Scalding Hot Take: The Demon Seed is not the problem

Alright, did I get your attention? Now let me explain this. Since I've opened The Demon Seed I've been working hard to farm the achievement, because initially I thought it would get nerfed hard and therefore it would be better to start grinding now.

However, after playing with all 3 different builds (the Control deck burn one, the Zoo one, and the combo one) I came to realize that all these decks suffer from the exact problem most people cited for why the Quest would fail. You die very fast and getting downn the Quest reward is much harder than it might look like...and yet, people get run over by the deck, growing increasingly frustrated.

So how does that work?

Flesh Giant

Flesh Giant is how that works.

This one card is the ONLY reason why Warlock is even playable at this stage. The Quest is not as fast as it seems. Sure, sometimes you draw the absolute nuts and get Tamsin by turn 5, but that's only possible in the Zoo variant and doesn't happen often. It absolutely cannot race Mage or any aggro deck in any capacity. Most board centric decks can run you down before you even get to complete your quests, and not even an abundance of healing will save you. However, the Quest, and most importantly it's mid-rewards, allow you to turbo out Flesh Giants that then proceed to run over your opponent (try running [Hearthstone Card (Battlegrounds Battlemaster) Not Found] and see how many more games you win just by way of Giant beatdown).

I'm serious by the way, I've been playing the deck basically non-stop to complete the quest and 90% of the time I either win or lose before completing it. It's actually kind of funny how the deck whose main gameplan should be winning through fatigue redirection and lategame burst, but instead the Quest functions more as a 1-mana deal 6/heal 6/discount Giants by 2.

Mark my words, if Warlock gets ANY nerfs at all it will be Flesh Giant up to 10 or higher and the whole deck just falls on its face and dies to aggro to the point where not even hard control will keep them alive long enough to finish it (or will have to run so many survival tools that you won't complete the quest fast enough for it to be a threat).

Oh yeah, and nerf [Hearthstone Card (Battlegrounds Battlemaster) Not Found] into the fucking ground, that card is a retarded abomination and whoever thought it was acceptable to print should be forced to find client bugs for the rest of his career, holy fucking shit.

Yeah, the giant seems to be the issue in standard, and is an issue in wild as well. After a week or two when balance changes are made, if mage is nerfed and the giant isn't I could see the meta shifting to an aggro/tempo meta because I cannot see a meta where control can exist where warlock can complete their quest while dropping threats that need to be killed.

Combo with Stealer of Souls, Darkglare, and Free Admission would have been the best deck had it not been for the goddamned slow as hell animations of the quest itself. The number of times I've lost my games because the bs quest takes forever to flip between tiers. Otherwise, it's death by turn 5-6 one way or another. Turn off the animations and I can finish all 3 tiers and kill my opponent on turn 5-6 more consistently than it would otherwise.

Of course, another problem that's currently creeping up the corners is as pointed out, Battleground Battlemaster. I can see why you hate that card so much in this post: you're playing warlock, and you're zooming past all corners to get the giants out. Coincidentally, any deck that's not playing combo now has this one card in it that reads: deal double damage on turn 5 if your opponent ignores your minions on board.

The madness of how fast the combos tend to come out is countered by how fast minion based decks can scam wins with this one card. Its a near mandatory inclusion into any minion based deck right now, and unless nerfs happen, will continue for time to come.

I do think the giants are strong, but I don't think its going to get nerfed. Zoolock in the past has dropped giants on 3 before and no one batted an eye. The reason being that you're basically trading health away to do it so you're playing on a clock as well as they are. With turn 5 battleground battlemaster, and the notable lack of taunts, the only way zoolock steal wins is by double giants on 3-4, with a good existing board like Bloodbound Imp and Darkglare support. That's the equivalent of token druid turn 1 bs, and just about as consistent.

If team5 decides to slow combo down in the next change (maybe switch the quest reward mana cost from 5 to 7, or just straightup nuke Incanter's Flow) zoolock may well be killing themselves faster than they can scam that win out because no one needs to tech against mage anymore. Nerfing battleground battlemaster would be the correct choice, not flesh giant.

Weird though, I never face Flesh Giant in D10 rank and below. All I faced was Dark Glare, and Stealer of Souls discounted by Free Admission. (just like @dapperdog mentioned). And it still pretty much ruined my games on turn 6 or 7.

