I've noticed a lot of comments from people complaining about the warrior nerf, saying it didn't go far enough to deal with the endless arsenal of removal that represses mid-range and value decks. It only improves the life for aggro.
But this seems to be misunderstanding how the meta works. If control warrior is suddenly losing or going 50/50 against aggro, it's overall winrate will plummet. People play control warrior today because it has the highest winrate. It won't be everywhere like it is today if it ends up with just a mediocre tier 2 winrate thanks to aggro matchups.
Even if it doesn't improve the matchup for value/mid-range vs control warrior, it will quite possibly decrease the likelihood that you run into the deck on ladder.
I pretty much try to craft every single meta deck and give it a try, so I dust everything that's an extra and then golden copies of bad legendaries/epics. I don't usually, but every now and then will even disenchant non golden copies of legendaries and epics I don't expect to ever really be viable. Just depends on my current need for dust.
Prismatic Lens: Down to 3 Mana. Change text to "Draw 2 cards. Swap their Costs."
I really like this Nerf rather than raising the cost to 5 or 6 like others have suggested. It doesn't make the card completely unplayable, accidentally nerfing every Paladin deck that wants to draw cards.
For the most part my predictions about decks were reasonably accurate. Probably the only two I was wrong about would be quest druid and bomb warrior. I expected quest druid to be much stronger, but I think it would only work in specific metas. It's in a weird spot where it's too slow that aggro decks can run it over fairly easily, while it doesn't quite have enough umph to be able to overwhelm slow, controlling decks like control warrior or freeze mage. I put it at tier 2, and right now it's looking more like it will end up in tier 3 unless people figure something out.
Bomb warrior I expected to stay strong and perhaps be even stronger because of it's ability to disrupt highlander decks with its bombs. It's honestly still a reasonably powerful tier 2 deck but just no one is really playing it right now (I guess since control warrior is better).
My predictions were mainly wrong in regards to decks I expected would be bad but ended up actually being good. Quest paladin I thought would be pretty garbage, and while it is pretty weak, it excels against control warrior. I don't think I expected control warrior to be such a big part of the meta, and if that ever dies down, so will quest paladin. I kinda figured highlander mage and hunter would be sorta playable, but didn't expect them to be near the top of the meta.
For the most part though I think everything is reasonably close to where I expected it to be.
I'd like to think that the lower winrate of quest shaman and quest druid is due to the large amount of experimentation, and that as time goes on, the better builds will win out and they will both end up with higher winrates. I'm not so hopeful though, especially on quest druid. Quest shaman shows more promise.
For quest druid: At all ranks, it is 49.5% over the entire expansion. Last 3 days it is at 48.7% and last 1 day it is at 47.5%. So it seems that the quest druid is just worsening over time. At upper ranks it is doing even worse. From rank 5-legend, it is 47.1% over the whole expansion, 46.6% over past 3 days and 45.7% over the past day. It's looking bleak for quest druid.
For quest shaman: At all ranks, it is 49% over the entire expansion. Past 3 days, it is also 49%. Past 1 day, it is up to 49.5%. It's been improving slightly, so there might be some promise here. At upper ranks, it is 48.2% over the whole expansion. Past 3 days, it is at 48.3%. Past 1 day it is at 48.6%. So we've seen some improvement, though it's still fairly negative.
Quest shaman I'd say is also the deck that has the most possibilities for different builds. You can go all the way from a fast aggro version meant to burn down the opponent immediately, all the way up to a fatigue style control deck. So there's a lot more possibilities and variance in the builds, as well as a lot more room to find the perfect formula that will have the best chances of winning in the current meta.
Quest druid on the other hand is far more straight forward in its build. The number of different choose one cards are rather limited, so the different ways you can actually build the deck are limited as well. Druid doesn't have the tools to be much of a control deck without single target removals or any serious board clears, nor can the quest be aggro with how it forces you to skip using your mana. It will always be either a midrange value deck or some sort of crazy combo deck with Elise.
So based on the info we have available, I'd assume that when everything is finished, quest shaman will end up as a pretty solid T2 deck list while quest druid will be little more than a tier 3 deck used in certain competitive circumstances where you can ban bad matchups. Even then though, there may be better options.
These statistics are really interesting. I'm guessing they're from hsreplay. Are they premium only?
