Hi everyone! Let's talk about the new expansion that was released today. Currently, it appears that quest rogue is the deck to beat. It's actually quite easy to complete the quest and its effect is immediate most of the time. It's strong right now because it is tough to deal with a board full of 5/5 and 5/5s charging from the hand.

What is everyone's experience with the expansion so far?

My first impressions, and I don't know how accurate they are, is that they are powercreeping the hell out of this game. The meta does feel real fresh though so that is definitely a nice change of pace.

Rogue and Hunter are certainly looking quite strong. It's fun to see people try different deck variations to make the different quests work. I can't say I've seen anyone even try to make the Paladin quest work, though.

I miss you, Reno Kazakus decks. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

I feel like I am constantly running into all taunt warriors, then they get sulfuras and nuke me. Other then that its fun!

Yeah, the warrior quest seems a little OP to me considering how many low cost taunt minions you can bust out. I think the adapt mechanic is pretty fun though.

So far I've actually been having a ton of fun with my priest quest deck. I can tell it's probably not going to be a high tiered deck because it seems that the deathrattle minions currently in standard are a bit too weak. I can get some insane value though, Holy Bishop into Cairne or Shellraiser is great, and Spiritsinger Umbra into Cairne gives 15/19 in stats for 10 mana, which is pretty solid. Elise the Trailblazer has already saved my ass in three games - the most delicious being when I got Spikeridged Steed against a murloc shaman who was in top deck mode. After buffing up a Crystalline Oracle and then playing N'Zoth I won that match pretty handily. I know it's probably obvious, but the deck is focused on gaining large amounts of value and outlasting the opponent. Best moment so far: Copying a quest hunter's Unleash the Hounds and clearing his full board of minions and then dropping Amara to heal from 16 to 40. That was the fastest concede I'd ever seen.

It should be noted that the way priest copies cards from the opponent's deck makes it SIGNIFICANTLY better than a Burgle deck which is just random cards from the opponent's class. In an average game I wind up copying 5-6 of my opponent's cards.

It's the only quest I opened so for now I'm playing it until I decide what to build next. Sounds like Rogue quest is pretty OP, so I'll probably build that since the only card I'm missing is the Caverns Below.

The Jungle Giants quest for Druid is an interesting one. You really have to curve out so perfectly to complete the quest in anything resembling a timely fashion. There are plenty of 5, 6, and 7 mana minions that push the quest forward (too many to list), but it's 3 and 4 mana where things are pretty rough. Even if you really try to mulligan for Wild Growth and Innervate, sometimes you don't draw them, and you need something to do when you only have 3 and 4 mana. It is kinda fun in that it makes you pore over all of the cards available to Druid to find a way to get a 5/X minion (or better) on the board in any way possible.

I made myself sad by looking at some of the cards that just rotated out of Standard. In a Jungle Giants deck, the following cards would've been worth considering just to make your early turns more consistent in advancing the quest:

• Druid of the Flame (3 mana for a 5/2, copyable with Menagerie Warden)
• Hungry Dragon (4 mana for a 5/6)
• Savage Combatant (4 mana for a 5/4 with a possibly useful upside, copyable with Menagerie Warden)
• Ice Rager (3 mana for a 5/2)
• Armored Warhorse (4 mana for a 5/3, possibly Charge if you win the joust which the Druid deck would actually have a good chance at, copyable with Menagerie Warden)
• Evil Heckler (4 mana for a 5/4 with Taunt)

I'm not saying all of those make the cut, but holy hell, there were so many useable 3 or 4 mana cards with 5 attack in Blackrock Mountain and The Grand Tournament. By comparison, all you have in Standard now is:

• Celestial Dreamer (3 mana for a possible 5/5, can be fairly inconsistent if your board happens to be empty, you can never actually play it on turn 3 unless you got out an early Elder Longneck) **actually good**
• Elder Longneck (3 mana for a 5/1 with Adapt, copyable with Menagerie Warden) **actually good**
• Shellshifter (4 mana for a 5/3 Stealth, copyable with Menagerie Warden) **actually good**
• Devilsaur Egg (3 mana for a 0/3 that summons a 5/5 when it dies, but this is way too slow to fit into an already slow deck)
• Faceless Shambler (4 mana to copy the stats of a friendly minion, can be fairly inconsistent if your board happens to be empty) **maybe actually good, I still haven't decided**
• Gentle Megasaur (4 mana for a 5/4, Adapts your Murlocs which is more or less pointless in Druid, copyable with Menagerie Warden)
• Genzo the Shark (4 mana for a 5/4 that possibly draws cards when it attacks)
• Midnight Drake (4 mana for an X/4, but unless you haven't played a damn thing, the X is probably less than 5)
• Naga Corsair (4 mana for a 5/4 that buffs your weapon, so pretty bad in Druid)
• Twilight Summoner (4 mana for a 1/1 that summons a 5/5 when it dies, but this is way too slow to fit into an already slow deck)
• Worgen Greaser (4 mana for a 6/3)

