snowball. It worked for a while in the beginning and then people figured out the meta. The greatest weakness of Priest's C'thun package compared to Druid or Warrior was that Priest can't go about 30 life and so sometimes they couldn't get their healing value in as well as the meta just having a larger percentage of high burst combo decks.

Priest of the Feast: This was arguably the best card that Priest got during One Night in Karazhan for that Meta. Since aggro Shaman, Secret Hunter, and Tempo Mage were all popular during this time, Priest of the Feast gave priest players a chance to try and recover from a bad start and regain control of the board. The main problem that faced this card was that there were a lot of 'needed' minions at the 4 mana slot since Auchenai + Circle was one of Priests better clear tools at the time. Priest of the Feast has been a great card for its lifetime in standard and has helped a lot of different Priest decks during its time. Priest will have to find a new swing recovery tool to rely on soon.

Onyx Bishop: This minion helped enable the Resurrect Priest archetype during the Karazhan meta. Though the swing turns were a lot less powerful than today's Big Priest, Bishop was a part of making the deck consistent enough to work. The deck usually only ran one or two big minions and most spells to try and get the Bishop to hit the correct thing. Ultimately the random nature of the resurrect effects at the time coupled with Bishop mucking up the pool of minions for the next Bishop caused the deck to fall out of the meta towards the end of Karazhan.

Pint-Size Potion: This is the card that finally let Shadow Word: Horror work semi-consistently. It also gave Cabal Shadow Priest new life. This potion saw limited flex play alongside those tools in a few Priest decks but for the most part was too slow during Shamanstone to work. In the Year of the Mammoth we saw this alongside Horror more often especially because Shadow Visions gave you more consistency in assembling the 2 card combo. Pint-Size Potion, and a lot Priest's Mean Streets tools, really helped shore up the weaknesses in Priest that other classes had been abusing up until this point.

Potion of Madness: As much as I mention Patches and Jades being polarizing, this card is equally polarizing in just how sneakily powerful it is. It has been used in a wide range of decks for its life in standard. Potion of Madness has been used to take control of boards, steal deathrattles, clear early aggression, make Hunter mains hate themselves, and other things I'm sure I'm missing. It's passage is going to hurt Priest more than a lot of these other cards as it really just does so many things in so many different common situations. The card has been an absolute staple since its inception into standard.

Kabal Talonpriest: This card was compared to Dark Cultist a lot when it was revealed and the comparison is fair. Priest had felt the void left by Dark Cultist through the entirety of the Year of the Kraken so gaining a battlecry replacement was great. The fact that it IS a battlecry instead of a Deathrattle has also proven to be good for the card in Wild. It is much more difficult to play around a Battlecry effect rather than trade efficiently into a board to deny the buff. Kabal Talonpriest is just another solid tool that has seen play as a staple of the Priest class since the Mean Streets released.

Greater Healing Potion: A massive burst heal was needed in Priest as before this, Priest was surprisingly susceptible to burst damage. For a class based around the idea of healing, Priest does not have a lot of ways to heal his own face for a ton of damage outside of hero powering every turn. Greater Healing Potion helped fix this problem and has seen limited play in the Year of the Kraken and more extended play during the Mammoth to help extend the game and get Priest to the late stages in order to execute its game plan.

Kabal Songstealer: Another good effect stapled to a fair minion. Kabal Songstealer has seen flex tech play since its inception and was a key piece in making Silence Priest work during the Un'goro meta. Considering how stuffed the 4 mana minion slot is for Priests, this minion was a fantastic alternative to Spellbreaker for decks that felt they had too many 4 mana minions already, but still needed silence effects.

Dragonfire Potion: What is priest going to do without this card? You'll notice I've used the phrase "staple of the Priest class since Mean Streets" with a few of these cards, but seriously, this card is THE staple of Priest. This card is going to leave a massive void in the class come April. I've come back to this section of write up on 3 different days prior to posting and I still just don't know how to put into words how much this one single piece of removal has absolutely positively affected the Priest class. It has done so much to help Priest come out of the dark days of Karazhan and see viable competitive play again. Seriously, what is Priest going to do without Dragonfire Potion?

