The last time we had a mission like this, it was to "play an old god X times," which was abolished because not everyone had access to them.
So, are they going to repeat their error, or are we receiving a free quest as well?
The reasoning of changing the weekly quest to play the old gods was not because its unavailable to a section of the population, but because the meta was so tragic that it was thought to be impossible to do so. Not to mention that the old gods were in general not thought to be good and youve got to wait 10 turns to play them.
The stormwind quest on the other hand doesn't suffer from this problem, because even at its worst its usually easily completed within 7 turns and below. I finish quest druid in duels about 6 turns in on average, and the deck is solid enough that I dont have to contrive much to get it done.
Having gone through two metas now without this being changed, I dont think theres a good chance of seeing it removed anytime soon. Most likely it'll be gone when stormwind rotates from standard.
Its not like druids are hurting for mana that they can't direct the amalgam to one of the whelps. And in matches where Kazakusan isn't important they can just get a few more nagas, like Dozing Kelpkeeper or another giant easily.
The only true factor here is that they probably have to remove some of their early game to do this. Probably on the chopping block; 1x Innervate, 1x Wrath, or remove the Smothering Starfish.
Their winrate will still probably tank, dont get me wrong, but I dont think the conditions will end up removing kazakusan from druids.
To be honest, 4 dragons really isn't much considering that the current ramp druid doesn't even play kazakusan until every single threat has been removed from their game. 2x Amalgam of the Deep basically does the job, and isn't really a slouch in doing other stuff whenever you dont need kazakusan to win (aggro games, etc.) Perhaps that's why they nerfed Miracle Growth along, but not touching Scale of Onyxia or simply reverting Nourish to 6 mana means we'll likely still be seeing ramp druid unless the nerf to pirate warrior introduces more decks that can beat druid.
My guess is that they will remove the Druid of the Reefs or perhaps one Wrath from the deck and put in double amalgams and pretend that everything is still solid. Team5 should've just made it 8 dragons to seal the deal completely, because that's presumably what they designed Kazakusan to be in the first place; be the cherry on top of a dragon cake. Not a card to be included into greed decks simply because they felt like it.
But team5 does have the data and I would presume that they did their playtesting before selecting the arbitrary number of 4 as the conditions for kazakusan.
The funny thing is that there's a real possibility that druids can adapt with the dragon package, with either Faerie Dragon, Twilight Drake or Amalgam of the Deep. If amalgam is the game, then its two copies and you're good because druids already play Scale of Onyxia and Raid Boss Onyxia herself. At very worst the amalgams can fetch more giants or just a simple Dozing Kelpkeeper.
I guess that's why they nerfed miracle growth too. Wish they revert nourish back to 6 along as well.
Our best hope is that druids are forced to cut off their early game to support the two additional amalgams so their win rate tanks downwards (along with their play rate) enough that it would only be an occasional problem for slower decks. Otherwise, I think there's still much for Mutanus to be doing until the next nerf patch.
There is unfortunately no precedent for this because the first card that got banned, demon seed, is still in standard. Im not sure if they would give them the old warsong commander treatment, but Switcheroo definitely be worthy of it. Turn 4 OTK is about as fast as it gets, even in wild.
Glad to see nerfs to Kazakusan and quest warrior, although Im sure quest warrior will still be somewhere lurking in our nightmares.
The Switcheroo nerf is funny, because it essentially only means priest needs only one additional card to do whats its been doing, which will explain why it got banned from wild despite a nerf. So...what are you going to be doing in two years time when it moves to wild proper, team5? Or are we going where a turn 4 lethal is essentially too slow then?
Im not too worried about dhunter. Ive played it to some success, but its clear that its only there because it has a good matchup against druid (one of the few decks that does) and quest warrior. It only really has two power cards, Battleworn Vanguard on 2 and Drek'Thar on 4. Miss either of these and the deck functions like a wet noodle unless your opponent literally doesn't know how to play the game and Wrathscale Naga rng is in your favor. But admitably, if druids do drop to tier 3 again then there's a possibility of it evolving to a more midrange deck with Illidari Inquisitors
The change will surely bolster both shaman and paladin decks, particularly rainbow shaman and control pally. Face and quest hunter also losses its worst matchup as well, so it'll likely slot in but its terribly weak against token dhunter so we'll see.
