Firestorm deck

What cards are essentially needed for a firestorm deck? What combination of classes is needed? Finally, how many firestorm cards would you need? Thanks in advance.

 

Firestorm, nimbus, drawbacks, heals, 2 priests a wizard and no sense of shame.

 

I hate to think that I might be contributing to more of these, but it pretty well breaks down one of two ways: three wizards, each with resistant hides and as many firestorms as possible. Or one wizard and two priests, the wizard with a resistant hide and as many firestorms as possible and the priests with Unholy Power, Savage Curse, and as many as possible.

The first build is mainly for PvE, the second build can do either PvE or PvP.

 

Sorry, that's supposed to read "as many Impenetrable Nimbus as possible." For some reason, the edit function doesn't work for me in this forum.

 

I just came across a few firestorm/nimbus items and was curious. I find it amusing how people are annoyed by this strategy. It reminds me of people complaining about how a crowd control strategy is cowardly. From what I understand, firestorm is not unbeatable or somehow inherently broken. It may be cheap, perhaps, but I find a dwarf warrior loaded with nimble strikes to be cheap.....why? It's frustrating....just like losing, period.

 

If you'd like a better understanding of why people don't like Firestorm, there's a longer thread on it here:

https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/blu-manchu-plea-for-change.4083/

 

Yes, I've read this thread. People appear to be complaining about an effective, but not unbeatable strategy. I actually like the diversity in strategy. As boring or cheap as it may appear, as long as it isn't necessarily broken (which seems to be a lot of the response), I feel that the game is better for the variation. As one poster mentioned, he went to a firestorm deck in part because of the plethora of parries. Well, it seems to me that if the firestorm strategy proliferates, we would see more shimmering auras, resistant hides, etc.

 

Disclaimer: I'm putting together a Firestorm deck, so my opinion may be heavily biased. This is posted here as the Firestorm thread linked above has turned into a WW/WWE thread.

At risk of being a pariah by going against community opinion, I don't think Firestorm decks are a terribly dominant part of the meta right now. They are problematic for some decks, to be sure, but they are susceptible to bad draws too. 6 damage a pop is nothing to sneeze at, but to 'go off', they need to have 6 firestorms against the popular dwarf step warrior deck (and one or two Nimbus to avoid eating damage too). Then again, I play mainly in the 1100-1200 range, so my experience may not be representative of the higher tiers of play.

These types of decks that have been complained about on the CH forums (Draw decks, Firestorm decks) represent the combo type of deck on the aggro-control-combo trinity from Magic the Gathering. Combo and controls decks are terrible to play against when you're on the losing side, that's why WoTC has shifted towards printing stronger creatures to enable aggro/ramp strategies to flourish. Combo decks are harder to put together now, and nobody complains much about them.

However, I think it is important to have viable combo decks existing in the meta, because this enables more diversity in deck-building. It allows you to counter-pick against aggro decks if they get out of control (see note on parry decks). Jon (or the BM guys) should have sufficient data to see if combo decks exist in overwhelming force - that should be a hint as to whether they are OP. But diversity in the metagame isn't a bad thing.

 

The thing is firestorm alone isn't the issue but combined with draw decks / nimbus it becomes very strong.

 

Precisely. The problem is probably with draw decks. It's like Necropotence in 1995/1996 Magic. The crappiest decks, when powered by Necro, became decent. When you played against decks that actually got their stuff together, it was a bloody nightmare when your opponent could fill his hand at whim.

Nimbus, from my point of view, isn't that big a problem. It still works off LOS and doesn't ignore the movement/tactical part of the game. What it essentially does is to allow for VP camping/allowing warriors to go on a tear without fear of retribution/saving injured guys. A good fix for it may be to split the card into two - one where playing it causes Stun but retains invul (defensive), and the other where you can move around and attack, but it reduces damage such that the max you can take it 2 per attack or something like that (offensive).

 

Worship and pestilence..

 

It's plainly clear that nimbus, drawspam and firestorm reduce the quality of MP. I'm not playing MP until these are addressed (which may mean never playing, that's fine) and my wife who plays a little just auto-resigns vs any team of 2+ priests. There's a misconception that people do this because they don't like losing and I'm sure some do, but that's to miss the point. Losing a good game can be enjoyable just as winning a good one can. When it's boiling down to waiting while the opponent cycles their drawspam nimbus, there is no entertainment element, it's just a wasting of time.

 

This makes me so sad, as someone who runs two priests. (My party isn't drawpsam at all, though; I think I have a total of two draw cards on one of my priests because they're on an item I've equipped for the mass frenzy.) But people see my build, they see my dwarf wizard and two priests, and they assume I'm combo, when actually I think I'm more like aggro-control.

I agree something needs to change, but whether nimbus is too good outside builds that don't rely on drawspam is unclear at this juncture, guys. We haven't seen it in a separate meta.

