Both decks are really fun. I hadn't played around with my quest for priest since getting it so I was playing the wall res priest deck yesterday and its a lot of fun and its been my go to deck for fun. You get rolled over a lot by aggro unless you get the right answers but your late game is pretty insane. If you have your late game cards I don't think anything really out values you.
I'd say quest priest is a bit more fun if you like the big 'timmy' plays where you jam insane stats onto the board but quest druid is more competitive while still being fun and unique to play. Consider which one costs you more dust and the value of the cards you'll need to craft outside these particular decks.
quest shaman definitely not a problem. It can seem really strong when it is gets the right curve for the right matchup or the right lackeys for the right time but it's super inconsistent and is prone to terrible opening hands in my experience. Straight up aggro and tempo decks kind of blow it out from my experience playing it and against it. It's a solid deck, whether it lands at the top end of the meta or not remains to be seen but its definitely not a contender for the top deck.
control warrior is still pretty good. I haven't played it much post nerfs because it was the main thing i played before the nerfs and I'm trying new stuff, but I can't imagine it being that bad. I think one thing myself and some other players were wrong about is how the mage nerfs affected the meta. We were like "ok less mages that has to be great for warrior" but mages were the thing making other midrange and powerful late game decks unplayable because mage just scammed them with pocket galaxy. Now there are more decks with a strong late game that can give more trouble that just didn't exist in the meta before.
As for other control decks besides warrior, i've seen a few relatively high legend players playing a control shaman list that has tons of removal and healing jammed in it.
Dono created the deck I believe and hit #16 with it, https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/control-shaman-16-legend-dono-uldum-post-nerf/
I got 1600 from my golden conj callings. I'm definitely not DEing any of my normal copies of the cards.
Either going to get the stuff for quest druid or reno hunter. HL hunter is more competitively viable but quest druid is more fun and interesting to me, and might be a thing in the meta now.
i held onto my two golden conjurer's callings since week one of ROS because i knew that shit would get nerfed. Got a free legendary out of it. Feelsgoodman.
I think the buffs were excellent and a huge success. I would much rather team 5 try things out to freshen things up. Some of it will work out and thats good. Some of it won't so they revert it, that's also good. I'd rather them take chances and fix something if it doesn't feel right than being scared to make change and they do nothing.
So many of these you're say, "oh this doesn't see play so it was a fail". Not every one of these cards was supposed to see play because it was buffed. Some of them were clearly just to make fun cards less shitty for meme decks or even when discovered or randomly generated. Like you're saying Pogo was a fail but people were playing that deck in tournaments and high legend during ROS. How can that be a fail? Just because they buff a card doesn't mean they intend for it to be meta until it rotates.
Extra arms was buffed at a time when priest was hot garbage. It was fine until the new expansion. If they wanted to address the divine spirit / inner fire issue then extra arms at 2 would STILL be fine, but they don't want to kill priests only competitively viable win condition so they went the easy way and reverted extra arms. Still, even though it's being reverted I think extra arms buff was the right call.
Thunderhead pushed aggro shaman into a meta deck. That is a huge success and it's a fun and cool card.
Storm bringer is pretty playable now and it never saw play before. Fun card, success.
Glowstone tech is not just a meme. It's not a tier 1 deck card but the game doesn't exist only for tier 1 decks. Mech paladin became a meta deck in RoS because of it, and hand paladin is a decently powerful deck in the current expansion that runs with it. Jambre plays at high legend with the deck. Success.
Crystology was good at 2, but it wasn't good enough to push aggro decks over, the only deck that used it was combo paladin. Crystology is super good but i don't think it gets nerfed unless they print a 1 attack minion that is super snowbally and they've been adamant they aren't doing that. In fact i'm very confident it doesn't get nerfed. Mech paladin didn't become a thing until glowstone and crystology were buffed, that was a deck added to the meta from the buffs. Success.
Already talked about pogo.
The only truly bad buff was Luna's Pocket Galaxy. They wanted to make a cool legendary that saw very little play more playable. In ROS it was a little broken but not as toxic as when SoU was released. Had to be nerfed, it is what it is.
I held onto my two copies of golden conj i opened at ROS week one because I knew that shit would be nerfed.
