In Hearthstone , the “Warrior” decks were actually considered the big winners after the latest expansion. But in eSports, this is becoming a problem for anyone relying on the “Bomb Warrior” deck. Because they are being specifically countered.
Why was the Warrior so strong with the new cards? When the last expansion of Hearthstone, “Conspiracy of Shadows”, was released, the Warrior looked like the big winner.
Because he retained a strong hero card with “Dr. Boom”, while many other hero cards from other classes rotated out and could no longer be used in the Standard format.
Moreover, the Warrior received some nasty new ways to hide bombs in the opponents’ decks.
The trend was leaning towards slower Control decks through the Archivist, everything seemed to work in favor of the defensive Warrior.
Particularly the “Bomb Warrior” deck was popular. Tempo-Storm currently has it in its meta snapshot at position 2.
The idea behind the decks: You build up a lot of defense and plan for a multitude of bombs in the opponent’s deck to take them down gradually. You are essentially waiting out the games.
Many are intensively preparing for the Warrior as an opponent
This is now the problem: As reported by Dotesports, the popularity of the Warrior is now somewhat turning against him at the highest level in eSports.
For at the start of the “Grand-Master” tour in Las Vegas, experienced professionals anticipated that many would rely on the “Bomb Warrior”.
Especially newcomers who do not know what to expect at a LAN tournament would rely on the “safe choice”, the Bomb Warrior, they speculated.
Therefore, the strategists extensively studied how to create decks that can reliably win against the Warrior and experimented and practiced with them.
Grandmasters like Paul “Zale” Nemeth or Ryan “Purple” Murphy-Root have intensely dealt with how to reliably defeat the “Bomb Warrior”, Dotesports reports.
This is now the result: As reported by Dotesports, the Warrior was indeed the most played class on the first day of the tournament by far. There were 1399 games with the Warrior, nearly double that of the second most played class, the Rogue.
But after the first day, the Warrior only had a 48% win rate, the lowest among the top 4 classes.
Decks from Shamans and Hunters destroyed the Warrior in the tournament – against them, Warriors only achieved 38% and 42% wins, respectively – that is deadly.
Those who invested time in designing their decks to counter the Warrior have probably invested that time well.
Mages dominate eSports tournament, achieve victory
How did it look in the final? In the finals of the Masters, the player Dog won with Mage against Gallon, who relied on a Warrior.
You can see the final phase of the tournament here:
In the deck list of Dog (via hearthpwn), it is evident that he had prepared for the Warrior. Besides Harrison Jones, he also had a Acidic Swamp Ooze to destroy the Warrior’s weapons.
Which classes were represented in the finals? In the new “Specialist format” in Hearthstone , the Grandmasters play only one class, but in three deck variations. In the top 8, there were:
- 5 Mages
- 2 Warriors
- 1 Rogue
The Warrior did play a significant role in the tournament, but was far from being as dominant as one could have inferred from the large number of matches played with him.
