While Feral Druid has existed in World of Warcraft since the games inception, it has never quite been able to manifest itself in Hearthstone, but Lost in the Park is a major step to make it exist. Each step reward gives some much needed armor and card draw, allowing the player to clear threats on the board with ease, and the final reward is a great finisher for any deck that can chip the opponent down a little bit. However, is each threshold of attack needed to progress the questline too high given that there is not that many tools to give attack? It is time to do some math and figure that out!
Parameters for the Statistics
Before jumping into the breakdown, I would first like to give the conditions behind a lot of the calculations you will see in this article and almost all the future ones. In every scenario, I assume the player goes first and hard mulligans everything but the questline to find the key cards to accomplish the quest, and then prioritizes completing the questline with the hypothetical opponent not applying much pressure. In addition to that, unless a percentage is stated, assume that the given scenario will happen 50% of the time. With this out of the way, let us dive into this questline!
Decklist
Quest Completion Breakdown
In the deck, there are a total of 8 accelerants for the quest, these being Feral Rage, Moontouched Amulet, Pounce and Park Panther, in addition to just naturally using the hero power. Given that the first breakpoint we are trying to reach is 4 attack and both Feral Rage and Moontouched Amulet give that much, we have a 53% chance of finding at least one copy in the opening hand, with that number going up to around 75% by the time we can finally cast it. It is also rather easy to complete this step using the hero power twice and pounce, which we are likely to draw by turn 4. To put it simply, the first step is going to be done by turn 3-4 a majority of the time.
The next step gets a bit messier, with it requiring either an additional hero power for the latter spells, or a combination of both Park Panther and Pounce to complete the quest cleanly. If we are looking for either Feral Rage or Moontouched Amulet, we can expect to draw the other one by around turn 7. As for Park Panther or Pounce, we can expect to get at least 1 copy of both in our hand by turn 8, which is still a bit slower than other accelerants. In the worse case scenario, we can expect to draw either Park Panther or Pounce by turn 4, which would result in completing this step around turn 7 using either 2 hero powers or 3 hero powers. This means that on average, we can expect this step of the quest to be finished by turns 7 or 8.
Finally, we arrive at the last step, which requires 6 attack, meaning either 2 Park Panthers, or Pounce and Feral Rage or Moontouched Amulet complete it the cleanest. Finding both Park Panthers is the worst way of completing the last step, taking around 17 to 18 turns on average to draw both. The last step can also take a while depending on how many Feral Rage or Moontouched Amulets you have already played. If you have not played any, there is a 93% chance to have one by turn 8. Playing 1 copy also does not hurt the chances that much, still being a 65% chance to have either on turn 8. Unfortunately, playing 2 copies does affect the chances a ton, with there being around a 50% chance of having the third copy by turn 13. At this point, it becomes significantly more reasonable to just complete the quest with a mix of hero powers, Pounce, and Park Panthers, which means you can expect the final step to be done around turns 12 or 13.
Reward
Compared to the other classes, druid’s questline rewards seem a bit lackluster. The first step reward is just Iron Hide, the second step’s reward is Shield Block, both of which are a bit underwhelming for the currently somewhat steep completion requirements.That leaves us with Guff the Tough, which is a very good payoff to say the least. There's a solid chance that if you play a bunch of standard games you are either going to see Alexstrasza the Life-Binder or Illidari Inquisitor being used as 8 damage burst to finish off someone. Guff falls into the same massive burst damage, while also providing plenty of protection in case you just need a little bit more damage afterwards to finish the opponent off. Despite Guff being quite a strong finisher, there’s just a few pieces lacking to give it a consistent powerful showing. If it wasn’t clear enough during the questline step breakdown, there are simply not enough strong tools to speed up the questline, and the hero power certainly is not going to be putting much work in itself.
In addition to that, it is not quite clear where the quest should even be played. Primordial Druid certainly does not need a tool to deal 8 damage burst when pretty much everything else in the deck can deal just as much, if not more for significantly less investment, and in Token Druid you get the chip in with the tokens, but then spend turns completing steps instead of buffing the board. If the quest gets more toys to play with, it has a chance of being great but until then, it just seems too inconsistent and is lost in the rest of druid’s current gameplans.
What do all of you think about the Druid Questline? It certainly has a lot of potential, and it would not surprise me if it became much better as time goes on, but as of now it seems a bit lackluster. If you have any questions about the math behind any of the numbers shown in the article, let me know and I can explain it a bit further. Hope you enjoyed and I'll see you all in the next one!
Learn More About Stormwind's Other Questlines
We have a whole series of articles planned for the questlines. Here's everything published so far:
- Demon Hunter's Final Showdown Legendary Questline
- Druid's Lost in the Park Legendary Questline
- Hunter's Defend the Dwarven District Legendary Questline
- Mage's Sorcerer's Gambit Legendary Questline
- Paladin's Rise to the Occasion Legendary Questline
- Priest's Seek Guidance Legendary Questline
- Rogue's Find the Imposter Legendary Questline
- Shaman's Command the Elements Legendary Questline
- Warlock's The Demon Seed Legendary Questline
- Warrior's Raid the Docks Legendary Questline
Comments
I wouldn't use it for Quest completion, I'd just use it for burst (or lifegain alternatively). 5-mana 8-damage is nothing to laugh at, especially if you can ppull it off twice on the same turn for that 16-damage nuke (the Chad Druid vs the virgin Doomhammer Shaman).
If this sort of deck comes together in any shape or form I feel like Solar Eclipse will be essential, if only just to double your draws or something.
Good catch! That is something that I did not consider, so I'll just write about it here to make up for that.
For the first step, Solar Eclipse + Pounce can be found by turn 8 on average, which is obviously not the best look when we already expect to have the first step done by turn 3.
As for the second step, we can just weave in a hero power with the aforementioned Eclipse + Pounce, which assuming we did not use either for the first step, can once again be found by turn 8 on average, which does help the consistency a bit, but ultimately doesn't make it faster.
The final step is where things get a little bit more interesting. Solar Eclipse + either of the 3 mana attack buff spells does save time. The chance of having both of these cards in your hand go as 68% on turn 8 if you have not cast any of the 3 mana attack buffs, 53% to have by turn 9 if you've cast 1, and finally 53% to have by turn 14 if you've cast two of them.
So all in all, Solar Eclipse can speed up the last step if you have cast none or one of the 3 mana attack buffs, but past then and it won't really speed things up on average.
All this being said, the main card you want to pair with Solar Eclipse is actually Fungal Fortunes, simply because 6/8 of the cards that help speed up the quest are spells, and if you can pull the two off, you can expect to finish the last step significantly faster even if you have already used 2/4 of the 3 mana attack buffs.