Next on the complain list following this change? Miracle naga mage probably.
- There has got to be a nerf to Kazakusan. I dont mind druids playing big stuff because that's what ramp is supposed to get to, but having kazakusan at the very end makes it nearly impossible to outlast druid in any late game scenario. In fact, the best way to deal with kazakusan in general is to eat it with Mutanus. The conditions is too flimsy and as we have seen, druid can easily just play it in a non-dragon deck and still manage to play it.
The most elegant way is to give it the hooktusk treatment and require 8 dragons be played before he even becomes active.
- Im actually thinking about a nerf hit to Whetstone Hatchet instead of Defias Cannoneer and Pufferfist. Having vipered their weapon before, I find quest warrior gets really bad really fast without a weapon in hand. Maybe increase its costs to 2? Worth speculating.
- Im not sure what they can do about Mr. Smite. The card isn't as broken as it looks, but being able to discover multiple copies of the card is like being able to play more than one leeroy per game. If we're not hitting this, then Gorehowl has got to go, because the weapon pool is small enough that I think getting hit with more than 15 in one turn because of rng is getting way too consistent to be fair.
- Switcheroo banned in wild. Kael'thas nerfed to what it once was.
I dont play it either, and up until I saw this I wasn't even aware this was a problem. At least there's nothing on reddit about it.
But it fact that this card instantly counters most of the colossal minions would probably be my guess. Likely team5 have enough data to show that colossal minions are just not very good in arena because of this card and wanted to change that.
I sucked off the Filletfighter achievement by doing the wrong Mr. Smiite order. How long will it take to find an opponent who doesn't concede when I show lethal?
Play the filletfighter first. Most of the time once they see mr smite they know the game is over. If you drag fast enough the lag between players will allow you to execute the move even if the animation doesn't play.
Its an unfortunate circumstance that will happen in every rotation because of the smaller pool available. This never used to be a problem because classic was sufficiently big and useless enough that most discover effects gets diluted fairly well. But core, featuring a smaller amount of cards, changed all that and we're at where we're at.
As bad as Amalgam of the Deep is abusing the smaller pool right now, at very least its a neutral card so you can easily abuse it back yourself. So while I think the card needs a stat nerf, its still kinda within what I could consider as fair.
Also, your suggestion doesn't really solve much since by diluting the pool according to rarity it can more easily be abused by something else like Venomous Scorpid or Pandaren Importer, and it makes the game more linear, which I dont think team5 would want.
Its much better to simply remove the possibilities of getting additional copies of certain cards. This is already in effect for quest cards. So why not legendaries as well?
I think team5 have stated before the going first has an advantage over second, and that the advantage is about 1%.
In general, most decks would do better going first. This has severe implications on how the game flows, because going first means youve got initiative over your opponent, and while your opponent can leverage a temporary ramp advantage with coin, you're always going to be playing your power turns first over your opponent who then has to play reactively to whatever you've done. Unsurprisingly, this is more important to aggro decks, and in aggro mirrors can easily decide games.
The only reason why anyone would prefer going second is actually coin, not card advantage. Rogue and druids would almost always prefer going second for that reason (rogue because of combo, druid because they can ramp earlier). Even face hunter before Kolkar Pack Runner got nerfed, can do very cancerous stuff simply because of the additional coin. Naga decks in particular also prefer getting coin, for synergistic reasons.
Metas can also determine the advantage gap, not merely decks and classes. As we have seen in stormwind, starting first has a fairly huge advantage in terms of win rate, so much that it can be felt in game. This is also true during the early phases of alterac before Irondeep Trogg got nerfed. You can literally lock your opponent out of using coin, or play anything for that matter, entirely.
To me at least, I think this first-second issue is fairly done and dusted. This part of the system functions well enough, and Ive yet to see any good suggestions from anyone on what should replace it, if at all.
You can more easily finish piranha's by playing pally in wild. Just buff it and then double its attack with Blessed Champion. Just run a few minions that gives stuff to your opponent and rush it in. Might take a few tries, but its better than doing it one at a time. Paladin can even easily tutor those fishes.
