If you're running into a lot of problems with mage, run Robes of Protection. Hard mulligan for it, if necessary. I've had a dozen games as mage get completely shut out by a single one of those, as quest mage (at least the no spell version) has exactly zero counters for it.
The stats might be an interesting showcase of what happens yet again when you live within a polarising rock-paper-scissors meta. Quest mage might not be the 'best' deck statistically as shown by the pic, but it sure doesn't feel that way whenever you're facing it. And while handbuff pally is shown to have a higher win rate, it really does fold rather quickly to the combo decks.
Far as Im concerned its likely because everyone is teching against combo (Cult Neophyte, Far Watch Post, cheaper and smaller decklist etc.) that whenever you meet a handbuff pally youre just in such a poor condition to face it.
DS + IF is probably the easiest combo to assemble in the whole game. When they announced the new core set for Priest and i saw that Inner Fire was gone, i became hopeful that Priest would be able to play a genuine buff based deck without resorting to a combo finisher. However, they also removed Power Word: Shield and Northshire Cleric which were the main cycle/reloading tool for the class. After that, they kept printing good tempo minions and buffs but all of these cards ended up as a complete failure. Priest doesn't have a hero power that creates minions like Paladin. Paladin can always throw their buffs into their 1/1s whenever they are out of minions. Priest, however, needs actual minions to buff and if their stuff gets removed there's a pretty high chance that they will become stuck with buff spells in hand that simply can't be used.
I'm not desperate for the birth of a super good aggro/tempo priest because i'm sure it will be infuriating to deal with. What annoys me is the fact that they keep printing these tempo cards and buffs that serve no purpose outside of discover/generation. Precious slots in card sets are wasted with cards that are simply hopeless. The strongest example is Scholomance Academy. This set brought a few cards that see play all the time (mainly Draconic Studies and Raise Dead) but both dual class legendary slots failed completely within the class because they were supporting buff/tempo playstyles. High Abbess Alura was a huge success in Paladin and even took a nerf because of that but the card simply doesn't work with any reliable Priest strategies. And Disciplinarian Gandling was simply insanely overrated and failed even within Warlock. There's also Frazzled Freshman (people were worried because it was a 1/4) and Power Word: Feast. If they just gave Priest a basic Arcane Intellect, these cards would probably be playable, at least. If they have no intention of doing this then i would wish for them to stop printing useless stuff and give the class cards that actually support its slower nature.
I think we'll see Mage played less as folks begin to play counter decks, aka RUSH EM GOOD.
Definitely frustrating to play against though. Incanter's Flow is such a stupid card - and I say that as someone that loves to abuse it as Mage. The mana cheating in Hearthstone is just so insane and really, its my only major complaint about the way the game has been designed in recent times.
Quest Mage is still good without it. I've been beat by players who didn't play an IF til much, much later in the game. Its just insane when they Turn 1 Coin+IF followed by IF. Yeah, no point in playing then!
I do think if a nerf does end up needing to happen, they should target IF with a +1 to mana cost. The spell is clearly problematic and I'd hate to go into the Alterac Valley (pls blizz) expansion later this year with it still being the bread and butter of the class. Then when it rotates in March/April of next year, do not unnerf it. Wild players don't deserve to fight against that forever.
My biggest concern is that even with potential quest/card nerfs for this expansion, we won't see any visceral change until the core set rotation of next year. 5-7 months is a long time to wait for the core set to rotate out all the changes/inherent neutral draw options available.
Also, a comment I meant to make earlier was that my feeling is that Demon Hunter is the problem/crux of all this. Demon Hunter set a "standard" for card draw with their initial release, and since then they've been a powerhouse class becuase of it. Even after multiple nerfs I'd argue that the class is still inherently strong from a combo/aggro standpoint. (Which as an aside, I didn't think we needed another aggro/combo class.)
It's funny to think that the Nzoth/Inquisitor build from last meta, is being completely shut out because the power level of the decks in this expansion is so high it's completely shut down any decks that require turn 8+ win conditions.
Edit: looks like I ended up typing out a long reply anyways oh well.
Lol. I know that feeling. I often think it'll just be a couple of paragraphs, then 17 paragraphs later I can't imagine how it could be made shorter.
