Petar “Gaara” Stevanovic has a long record in Hearthstone: From being the first DreamHack champion to actively creating Hearthstone content nowadays. A founding player of Tempo Storm, Gaara has been through highs and lows in his career but a recent tournament has come as the perfect opportunity for him and his teammates to be in the spotlight again.
At 2-2, Tempo Storm are in a decent position halfway through the $150,000 Trinity Series. The team has been trying to reinvent the metagame on a weekly basis and most recently they shocked the viewers by winning three in a row… with Hunter.
Radoslav “Nydra” Kolev caught up with Gaara for this week’s edition of “Five questions with” to discuss why the hell did Rexxar see play this week.
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We have to talk about this Hunter deck in Trinity Series last night. The class has been on the benches for weeks. Why did you decide to leave it open?
It took me four weeks to convince my teammates that Hunter is a good pick. On the other hand, I can understand them for not wanting to play it, since no other team is bringing it. I am known for bringing wacky stuff sometimes, but you can also not ignore the fact that sometimes my "wacky" deck is working.
I have very good reasons why I wanted to bring Hunter, but I also didn't want to force my team into playing something they don't want to, because it is a team league after all and you don't want to be the person to blame after a loss. But after two consecutive losses in the Trinity League I gained more confidence to bring my points across, because what is the worst that can happen at this point?
"It too me four weeks to convine my teammates that Hunter is a good pick."
Is there an actual future for Hunter in tournaments or will it remain a niche pick for multi-ban tournaments like Trinity Series? I mean, TwoBiers at least is brave enough to bring it to playoffs.
"Brave" is a good word to describe that. *laughs* The thing is that in around two weeks a new expansion will come out, so Hunter might become viable again, since it is a Dinosaur-focused expansion. It should contain a lot of beast cards, so I assume that Hunter will get a reasonable push.
But until that happens, Hunter will remain a niche pick for Trinity Series and the only reason you can play it there is that we have to bring all nine classes and we can ban out two of the three strongest pirate decks, which hard-counter the Hunter class right now.
I think the main reason why nobody is bringing Hunter is that you can only explore the strength of the deck in team practice, since the class gets absolutely destroyed on ladder. I think it is comparable to Freeze Mage, when many people played Control Warrior on ladder.
I think this might actually become the next level of tournament preparation a few years down the line, where you explore decks for multi ban tournaments in team practice, which get absolutely destroyed on ladder, but are good choices to bring in a certain format.
You and your teammates are constantly experimenting with the Trinity Series meta. We’ve seen Pirates Paladin, Handlock, Kun Druid and now Hunter. Why take such risks and not stick to established archetypes?
We don't want to be too predictable and in addition we can see teams that bring a standard lineup getting swept by Murloc Paladin and other decks, like G2 vs Alliance in the first week, for instance. We also think that some classes, which are a "must play" have a lot of room for improvement, like Paladin or Warlock. Every Team is bringing Murloc Paladin and RenoLock in their lineups even though those are the worst two decks/classes on paper as they counter the fewest decks in the six-deck format.
That's why we are experimenting with those a lot. We don't do it with all classes, just with the ones you can come up with a better deck.
"We don't want to be too predictable, that's why we're experimenting a lot."
VLPS seems to be very active in player comm and he’s your most recent pick as well. What is he bringing to the Tempo Table?
He is like the most positive human I have ever met. He is never salty or negative about anything. He is usually the guy who cheers you up, when you are 0-5 behind in a series. On top of that he is an excellent and innovative player who can also think outside the box.
There’s an ongoing war of outrage currently between HS community, pros and devs about the toxicity of the meta. Many players have been very vocal—some to the point of long, long rants—while devs have been staying on the defensive, saying this isn’t the worst meta in HS by a long shot. Where do you stand?
I made a 40-minute-long video about it a few days ago, which got on the front page of reddit, the community and even some employees of Blizzard seemed to like it.
In short: This is a very "in depth" topic, where I can talk about for hours. I am trying to stay objective. What I dislike the most about the general consensus is that people are pretty much just whining and not giving any constructive criticism. After watching Noxious’ and Kripparrian’s videos, I finally decided to give my own feedback to the whole "state of Hearthstone". I analyzed the whole situation and pinpointed the core problems and also suggested fixes that are realistic to implement.
Bonus sixth question: Global Games are coming and Germany is considered one of the strongest nations in it. How do you perceive Germany’s chances compared to—just as an example—nations like Russia and the United States and how long will it take you to roll over Thijs and the Dutchies?
I really wish that Bosnia would be a part of it, because I am probably the highest ranked player there and I would love to participate. *laughs* I think Germany has very good chances of winning it, probably the most stacked region in Europe.
