The Quests in The Lost City of Un’Goro have been a disappointment, to say the least. Quests and Questlines have usually been class-defining for their time in the Standard format, but the Quests from the new Un’Goro iteration have performed abysmally. Blizzard did not want to create one-dimensional Quest decks that are piloted on rails, but the result ended up being unplayable instead.
The issue may be fundamental. You are sacrificing a card from your opening hand and your first turn to play a Quest. That is a big investment. If that investment does not give you a major advantage later on, you have effectively surrendered. In trying to build Quests that do not win a game, Blizzard may have doomed them altogether.
But maybe they can still be salvaged? Nerfs will not do it, there are too many candidate decks waiting by the sidelines. Buffs, on the other hand, just might. Let’s take a look at the current Quests, and their good, bad, and ugly features.
Death Knight – Reanimate the Terror – Win Rate 40%
Reanimate the Terror gives you Tyrax, Bone Terror as your completion reward. As long as it is not silenced, Tyrax provides infinite value either as an 8/8 minion or as a Location that can deal 4 damage.
One of the upsides of the Death Knight Quest is that you can use it in many Death Knight decks. All you need to do is spend corpses, which you’re likely to do anyway. It still takes some time to get to Tyrax, and once you do, you need to find 5 mana to play it, and it does not do anything immediately. No Rush, no Taunt, nothing. By the time you’re able to play Tyrax, a vanilla 8/8 minion just isn’t very impressive.
Tyrax is best used in a control shell. It has to be Blood/Unholy (BBU) because of the Quest rune requirements, but you can fit the leech package into those runes, and that looks like the most promising path. However, there is another slow Death Knight deck that you are in direct competition with: Starship Death Knight. Both decks are willing to go to the late game and play Kil'jaeden for endless value. The Starship deck can be built around pure Blood (BBB) for Vampiric Blood, and it looks stronger all around. To make matters worse for the Quest, you can also play BBU Leech Death Knight without the Quest, and you will have several percentage points of win rate advantage if you do. Ultimately, Tyrax will be outvalued by Kil'jaeden and become irrelevant in a long game. In a short game, it does nothing because you can’t find the time to play it.
For Tyrax to matter, it would either need to be a win condition or it would need to be a key ingredient in getting to the late game. If you could use Tyrax to defend and buy time to get your Kil’jaeden rolling, it would have a purpose. It would need some proactive ability to get there; vanilla stats will not help. Would it be too strong with Taunt or Rush? That would take some testing, but something like that would be needed for it to be relevant.
Demon Hunter – Unleash the Colossus – Win Rate 30%
Unleash the Colossus asks you to deal exactly 2 damage, 15 times, to get Gorishi Colossus. It is best-suited for aggressive decks because you need a lot of cards that deal 2 damage to fulfill your Quest goal. From there, the finisher can be a combo-like repetition of 2 damage with the bonus 2 damage each time, or just some extra damage for the aggression.
The big problem for Demon Hunter is the Gorishi Colossus itself. Trying to play a 5-cost minion that does nothing just to enable your win condition in an aggressive deck is really difficult. Aggro Demon Hunter is one of the best decks in the game right now, and it is not going to spend time, mana, and cards first on the Quest and then on the Quest reward. The 8/8 stats on the Colossus are meaningless, too, because there is always going to be a way to handle it by the time you can play it.
I have played with the Demon Hunter Quest and actually think it is fun. Finding ways to deal that two damage with some Pirates and Pirate buffs and spells and other tools is a fun little exercise. At the end of all that juggling, I just die. Sometimes with a Colossus in hand, sometimes before I even get there. This implies that there are two ways you could improve the Demon Hunter Quest: by lowering the requirement or by making the Colossus cheaper or even free, or even by removing the Colossus altogether and just giving the bonus damage as the Quest reward.
I would most like to see the bonus damage become instantly active when the Quest is finished. I’m not even sure if that would be enough to make it playable or if the requirement would also need to be toned down, but that would be a good first step into exploring its viability. I think it would still be too weak, but that’s something a little actual playtesting could figure out fairly easily.
Druid – Restore the Wild – Win Rate 35%
Restore the Wild is difficult to complete. You need to fill your board on three of your turns, and as soon as your opponent wants to deny you from doing that, it becomes a struggle. If your opponent is passive for some time at the start, you can snowball quite well, like any Token Druid.
