Brawl: Nefarian sucks, Ragnaros owns?

[Deleted]

5 days ago, the threads were all "NEW OWNS RAG BLOWS!"... Neither one sucks and neither one is overpowered honestly, if you can't win with either, you are either terrible or very unlucky.

Nef is heavily favored in the matchup. I would say at least 80+% favored.There are Nef openings that you simply cannot answer as Ragnaros and Nef can get lucky at any point getting Mind Control or Sprint for example.

If Brawl was like Arena(with paid entry) there would be a massive outcry of why am i with Ragnaros????

Its a lot more fun to win as Ragnaros however.

[Nanaboostme]

Who cares, it ends soon enough anyway.

It's not literally just one week, it'll eventually be back. They'd have a shitton of balancing, creating, drawing, designing if they had to throw out new brawl content weekly

[haxartus]

From what I've seen watching Kripp play, nerfarian has essentially a 100% win rate and rag can only win vs bad players or seriously bad nerfarian rng.

Pretty much. I lost one or two games with Nef at the start, but after understanding both decks I have over 90% winrate at about 50 games with Nef. I don't count the Rag wins but it's probably something like 30% or so.

[fengosa]

I'm winning with both. Nef can spiral out of control faster and Rags takes a little more skill to play successfully. Not sure if it's 100 percent balanced but it's closer than people make it out to be.

[McNeil]

If Nef gets a good start its prety much game over, just had an opponent who coined out Vael with some of the best possible follow-ups. As Rag I had a pretty good start aswell with turn 1 Flame Imp and turn 2 that 6/6 taunt but I stood no chance. Not to mention the luck he had with Wild Magic.

Edit: And now I played Nef myself and completely stomped Rag, had a pretty good curve starting with Dragon Consort which allowed me to play Attramedus and some other stuff. Also got a Mind Control from Wild Magic, and I was able to finish his last HP with Lava Burst which I also got from Wild Magic.

[Mormolyce]

I've never drawn a bad card with nef other than like circle of healing.

I saw Preparation a couple of times :P

But yeah, most of the time you get something pretty nuts.

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Nef is heavily favored in the matchup. I would say at least 80+% favored.There are Nef openings that you simply cannot answer as Ragnaros and Nef can get lucky at any point getting Mind Control or Sprint for example.

Well I'd probably put it more at about 60-40 or so but yeah distinct advantage. If he gets good draw/hero powers at the start it's often too much for Rag to catch up. Even late game he can swing a match like a motherfucker with that hero power.

Rag does have his own strengths but yeah, you always FEEL like you're at a disadvantage as Rag IMO.

[doot]

I do wonder if people seeing TotalBiscuit win only with Rag has influenced people's opinions on which is better.

Anyway my own thoughts are it does feel Nef is favored most of the time and admittedly most of my Rag wins are tied to Nef playing the Omnitron cards at a bad time (Electro and Arcano namely) allowing me some major board control or bad RNG. Conversely my Nef losses were tied to me being dumb or getting bad cards (I once got tree of life). I do feel that at the very least Rag needed a way to actually remove Razorgore effectively.

[Lotus Victoria]

Nef is RNG, rag is good minions in opening hand and bad rng for nef.

[haxartus]

All of my wins with Rag have been sub-20 health. Usually involves a late-game taunt, sometimes some lucky Die Insects, and on occasion a Golemagg. Rag's major weakness is the early game, where Nef has a 5 mana advantage over you. Once you get to the late game, if you can stop Vaelstraz (Or if the opponent's draw doesn't get him it) your disadvantage shrinks until there's none left.

Nef doesn't really have a quick way to deal 10-15 damage from spells or charge minions, unless he gets a huge damage spell, and that's rare. So you could afford to sit at 10-15 health as Rag most of the time.

[Korgoth]

Lol this guy. Nef was completely broken. Razorgore, Vael, opening hand, cant lose. Hit the spell button get removal every turn, cant lose. To win as Rag your opponent had to be incredibly unluckily, or just plain retarded.