I have to agree with the rogue and warrior 500xp achievement. Seems more like a joke. The best I can think of for rogue is to get the two cards out, play it after something like faelin or Academic Espionage and just concede for another game. Probably skip this myself, because xp or no, Im not bshitting myself for team5's amusement. Because unless you're literally running 50 games per day in standard there's no chance this can ever be done naturally in 4 months.
As for warrior's, it can go fuck itself. The Fires of Zin-Azshari being an epic card is bad enough. First drawing it, then playing one card per turn with an unhelpful opponent, and wild being the cesspool as it is? yeah, just not happening.
Zeddy explanation why aggro is so relevant based on Blizzard communication (important start is at 4:56)
In the video he describes why he feels aggro are favored by design and then proceeds to show and describe the top decks currently (and in boomsday) being non-aggro decks.
And then he continues his argument as though as that doesn't mean anything.
In truth, I think he was trying to use the article as proof of how blizz is intrinsically designing their games to be short, so they'd be more 'mobile friendly'. But somehow, he either forgets about or confuses the message to be something about how aggro cards are favored by design.
But if Ive got to be honest, I can't find any support that aggro is being favored above other archetypes. The best decks in the past year are nearly all non-aggro decks, and the last time I can remember that aggro was a consistent threat was the MSoG era when Small-Time Buccaneer and patches were tearing everything to pieces...and then buccaneer got nerfed, and from there on its mostly just variants of zoolock and face hunter.
There's always good aggro or face decks around; odd rogue, face hunter, healock (some of the weirdest shit in history), aggro shadow priest, aggro druid, secret pally, etc. But for all those, there's always plenty other decks like giants mage, shirvallah pally, raza priest, control odd warrior, quest druid, quest mage, spell mage, etc. More often than not, an aggro deck is simply never the best deck for a skilled player looking to rise up the top.
We're nearly a week past the expansion/rotation. Mech mage has suddenly fallen down the cards, murlock is nowhere to be seen, token dhunter cannot and will not beat any control deck, and the much hated quest warrior is nearly 100% reliant on Mr. Smite somewhere somehow to win (sadly because of the smaller pool, this is fairly consistent)
I have to agree with suchti here; I think in this instance, zeddy is reading way too much into that specific response in the article.
Edit: There was one era more recent than MSoG that an aggro deck was the top tier. AoO featured a massively overpowered tempo dhunter that basically took the entire meta for ransom. But the story ends the same way; it got nerfed (three times) and we haven't heard or seen it since the start of scholomance.
I completely agree that the Switcheroo Priest is a tilting, highrolly deck, but the data on HSReplay (which is certainly only preliminary since the expansion just launched) suggests that it's generally pretty bad in Standard. In theory that should be enough to fix the problem on its own, but here are some of my thoughts on the cards in question:
If the mana cost of Switcheroo were to increase, it would only serve to make the card exclusively relevant to high-roll decks (because it would be too expensive as draw elsewhere). That seems bad.
I actually think it's good to have a limited number of cards like Twin-fin Fin Twin that summon a "copy" rather than "another" version of the card. This incentivizes handbuffing strategies, which I think is valuable. Without that copying, it's on par with Spring Rocket in terms of its power level, which seems a little wrong since it's a rare compared to a common.
Stonetusk Boar seems to see play in Wild exclusively as part of a degenerate combo deck, but I wouldn't love seeing it removed because a lot of those degenerate combos require assembling lots of cards
With all that in mind, I think the best fix is to ban Switcheroo in Wild and remove Rush from Twin-fin Fin Twin. The former solves the Wild problem completely, and the latter should make Switcheroo Priest even more vulnerable to aggressive strategies, driving down the win rate for Standard Switcheroo Priest so low that no one will want to play it. (You could consider upping the base stats of the Twin-fin a bit to account for the change.)
With these changes, Switcheroo can still be a relevant card in Silence Priest or Miracle Priest strategies, and Twin-fin Fin Twin can still be relevant to handbuff decks where it was clearly intended to be relevant. Switcheroo Priest will still be intact enough for people to play it if they really love that high-rolling nonsense, but it will be slow enough that it won't become a major part of the meta ecosystem.