Boom isn't going anywhere by the way. It was appropriately nerfed but warrior players are probably happy about these nerfs overall due to not getting farmed by mage.
I disagree it should have been six mana. That's still five mana with the coin, it's still early enough to highroll any game especially with a zeph'd wild growth. I'm sure they tested this at six. Imagine they make it six and it's still broken. You're stuck playing the same meta except mage is even better because priest is nerfed for another month.
People are saying it's garbage at 7 but it's really not. It saw some fringe play in cyclone mage lists at high legend when warrior was played a lot. and that was in Cyclone mage which benefited from the card MUCH less than the current expansions mage decks. This could still be played in reno mage. Sometimes you tutor pocket galaxy from the 8 mana dude and it still wins you the game. It's a huge nerf for sure but it's still playable and probably requires less greedy deck building.
Its a good nerf, the card was a burden on the game and soured the expansion a bit.
This might not have been the best way to handle the giant+conj interaction, but it's probably the easiest and required the least risk of fucking it up which is fine as long as it gets the job done.
It doesn't kill the strategy but forces it to be more interactive or come out slower. You have to stick the giant, doing the combo from hand comes out a turn later which is hard in the face of pressure.
You can't get this from magic trick anymore also. I feel like the nerf to this in general hurts cyclone / big spell more than reno.
I like this nerf. I didn't want the effect of the card to change. I also don't want warrior to be so strong that it defines the meta and everything is a warrior counter.
This is a super strong nerf to the tempo of control warrior but not value, and I think that is the perfect way to nerf the deck imo. It's supposed to be a powerful late game card, having to pass an entire turn.
When you're under pressure you usually try to set up a boom + shield slam on 8 or boom + hero power on 9. This means you have to play a 9 mana heal 7 or hold a shield slam till ten and even still that is so slow. It's a lot harder to get boom up against decks that can compound pressure. Aggro decks still lose to warrior because they don't even really need boom to beat aggro anyway. Control decks still get grinded out. Combo decks are going to be stronger against warrior now because the boom tempo coming out later gives your counter pressure game a lot less time to work. Midrange decks will be stronger against control warrior because they run a top end on the deck to keep up the pressure but they won't be favored. I think this seems like a pretty good balance on paper.
I think this changes the way you build and play control warrior a bit. For one thing you aren't keeping this card in any match except the mirror now. You might not be able to play so much early game because you are going to have to stretch games out with some mid game cards before you get boom,. The way control warrior is currently built is it's a bunch of dominant early game control tools and then you let boom carry the rest of the way but now I think you'll need some other late game stuff to get you to a point where you can play boom, but i'm not sure. You might have to omega assembly before ten more now just for more board presence, lowering late game value.
I also think of the three classes that were nerfed, warrior was weakened the least and benefits the most by mage being nerfed.
unrelated but I wish all control warrior players could come together and agree to just not run Archivist. It would just make the deck better in every other matchup and the mirror wouldn't come down to RNG. I don't want to run two 9 mana cards. Archivist might get cut because of this nerf now that I think about it. but if the mirror is common it will stay in because arms race mentality.
It's not a false dilemma. If you run the quest you are statistically less likely to have a cleric along with other early game cards, and there isn't a single matchup you don't want cleric or the other early game cards. Combo priest wins by snowballing the early game, having a dead card for the first chunk of the game doesn't help you get early board and snowball, it does the opposite. Of course you can mulligan the quest, but what is the point of having the quest if it is better to mulligan it in literally every matchup, because it's just not good in the deck and does not fit your gameplan. Having to mulligan it also still weakens your mulligan because that could have been a good card. What are these matchups where a 3/3 buff is going to help a deck with no comeback mechanics, because you haven't mentioned them yet. Even if these mythical matchups exist, it wouldn't be enough to justify weakening your opening mulligan and potential draws.
Calling it a streamer thing is ridiculous and is showing some serious weird bias you have going on. You think pros going to korea for masters and people winning open cups with priest are just playing what they play because "lol a streamer played it". Combo priest isn't the highest winrate deck in the meta because a streamer played it, and it isn't better with the quest. This stuff has been tested. For the record, completely standard combo priest has 49% winrate with the quest in it on HSreplay which is a whopping 10% lower than the most played list. It's almost like having a terrible card in your hand every game is bad. The quest has the third lowest drawn rate in the deck.