Some great insights overall. I guess I thought quest shaman would be more straightforward than it is. Throwing in all the lackey synergies + good lategame value cards such as Swampqueen Hagatha and Shudderwock mixed with some boardclear isn't enough to have the deck reach 50% just yet apparently.
Will be interesting to see how the quests further develop, and what vS' thoughts are coming thursday.
Yeah, they're from hsreplay. Premium lets you view a lot more things than you get to see for free. It's pretty cheap, provides some interesting statistics to look at (being able to see deck popularity at each rank is pretty useful too), and I like being able to support the info that hsreplay puts out.
I've been trying a quest shaman that's basically a control shaman list. Earthquake is a really nice AOE in a lot of instances and plague of murlocs does give us a way of dealing with early giants. I'm just not sure if the quest actually makes sense in the deck; it might be better to just drop the quest and lackey stuff in favor of more removal like hex or lightning bolt.
I like the legendaries being more specialized rather than just overpowered, auto include cards like ragnaros, dr boom, sylvanus, loatheb, etc. It makes decks more interesting and unique, rather than both sides being the same powerful shell that differs mainly on some of the class card inclusions. Decks from any individual class are almost not alike at all.
I can understand the issue for free to play players though. You can't just craft a few safe legendaries and be able to play most decks after crafting a few epics and a couple class legendaries. But as someone who pays a reasonable amount of money, I care more about the quality of gameplay than the accessibility for people who don't want to spend anything on it.
I'd like to think that the lower winrate of quest shaman and quest druid is due to the large amount of experimentation, and that as time goes on, the better builds will win out and they will both end up with higher winrates. I'm not so hopeful though, especially on quest druid. Quest shaman shows more promise.
For quest druid: At all ranks, it is 49.5% over the entire expansion. Last 3 days it is at 48.7% and last 1 day it is at 47.5%. So it seems that the quest druid is just worsening over time. At upper ranks it is doing even worse. From rank 5-legend, it is 47.1% over the whole expansion, 46.6% over past 3 days and 45.7% over the past day. It's looking bleak for quest druid.
For quest shaman: At all ranks, it is 49% over the entire expansion. Past 3 days, it is also 49%. Past 1 day, it is up to 49.5%. It's been improving slightly, so there might be some promise here. At upper ranks, it is 48.2% over the whole expansion. Past 3 days, it is at 48.3%. Past 1 day it is at 48.6%. So we've seen some improvement, though it's still fairly negative.
Quest shaman I'd say is also the deck that has the most possibilities for different builds. You can go all the way from a fast aggro version meant to burn down the opponent immediately, all the way up to a fatigue style control deck. So there's a lot more possibilities and variance in the builds, as well as a lot more room to find the perfect formula that will have the best chances of winning in the current meta.
Quest druid on the other hand is far more straight forward in its build. The number of different choose one cards are rather limited, so the different ways you can actually build the deck are limited as well. Druid doesn't have the tools to be much of a control deck without single target removals or any serious board clears, nor can the quest be aggro with how it forces you to skip using your mana. It will always be either a midrange value deck or some sort of crazy combo deck with Elise.
So based on the info we have available, I'd assume that when everything is finished, quest shaman will end up as a pretty solid T2 deck list while quest druid will be little more than a tier 3 deck used in certain competitive circumstances where you can ban bad matchups. Even then though, there may be better options.
It doesn't seem like there is any deck that's too strong at the moment, but one of my biggest gripes with the initial impression is that the meta feels very rock paper scissors like. It could be that it's my deck specifically, since I've been playing a combo burn mage deck, but certain matchups are impossible to either win or lose.
Quest druid demolishes me, since my only way to deal with their board is frost Nova + doomsayer, and they'll usually be able to Starfall the doomsayer or kill it with Loti. I haven't won once against that deck.
While zoolock is almost impossible to lose against. They basically burn themselves for me with all the self damage mechanics and they rarely have any way to deal with frost Nova + doomsayer to clear their board. Quest shaman is similarly weak, since they don't put up enough pressure to kill me before I can burn them down.
Murloc paladin seems an impossible deck to beat against nearly any aggro deck when they play tip the scales on turn 4 or 5. At the same time, my aggro pirate rogue demolishes so many decks, hunters especially, since they can't do anything about all my damage to face.
