Dusted everything except Dr, Boom .... i have mixed feelings about dusting him ... he could be still viable even tough i do not play warrior that often ... but i guess i will dust him because the Warrior decks i play are mostly aggro ...
You can always dust him today and then change your mind in 2 weeks and recraft him for no loss of dust. Doing the converse will cost you -1200 dust, though.
unsure if i'll go towards quest shaman or quest paladin tho
Obviously you should craft whatever deck is going to bring you the most joy now, but if its honestly a coin-flip between those two choices, consider this: Quest Shaman is tied to battlecries and since every expansion introduces new battlecries, its probably going to continue to evolve and improve over the next 1.5 years (although it will take a hit when [Hearthstone Card (Shudderwock) Not Found] rotates). Conversely, Quest Paladin is tied to both reborn minions and strong deathrattles, so its always going to be restricted to running the ~12 reborn minions it does today plus it is relying heavily on Mechano-Egg, Kangor's Endless Army, Da Undatakah, etc for late game value, so there's a good chance that the archetype won't be viable in standard after the rotation.
Combo Priest was a brief, yet fun experience Will it find a way to stick around or is Priest back out of standard?
My guess is that combo priest will still be around, but it will either morph into a new, slightly less effective aggro variant or shift to look more like RR's wall priest. Which outcome I think it depends greatly on how popular control warrior is post-nerf, since that is currently dictating what aggro decks are viable. Boom on 9 is still pretty strong so maybe CW is still around just with ~3% fewer wins. On the other hand, I could also see a lot of players just dust him immediately for the full refund and then play other decks while waiting to see the new meta before possibly recrafting. If everyone does that it will drastically shake up the meta.
I think even Priest players (been Priest main until last rotation) would be all down for the Divine Spirit/Inner Fire reign to be over: yeah, it's a strong finisher, but it's so boring, dumb and repetitive.
Edit (cause I think people didn't understand my point of view): yeah, HoF it but give us something different (and possibly playable) in the evergreen set to play with
I think most readers follow what you meant, they just can't think of anything meaningful to respond with. If you remove the class's most consistent win condition, how do you replace it? Do you try "heal-happy" minions like [Hearthstone Card (Light Warden) Not Found] and Nightscale Matriarch? Do you encourage outlast/fatigue control strategies a la Archbishop Benedictus and Amara, Warden of Hope--and if so, how do you so in an era of Archivist Elysiana and Dr. Boom, Mad Genius? Or do you play to the "narrow but powerful spells" aspect of the alleged class identity, which I guess would be things like Mass Resurrection or perhaps a playable version of Surrender to Madness.
I think Zephrys the Great should have a place under the top cards ....
These lists were based strictly off statistics, and I suspect [Hearthstone Card (Zephrys the Great) Not Found]'s overall statistics aren't as good BECAUSE he's so powerful. He's in 29% of decks right now, and a lot of them probably aren't utilizing his full potential. Murloc Paladin, for example, has an overall Win Rate of ~55%, but in that archetype Zeph only has a Played Win Rate of ~45%--presumably because if you're winning, you want to hold him back as a trump card and your opponent probably concedes before you ever play him, and if you're losing, you play him and maybe discover a card that can buy a turn or two but if your behind with that deck its really hard to turn the game around.
Consider this compared to Dinotamer Brann, King Phaoris, and Reno the Relicologist, where A.) there's only a small population of decks that support them, all of which happen to be very good so nobody is "tainting" their overall statistics, and B.) they are all good tempo cards that you can (generally) feel great about slamming on-curve--even if you're ahead--so they collect spillover wins. Remember that good decks win more than they lose, and trackers like HsReplay just know which cards were played as part of that win, not how "clutch" they were or weren't.
I dunno, man. I mean, I get what you're saying--I'm a little disappointed in that I haven't really found any "cool" decks on this site too--but it sounds like your post reads like a call to the outof.cards staff to police what decks show up and/or how they are described. I think all these sites are essentially crowd-sourcing the review process, and I think they are depending on that as part of their business model. (Otherwise you're looking at something like a Hsreplay model, where all the "good stuff" is pay-walled off so that they can generate an additional revenue stream beyond donations and advertisement.) That would imply its really up to us community members to be a little more disciplined, resisting the urge to give additional weight to decks from charismatic streamers or click-baity titles and instead evaluate them on their merit.