It seems Face Hunter and sometime Tempo Shaman is the only one fast enough to beat them since Warlock usually at their low health.

I want to see a nerf to Occult Conjurer. Their burst can be healed through, but that card alone patches one of few abusable weaknesses it had, which was a weak turn 4.

While I agree that there is exactly zero reason why Flesh Giant, of all giants, should be the cheapest, considering how easily it can be (permanenty) discounted in contrast to Mountain Giant, Molten Giant etc. it don't think destroying that card alone fixes the problem. There is still an underlying groundwork of brokenness that allows Warlock to even discount the Giant as quickly as they do (note how utterly useless the card is in Priest). Nerf the giant, definitely, but Darkglare HAS to go too. It's Darkglare that enables all of this shit in the first place and it's absurd to me that it has been allowed to exist in its current state after the first nerf. I mean they nefed it and it became the centrepiece of one of the most dominant decks in Wild's history.

There's no way I should be able to play Quest on turn 1 and then immediately seize the board on turn 2 with coin by playing 6 mana worth of stuff on turn 2 and still have mana left over. Darkglare + Tour Guide + Flame Imp + 2x Kobold Librarian and good luck to the opponent in controlling the board despite the fact I skipped my turn 1. My hand is refilled, I have tons of bodies on the board and the opponent likely has to spend their entire turn just killing the Darkglare.

They should definitely up the giant's cost to at least 10 if not 12, but it's only a matter of time until another card is printed that abuses Darkglare, giant or no, since self damage is such an integral part of Warlock identity. Tying mana cheating to the basic thing Warlocks do is just not on. Make that thing trigger only once a turn, maaaybe refresh 2 crystals instead of one to compensate, though that might still be way too generous of a mana cheat. At best you'd have a free 2/3 that requires an answer, but you can't just run away with the game within the span of a one turn from hand.

Quote From lMarcusl

While I agree that there is exactly zero reason why Flesh Giant, of all giants, should be the cheapest, considering how easily it can be (permanenty) discounted in contrast to Mountain Giant, Molten Giant etc. it don't think destroying that card alone fixes the problem. There is still an underlying groundwork of brokenness that allows Warlock to even discount the Giant as quickly as they do (note how utterly useless the card is in Priest). Nerf the giant, definitely, but Darkglare HAS to go too. It's Darkglare that enables all of this shit in the first place and it's absurd to me that it has been allowed to exist in its current state after the first nerf. I mean they nefed it and it became the centrepiece of one of the most dominant decks in Wild's history.

There's no way I should be able to play Quest on turn 1 and then immediately seize the board on turn 2 with coin by playing 6 mana worth of stuff on turn 2 and still have mana left over. Darkglare + Tour Guide + Flame Imp + 2x Kobold Librarian and good luck to the opponent in controlling the board despite the fact I skipped my turn 1. My hand is refilled, I have tons of bodies on the board and the opponent likely has to spend their entire turn just killing the Darkglare.

They should definitely up the giant's cost to at least 10 if not 12, but it's only a matter of time until another card is printed that abuses Darkglare, giant or no, since self damage is such an integral part of Warlock identity. Tying mana cheating to the basic thing Warlocks do is just not on. Make that thing trigger only once a turn, maaaybe refresh 2 crystals instead of one to compensate, though that might still be way too generous of a mana cheat. At best you'd have a free 2/3 that requires an answer, but you can't just run away with the game within the span of a one turn from hand.

For glare, just make it a 3/4 for 3again like used to but keep refresh 1mana instead of old refresh 2 and make raise dead 1.

That would weaken/slow it down quite abit, (glare into raise into 1drops would be turn 4 vs turn 2)

Care the explain why every time you deign to comment on a thread you go out of your way to thumb down every comment above you? You're in need of some serious forum etiquette learning.

The Demon Seed is an absolute menace in Wild, which is pretty unfortunate. But as far as Standard is concerned, my "scalding hot take" is that I actually think it's a brilliantly designed quest. It's a single card that enables a combo archetype focused on Free Admission to tutor out Stealer of Souls/Darkglare/Nightshade Matron, an aggro archetype focused on high tempo self harm cards like Flame Imp to cheat out Flesh Giant, and a control archetype that leverages Soul Rend and Altar of Fire for board clears and disruption respectively, with fatigue as a win con for control mirrors. It's true that not all of those decks are equally successful right now (nor should they be), but all of these archetypes can find ways to use this quest, and I think that's honestly really cool.