This may just be the result of an early, unrefined meta. I just hope it doesn't end up being too much of a rock paper scissors meta, otherwise hardly anyone will enjoy it
Quest druid looks pretty good and will have a ton of late game value. Will probably work quite well against control warrior, though it's early game is necessarily weak because of the quest. Unlikely to be more than tier 2 because of that.
Mage - Cyclone mage will continue to be powerful. Probably will remain a tier 1 deck, I don't see any big counters to it coming out.
Big spell mage I'm not sure on. Could be playable, probably will end up tier 3 because of a weakness to aggressive strategies.
Freeze Mage will continue to be an alternative to the cyclone mage if you want to do better against slower decks like control warrior. It didn't really get many new tools in this expansion though, but might be able to murge somewhat with the big spell mage so that you're playing big minions and big spells. Probably tier 2 either way.
Hunter - Mech hunter will continue to be around, but with no new cards will likely just be a fair bit weaker. It was already pretty mediocre and just played because it was simple, fast and easy to secure victories against bad players/poorly refined decks at lower ranks. With the expansion it will likely drop down to a tier 3 aggro deck no one wastes their time playing.
Quest Hunter initially looks pretty bad, but there are some pretty good cards printed for the quest and it's actually not as hard for them to summon 20 minions as it might initially seem. The hero power is also pretty insane if you can pair it with charge minions from unleash the hounds, leeroy jenkins, or with tundra rhino. Probably tier 3 but could make it into tier 2.
OTK Priest will be a tier 4 garbage meme deck and nothing more. If it was going to be good, people would already be playing Stormwind Knight + Power Word: Shield x2 + Divine Spirit x2 + Topsy Turvy for the same amount of mana and the same number of cards. It will die to aggro before it can get the combo off, it just hard loses to any sort of deck that has lots of taunts, control warrior will almost always have enough armor to survive it... I just don't see how this deck could possibly be competitively viable.
I can tell you've been listening to Trump ... or at least you make some of the same arguments he makes.
Quest Druid: What's its win condition? That was where I stumbled when theorycrafting it myself; it doesn't seem to have a good one.
Cyclone Mage: Well, there are big counters to it coming out, most prominently Plague of Murlocs. But I share your opinion that the counters won't be common enough to knock Cyclone Mage from Tier 1.
I'm not sure Big Spell Mage and Freeze Mage are different decks anymore. RDU's combination of the two looked pretty strong.
I've also seen the suggestion that Mech Hunter and Quest Hunter get combined into one ... Does adding a Magnetic minion to a minion already on board add to the Quest's counter? Anyone know?
OTK Priest: You made a very interesting argument; I had to think about it for a while. I'm ultimately not persuaded by it, though.
First of all, a combo using 1x Power Word: Shield is innately easier to pull off than a combo with 2x Power Word Shield, because it means you can use one of your Power Word: Shields before the combo turn, which is one of Priest's best sources of card draw.
On quest druid, the win condition is pretty simple. Make big plays with the doubled choose one cards and kill your opponent's face. Same win condition most decks have. The main question I have is if the quest reward is really as unfair as some of the other conditions in other decks, such as making a board full of giants or 10 mana minions.
On OTK priest, the addition of Amet would slightly improve the consistency of the combo, but I'd imagine the deck would need to start out already in the tier 3 or tier 4 category for that to make it somewhat playable. Going from so unplayable its completely off the radar to a strong deck just because of a couple extra chances at drawing the combo. Maybe it makes it into the tier 4 category? Guess we'll see soon enough either way.
Well, it would be a pretty good choice to pull out of your deck with Duel!. I remember earlier on in RoS people were running Big Paladins. Maybe you could try to make it work.
Druid - Token druid will still be a thing, and got a couple of cards that might make it better than it is now. Probably tier 2 or tier 3.
Quest druid looks pretty good and will have a ton of late game value. Will probably work quite well against control warrior, though it's early game is necessarily weak because of the quest. Unlikely to be more than tier 2 because of that.
Combo druid ?? Elise is definitely a strong card, but hard to see what sort of combo would work here. I'll leave that to people who are far more creative in their deck building than I am to try and figure out.
Mage - Cyclone mage will continue to be powerful. Probably will remain a tier 1 deck, I don't see any big counters to it coming out.
Secret mage seems a bit iffy, but probably playable. Maybe cusp of tier 3 to tier 4.
Big spell mage I'm not sure on. Could be playable, probably will end up tier 3 because of a weakness to aggressive strategies.