Banning Switcheroo from wild would solve most things, for now. When it eventually rotates, I doubt the world have moved on to the extent that the combo would cease to be relevant. Turn 4 OTK is about as fast as it gets, barring druid bs.
I can't say I can agree with the twinfin solution though. Removing rush from this indirectly reduces the viability of murloc and handbuff decks, and looking at their power levels I wouldn't call that fair at all, particularly when they can just nerf switcheroo to 4 or limit its draw to cards that costs less than 6.
But knowing team5, they'd probably just increase switcheroo's and twinfin's costs. An effective though less elegant fix.
Im not sure how team will address this problem, except nerfing boar or changing Switcheroo altogether. Its actually doing the same thing with twinfin/deathwing in standard too, but that is a much, much less problem than what wild is facing right now.
It does, but that's a class limited solution. Warriors can also deal with them by gaining more than 10 armor and kill both boars.
Also even if boar is nerfed there's still Bluegill Warrior and Wolfrider. They're slower sure, but still the same problems.
I guess there is a neutral option, in the form of Blademaster Okani, but I suspect that's far too late. Its still an option though.
Yeah, I thought of that card and Hecklebot. They're both kinda too late to be played.
There's also one more option, which is Deathlord. But you still have to have a way to kill it. But hilariously these are simply too slow to counter this deck.
Im not sure how team will address this problem, except nerfing boar or changing Switcheroo altogether. Its actually doing the same thing with twinfin/deathwing in standard too, but that is a much, much less problem than what wild is facing right now.
It does, but that's a class limited solution. Warriors can also deal with them by gaining more than 10 armor and kill both boars.
Also even if boar is nerfed there's still Bluegill Warrior and Wolfrider. They're slower sure, but still the same problems.
I guess there is a neutral option, in the form of Blademaster Okani, but I suspect that's far too late. Its still an option though.
Im not sure how team will address this problem, except nerfing boar or changing Switcheroo altogether. Its actually doing the same thing with twinfin/deathwing in standard too, but that is a much, much less problem than what wild is facing right now.
Mech mage and miracle naga mage practically plays the same way, just wait and then vomit out stats and swing board. With removals being thin right now, there's not many decks that can swing right back after a big turn like that. But the deck has some issues against tempo decks, and they're still slow enough that I dont really consider it impossible to play against.
Quest pirate warrior is a problem less because of the pirates, which differs very little from before rotation, and more because of the seeming ease of discovering multiple Mr. Smites per game. Slow decks have little to no chance, because everyone is teching against control by having nellie in their deck, and the pool is small enough that you'll likely get mr. smite off nellie and then its practically game over.
Against tempo decks though, and vomit decks like mage, quest pirate has problems. A lot of problems.
Will we see a week 1 nerf this time? Not sure really. I guess if the play rates for quest warrior is high enough team5 might be forced to act. Not sure what they can do though, but I wont be too surprised if they decide to axe Mr. Smite in one way or another.
Oh, and I should also say that if Amalgam of the Deep gets a stat nerf I wont be surprised neither.
The reasoning of changing the weekly quest to play the old gods was not because its unavailable to a section of the population, but because the meta was so tragic that it was thought to be impossible to do so. Not to mention that the old gods were in general not thought to be good and youve got to wait 10 turns to play them.
The stormwind quest on the other hand doesn't suffer from this problem, because even at its worst its usually easily completed within 7 turns and below. I finish quest druid in duels about 6 turns in on average, and the deck is solid enough that I dont have to contrive much to get it done.
Having gone through two metas now without this being changed, I dont think theres a good chance of seeing it removed anytime soon. Most likely it'll be gone when stormwind rotates from standard.
Its not like druids are hurting for mana that they can't direct the amalgam to one of the whelps. And in matches where Kazakusan isn't important they can just get a few more nagas, like Dozing Kelpkeeper or another giant easily.
The only true factor here is that they probably have to remove some of their early game to do this. Probably on the chopping block; 1x Innervate, 1x Wrath, or remove the Smothering Starfish.
