Priest absolutely cannot deal with it (unless you let them steal Zixor or are dumb enough to play into Mindrender)
So all you have to do is not play Zixor until you can trade it off, while also playing Zixor immediately to play around an early Mindrender... check! ;)
Warrior's only actual out is Rattlegore (which is actually pretty effective and you can't deal with it), [...] Paladin can be difficult if they snowball but I have put in the tools to somewhat deal with it.
Only Rogue is a truly terrible matchup based on the fact that Stealth counters Rush.
Since most of their stealth minions have 1 health, maybe Knife Juggler is a viable counter? It has synergy with the rest of the deck against other opponents as well.
Another option could be Flare, but that's probably too situational. Although Flare + Gryphon would counter Twilight Runner.
Last time I played Quest Hunter, Clear the Way was a bit of an awkward card, since you lose its benefit if it overlaps with Swarm of Locusts. Maybe one copy would be enough?
Is there a place for Tracking in this deck? Post-completion there are quite a few cards that you would rather skip, while in the early game it can be useful if you didn't draw a good curve.
I might give it a go, but I'm missing Veranus. Perhaps that's just worth crafting though, if it's good enough to be played outside of dragon decks as well.
Owl is a fine tech choice, Ingenuity is mostly there for draw anyways. It's just a bit situational in my opinion. I'd only run it if the Warrior and Paladin are extremely prevalent.
Veranus is kind of a staple for Quest Hunter (and Highlander too if I recall correctly) so if you're really interested in the playstyle it's a must.
I do have to warn you though, Stealth Rogue is on the rise and Quest Hunter just can't beat them...at least not unless you gimp the deck hard by running Explosive Traps
EDIT: Completely forgot, yeah, Clear the Way is a bit awkward at two, it's probably better at one (or ditched entirely, maybe even for the aforementioned Explosive Trap). Without Springpaw it'S gotten a bit too clunky for my taste. I'm also thinking of doubling up on Cult Master because I really need the draw.
Knife Juggler could work but is probably too slow. You wanna use it early but can't stick it on the board against rogue so it only really works in the midgame where you're most likely already losing
Tracking is a bit of a hate card of mine. I jsut don't like the discard effect. It also has anti-synergy with shuffling multiple Zixors.. I'd rather just run more draw.
I've been having a blast (and quite a few wins) with Quest Hunter since DoD came out. My deck runs King Krush, Beastmaster Leoroxx, Scavenger's Ingenuity and Ramkahen Wildtamer as a win condition. With a little luck, you can blast 36 to face on turn 10. I can share the list if anyone's interested.
please do. I actually ran into a list like that while testing and I actually beat themm (though I suppose they drew rather poorly). My list was always intended as a value deck first and foremost, but maybe going full finisher is the better choice
Thanks for sharing; I'm happy to see Quest Hunter alive and doing well on the ladder!
What would think about running Ramkahen Wildtamer instead of 1 or both Nine Lives? I found some success with it in a Zixor heavy deck last season and you're not running expensive beasts that would make it hard to isolate Zixor. Just thinking it may be a little better in aggro matches and not too much worse against control.
And is it safe to say that Shu'ma is too slow in the higher ranks? Or does Nine Lives just make that unnecessary?
Tamer only gives you one extra zixor instead of two. The main reason I like Nine Lives is because it guarantees we have enough value for any decks.
Shu'ma I haven't tried so far but from pastt experience it's not proactive enough. It's only good against slow control decks and even then it's basically just for quickly finishing the quest without having to waste Locust Swarm.
Nice innovation just using Nine Lives with zixor as a win condition. But the more I look at it the more Im convinced that the quest is expendable. Just doesn't seem like your deck is using the quest to do anything other than cheese a win with Unleash the Hounds.
I tried a combo variant to abuse zixor along with a dragon shell but wasn't too successful with it. Maybe I can try your idea of abusing Nine Lives and go with it again.
Consider adding Pressure Plate in your deck. Its just nuts in this meta.
Thing is, Zixor alone doesn't really work as a win condition by itself. It's really the mounting pressure of the Quest Hero power that does it (Unleash is really just a last resort). Any time multiple minions stick the opponent takes extra damage.
Quest Hunter is also the only deck that can reasonably bring a lot of draw to Hunter through Cult Master, which you absolutely need. Nine LIves is already kind of clunky because it's a dead draw before you play Zixor.