Freeze Mage will continue to be an alternative to the cyclone mage if you want to do better against slower decks like control warrior. It didn't really get many new tools in this expansion though, but might be able to murge somewhat with the big spell mage so that you're playing big minions and big spells. Probably tier 2 either way.
Hunter - Mech hunter will continue to be around, but with no new cards will likely just be a fair bit weaker. It was already pretty mediocre and just played because it was simple, fast and easy to secure victories against bad players/poorly refined decks at lower ranks. With the expansion it will likely drop down to a tier 3 aggro deck no one wastes their time playing.
Midrange got a few new tools to play around with, but will probably stick to being at the tier 2 level.
Quest Hunter initially looks pretty bad, but there are some pretty good cards printed for the quest and it's actually not as hard for them to summon 20 minions as it might initially seem. The hero power is also pretty insane if you can pair it with charge minions from unleash the hounds, leeroy jenkins, or with tundra rhino. Probably tier 3 but could make it into tier 2.
Secret Hunter could either end up as singleton or as a more normal secret hunter deck, but will undoubtedly be a powerful deck. Either tier 2 or tier 1, it will still have a big weakness to control warrior though.
Paladin - Holy Wrath will remain playable. I'm curious to try out a more midrange version that uses Tip the Scales in order to clear out the deck and create tempo to stay alive rather than strictly control tools to stabilize. Might still just be a tier 2 deck.
Mech paladin didn't get anything new and wasn't that great to begin with. Might fall down to a tier 3 deck, or remain at the tier 2 level.
Quest Paladin forces you to run a bunch of bad reborn cards in order to get an effect which is only good if you're ahead. Which you won't be, since you'll be playing garbage cards for most of the game. Tier 4.
Priest - Quest Priest (?) might be a thing. Priest got a lot of really powerful cards, but I'm having trouble envisioning what sort of deck will be built from all of it. Priest might still be trash if it can't all come together well.
OTK Priest will be a tier 4 garbage meme deck and nothing more. If it was going to be good, people would already be playing Stormwind Knight + Power Word: Shield x2 + Divine Spirit x2 + Topsy Turvy for the same amount of mana and the same number of cards. It will die to aggro before it can get the combo off, it just hard loses to any sort of deck that has lots of taunts, control warrior will almost always have enough armor to survive it... I just don't see how this deck could possibly be competitively viable.
Resurrect Priest will maybe see some more life because of psychopump, but will probably stick to the tier 3 category.
Rogue - Quest rogue will probably be pretty good, it's very easy to activate and always having a 3/2 weapon with immune is insane. Probably tier 2, could be tier 1.
Tempo rogue will stay as a tier 1 deck most likely, it's getting a few new cards and there's not much reason to expect it to get worse.
Deathrattle/mecha'thun rogue (?) maybe becomes playable, I have no idea.
Mogu Cultist combo rogue will be a tier 4 meme deck. Too hard to pull off against anything with any aggression, and even against control warrior the end result will only deal 20 damage to them. It's too much work for too little pay off in most situations.
Shaman - Battlecry shaman looks quite strong, though it remains to see how it stands up against other decks currently in the meta. Most likely a tier 2 deck, has the potential to be tier 1.
Aggro shaman using overload, tokens and some of the new tools like Plague of Murlocs will likely still be as good as it is now, if not better. Probably a tier 2 card.
Control Shaman will be dead just as it is now. Earthquake is good against reborn minions, but no one will be playing reborn minions much at all and it isn't enough to kill giants. It's worse than control warrior which means there's not really much of a reason to try to make it work until April.
Murloc Shaman got a few new tools, but will likely be overshadowed by the other new shaman cards that buff up aggro and create battlecry shaman. Probably tier 2 or 3 aggro deck.
Warlock - Lackey Zoo looks to be pretty good. Lackeys are strong, turning lackeys into 5/5s for 3 mana while also getting a 3/3 is pretty insane. Some of the other new cards like Neferset Thrasher and Diseased Vulture might make a more midrange zoo warlock pretty good. I find Dark Pharaoh Tekahn questionable. While he'd be insane on his own, you might as well just turn your lackeys into 5/5s with EVIL Recruiter. I don't know if there will be enough lackeys for both to make sense.