Anyway, yes, "word creep" is definitely how HS has handled power creep. We should be glad of that really, because if vanilla stats don't change then there's hope that Standard can undo power creep. At least in principle. It happened before with the Year of the Raven, which was a huge benefit to the game in the Year of the Dragon, but I'm not optimistic that they'll do it again since it requires a year of cards that don't impact the meta much immediately.
I was in serial disconnect/re-connect land too for the first 2 days. Very frustrating, but it seems like performance has improved a bit in the last 24 hours. Here's hoping.
I am farming achievements at the Diamond 5 floor. Painful to lose so much, but the at least I am getting XP for now.
I don't feel like typing out a super long reply, but in reply to your Primary post Shuckle, I 100% agree. Right now it feels like card draw is overtuned, and the usual format of Combo>Control>Aggro>Combo doesn't exist. Instead Combo and Aggro vie against one another for meta supremacy between expansions/mini-set releases/balance patches...while Control huddles in the corner in a fetal position.
For the last year-ish, playing control has felt like "did I draw the perfect nuts draw and counter my combo or aggro opponent perfectly with an extremely refined and teched deck" Yes? Congrats. No. You lose.
My biggest issue with the current Stormwind meta is that back and forth interactions are no longer a thing. Standard feels like wild now. The reason I liked standard and play standard is for the back and forth decision making and interactions between two players playing decks. Wild doesn't really care about the opponents deck. It has it's own gameplan, and if it fufills it's gameplan before you fufill yours, you generally just lose....
....which is exactly what is occurring in standard now. I'm honestly fed up with a lot of the design decisions the devs have made. Vanilla statlines haven't moved that much, but extra effects sure have. A 3 mana 3/4 with no special effects (aka spider tank) used to be the gold standard for 3 drops. Now, unless your 3 mana minion has a special passive, deathrattle, battlecry, etc it's usually not worth running (see LuckySoul Hoarder or Razorfen Beastmaster, Dreaming Drake, Pack Kodo, Alliance Bannerman, etc).
Now some of those are 3/3's or even 2/2's but the 3 cost is tied to a super strong effect. I know those are all class cards, but even cards like Archdruid Naralex, or Devouring Ectoplasm exist). Put simply, we don't need to go back to "vanilla" hearthstone like PrivateNightmare was suggesting, but I think we are starting to see too many compounded effects being tacked onto cards.
In short: Too much "word creep" (special effects attached to vanilla or normal statlines). Too much available card draw with little-to-no downsides attached. And control has been pushed out entirely at this point. (the last surviving bastion of control was priest, but after the nerfs to Apotheosis and Renew, the deck has struggled to say the least.)
Edit: looks like I ended up typing out a long reply anyways oh well.
So I cracked all my new United in Stormwind packs that I was able to amass from the gold I've been saving over the past month and crafted a few of the decks for the quests and I gotta say this... Hunter and Warrior are not only ridiculously easy to do, but probably NEED to be nerfed.
I took the garden variety Dwarven Defense deck for Hunter with no changes and just ROFL stomped every single player I came across. This works even more viciously in Wild with Baku. I was able to accomplish it as soon as turn 6 and just destroy my opponent.
The Warrior quest was nearly almost as easy to complete. Once The Juggernaut hits the board, it's kinda GG for your opponent. I didn't even try to make a competitive deck, I just threw in some Pirates and Coerce into a deck and destroyed my opponents.
I've tried the Druid quest and it was lack luster to say the least but that was expected in the card reveal. I got 2-4 of the other quests that I need to try as well, but honestly, I was shocked at how easy it was to just beat your opponent with the quest rewards of those two so far, so even though the Hunter quest is the ONE thing that has got me liking that class finally after the passed 7 years of playing this game, it really needs to be nerfed as it is waaaaaaaaaaaay too easy to complete. Thoughts on this and your experiences so far?
Are you still that opinion, OP?
I just went head on with Odd Hunter in Wild and they used [Hearthstone Card (Auctioneer Beardo) Not Found] until they finished the quest... and yeah. 2 damaging spells per level is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY easy to do.
Then with Warrior, I seriously have not seen it under perform. In standard, I can get it triggered within the first 6 turns. In wild, I usually have Rokara in hand before I have enough mana to play her. And as long as I can do what I can to control the board, The Juggernaut does the work for me.
