Quest Mage In Wild Might Get Another Nerf in the Future
If you are playing Wild mode, you might've come across a lot of Quest Mages, who are really annoying to play against, mainly because of the Flamewaker and Sorcerer's Apprentice combo, but the Sorcerer's Apprentice alone can cause a lot of problems and create a huge tempo swing in early/mid rounds.
A Twitter user asked a Hearthstone developer (Cora) about her opinion about this problematic combo or deck in general and she replied with the following answers.
Q: What do you guys think about Sorcerer's Apprentice shenanigans' in wild? Do you think its acceptable the way it is now? (Talking about giants quest mage)
A: It's definitely on our radar. We hit Open the Waygate a while back, but we're very aware that it's a volatile situation and a few new cards could make things really unpleasant. SOURCE
A: We're not just going to leave Wild out to dry. If changes are necessary then we'll make them. SOURCE
You are an idiot. U cannot check the meta report or at least play wild?
Yes and that was stupid. The barnes nerf for instance changed virtually nothing, except it got the smooth brains to stop playing a mediocre deck. Meanwhile they unnerfed raza, which is an awfully oppressive combo to play against. It is, however, mediocre in wild because it is so slow, and tempo decks can dump 10's of mana worth of stats in a matter of turns. So which is it? Do you want to get rid of "traumatic" combos, or not?
Quest mage is the only actually interesting deck in the format. It is reminiscent of miracle rogue, which likewise got the axe because of bitching by idiots who'd rather just play generic tempo or generic control.
Ultimately I fail to see how a time walk is any more "traumatic" than turn one 4/4 with a 1/3 weapon which spirals into more tempo. Or dump a bunch of totems and buff them into 4 drops. Or dump secrets out of your hand that are value and tempo free, while also getting frostbolts/fireballs attached to bodies. The list goes on, there is tons of broken garbage in the format. Just leave the format alone. Team 5 is incompetent. They can't design for standard, do not trust them to make good decisions for wild.
As an aside, combo druid never got this level of bitching, despite being the best combo deck in the game and arguably the best deck in the history of the game at it's height. It's not the time walk people hate, I suspect it's the RNG. Because consistently doing the same boring shit over and over is fun, but a deck that makes the player think on the fly is "traumatic". These people should actually play the deck and realize that you don't random into an ice block whenever you need it like they seem to think.
It doesn't matter that you think a deck is "traumatic" or not. Blizzard apparently thinks so and that's why it's gonna get nerfed. Our opinions don't really matter at the end of the day.
Why should they nerf a standard card just for wild?
You don't like a healthy meta, do you?
It can be never healthy again after AoO, so...
So sad DM13 that you got downvoted because of people ignorance. It is clear now.
"Might". It took Barnes ~2 1/2 years to get nerfed after this exact kind of talk.
And since it was already nerfed not that long ago, they won't hurry wit it unless its winrate goes completely bonkers.
I know it’s Not the whole problem but I think vargoth should never give 3 turns
Vargoth should have never been printed. Made big priest even more braindead toxic.
Sorcerer's Apprentice should read "The first spell you play each turn costs 1 less."
There, it's fixed.
Why would they nerf a standard card to balance a deck in wild?
I don't understand why cards have to to have the same effect in both wild and standard can't they just explain some cards might have different effects/cost based on what format they're in?
Because it's what they should have done a long time ago.
Cards being different in standard and wild would be super confusing. What they could do is make certain cards standard only, though. Maybe Sorcerer's Apprentice is standard only? *shrug*
And why would they change Sorcerer's Apprentice? Sorcerer's Apprentice isn't a problem. Even when Un'goro was in standard, Quest Mage was degenerative and obnoxious but it wasn't broken.
Having "standard only" cards would go against the definition of wild format. Wild exists so people can use whatever card you want. If you start putting card restrictions on wild, what's the point?
Pretty much, but I think nerfing cards in the standard format to balance wild is probably worse.
I think the biggest problem is the mechanic of giving extra turns is too powerful a mechanic for the game to handle (especially considering other mechanics such as discounting large minions to 0-cost). Removing the requirement for your minions to wait a turn to attack is essentially equivalent to giving all of your minions played that turn charge and we know that Blizzard considered charge to be too powerful a mechanic for HS.
Add in the fact this effect can be duplicated with Vargoth means I think the reward should be completely redesigned.
Or 2 charges if you play quest with Vargoth.
Feel like it might be easier to nerf Sorcerers Apprentice with some of the new cards in this expansion as well. The Spell Damage legendary just seems so strong with Sorcerers Apprentice. Even in standard I think small spell mage is going to be insane.
Turn nine = Spell Damage Legendary, two Sorcerers Apprentice... Then just 0 mana spell up to x12 which isn’t even that hard with Magic Trick being able to discover itself and Ray of Frost... Frostbolt x2... that’s game.
And even if I’m overestimating how much you can pull off with this combo... and it isn’t that easy to pull off... even if you only half it, there’s still the matter of the two 8/8s when you don’t get OTKed.
It might not even be that OP. Obviously this deck will be weak to aggro... but it’ll be so frustrating to lose against.