Today's reddit AMA has been full of great replies from the Hearthstone team, and that includes talking about the usually forgotten Wild format.
Alec Dawson of the game design team says that we should expect changes to two problematic decks in the Wild format - Quest Mage and Darkest Hour Warlock. This will be done by making adjustments to Open the Waygate and Bloodbloom, the details of which are not yet known but will be announced soon.
How would you change the cards?
Quote From HS_Alec For Wild, we know there has been a lot of very strong reactions to Quest Mage and Darkest Hour Warlock. These decks play in a one-player fashion similar to other decks we've nerfed in the past. There's going to be crazy combos in Wild, but we don't think these two decks in particular are healthy. Expect to see changes to Open the Waygate and Bloodbloom.
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 12 - Day 2 [Finished]](dark-beyond-reveals-day-2-thumb.webp)
Comments
I hope they just raise the number of spells needed to complete Open the Waygate, and not nerf the reward. Back when it was first introduced, completing the quest required some build-around with sub-optimal cards; it was a suitably challenging objective for a cool and unique reward. Since then, we've gotten better spell generators with each expansion so much so that it has become almost trivial to complete the quest, with Evocation being the latest addition. Double the target to 12, maybe?
Huh, now that’s interesting. I left a comment on a post about what cards people thought would/should be reverted to their pre-nerf iterations a month ago, and in it, I mentioned the fact that Quest Mage and Darkest Hour are obviously problematic decks. The response I got from the wild experts there in the comments—e.g., that those decks, specifically Quest Mage and Darkest Hour, were so far from broken I must’ve never played the game and what we should’ve really been worried about is “super broken reverted Raza Priest”—is hilarious in retrospect!
An interesting change to Open the Waygate would be to make it refresh your mana instead of taking an extra turn. This would keep the combo potential, but it no longer stacks with Archmage Vargoth and it also doesn't give you any extra attacks which would fix the giant deck.
The better builds don't even use Archmage Vargoth. That's usually a "win-more" card.
Honestly the 3 turns thing is rather irrelevant. I've played some Vargoth Quest Mage decks for some meme Malygos stuff, but the vast majority of decks just use the standard 2 turn win method. It's not like Vargoth suddenly made Antonidas or giants able to win in Quest Mage. The 3rd turn is pretty much just there to allow you to change up what type of combo you'd like to win with.
Agree about DH Warlock, but I hated playing against that anyway.
The Mecha'Thun change isn't really going to change that much. Swap out Bloom with Drakkari Enchanter and the deck works exactly the same as normal.
Btw, if they nerf those decks too much, we may actually be going towards a Raza Priest meta.
Raza Priest is a solid mixture of Control and Combo, it might fulfill the niche left by the nerfs.
What do you think?
Nerfed or not, I will always run the albatross against that deck.
But the albatross can only delay Raza, not really prevent it (unless you go hard with duplicates).
Also, albatross may be nerfed for Standard purposes soon (to be seen how).
Damn, I didn't get a notification. Well, for quite some time now my main deck is N'zoth Priest, so you can imagine how well I make use of the various deathrattles and deathrattle synergies there.
Of course the albatross can only delay Raza, but isn't this our strategy - to put duplicates in the opponent's deck, so that we turn off their Reno and apply too much pressure for them to handle?
I don't want to seem argumentative or rude, but the hatred levelled at big priest/ raza priest seems to come from a place of ignorance.
These decks are not good in wild right now, they have poor win rates and have unfavourable matchups against combo decks like waygate/DH and against aggro decks like discardlock.
Well...rip Mecha'thun cheese in adventures I guess.
There go my 6.000 dust I spent yesterday to craft my first Darkest Hour deck ever. Needless to say I lost almost every game with it. But that one time I pulled the combo off on turn 3 was great!
It's really weird that they're not touching secret mage at all. Despite what people in the comments here are saying that deck is stronger and more consistent than both reno and regular quest mage.
The nerf to Bloodbloom could also be a big nerf to Mecha'thun warlock. I guess they need to run the Dollmaster Dorian combo instead.
Either way, both of those decks were big counters to Reno Galaxy mage (which counters secret mage pretty hard), which is what I've been playing lately, so I'm happy.
I think the reason they're nerfing those decks as opposed to others is less so because it's strong and moreso because it's not fun to play against.
As much as combo decks are fun to play (I loved the double OTK Paladin with the DK and Shirvallah), it feels really bad when all they do is cast power removal spells then blast you in the face. It's like playing Solitaire, where you surviving till your combo is like revealing the cards, setting up the aces and the kings, and the actual combo is when you can drag all the cards into the piles one after another.
That applies to every combo deck though, doesn't it? In that case cards like Mecha'thun never should have been printed at all.
There are enough ways to handle Secret Mage and a lot of tech cards against secrets.
Of course Secret Mage can be anoying - but it far from "unstoppable" like for example Darkest Hour Warlock which got its combo on turn 5.
There is nothing wrong about having really strong decks in Wild - the problem are the decks, which feel "unstoppable".
Okay, I fully agree with both nerfs and Darkest hour warlock is a problem that should have been addressed long ago.
Quest mage is far from unstoppable though. It loses consistently to aggro decks (which is like half of the wild meta) and the slower Reno quest countetpart has the same weakness most combo decks have.
Secret mage, on the other hand, has been the best deck for a long time now. Even with all the secret hate the deck still performs at a top tier level.
Indeed, there is nothing wrong with having really strong decks. But there is something wrong with having a single really, really strong deck. (Does naga giant warlock come to mind?)
Do you really compare Secret Mage with Nagalock? o.O
Nagalock was one of this "unstoppable" decks. Secret Mage is no where near the brokeness of the old Naga Giants combo.
And based on what do you call Secdret mage "the best deck for a long time"? It is even debatable if Secret Mage was T1 in the last months (Tempo Storm for example only listed it as T2).
Secret Mage is only "op" as long as the opponent is too bad to play effectively around the secrets. Even without a special anti secret tech, I had over 50% winrate for sure against Secret Mage with for example Reno-Quest-Mage, which I reached Legend two months in a row.
I'm sorry but if you're referring to Tempo storm as your go-to meta indicator your credibility can be thrown out the window immediately.
Perhaps my comparison with giants warlock wasn't the best but secret mage has been a consistent top tier performer for a long time. Continuously flying under the nerf radar because of more pressing matters (i.e. sn1p-sn4p) yet ever present on ladder. Leading to an extremely stale ladder experience. Even more so now that multiple decks are getting nerfed and even more people will probably flock to it.
Anecdotal evidence of you versus secret mage aside, the deck has no real weakness anymore ever since the latest additions and is EXTREMELY consistent, even when it's getting countered with secret hate.
So then show me please your data, which prove that quote "Secret mage has been the best deck for a long time now".