The Quest reward is a little cheaper than most at 3 mana, but it is still difficult to fill your board and immediately equip The Everbloom. This is a common theme for the Quest rewards. It takes some effort to get them, and once you do, you still struggle to find the time to play them. If you get the Everbloom and cannot equip it right away, you probably do not have a board the following turn, and then you need to spend mana to rebuild, and it is again hard to equip the weapon.
The Everbloom is another Quest reward that would be better if it was just equipped immediately when the Quest is completed. You are guaranteed to have a full board at that point, and you can make it more powerful right away by swinging with your weapon. Now, that would be a relevant tempo swing (pun intended). And even with that added power, it would still not be easy to get there!
Hunter – The Food Chain – Win Rate 30%
The Food Chain asks you to play a 1-, 3-, 5-, and 7-attack Beast to get Shokk, Jungle Tyrant, who is a 9/9 with Rush (good) and gives you 2-cost copies of random 8-, 6-, and 4-attack Beasts.
To be honest, I found the Hunter Quest confusing. There’s a bunch of work in fulfilling the Quest requirement, and then the reward is random. I have lost to it once when the 6-attack Beast was King Plush (a 1/9 chance). But in reality, aggressive decks can often kill Hunter before the reward is up, and slower decks shouldn’t have a problem clearing the random Beasts.
I don’t see a clear way to making the Hunter Quest good.
Mage – The Forbidden Sequence – Win Rate 43%
To activate The Forbidden Sequence, you need to Discover 8 cards. As a reward, you get The Origin Stone.
Mage Quest is really fun to play with. You build a deck full of Discover cards, a full spell version works better than a mix of spells and minions, and off you go, Discovering answers to threats and finally Discovering even more with The Origin Stone. Playing with the Stone is a lot of fun because you sometimes need to pick an option you do not want to be cast right there and then, and sometimes you look for things that you want to happen later, even if they would be helpful already. It just brings the decision-making for Discovers to a new level.
However, this same archetype is a lot less fun to play against. You never know what is going to happen, and your ability to play around things is limited. I can imagine what the sentiment would be like if Quest Mage was a top-tier deck. Discover as a mechanic does not distribute joy evenly.
Quest Mage is one of the best Quest decks because it is borderline playable. It has even been able to maintain a 50% win rate up to Diamond so far. That said, it is currently down to 41% in Legend and this trend is likely to spread to lower ranks as well, and even more so if there are buffs to the other Quests.
The most simple buff to Quest Mage would be to auto-equip the weapon. I really like the design of it and how it changes the way you approach Discover effects when you have it equipped, and I would love to retain that aspect of the deck. A small nudge to get to the fun part easier would be all it needs. It could also be the lowering of the Discover requirement, which would have a similar effect.
Paladin – Dive the Golakka Depths – Win Rate 52%
Quest Paladin with its infinite stream of Murlocs was a force to be reckoned with on the first day of The Lost City of Un’Goro. It is the only new Quest that does not give you a playable card, but instead provides its reward immediately with no action needed and at no extra cost. That has been a major factor in making it strong.
It still shares the common Quest weaknesses of forfeiting a card from your opening hand and losing your first turn. This has made it vulnerable to aggro decks, which are currently performing better than the Paladin on the ladder.
I would still not completely rule out Quest Paladin. Depending on the meta, it can be powerful with its many board refills and increasing stats throughout the game. Any control deck will have to be careful about their removal use to make them last long enough.
Quest Paladin is in the peculiar position where some people want to nerf it, and others consider it already irrelevant. I would prefer to keep it as it is. It has some known weaknesses, but it may also benefit from buffs that make pure aggro decks less powerful and give more room for its midrange approach.
Priest – Reach Equilibrium – Win Rate 26%
I don’t even know. Reach Equilibrium requires you to cast 5 Holy spells for one reward and 5 Shadow spells for another, and only the combined reward Sol'etos, Cycle's Rebirth is any good. But it doesn’t win the match by itself, far from it, and the random damage can easily be stopped by building a wide board. This is one of the most unplayable Quests, or even cards, in the game. The reward would need to be buffed to broken levels for this Quest to see play.
Rogue – Lie in Wait – Win Rate 20%
If you thought Priest was bad – it is rare to see a deck below a 30% win rate, after all – you’re not going to believe this. Quest Rogue is well on its way to below a 20% win rate. You have to do something special to get there. Even when your opponent gets some of their worst possible draws, you still struggle to win.
