Is this finally the card that will make control hunter possible? As we’ve seen in the past with Raza the Chained and Shadowreaper Anduin, a free 2 damage ping whenever you do something is very strong, and even with a bit more of a restriction to only spells, Defend the Dwarven District has a ton of potential to be one of the meta-defining cards. That raises the question, does Hunter have the support to get this beast of a hero power online and abuse it or is it simply too slow, time to find out!
Parameters for the Statistics
Before jumping into the breakdown, I would first like to give the conditions behind a lot of the calculations you will see in this article and almost all the future ones. In every scenario, I assume the player goes first and hard mulligans everything but the questline to find the key cards to accomplish the quest, and then prioritizes completing the questline with the hypothetical opponent not applying much pressure. In addition to that, unless a percentage is stated, assume that the given scenario will happen 50% of the time. With this out of the way, let us dive into this questline!
Decklist
Quest Completion Breakdown
Due to hunter’s lack of draw and cheap efficient removal, it is fairly straightforward to calculate how fast we can reasonably complete this quest. With 14 spells that deal damage in the deck, there is a 62% chance to have two of them we can cast by the time we reach turn 2. This does not include Explosive Trap, which if it can trigger increases the chances to a clean 70%. All this means that we can expect to be finished with the first questline step by turn 3, which is a very fast completion of the first step.
Fortunately, the second step is the same as the first, and having access to more mana means a larger range castable cards like Piercing Shot. This wider range of cards to cast means on average, we can find the 4 spells needed to finish this step by turn 5. Something else to note is that this calculation is assuming that we cannot trigger Explosive Trap. Being able to trigger it once brings the turn requirement down to turn 4, and being able to trigger the second one brings that chance from a bit below average up to 57% of the time. This means that we should typically be able to finish this step of the quest by turn 4 or 5, depending on the mana cost of the spells drawn.
As for the last step, we have access to the full arsenal of tools to fetch spells, such as Barak Kodobane, Venomous Scorpid, as well as being able to take better advantage of Tracking and Resizing Pouch. Ignoring the 4 of these, we can expect to get 6 of them by turn 9, once again not including Explosive Trap. If we can get one to trigger, this brings it down to turn 8, and a second to trigger brings it down to turn 7. Now lets consider our other tools to help speed this up. Barak's 2 mana and 3 mana spell will always be damage spells, with a 50% chance to get a 1 mana damage spell. As for Venomous Scorpid, there is a 72% chance that one of the spells it offers will be a damage spell. Factoring in both of these, we can expect to draw all the spells to around turn 5-6 50% of the time, which is very efficient, so much to the point where the questline will be completed and Tavish will be played by turn 7.
Reward
Tavish, Master Marksman is only the cherry on top for the hunter questline as far as I’m concerned. Every single reward for the steps are strong on their own, and combine to create a weaker version of one of the historically strongest hero powers in the game. The first step reward alone is something that already seems fine on its own, the second step turns it into 2 free damage per turn and then Tavish just puts it way over the top. It is hard to evaluate statistically how quick Tavish will end the game just because the main appeal of it is just keeping the board clean for all your minions, but rest assured, a free 2 damage per spell played is very strong, with the only limiting factor being the fact that hunter lacks card draw. The lack of draw is the only thing that would reasonably keep this quest down as Hunter is almost the polar opposite of Priest in terms of card generation. It will be interesting seeing how this quest plays out once people can get their hands on it as so many aspects of it point to being a powerhouse, yet the final reward is being held back by lack of draw.
What do all of you think about the Hunter Questline? So many arrows point towards it being a dominant card, both in terms of completing fast, as well as having a very powerful reward, yet it can be held back by something the class has almost 0 ways of fixing. That being said, it is still one I am looking forward to playing. If you have any questions about the math behind any of the numbers shown in the article, let me know and I can explain it a bit further. Hope you enjoyed and I'll see you all in the next one!
Learn More About Stormwind's Other Questlines
We have a whole series of articles planned for the questlines. Here's everything published so far:
- Demon Hunter's Final Showdown Legendary Questline
- Druid's Lost in the Park Legendary Questline
- Hunter's Defend the Dwarven District Legendary Questline
- Mage's Sorcerer's Gambit Legendary Questline
- Paladin's Rise to the Occasion Legendary Questline
- Priest's Seek Guidance Legendary Questline
- Rogue's Find the Imposter Legendary Questline
- Shaman's Command the Elements Legendary Questline
- Warlock's The Demon Seed Legendary Questline
- Warrior's Raid the Docks Legendary Questline
Comments
I want to try this in a Wild Spell Hunter list. Curious to see if the hero power being free and refreshing after playing a spell carries over to new hero powers after playing a hero card. Creating multiple zombeasts in a turn for free?! Yes, please! The effects of Wildfire carries over when you play Frost Lich Jaina so I imagine these effects would carry over for Rexxar or Zul’jin.
My first thought when I saw the quest steps was to wonder if it might be worth running the quest simply for the step 1 (and maybe step 2?) rewards, without necessarily even intending to take it all the way? But maybe it takes too long to complete the steps if you haven't built your deck around damage spells.
Here's a Wild list a few of us cooked up on the Discord server. We've tried to fix the draw issue with Subject 9 and a secret package. Have you considered adding Cornelius Roame to the Standard list? I was a bit surprised to see bunnyhoppor & friends give it top ratings, but they're the pros and it fits exactly the weak spot of Questline Hunter.
