This article is almost fully focused on Wild. (And what it does have about Standard is inaccurate - for example, Quest Warlock decks only relied on fatigue damage for the first few days after the expansion released.)
In Standard, Quests really don’t seem to be a problem. According to the latest VS report (#205), Quests are found in only 1 of the 4 tier 1 decks 1 of the 7 tier 2 decks! The Quest archetypes are mainly found in T3 and T4. People like to complain, but it’s really not a problem.
As for Wild: I’ve been playing the game for a few years, and I can’t remember a single period when the Wild community wasn’t angry about how broken their meta was. I can believe that Quest Warlock is a problem, but it seems like the fundamental problems go far deeper than that.
I will admit that much of my experiences come from Wild. In Standard I've only been grinding achievements and my MMR is so low that I can't say too much about the top player meta. As I believe I mentioned, I don't hate the current Standard meta but even there control doesn't really exist due to questlines pushing the meta to another direction. If it was just for this expansion I could accept it, but the questlines are going to stay there for the next 1.5-ish years.
For Wild: certainly, there's always the strongest decks which will always give rise to complaints, but as patinha mentioned this meta is something else. I can't recall a similar shift where the new expansion cards would overtake the entire format with such power. If the same would've happened in Standard, I'm pretty sure things would've been nerfed by now.
Or maybe they'll all end up costing gold, thus alienating any F2P player who might enjoy the mode but sees it as a risk of a crucial resource for other modes they already play.
I probably sound like a broken record, but there's really no reason for Blizzard to care about the feelings of free players who are going to pitch a fit over a little bit of gold. If they refuse to spend gold, that's a sign they will never, ever spend cash. Blizzard has nothing to gain from keeping that kind of non-customer happy.
Free-to-pay games aren't free because of a company's generosity. They are free in the hope that free players will eventually spend money. Gating content behind a small gold expenditure is actually a pretty smart way to weed out the ones who will never pay a dime.
There are very few situations where regions feel powerful on release.
Shurima used to be an aggro focused mess that was designed to be high synergy but wasn't. Only being addressed recently.
Targon on release was underpowered in the beginning, overpowered with Aphelios, and now is kind of being carried by Zoe which is a little sad.
But man bandlewood is just coming out of the gate swinging. The number of playables vs non playable isn't something we've seen since vanilla, or the release of bilgewater.
Pranks are viable, shromes are viable, landmarks are viable, darkness is viable, and when you start to get creative you realize there are very few limitations.
Bandlewood Yassao sure why not you can hexplosove minefield into safety inspector.
Bandlewood Ezreal oh you bet all those free poison darts hyper level him.
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get a poppy elite list rolling, which I haven't seen tried yet.
Veigar without shadow, that's easy he levels himself if you can keep him alive, you can try targon or freijord.
This is a great time for deck builders and a really bad time for meta slaves.
In this case, the whole "pay to win" outcry has been particularly strange to me. They clearly state -- both in the video and on the dev blog -- that PvP matchmaking will not match you against a vastly stronger opponent. Slightly stronger (or weaker)? Maybe, occasionally, but only to prevent long queue times -- similar to the way Hearthstone might occasionally match you with someone one rank higher or lower on ladder. I'd love to hear anyone's ideas on how it could realistically be better than that.
And make no mistake, that small possibility of a small power differential would not disappear if they removed all monetization from the game. You would still occasionally encounter a free player who has been grinding longer than you. There's no way around it.
The other weird complaint is, "How dare they steal my precious gold?!" The obvious answer is: If Hearthstone cards are more important to you than building a town in Mercenaries, don't build the town. There's no reason to be mad about it. Free players have to make these decisions all the time. You aren't required to play Mercenaries at all. But if you choose to play, there's nothing wrong with asking you to pay a bit of gold. It's pretty unrealistic to expect this humongous new game mode to be given to you for free. If a little gold is all you have to fork over to get your town up and running, that's actually quite generous on Blizzard's part. Free games are not a human right.
I agree that there's nothing really wrong with them asking players to pay a bit for a product they like, but I think one of the big things is the the question of how much it will cost to have fun with the format. For example, you can spend money or gold to get the Battlegrounds Perks and various cosmetics, but even if you don't do that you'll still be able to play Battlegrounds as a full game mode (albeit with fewer heroes to choose from, and without emotes). It's not that hard to have fun with it despite paying nothing.