Carpet Zoo doesn't really get much that's exciting. It will likely be overshadowed by the lackey zoo deck, if either of them is viable. Maybe ends up as a tier 3 aggro deck that sees competitive play in some specific circumstances because it's strong against decks like token druid and murloc shaman.
Quest/Plot Twist Warlock does seem to get quite a bit of support with the quest, Plague of Flames and a few other neutral cards such as [Hearthstone Card (King Phaorsis) Not Found] but will any of it be enough to resurrect it from the absolute trash tier deck that it is currently? Probably not.
Warrior - Control Warrior isn't going anywhere. It may not have gotten many tools in this new expansion, but it got a few and frankly? It doesn't need any help to stay Tier 1.
Bomb Warrior is the same deal, pretty much. Stays at Tier 1.
Taunt Warrior could be a pretty strong deck. It remains to be seen if there will be a separate taunt warrior deck that goes all in on creating a bunch of massive taunt minions with buff cards that can be cloned by Bloodsworn Mercenary in order to easily outvalue and out tempo opponents or if we will see a control warrior that has a smaller taunt package in order to use the buffs and then the rush from Dr Boom + Tomb Warden for some pretty big board swings. Probably tier 2 for a solo taunt warrior deck.
I didn't include every possible deck out there, but anything that's viable in the current meta will probably still be viable in the next, albeit a bit weaker if the particular deck didn't get enough support. I also don't expect any of the other quest or highlander decks to be viable. Highlander decks are just too easily countered by bomb warrior and difficult to make consistent. Secret hunter is pretty much the only one that looks like it can pull it off. But what do I know? We'll see in a few weeks.
I don't see quest warrior as being a thing. For one, you already have Dr. Boom if you wanted a high value, upgraded hero power. Second, just think about how this deck competes with others. I don't see this deck as ever being able to pick up enough tempo to be able to beat a control warrior. Quest rogue will just kill any of your golems for free with their weapon. And against mage, as soon as they play giant + conjurer's calling, you're pretty close to done. This deck just seems to have less power than other aggro decks and no where near the long term value of other decks like mage, quest druid, or slower warrior builds.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't really see this deck having many favorable matchups.
It definitely looks like a strong deck, but I'd also be cautious. A lot of people in the theorycrafting thing a few days ago were running greedy decks, meme decks (ie mogu cultist decks), plot twist warlocks, etc that are either just straight up bad decks or will take quite a bit longer to refine and tune than something straightforward like battleycry shaman. Hard to say what will end up good until we've had a few weeks to actually test the whole meta out. I'd be quite surprised if it didn't end up a Tier 2 deck at least though.
I've noticed a lot of comments from people complaining about the warrior nerf, saying it didn't go far enough to deal with the endless arsenal of removal that represses mid-range and value decks. It only improves the life for aggro.
But this seems to be misunderstanding how the meta works. If control warrior is suddenly losing or going 50/50 against aggro, it's overall winrate will plummet. People play control warrior today because it has the highest winrate. It won't be everywhere like it is today if it ends up with just a mediocre tier 2 winrate thanks to aggro matchups.
Even if it doesn't improve the matchup for value/mid-range vs control warrior, it will quite possibly decrease the likelihood that you run into the deck on ladder.
I pretty much try to craft every single meta deck and give it a try, so I dust everything that's an extra and then golden copies of bad legendaries/epics. I don't usually, but every now and then will even disenchant non golden copies of legendaries and epics I don't expect to ever really be viable. Just depends on my current need for dust.
I really like this Nerf rather than raising the cost to 5 or 6 like others have suggested. It doesn't make the card completely unplayable, accidentally nerfing every Paladin deck that wants to draw cards.
For the most part my predictions about decks were reasonably accurate. Probably the only two I was wrong about would be quest druid and bomb warrior. I expected quest druid to be much stronger, but I think it would only work in specific metas. It's in a weird spot where it's too slow that aggro decks can run it over fairly easily, while it doesn't quite have enough umph to be able to overwhelm slow, controlling decks like control warrior or freeze mage. I put it at tier 2, and right now it's looking more like it will end up in tier 3 unless people figure something out.
Bomb warrior I expected to stay strong and perhaps be even stronger because of it's ability to disrupt highlander decks with its bombs. It's honestly still a reasonably powerful tier 2 deck but just no one is really playing it right now (I guess since control warrior is better).
