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[werothegreat]

The most luck I've had so far is with Mage and Priest decks.  Mage has excellent board clears, and with a Pyroblast finish, can usually get away with having mostly spells in their deck.  Priest at least has Holy Nova, but its main power is in manipulation and buffing things like Lightspawn.

But Shaman... except for Fire Elemental and maybe Hex, all the basic Shaman cards just seem terrible.  The only board clear it really gets is Lightning Storm, which has Overload and is Rare.  Its buffs aren't all that good, either, particularly compared to Druid and Priest.

Am I just doing something wrong?  How would you construct a viable deck using only basic Shaman cards and Neutrals?

[KingZog3]

Basic Shaman is awful. Shaman in general is super weak, and you do need the rares to even have a chance. The new expansion is giving so much buff to Shaman though, so I'm hopeful.

[popsofctown]

Basic shaman is really weak.  I don't think Blizz actually tries to balance all 9 classes in basic play. 

There's a little indication that they balance for Commons+basics meta.  Unfortunately I can't advocate crafting commons though, they are the least efficient thing to craft with dust. 

It's probably best to skip Shaman and come back to them later when you have better cards.

I have almost every single card and I felt like that during GvG before getting Neptulon, just because Shaman is so weak to start with.  (After Neptulon, it gets better, but still not tier 1.)

[werothegreat]

Why Neptulon?  What's so great about an Overloaded 7/7 and some Murlocs?

[Titandrake]

If Neptulon read

7 mana
7/7
Battlecry: Draw 4 cards
Overload: 3

he would be bonkers. That's kind of what he reads, except those 4 cards are all Murlocs. It's not that great, but the Murloc cards can combo with each other, and since most Murlocs are cheap, you can usually use any extra mana crystals you have to play them. By late game, you usually aren't going to use all your mana each turn, and having some slack to fill the gap helps.

[qmech]

You can make a reasonable Bloodlust deck with fairly cheap cards.  None of the key cards in the one I use for quests are more than common, (but they are spread across the sets, including Naxx and Blackrock).  The idea is to stuff the deck with minions that produce lots of bodies (ideally through deathrattle) then smack your opponent very hard if they can't clear your board.  Ideal minions are Piloted Shredder, Haunted Creeper, Harvest Golem and Sludge Belcher, but things like Dragonling Mechanic and Razorfen Hunter aren't terrible.

[Awaclus]

Well, this might not be of much help to you, but I've had pretty good success with a Shaman Mech aggro deck. It is relatively cheap to craft, though.

[KingZog3]

Well, this might not be of much help to you, but I've had pretty good success with a Shaman Mech aggro deck. It is relatively cheap to craft, though.

It needs Fel Reavers, but those are the most expensive cards. The reset is all common and rare.

[popsofctown]

Dragonling Mechanic and Razorfen Hunter aren't terrible.

They are, though.  They're not even playable in Arena.  If you insist that you're not going to pick one of top 8 classes to play with basic cards, though, it probably makes sense to go ahead and stack some other bad decisions on top of that one, I guess, so run 2 Wisps, they combo with Bloodlust.


Re:Neptulon
Neptulon is actually not that great, he just happens to be in the subcategory of card Shaman is dying for.  Shaman has lots of ways to use small amounts of mana to get strong effects: Stormforged Axe, Hex, Lightning Bolt, Forked Bolt, Earth Shock, Rockbiter Weapon, Earth Shock, Rockbiter Weapon.  What shaman didn't have pre GVG was any way at all to refill his hand after dumping all those cheap cards.  All control shamans were running 2 Azure drakes and wishing they could run 6, because after dumping those cheap minion control spells you just want to refill your hand and win endgame.  Neptulon draws you lots of cards.  From another angle, Neptulon makes use of about 18 mana crystals on average, which is even more than Ysera with optimistic expectations for her lifespan (Ysera would be a great solution for Shaman if they didn't run out of cards so fast, it's easy to have one card left in you hand on turn 8 and apply to the bank for a loan wanting to play Ysera)

[popsofctown]

Please don't craft commons, it just wrecks your dust.  It's better to play your 4th favorite class now and have really good cards for it and then play your favorite class later with everything it takes to make it beautiful. 

Or if you really really want to play shaman and just shaman, set aside one of the play modes (casual or ranked) and play only shaman in that game mode.  Your winrate might have been higher with the other classes right now, but your MMR will go down when you inevitably lose many times with shaman, then after your MMR stabilizes you'll go to winning about 50% of your games.  Then if you start mastering the class and adding cards one at a time from packs you can get a 55% or so winrate due to your steady improvements while you build up a dust reserve.

[markusin]

Well, this might not be of much help to you, but I've had pretty good success with a Shaman Mech aggro deck. It is relatively cheap to craft, though.

It needs Fel Reavers, but those are the most expensive cards. The reset is all common and rare.

Yeah you'd think Fel Reavers would just get removed by BGH, but in practice Mech Shamans with Fel Reaver on the board are very scary.