The reveal blogpost about this makes clear that "when you first enter the Village, [the Workshop] will be your only [building]." The reveal video seemed to state that all buildings and building upgrades would cost gold, so I think there's some legitimate open questions about what the costs are associated with just getting a basic village up and running so you can actually play the full game mode. Maybe it will turn out that all Level 0 buildings are free or just part of a quest-style progression. Or maybe they'll all end up costing gold, thus alienating any F2P player who might enjoy the mode but sees it as a risk of a crucial resource for other modes they already play.
I really enjoy questline decks in standard and don't really want to see too much of a change (it is a little absurd that the people complaining about control priest last expansion are the same people complaining about this meta). I personally think the best solution is to nerf any of the problematic cards in wild but keep them the same in standard. It might be a little confusing for newer players, but we already play with two different versions of classic cards so I do not think it will be that big of a deal. Anything is better than banning a card because it sucks not even being able to use a card at all.
Honestly, I'd rather just take them out of the game. If you change them enough to make them reasonable, the people who used to like them are going to be upset anyway. Just scrap the whole thing like Genn and Baku and let Wild deal with it.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might suspect this whole meta is just a sneaky way to drive people over to Mercenaries. If so, it's working in my case. I'm looking forward to a game where I can largely ignore PvP and metas and developers who decide to change the texture of the entire game on a whim.
Thats a valid point, things are balanced enough now that no deck is hitting those gross 60% winrates post burst meta nerfs. So play what you want as long as you can answer early game pressure.
I would argue that 2/1 one drops have never been better in the absence of avalanche, withering wail, box, even vile feast is rare to see. Learn what work in the meta by feeling it out for two weeks, capitalize and youre pretty unstoppable in pickup games. Grinding ladder, tournaments are their own thing.
what got into my way is that I understood how it work, so suddenly i became a bit involved and lost track of whether I made a step or not and got all confused, so instead just used the map because that way it was easier for me to process in my mind.
You mentioned the mercenaries coming out as 5-mana 7/7s, and I wonder if that points to them using super unoptimised decks during playtesting. Design-wise, it does seem like they expected these to come out Turn 7 upwards, so they buffed the stats to compensate.
I've been under the assumption that they wanted the meta this way - short games, but huge power turns. But maybe they were genuinely surprised by the deck construction that happened?
Great article and many great posts. These questlines are simply too quick to complete, making them incredibly consistent and reliable. The Dr. 7 suggestion in the article is a very reasonable start. Those 80+% stats in wild make UTHunter look soft.
The third stage could be completely removed and not impact the card at all, if anything gets directly nerfed in the deck it's probably going to be a different combo piece
Putting the reward to 7 severely limits it's power, given that Hunter is usually low on resources already by turn 5, if it's still an issue maybe increase the requirement for the second stage to 3 spells
Your guess on how to make this playable without making it broken or completely redesigning it is as good as mine, either it's unplayable or it's incredibly irritating, honestly wouldn't be opposed to just scrapping it and making a completely new questline with any relation to the things priest does
This seems fine with the reward at 5, Spymaster Scabbs could possibly even be buffed to add a random gizmo to your hand at the start of the turn for the rest of the game as well as adding one of each on battlecry if he went to 7
Don't even know where to start with this, as for the quest itself either make it 7/8/8 or reduce the rewards to 2 damage, make Blightborn Tamsin not redirect fatigue, make Crystallizer deal and gain 3, and drop Darkglare a health at bare minimum, possibly make Kobold Librarian a 2 mana 2/2 as well to reduce the massive cycling ability the deck has, would love to see Raise Dead hit, but doubt that will ever happen given that it hasn't already
While I don't hate the current Standard meta, I still think Control (as all other archetypes) should have room in it. Right now the strength of the Questline rewards makes it very difficult for them to exist and it's basically the combo-ish Questlines vs aggressive decks that have the ability to rush them down.