You're the one not thinking critically here, sometimes things stay outside the box for a reason.
A few things about this meta feel...well to speak frankly idiotic.
To start, the Aggro Priest variant:
It utilizes practically all the cards a Quest priest variant would want. To not run quest in this version of the deck seems to speak to the "lemming problem". (i.e. A popular streamer/pro player showcases a deck, despite it being flawed or perhaps unrefined the "masses" start to play it even though it practically makes no sense.)
I get it, Lightwarden makes the deck aggro oriented, and you want to play lightwarden on 1 so you can buff it/heal and get out of control fast. I get it. However, when the deck loses, it loses hard....except if it had the quest it wouldn't lose hard. All the deck has to do is swap 1 minion out for the quest, and you will get MUCH more value.
IMO the deck doesn't need Leeroy Jenkins, between Lightwardens, Inner Fire combos, and possibly including the quest, the deck wouldn't need Leeroy in the first place. And even if you DID run leeroy, You'd want to run it with the quest so you could 8 mana combo for 9 damage.
Everything about this deck, and the people proliferating it's popularity makes ZERO sense. I implore you. If you're running aggro priest, just run the quest with it. Swap out one card that you don't have, or feel like you don't need as much (cough cough 1x Inner fire is enough to combo with...cough cough) And enjoy a much more robust deck. It would be similar to running a ton of battlecry minions in shaman, and not running the quest because you want to play a turn 1 minion. It's dumb NOT to include the quest in those instances.
Quest Shaman:
I've found weaponized wasp to be highly inconsistent, and often when you play Shudderwock you're playing it on an empty board so you won't be triggering the wasps battlecry effect with the Wock himself. Running 2x Questing Explorer and 2x Novice Engineer feels redundant. Both are only used to create hand size early on pre-quest completion. After quest completion you often don't find yourself running out of resources.
Evil Totem is great if it goes off and survives for more than 1 round, but often it's 2 mana for 1 lackey which is horrible. I know it makes wasp more consistent to use, but again...I feel like running Youthful Brewmasters or Bog Sloshers and just bouncing your existing lackey generators would be actually better, and in the case of the 2 latter; they progress the quest forward immediately, where Evil Totem does not.
Mogu Fleshshaper isn't horrible, but I find that if you're gonna run that card, you probably want to run mutute. Yes, it's technically card disadvantage, and sometimes you won't be able to combo them, but the times it high rolls and gives you an 8 drop on turn 3-4, it will pay for itself.
Personally I'm actually running a different decklist with Quest Shaman utilizing Siamat to buff up Shudderwock, and giggling inventors to stall. It's proved fun, if not somewhat inconsistent. I guess I'm on the "control" side of Quest Shaman, and there's no right answer, but the deck provided above feels very unrefined.
Aggro Warrior:
Haven't actually seen this that much. But it's a one trick pony. Either it goes off cause you have no answer, or it stalls out. Any decent midrange/control deck is able to fend it off fairly easily, even with quest completion. Only other aggro decks will have a hard time from what I've seen.
You're super wrong on the quest in priest. Combo priest wins or loses games way before the effect is relevant. You would rather have a CHANCE at a cleric on one than ever have that quest in your opening hand. Calling it a streamer thing is silly, these things have been tested over thousands of games and statistics show you don't run the quest in combo priest. Combo priest is one of the highest winrate decks in the meta, if the quest made it better people would be aware.
I do think Leeroy is not a good card in combo priest but this deck runs the 3 mana 3/3 so there is some synergy i've never personally tested and I could see it being a finisher for the games where you don't get a huge combo off and you need to close the game. It's basically Leeroy + shadowstep except it's a 3/3 that has synergy with your other cards.
I disagree with a lot of your opinions on quest shaman but that deck is not refined and I think you can build it a lot of ways so no way is really right or wrong. But I think the wasp and totem are good.
that looks pretty neat. I hope it's something they're looking to implement in other regions. China's HS always feels separate from NA/EU/AP though so i'm not too optimistic.
After the expansion has been out a week and i've played a ton of games.