Drakonid Operative: this card pulled Dragon Priest, and the class in general, out of the dumpster and into the competitive scene after nearly a year spent being basically a meme. Drakonid OP, as he's affectionately been called, has been the main reason to run Dragon Priest throughout the entire Year of the Mammoth. The power this card puts on the board while giving you a ton of information about your opponents deck has been phenomenal. In a class where you are built to be more reactionary by default, having such a powerful proactive move that also gives you insight on how to utilize your later reactive tools is incredible. He's served his purpose and his time and it's about time he moves on to Wild. Also, SECRET AGENT COMING THROUGH!

Raza the Chained, Kazakus, and Kabal Courrier: The Priest version of the Kabal Package was not all that powerful at the time of release. Raza the Chained didn't really set the world on fire until Knights of the Frozen Throne and Reno Priest bounced between tier 2 and 3 throughout Mean Streets of Gadgetzan as Priest was beginning to get enough removal tools to deal with aggressive boards but still didn't really have a good way to burst down control decks. Inspire Reno Shadowform Priest was probably the best thing to come from this package and it even cut Raza in a few builds.

Purify: I saved the best for last. Purify is iconic for Priest in the Year of the Kraken as it was part of the Karazhan adventure, which released far fewer cards, and came at a time when Priest was already declining in power and play levels to what we see in Warrior and Shaman today. If you go and search top posts from the time, you'll see all sorts of outrage and hatred at the reveal of this card. So much so that /u/bbrode actually made this video outlining the design decisions at the time. Ultimately the card came out at the wrong time for an already weak class and so received such a negative reaction. Mr. Brode was ultimately proven correct as during Un'goro it created a 'new fun archetype.' It just took a half a year and a rotation to get there but eventually Silence Priest got enough tools to see competitive play during the Un'goro meta with Purify being an alright card that added consistency to the deck.

Nerfs Throughout the Year
Priest never got hit by any card changes during the Year of the Kraken and didn't see a change to any of their cards until the most recent balance changes mentioned here. Prior to the nerf, Priest had gained a high enough saturation of removal and survivability tools that a singleton deck wasn't a drawback anymore. Razakus warped the meta into one where survivability and healing to get 'out of machine gun range' had to be accounted for because of the popularity of the Razakus strategy. Razakus Priest was powerful enough in both wild and standard to warrant a change to Raza which has seemingly killed the deck in standard. As long as Reno exists, there will be a home for Raza in Wild however.

A Look at Great Decks Priest didn't really have great decks until the last balance change before rotation but some of these showcase the problems or the foundation that we see in some Priest decks today. As is usually the case with every expansion, the common theme was a spike in Priest popularity in a new flux meta before it was quickly discovered that Priest was terrible. A lot of the Priest decks were just outclassed by other classes utilizing the same central package (Usually Warrior for both C'thun and Dragon package).

Dragon Priest: Dragon Priest was around in some form through the entire year of the Kraken. It wasn't until the introduction of Drakonid OP and Dragonfire Potion that the deck was able to find its niche. You can see here the deck used to try to utilize some late game minions to stabilize and win. The deck instead went midrange after Mean Streets and just tried to discover a late game Dragon from the limited pool of Dragons to kill control or tried to use the new Drakonid Operative to try and steal your opponents burst potential. All this while utilizing the new control potions to help stop the pirate onslaught from establishing an easy foothold.

C'thun Priest was another example of a solid deck that just didn't execute the game plan as well as other classes. Like most C'thun decks, you had a strong burst finisher with C'thun himself and the Priest C'thun specific cards were geared around healing. The deck struggled against the burst power found in Aggro Shaman, Midrange Hunter, and the outlast and removal power of Warrior.

Control Priest was always around in some form pre-Mean Streets. The deck had the removal tools to keep up with a lot of decks but (as is the theme) it had problems dealing with Shaman and Hunters burst potential and couldn't hold up in the fatigue match-ups of the removal heavy warrior and mage.

SPECIAL LOOK Reno OTK Priest For those of you who still have fresh memories of the horror of Razakus priest, this is what the first 'refined' iteration of the deck looked like. The deck was much more midrange and built around surviving and gaining value with the dragon package before trying to do some form of inner fire combo or utilizing Velen alongside some form of hero power refresh. Sounds familiar.