The challenge here is that it's very clear how a lot of these questlines can support a variety of archetypes. I think we've seen several archetypes for The Demon Seed already, and it will fit nicely into a more traditional Control Warlock deck after rotation because it will lose a lot of the cards it uses for its faster combo decks. Command the Elements can make for a lot of burst potential, but with spells like Tidal Surge and Tidal Wave it could also be a strong tool in a Control deck. Same deal with Mage - the spell damage boost could make for a powerful addition to any control deck, not just the infinite burn Ignite decks we've seen. Defend the Dwarven District can create a "Razakus" style combo endgame, but it also opens up targeting minions, and the spell synergies in Standard (e.g. Kolkar Pack Runner, Krolusk Barkstripper, and Lock and Load) support a more board-centric/value-oriented Hunter. Pirate Warrior will probably never be a Control deck, but I think Raid the Docks at least supports Aggro and Midrange nicely thanks to support like Shiver Their Timbers! and Cargo Guard.
The reality is that the quests that have mostly failed (e.g. Seek Guidance and Find the Imposter) have failed because they fit a very narrow set of archetypes (Quest Priest has to be control, Quest Rogue's SI:7 support forces a Tempo archetype) and those archetypes just haven't had success. I think Blizzard has been smart not to touch the questlines at all, but rather focus on the key cards (like Flesh Giant) that have made certain archetype/quest pairs too powerful and too popular*. There may yet be more work to be done, but the flexibility of these questlines is something to be lauded, and any adjustments need to be made with extreme care.
Maybe the "increase to 7 mana" suggestion is appropriate, but the risk there is making the rewards so hard to use on the same turn the quest is completed that all Quest decks becomes highly vulnerable to Mutanus the Devourer. I'm not convinced a metagame where every quest deck is easily disrupted by control is a good thing, as that would harm the many non-combo ways to play questlines.
*The popularity here is a particularly important thing to note. If the metagame were 20% Combo quests, 80% Aggro, that would mean there's room for Control to eat into the Aggro success. The metagame just prior to the latest nerfs looked more like 40% Combo/60% Aggro, which is basically an impossible place for Control to thrive without 85%+ winrates against Aggro.
Aren't people playing Caitlyn with Draven or is that just my experience? I've seen a lot of them more than Draven Ezreal tbh so I thought that was how you play Caitlyn now.
I did give this one a try, It worked better than what I expected. As I suspected Noxus control tools works well with Caitlyn since her flashbombs tend to damage your opponent units opening them for removal like Ravenous Flock, Noxian Guillotine and Scorched Earth. Still I don't know if this version is an upgrad of EZ/Draven or more of a side grade. Cailtyn is definitely better at creating early to mid game pressure but Ezreal is a stronger finisher.
As for Wild: I’ve been playing the game for a few years, and I can’t remember a single period when the Wild community wasn’t angry about how broken their meta was. I can believe that Quest Warlock is a problem, but it seems like the fundamental problems go far deeper than that.
As a Wild player (and some Arena) I can only tell about my experience: never before the meta lacked so much variety as it does now.
And here are the scores for August, assuming that August includes everything in the new thread until last Tuesday. Anchorm4n has three or four, depending on whether a question counts for a month based on the date of the question or the answer. So depending on that ruling either R wins the month outright or is tied with anchorm4n. Otherwise for display purposes I broke ties by earliest date of the final answer (so Almaniarra beat out me). For September, so far I have a point and anchorm4n may have a point depending on how we count his most recent answer.
Show Spoiler
R
4
anchorm4n
3 or 4
Almaniarra
3
madcat
3
Live4vrRdieTryn
2
Lundy
1
Edit: Fixed table display to something less comical and more readable.
"Removing the heals for Quest rewards is probably a no go; even though it would slow down Flesh Giants it would likely just offer the deck for aggro as lunch on a silver platter."
So? God forbid the thing that wants to hit itself in the face actually having to pay a price for doing that. That would change nothing about control and combo matchups, but if you give it glaring weakness to the other archetype, then suddenly it's not so ubiquitous that it ruins the ladder.
I personally think removing the Lifesteal would be the best solution. It would nothing about how the deck is played or built - so people can keep their decks if they like to play - but it would still greatly lower its impact on the meta and give it a much-needed weakness.
Agreed with much of this article. Fact remains that quest decks are too easily completed, features 3 tiers of rewards, and finishing it usually means death in 2 turns max. Games end by turn 8 on average now, and we all know that it used to be turn 6.