For meta/competitive decks: Control warrior is my favorite and go to deck for legend and climbing the legend ladder. Dr Boom is obviously strong and fun to play (not as fun to play against ofc). I'm really impressed by how strong the taunt package is. I kind of wrote it off when they were revealed thinking that mage + quests would make control warrior take the full backseat to bomb warrior but I was wrong. The taunts are incredibly strong and you have one for each phase of the game. You ever played two Armagedillo and 3 buffed Tomb Wardens? Even warriors bad matchups can struggle with that. Warrior isn't even that bad against mage if Lunas isn't in the top third of their deck. Lunas on 5 means you're ded but you can grind reno mages out if they don't draw it because they only run one conj and one giant in deck.
Bomb warrior used to be my go to deck, and I may eventually go back to it but control warrior might just be stronger, and since bomb warrior gained only the mummy, i won't be too interested in it for a while since I already climbed to legend every month of ROS with it.
For fun decks: I haven't played a lot of "fun decks" but honestly the two that stand out to me as being the most fun are zoolock and quest shaman. The zoolock i play runs the full lackey package with the legendary and it's just nutty when you draw the right cards. Quest shaman is fun because lackeys and shudderwock are fun. and there are a lot of weird battlecry minions you can just slap in there and see what happens.
Quest shaman seems like a decent choice. It runs no epics and is all commons and rares. Other than shudderwock but you could always craft that if she really likes the deck. Hagatha isn't even core. Deck seems like it would be fun for a kid to play and you can put Brightwing in there for synergy and RNG fun and she can play some legendary she might otherwise not. I'm not sure if playing with lackeys double battlecry stuff would be too hard or not.
Quest rogue is a decent option too. Mostly commons and rares, no epics. Legendaries are Leeroy, Edwin, and Zilliax but you can just replace Edwin and Leeroy. You get to have RNG fun and it's pretty simple to play.
You should be able to just look at HSreplay and go by winrate and the ones at the top are fairly cheap and you can cut corners where you think its appropriate.
Boom, Velen, and Kalecgos all seem like they'd be in fairly expensive decks.
I hope hearthstone is still a thing when my kid's old enough to play, would be super cool to get him to play. Good luck.
it's a bad card. owl is just better. one extra mana is worth the flexibility even in aggro decks. freeze is super popular so not being able to silence your own minions out of a freeze is a flaw. you also can't silence buffed minions in aggro mirrors or value minions against control. There are better ways to kill zilliax than this thing. yeah, the card is good in the dream scenario where you have exact lethal with this because it's 2 mana, but there are normal games that will happen all the time where this is a dead card or a 2 mana 2/1 where you lose tempo and lower your chance of winning that game. If it was a good card, people would play it.
If you want cheaper than owl, you're better off with earth shock or the poison murloc.. you aren't really interested in paying an extra mana for a 0 synergy 2/1.
Druid, Rogue, and Shaman are good. They will probably have meta decks once the meta settles and they refine.
Priest could have something pop up but I think it'll be on hold for an expanson or so.
The rest are pretty bad. Maybe post rotation or with dramatic support in the next set something could happen but as of right now they just aren't strong. Some of them are fun though. Shout out to hunter and warlock for being the absolute worst, imo.
being able to just giant + conj against an aggro deck IS highrolling. it means you likely had the coin, they got off to a slower start, you had some innervates, or some combination of these. but I was more referring to Luna's Pocket Galaxy's ability to just win you almost any game on the spot. I didn't think cyclone mage was as broken before they buffed that card, it was a lot harder to play and more restrictive with it's play style.
quest druid is probably my favorite. the temp and value is insane. If they don't put you near death in the first couple turns it's pretty hard to lose. Druid quest is probably the fastest other than rogue and it's just so strong. Kind of feels like year of the raven druid again but without the broken cards (UI / SP) but you still have some nutty cards. I think the deck still needs some refinement but I think it'll be a meta deck for sure especially if/when cyclone mage gets nerfed. I think maly druid and token druid with the quest are both pretty viable but I think a beefy token druid might be the way to go in the long run. I was doing pretty well on ladder with a maly list though.