[popsofctown]

Well they do get removed by BGH if BGH is in the deck, it's just BGH isn't super common anymore. 

[Twistedarcher]

Well, this might not be of much help to you, but I've had pretty good success with a Shaman Mech aggro deck. It is relatively cheap to craft, though.

It needs Fel Reavers, but those are the most expensive cards. The reset is all common and rare.

what decklist do you use? the one i use curves out with loatheb/boom/rag.

[qmech]

Dragonling Mechanic and Razorfen Hunter aren't terrible.

They are, though. 

They are not good cards.  They are passable substitutes if you absolutely have to play free Bloodlust Shaman and are low on the ladder.  (I don't even play my "improved" Bloodlust Shaman on ladder.)

[KingZog3]

Well, this might not be of much help to you, but I've had pretty good success with a Shaman Mech aggro deck. It is relatively cheap to craft, though.

It needs Fel Reavers, but those are the most expensive cards. The reset is all common and rare.

what decklist do you use? the one i use curves out with loatheb/boom/rag.

Yeah, it curves out at Rag. Fel reaver costs 5 mana, so it's in the middle of your curve. I was running starndard mech Shaman.

[popsofctown]

Dragonling Mechanic and Razorfen Hunter aren't terrible.

They are, though. 

They are not good cards.  They are passable substitutes if you absolutely have to play free Bloodlust Shaman and are low on the ladder.  (I don't even play my "improved" Bloodlust Shaman on ladder.)

Gnomish Inventor is better than Dragonling Mechanic, Trump uses the former in low-dust-cost Bloodlust shaman.  Yeti is also better, playing a more powerful card outweighs the possibility that you maybe get both components of a dragonling mechanic to stick and get an extra Darkbomb.  Any other time, you're down by about that much.

I guess Razorfen Hunter is optimal since there are not good basic alternatives provided for you at 3 cost, but I would prefer that it be thought of as "terrible" during the entirety of the unsolicited counsel that the opponent not mess with Tusker and the ensuing squeal.

[Jorbles]

I completely missed this whole conversation! I love Shaman, but yes it's terrible. I wish I could trade my Al'Akir for Neptulon too.

People are rumbling that they might be able to make not one, but two different types of Shaman decks after GT is released: Totem Aggro Shaman and Ancestor's Call Control Shaman. Do people think either of these will be viable? I think the Totem one will be with what we've seen so far.

[popsofctown]

I completely missed this whole conversation! I love Shaman, but yes it's terrible. I wish I could trade my Al'Akir for Neptulon too.

People are rumbling that they might be able to make not one, but two different types of Shaman decks after GT is released: Totem Aggro Shaman and Ancestor's Call Control Shaman. Do people think either of these will be viable? I think the Totem one will be with what we've seen so far.

I find Ancestor's Call more exciting (did you look at my rough draft?), but aggro might be more promising.

I don't really think the totem subtheme will be successful though.  I think Totem Golem and Tuskar Totemic are good cards that will be good in an aggressive or midrange Shaman deck, but they won't be enough to run any of the cards that care whether a minion is a totem or not. 

[Jorbles]

I completely missed this whole conversation! I love Shaman, but yes it's terrible. I wish I could trade my Al'Akir for Neptulon too.

People are rumbling that they might be able to make not one, but two different types of Shaman decks after GT is released: Totem Aggro Shaman and Ancestor's Call Control Shaman. Do people think either of these will be viable? I think the Totem one will be with what we've seen so far.

I find Ancestor's Call more exciting (did you look at my rough draft?), but aggro might be more promising.

I don't really think the totem subtheme will be successful though.  I think Totem Golem and Tuskar Totemic are good cards that will be good in an aggressive or midrange Shaman deck, but they won't be enough to run any of the cards that care whether a minion is a totem or not. 

I meant to, but only just did now. I think it's a cool idea, but I think you might want to tweak it with the new cards. In particular that new board clear looks like it might want to be in Shaman Control decks. Paired with a Lava Shock it's good without it's okay if you're absolutely desperate. You probably want Fire Elementals even if you don't want to drop them with Ancestor's Call. They're too good not to include. Master Jouster's seem like they're also what you want in this deck. Really defensive, and take advantage of all the expensive minions you'll want. You could probably remove cards like Rockbiter (since there aren't really the types of cards that take advantage of it in your deck) and Earth Shock (since you already have 2 Hexes). Kel might not be the right type of Big Minion to include in this deck as it's not going to be super common you have a lot of board presence to drop Kel onto. I don't think your deck has enough minions in it to reliably do anything if the first one gets removed (with say a BGH or a Hex/Polymorph, Freezing Trap, Execute). You probably don't want Ice Howl in the deck as you can't use him to win and there's so few minions in the deck as it stands. You can't really afford to put in minions that can't go face.

[popsofctown]

I disagree with a lot of that except I think you might be right about Icehowl and Kel (the new board clear wasn't spoiled yet btw I consider it autoinclude in an Ancestor's Call deck)