I experimented with a Secret package early on but it was just too slow. Then again, maybe there is a way to combine the two and still keep the Quest around. Lately I have been runnning into a lot of trouble against the rising tide of Stealth Rogues and I was considering finding a way to squeeze in Explosive Trap
So Quest Hunter has been my favourite competitive deck during the DoD meta because of how versatile and unique it was. Thanks to Leeroy Jenkins it basically played like a combo deck, but instead of just burning through your deck like a lobotomite until you have lethal you had to use your ressources as efficiently as possible and get in chip damage until you get into a position where your opponent can't possibly win anymore.
After Leeroy got HoF'd the deck just kind of fell apart because despite having a strong payoff it now struggled to actually close out the game (and the lack of Zilliax certainly didn't help either). During AoO the deck was essentially dead. The only support it received was Zixor, Apex Predator which just wasn't a good enough replacement. So I just kind of accepted this deck was a one-expansion gimmick and moved on..
However, due to me being bored by the current trend of Hunter being either a braindead face deck or an equally brain dead amalgamation of overstatted cards (also known as Highlander Hunter) I tried to find new ways to play the class. After trying (and failing) to build some from of Deathrattle Hunter (and wasting 3600 dust on Vectus and Teron Gorefiend in the process) I eventually ended up in a situation where I realized that Nine Lives works exceptionally well with Zixor, effectively giving your 4 additional Primes over the course of the game. I then continued testing with a Quest Hunter build where I ended up cutting all the Deathrattle stuff (which was just too slow and pointless) and instead went hard on a Zixor package aiming to just simply outressource the opponent by spamming Cyborg-lizards until they are out of removals...and it worked surprisingly well.
Priest absolutely cannot deal with it (unless you let them steal Zixor or are dumb enough to play into Mindrender), Warrior's only actual out is Rattlegore (which is actually pretty effective and you can't deal with it), Demon Hunter, Hunter, Shaman and Highlander Mage all have a chance but you can most certainly push them off the board and set up lethal. Druid is...broken...but still manageable if they don't get the perfect curve (Veranus is key, but an early Lake Thresher just fucks your shit completely). Paladin can be difficult if they snowball but I have put in the tools to somewhat deal with it. Only Rogue is a truly terrible matchup based on the fact that Stealth counters Rush.
At the end of they day it's a counter deck to specific matchups, but at the very least it's fun.
Anyways, I'm genuinely proud of this build and surprised it works as well as it does:
Losing to these infinite value loops is never fun. It also means that they are now able to print stronger discover cards more consistently because they don't have to balance around stuff like that anymore.
Maybe they'll even bring the class bonus back. Pure RNG on minion discovery made those cards really bad by comparison.
On one hand it probably feels bad for people who spent 80$ to get a skin that now becomes available for a fraction of the price.
ON the other hand, if you were dumb enough to spend 80$ just for a skin with no use for the packs you deserve to be ripped off you fiscally irresponsible gremlin.
I'll put it simply. If the system doesn't allow to grind at least 10k gold between expansions with max dedication then it is objectively a downgrade (unless of course the cap is lower but you can reach it more easily)
at this point I almost feel like they don't even know why it's not a keyword yet, but it has gone on too long and now they can't just admit it.
Either way I can at least agree that there's just no point to make it into a keyword for no other reason than novelty. Unless there's distinct synergy it's just pointless
that sounds great. Basically all the classes have some really confusing and outdated cards in their base set that could be improved the same way Priest was.
Warlock and Paladin come to mind. There's a lot of really confusing cards in there.
Honestly what really bothers me about this is how it seems to be targetting f2p almost intentionally.
They could have just made the Battle pass an optional thing for minor cosmetics and extra packs (aka how they handled Adventures in the last year except with way less effort) but they insist on making a handicap for progress.
Who is this even supposed to appeal to? The casuals won't like it because they don't have time to grind. The whales won't like it because they'd rather buy their stuff upfront instead of having to pay for the privilege to earn it.
This is literally the problem of "people would probably buy some hero skins seperately but not as part of an 80$ bundle because that's just too much" except applied to everything and also mandatory.