I've also tried these decks and these are my brief impressions.
secret hunter - excellent pressure against anything slightly slow and still solid against aggro. Hyena is strong
battlecry shaman - definitely needs a lot of refinement. so many different ways to build it. serious potential and power. you can contest warriors late game and grind everything else out or you can build pretty high tempo and have solid burst.
aggro overload shaman - I think this might be a good tournament deck now. This was already an established ladder deck but it got a good power boost. Sandstorm elemental and Mogu Fleshshaper are good cards in it, but most of all Vessina is very powerful. card is pretty nuts, it's bloodlust as an aura with a body. It gives the redundancy of a third bloodlust, allowing you to go for a more consistent token/lust finisher instead of doomhammer + spells. It still struggles to warrior but it generally beats mage which is very important.
control warrior with the taunt package - the taunt package is a lot stronger than i thought. shaggy is really good value and early board contest. The legendary dude is solid and just hitting zilliax + a tomb warden is great value. tomb warden in particular is better than a lot of people thought. it locks out aggro when buffed and it's a lot of sticky stats.
I do think it's important for the meta that the strongest decks, mage and warrior, now have more rougher matchups, especially mage. Mage is still broken but there are decks that can check it as long as they don't highroll their ass off. As the meta settles, we will see that mage is still broken and hopefully it gets the nerf.
Both decks are really fun. I hadn't played around with my quest for priest since getting it so I was playing the wall res priest deck yesterday and its a lot of fun and its been my go to deck for fun. You get rolled over a lot by aggro unless you get the right answers but your late game is pretty insane. If you have your late game cards I don't think anything really out values you.
I'd say quest priest is a bit more fun if you like the big 'timmy' plays where you jam insane stats onto the board but quest druid is more competitive while still being fun and unique to play. Consider which one costs you more dust and the value of the cards you'll need to craft outside these particular decks.
resurrect quest priest early game can be pretty barren and very likely dies to the exact same Rogue hand.
quest shaman definitely not a problem. It can seem really strong when it is gets the right curve for the right matchup or the right lackeys for the right time but it's super inconsistent and is prone to terrible opening hands in my experience. Straight up aggro and tempo decks kind of blow it out from my experience playing it and against it. It's a solid deck, whether it lands at the top end of the meta or not remains to be seen but its definitely not a contender for the top deck.
control warrior is still pretty good. I haven't played it much post nerfs because it was the main thing i played before the nerfs and I'm trying new stuff, but I can't imagine it being that bad. I think one thing myself and some other players were wrong about is how the mage nerfs affected the meta. We were like "ok less mages that has to be great for warrior" but mages were the thing making other midrange and powerful late game decks unplayable because mage just scammed them with pocket galaxy. Now there are more decks with a strong late game that can give more trouble that just didn't exist in the meta before.
As for other control decks besides warrior, i've seen a few relatively high legend players playing a control shaman list that has tons of removal and healing jammed in it.
Dono created the deck I believe and hit #16 with it, https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/decks/control-shaman-16-legend-dono-uldum-post-nerf/
I got 1600 from my golden conj callings. I'm definitely not DEing any of my normal copies of the cards.
Either going to get the stuff for quest druid or reno hunter. HL hunter is more competitively viable but quest druid is more fun and interesting to me, and might be a thing in the meta now.
Will probably hold off a day or two to decide.
i held onto my two golden conjurer's callings since week one of ROS because i knew that shit would get nerfed. Got a free legendary out of it. Feelsgoodman.
I think the buffs were excellent and a huge success. I would much rather team 5 try things out to freshen things up. Some of it will work out and thats good. Some of it won't so they revert it, that's also good. I'd rather them take chances and fix something if it doesn't feel right than being scared to make change and they do nothing.
So many of these you're say, "oh this doesn't see play so it was a fail". Not every one of these cards was supposed to see play because it was buffed. Some of them were clearly just to make fun cards less shitty for meme decks or even when discovered or randomly generated. Like you're saying Pogo was a fail but people were playing that deck in tournaments and high legend during ROS. How can that be a fail? Just because they buff a card doesn't mean they intend for it to be meta until it rotates.
Extra arms was buffed at a time when priest was hot garbage. It was fine until the new expansion. If they wanted to address the divine spirit / inner fire issue then extra arms at 2 would STILL be fine, but they don't want to kill priests only competitively viable win condition so they went the easy way and reverted extra arms. Still, even though it's being reverted I think extra arms buff was the right call.