Their winrate will still probably tank, dont get me wrong, but I dont think the conditions will end up removing kazakusan from druids.
To be honest, 4 dragons really isn't much considering that the current ramp druid doesn't even play kazakusan until every single threat has been removed from their game. 2x Amalgam of the Deep basically does the job, and isn't really a slouch in doing other stuff whenever you dont need kazakusan to win (aggro games, etc.) Perhaps that's why they nerfed Miracle Growth along, but not touching Scale of Onyxia or simply reverting Nourish to 6 mana means we'll likely still be seeing ramp druid unless the nerf to pirate warrior introduces more decks that can beat druid.
My guess is that they will remove the Druid of the Reefs or perhaps one Wrath from the deck and put in double amalgams and pretend that everything is still solid. Team5 should've just made it 8 dragons to seal the deal completely, because that's presumably what they designed Kazakusan to be in the first place; be the cherry on top of a dragon cake. Not a card to be included into greed decks simply because they felt like it.
But team5 does have the data and I would presume that they did their playtesting before selecting the arbitrary number of 4 as the conditions for kazakusan.
Been giving it some thought.
The funny thing is that there's a real possibility that druids can adapt with the dragon package, with either Faerie Dragon, Twilight Drake or Amalgam of the Deep. If amalgam is the game, then its two copies and you're good because druids already play Scale of Onyxia and Raid Boss Onyxia herself. At very worst the amalgams can fetch more giants or just a simple Dozing Kelpkeeper.
I guess that's why they nerfed miracle growth too. Wish they revert nourish back to 6 along as well.
Our best hope is that druids are forced to cut off their early game to support the two additional amalgams so their win rate tanks downwards (along with their play rate) enough that it would only be an occasional problem for slower decks. Otherwise, I think there's still much for Mutanus to be doing until the next nerf patch.
There is unfortunately no precedent for this because the first card that got banned, demon seed, is still in standard. Im not sure if they would give them the old warsong commander treatment, but Switcheroo definitely be worthy of it. Turn 4 OTK is about as fast as it gets, even in wild.
Sorry, but the less stormwind quests sees play, the more healthier it would be for all of us.
It makes more sense to unnerf The Demon Seed right now to be honest, but for the same reason it should stay where it is, in standard obscurity.
Glad to see nerfs to Kazakusan and quest warrior, although Im sure quest warrior will still be somewhere lurking in our nightmares.
The Switcheroo nerf is funny, because it essentially only means priest needs only one additional card to do whats its been doing, which will explain why it got banned from wild despite a nerf. So...what are you going to be doing in two years time when it moves to wild proper, team5? Or are we going where a turn 4 lethal is essentially too slow then?
Im not too worried about dhunter. Ive played it to some success, but its clear that its only there because it has a good matchup against druid (one of the few decks that does) and quest warrior. It only really has two power cards, Battleworn Vanguard on 2 and Drek'Thar on 4. Miss either of these and the deck functions like a wet noodle unless your opponent literally doesn't know how to play the game and Wrathscale Naga rng is in your favor. But admitably, if druids do drop to tier 3 again then there's a possibility of it evolving to a more midrange deck with Illidari Inquisitors
The change will surely bolster both shaman and paladin decks, particularly rainbow shaman and control pally. Face and quest hunter also losses its worst matchup as well, so it'll likely slot in but its terribly weak against token dhunter so we'll see.
Next on the complain list following this change? Miracle naga mage probably.
Just pure speculation;
- There has got to be a nerf to Kazakusan. I dont mind druids playing big stuff because that's what ramp is supposed to get to, but having kazakusan at the very end makes it nearly impossible to outlast druid in any late game scenario. In fact, the best way to deal with kazakusan in general is to eat it with Mutanus. The conditions is too flimsy and as we have seen, druid can easily just play it in a non-dragon deck and still manage to play it.
The most elegant way is to give it the hooktusk treatment and require 8 dragons be played before he even becomes active.
- Im actually thinking about a nerf hit to Whetstone Hatchet instead of Defias Cannoneer and Pufferfist. Having vipered their weapon before, I find quest warrior gets really bad really fast without a weapon in hand. Maybe increase its costs to 2? Worth speculating.