There was no set of cards you could play on Rag with absolutely correct decisions every turn that would guarantee a win. None. Nef could always just get a spell that completely shuts you out of the game.

My favorite Nef moment was getting charge one turn, then mind control the next, and oh lookie the Rag player just dropped Golemagg. SMOrc'd him good!

[Mormolyce]

I had a Nef play the Shaman spell to increase totem health by 2.

I'd say that's pretty worthless, considering you also can't get totems from it.

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I feel like that's Rag's greatest strength - He always APPEARS to be at a disadvantage. It's how you use that against your opponent that matters.

All of my wins with Rag have been sub-20 health. Usually involves a late-game taunt, sometimes some lucky Die Insects, and on occasion a Golemagg. Rag's major weakness is the early game, where Nef has a 5 mana advantage over you. Once you get to the late game, if you can stop Vaelstraz (Or if the opponent's draw doesn't get him it) your disadvantage shrinks until there's none left.

The disadvantage grows even weaker on turn 6, if you spend every charge of Sulfuras ASAP. Sometimes smacking a minion in order to secure the kill with it is better than letting Nef swing with it. You can sacrifice the health for sure, especially with Golemagg sitting in wait somewhere. While random, 8 damage for 2 mana is still pretty damn high value.

That said, no more tavern brawl for a few days.

Haha never saw the totem one, that's useless even to a Shaman :P

I think the thing was, with Rag you're always down to the wire trying to survive until the late game when Nef (hopefully) runs out of steam, whereas Nef feels like you're always the one in control.

Kinda sucks that it's off for a few days. I could've gone for more Brawling.

[Korgoth]

Kinda sucks that it's off for a few days. I could've gone for more Brawling.

Yeah what is up with that? Was playing more lately because of brawl than in months.

[Mormolyce]

Yeah what is up with that? Was playing more lately because of brawl than in months.

I guess it's intended as a limited time special thing to make it... special?

But I wish it wasn't.

[haxartus]

I think it is done because Blizzard thinks people are too stupid to understand that a new Brawl would be appearing each week so they close it for a few days to remind people that something is going on (preparing a new brawl).

[Nictattoos]

Other way around.

I second that. Nef > rag in every brawl I've played.

[fengosa]

Yeah what is up with that? Was playing more lately because of brawl than in months.

My assumption is that they take it down for a couple days to get next week's brawl up and tested to catch any bugs that may go live.

[Raiju]

I haven't seen a single Nef get removal every turn. It's all RNG - And what you're describing is literally perfect RNG. Lucky starting hand, lucky hero power.

Rag's minions were significantly stronger than Nef's. Rag's removal was significantly more predictable than Nef's. Hell, I played multiple games against Nefarian's who didn't get a SINGLE removal card all game. They didn't draw Vael, and NONE even managed to drop Razorgore. (Seriously. That was a card in Nef's deck? I never saw it played, although it does look pretty damn strong.) Then again, everyone keeps saying "If Nef drops the coin..." and I never saw Nef play second in any game.

You're literally proving the point here. Nef was all based on RNG. Rag was consistent. Nef was all about the right draws and the right hero power spells at the right time. With it, Nef could pump out crazy damage, without it he couldn't keep control of the board at all. Rag was about controlling the early game in order to blow up the late game. Consistently, Rag was able to pump out heavy damage with very little need of RNG.

Neither was OP nor UP. One was just RNG-reliant, the other was consistent. I personally like consistency.

Conveniently ignoring the fact ragnaros can't really remove anything above 6 health other than by slow (and poor) trades until turn 6 at best.

Which nef can.

[Deleted]

Playing as Nefarian is much more fun and you are in winning position because you need to have bad luck to lose.

[Deleted]

Nef has powerful earlygame minions. As Rag you're almost always on the defending side for the first 5-6 turns. Since Hearthstone is a proactive-based game you will most likely lose if Nef overwhelms you too much because you are forced into reactive play style.

Ofc Nef can get garbage spells out of the hero power (such as rogue weapon buffs etc.) but overall you need favorable RNG on both sides (shitty Nef, good Rag) to not get too behind on the earlygame.