Yes, yes and yes. There is no other way to "heal" Wild at the moment.
The amount of nerfing the questline would need in Wild to be balanced would likely make the card unplayable in Standard; I doubt they want to do that.
The easiest way to fix the problem is to ban The Demon Seed in Wild, like they did for Stealer of Souls. If they don't want to go that far, I think Crystallizer is the card to nerf instead.
I'm not sure we're going to see games past turn 10 any time soon: I think the only thing keeping the Priest questline in check is the other questlines finishing sooner.
That said, even making it to turn 10 would be an improvement; I'd like to be able to play Sheldras Moontree.
I agree that's the best way to deal with Crystallizer: it doesn't destroy the card (in fact it becomes better in most other decks) but it does limit its usefulness in questline Warlock to a point where it probably won't be included anymore.
What makes Crystallizer very powerful at the moment is not only how much it helps quest completion, but also that the damage + armor after completion makes it very hard for the opponent to win a damage race after quest completion.
Any kind of persistent reward is going to be good versus control. I think that similar to when Death Knights were in Standard, almost every control deck will have to run the questline itself.
Questline Shaman and Mage are indeed very powerful and may continue to be a problem for control decks.
Hunters can run out of resources, so if you can heal enough or put down minions they can't ignore, I think a control deck should be able to outlast them.
The Paladin questline currently seems the strongest when you play as many 1-drops as possible, but against control that's unlikely to be favored. If that deck is retooled to have more staying power, its quest completion will come later, which weakens it considerably against non-control decks. The more expensive cards are included, the more likely you'd be better off playing Handbuff instead.
Starting at 10 mana, you're not going to get enough discounts from just tapping to make it worthwhile to play Flesh Giant. If you play healing and self-damage as well (in particular, Spellstone and ways to charge it), you can get meaningful discounts. However, I encountered a lot of Demon Seed Warlock and Mozaki Mage on ladder last month and I don't think you can out-heal those decks.
Recently I've been playing EvenLock with Battleground Battlemaster instead, also thanks to a nerf. I cut all the 8+ mana cards (except the mana cheating ones) and instead try to put some big minions on the board on turn 3-5 and if anything sticks, the windfury closes out the game.
I must confess I only understood how it worked after I saw a solution, but for those people who are stuck on the mechanics and don't want a full solution, read on below:
Show Spoiler
You're walking on a map, of which you see a slice along one axis (let's call it east-west). The minions are grid locations you can walk to, immune minions represent locations that cannot be reached from your current position.
The hero power makes you change direction (north/south). You'll continue walking in the new direction until you flip it again using the hero power.
Every time you visit a location, its counter decreases by one. The goal is to make all the counters on the map reach one.
I've played a few games with a Questline Paladin with Lady Prestor, similar to this deck by FunkiMonki, but with some different cards so it's more likely to complete the quest on turn 5 (but less likely to draw Lady Prestor). The dragons give you just a bit of extra reach after completing the questline.
With the questline in it, it's not a pure budget deck, but if you happen to have that card, the rest of the deck is cheap. I think the only other expensive card I'm running is Oh My Yogg!, but that can be swapped out without too much consequences.
Maybe it would be interesting to do a series of almost-budget decks where the only expensive card is the questline? Probably a lot of players got at least one questline from packs or track rewards.
Demon Hunter has a lot of flexibility in how you build a questline deck, since their card draw is cheap and the rewards are good on any card.
Druid's quest support cards are cheap, although I'm not sure what the other half of the deck would be.
Mage would miss Ignite; while it is a good card I don't think its absence would ruin the deck.
Paladin is certainly possible, as discussed above.
Priest has plenty of options to build the deck. While High Abbess Alura seems to be the most popular tutor for the reward, Cleric of An'she is also an option and allows you to play two spells in the deck itself.
Rogue has lists without Tenwu, but I don't know if Secret Passage is replaceable: I don't have this questline myself and I haven't seen it been played much.
Shaman would have to replace Instructor Fireheart; since that's not a card you're guaranteed to draw every match anyway, I don't think that should break the deck.
Warlock would be a bit of a puzzle, but I think it has enough flexibility that something is possible.
I wonder what would happen when there is an overpowered deck and everyone bans the same class. Would people playing that class be stuck in the queue for minutes? I guess that would encourage them to play something else though, so maybe it's not so bad.
I'd rather ban a card than a class though. For example, in Wild I'd gladly ban Secret Mage or Big Priest, but I have no issue playing against other Mage or Priest decks.
What happens if you copy The Rat King's deathrattle with Mok'Nathal Lion? Does it come back as a lion or as a rat king?
In a recent Tavern Brawl I saw a minion randomly get assigned the deathrattle of Sherazin, Corpse Flower and that minion turned into Sherazin while dormant. But Hearthstone isn't always consistent, so I'm not sure it's safe to extrapolate from that.