My predictions were mainly wrong in regards to decks I expected would be bad but ended up actually being good. Quest paladin I thought would be pretty garbage, and while it is pretty weak, it excels against control warrior. I don't think I expected control warrior to be such a big part of the meta, and if that ever dies down, so will quest paladin. I kinda figured highlander mage and hunter would be sorta playable, but didn't expect them to be near the top of the meta.
For the most part though I think everything is reasonably close to where I expected it to be.
Yeah, they're from hsreplay. Premium lets you view a lot more things than you get to see for free. It's pretty cheap, provides some interesting statistics to look at (being able to see deck popularity at each rank is pretty useful too), and I like being able to support the info that hsreplay puts out.
I've been trying a quest shaman that's basically a control shaman list. Earthquake is a really nice AOE in a lot of instances and plague of murlocs does give us a way of dealing with early giants. I'm just not sure if the quest actually makes sense in the deck; it might be better to just drop the quest and lackey stuff in favor of more removal like hex or lightning bolt.
I like the legendaries being more specialized rather than just overpowered, auto include cards like ragnaros, dr boom, sylvanus, loatheb, etc. It makes decks more interesting and unique, rather than both sides being the same powerful shell that differs mainly on some of the class card inclusions. Decks from any individual class are almost not alike at all.
I can understand the issue for free to play players though. You can't just craft a few safe legendaries and be able to play most decks after crafting a few epics and a couple class legendaries. But as someone who pays a reasonable amount of money, I care more about the quality of gameplay than the accessibility for people who don't want to spend anything on it.
I'd like to think that the lower winrate of quest shaman and quest druid is due to the large amount of experimentation, and that as time goes on, the better builds will win out and they will both end up with higher winrates. I'm not so hopeful though, especially on quest druid. Quest shaman shows more promise.
For quest druid: At all ranks, it is 49.5% over the entire expansion. Last 3 days it is at 48.7% and last 1 day it is at 47.5%. So it seems that the quest druid is just worsening over time. At upper ranks it is doing even worse. From rank 5-legend, it is 47.1% over the whole expansion, 46.6% over past 3 days and 45.7% over the past day. It's looking bleak for quest druid.
For quest shaman: At all ranks, it is 49% over the entire expansion. Past 3 days, it is also 49%. Past 1 day, it is up to 49.5%. It's been improving slightly, so there might be some promise here. At upper ranks, it is 48.2% over the whole expansion. Past 3 days, it is at 48.3%. Past 1 day it is at 48.6%. So we've seen some improvement, though it's still fairly negative.
Quest shaman I'd say is also the deck that has the most possibilities for different builds. You can go all the way from a fast aggro version meant to burn down the opponent immediately, all the way up to a fatigue style control deck. So there's a lot more possibilities and variance in the builds, as well as a lot more room to find the perfect formula that will have the best chances of winning in the current meta.
Quest druid on the other hand is far more straight forward in its build. The number of different choose one cards are rather limited, so the different ways you can actually build the deck are limited as well. Druid doesn't have the tools to be much of a control deck without single target removals or any serious board clears, nor can the quest be aggro with how it forces you to skip using your mana. It will always be either a midrange value deck or some sort of crazy combo deck with Elise.
So based on the info we have available, I'd assume that when everything is finished, quest shaman will end up as a pretty solid T2 deck list while quest druid will be little more than a tier 3 deck used in certain competitive circumstances where you can ban bad matchups. Even then though, there may be better options.
It doesn't seem like there is any deck that's too strong at the moment, but one of my biggest gripes with the initial impression is that the meta feels very rock paper scissors like. It could be that it's my deck specifically, since I've been playing a combo burn mage deck, but certain matchups are impossible to either win or lose.
Quest druid demolishes me, since my only way to deal with their board is frost Nova + doomsayer, and they'll usually be able to Starfall the doomsayer or kill it with Loti. I haven't won once against that deck.
While zoolock is almost impossible to lose against. They basically burn themselves for me with all the self damage mechanics and they rarely have any way to deal with frost Nova + doomsayer to clear their board. Quest shaman is similarly weak, since they don't put up enough pressure to kill me before I can burn them down.
Murloc paladin seems an impossible deck to beat against nearly any aggro deck when they play tip the scales on turn 4 or 5. At the same time, my aggro pirate rogue demolishes so many decks, hunters especially, since they can't do anything about all my damage to face.