I'm just gonna put this out: A dedicated player can easily save up to 12000 gold between expansions (depending on events and how much 3-win gold they decide to grind). I have done this multiple times and it has worked fine for me. With this new system the gold ceiling is A THIRD of that. This is the amount of gold I saved up for this expansion...AND I DIDN'T PLAY FOR TWO MONTHS OF IT. Furthermore, despite opening 43 packs this expansion I'M still missing a good amount of rares, meaning that if you are fully f2p YOU CANNOT EVEN UNLOCK THE BASICS OF THE EXPANSION ON DAY ONE.
We're not even talking about losing stuff by comparison anymore. You flat out CANNOT COMPETE anymore unless you actively spend money.
My dustbin has been growing steadily over the past years because of my rather conservative spending and very liberal disenchanting policy. I have over 50k dust because I like to be flexible with crafting and not regret whenever I craft a bad legendary for experimental purposes. If this goes through my dust reserves would most likely be empty within 3-4 expansions if I want to keep playing for fun instead of just playing the 3 best meta deck. I should also note that I'm not even fully f2p as I have spent a good amount on several occasions for various things because I felt like treating myself (only one preorder ever though). Now just think how much worse this would be for someone who wasn't nearly as dedicated to building up ressources.
If this goes through the game will unironically die. We're talking completely unplayable from a financial standpoint for anyone but the wealthy...and even those will probably ditch just because of how objectively stupid and predatory this is.
I've seen a lot of predatory monetization and I have studied the behaviour of whales...but this is quite possibly the worst one ever. The thing they don't seem to grasp is that the reason why whales are so eager to spend loads of money on worthless content is because they will always operate under the illusion of choice, hence why most battle passes (and other overpriced gimmicks) usually feature cosmetics exclusively. The moment you tie whaling to actual gameplay and make it mandatory, they will jump ship. They want to pay to show off, not pay to win.
Again, everyone who needs proof of this, just read up on the OB64 fiasco for Paladins: Champions of the Realm. Basically the same type of "if you really wanna play you gotta pay"....and absolutely nobody was on board and the thing was axed a couple months later and is even memed by the devs at this point for being utterly idiotic.
Blizzard, you target audience is fucking stupid, but they're not that stupid...and even stupid people hate being exploited once they realize it...and you haven't done a good job hiding it.
which doesn't account for said cards becoming better with more support.
Prime example right now: Archwitch Willow. Good card, but not enough support to make it work. Now, generally I am hopeful Big Demon Warlock will be a thing at some point...but I have no guarantee. So (pretending if we had the system right now) do I craft her now and gamble or do I not and need more dust later on when she does become a real thing?
That's not a good thing, it's a bandaid fix with which they disguise how much they cut down the ability to obtain cards through just playing the game.
same here...which is why I don't understand how these battle passes are supposed to be successful at all.
I played Paladins where these passes are commonplace for skins and despite some of these skins looking pretty good I was never tempted to buy the pass because it came with so much stuff that i just didn't want. It felt to me like they were actively missing out on money by hiding skins people would buy behind a paywall that's just too much.
Owl is a fine tech choice, Ingenuity is mostly there for draw anyways. It's just a bit situational in my opinion. I'd only run it if the Warrior and Paladin are extremely prevalent.
Veranus is kind of a staple for Quest Hunter (and Highlander too if I recall correctly) so if you're really interested in the playstyle it's a must.
I do have to warn you though, Stealth Rogue is on the rise and Quest Hunter just can't beat them...at least not unless you gimp the deck hard by running Explosive Traps
EDIT: Completely forgot, yeah, Clear the Way is a bit awkward at two, it's probably better at one (or ditched entirely, maybe even for the aforementioned Explosive Trap). Without Springpaw it'S gotten a bit too clunky for my taste. I'm also thinking of doubling up on Cult Master because I really need the draw.
Knife Juggler could work but is probably too slow. You wanna use it early but can't stick it on the board against rogue so it only really works in the midgame where you're most likely already losing
Tracking is a bit of a hate card of mine. I jsut don't like the discard effect. It also has anti-synergy with shuffling multiple Zixors.. I'd rather just run more draw.
please do. I actually ran into a list like that while testing and I actually beat themm (though I suppose they drew rather poorly). My list was always intended as a value deck first and foremost, but maybe going full finisher is the better choice
Tamer only gives you one extra zixor instead of two. The main reason I like Nine Lives is because it guarantees we have enough value for any decks.