In general, this doesn't do great versus aggro. The first night I tested this I ran into a lot of Mage and some other slower decks like Warrior and Druid and was able to often outpace them. But when I tested it again later in an aggro pocket meta, I managed to get a narrow victory versus Shadow Priest but lost against another Shadow Priest, a Face Hunter and Questline Zoo.
Soul Rend is probably more reliable than Hysteria versus wide boards of roughly equal minions; that would be something to try. I was a bit worried bout burning combo pieces, but against aggro that probably doesn't really matter.
Raise Dead is useful against slower decks, since you can drop Soul Stealer and see if it sticks, but against decks that get on the board early the chance of it sticking is small and the 3 damage you take from the reload is relevant. So that would be another card to consider replacing to make the deck more resilient to aggro.
A problem with Questline Zoo in particular is that they can use Raise Dead to play Cult Neophyte again and again. Since we run The Dark Portal, our entire early game is spells, so this is very disruptive.
Maybe the solution is to queue this deck only if you're encountering a lot of control/combo opponents and queue a different build of Questline Warlock if you're encountering a lot of aggro.
Finally getting the Warlock questline, I attempted to revitalize my old Stealer of Souls deck. While it's still fun, I figured that with the questline and all the new Warlock spells, it would be both possible and rewarding to go all-in on Stealer of Souls, which led to this:
A card that worked very well for me is Witching Hour, since Guff the Tough is a beast and you're pretty much guaranteed to get him relatively soon. You'd have to cut BEEEES!!! though, since those are also beasts.
The deck I'm playing is quite different, it has more of a top-end and doesn't use tokens. It's nice that such different takes on Odd Questline Druid are possible.
Usually I don't submit decks until I've played a few games with them, but this giveaway was a good reason to push that habit aside. Let's hope the deck doesn't just work in theory.
There is Overlord Runthak as well, but that's only one card in a deck and you wouldn't be able to get rush turn 4. That curve problem applies to Sermon as well, unless you coin the Sermon.
There could be a meta curve issue as well: Goody Two-Shields is one of the best current Paladin cards, so often you'd want to play a spell on turn 4 instead of a minion.
The base minion isn't terrible, but it has competition in that slot from Kazakus, Golem Shaper, so unless you are playing other 4-drops like Sermon already, I don't see this getting included.
It's true that you'd be likely to land Blessing of Authority, but you are spending 2 turns and 9 mana on that, which seems risky when cheap answers like Devolving Missiles and Coerce are around. Hunter is also getting more Poisonous cards, although we don't know yet if those will be meta.
It's probably good in Wild, where you can handbuff it on turn 1 or 2.
The amount of nerfing the questline would need in Wild to be balanced would likely make the card unplayable in Standard; I doubt they want to do that.
The easiest way to fix the problem is to ban The Demon Seed in Wild, like they did for Stealer of Souls. If they don't want to go that far, I think Crystallizer is the card to nerf instead.
I'm not sure we're going to see games past turn 10 any time soon: I think the only thing keeping the Priest questline in check is the other questlines finishing sooner.
That said, even making it to turn 10 would be an improvement; I'd like to be able to play Sheldras Moontree.
I agree that's the best way to deal with Crystallizer: it doesn't destroy the card (in fact it becomes better in most other decks) but it does limit its usefulness in questline Warlock to a point where it probably won't be included anymore.
What makes Crystallizer very powerful at the moment is not only how much it helps quest completion, but also that the damage + armor after completion makes it very hard for the opponent to win a damage race after quest completion.
Any kind of persistent reward is going to be good versus control. I think that similar to when Death Knights were in Standard, almost every control deck will have to run the questline itself.
Questline Shaman and Mage are indeed very powerful and may continue to be a problem for control decks.
Hunters can run out of resources, so if you can heal enough or put down minions they can't ignore, I think a control deck should be able to outlast them.
The Paladin questline currently seems the strongest when you play as many 1-drops as possible, but against control that's unlikely to be favored. If that deck is retooled to have more staying power, its quest completion will come later, which weakens it considerably against non-control decks. The more expensive cards are included, the more likely you'd be better off playing Handbuff instead.
Starting at 10 mana, you're not going to get enough discounts from just tapping to make it worthwhile to play Flesh Giant. If you play healing and self-damage as well (in particular, Spellstone and ways to charge it), you can get meaningful discounts. However, I encountered a lot of Demon Seed Warlock and Mozaki Mage on ladder last month and I don't think you can out-heal those decks.
Recently I've been playing EvenLock with Battleground Battlemaster instead, also thanks to a nerf. I cut all the 8+ mana cards (except the mana cheating ones) and instead try to put some big minions on the board on turn 3-5 and if anything sticks, the windfury closes out the game.
I must confess I only understood how it worked after I saw a solution, but for those people who are stuck on the mechanics and don't want a full solution, read on below:
The hero power makes you change direction (north/south). You'll continue walking in the new direction until you flip it again using the hero power.