Looking Ahead
Priest is the most difficult class to look ahead on so far. There is just so much changing about the very core of this class's removal and tempo tools that to make a guess on what comes next is practically impossible. Priest will always have access to the inner fire divine spirit combo that has seen resurgent playability, combined with another year of Radiant Elemental and Shadow Visions should help stabilize that as a key fall back plan. There is a new Dragon core that could help a control oriented Dragon list but the loss of Netherspite and Drakonid OP is huge. Spiteful Summoner is still very strong in Priest so enough early tempo minions added to the class can easily keep that archetype going. Keep an eye out for a possible Elemental Priest to emerge as Radiant Elemental and Lyra the Sunshard both hold that tag which makes Servant of Kalimos decent for a value oriented elemental priest deck.

That is all I've got for today's write up on Priest. I'll be back again tomorrow with day 6 of the write ups. Next up we'll tackle the Rogue class and see what it is losing and how Rogue might be changing. As always, if you feel like I missed anything major during this write up or if you spot an error, drop a comment and I'll try to get it fixed. Here is a link to the Hub which is updated with each thread to easily move between all of them!

submitted by /u/gigashadow89
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I really love playing Dude Paladi... I mean control priest

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 06:51 AM PST

Haven’t gotten a golden legendary in awhi...woaaaaah

Posted: 08 Mar 2018 03:34 PM PST

Why does the Old God Pre-Release chart have drastically more upvotes than the rest? Noticed this when looking at the old threads

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 08:09 AM PST

First time I had ever seen Crypt Lord, I could barely contain my excitement over the next few turns

Posted: 08 Mar 2018 01:09 PM PST

Spells that gain effects in your hand don't get reduced to 0 from nefarions hero power

Posted: 08 Mar 2018 11:39 PM PST

What class card that has only seen fringe to no play would be a staple pick in another class?

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 04:17 AM PST

My thoughts would be Siltfin Spiritwalker in Paladin or Hadronox in Big Priest.

submitted by /u/TheOneDudeOnline
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All 4 Old Gods in a single turn

Posted: 08 Mar 2018 11:43 PM PST

Well, I had gotten all 4 Old Gods on the board at the same time before. But now I do it all in a single turn... and what's better, this time I captured it on video!

Unfortunately, Yogg decided to kill himself. Press F to pay respects. Still counts as I played all 4 of them from the hand.

submitted by /u/toadofsteel
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First time I see this card actually played.

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 08:04 AM PST

Introducing: Amazon Brode!

Posted: 08 Mar 2018 10:48 AM PST

Predicting next expansion announcement date.

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 07:18 AM PST

We know that when it comes to expansion releases Blizzard follows a timetable fairly closely. Expansions usually drop the first Thursday of April, August, and December with about a two week reveal season following a two week hiatus after the initial expansion announcement.

So going off of what happened with the year of the mammoth announcement and the initial Journey to Un'Goro reveal we might be able to guess when the next set will be announced.

Based of the date the announcement videos were uploaded to their YouTube channel, The Year of the Mammoth was announced Feb 16th and Journey to Un'Goro was announced Feb 27th (11 days after on a Friday). This year, The Year of the Raven was announced Feb 27th. 11 days after Feb 27th is tomorrow, but it's also a Saturday so I wouldn't expect an announcement then. That means that it's not unreasonable to believe that the expansion might get announced today.

Oh, and Whispers of the Old Gods was also announced March 11th (another Friday).

A few things that discredit this theory is that (1) The Year of the Kraken announcement was Feb 6th, meaning that there was over a month in between Kraken and Whispers announcements. However, this was the announcement of the new format and Blizzard has said that they felt that the wait between LoE and Whispers was too long so I doubt they want to replicate it. (2) There hasn't been the official announcement of the announcement yet (this one is pretty damning)

TL;DR: Expansion announcement today? Don't castrate me if I'm wrong

submitted by /u/Nostalgia37
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Did you guys purchase these fabulous arena keys from blizzard?

Posted: 08 Mar 2018 05:06 PM PST

The Ultimate Guide: Secret Mage

Posted: 09 Mar 2018 09:45 AM PST

Hello, Clydestrife here with the Ultimate Guide series!

Starting out the game and you build Secret Mage as your first deck? or you build one because it's cheap but not winning any games? Don't worry I've got you all covered with this ultimate guide on Secret Mage. It contains everything to know about playing the deck, how to beat any deck in the metagame by knowing when to play your secrets and when to just burn them to death.

You can find the decklist and read my guide in the link below and feel free to comment and let me know what you think, or if you have any questions.

The Ultimate Guide: Secret Mage

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