- Im not sure what they can do about Mr. Smite. The card isn't as broken as it looks, but being able to discover multiple copies of the card is like being able to play more than one leeroy per game. If we're not hitting this, then Gorehowl has got to go, because the weapon pool is small enough that I think getting hit with more than 15 in one turn because of rng is getting way too consistent to be fair.
- Switcheroo banned in wild. Kael'thas nerfed to what it once was.
I dont play it either, and up until I saw this I wasn't even aware this was a problem. At least there's nothing on reddit about it.
But it fact that this card instantly counters most of the colossal minions would probably be my guess. Likely team5 have enough data to show that colossal minions are just not very good in arena because of this card and wanted to change that.
Play the filletfighter first. Most of the time once they see mr smite they know the game is over. If you drag fast enough the lag between players will allow you to execute the move even if the animation doesn't play.
Its an unfortunate circumstance that will happen in every rotation because of the smaller pool available. This never used to be a problem because classic was sufficiently big and useless enough that most discover effects gets diluted fairly well. But core, featuring a smaller amount of cards, changed all that and we're at where we're at.
As bad as Amalgam of the Deep is abusing the smaller pool right now, at very least its a neutral card so you can easily abuse it back yourself. So while I think the card needs a stat nerf, its still kinda within what I could consider as fair.
Also, your suggestion doesn't really solve much since by diluting the pool according to rarity it can more easily be abused by something else like Venomous Scorpid or Pandaren Importer, and it makes the game more linear, which I dont think team5 would want.
Its much better to simply remove the possibilities of getting additional copies of certain cards. This is already in effect for quest cards. So why not legendaries as well?
Best way for me is via duels with quest druid. Otherwise, Id just do it with hunter in wild.
I think team5 have stated before the going first has an advantage over second, and that the advantage is about 1%.
In general, most decks would do better going first. This has severe implications on how the game flows, because going first means youve got initiative over your opponent, and while your opponent can leverage a temporary ramp advantage with coin, you're always going to be playing your power turns first over your opponent who then has to play reactively to whatever you've done. Unsurprisingly, this is more important to aggro decks, and in aggro mirrors can easily decide games.
The only reason why anyone would prefer going second is actually coin, not card advantage. Rogue and druids would almost always prefer going second for that reason (rogue because of combo, druid because they can ramp earlier). Even face hunter before Kolkar Pack Runner got nerfed, can do very cancerous stuff simply because of the additional coin. Naga decks in particular also prefer getting coin, for synergistic reasons.
Metas can also determine the advantage gap, not merely decks and classes. As we have seen in stormwind, starting first has a fairly huge advantage in terms of win rate, so much that it can be felt in game. This is also true during the early phases of alterac before Irondeep Trogg got nerfed. You can literally lock your opponent out of using coin, or play anything for that matter, entirely.
To me at least, I think this first-second issue is fairly done and dusted. This part of the system functions well enough, and Ive yet to see any good suggestions from anyone on what should replace it, if at all.
You can more easily finish piranha's by playing pally in wild. Just buff it and then double its attack with Blessed Champion. Just run a few minions that gives stuff to your opponent and rush it in. Might take a few tries, but its better than doing it one at a time. Paladin can even easily tutor those fishes.
I have to agree with the rogue and warrior 500xp achievement. Seems more like a joke. The best I can think of for rogue is to get the two cards out, play it after something like faelin or Academic Espionage and just concede for another game. Probably skip this myself, because xp or no, Im not bshitting myself for team5's amusement. Because unless you're literally running 50 games per day in standard there's no chance this can ever be done naturally in 4 months.
As for warrior's, it can go fuck itself. The Fires of Zin-Azshari being an epic card is bad enough. First drawing it, then playing one card per turn with an unhelpful opponent, and wild being the cesspool as it is? yeah, just not happening.
In the video he describes why he feels aggro are favored by design and then proceeds to show and describe the top decks currently (and in boomsday) being non-aggro decks.
And then he continues his argument as though as that doesn't mean anything.