With the power of the Rogue Quest, Lie in Wait, you too can become Master Dusk, and shuffle meaningless 3/3 Ninjas into your deck that you can then draw to take up space from your board and do nothing.
Master Dusk’s Hero Power is actually pretty nice. One mana to draw two cards that did not start in your deck could be good. Illusory Greenwing is one of the best cards in the deck, because those Dragons do something when drawn, thanks to having Taunt. Agency Espionage can also do some sweet things, if you can ever afford it and also manage to complete the Quest. That’s two big ifs, but it is one of the highest played win rate cards in the deck. The deck can also be built around Asteroids or Incindius, although in its current state, that makes it a bad version of Cycle Rogue.
No matter how bad the Rogue Quest is right now, it has potential. Burgle Rogue has always been semi-popular because people enjoy the playstyle. The deck can basically head down one or more of three ways:
- The Ninjas will have an immediate board impact with some kind of a buff
- The Quest will be easier to complete and the deck starts to compete with Cycle Rogue
- The Burgle aspect of the Quest is empowered and the deck becomes the new slow Burgle Rogue – not top tier, but good enough that people who enjoy it will play it
Ninja buffs, easier completion, more Burgle. Plenty of directions Blizzard can go with this, it is a wonderful canvas that currently just lacks any paint.
Shaman – Spirit of the Mountain – Win Rate 28%
Spirit of the Mountain asks you to play 7 minions of unique types to get Ashalon, Ridge Guardian, which will then give adaptations to all minions you play for the rest of the game. It’s a fun effect, has the potential to be strong, and works well with Menagerie decks, so it can be combined with Menagerie Jug (which may or may not get nerfed as it is currently one of the best cards in the game).
For this one, I would like to see Blizzard make it a little easier to complete and the reward easier to play. That might be all the buff it needs.
Warlock – Escape the Underfel – Win Rate 30%
In order to Escape the Underfel, you need to play 6 Temporary cards. That gives you the 5-cost Underfel Rift, which you can then summon on the board and start throwing cards into it to get some Fel Beasts, but only once per turn. The Fel Beasts don’t scale very well into the late game, so you would want to play more of a midrange deck to make good use of them, because they are powerful in the mid-game.
However, in order to earn the Quest reward early enough, you’d need to be able to play a lot of temporary cards at low mana. That’s a big problem because many sources of temporary cards give you cards of various mana costs, many of which will be unplayable; you just don’t have enough mana. There is a good reason why Bloodpetal Biome is the best card in Quest Warlock: it gives you cheap temporary cards, and because it is a location, it also does not cost mana on the turn you play your temporary cards.
This is a major problem that can only be solved by changing some of the cards that generate temporary cards. I think that would be the best way to improve the Warlock Quest.
Obviously, Blizzard could also lower the requirement or make the reward cheaper, and that may also be necessary, but neither of those changes addresses the main issue with the Warlock Quest.
Warrior – Enter the Lost City – Win Rate 50%
Enter the Lost City is one of my favorite Quests. It is a win condition all on its own, and it is also a fun nostalgia trip into the original Quest rewards, as it gives you two into your hand and all the others into your deck. Another thing that is awesome about it is that it is a Control Warrior quest for any Control Warrior that you can think of: all you need to do is survive, and it is up to you how you will do it.
On the ladder, the Quest is used as the main win condition of some Warrior decks, and alongside cards like Chemical Spill in others. The main question is whether a Chemical Spill style Warrior is better off without the Quest or with the Quest. It is not yet clear, but it looks like that specific style could be better without the Quest.
If Blizzard wants to improve it, they could reduce the number of turns you need to survive or make the reward easier to activate by tweaking Latorvius, Gaze of the City. Why does it not have Taunt, for example? That would be very thematic.
Alternatively, they could also improve Warrior’s control tools. Shellnado is my pet peeve of the new ones; it is just such a poor removal tool. Takes away your armor and still runs out of damage against many targets. Already making that card stronger could give Control Warrior all the boost it needs.
Can the Quests be Saved?
Blizzard obviously dropped the ball quite hard with the new Quests. Many of them cannot reach a 30% win rate, and a 30% win rate deck is completely unplayable. 40%+ is where you can consider playing even a fun deck, anything below that is just too frustrating with the constant losses.