I should have definitely considered Cornelius Roame more than I did. Realistically, this archetype of deck can protect him very well and it does fix the major issue that the deck has once we complete the quest. However the biggest issue with Roame to me is that he is very dependent on what type of decks are seeing play in order for him to truly be strong. For example, in a minion dominant meta, where we can truly go to town pinging everything down for 2, Roame is just going to sit back and draw through most of our deck, but if decks with lots of removal, such as a spell mage, control warlock, etc, become mainstream, Roame gets significantly harder to stay alive, and thus worse.
That being said, Roame can probably find a home over something like Wandmaker in the current version of the list.
Do we have a confirmation that Explosive Trap works with the quest progress or not?
yes it does work, I belive I saw it on someones pre-release stream. But I'm not sure which one is was.
I'd personally remove the Mystery Winner, Explosive Trap and Bola Shot, in favor of Entrapped Sorceress, Encumbered Pack Mule, 1x Rustrot Viper, and 1x Death's Head Cultist.
Maybe remove Piercing Shot for Overwhelm instead.
Put simply, there's more than enough fuel for the quest to finish around turn 5-7, bearing in mind that the 1st and 2nd reward will allow for some amount of control, and will reliably finish on turn 4-5. The main problem is staying alive, not the late game. I've a good feeling that we'll be seeing plenty of spell mages, shaman, druid and paladin on day 1, and I really dont think this deck can get away without including some semblance of a board or taunts.
Rustrot Viper is a flex. Its mostly because I think if shaman gets Doomhammer out you might as well just concede.
I think pack mule is gonna end up being a terrible card, the numbers are just all wrong
You'd need to elaborate more if you hope of convincing me, because the only downside to that card is if it ended up in your mulligan hand.
Its a beast, its practically Saronite Chain Gang, and it has that crucial taunt factor. In my view quest hunter needs to stay alive above all else, so even if this thing gets value traded thats not really a problem as long as it protects your face as you race towards completing the quest.
Yes and saronite chain gang hasn’t been good enough in anything but evolve shaman for a long tim
We'll have to agree to disagree then. Far as Im concerned saronite chain gang was fairly used during one of hearthstone's most overpowered metas so if nothing else Im willing to give it a chance.
Im not saying its going to take over the meta, because outside of paladin, hunter and warlock its fair enough to say there might be better cards available.
The overpowered metas of old ha nothing on the current power level of hearthstone. I don’t see a world where 2 bad cards is better than 1 good one in anything but the handlock deck
Rustrot Viper is definitely a nice option, though I usually don't include tech cards for whatever reason, probably just to get used to messing around with the core and then finding ways to adjust it from there to better counter the meta.
As for the other changes, Mystery Winner -> Entrapped Sorceress definitely makes sense as its just a wider card pool that will usually provide something that we would like. As for cutting Explosive Trap and Bola Shot, I'm not a huge fan of, since I find them to be decent anti-aggro tools on their own, in addition to progressing the quest, as well as still being hesitant on the power of cards like Encumbered Pack Mule
I'll probably revisit this list after toying around with it once the new set comes out since this and the DH questlines are probably the ones I'm interested in playing the most, for better or for worse. Thanks for the suggestions!
I'm very excited to play hunter on the next week!
What about Professor Slate ? I always thougth about beeing a good card but not for hunter, this is an archetype that I can see him running
Slate is very interesting for this type of deck. He works ludicrously well with some of the removal we are running, like Explosive Trap and Bola Shot but ultimately, I feel like having a free hero power that can just ping things off just makes running him a bit pointless. I do think there is a home for him in some type of this quest, especially in wild where you have cards like Rapid Fire, but I'm personally just not a fan of running cards that need to synergize with other cards in order to feel good in a class that, atleast in standard right now, does not have the ability to pick and choose cards from their deck.
They're not fully comparable, but I think it's funny that Zul'jin's only upgrade to the Hero Power is that you can target minions without requiring something like Dwarven Sharpshooter, whereas you can readily earn that here with the Questline...as step 1. They really put all of his power-budget into the Battlecry lol
Hell you could almost play the Questline as sort of a "would be nice if I set the whole thing off, but it's not the main plan" type of situation. Just grabbing the earlier rewards, without relying on Tavish; a package to some other control-ing archetype, maybe?
I was thinking the same thing! The days of Yogg n Load Hunter were very, very fun days.
Lock and Load will definitely need to be run in this deck to create more resources. Hunter doesn’t have enough spells to make this quest reward worthwhile otherwise
When I was first theorycrafting this list, I actually had a Lock and Load in it. I messed around with it back when the card first came out in TGT and it felt ok, so I wanted to do a bit of playtesting with it now and see if its changed at all. The biggest issue with the card is that more often than not it just gives you clunky garbage, which usually wouldn't be bad given that with the finished questline Hero Power, we can make most of the garbage into additional damage. However, Lock and Load also gives creatures, which is generally bad.
Hunter has a fairly even split of creatures to spells, giving you a 44% chance to hit a spell off of Lock and Load. These spells will have an average mana cost of 2.71, (possibly 2.65, if Lock and Load can generate itself, which I don't think it can) which is decent, but theres still just too much whiff potential. If you were to have 2 spells in hand, the chances of getting 2 spells is only 20% and in my opinion, the consistency of things like Resizing Pouch outweighs the potential highroll of Lock and Load.
That being said, I'd love it if this archetype gets refined, Lock and Load can sneak its way into the list. The card is very fun to play around with.