Priest's card draw is in a healthy spot but only for Control. The class will never find any success outside of Control without real card draw. Shadow Priest is just another Control Priest. Quest Priest is Control as well. Priest literally can't do anything else. It doesn't have access to burst for any sort of Combo and fast strategies will die from an inability to reload efficiently throughout the game.
I thought I'd do this comment justice by trying out Shadow Priest (SP) before responding. Over the Barrens months I let myself slide from a diamond 5 player to only getting 4 bonus stars at the start of the season, so I'm not exactly against the best players, but still here are my thoughts...
Oh, I also met a lovely questline mage player who flamed me after they lost, accused SP of being cancerous, found the effect of Psyfiend "DISGUSTING" and ended the conversation with "So hope you die soon". It all seemed a touch hypocritical given he was playing something rather more prevalent in the meta, and doesn't even have the good grace of playing minions before shooting the opponent's face. Clearly it doesn't matter what priest does, some people will always hate it :P
Anyway, I wouldn't categorise SP as a conventional control deck. I'm sure you could make it into one, but the version I played with Psyfiends and Voidtouched Attendants was more towards the combo side. Not enough to qualify as a proper combo deck either, more like a deck that can choose between game plans depending on the situation. Like hunter, the hero power provides enough chip damage that you don't need to find anything close to 30 damage when you choose to finish off the opponent.
Somewhat analogously, the card draw situation was a mix between actual draw and card generation. I hadn't appreciated going into it how useful the generation would be for the combo side of the deck. You could afford to use up some combo pieces because you could either bring them back with Raise Dead or find replacement shadow spells.
I did play the quest too a couple of days ago. That felt like a control-y midrange deck more than true control, which again can get by with priest's mix of draw and generation. So priest's current position is similar to usual: you can make genuinely different archetypes, but they are always anchored to control.
I'm personally not sure if that's a problem or not. I could say something similar for rogue, for example, and replace 'control' with 'tempo'. A benefit of having 10 classes is that they can each have their own 'anchor', or put less esoterically: each class feels like the same class even when playing different archetypes.
With that in mind I guess the long term failed archetype in priest is tempo priest, which has worked a couple of times but usually thanks to cheesing wins with Divine Spirit + Inner Fire. There's 2 ways I can think to view this: either tempo priest just doesn't mesh with priest's 'anchor' (partly because it would need the draw that the control-centred anchor lacks); or because limiting priest's attack buffs stifles the tempo playstyle, so that it will always struggle against slow decks because it's too slow to put on pressure. It's a shame, and I'm willing to accept the limited card draw's role in it. I'd love to see how well it works with DS+IF around AND the more card draw-heavy environment. Unfortunately they just missed each other in Standard, making it tricky to know which conclusions to draw.
I kinda blanked on conviction as a holy spell to be honest. In that case, I think it'll have to be dropped because having a 100% to draw blessed goods and therefore complete 1 tier of the quest is simply more important. But it does allow for a burst finish so the choice is yours I guess.
Sneaky Delinquent is a good 2 drop in a meta without any minions because it virtually guarantees 3 damage to the face in the early game and after its dead it gives you a second stealth minion to go with Battleground Battlemaster in the midgame. While obviously both mage and warlock runs some board clears, they only have two. Its not an absolute counter card, but its basically the best we have at the moment for a midgame burst.
Also what kinda bugged me a little since i sometimes join in the WCDC - we can't give half Stars - maybe a card is worth 3.5 but i can only give 3 or 4 ... also maybe it would be better if the votings would start all together because it seems that someone who submits a card early on has a litte bit of voting advantage ...
Then make it 10 stars rating system.
Also sometimes i feel like the WCDC Community ( or at least some votes) are way to harsh - sure we want a good and perfect card with no errors but sometimes a card is very good but does not make it to the finals because the Watermark is from a wrong expansion or the flavour is ok but not in the right kind etc. so i guess with an expanded rating system this could be improved.
I agree with this. Most often I choose a watermark only because it is suitable for the look of card, and not by the set theme.
Advanced revards? Sounds nice.
Cutting finalist voting? Give it a try.