It's kinda funny--so far, its been the exact opposite.
Not that I'm throwing shade; I probably would have thought the exact same thing pre-release. I mean: who could have foreseen Finley being utilized exclusively for his tribal tag in Tip the Scales decks? Or that highlander mage or hunter decks being consistent enough to support tempo archetypes? It just goes to show you.
Ok. Someone explain this scenario to me! I'm playing Highlander hunter. I set up a lethal situation by putting a couple of minions on board, Kill Command in hand, and a hero power for some overkill. I press End Turn button. My opponent intuitively understands the set up and throws down Khartut Defender and does some other irrelevent action before ending his turn. Its my turn now I get myself down to 6 mana then I play the 2 mana Zephyrs knowing full well that it should offer me a 4 mana Polymorph! Zephyrs offers me Hex instead! I now don't have lethal! I won the game a few turns later but WTF Zephyrs! Hex is almost never a better option than Polymorph.
I'm confused--how exactly did this turn you played Zephrys go? Specifically: you mention having a Kill Command in hand the turn before; did you play this before Zephyrs so literally the only actions you need to lethal were to Polymorph the taunt and send your on-board minions to face?
I'm thinking that he didn't see the lethal so he assumed that you were still fighting for board, in which case trading against a 0/1 is better than a 1/1, but I'm really just guessing.
Just curious if there are any decks in SoU that you thought were going to be good (or maybe just playable?) before launch that you've experimented with and they were just trash?
Quest Warlock. I knew it was never going to be good because it has such a weak early game, and I knew it was never going to be popular because its so dependent on otherwise-useless legendaries (Supreme Archaeology, Dollmaster Dorian, Arch-Villain Rafaam, and Fel Lord Betrug), however I figured it could compete against slower decks. Drawing an extra card every turn is pretty good, reducing a card to 0 mana is great, and after you play Rafaam, you're usually dropping 2-3 mid-sized legendaries every turn. On paper, that sounds fantastic! In practice, this archetype has miserable statistics against every pretty much everything.
It is still fun to play, though, so at least there's that. :-)
You might want to refrain from making statements like "bad decklists". It's been less than a week since the release officially came out, even "good" (by comparison) decklists are still unrefined.
You're right; I really meant something more like "a variant not focused on optimizing the quest reward". From what I've seen and read, most Paladin Quest players are taking that route at the expense of early game defense. Which, to your point, might result in overall lower winrate. I guess my point is: Making Mummies has the potential for arguably the strongest value from a single card provided that you A.) live long enough to complete the quest and B.) still have enough value-oriented cards left in your deck. If you're not satisfied with how it performs in late game, you always have the option of swapping in more value-focused cards to that goal.
I would greatly recommend running Seance over [Hearthstone Card (Archivist Elysianna) Not Found]--against straight control warriors, you'll always have the option to copy their Elysianna and then play it a turn later, and meanwhile you open up so many other possibilities for your other games too.
I tried quest paladin, and won a few, lost a few. Trying to squeeze in reborn, mechs, and "value" minions to copy with the quest hero power felt awkward. It feels like the deck has problems with card draw, even running 2x Crystology it felt lacking. The deck also lacks late game. TBH the reborn minions feel actually quite underpowered. None of my opponents ever had any problems clearing any of my minions. The games I won were due to my opponent not being able to clear key minions, or me not getting enough reborn in time to get my quest done before my opponent. Overall the deck feels like it's lacking card draw severely, and lacks a clear late game finish. Very strong early game though, if the opponent has no early game it can snowball very easily.
I'm not counting Mogu Cultist towards either tally, because as you written originally that's more of a meme / future expansion card, plus it really needs someone to discover the perfect deck to build around it before its even worth including anywhere.
I generally agree with your assessment, Clawz, although I think you give Rogue too much credit and Warlock too little.
My big problem with the Rogue quest is the anti-synergy with Spectral Cutlass, but I think that's by design. I too suspect we will start to see aggro decks that channel the spirits of Odd Rogue and pre-nerf Raiding Party to create fast burn decks, but I don't think there every going to breakout like the latter did due to how much the quest slows them down. Getting an extra +2 face damage a turn as soon as T4 is nice, but its not game-breaking--especially in a meta where (admittedly experimental) healing decks are so popular.
