i suppose ill answer some of the questions then the idea of wizents staff in which is quite often destroyed is to use shadow energy to draw when it cannot be used to trade for a card in play (creature or item) so if you can attack to take durability or kill a creature and take damage then i will usually save for a heal otherwise i will draw at worst... turn 4 i gain 1 card advantage so i play 4 of these in the deck... this answer is not specific ... i play this way vs almost all heros.

oh and at your firstly ahaha yes me and my older sisters childhood... took us months to figure out how to beat Merco

anyway when there are no creatures in hand and they are not an item deck i can see a few worst case scenarios i find cobraskin wraps to be helpful here along with saving energy to heal delays my tidal wave hoping to catch things that are out of range of ice storm. i havent played for too long since i added the campfire stories but from what i have they dont seem to hurt even if you cant cycle them because im aiming for 7 resources anyway

as far as mind control goes i just dont play raven anymore mostly for that reason vs elemental i like to be able to have 2 creatures out that cant kill each other or in ravens case make the other one useless then be sacrificed (in that regard the aeon nerf let me switch from jasmines down to puwens allowing me to deviate from mostly 3 cost cards)

and yeah if im on the draw i find turn 3 ice storm and turn 4 more ice storm/wizents staff to be sufficient to keep me alive if i dont have a tidal wave in hand or simply cant wait... vs the early buff decks similar to the ones used to crush the ai i have retreats 2 of them to try and help deal with this if i draw them but the elemental version of this that runs shard is quite weak to a lot of the answers in this deck