Thunderhead pushed aggro shaman into a meta deck. That is a huge success and it's a fun and cool card.
Storm bringer is pretty playable now and it never saw play before. Fun card, success.
Glowstone tech is not just a meme. It's not a tier 1 deck card but the game doesn't exist only for tier 1 decks. Mech paladin became a meta deck in RoS because of it, and hand paladin is a decently powerful deck in the current expansion that runs with it. Jambre plays at high legend with the deck. Success.
Crystology was good at 2, but it wasn't good enough to push aggro decks over, the only deck that used it was combo paladin. Crystology is super good but i don't think it gets nerfed unless they print a 1 attack minion that is super snowbally and they've been adamant they aren't doing that. In fact i'm very confident it doesn't get nerfed. Mech paladin didn't become a thing until glowstone and crystology were buffed, that was a deck added to the meta from the buffs. Success.
Already talked about pogo.
The only truly bad buff was Luna's Pocket Galaxy. They wanted to make a cool legendary that saw very little play more playable. In ROS it was a little broken but not as toxic as when SoU was released. Had to be nerfed, it is what it is.
I held onto my two copies of golden conj i opened at ROS week one because I knew that shit would be nerfed.
Boom isn't going anywhere by the way. It was appropriately nerfed but warrior players are probably happy about these nerfs overall due to not getting farmed by mage.
I disagree it should have been six mana. That's still five mana with the coin, it's still early enough to highroll any game especially with a zeph'd wild growth. I'm sure they tested this at six. Imagine they make it six and it's still broken. You're stuck playing the same meta except mage is even better because priest is nerfed for another month.
People are saying it's garbage at 7 but it's really not. It saw some fringe play in cyclone mage lists at high legend when warrior was played a lot. and that was in Cyclone mage which benefited from the card MUCH less than the current expansions mage decks. This could still be played in reno mage. Sometimes you tutor pocket galaxy from the 8 mana dude and it still wins you the game. It's a huge nerf for sure but it's still playable and probably requires less greedy deck building.
Its a good nerf, the card was a burden on the game and soured the expansion a bit.
This might not have been the best way to handle the giant+conj interaction, but it's probably the easiest and required the least risk of fucking it up which is fine as long as it gets the job done.
It doesn't kill the strategy but forces it to be more interactive or come out slower. You have to stick the giant, doing the combo from hand comes out a turn later which is hard in the face of pressure.
You can't get this from magic trick anymore also. I feel like the nerf to this in general hurts cyclone / big spell more than reno.
Warrior main.
I like this nerf. I didn't want the effect of the card to change. I also don't want warrior to be so strong that it defines the meta and everything is a warrior counter.
This is a super strong nerf to the tempo of control warrior but not value, and I think that is the perfect way to nerf the deck imo. It's supposed to be a powerful late game card, having to pass an entire turn.
When you're under pressure you usually try to set up a boom + shield slam on 8 or boom + hero power on 9. This means you have to play a 9 mana heal 7 or hold a shield slam till ten and even still that is so slow. It's a lot harder to get boom up against decks that can compound pressure. Aggro decks still lose to warrior because they don't even really need boom to beat aggro anyway. Control decks still get grinded out. Combo decks are going to be stronger against warrior now because the boom tempo coming out later gives your counter pressure game a lot less time to work. Midrange decks will be stronger against control warrior because they run a top end on the deck to keep up the pressure but they won't be favored. I think this seems like a pretty good balance on paper.
I think this changes the way you build and play control warrior a bit. For one thing you aren't keeping this card in any match except the mirror now. You might not be able to play so much early game because you are going to have to stretch games out with some mid game cards before you get boom,. The way control warrior is currently built is it's a bunch of dominant early game control tools and then you let boom carry the rest of the way but now I think you'll need some other late game stuff to get you to a point where you can play boom, but i'm not sure. You might have to omega assembly before ten more now just for more board presence, lowering late game value.
I also think of the three classes that were nerfed, warrior was weakened the least and benefits the most by mage being nerfed.
unrelated but I wish all control warrior players could come together and agree to just not run Archivist. It would just make the deck better in every other matchup and the mirror wouldn't come down to RNG. I don't want to run two 9 mana cards. Archivist might get cut because of this nerf now that I think about it. but if the mirror is common it will stay in because arms race mentality.