About my thoughts... I often feel that a whole week is too long. I want the competitions to be more often or there were more of it. (...this long time between wcdc seasons...) Or add that meisterz39 is offered - a creation of a mini set / new archetype. Creating multiple cards will take longer and the week will be enough, isn't it?
It really depends on the meta youre facing. The decklist is fine, but sphere is iffy to me. If its against mage, miracle rogue, questlock, and OTK dhunters, I'd also rather just ditch the cornelius and alliance bannerman for what seems to be the go-to anti-combo tech now: Sneaky Delinquent and Battleground Battlemaster. If this is your game, then conviction should stay, otherwise I'd get rid of it.
There's also a small consideration for Cult Neophyte, but for some reason Im seeing lots of guys fit in SI:7 Skulker into pally decks now. Maybe that's the edge it needs against all these combo decks. Havent tried that myself.
Also, if you're really a gamer, throw in Mutanus. Many quest decks dont tend to play around this card so you may just snipe out their win condition.
I get Battleground Battlemaster as anti quest/combo tech. But how is Sneaky Delinquent anti tech? I've thought about cult neophyte but it requires precise timing to do otherwise. Right now as you saw I'm running robes of protection which is about as good as it gets or constant passive anti-tech. I actually was considering SI7 Skulker so good to know I'm not crazy. I'm a big fan of Mutanus, so yea ... :)
So Conviction is a Holy spell as well. So Knight isn't 100% guaranteed to draw Blessed Goods. Is this just one of those "RNG" things you gotta pray it hits for the deck to do well with? I appreciate the response so far though.
Priest's card draw is in a healthy spot but only for Control. The class will never find any success outside of Control without real card draw. Shadow Priest is just another Control Priest. Quest Priest is Control as well. Priest literally can't do anything else. It doesn't have access to burst for any sort of Combo and fast strategies will die from an inability to reload efficiently throughout the game.
What Standard Decks to Play in Hearthstone's New Expansion? The Top 10 Stormwind Deck Archetypes of Week 1
If you're running into a lot of problems with mage, run Robes of Protection. Hard mulligan for it, if necessary. I've had a dozen games as mage get completely shut out by a single one of those, as quest mage (at least the no spell version) has exactly zero counters for it.
9 More Top Legend Standard Hearthstone Decks to Complete Your Early United in Stormwind Experience
No Garrote Rogue is ridiculous they get their combo turn 6 and just win. Who would of thought 4 mana deal 16 is broken....
What Standard Decks to Play in Hearthstone's New Expansion? The Top 10 Stormwind Deck Archetypes of Week 1
The stats might be an interesting showcase of what happens yet again when you live within a polarising rock-paper-scissors meta. Quest mage might not be the 'best' deck statistically as shown by the pic, but it sure doesn't feel that way whenever you're facing it. And while handbuff pally is shown to have a higher win rate, it really does fold rather quickly to the combo decks.
Far as Im concerned its likely because everyone is teching against combo (Cult Neophyte, Far Watch Post, cheaper and smaller decklist etc.) that whenever you meet a handbuff pally youre just in such a poor condition to face it.
What Standard Decks to Play in Hearthstone's New Expansion? The Top 10 Stormwind Deck Archetypes of Week 1
Face hunter wont be a thing when people don't want to win anymore.
Card draw power creep is a major issue
DS + IF is probably the easiest combo to assemble in the whole game. When they announced the new core set for Priest and i saw that Inner Fire was gone, i became hopeful that Priest would be able to play a genuine buff based deck without resorting to a combo finisher. However, they also removed Power Word: Shield and Northshire Cleric which were the main cycle/reloading tool for the class. After that, they kept printing good tempo minions and buffs but all of these cards ended up as a complete failure. Priest doesn't have a hero power that creates minions like Paladin. Paladin can always throw their buffs into their 1/1s whenever they are out of minions. Priest, however, needs actual minions to buff and if their stuff gets removed there's a pretty high chance that they will become stuck with buff spells in hand that simply can't be used.
