Rogue Quest Nerf Incoming! Un'Goro Q&A this Friday!
The Caverns Below will require that Rogues now play five minions with the same name. Finally?
In addition to this upcoming change, Ben Brode and Mike Donais will be holding a live Q&A this Friday, June 30 at 10:30 AM PDT (1:30 PM EDT, 7:30 PM CEST) on the PlayHearthstone Twitch.
Poll: Is this a Good Balance Change?
What do you think? Let us know more about your opinion in the comments below.
Nerf Announcement
Quote from KeganbeIn an upcoming update, we will be making a balance change to the Rogue card: The Caverns Below.
The Caverns Below now reads: Quest: Play five minions with the same name. Reward: Crystal Core.
Since the release of Journey to Un'Goro, Hearthstone has enjoyed a wider variety of competitively viable classes and decks than ever before. We’ve been monitoring overall gameplay, and we’ve decided that—even though everything is varied and many decks are viable—a change to The Caverns Below is still warranted.
The Caverns Below is uniquely powerful versus several slower, control-oriented decks and played often enough that it’s pushing those decks out of play. This change should help expand the deck options available to players both now and after the release of the next expansion.
Blog Announcement
Quote from BlizzardThe elementals are calling! Join us June 30 at 10:30 a.m. PDT for a live Q&A session where Game Director Ben Brode and Principal Game Designer Mike Donais will be answering your questions about Journey to Un’Goro and the upcoming balance changes.
Want to learn more: Check out the forum post!
Have something you'd like to ask? Here’s how you can be part of the conversation:
- Tweet @PlayHearthstone with the hashtag #QA with your question
- Post a question below in the blog comments
- Join us live in Twitch chat and direct questions to us @PlayHearthstone
Can’t make it? Don’t worry – we will be posting the full video on the PlayHearthstone YouTube channel after the Q&A has completed.
Follow the official Hearthstone Twitch channel to be notified when the stream begins.
We’ll see you there!
While I feel the Card should be Nerfed. This is a terrible nerf. All is going to do is make the deck lose even HARDER to aggro, without fixing ANYTHING in the control matchup. "I need 1 more bounce card to finish the quest!" Then back to exactly the same position as before. I think maybe 1 in 40-45 games vs Quest rogue have i been "Damn, if only he didn't have that 1 shadow step to finish me off with that second Southsea Deckhand charge."
This deck is still gonna stomp slow decks. Its just gonna get punished more by aggro, and more likely to lose vs midrange.
If the card is helpless against aggro, people will stop playing it, so that control decks don't have to deal with it.
So the best answer is to not play an entire archetype? Fuck that. Glad you aren't on the Hearthstone team.
Wait for next expansion, disenchant The caverns below first, then open your packs for increased chance of getting another copy of the quest.
Doesn't seem that hard to me. If you already have the important legendaries, you'd better go for the slim chance of getting caverns below duplicates. At worst, you can get lots of dust which can be used to craft the missing legendaries assuming you won't get a missing one in your 50 packs
I crafted this quest arount a month ago to test the deck though. First few games and a thought: What a shit deck ist that all about? Well it was sooo unfun to play and felt a bit "dirty" when I won.
So I'm looking forward to undust this quest for full reimbursment and the feeling is gone that I paid 1600 for nothing:)
Dirty like Pirate Warrior... DUST, my friend! :)
Why bother with this nerf a week before a new expansion is announced? Ungoro will have been out 4 months (roughly) by the time the new expansion hits, 3 months of it will have been with Quest Rogue in its current form.
This deck was a problem from day 1. Just shows how unbelievably slow and uninteractive Team 5 really are.
I'm against this nerf (not that it matters; Blizzard have announced it and they're not going to change now), but what I really don't get is the line of talk in this thread about how the deck is "hard to interact with" or "boring to play with".
Quest Rogue, in its current form, is one of the most tricky decks to pilot I've seen in Hearthstone. Ok, you occasionally get the absolute nuts hand with both Shadowsteps, a Prep and stuff and go off on turn 4. That's no different from how often you got the Tunnel Trogg -> Totem Golem -> Totem Golem line in Shaman last year, and both of these could still lose games; I lost to Druid last night with a nuts hand because he had 10 power on board at the end of his turn 2. Most games though, you don't get these insane hands and you need to work how the path to victory, using your available resources (cards, health, mana) to slow down the opponent's board state long enough that you get to complete the quest and not die. Vanish acting as both a delayer and a "super Shadowstep" adds yet another layer to the strategy, and then there are those games that the only viable way you have to complete the quest is Panda your Panda to Panda your Panda. The deck has come so far since Dog's initial list with Moroes and Violet Teacher back when the set first came out, and 90% of the games I lose I see a better line I could have taken afterwards.
Playing against Quest Rogue as an aggro player is easy: you punch them in the face and they die horribly. My Druid story above isn't a one-of, it's happened a lot of times and even when I'm playing Standard Midrange Hunter or Wild Aggro Shaman, the plan is still the same for me: their most precious resource is time, and you just make sure they have as little of that as possible.
If you're the control deck though, it's a different story. Counterspell slows them down a lot (plus you get free wins because people take chances they shouldn't, even now that there are fewer spells in the deck than ever) but during my Reno Priest days playing against the deck, if they managed to go off then my plan immediately turns into "kill absolutely everything they play until they run out of cards". It's pretty intense and if your opponent plays perfectly and never overextends even slightly then it's one of the hardest matches you'll ever play, but they usually don't and you'll be just fine. :)
Nerfs are needed when the game gets unhealthy. Force/Savage needed to get nerfed: it was unfun to play (OMG ONE DAMAGE OFF LETHAL) and it was horrible to play against, especially with Shades and stuff too. Spirit Claws needed to get nerfed because the game could be won instantly off the back of a 25% random event, which just shouldn't happen. Undertaker needed to get nerfed because it made it impossible to catch up if it got too big (which I still maintain isn't true, not that it matters now). Quest Rogue doesn't do any of these things. You might feel that it's the modern day equivalent of Leeroy -> Shadowstep -> Leeroy -> Shadowstep -> Leeroy, but Quest Rogue needs the whole game and their draw to go a specific way to do powerful things, while the other things mentioned above just need you to draw two or three specific cards. To me, they aren't comparable.