Shu'ma I haven't tried so far but from pastt experience it's not proactive enough. It's only good against slow control decks and even then it's basically just for quickly finishing the quest without having to waste Locust Swarm.
Thing is, Zixor alone doesn't really work as a win condition by itself. It's really the mounting pressure of the Quest Hero power that does it (Unleash is really just a last resort). Any time multiple minions stick the opponent takes extra damage.
Quest Hunter is also the only deck that can reasonably bring a lot of draw to Hunter through Cult Master, which you absolutely need. Nine LIves is already kind of clunky because it's a dead draw before you play Zixor.
I experimented with a Secret package early on but it was just too slow. Then again, maybe there is a way to combine the two and still keep the Quest around. Lately I have been runnning into a lot of trouble against the rising tide of Stealth Rogues and I was considering finding a way to squeeze in Explosive Trap
why keep Kanrethad in your mulligan? You don't want to draw him off Willow later.
Also, what about running Felosophy to copy Kanrethad Prime later on to have more lategame.
So Quest Hunter has been my favourite competitive deck during the DoD meta because of how versatile and unique it was. Thanks to Leeroy Jenkins it basically played like a combo deck, but instead of just burning through your deck like a lobotomite until you have lethal you had to use your ressources as efficiently as possible and get in chip damage until you get into a position where your opponent can't possibly win anymore.
After Leeroy got HoF'd the deck just kind of fell apart because despite having a strong payoff it now struggled to actually close out the game (and the lack of Zilliax certainly didn't help either). During AoO the deck was essentially dead. The only support it received was Zixor, Apex Predator which just wasn't a good enough replacement. So I just kind of accepted this deck was a one-expansion gimmick and moved on..
However, due to me being bored by the current trend of Hunter being either a braindead face deck or an equally brain dead amalgamation of overstatted cards (also known as Highlander Hunter) I tried to find new ways to play the class. After trying (and failing) to build some from of Deathrattle Hunter (and wasting 3600 dust on Vectus and Teron Gorefiend in the process) I eventually ended up in a situation where I realized that Nine Lives works exceptionally well with Zixor, effectively giving your 4 additional Primes over the course of the game. I then continued testing with a Quest Hunter build where I ended up cutting all the Deathrattle stuff (which was just too slow and pointless) and instead went hard on a Zixor package aiming to just simply outressource the opponent by spamming Cyborg-lizards until they are out of removals...and it worked surprisingly well.
Priest absolutely cannot deal with it (unless you let them steal Zixor or are dumb enough to play into Mindrender), Warrior's only actual out is Rattlegore (which is actually pretty effective and you can't deal with it), Demon Hunter, Hunter, Shaman and Highlander Mage all have a chance but you can most certainly push them off the board and set up lethal. Druid is...broken...but still manageable if they don't get the perfect curve (Veranus is key, but an early Lake Thresher just fucks your shit completely). Paladin can be difficult if they snowball but I have put in the tools to somewhat deal with it. Only Rogue is a truly terrible matchup based on the fact that Stealth counters Rush.
At the end of they day it's a counter deck to specific matchups, but at the very least it's fun.
Anyways, I'm genuinely proud of this build and surprised it works as well as it does:
It's All Star by Smash Mouth
They're chanting All Star by Smash Mouth
the name sounds like the title of a very interesting porno
This is good. I wonder what took them so long.
Losing to these infinite value loops is never fun. It also means that they are now able to print stronger discover cards more consistently because they don't have to balance around stuff like that anymore.
Maybe they'll even bring the class bonus back. Pure RNG on minion discovery made those cards really bad by comparison.
Swole Squirrel walks up to you in a club and slaps your girlfriend's ass. What do you do?
On one hand it probably feels bad for people who spent 80$ to get a skin that now becomes available for a fraction of the price.
ON the other hand, if you were dumb enough to spend 80$ just for a skin with no use for the packs you deserve to be ripped off you fiscally irresponsible gremlin.
I'll put it simply. If the system doesn't allow to grind at least 10k gold between expansions with max dedication then it is objectively a downgrade (unless of course the cap is lower but you can reach it more easily)
at this point I almost feel like they don't even know why it's not a keyword yet, but it has gone on too long and now they can't just admit it.