Warlock, on the other hand, has a lot of potential. With the current base of cards you're really relying on hitting Arch-Villain Rafaam--but let's face it, control warrior relies on hitting Dr. Boom, and that hasn't slowed it down. It's a big investment, but once you do, you're usually utilizing your new hero power to play 2 mid-sized Legendaries a turn--pretty good! Not to mention: you specifically said you want to analyze these quests with respect to future expansions. This archetype has a lot of potential upside through new cards, and the only significant card up for rotation next year is Dollmaster Dorian, which isn't really core.
No Lightforged Blessing?
You can always dust him today and then change your mind in 2 weeks and recraft him for no loss of dust. Doing the converse will cost you -1200 dust, though.
Obviously you should craft whatever deck is going to bring you the most joy now, but if its honestly a coin-flip between those two choices, consider this: Quest Shaman is tied to battlecries and since every expansion introduces new battlecries, its probably going to continue to evolve and improve over the next 1.5 years (although it will take a hit when [Hearthstone Card (Shudderwock) Not Found] rotates). Conversely, Quest Paladin is tied to both reborn minions and strong deathrattles, so its always going to be restricted to running the ~12 reborn minions it does today plus it is relying heavily on Mechano-Egg, Kangor's Endless Army, Da Undatakah, etc for late game value, so there's a good chance that the archetype won't be viable in standard after the rotation.
My guess is that combo priest will still be around, but it will either morph into a new, slightly less effective aggro variant or shift to look more like RR's wall priest. Which outcome I think it depends greatly on how popular control warrior is post-nerf, since that is currently dictating what aggro decks are viable. Boom on 9 is still pretty strong so maybe CW is still around just with ~3% fewer wins. On the other hand, I could also see a lot of players just dust him immediately for the full refund and then play other decks while waiting to see the new meta before possibly recrafting. If everyone does that it will drastically shake up the meta.
I think most readers follow what you meant, they just can't think of anything meaningful to respond with. If you remove the class's most consistent win condition, how do you replace it? Do you try "heal-happy" minions like [Hearthstone Card (Light Warden) Not Found] and Nightscale Matriarch? Do you encourage outlast/fatigue control strategies a la Archbishop Benedictus and Amara, Warden of Hope--and if so, how do you so in an era of Archivist Elysiana and Dr. Boom, Mad Genius? Or do you play to the "narrow but powerful spells" aspect of the alleged class identity, which I guess would be things like Mass Resurrection or perhaps a playable version of Surrender to Madness.
These lists were based strictly off statistics, and I suspect [Hearthstone Card (Zephrys the Great) Not Found]'s overall statistics aren't as good BECAUSE he's so powerful. He's in 29% of decks right now, and a lot of them probably aren't utilizing his full potential. Murloc Paladin, for example, has an overall Win Rate of ~55%, but in that archetype Zeph only has a Played Win Rate of ~45%--presumably because if you're winning, you want to hold him back as a trump card and your opponent probably concedes before you ever play him, and if you're losing, you play him and maybe discover a card that can buy a turn or two but if your behind with that deck its really hard to turn the game around.
Consider this compared to Dinotamer Brann, King Phaoris, and Reno the Relicologist, where A.) there's only a small population of decks that support them, all of which happen to be very good so nobody is "tainting" their overall statistics, and B.) they are all good tempo cards that you can (generally) feel great about slamming on-curve--even if you're ahead--so they collect spillover wins. Remember that good decks win more than they lose, and trackers like HsReplay just know which cards were played as part of that win, not how "clutch" they were or weren't.
Gratz!
I dunno, man. I mean, I get what you're saying--I'm a little disappointed in that I haven't really found any "cool" decks on this site too--but it sounds like your post reads like a call to the outof.cards staff to police what decks show up and/or how they are described. I think all these sites are essentially crowd-sourcing the review process, and I think they are depending on that as part of their business model. (Otherwise you're looking at something like a Hsreplay model, where all the "good stuff" is pay-walled off so that they can generate an additional revenue stream beyond donations and advertisement.) That would imply its really up to us community members to be a little more disciplined, resisting the urge to give additional weight to decks from charismatic streamers or click-baity titles and instead evaluate them on their merit.