It's a longer list currently, but for most practical purposes it's vanilla 4-mana 5/4s or a 6/3 that I don't want to play, and I would gladly trade those options for the 3 and 4 mana options from Blackrock Mountain and The Grand Tournament. I think the next couple sets will hopefully go a long way to helping Jungle Giants, because the options right now are kinda slim.

Also, while you're here, Basic/Classic technically has:

• Magma Rager (3 mana for a 5/1)
• Blood Knight ????????? (3 for a 3/3, possibly a 6/6 if you steal Divine Shield somehow from an enemy minion, or exactly from your own Elder Longneck)
• King Mukla (3 mana for a 5/5 with a considerable drawback, copyable with Menagerie Warden)
• Tinkmaster Overspark ???????? (3 mana for a 3/3, the Battlecry could turn your own minion into a 5/5, but I'm not sure if this interaction counts as summoning a 5/5)
• Ancient Brewmaster (4 mana for a 5/4, lets you bounce one of your own minions which actually isn't completely terrible for the quest)

So definitely some of the weirder/joke options.

Was fun for about 8 hours, went from rank 24 to rank 8 with Reno (sans Reno) Priest + like 6 or 7 new cards. Still mildly engaging at higher ranks but definitely back to the coinflip grind; that and rogues always having ways to activate their quest even if they don't draw any cards for the entire game. Arena seems like same shit, which is interesting considering shadowverse implemented similar changes but feels quite a bit different. But in Shadowverse generally skill matters a lot so that certainly helps.

I'll probably get up to rank 5 then retire till next year's rotation, will continue to have Kripp sing me lullabies so I can fall asleep though.

Quest hunter is mediocre, but midrange hunter is very strong; Shaman is alright, taunt warrior loses to the good decks but is probably playable at lower ranks. My reno priest has a 100% win rate against quest priest, about 15 of them or so. Deathwing Dragonlord remains a strong finisher if played correctly. Mage is alright but probably gets obliterated by Rogue which is definitely the cancer. Very good win rate against Druid, the quest just doesn't do enough typically since it doesn't impact minions in your hand, Ebola murloc paladin apparently works now but Paladin is very rare to play against.

Handlock seems good again.

I've had 20+ fatigue games, but when rogue becomes 65% of the meta it'll be turn 7-8 instead of turn 5. Ironically rogue has always been at least somewhat difficult to play in the past, not any more.

@bisonhero: Reno/Highlander definitely still works in priest.

Since release of the expansion, the main weakness of rogues has been finding activators and not interacting with the board until they have combo. I'm finding that it is starting to change now that some rogue decks have incorporated Igneous Elemental and Fire Fly . The rogue quest does not care if you don't use the same minion multiple times as long as they all have the same name.

And because the expansion is still new and no one is using the new ooze, Pirate Warrior is still good.

In arena, if you don't Vicious Fledgling, the game could be over real fast since you are likely to get at least one attack off and a second one if you have windfury.

I don't think that's it at all, it's just a really strong deck. I've been playing with new Ooze and only have ended up getting it before dying against Pirate Warrior about 20% of the time. But then there's another Arcanite Reaper behind the one that got Oozed, so...yeah. I don't think new ooze is as much of a pirate warrior counter as people predicted it would be. Hell, even full-on taunt warriors have trouble surviving, and people said that all the new taunts like the Tar stuff would spell the end of pirate warrior. Nope, they just cut through those taunts like a hot knife through butter. It's pretty disgusting.

@mike: it's interesting to imagine the future of pirate warrior. I used it the other day to cut through some rogues and reach a ranked floor so I could get back to my more interesting decks. Losing Finley does hurt it since you can't get steady shot, life tap, etc. but it's still incredibly strong and the next rotation isn't until early 2018. Once the Whispers and Gadgetzan cards rotate it'll be gone, but can Blizzard actually print a card which can stop them before then? I'm not even sure what such a card would look like. As you alluded to, you can run 4 oozes, the crab, and the Tar cards and still lose. It's definitely not as much of a sure thing anymore but the deck has serious power.

I've beaten a few pirates with my quest warrior. I just don't use Sulfuras against them until they're under 12 health from bashing weapons against my taunts. I would never have dreamed playing a control deck against pirate warrior before this one so it does make me optimistic for the future of the meta.

