In a vacuum, getting a 4/3 weapon and 6 1/1s is probably worth 7 mana, but that won't see play.

I'm sure there will be lots of attempts at a Steward of Darkshire Paladin around rank 20.

I guess we'll wait and see but i predict a hard over correction towards countering PW and then a slow relapse into PW again

i dont see the issue if pirate warrior isnt the strongest deck in the game.

Would be lamer if there were no decks trying to race you while you defend

I really hope taunt warrior with the new quest will be viable, I almost lost interest in the game after MSG made control warrior obsolete. Gonna craft the new cards and hopefully it won't be a waste of resources.

Quick overview of Thijs' take:

Top tier: Shaman, 3 viable archetypes. Beast Hunter. Druid

Tier 2: Discard Zoo, Tempo-Taunt Warrior
Thinks Discard Zoo could be really strong and might be top tier. He thinks the Warrior cards are mostly garbage, the but Die Insect! quest is one of the best.

Mid tier: Rogue, Mage. He seemed really unsure on mage, says Rogue has some interesting tools to work with.

Bottom tier: Paladin, Priest

He 's obviously quite concerned about control warlock as it's one of his favorite archetypes, says he doesn't think it's viable with so many suicide cards and not enough heal.

How is it that the Pyromancer poisonous adaptation is a full board clear, but the Rogue Envenom with Blade Fury is not?

I guess they're trying to say the blade flurry spell deals the damage, not the weapon.

Blizzard logic is very inconsistent.

What druid archetype is going to be tier 1? Jades?

I think this makes sense

Paladin might be played even less than now, which is incredible. Shaman is still going to be all over the place and hex/devolve hard counters both the idiotic quest and the cool reward.

i only watched about 30 mins of a 4 hour stream, but I am pretty sure he's mostly just talking about the new archetypes that will arise. I did catch him talking about Pirate Warrior and he thinks there are counters to it, more weapon hate, and the deck got no help at all. (I think this ignores the fact that the biggest counter to PW was Reno, but w/e).

So I think he was saying the Barnabus Druid will be good. He did say that the "buff your minion, add armor" would be very good in Jade Druid and might replace Feral Rage.

I think the biggest takeaway is he thinks the new Hunter decks will be really good.

I think I agree on both points, however, it remains to be seen what shamans will do for early game with Trogg/Totem Golem rotating out, and Concede Shaman losing Healing wave.

I went back ITT and looked at what people said about Gadgetzan, and it is pretty amusing.

There was a ton of talk about the Grimy Goons and they basically got no play.

No one thought Shaku was any good at all

People, including pros, are really bad at accessing how good cards are when the meta switches.

Nobody said anything about Finja being OP (after searching, I think Gordon mentioned it being good).

That's definitely true, I mostly went back to look out to be amused.

I don't think anyone thought Patches would be meta-defining, although it was obvious about 2 hours into the new season.

I really can't believe how bad the Priest quest is.

It's obviously supposed to be a counter to the Hunter quest but it's so much slower and deathrattles are crap. In order to fulfill the quest in any reasonable amount of time, you'll have to play a lot of cheap deathrattles like Mistress and Tentacle and Loot Hoarder. If you're playing all these, you still lose to the Hunter quest even at 40 health because the Hunter is pumping out endless raptors and can buff them.

And you have no win condition vs. any type of control deck. Yay for Turn 10 N'Zoth that brings back a board of Mistresses and Loot Hoarders.

I just remembered how good dirty rat is in control warrior

now double that, neat.


//

(priest quest)
it's summon 7 deathrattle minions, which means you can copy them (i.e. with the new card that makes 1/1 copy - probably not the one that auto triggers deathrattles)

very easy to do tbh.

But looking around at available deathrattles you're right its mostly cairne as top end, nzoth wont be too spooky for board power

You should be able to get a lot of value off cards like twilight summoner/shifting shades/crystalline oracle though, out of deck style to beat more fatigue control decks.

Watching the Lifecoach stream -- he thinks if the Hunter quest is good, the whole meta will be bad.

its pretty incredible that the worst metas were ruined because of OP 1 drops (undertaker, trogg, buccaneer/patches) and now they think it could be a good idea to make a quest over playing 15 1 drops in the least interactive class already

I saw Lifecoach talking about the Hunter quest and he really did not convince me.

It's sooo easy to counter it. Nearly all the minions have one health. There's so many cards that blow them out. You can three for one them for one mana. Once they're in top decking Raptors mode it's not like their turns are unbelievably powerful compared to what other decks are doing with 8 mana.

I can see the deck being strong enough to be a viable slice of the meta, but there's no world where it's 45% of the meta with a sky high winrate because when it can't beat Tentacle of N'Zoth.

I do agree with him that if the quest is good then it will be absolutely terrible gameplay.

Strong 1 drops rely on having strong follow-ups to continue the pressure. Trogg into T2 hero power is hardly going to scare anyone.

There's also the issue that for every OP 1-drop there are plenty of Angry Chickens. The best 1 drops are historically quite good, but the fifth best? Let alone the 15th... and as I noted originally you're less likely to have a good follow-up because half your deck is 1-drops and you lost a card from your opening hand playing the quest, which also means you couldn't even drop your OP 1-drop on 1.

I think complaints about the Gadgetzan meta are overdone. There was a long period where Reno Mage was the dominant deck on ladder and it didn't die due to aggro decks, but the rise of Jade Druids (which gained power after the aggro decks that crushed it got nerfed). There has also been a ton of Renolocks at every step of the ladder, and rogue, which usually suffers vs. aggro classes, has done quite well.

I think the worst metas are defined by cookie-cutter mechanics/game play (C'Thun, Jades) rather than getting smorced, but that's me.

I hated the Karazhan meta, which was dominated by COTW Hunter and then Shamanstone. The problem with MR shaman was, well, everything, which is why it was so strong and got even stronger after nerfs aimed at it were implemented.

It's clear that Blizz put a lot of effort into making interesting mechanics. It remains to be seen if it produces an interesting meta though.

The druid quest didn't pop out at me as OP. Since the TGT, BRM and LOE stuff is all rotating out hopefully it will at least take more than 2 weeks to solve this meta.

yeah I agree the hunter quest might suck balls, what im wondering about is why they thought it was a good idea