This is a fantastic article, mrgn0me!
It's kinda funny--so far, its been the exact opposite.
Not that I'm throwing shade; I probably would have thought the exact same thing pre-release. I mean: who could have foreseen Finley being utilized exclusively for his tribal tag in Tip the Scales decks? Or that highlander mage or hunter decks being consistent enough to support tempo archetypes? It just goes to show you.
I'm confused--how exactly did this turn you played Zephrys go? Specifically: you mention having a Kill Command in hand the turn before; did you play this before Zephyrs so literally the only actions you need to lethal were to Polymorph the taunt and send your on-board minions to face?
I'm thinking that he didn't see the lethal so he assumed that you were still fighting for board, in which case trading against a 0/1 is better than a 1/1, but I'm really just guessing.
I think you're playing in a very different meta than I am.
Quest Warlock. I knew it was never going to be good because it has such a weak early game, and I knew it was never going to be popular because its so dependent on otherwise-useless legendaries (Supreme Archaeology, Dollmaster Dorian, Arch-Villain Rafaam, and Fel Lord Betrug), however I figured it could compete against slower decks. Drawing an extra card every turn is pretty good, reducing a card to 0 mana is great, and after you play Rafaam, you're usually dropping 2-3 mid-sized legendaries every turn. On paper, that sounds fantastic! In practice, this archetype has miserable statistics against every pretty much everything.
It is still fun to play, though, so at least there's that. :-)
You're right; I really meant something more like "a variant not focused on optimizing the quest reward". From what I've seen and read, most Paladin Quest players are taking that route at the expense of early game defense. Which, to your point, might result in overall lower winrate. I guess my point is: Making Mummies has the potential for arguably the strongest value from a single card provided that you A.) live long enough to complete the quest and B.) still have enough value-oriented cards left in your deck. If you're not satisfied with how it performs in late game, you always have the option of swapping in more value-focused cards to that goal.
I would greatly recommend running Seance over [Hearthstone Card (Archivist Elysianna) Not Found]--against straight control warriors, you'll always have the option to copy their Elysianna and then play it a turn later, and meanwhile you open up so many other possibilities for your other games too.
Are you playing a bad decklist? Most are now running something like this https://outof.cards/hearthstone/decks/6228-mech-egg-quest , with 2x Mechano-Egg, 2x Mechanical Whelp, Kangor's Endless Army, and Da Undatakah ... That's the exact opposite of "lacking late game". It does struggle with early-game though.
Looking back at this article, it seems like an even split:
Zephrys the Great (1), Corrupt the Waters (3), Untapped Potential (7), and Activate the Obelisk (8) all seem to be getting a lot of play.
Plague of Wrath (5), Elise the Enlightened (6), Anka, the Buried (9), and Plague of Murlocs (10): not so much.
I'm not counting Mogu Cultist towards either tally, because as you written originally that's more of a meme / future expansion card, plus it really needs someone to discover the perfect deck to build around it before its even worth including anywhere.
I generally agree with your assessment, Clawz, although I think you give Rogue too much credit and Warlock too little.
My big problem with the Rogue quest is the anti-synergy with Spectral Cutlass, but I think that's by design. I too suspect we will start to see aggro decks that channel the spirits of Odd Rogue and pre-nerf Raiding Party to create fast burn decks, but I don't think there every going to breakout like the latter did due to how much the quest slows them down. Getting an extra +2 face damage a turn as soon as T4 is nice, but its not game-breaking--especially in a meta where (admittedly experimental) healing decks are so popular.
Warlock, on the other hand, has a lot of potential. With the current base of cards you're really relying on hitting Arch-Villain Rafaam--but let's face it, control warrior relies on hitting Dr. Boom, and that hasn't slowed it down. It's a big investment, but once you do, you're usually utilizing your new hero power to play 2 mid-sized Legendaries a turn--pretty good! Not to mention: you specifically said you want to analyze these quests with respect to future expansions. This archetype has a lot of potential upside through new cards, and the only significant card up for rotation next year is Dollmaster Dorian, which isn't really core.
Have you considered Ancient Mysteries? I know you're very light on secrets, but it has fantastic synergy with your existing Vex Crow, Mana Cyclone, and [Hearthstone Card (Dune Sculptor) Not Found] strategies.
They are not