It's been 10 days since the expansion was released. It seems like Miracle Rogue is competing with Quest Rogue to see which is the strongest on ladder. At rank 8 i see them about equally when I play against a rogue. The same can be said about taunt warrior and pirate warrior. Taunt warrior has become more consistent by adding in more board removals and card draws such as sleep with the fishes and acolyte of pain. It is actually really hard to play against taunt warrior as quest rogue if they dirty rat your combo or brawl your board.

Freeze Mage has also made a return. This time they have a counter against control warrior or any class with alot of health. They just wait until the end where they get sorcerer's apprentice, molten reflection, archmage antonidas and an activated time warp. It sounds really hard to get but there aren't that many aggro decks on ladder and that gives freeze mage alot of time to get infinite fireball or arcane giant OTK. You can a get alot of freeze from your card creating effects and arcanologist was what freeze mage needed after mad scientist was rotated out.

In arena, vicious fledgling is still really strong.

@acura_max: From what I've seen on EU the last few days no one is playing the quest mage, they just play plain freeze instead. It's much less combo-y (really only looking for Alex), gets through the deck much faster and can even pull out wins without Alex. I'm also seeing a ton of aggressive hunters built to just straight up kill quest decks. Other than that it's Rogue and Warrior dominating the meta mostly.

Even though the meta seems to have mostly settled at this point I gotta say that even at this point I'm still really enjoying the expansion. There's a lot of deck concepts I like playing and the only shitty deck to play against is the quest rogue. Fortunately it's not consistent enough to completely dominate the game, and even when they pop the quest they quickly run out of resources if they don't get the instant win. It's hard to tell if I'm enjoying the expansion because it's really good or if it's because the last one was so bad though. I have a feeling things like Rag hero power, Dirty Rat and the new overpowered draw/discover cards will start to get really grating after a while.

Quest Rogue is the dumbest thing ever. I've yet to face one that hasn't had a Crystal Core by turn 5. As a shaman it's pretty much impossible to beat unless they're idiots. The only time I've won was because they go greedy and didn't kill off my minions so I was able to bloodlust. There's zero actual counter play. Freeze Mage is almost as bad, but I haven't seen any in a while.

@hunkulese said:

Rogue quest has been pretty widely criticized for being uninteractive and having no real counterplay. All you do is try to constantly clear their minions while they're still 1/1 and 1/2, because there really isn't much you can do once everything is 5/5. It was probably a design mistake to make them 5/5s instead of 4/4s. 4/4s could be cleared by Flamestrike, Lightning Storm with spell damage, Volcano, Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing, and maybe a few things I'm forgetting. 5/5s are just kinda "OK, I give up" because the only thing that can reliably clear them is Equality + Damage, Dragonfire Potion, or Brawl (or Twisting Nether/Shadowflame, but people aren't playing Warlock much right now). It's also a hilarious joke that Rogue Quest and Druid Quest are both basically the same: "do a thing, then dump a zillion minion stats onto the board for very low mana cost", except the Rogue version is both consistent and fast, while the Druid version requires you to build a really shitty deck that is incredibly slow and inconsistent.

If you want to beat Quest Rogue, play Pirate Warrior or Midrange Hunter and a lot of the time you can just beat them to death around the turn that Rogue finishes the quest. But yeah, Quest Rogue is really unfun to play against as any kinda control deck because there really aren't the tools to actually control the board unless Quest Rogue draws incredibly poorly or makes absurd misplays. The win rate on Quest Rogue isn't even disgustingly high because it can get pretty bad draws sometimes, but it's definitely the least fun deck in the meta to play against because it either gets a bad hand and loses, or it gets a mediocre-to-good hand and probably beats you unless you're exactly Pirate Warrior or Midrange Hunter. Your actual plays in the game don't particularly matter most times. You could Dirty Rat out the card they keep playing and kill it, but fewer decks run Dirty Rat because it's not nearly as good now that Reno/Kazakus decks are basically gone forever.

@bisonhero: I'm actually amazed at my bad luck. I don't play a ton, but I play enough. I've probably played at least 20-30 quest rogues in the last month and every one of them has had a crystal core by turn 5.

I don't know why I haven't seen freeze mages recently because they were even worse as a shaman. Hey, how about you can't do anything for 30 turns, then I get infinite fireballs.

The quest rogue and new freeze mage are the only decks that are frustrating to play against. Like people have said playing against Quest Rogue.. sometimes they just get the hand and that's game. If you're not running heals and come across freeze mage you're also doomed as they just slowly pick at you and have a ton of rng removals.. difficult times.