Im avoiding commenting extensively on wild, but in standard the problem is very similar except quest warrior is not yet a scourge. Let's have a short review of the problem;
- Mage ends games the following turn after Varden is played. Usually turns 7-8, and that's assuming the opponent plays little to no minions. With minions, the quest can be completed by turn 6. In other words, whenever the meta is composed of ordinary hearthstone i.e. curvestone plays, quest mage will always win, barring strong disruption like Cult Neophyte and Far Watch Post.
- Shaman finishes around turn 7, but Brukan only kills on average within 2-3 turns. Its slower than mage, but shaman's clears are preposterously powerful with Perpetual Flame without any downsides and shaman can crucially heal so the usual burn strats don't always work compared to mage. While mage can be killed by aggro, shaman is near immune to it. The quest reward basically allows shaman to outvalue everything. And I simply cannot imagine how team5 will solve this without powercreeping this straight to hell.
- Warlock finishes vary according to deck build. The current most healthiest questlock deck is handlock, where the quest is an after thought, more as a last resort. However, that doesn't change the fact that when tamsin comes down its lights out within 2 turns, via fatigue or otherwise. We've already seen warlock nerfed twice, and I happen to know that wild is such a cesspool of warlock decks that there's no chance we won't get a third nerf. Like really team5, just nerf this quest already.
- Hunter varies in wild and standard. In wild, this can finish as easily as turn 4-5 thanks to Rapid Fire. Needless to say hunter is a major problem in wild. While this has not picked up yet in standard, as shown by rapid fire this can easily change with the introduction of more spells for hunter. Quest hunter in standard is currently too slow for the meta, because hunter cant heal and can't clear as efficiently as the other decks. But does team5 intend to design around the quest for the next 1.5 years? I should think not.
- Quest warrior is shit in standard, but is an absolute monster in wild. This one is up in the air for me. I think its easy to design around this in standard, because there's no mandate for pirates to be printed every expansion. But again, if the meta slows down enough, this can easily be another problem, and warrior have no shortage of clears and heals to make sure it can get there.
- Nothing needs to be changed to priest, but team5 should take from this design philosophy. Powerful things should have weaknesses and should never be easily played, and quest priest is that exactly. The reward will always be vulnerable to mutanus and even the god destroying end reward that literally destroys the opponent when played is only available on turn 10, turn 9 at the very earliest. Is there any reason why team5 isn't designing the other quests like this?
- For the others: quest paladin (too slow, and cant heal), quest dhunter (too difficult to play correctly), quest rogue (powerful but can be played around), quest druid (destroyed by taunts. Like literally)
How to fix it? Just make the conditions more difficult to finish. Strong rewards should also come with difficult conditions, and this is only reflected in a few of the quests like priest. Otherwise, more radically, the quest rewards needs to be bumped up to 6-7 mana. This makes it very difficult to avoid a mutanus, which will balance the quest decks more or less but at a risk of making them unviable. Either way, if team5 leaves this hanging like this, they'd have to design around it for the next 1.5 years and that's a scary thought. We all thought the DKs were too powerful, well this expansion single handedly warped wild around its little finger. How many cards ever made as much a difference?
This article is almost fully focused on Wild. (And what it does have about Standard is inaccurate - for example, Quest Warlock decks only relied on fatigue damage for the first few days after the expansion released.)
In Standard, Quests really don’t seem to be a problem. According to the latest VS report (#205), Quests are found in only 1 of the 4 tier 1 decks 1 of the 7 tier 2 decks! The Quest archetypes are mainly found in T3 and T4. People like to complain, but it’s really not a problem.
As for Wild: I’ve been playing the game for a few years, and I can’t remember a single period when the Wild community wasn’t angry about how broken their meta was. I can believe that Quest Warlock is a problem, but it seems like the fundamental problems go far deeper than that.
The only thing that comes to my mind is to either reintroduce Loatheb or to literally have a card that reads "if your opponent played a quest, gain +4+4, etc."
But if hearthstone history says anything, its if the reward is powerful enough it justify playing around even its strongest counters. Golakka Crawler didn't make Patches the Pirate go away, and even Loatheb didn't stop freeze mage from continuing seeing play.
If we are to see any change, Im afraid giving the quest tweak a miss is a mistake in the making.