In truth, I think he was trying to use the article as proof of how blizz is intrinsically designing their games to be short, so they'd be more 'mobile friendly'. But somehow, he either forgets about or confuses the message to be something about how aggro cards are favored by design.
But if Ive got to be honest, I can't find any support that aggro is being favored above other archetypes. The best decks in the past year are nearly all non-aggro decks, and the last time I can remember that aggro was a consistent threat was the MSoG era when Small-Time Buccaneer and patches were tearing everything to pieces...and then buccaneer got nerfed, and from there on its mostly just variants of zoolock and face hunter.
There's always good aggro or face decks around; odd rogue, face hunter, healock (some of the weirdest shit in history), aggro shadow priest, aggro druid, secret pally, etc. But for all those, there's always plenty other decks like giants mage, shirvallah pally, raza priest, control odd warrior, quest druid, quest mage, spell mage, etc. More often than not, an aggro deck is simply never the best deck for a skilled player looking to rise up the top.
And then there's cards. He references Swordfish and Pufferfist in his video as evidence of aggro being favored. But a look at the core cards will show differently: Tar Creeper, Doomsayer, Mistress of Mixtures, Wild Pyromancer, unnerfed Equality, Candleshot, Living Roots, Wrath, etc. If team5 really wanted aggro to be the best deck, all they needed to do is to bring back patches and unnerfed buccaneer.
We're nearly a week past the expansion/rotation. Mech mage has suddenly fallen down the cards, murlock is nowhere to be seen, token dhunter cannot and will not beat any control deck, and the much hated quest warrior is nearly 100% reliant on Mr. Smite somewhere somehow to win (sadly because of the smaller pool, this is fairly consistent)
I have to agree with suchti here; I think in this instance, zeddy is reading way too much into that specific response in the article.
Edit: There was one era more recent than MSoG that an aggro deck was the top tier. AoO featured a massively overpowered tempo dhunter that basically took the entire meta for ransom. But the story ends the same way; it got nerfed (three times) and we haven't heard or seen it since the start of scholomance.
Banning Switcheroo from wild would solve most things, for now. When it eventually rotates, I doubt the world have moved on to the extent that the combo would cease to be relevant. Turn 4 OTK is about as fast as it gets, barring druid bs.
I can't say I can agree with the twinfin solution though. Removing rush from this indirectly reduces the viability of murloc and handbuff decks, and looking at their power levels I wouldn't call that fair at all, particularly when they can just nerf switcheroo to 4 or limit its draw to cards that costs less than 6.
But knowing team5, they'd probably just increase switcheroo's and twinfin's costs. An effective though less elegant fix.
There's also one more option, which is Deathlord. But you still have to have a way to kill it. But hilariously these are simply too slow to counter this deck.
I guess there is a neutral option, in the form of Blademaster Okani, but I suspect that's far too late. Its still an option though.
Does hunter essentially punishes this deck hard with Pressure Plate and Freezing Trap?
Im not sure how team will address this problem, except nerfing boar or changing Switcheroo altogether. Its actually doing the same thing with twinfin/deathwing in standard too, but that is a much, much less problem than what wild is facing right now.
Its still too early to say. Its only week 1.
Mech mage and miracle naga mage practically plays the same way, just wait and then vomit out stats and swing board. With removals being thin right now, there's not many decks that can swing right back after a big turn like that. But the deck has some issues against tempo decks, and they're still slow enough that I dont really consider it impossible to play against.
Quest pirate warrior is a problem less because of the pirates, which differs very little from before rotation, and more because of the seeming ease of discovering multiple Mr. Smites per game. Slow decks have little to no chance, because everyone is teching against control by having nellie in their deck, and the pool is small enough that you'll likely get mr. smite off nellie and then its practically game over.
Against tempo decks though, and vomit decks like mage, quest pirate has problems. A lot of problems.
Will we see a week 1 nerf this time? Not sure really. I guess if the play rates for quest warrior is high enough team5 might be forced to act. Not sure what they can do though, but I wont be too surprised if they decide to axe Mr. Smite in one way or another.
Oh, and I should also say that if Amalgam of the Deep gets a stat nerf I wont be surprised neither.