I'm not desperate for the birth of a super good aggro/tempo priest because i'm sure it will be infuriating to deal with. What annoys me is the fact that they keep printing these tempo cards and buffs that serve no purpose outside of discover/generation. Precious slots in card sets are wasted with cards that are simply hopeless. The strongest example is Scholomance Academy. This set brought a few cards that see play all the time (mainly Draconic Studies and Raise Dead) but both dual class legendary slots failed completely within the class because they were supporting buff/tempo playstyles. High Abbess Alura was a huge success in Paladin and even took a nerf because of that but the card simply doesn't work with any reliable Priest strategies. And Disciplinarian Gandling was simply insanely overrated and failed even within Warlock. There's also Frazzled Freshman (people were worried because it was a 1/4) and Power Word: Feast. If they just gave Priest a basic Arcane Intellect, these cards would probably be playable, at least. If they have no intention of doing this then i would wish for them to stop printing useless stuff and give the class cards that actually support its slower nature.
What Standard Decks to Play in Hearthstone's New Expansion? The Top 10 Stormwind Deck Archetypes of Week 1
When will Face Hunter no longer be a thing?
When will the deck archetypes they push and get us excited about actually work better than aggro decks?
Bleh. It's the usual week-into-an-expansion sadness when all my experiments aren't working out.
What Standard Decks to Play in Hearthstone's New Expansion? The Top 10 Stormwind Deck Archetypes of Week 1
I think we'll see Mage played less as folks begin to play counter decks, aka RUSH EM GOOD.
Definitely frustrating to play against though. Incanter's Flow is such a stupid card - and I say that as someone that loves to abuse it as Mage. The mana cheating in Hearthstone is just so insane and really, its my only major complaint about the way the game has been designed in recent times.
Quest Mage is still good without it. I've been beat by players who didn't play an IF til much, much later in the game. Its just insane when they Turn 1 Coin+IF followed by IF. Yeah, no point in playing then!
I do think if a nerf does end up needing to happen, they should target IF with a +1 to mana cost. The spell is clearly problematic and I'd hate to go into the Alterac Valley (pls blizz) expansion later this year with it still being the bread and butter of the class. Then when it rotates in March/April of next year, do not unnerf it. Wild players don't deserve to fight against that forever.
What Standard Decks to Play in Hearthstone's New Expansion? The Top 10 Stormwind Deck Archetypes of Week 1
It's because quest mage is frustating to play against if you aren't a face deck.
Darkseeker's channel - 13th November update: KOtsosKOtsos' Reno Evolve Shudderwock Shaman - ft. Archivist Elysiana
6th August update: LaboreSangre's WILD Giants Shaman - United in Stormwind!
All hail Laboresangre for this awesome Giants Shaman deck. Draw through your deck, find your giants, win the game.
https://twitter.com/laboresangre/status/1422845244350124037
Deck code: AAEBAaoIBpUBlAOr0ALz5wLcuAOLnwQM0hOCtAKNzgL28AKe/QKMhQPw1AP67APk9gOF+gPwhQT5nwQA
https://youtu.be/-xM-wrheD30
New Priest Minion - Voidtouched Attendant
this card in wild aggro shadow priest just reads :
1 mana 1/3 effect : raid leader + spell damage + hero power damage
it's busted :D, got to legend with 70% win shadow priest
What Standard Decks to Play in Hearthstone's New Expansion? The Top 10 Stormwind Deck Archetypes of Week 1
Nerf mage >:(
Its interesting to see how these always differ from the general perception, I myself also fully expected to see Mage on top
Card draw power creep is a major issue
My biggest concern is that even with potential quest/card nerfs for this expansion, we won't see any visceral change until the core set rotation of next year. 5-7 months is a long time to wait for the core set to rotate out all the changes/inherent neutral draw options available.
Also, a comment I meant to make earlier was that my feeling is that Demon Hunter is the problem/crux of all this. Demon Hunter set a "standard" for card draw with their initial release, and since then they've been a powerhouse class becuase of it. Even after multiple nerfs I'd argue that the class is still inherently strong from a combo/aggro standpoint. (Which as an aside, I didn't think we needed another aggro/combo class.)
It's funny to think that the Nzoth/Inquisitor build from last meta, is being completely shut out because the power level of the decks in this expansion is so high it's completely shut down any decks that require turn 8+ win conditions.
Card draw power creep is a major issue
Lol. I know that feeling. I often think it'll just be a couple of paragraphs, then 17 paragraphs later I can't imagine how it could be made shorter.