This may just be the result of an early, unrefined meta. I just hope it doesn't end up being too much of a rock paper scissors meta, otherwise hardly anyone will enjoy it
I'm just glad I'm not running into bomb warriors tbh.
On quest druid, the win condition is pretty simple. Make big plays with the doubled choose one cards and kill your opponent's face. Same win condition most decks have. The main question I have is if the quest reward is really as unfair as some of the other conditions in other decks, such as making a board full of giants or 10 mana minions.
On OTK priest, the addition of Amet would slightly improve the consistency of the combo, but I'd imagine the deck would need to start out already in the tier 3 or tier 4 category for that to make it somewhat playable. Going from so unplayable its completely off the radar to a strong deck just because of a couple extra chances at drawing the combo. Maybe it makes it into the tier 4 category? Guess we'll see soon enough either way.
Well, it would be a pretty good choice to pull out of your deck with Duel!. I remember earlier on in RoS people were running Big Paladins. Maybe you could try to make it work.
So just to go class by class:
Druid - Token druid will still be a thing, and got a couple of cards that might make it better than it is now. Probably tier 2 or tier 3.
Quest druid looks pretty good and will have a ton of late game value. Will probably work quite well against control warrior, though it's early game is necessarily weak because of the quest. Unlikely to be more than tier 2 because of that.
Combo druid ?? Elise is definitely a strong card, but hard to see what sort of combo would work here. I'll leave that to people who are far more creative in their deck building than I am to try and figure out.
Mage - Cyclone mage will continue to be powerful. Probably will remain a tier 1 deck, I don't see any big counters to it coming out.
Secret mage seems a bit iffy, but probably playable. Maybe cusp of tier 3 to tier 4.
Big spell mage I'm not sure on. Could be playable, probably will end up tier 3 because of a weakness to aggressive strategies.
Freeze Mage will continue to be an alternative to the cyclone mage if you want to do better against slower decks like control warrior. It didn't really get many new tools in this expansion though, but might be able to murge somewhat with the big spell mage so that you're playing big minions and big spells. Probably tier 2 either way.
Hunter - Mech hunter will continue to be around, but with no new cards will likely just be a fair bit weaker. It was already pretty mediocre and just played because it was simple, fast and easy to secure victories against bad players/poorly refined decks at lower ranks. With the expansion it will likely drop down to a tier 3 aggro deck no one wastes their time playing.
Midrange got a few new tools to play around with, but will probably stick to being at the tier 2 level.
Quest Hunter initially looks pretty bad, but there are some pretty good cards printed for the quest and it's actually not as hard for them to summon 20 minions as it might initially seem. The hero power is also pretty insane if you can pair it with charge minions from unleash the hounds, leeroy jenkins, or with tundra rhino. Probably tier 3 but could make it into tier 2.
Secret Hunter could either end up as singleton or as a more normal secret hunter deck, but will undoubtedly be a powerful deck. Either tier 2 or tier 1, it will still have a big weakness to control warrior though.
Paladin - Holy Wrath will remain playable. I'm curious to try out a more midrange version that uses Tip the Scales in order to clear out the deck and create tempo to stay alive rather than strictly control tools to stabilize. Might still just be a tier 2 deck.
Mech paladin didn't get anything new and wasn't that great to begin with. Might fall down to a tier 3 deck, or remain at the tier 2 level.
Quest Paladin forces you to run a bunch of bad reborn cards in order to get an effect which is only good if you're ahead. Which you won't be, since you'll be playing garbage cards for most of the game. Tier 4.
Priest - Quest Priest (?) might be a thing. Priest got a lot of really powerful cards, but I'm having trouble envisioning what sort of deck will be built from all of it. Priest might still be trash if it can't all come together well.
OTK Priest will be a tier 4 garbage meme deck and nothing more. If it was going to be good, people would already be playing Stormwind Knight + Power Word: Shield x2 + Divine Spirit x2 + Topsy Turvy for the same amount of mana and the same number of cards. It will die to aggro before it can get the combo off, it just hard loses to any sort of deck that has lots of taunts, control warrior will almost always have enough armor to survive it... I just don't see how this deck could possibly be competitively viable.
Resurrect Priest will maybe see some more life because of psychopump, but will probably stick to the tier 3 category.