The culprit is the mechanic. In any card game, randomness is a huge check on power level. You gotta draw the good card. Like Keleseth is a good example, broken but checked by having to be drawn early. So that really means that, as soon as any quest is good, it is 10 times as good as a card on a similar theoretical power level. So yep, if quest = broken, then quest = super broken. Now, sure, the type of effect does matter. But imo the heart of the issue is cheating the randomness rule.
I get why they make them, they are great for giving direction on what to do and how to build your deck. But they just cannot be good, since they jump up to super good immediately. And they cannot have an effect that defines the endgame (first rogue quest,mage quest Warlock questline and more) since that makes matchups auto lose. Any deck that runs slow decks over with less than 5% winnable m/u and is not otherwise at an abysmal winrate vs anything else should be nerfed.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
I will admit that much of my experiences come from Wild. In Standard I've only been grinding achievements and my MMR is so low that I can't say too much about the top player meta. As I believe I mentioned, I don't hate the current Standard meta but even there control doesn't really exist due to questlines pushing the meta to another direction. If it was just for this expansion I could accept it, but the questlines are going to stay there for the next 1.5-ish years.
For Wild: certainly, there's always the strongest decks which will always give rise to complaints, but as patinha mentioned this meta is something else. I can't recall a similar shift where the new expansion cards would overtake the entire format with such power. If the same would've happened in Standard, I'm pretty sure things would've been nerfed by now.
Mercenaries: My First Impressions
I probably sound like a broken record, but there's really no reason for Blizzard to care about the feelings of free players who are going to pitch a fit over a little bit of gold. If they refuse to spend gold, that's a sign they will never, ever spend cash. Blizzard has nothing to gain from keeping that kind of non-customer happy.
Free-to-pay games aren't free because of a company's generosity. They are free in the hope that free players will eventually spend money. Gating content behind a small gold expenditure is actually a pretty smart way to weed out the ones who will never pay a dime.
Why Bandlewood Will Be The Best Region
There are very few situations where regions feel powerful on release.
Shurima used to be an aggro focused mess that was designed to be high synergy but wasn't. Only being addressed recently.
Targon on release was underpowered in the beginning, overpowered with Aphelios, and now is kind of being carried by Zoe which is a little sad.
But man bandlewood is just coming out of the gate swinging. The number of playables vs non playable isn't something we've seen since vanilla, or the release of bilgewater.
Pranks are viable, shromes are viable, landmarks are viable, darkness is viable, and when you start to get creative you realize there are very few limitations.
Bandlewood Yassao sure why not you can hexplosove minefield into safety inspector.
Bandlewood Ezreal oh you bet all those free poison darts hyper level him.
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get a poppy elite list rolling, which I haven't seen tried yet.
Veigar without shadow, that's easy he levels himself if you can keep him alive, you can try targon or freijord.
This is a great time for deck builders and a really bad time for meta slaves.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
The Warlock quest will certainly be nerfed this month, so after that see how things are in meta
Mercenaries: My First Impressions
I agree that there's nothing really wrong with them asking players to pay a bit for a product they like, but I think one of the big things is the the question of how much it will cost to have fun with the format. For example, you can spend money or gold to get the Battlegrounds Perks and various cosmetics, but even if you don't do that you'll still be able to play Battlegrounds as a full game mode (albeit with fewer heroes to choose from, and without emotes). It's not that hard to have fun with it despite paying nothing.
The reveal blogpost about this makes clear that "when you first enter the Village, [the Workshop] will be your only [building]." The reveal video seemed to state that all buildings and building upgrades would cost gold, so I think there's some legitimate open questions about what the costs are associated with just getting a basic village up and running so you can actually play the full game mode. Maybe it will turn out that all Level 0 buildings are free or just part of a quest-style progression. Or maybe they'll all end up costing gold, thus alienating any F2P player who might enjoy the mode but sees it as a risk of a crucial resource for other modes they already play.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
I really enjoy questline decks in standard and don't really want to see too much of a change (it is a little absurd that the people complaining about control priest last expansion are the same people complaining about this meta). I personally think the best solution is to nerf any of the problematic cards in wild but keep them the same in standard. It might be a little confusing for newer players, but we already play with two different versions of classic cards so I do not think it will be that big of a deal. Anything is better than banning a card because it sucks not even being able to use a card at all.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
Honestly, I'd rather just take them out of the game. If you change them enough to make them reasonable, the people who used to like them are going to be upset anyway. Just scrap the whole thing like Genn and Baku and let Wild deal with it.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might suspect this whole meta is just a sneaky way to drive people over to Mercenaries. If so, it's working in my case. I'm looking forward to a game where I can largely ignore PvP and metas and developers who decide to change the texture of the entire game on a whim.