Every time you visit a location, its counter decreases by one. The goal is to make all the counters on the map reach one.
Don't do it! You'd spend millions to get Kripp to stream exclusively on your service and despite that your brand wouldn't even be called a joke.
This brawl is a rare occasion where Harbinger Celestia and Millhouse Manastorm are actually good legendaries.
I've played a few games with a Questline Paladin with Lady Prestor, similar to this deck by FunkiMonki, but with some different cards so it's more likely to complete the quest on turn 5 (but less likely to draw Lady Prestor). The dragons give you just a bit of extra reach after completing the questline.
With the questline in it, it's not a pure budget deck, but if you happen to have that card, the rest of the deck is cheap. I think the only other expensive card I'm running is Oh My Yogg!, but that can be swapped out without too much consequences.
Maybe it would be interesting to do a series of almost-budget decks where the only expensive card is the questline? Probably a lot of players got at least one questline from packs or track rewards.
I wonder what would happen when there is an overpowered deck and everyone bans the same class. Would people playing that class be stuck in the queue for minutes? I guess that would encourage them to play something else though, so maybe it's not so bad.
I'd rather ban a card than a class though. For example, in Wild I'd gladly ban Secret Mage or Big Priest, but I have no issue playing against other Mage or Priest decks.
What happens if you copy The Rat King's deathrattle with Mok'Nathal Lion? Does it come back as a lion or as a rat king?
In a recent Tavern Brawl I saw a minion randomly get assigned the deathrattle of Sherazin, Corpse Flower and that minion turned into Sherazin while dormant. But Hearthstone isn't always consistent, so I'm not sure it's safe to extrapolate from that.
In general, this doesn't do great versus aggro. The first night I tested this I ran into a lot of Mage and some other slower decks like Warrior and Druid and was able to often outpace them. But when I tested it again later in an aggro pocket meta, I managed to get a narrow victory versus Shadow Priest but lost against another Shadow Priest, a Face Hunter and Questline Zoo.
Soul Rend is probably more reliable than Hysteria versus wide boards of roughly equal minions; that would be something to try. I was a bit worried bout burning combo pieces, but against aggro that probably doesn't really matter.
Raise Dead is useful against slower decks, since you can drop Soul Stealer and see if it sticks, but against decks that get on the board early the chance of it sticking is small and the 3 damage you take from the reload is relevant. So that would be another card to consider replacing to make the deck more resilient to aggro.
A problem with Questline Zoo in particular is that they can use Raise Dead to play Cult Neophyte again and again. Since we run The Dark Portal, our entire early game is spells, so this is very disruptive.
Maybe the solution is to queue this deck only if you're encountering a lot of control/combo opponents and queue a different build of Questline Warlock if you're encountering a lot of aggro.
Yes, it's there for Tuskpiercer to draw and then you shuffle it back into the deck.
I got The Demon Seed, Maestra of the Masquerade and Kargath Bladefist.
Finally getting the Warlock questline, I attempted to revitalize my old Stealer of Souls deck. While it's still fun, I figured that with the questline and all the new Warlock spells, it would be both possible and rewarding to go all-in on Stealer of Souls, which led to this:
I replaced 2x Starfall by 1x Naturalize and 1x Guidance. I'm not sure yet about Guidance, but Naturalize has been useful.
I've been having fun with the Druid questline: (click for detailed guide)
A card that worked very well for me is Witching Hour, since Guff the Tough is a beast and you're pretty much guaranteed to get him relatively soon. You'd have to cut BEEEES!!! though, since those are also beasts.
The deck I'm playing is quite different, it has more of a top-end and doesn't use tokens. It's nice that such different takes on Odd Questline Druid are possible.
Many thanks for the bundle!
Usually I don't submit decks until I've played a few games with them, but this giveaway was a good reason to push that habit aside. Let's hope the deck doesn't just work in theory.
Here is my entry for the contest, an attempt to take advantage of Battleground Battlemaster using stealth minions:
There is Overlord Runthak as well, but that's only one card in a deck and you wouldn't be able to get rush turn 4. That curve problem applies to Sermon as well, unless you coin the Sermon.
There could be a meta curve issue as well: Goody Two-Shields is one of the best current Paladin cards, so often you'd want to play a spell on turn 4 instead of a minion.
The base minion isn't terrible, but it has competition in that slot from Kazakus, Golem Shaper, so unless you are playing other 4-drops like Sermon already, I don't see this getting included.
It's true that you'd be likely to land Blessing of Authority, but you are spending 2 turns and 9 mana on that, which seems risky when cheap answers like Devolving Missiles and Coerce are around. Hunter is also getting more Poisonous cards, although we don't know yet if those will be meta.
It's probably good in Wild, where you can handbuff it on turn 1 or 2.