Anyway, yes, "word creep" is definitely how HS has handled power creep. We should be glad of that really, because if vanilla stats don't change then there's hope that Standard can undo power creep. At least in principle. It happened before with the Year of the Raven, which was a huge benefit to the game in the Year of the Dragon, but I'm not optimistic that they'll do it again since it requires a year of cards that don't impact the meta much immediately.
9 More Top Legend Standard Hearthstone Decks to Complete Your Early United in Stormwind Experience
I was in serial disconnect/re-connect land too for the first 2 days. Very frustrating, but it seems like performance has improved a bit in the last 24 hours. Here's hoping.
I am farming achievements at the Diamond 5 floor. Painful to lose so much, but the at least I am getting XP for now.
10 subscriber thank you video
9 More Top Legend Standard Hearthstone Decks to Complete Your Early United in Stormwind Experience
I forgot to use my aren-uh... tavern tickets last expansion, so this is good news to me.
Card draw power creep is a major issue
I don't feel like typing out a super long reply, but in reply to your Primary post Shuckle, I 100% agree. Right now it feels like card draw is overtuned, and the usual format of Combo>Control>Aggro>Combo doesn't exist. Instead Combo and Aggro vie against one another for meta supremacy between expansions/mini-set releases/balance patches...while Control huddles in the corner in a fetal position.
For the last year-ish, playing control has felt like "did I draw the perfect nuts draw and counter my combo or aggro opponent perfectly with an extremely refined and teched deck" Yes? Congrats. No. You lose.
My biggest issue with the current Stormwind meta is that back and forth interactions are no longer a thing. Standard feels like wild now. The reason I liked standard and play standard is for the back and forth decision making and interactions between two players playing decks. Wild doesn't really care about the opponents deck. It has it's own gameplan, and if it fufills it's gameplan before you fufill yours, you generally just lose....
....which is exactly what is occurring in standard now. I'm honestly fed up with a lot of the design decisions the devs have made. Vanilla statlines haven't moved that much, but extra effects sure have. A 3 mana 3/4 with no special effects (aka spider tank) used to be the gold standard for 3 drops. Now, unless your 3 mana minion has a special passive, deathrattle, battlecry, etc it's usually not worth running (see LuckySoul Hoarder or Razorfen Beastmaster, Dreaming Drake, Pack Kodo, Alliance Bannerman, etc).
Now some of those are 3/3's or even 2/2's but the 3 cost is tied to a super strong effect. I know those are all class cards, but even cards like Archdruid Naralex, or Devouring Ectoplasm exist). Put simply, we don't need to go back to "vanilla" hearthstone like PrivateNightmare was suggesting, but I think we are starting to see too many compounded effects being tacked onto cards.
In short: Too much "word creep" (special effects attached to vanilla or normal statlines). Too much available card draw with little-to-no downsides attached. And control has been pushed out entirely at this point. (the last surviving bastion of control was priest, but after the nerfs to Apotheosis and Renew, the deck has struggled to say the least.)
Edit: looks like I ended up typing out a long reply anyways oh well.
Hunter and Warrior Quests are Total Nerf Targets
I just went head on with Odd Hunter in Wild and they used [Hearthstone Card (Auctioneer Beardo) Not Found] until they finished the quest... and yeah. 2 damaging spells per level is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY easy to do.
Then with Warrior, I seriously have not seen it under perform. In standard, I can get it triggered within the first 6 turns. In wild, I usually have Rokara in hand before I have enough mana to play her. And as long as I can do what I can to control the board, The Juggernaut does the work for me.
Fresh 12-Win Starting Decks for the New United in Stormwind Duels Meta
Nice, was going to try Duels after climbing ranked a little, since I wanted to try the quests in it, thanks!
Card draw power creep is a major issue
I thought I'd do this comment justice by trying out Shadow Priest (SP) before responding. Over the Barrens months I let myself slide from a diamond 5 player to only getting 4 bonus stars at the start of the season, so I'm not exactly against the best players, but still here are my thoughts...