That said, many of the Quests can be saved. They have good things going for them, and some would be easy to make overpowered, another thing Blizzard has to be wary of. They still need some major buffs to be playable. For many, this involves making the Quest reward easier to use or the Quest easier to complete. For others, buffs to cards that support the Quest would be the most effective way to improve them. But sadly for some, a major rework would be in order.
This is not a position Blizzard wants to find itself in right after a new expansion launch, but it is not impossible to repair either. It’s going to take a while, but with the right balance tuning we might be able to play many of the Quest decks later in the expansion.
all solid ideas but i’d like to add something
if weapons rewards become powerful enough weapon removal are a big issue(no, it’s not like cubelock, cubelock could win anyway after you remove the weapon), and make it auto equip could hurt more than it helps, I’d like to see the reward a dormant minion or a re-equip weapon tool for them.
Tyrax definately needs taunt or at the very least a re-open mechanic for the location (like spend 3 corpses to re-open this), it woul add the pressure if you can constantly have this 8/8 on board (maybe 4 damage only to minions)
warlock make the support cards 1 mana cheaper, most important the raptor needs to be 2 mana get two 1 cost temporary minions 2 costs are really expensive and most of them are really bad (courius explorer and doomsayer I’m looking at you)
rogue needs so much, 3/3 ninjas have to be completely re-worked, stealth on 3/3 bodies is such a troll, if those are a threat I want to remove those with aoe anyway; shuffle 5 times means you have to run bad cards(the 1 drop) or slow cards (greenwing, rogue is not his best class). I’d love to see the 1 drop discover from legendary from any class (neutral is so bad) and reduce their cost ( at that point maybe needs to be 2 mana)
priest quest is really good imho, its support sucks, just saying ritual of the new moon could be one of the best card in this deck but it’s arcane. also twilight mender should give spells that cost 3 or less, the naga maybe 3/5 but it costs 0 (danger zone for non quest decks thought)
hunter also lacks good support, like a bunch of overstats minions do nothing against wide boards, something like stonebound gargon and some taunt would definitely help
There’s always the consideration that this how they wanted it. I mean in order to make these competitive at all you need to hit every major power card form last years expansions and even then it probably won’t make these worth playing. I just feels like these were created like this on purpose.
Here are good possibilities to update quests:
1. Death Knight – lower reduce corpse cost by 2-3
2. Demon Hunter – lower 2 dmg req to 10
3. Druid – change to something like “summon 3 minions in one turn”
4. Hunter – change wording to “summon” and not “play”
5. Mage – auto equip weapon is good, or just up the durability
6. Paladin – hard cap on the bonus, or have it only affect minions currently on the board.
7. Rogue – give the ninjas rush
8. Shaman – either out requirement down to 5 or let each minion type count as one (mech/beast minion would count as two)
9. Warlock – requirement down by –
10. Warrior – make the main reward cost less, or remove it entirely and just provide the reward automatically once the quest is fulfilled
Good ideas.
What about priest? No ideas either? xD
I like the other ideas btw. Except Druid, that’s far too strong! 3 minions almost guarantees completion on 4. Maybe summon 5 with the alternative of filling the board. If that’s too weak, auto equip the weapon.
Priest – I would say lifesteal and deal 5 dmg twice on death rattle.
For Druid – I think summon 3 (maybe 4, im not married to 3) a turn would be ok. Would guarantee activation on turn 4, play weapon turn 5. But you would still need a board to make the weapon useful.
Quite some solid ideas. Let me provide my 2 cents
1. Death Knight – lower reduce corpse cost by 2-3 – and give the minion taunt.
2. Demon Hunter – lower 2 dmg req to 10 – agreed
3. Druid – change to something like “summon 3 minions in one turn” – I think it is already powerful enough, but people are trying to make it aggro, when it should probably be more midrange oriented deck. If it was to be buffed, I can see it being buffed by completing a stage anytime you fill the board (not just once per turn) or making the weapon cheaper (not auto cast, because of potential viper counterplay since right now, breaking your deathrattles will complete the quest on your opponent’s turn)
4. Hunter – change wording to “summon” and not “play” – I would make the 2 mana guys cost 1 or make it give also you a random even cost beast that costs 2 from the turn you played the reward onward.
5. Mage – auto equip weapon is good, or just up the durability – agreed
6. Paladin – hard cap on the bonus, or have it only affect minions currently on the board. – I would make the quest progress by playing murlocs, but keep the buffs also for summoned murlocs.