To the extent that Quest Zoolock is too powerful right now in Standard, I'm not convinced Flesh Giant is the right target for a nerf. It's a dual-class card, making it less likely to see a nerf anyway, but as powerful as getting a cheap 8/8 is, it's not unstoppable. Any deck that wants to can tech in Big Game Hunter to clear it before it does anything, and there are lots of class-specific answers as well. The real problem, as others have pointed out, is that Battleground Battlemaster's drawback (being a slightly understated 5-drop) is too small a drawback to make it bad. Compare it to Windspeaker - a card that saw very little play - and it's a neutral card with double the effect of a class card for one extra mana. (Obviously it's slightly different - one effect is permanent, the other is an aura, but granting windfury rarely matters beyond a single turn anyway.) I think the only fix for the card would be to drive up the cost - probably to 7 or 8.

Quote From anchorm4n

I'm almost exclusively playing Wild and it looks like the meta is healing there. Shortly after release everybody was playing QL Warlock, now the ladder is full of hyper Aggro decks, we're even having our own version of Shadowpriest. The logical next step would be the return of Control lists that counter the aggro fiesta and voilà: we're back at rock-paper-scissors with Secret Mages laughing their asses off because they just don't care. 

Iunno about that one chief...

https://twitter.com/corbettgames/status/1423926232203239429?s=20

Biggest upside for me is that secret mage got some (hard) counters, in the form of odd hunter especially.

Absolutely blessed, screw everyone who still plays that cookie cutter deck after god knows how many years it's been around. 

Well i personaly haven't met that many Quest Warlocks - sure some but not much. And only once my opponent played a Flesh Giant - so i personaly did not notice a problem with the card. Sure , when the Card was released i was surprised that the original cost is not higher but right now i realy don't see him as the problem. 

Stealer of Souls is what mostly closes out the game once i'm up against Quest Warlock - and in Combination with a Nightshade Matron that discard a Hand of Gul'dan is insane - so for me, the Problem would be Stealer of Souls. 

Quote From FieselFitz

Well i personaly haven't met that many Quest Warlocks - sure some but not much. And only once my opponent played a Flesh Giant - so i personaly did not notice a problem with the card. Sure , when the Card was released i was surprised that the original cost is not higher but right now i realy don't see him as the problem. 

Stealer of Souls is what mostly closes out the game once i'm up against Quest Warlock - and in Combination with a Nightshade Matron that discard a Hand of Gul'dan is insane - so for me, the Problem would be Stealer of Souls. 

I do think that Stealer of Souls should get some sort of change just because it fucks up the damage breakpoints to the point of complete unpredictabilityy. I haven't played the Nightshade Matron variant, but my biggest issue with the Stealer OTK stuff is how vulnerable it is to large minions and wide boards because of the lack of actual removal.

I guess we'll have a meta report in a few days that accurately breaks down which builds actually work, but I still suspect Flesh Giant is a huge part of the deck's overall success.

Quote From meisterz39

To the extent that Quest Zoolock is too powerful right now in Standard, I'm not convinced Flesh Giant is the right target for a nerf. It's a dual-class card, making it less likely to see a nerf anyway, but as powerful as getting a cheap 8/8 is, it's not unstoppable. Any deck that wants to can tech in Big Game Hunter to clear it before it does anything, and there are lots of class-specific answers as well. The real problem, as others have pointed out, is that Battleground Battlemaster's drawback (being a slightly understated 5-drop) is too small a drawback to make it bad. Compare it to Windspeaker - a card that saw very little play - and it's a neutral card with double the effect of a class card for one extra mana. (Obviously it's slightly different - one effect is permanent, the other is an aura, but granting windfury rarely matters beyond a single turn anyway.) I think the only fix for the card would be to drive up the cost - probably to 7 or 8.

I agree here mesiterz.  Battlemaster is a near auto-include into any minion based deck right now, and is the current expansions "leeroy". (the fact it's an aura and not a permanent effects doesn't matter because it either provides lethal, or near lethal) if any minions are left up.  It needs to be an 8 cost 100%.  Reducing it's stats will matter little (no-one cares about it's stats itself because it's stats are not relevant, the stats of the 2+ minions being left alive from the previous turn are what's relevant.  And I'll be royally pissed at blizzard if they end up nerfing this card by reducing it's stats...which is the entirely wrong direction to take this card in.