Oh, I also met a lovely questline mage player who flamed me after they lost, accused SP of being cancerous, found the effect of Psyfiend "DISGUSTING" and ended the conversation with "So hope you die soon". It all seemed a touch hypocritical given he was playing something rather more prevalent in the meta, and doesn't even have the good grace of playing minions before shooting the opponent's face. Clearly it doesn't matter what priest does, some people will always hate it :P
Anyway, I wouldn't categorise SP as a conventional control deck. I'm sure you could make it into one, but the version I played with Psyfiends and Voidtouched Attendants was more towards the combo side. Not enough to qualify as a proper combo deck either, more like a deck that can choose between game plans depending on the situation. Like hunter, the hero power provides enough chip damage that you don't need to find anything close to 30 damage when you choose to finish off the opponent.
Somewhat analogously, the card draw situation was a mix between actual draw and card generation. I hadn't appreciated going into it how useful the generation would be for the combo side of the deck. You could afford to use up some combo pieces because you could either bring them back with Raise Dead or find replacement shadow spells.
I did play the quest too a couple of days ago. That felt like a control-y midrange deck more than true control, which again can get by with priest's mix of draw and generation. So priest's current position is similar to usual: you can make genuinely different archetypes, but they are always anchored to control.
I'm personally not sure if that's a problem or not. I could say something similar for rogue, for example, and replace 'control' with 'tempo'. A benefit of having 10 classes is that they can each have their own 'anchor', or put less esoterically: each class feels like the same class even when playing different archetypes.
With that in mind I guess the long term failed archetype in priest is tempo priest, which has worked a couple of times but usually thanks to cheesing wins with Divine Spirit + Inner Fire. There's 2 ways I can think to view this: either tempo priest just doesn't mesh with priest's 'anchor' (partly because it would need the draw that the control-centred anchor lacks); or because limiting priest's attack buffs stifles the tempo playstyle, so that it will always struggle against slow decks because it's too slow to put on pressure. It's a shame, and I'm willing to accept the limited card draw's role in it. I'd love to see how well it works with DS+IF around AND the more card draw-heavy environment. Unfortunately they just missed each other in Standard, making it tricky to know which conclusions to draw.
So this just happened...Quest Pally vs Quest Mage. Turn 1 Win
I kinda blanked on conviction as a holy spell to be honest. In that case, I think it'll have to be dropped because having a 100% to draw blessed goods and therefore complete 1 tier of the quest is simply more important. But it does allow for a burst finish so the choice is yours I guess.
Sneaky Delinquent is a good 2 drop in a meta without any minions because it virtually guarantees 3 damage to the face in the early game and after its dead it gives you a second stealth minion to go with Battleground Battlemaster in the midgame. While obviously both mage and warlock runs some board clears, they only have two. Its not an absolute counter card, but its basically the best we have at the moment for a midgame burst.
WCDC Season 4 Suggestions
Then make it 10 stars rating system.
I agree with this. Most often I choose a watermark only because it is suitable for the look of card, and not by the set theme.
Advanced revards? Sounds nice.
Cutting finalist voting? Give it a try.
About my thoughts... I often feel that a whole week is too long. I want the competitions to be more often or there were more of it. (...this long time between wcdc seasons...) Or add that meisterz39 is offered - a creation of a mini set / new archetype. Creating multiple cards will take longer and the week will be enough, isn't it?
So this just happened...Quest Pally vs Quest Mage. Turn 1 Win
So this just happened...Quest Pally vs Quest Mage. Turn 1 Win
I get Battleground Battlemaster as anti quest/combo tech. But how is Sneaky Delinquent anti tech? I've thought about cult neophyte but it requires precise timing to do otherwise. Right now as you saw I'm running robes of protection which is about as good as it gets or constant passive anti-tech. I actually was considering SI7 Skulker so good to know I'm not crazy. I'm a big fan of Mutanus, so yea ... :)
So Conviction is a Holy spell as well. So Knight isn't 100% guaranteed to draw Blessed Goods. Is this just one of those "RNG" things you gotta pray it hits for the deck to do well with? I appreciate the response so far though.
Card draw power creep is a major issue
Priest's card draw is in a healthy spot but only for Control. The class will never find any success outside of Control without real card draw. Shadow Priest is just another Control Priest. Quest Priest is Control as well. Priest literally can't do anything else. It doesn't have access to burst for any sort of Combo and fast strategies will die from an inability to reload efficiently throughout the game.