Check out my combo warlock. It farms aggro shaman/hunters and beats the slower locks too. Had fun making and playing it.
It's not a false dilemma. If you run the quest you are statistically less likely to have a cleric along with other early game cards, and there isn't a single matchup you don't want cleric or the other early game cards. Combo priest wins by snowballing the early game, having a dead card for the first chunk of the game doesn't help you get early board and snowball, it does the opposite. Of course you can mulligan the quest, but what is the point of having the quest if it is better to mulligan it in literally every matchup, because it's just not good in the deck and does not fit your gameplan. Having to mulligan it also still weakens your mulligan because that could have been a good card. What are these matchups where a 3/3 buff is going to help a deck with no comeback mechanics, because you haven't mentioned them yet. Even if these mythical matchups exist, it wouldn't be enough to justify weakening your opening mulligan and potential draws.
Calling it a streamer thing is ridiculous and is showing some serious weird bias you have going on. You think pros going to korea for masters and people winning open cups with priest are just playing what they play because "lol a streamer played it". Combo priest isn't the highest winrate deck in the meta because a streamer played it, and it isn't better with the quest. This stuff has been tested. For the record, completely standard combo priest has 49% winrate with the quest in it on HSreplay which is a whopping 10% lower than the most played list. It's almost like having a terrible card in your hand every game is bad. The quest has the third lowest drawn rate in the deck.
You're the one not thinking critically here, sometimes things stay outside the box for a reason.
You're super wrong on the quest in priest. Combo priest wins or loses games way before the effect is relevant. You would rather have a CHANCE at a cleric on one than ever have that quest in your opening hand. Calling it a streamer thing is silly, these things have been tested over thousands of games and statistics show you don't run the quest in combo priest. Combo priest is one of the highest winrate decks in the meta, if the quest made it better people would be aware.
I do think Leeroy is not a good card in combo priest but this deck runs the 3 mana 3/3 so there is some synergy i've never personally tested and I could see it being a finisher for the games where you don't get a huge combo off and you need to close the game. It's basically Leeroy + shadowstep except it's a 3/3 that has synergy with your other cards.
I disagree with a lot of your opinions on quest shaman but that deck is not refined and I think you can build it a lot of ways so no way is really right or wrong. But I think the wasp and totem are good.
that looks pretty neat. I hope it's something they're looking to implement in other regions. China's HS always feels separate from NA/EU/AP though so i'm not too optimistic.
After the expansion has been out a week and i've played a ton of games.
For meta/competitive decks: Control warrior is my favorite and go to deck for legend and climbing the legend ladder. Dr Boom is obviously strong and fun to play (not as fun to play against ofc). I'm really impressed by how strong the taunt package is. I kind of wrote it off when they were revealed thinking that mage + quests would make control warrior take the full backseat to bomb warrior but I was wrong. The taunts are incredibly strong and you have one for each phase of the game. You ever played two Armagedillo and 3 buffed Tomb Wardens? Even warriors bad matchups can struggle with that. Warrior isn't even that bad against mage if Lunas isn't in the top third of their deck. Lunas on 5 means you're ded but you can grind reno mages out if they don't draw it because they only run one conj and one giant in deck.
Bomb warrior used to be my go to deck, and I may eventually go back to it but control warrior might just be stronger, and since bomb warrior gained only the mummy, i won't be too interested in it for a while since I already climbed to legend every month of ROS with it.
For fun decks: I haven't played a lot of "fun decks" but honestly the two that stand out to me as being the most fun are zoolock and quest shaman. The zoolock i play runs the full lackey package with the legendary and it's just nutty when you draw the right cards. Quest shaman is fun because lackeys and shudderwock are fun. and there are a lot of weird battlecry minions you can just slap in there and see what happens.
Quest shaman seems like a decent choice. It runs no epics and is all commons and rares. Other than shudderwock but you could always craft that if she really likes the deck. Hagatha isn't even core. Deck seems like it would be fun for a kid to play and you can put Brightwing in there for synergy and RNG fun and she can play some legendary she might otherwise not. I'm not sure if playing with lackeys double battlecry stuff would be too hard or not.