You're Playing Catalyn Wrong
Thats a valid point, things are balanced enough now that no deck is hitting those gross 60% winrates post burst meta nerfs. So play what you want as long as you can answer early game pressure.
I would argue that 2/1 one drops have never been better in the absence of avalanche, withering wail, box, even vile feast is rare to see. Learn what work in the meta by feeling it out for two weeks, capitalize and youre pretty unstoppable in pickup games. Grinding ladder, tournaments are their own thing.
Solving the "???" Gift of Elune Card Back Achievement in Hearthstone - Solve the Stormwind Mysteries
what got into my way is that I understood how it work, so suddenly i became a bit involved and lost track of whether I made a step or not and got all confused, so instead just used the map because that way it was easier for me to process in my mind.
Avalon's 12 Wins Questline Mage
I really want to create a big druid deck but it’s way too slow even with minions cost (5) ..
And Paladin, the recruits one feels really nice to play and I am waiting for the good treasures to 12 it =)
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
You mentioned the mercenaries coming out as 5-mana 7/7s, and I wonder if that points to them using super unoptimised decks during playtesting. Design-wise, it does seem like they expected these to come out Turn 7 upwards, so they buffed the stats to compensate.
I've been under the assumption that they wanted the meta this way - short games, but huge power turns. But maybe they were genuinely surprised by the deck construction that happened?
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
Great article and many great posts. These questlines are simply too quick to complete, making them incredibly consistent and reliable. The Dr. 7 suggestion in the article is a very reasonable start. Those 80+% stats in wild make UTHunter look soft.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
Thoughts on a few of the quests if the rewards go to 7:
Final Showdown:
The third stage could be completely removed and not impact the card at all, if anything gets directly nerfed in the deck it's probably going to be a different combo piece
Defend the Dwarven District:
Putting the reward to 7 severely limits it's power, given that Hunter is usually low on resources already by turn 5, if it's still an issue maybe increase the requirement for the second stage to 3 spells
Sorcerer's Gambit:
Just reduce the spell damage to 2
Seek Guidance:
Your guess on how to make this playable without making it broken or completely redesigning it is as good as mine, either it's unplayable or it's incredibly irritating, honestly wouldn't be opposed to just scrapping it and making a completely new questline with any relation to the things priest does
Find the Imposter:
This seems fine with the reward at 5, Spymaster Scabbs could possibly even be buffed to add a random gizmo to your hand at the start of the turn for the rest of the game as well as adding one of each on battlecry if he went to 7
The Demon Seed:
Don't even know where to start with this, as for the quest itself either make it 7/8/8 or reduce the rewards to 2 damage, make Blightborn Tamsin not redirect fatigue, make Crystallizer deal and gain 3, and drop Darkglare a health at bare minimum, possibly make Kobold Librarian a 2 mana 2/2 as well to reduce the massive cycling ability the deck has, would love to see Raise Dead hit, but doubt that will ever happen given that it hasn't already
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
The challenge here is that it's very clear how a lot of these questlines can support a variety of archetypes. I think we've seen several archetypes for The Demon Seed already, and it will fit nicely into a more traditional Control Warlock deck after rotation because it will lose a lot of the cards it uses for its faster combo decks. Command the Elements can make for a lot of burst potential, but with spells like Tidal Surge and Tidal Wave it could also be a strong tool in a Control deck. Same deal with Mage - the spell damage boost could make for a powerful addition to any control deck, not just the infinite burn Ignite decks we've seen. Defend the Dwarven District can create a "Razakus" style combo endgame, but it also opens up targeting minions, and the spell synergies in Standard (e.g. Kolkar Pack Runner, Krolusk Barkstripper, and Lock and Load) support a more board-centric/value-oriented Hunter. Pirate Warrior will probably never be a Control deck, but I think Raid the Docks at least supports Aggro and Midrange nicely thanks to support like Shiver Their Timbers! and Cargo Guard.