7. Rogue – give the ninjas rush – agreed
8. Shaman – either out requirement down to 5 or let each minion type count as one (mech/beast minion would count as two) – Making each minion type count would make amalgams complete it in a single turn. I would reduce the requirement, make it progress with summons, but only buffs played mininons (reverse of paladin in order to avoid the plants getting scary). It could be also repeatable, providing one adapt per tick like Repeatable: play 3-4 different minion types to discover an adapt.
9. Warlock – requirement down by – agreed. Lowering it to 4 could make it too strong, it should at least be 5 though
10. Warrior – make the main reward cost less, or remove it entirely and just provide the reward automatically once the quest is fulfilled – I would just give it taunt. And make it playable on turn 10, not 11. That would be inline with surviving for 9 turns, since there were 9 original quests, not 10.
11. Priest – Give it lifesteal and deal damage based on the attack. It would still be 5 damage for shadow reward, but 8 for combined Sol’etos.
Last but not least, solve the problem with quests wasting turn one. I provided some potentiall solutions below.
Murloc Paladin 52% winrate? I see 67% on hsreplay. If it doesn’t get nerfed a bit, I will be a disaster for the game.
Quests desperately need buffs as said. I love Mage. If I didn’t lost to Paladin so much, I would be doing much better with it.
hsreplay shows data of every rank unless you pay, even bronze, silver and gold ranks, obviously a deck thats easy to play is going to do well against people playing bad decks, murloc paladin is not that good and lose to every aggro deck out there
You are referring to Bronze-Gold stats from the entire Lost City period. Murloc Paladin did have a good win rate on day 1! If you look at Diamond-Legend for the past 3 days, it is 52.1%, and for the past 1 day, it is 51.8%. The archetype win rate goes lower than that in Legend, but the best lists still have a shot at going above 50%.
It isn’t even necessarily that Murlocs Paladin is “op” as much as it is polarizing against slower lists. Looking at HSGuru, murloc paladin loses against Menagerie Aggro, DH Aggro, and is roughly 50/50 against cycle rogue and Lohcky Druid. The matchup into control is genuinely insane, with the best
Quest Warrior list (currently the best control deck). having a 26% win rate against murloc paladin.
While Midrange is supposed to counter Control, it shouldn’t be to such an unhealthy degree. I would not be surprised if even with nerfs to Loh and buffs to quest if any of them can actually compete against Murloc Paladin if only because it so cleanly beats control lists.
Would it be too powerful to make quests activate on start of game? Not taking up a mulligan card or turn one?
Yes. Everyone would put the quests in their decks to thin the deck to 29 cards even if they had no intention to use them.
This could easily be avoided. We probably all agree that quests taking turn one is a huge design issue. Tempo oriented quest decks like druid, hunter, shaman, priest, even paladin need turn 1 to start fighting on the board asap. That’s the main reason why all sorts of aggro managerie decks beat murloc paladin. And control decks are esentially left being down a card in the mulligan, making them less consistent of finding the required answers in time. I see two potential solutions:
1. Quests cost 0 so that it still has to be played, but it allows to fight for the board early on. This still leaves a problem with going down a card in the mulligan, but some price should still be payed I guess. Optionally it could also draw a card, but that would probably make it too strong. Maybe if it cost 1 and drew a card. That would make it ok in slower, midrange or control oriented quests like DK, warrior, warlock etc. that are not so desperate for turn one play. Heck, they don’t need to be the same.
2. Make quests start of game effect like that mushroom warrior guy that still leaves him a vanilla card in a deck. Something like “Start of game: start a quest”. That would make it a dead card in the deck, but at least early game would be more manageable. The quest iself could also be a 1 mana draw one cycle card so that it wouldn’t be entirely dead card. That way the deck would still contain 30 cards and there are much better ways of drawing cards nowadays than 1 mana cycle cards.
We need to go that way. But maybe some like special rule for Quest, like a non-playable card. So your deck has 30 cards and 1 special side card. Or… Allow 31 cards, only if you have a quest. 🙂
Maybe force a trio of other cards to play with it, so it’s not just something you can add to every deck “just in case” without a downside. I believe every class got at least one card that is very good with their quest deck and bad everywhere else. Warrior is the exception, but forcing 3 control tools should still keep the quest in intended decks.
Got the idea from the new Arena Legendary pick that comes with three other cards to support it.
We have that tech already (Arena Draft).