Rogue - Quest rogue will probably be pretty good, it's very easy to activate and always having a 3/2 weapon with immune is insane. Probably tier 2, could be tier 1.
Tempo rogue will stay as a tier 1 deck most likely, it's getting a few new cards and there's not much reason to expect it to get worse.
Deathrattle/mecha'thun rogue (?) maybe becomes playable, I have no idea.
Mogu Cultist combo rogue will be a tier 4 meme deck. Too hard to pull off against anything with any aggression, and even against control warrior the end result will only deal 20 damage to them. It's too much work for too little pay off in most situations.
Shaman - Battlecry shaman looks quite strong, though it remains to see how it stands up against other decks currently in the meta. Most likely a tier 2 deck, has the potential to be tier 1.
Aggro shaman using overload, tokens and some of the new tools like Plague of Murlocs will likely still be as good as it is now, if not better. Probably a tier 2 card.
Control Shaman will be dead just as it is now. Earthquake is good against reborn minions, but no one will be playing reborn minions much at all and it isn't enough to kill giants. It's worse than control warrior which means there's not really much of a reason to try to make it work until April.
Murloc Shaman got a few new tools, but will likely be overshadowed by the other new shaman cards that buff up aggro and create battlecry shaman. Probably tier 2 or 3 aggro deck.
Warlock - Lackey Zoo looks to be pretty good. Lackeys are strong, turning lackeys into 5/5s for 3 mana while also getting a 3/3 is pretty insane. Some of the other new cards like Neferset Thrasher and Diseased Vulture might make a more midrange zoo warlock pretty good. I find Dark Pharaoh Tekahn questionable. While he'd be insane on his own, you might as well just turn your lackeys into 5/5s with EVIL Recruiter. I don't know if there will be enough lackeys for both to make sense.
Carpet Zoo doesn't really get much that's exciting. It will likely be overshadowed by the lackey zoo deck, if either of them is viable. Maybe ends up as a tier 3 aggro deck that sees competitive play in some specific circumstances because it's strong against decks like token druid and murloc shaman.
Quest/Plot Twist Warlock does seem to get quite a bit of support with the quest, Plague of Flames and a few other neutral cards such as [Hearthstone Card (King Phaorsis) Not Found] but will any of it be enough to resurrect it from the absolute trash tier deck that it is currently? Probably not.
Warrior - Control Warrior isn't going anywhere. It may not have gotten many tools in this new expansion, but it got a few and frankly? It doesn't need any help to stay Tier 1.
Bomb Warrior is the same deal, pretty much. Stays at Tier 1.
Taunt Warrior could be a pretty strong deck. It remains to be seen if there will be a separate taunt warrior deck that goes all in on creating a bunch of massive taunt minions with buff cards that can be cloned by Bloodsworn Mercenary in order to easily outvalue and out tempo opponents or if we will see a control warrior that has a smaller taunt package in order to use the buffs and then the rush from Dr Boom + Tomb Warden for some pretty big board swings. Probably tier 2 for a solo taunt warrior deck.
I didn't include every possible deck out there, but anything that's viable in the current meta will probably still be viable in the next, albeit a bit weaker if the particular deck didn't get enough support. I also don't expect any of the other quest or highlander decks to be viable. Highlander decks are just too easily countered by bomb warrior and difficult to make consistent. Secret hunter is pretty much the only one that looks like it can pull it off. But what do I know? We'll see in a few weeks.
I don't see quest warrior as being a thing. For one, you already have Dr. Boom if you wanted a high value, upgraded hero power. Second, just think about how this deck competes with others. I don't see this deck as ever being able to pick up enough tempo to be able to beat a control warrior. Quest rogue will just kill any of your golems for free with their weapon. And against mage, as soon as they play giant + conjurer's calling, you're pretty close to done. This deck just seems to have less power than other aggro decks and no where near the long term value of other decks like mage, quest druid, or slower warrior builds.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't really see this deck having many favorable matchups.
It definitely looks like a strong deck, but I'd also be cautious. A lot of people in the theorycrafting thing a few days ago were running greedy decks, meme decks (ie mogu cultist decks), plot twist warlocks, etc that are either just straight up bad decks or will take quite a bit longer to refine and tune than something straightforward like battleycry shaman. Hard to say what will end up good until we've had a few weeks to actually test the whole meta out. I'd be quite surprised if it didn't end up a Tier 2 deck at least though.