The reality is that the quests that have mostly failed (e.g. Seek Guidance and Find the Imposter) have failed because they fit a very narrow set of archetypes (Quest Priest has to be control, Quest Rogue's SI:7 support forces a Tempo archetype) and those archetypes just haven't had success. I think Blizzard has been smart not to touch the questlines at all, but rather focus on the key cards (like Flesh Giant) that have made certain archetype/quest pairs too powerful and too popular*. There may yet be more work to be done, but the flexibility of these questlines is something to be lauded, and any adjustments need to be made with extreme care.
Maybe the "increase to 7 mana" suggestion is appropriate, but the risk there is making the rewards so hard to use on the same turn the quest is completed that all Quest decks becomes highly vulnerable to Mutanus the Devourer. I'm not convinced a metagame where every quest deck is easily disrupted by control is a good thing, as that would harm the many non-combo ways to play questlines.
*The popularity here is a particularly important thing to note. If the metagame were 20% Combo quests, 80% Aggro, that would mean there's room for Control to eat into the Aggro success. The metagame just prior to the latest nerfs looked more like 40% Combo/60% Aggro, which is basically an impossible place for Control to thrive without 85%+ winrates against Aggro.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
Feels like you just outright kill most of them by increasing the rewards by 2 mana.
You're Playing Catalyn Wrong
I did give this one a try, It worked better than what I expected. As I suspected Noxus control tools works well with Caitlyn since her flashbombs tend to damage your opponent units opening them for removal like Ravenous Flock, Noxian Guillotine and Scorched Earth. Still I don't know if this version is an upgrad of EZ/Draven or more of a side grade. Cailtyn is definitely better at creating early to mid game pressure but Ezreal is a stronger finisher.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
As a Wild player (and some Arena) I can only tell about my experience: never before the meta lacked so much variety as it does now.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
I have the same opinion. Great article!
[Game] Card Treasure Hunt (Hearthstone Riddles)
And here are the scores for August, assuming that August includes everything in the new thread until last Tuesday. Anchorm4n has three or four, depending on whether a question counts for a month based on the date of the question or the answer. So depending on that ruling either R wins the month outright or is tied with anchorm4n. Otherwise for display purposes I broke ties by earliest date of the final answer (so Almaniarra beat out me). For September, so far I have a point and anchorm4n may have a point depending on how we count his most recent answer.
Edit: Fixed table display to something less comical and more readable.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
This is actually my favorite article on OOC in the past several months. Hopefully hs will take action similar to what is suggested here.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
"Removing the heals for Quest rewards is probably a no go; even though it would slow down Flesh Giants it would likely just offer the deck for aggro as lunch on a silver platter."
So? God forbid the thing that wants to hit itself in the face actually having to pay a price for doing that. That would change nothing about control and combo matchups, but if you give it glaring weakness to the other archetype, then suddenly it's not so ubiquitous that it ruins the ladder.
I personally think removing the Lifesteal would be the best solution. It would nothing about how the deck is played or built - so people can keep their decks if they like to play - but it would still greatly lower its impact on the meta and give it a much-needed weakness.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
Agreed with much of this article. Fact remains that quest decks are too easily completed, features 3 tiers of rewards, and finishing it usually means death in 2 turns max. Games end by turn 8 on average now, and we all know that it used to be turn 6.
Im avoiding commenting extensively on wild, but in standard the problem is very similar except quest warrior is not yet a scourge. Let's have a short review of the problem;
- Mage ends games the following turn after Varden is played. Usually turns 7-8, and that's assuming the opponent plays little to no minions. With minions, the quest can be completed by turn 6. In other words, whenever the meta is composed of ordinary hearthstone i.e. curvestone plays, quest mage will always win, barring strong disruption like Cult Neophyte and Far Watch Post.
- Shaman finishes around turn 7, but Brukan only kills on average within 2-3 turns. Its slower than mage, but shaman's clears are preposterously powerful with Perpetual Flame without any downsides and shaman can crucially heal so the usual burn strats don't always work compared to mage. While mage can be killed by aggro, shaman is near immune to it. The quest reward basically allows shaman to outvalue everything. And I simply cannot imagine how team5 will solve this without powercreeping this straight to hell.