 

I wonder if it's something that alot of us "two priest" guys have in common, more then once I had people be utterly surprised that I didn't spend the entire round drawing, nimbusing, and just generally taking twice the time they do on the round and actually advancing towards the vp. I guess psychologically we all have a reaction based on past matches and I understand how to most people seeing more then one priest screams: "traumatic time waste that will probably result in your eventual loss" so they despair immediately, to other people it's different builds (3 mages anyone?), I would advise people to give the match a couple of minutes to see what their opponent is playing exactly, if not for anything other then sheer curiousity to see what people are doing and maybe learn something new - not all dwarf priests were created the same!

 

Oh man, one of my favorite cards. I loved Pestilence to bits when paired with ProBlack creatures. Board control and direct damage? Sign me up! But Firestorm/Nimbus is a lot more fiddly than the old school Wor/Pes deck. Only when you pair it with a good draw engine, does it become a monster. But then, draw engines make most things monstrous - that's my point.

I agree - if you give any match a go, you might learn something. I do resign when I'm in a hole that I know is pretty impossible to climb out of (3 v 1 priest), but doing an auto resign even before the other guy starts playing is rather silly.
But then, hey, free loot!

 

I have built multiple types of firestorm decks, I'll try to provide my opinions on them. Personally I feel there are two types of firestorm parties that work well.

The first uses two priests and one wizard, and often requires the priests to draw plenty of cards. In this case the priests are there to provide card draw, heal/nimbus effects, and possibly add damage boosting effects like Unholy Power. This deck is easier to build, as it requires only one character's worth of firestorm items. Race wise this works with humans and dwarves. Given the amount of damage you'll do to your own party elves don't tend to work all that well (it's possible but but just adds difficulty). Humans are worth considering because of leadership which along with the other card draw can really assist this type of build, as the single wizard will need to get through his deck very quickly to draw enough firestorms.

The other type of build, and one I think can be a bit stronger, uses two firestorm wizards and only one priest. This requires additional items, but with two wizards you will naturally draw significantly more firestorms over the course of the game. It doesn't rely on the card drawing priests to find enough firestorms to win. I think this type of party works best with all dwarves, as you can easily kill your own team with the amount of firestorms that will be flying around. A single priest can't normally keep up with nimbus effects, but can still use team heals to keep your HP ahead of your opponent. The dwarves can use items with Dwarven Cry to add some additional card draw. This is also much more resilient to whirlwind effects, as you can keep putting out a lot of damage even if your team isn't all together in a group as fewer of your spells are dependent on LOS.

Really you want any items that have firestorm, with a special focus on any item with multiples of the spell. Firehide Robes is a perfect example. Staff Of The Inferno can be shockingly good so long as you have a plan for combustion (like holy nimbus, or lots of heal). I highly recommend you run some armor discard too (this is also a benefit of using two wizards), armor shuts firestorm down so you want a plan for it.

 

All other tactics other then firestorm (including the mentioned dwarf with nimble strike) still needs to worry about movement and encumbered status, positioning, orientation of his enemy (for blocks), line of sight, range etc.

None of this is a issue for a firestorm deck, so how can it not be broken? Just because it's beatable (luckily not everyone who managed to get firestorm on their items know what to do with it) it doesn't justify it not being broken. Just constantly run away, add resistant hide and WWE to blow your enemies away as they try to reach you and ta-da! It's lame, annoying, boring and most importantly - broken.

 

(Emphasis mine.)


Ta-da? Your opponent has step moves, team moves, WWE of their own... lots of options. Just because one strategy doesn't depend on every aspect of the game doesn't mean it's broken. It just means that it occupies a different space, and functions in a different way. This thread is full of MtG references, so I'll make another: pure burn decks in MtG don't play creatures. They don't need to worry about blocking, they don't need to worry about attacking, they don't need to worry about having their creatures removed. There're portions of the game that do not apply to the pure burn strategy in MtG. This does not make burn decks broken: they're just one part of a wildly varied game.

Maybe a well-made firestorm build is too strong. But I would guess that strength is predicated on two things: first, the presence of a priest on the team, and, as we know, priests are too strong right now (draw). Second, the meta probably encourages firestorm because people do not run that much armor these days. The first of those issues is being worked on. The second is not a problem. It is something that will naturally correct itself as people play the game more. And either way, those two things (and the strength of firestorm) have little to do with whether firestorm requires line of sight or orientation.

I don't think the emphasized part of your post is logical, simply because I do not see how that conclusion follows from what you stated previously. I'm open to see actual evidence of how firestorm is fundamentally broken. But it's not there yet

 

Precisely right. It's the draw that juices Firestorm decks up.

Flaxative also makes a pretty good point about loading up on armor. The meta right now is loaded with "big bruiser" decks; hence most people play mostly parries; hence Firestorm decks prey on decks that forgo armor for parries.

 

I auto-resign against two priests now too. It's lowered my rating a lot, and as a result I'm having much more fun. I'll go back up to high rating once card draw is fixed. I'd feel bad about it, but 2+ priests is auto-loss 90% of the time anyway (with both firestorm mage and step warrior), so might as well save myself the time.