My biggest pet peeve in Hearthstone is still the existence of the Jade Golem mechanic, which reminds me far too much of Slivers in Magic but without the inherent weakness to board clears, and Jade Idol specifically because LAWL FATIGUE. If you want to talk about uninteractive cards and unfun decks, I would say Jade Druid is far, far worse than Quest Rogue, but maybe I'm just biased.
Oh, and Pirate Warrior is fine. It still feels horrible when you get crapped on by the nuts hand or when you lose to someone who's absolutely dreadful but you had nothing to punish them with because you drew badly, but it's an aggro deck; survive until they're out of gas and they die. Welcome to Magic for the last 8 years.
Thanks for listening all, I'm going back to grinding Rogue wins until the nerf hits.
Thank you for giving an argumented advice. I just wish people would be giving more of these.
I totally agree with, and would just add one question : What is the problem with having a good matchup?
I wish people will take the time to read your post and not only downvote it.
Thank you for the arguments, however two things against:
- I don't care (and neither do many of the players) that a deck is "complex to pilot". This should have no bearing on whether it deserves a nerf. Imagine a hypothetical deck that gives you an instant win if you solve a differential equation in four dimensions in 3 minutes while you opponent sits and watches you do it. Complex? Definitely! Interesting and difficult for you? Sure! Rewarding? Immensely! But, boring and non-interactive as watching painted grass drygrow. So, not a real argument in favour of keeping it.
- Related to the point above, of course also Patron Warrior and Worgen Warrior were nerfed. Arguably two of the most complicated decks to pilot in Hearthstone's history, and not particularly powerful. This is in the end what Blizzard does, albeit slowly.
So, Patron Warrior and the various forms of Charge Warrior (even going back to the Molten Giants variation seen early on) both fall under the same banner as Force/Savage for me. Once you get to the late game, you stop playing Hearthstone and start playing Am I Dead If I Don't Have Taunts, which is an utterly miserable experience in a game with no interaction outside of your own turn. Patron had the infinitely large Frothing Berserker with Charge stuff, and you're absolutely right in that Patron Warrior was ridiculously hard to pilot correctly (something I never managed), I think the difference, for me, is that you go from a neutral or winning game state playing against these decks to being just freaking dead from them not having a board, while it's very uncommon (though not impossible) to lose to Quest Rogue in one turn from any empty board.
I agree with your comment that difficulty is no indication of a nerf being deserved. Looking at Magic again: Dark Depths Thopter was a masterpiece that lasted for a few months before getting banned horribly and it was all about finding lines too, but the deck was inherently broken (attacking for lethal with an indestructible 20/20 flier on turn 3 seems goooooooood) so it had to go. I think my comment was more aimed at the few commenters here who have the impression or attitude of "hurrr, deck is brainless, thank fuck it's nerfed, never want to play against it, hate playing it, I always get unlucky when I play it and it must be the deck and not me". It just makes me sad that others can't appreciate how neat the deck is too.
Oh, there's nothing bad with having a good matchup because it's just a bad matchup for someone else. Bad matchups aren't unwinnable, Reno Priest vs Jade Druid is 90/10 in Druid's favour but it's still possible for the Priest to win and it makes it even more epic for the Priest player when they do. You're never going to have a meta that's 50/50 for everyone, that's why metas exist. If you find that your deck can't beat Quest Rogue (or whatever the most played deck is), you either change decks or wait for the meta to change back. Or I guess you could put Crabs in your deck and hope your next opponent has targets for them. >_>
Original post:
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/hearthstone/topic/20757246514#post-1
Note: The Caverns Below will be eligible to be disenchanted for its full Arcane Dust value for a limited time after the next Hearthstone patch arrives.
This is totally unnecessary. The quest rogue is just another miracle rogue deck which the rogue has always had. If you don't get 3 bounces soon enough you're stuck with a handful of crappy minions unable to do anything.
I've beat the quest rogue decks lots of times and I've lost many games as a quest rogue too...win ratio is only 60% when it first came out now it's 44% win ratio with the last 35 games (I just stopped playing it because it's not effective as other decks). I've got a 67% win ratio with Lyra Priest in 30+ games.
This deck just isn't what it was when it first came out, but all the whiney babies got Mamma to give them their way and Blizzard will now make it so all your minions are 2/2's or you have to bounce the same minion 7 times to complete the quest...can you say 400 dust?
Sounds horrible, doesn't it?
Let's see. The deck runs:
- 2 Shadowstep; 2 Pandas; 2 Ferrymen. In addition 2 Vanish for turn 6 megabounce + board clear, or t3 with Prep (also 2 copies).
- 2 Novice Engineers; 2 Mimic Pod (0 mana with Prep) for card draw and card multiplication
- 2 Fire Fly and 2 Igneous Elemental to generate 6 Flame Elementals, no single Bounce needed.
That's 18 cards out of 30 that help towards completing the Quest. Really not that difficult to get 3 of these by turn 6, especially if you mulligan for them.In fact, very hard not to.
But you knew that, didn't you?
I think out of all my games against quest rogue, the quest is almost always both completedAND activated by turn 4 or five. Only. Handful of times have the rogues drawn poorly against me. So I always find it funny when people say how uncommon it is, because on the other side of it it happens a shit ton.