Quest rogue is a decent option too. Mostly commons and rares, no epics. Legendaries are Leeroy, Edwin, and Zilliax but you can just replace Edwin and Leeroy. You get to have RNG fun and it's pretty simple to play.
You should be able to just look at HSreplay and go by winrate and the ones at the top are fairly cheap and you can cut corners where you think its appropriate.
Boom, Velen, and Kalecgos all seem like they'd be in fairly expensive decks.
I hope hearthstone is still a thing when my kid's old enough to play, would be super cool to get him to play. Good luck.
it's a bad card. owl is just better. one extra mana is worth the flexibility even in aggro decks. freeze is super popular so not being able to silence your own minions out of a freeze is a flaw. you also can't silence buffed minions in aggro mirrors or value minions against control. There are better ways to kill zilliax than this thing. yeah, the card is good in the dream scenario where you have exact lethal with this because it's 2 mana, but there are normal games that will happen all the time where this is a dead card or a 2 mana 2/1 where you lose tempo and lower your chance of winning that game. If it was a good card, people would play it.
If you want cheaper than owl, you're better off with earth shock or the poison murloc.. you aren't really interested in paying an extra mana for a 0 synergy 2/1.
Aggro warrior is a very real deck. not tier 1 or super popular but it's legit. someone won a masters qualifier with it the other day.
Combo priest is pretty strong right now, high priest amet is pretty insane.
It's just better to play for tempo and stick something for the combo than try to OTK from hand which is super super slow and not proactive.
I thought quest shaman would be a lot stronger than it is. It's pretty good but I thought it would be a tier 1 deck.
Druid, Rogue, and Shaman are good. They will probably have meta decks once the meta settles and they refine.
Priest could have something pop up but I think it'll be on hold for an expanson or so.
The rest are pretty bad. Maybe post rotation or with dramatic support in the next set something could happen but as of right now they just aren't strong. Some of them are fun though. Shout out to hunter and warlock for being the absolute worst, imo.
being able to just giant + conj against an aggro deck IS highrolling. it means you likely had the coin, they got off to a slower start, you had some innervates, or some combination of these. but I was more referring to Luna's Pocket Galaxy's ability to just win you almost any game on the spot. I didn't think cyclone mage was as broken before they buffed that card, it was a lot harder to play and more restrictive with it's play style.
quest druid is probably my favorite. the temp and value is insane. If they don't put you near death in the first couple turns it's pretty hard to lose. Druid quest is probably the fastest other than rogue and it's just so strong. Kind of feels like year of the raven druid again but without the broken cards (UI / SP) but you still have some nutty cards. I think the deck still needs some refinement but I think it'll be a meta deck for sure especially if/when cyclone mage gets nerfed. I think maly druid and token druid with the quest are both pretty viable but I think a beefy token druid might be the way to go in the long run. I was doing pretty well on ladder with a maly list though.
I've also tried these decks and these are my brief impressions.
secret hunter - excellent pressure against anything slightly slow and still solid against aggro. Hyena is strong
battlecry shaman - definitely needs a lot of refinement. so many different ways to build it. serious potential and power. you can contest warriors late game and grind everything else out or you can build pretty high tempo and have solid burst.
aggro overload shaman - I think this might be a good tournament deck now. This was already an established ladder deck but it got a good power boost. Sandstorm elemental and Mogu Fleshshaper are good cards in it, but most of all Vessina is very powerful. card is pretty nuts, it's bloodlust as an aura with a body. It gives the redundancy of a third bloodlust, allowing you to go for a more consistent token/lust finisher instead of doomhammer + spells. It still struggles to warrior but it generally beats mage which is very important.
control warrior with the taunt package - the taunt package is a lot stronger than i thought. shaggy is really good value and early board contest. The legendary dude is solid and just hitting zilliax + a tomb warden is great value. tomb warden in particular is better than a lot of people thought. it locks out aggro when buffed and it's a lot of sticky stats.
I do think it's important for the meta that the strongest decks, mage and warrior, now have more rougher matchups, especially mage. Mage is still broken but there are decks that can check it as long as they don't highroll their ass off. As the meta settles, we will see that mage is still broken and hopefully it gets the nerf.