Quests Kill Control – How has Hearthstone changed with the release of United by Stormwind?

The eternal problem of balance

The community of any game has eternal topics of discussion. While fans of Dota and Counter-Strike vilify Valve for infrequent updates, HS fans are constantly unhappy with the balance. And “United by Stormwind” only increased the degree of such sentiments on forums, YouTube and social networks.

Over the past year and a half, Team 5, responsible for Hearthstone, has been rather conservative about creating ultimately strong legendary cards, instead focusing on what the developers think are “interesting” mechanics. After Zephrys, Queen Alexstrasza and Galakronds of the Priest and Rogue appeared in the game, HS no longer added cards, the drawing of which heralded a complete revolution of the game out of nowhere. At best, they were key cards in OTK-combinations (“Mozaki” or “Il’ginot”) or prepared a coup (“Loremaster Polkelt”), but still did not commit it themselves.

In other words, Legendaries, in fact, became technical cards of different archetypes and often turned out to be optional, if not easily replaceable for success in long-range games. For clarity: over the past four updates, only two of the eight released Legendaries for the Rogue have played more or less stable, the rest have not come close to entering a successful archetype.

The lack of effective legendaries began to be compensated for by two copies of stronger cards of other rarity, the presence of which on the mulligan began to significantly increase the class winrate: for the mage it is “Sorcerous Stream”, for the druid – “Sparkbloom” and “Rampage of Nature”, for the demon hunter – “Skull Gul’dan “, etc. As a result, relatively speaking, the” Standard “meta has become a confrontation between decks that rely on the early drawing of such cards, with aggro decks. And the new addition has seriously shaken the meta, completely destroying the potential of control decks.

About new mechanics

The two main features of Stormwind Bindings are the exchange mechanics and the return of quests, which were last released two years ago in Saviors of Uldum. With the first, everything is simple: on some of the cards that have been released, a property has appeared, thanks to which they can be put back into the deck and take new cards, while spending a unit of mana. But the new quests turned out to be much more interesting than before.

Now the quest is a chain of three tasks with intermediate rewards, and the final bonus is a strong creature for five mana with a powerful battle cry. For example, after playing a quest, a druid needs to increase the hero’s attack by four (the reward is +5 to armor), then to increase by five (+5 to armor and a card draw), and then by eight (8/8 provocation, the play of which gives + 8 to attack).

All classes got quest chains, but only the cards for the mage and warlock really broke the game. Both classes are capable of achieving final rewards extremely quickly, the battle cries of which are almost guaranteed to help you finish the game the next turn. And some decks are simply not able to resist this: now cases of “consid” before the first move are not uncommon. Especially the priest got it, for whom a meeting with a magician and a warlock is an absolutely hopeless matchup.

At the same time, of the two quests, the most problematic so far seems to be Gul’dan’s quest chain. If the magician largely depends on the timely arrival of the “Sorcerous Stream” and the presence of the opponent’s creatures on the table, then the warlock practically does not care what the opponent is doing. Because of these two decks, in the first days after the release of Stormwind Rally, the community started talking about the Solitaire meta, hinting that Jaina and Gul’dan are basically playing with themselves, not with a rival.

The mechanics of exchanging cards still deserve a few words. If initially many top players and streamers were rather skeptical about it (mainly due to the weakness of the effects of the cards themselves), in practice it turned out to be useful at least for the magician and demon hunter. Illidan especially rejoices, whose quest is tied to drawing cards on his turn.

How to take “Legend” in August?

But let’s talk about other classes as well. I am partial to robber, so I took the “Legend” on Valeera with a quest that uses new (and a couple of forgotten old) SI: 7 cards. This deck has practically no bad matchups, and only hunters, as well as a warlock with a perfect fit, can spoil the winrate.

Didn’t go anywhere and paladin, almost the best class of “Standard” right now. Within a week, the assemblies of this class have become significantly “easier”, having abandoned a number of expensive cards in favor of faster or technical ones (for example, “Protective Mantle” is the best choice against mages). Uther plays from the buff of creatures in his hand, this turned out to be much more effective than the quest, which the class received in the new addition.

Well-known people will help you quickly get to the “Legend” Face Hunter and Agro Elem Shaman… Both decks have remained largely unchanged since Forged in the Barrens, with one or two new cards added. And the win rate seems to have only gotten higher.

If you have a quest for demon hunter, you can try to play the class assembly with Il’ginot. In these decks, players often began to give up the Skull of Gul’dan, but I would not recommend doing that.

The rest of the classes still look faded, including the beloved druids and shamans with quest chains. Meanwhile, the deader of all the dead is the priest: his quest is carried out criminally slowly, and the archetype on the “Form of Darkness” outright loses to paladins, robbers and shamans.

Remember, the meta has been building for at least a few weeks, so don’t waste your dust right now. What’s more, Hearthstone Lead Developer Dean Ayala has already announced that the team plans to nerf at least one card this week – so be sure to wait for the balance tweaks before spending any accumulated dust.