- Warlock finishes vary according to deck build. The current most healthiest questlock deck is handlock, where the quest is an after thought, more as a last resort. However, that doesn't change the fact that when tamsin comes down its lights out within 2 turns, via fatigue or otherwise. We've already seen warlock nerfed twice, and I happen to know that wild is such a cesspool of warlock decks that there's no chance we won't get a third nerf. Like really team5, just nerf this quest already.
- Hunter varies in wild and standard. In wild, this can finish as easily as turn 4-5 thanks to Rapid Fire. Needless to say hunter is a major problem in wild. While this has not picked up yet in standard, as shown by rapid fire this can easily change with the introduction of more spells for hunter. Quest hunter in standard is currently too slow for the meta, because hunter cant heal and can't clear as efficiently as the other decks. But does team5 intend to design around the quest for the next 1.5 years? I should think not.
- Quest warrior is shit in standard, but is an absolute monster in wild. This one is up in the air for me. I think its easy to design around this in standard, because there's no mandate for pirates to be printed every expansion. But again, if the meta slows down enough, this can easily be another problem, and warrior have no shortage of clears and heals to make sure it can get there.
- Nothing needs to be changed to priest, but team5 should take from this design philosophy. Powerful things should have weaknesses and should never be easily played, and quest priest is that exactly. The reward will always be vulnerable to mutanus and even the god destroying end reward that literally destroys the opponent when played is only available on turn 10, turn 9 at the very earliest. Is there any reason why team5 isn't designing the other quests like this?
- For the others: quest paladin (too slow, and cant heal), quest dhunter (too difficult to play correctly), quest rogue (powerful but can be played around), quest druid (destroyed by taunts. Like literally)
How to fix it? Just make the conditions more difficult to finish. Strong rewards should also come with difficult conditions, and this is only reflected in a few of the quests like priest. Otherwise, more radically, the quest rewards needs to be bumped up to 6-7 mana. This makes it very difficult to avoid a mutanus, which will balance the quest decks more or less but at a risk of making them unviable. Either way, if team5 leaves this hanging like this, they'd have to design around it for the next 1.5 years and that's a scary thought. We all thought the DKs were too powerful, well this expansion single handedly warped wild around its little finger. How many cards ever made as much a difference?
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
This article is almost fully focused on Wild. (And what it does have about Standard is inaccurate - for example, Quest Warlock decks only relied on fatigue damage for the first few days after the expansion released.)
In Standard, Quests really don’t seem to be a problem. According to the latest VS report (#205), Quests are found in only 1 of the 4 tier 1 decks 1 of the 7 tier 2 decks! The Quest archetypes are mainly found in T3 and T4. People like to complain, but it’s really not a problem.
As for Wild: I’ve been playing the game for a few years, and I can’t remember a single period when the Wild community wasn’t angry about how broken their meta was. I can believe that Quest Warlock is a problem, but it seems like the fundamental problems go far deeper than that.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
The only thing that comes to my mind is to either reintroduce Loatheb or to literally have a card that reads "if your opponent played a quest, gain +4+4, etc."
But if hearthstone history says anything, its if the reward is powerful enough it justify playing around even its strongest counters. Golakka Crawler didn't make Patches the Pirate go away, and even Loatheb didn't stop freeze mage from continuing seeing play.
If we are to see any change, Im afraid giving the quest tweak a miss is a mistake in the making.
Hearthstone's Stormwind Questline Cards Were a Mistake - Here's How We Can Fix Them
The culprit is the mechanic. In any card game, randomness is a huge check on power level. You gotta draw the good card. Like Keleseth is a good example, broken but checked by having to be drawn early. So that really means that, as soon as any quest is good, it is 10 times as good as a card on a similar theoretical power level. So yep, if quest = broken, then quest = super broken. Now, sure, the type of effect does matter. But imo the heart of the issue is cheating the randomness rule.
I get why they make them, they are great for giving direction on what to do and how to build your deck. But they just cannot be good, since they jump up to super good immediately. And they cannot have an effect that defines the endgame (first rogue quest,mage quest Warlock questline and more) since that makes matchups auto lose. Any deck that runs slow decks over with less than 5% winnable m/u and is not otherwise at an abysmal winrate vs anything else should be nerfed.