Either way I can at least agree that there's just no point to make it into a keyword for no other reason than novelty. Unless there's distinct synergy it's just pointless
Sounds good for people who want more customization.
Let'S hope this is going to be their approach for further monetization and not the disgraceful battle pass model.
eh, I don't see the problem as long as they announce it properly.
It's not like Hearthstone was ever a champion of clarity anyways
that sounds great. Basically all the classes have some really confusing and outdated cards in their base set that could be improved the same way Priest was.
Warlock and Paladin come to mind. There's a lot of really confusing cards in there.
Imagine you're the guy who made Blood Herald and you learn afterwards what its effect is :^)
Honestly what really bothers me about this is how it seems to be targetting f2p almost intentionally.
They could have just made the Battle pass an optional thing for minor cosmetics and extra packs (aka how they handled Adventures in the last year except with way less effort) but they insist on making a handicap for progress.
Who is this even supposed to appeal to? The casuals won't like it because they don't have time to grind. The whales won't like it because they'd rather buy their stuff upfront instead of having to pay for the privilege to earn it.
This is literally the problem of "people would probably buy some hero skins seperately but not as part of an 80$ bundle because that's just too much" except applied to everything and also mandatory.
I'm just gonna put this out: A dedicated player can easily save up to 12000 gold between expansions (depending on events and how much 3-win gold they decide to grind). I have done this multiple times and it has worked fine for me. With this new system the gold ceiling is A THIRD of that. This is the amount of gold I saved up for this expansion...AND I DIDN'T PLAY FOR TWO MONTHS OF IT. Furthermore, despite opening 43 packs this expansion I'M still missing a good amount of rares, meaning that if you are fully f2p YOU CANNOT EVEN UNLOCK THE BASICS OF THE EXPANSION ON DAY ONE.
We're not even talking about losing stuff by comparison anymore. You flat out CANNOT COMPETE anymore unless you actively spend money.
My dustbin has been growing steadily over the past years because of my rather conservative spending and very liberal disenchanting policy. I have over 50k dust because I like to be flexible with crafting and not regret whenever I craft a bad legendary for experimental purposes. If this goes through my dust reserves would most likely be empty within 3-4 expansions if I want to keep playing for fun instead of just playing the 3 best meta deck. I should also note that I'm not even fully f2p as I have spent a good amount on several occasions for various things because I felt like treating myself (only one preorder ever though). Now just think how much worse this would be for someone who wasn't nearly as dedicated to building up ressources.
If this goes through the game will unironically die. We're talking completely unplayable from a financial standpoint for anyone but the wealthy...and even those will probably ditch just because of how objectively stupid and predatory this is.
I've seen a lot of predatory monetization and I have studied the behaviour of whales...but this is quite possibly the worst one ever. The thing they don't seem to grasp is that the reason why whales are so eager to spend loads of money on worthless content is because they will always operate under the illusion of choice, hence why most battle passes (and other overpriced gimmicks) usually feature cosmetics exclusively. The moment you tie whaling to actual gameplay and make it mandatory, they will jump ship. They want to pay to show off, not pay to win.
Again, everyone who needs proof of this, just read up on the OB64 fiasco for Paladins: Champions of the Realm. Basically the same type of "if you really wanna play you gotta pay"....and absolutely nobody was on board and the thing was axed a couple months later and is even memed by the devs at this point for being utterly idiotic.
Blizzard, you target audience is fucking stupid, but they're not that stupid...and even stupid people hate being exploited once they realize it...and you haven't done a good job hiding it.
which doesn't account for said cards becoming better with more support.
Prime example right now: Archwitch Willow. Good card, but not enough support to make it work. Now, generally I am hopeful Big Demon Warlock will be a thing at some point...but I have no guarantee. So (pretending if we had the system right now) do I craft her now and gamble or do I not and need more dust later on when she does become a real thing?
That's not a good thing, it's a bandaid fix with which they disguise how much they cut down the ability to obtain cards through just playing the game.
same here...which is why I don't understand how these battle passes are supposed to be successful at all.
I played Paladins where these passes are commonplace for skins and despite some of these skins looking pretty good I was never tempted to buy the pass because it came with so much stuff that i just didn't want. It felt to me like they were actively missing out on money by hiding skins people would buy behind a paywall that's just too much.