Looking at the list, it’s surprising it’s taken the team this long to hit some of these – and certainly the bulk of them feel very deserved. Sanguine Infestation and the core components of Rogue’s combo spam are certainly cards I’m not shedding tears over even though Leech Death Knight is one of my favourite archetypes from 2025. Hitting Warlock’s consistent packages also feels reasonable, especially with the DK Tourist additions. How the turns table, that the classes with the best and worst quests of Un’Goro in 2017 now find their roles reversed in 2025. I absolutely enjoyed Quest Warlock for the Lost City meta and I can’t blame the team for wanting to revert the buff.

Nerfing Dive the Golakka Depths confuses me. Even with Firegill the deck still feels more okay than anything else. The deck feels basic but boring once you take it out of the limited Brawl formats where a consistent +1/+1 snowballing buff actually shines. Maybe all of us just hate the deck on sight and wouldn’t lose any sleep if it disappeared. “I am not sorry,” remarked Wronchi’s latest iteration of Uther.

Hitting Ancient of Yore and Arkonite Crystal seems to suggest that the devs really want all out aggro to succeed this meta. I suppose after eating crap for most of this year and some of the most notable nerfs, they’re tossing Demon Hunter and Hunter a few bones, but this is certainly going to hurt the slower decks like Rafaam Warlock quite a bit. I wonder what’s likelier, hitting the mana cost or armour gain?

I have little idea of what goes on in BG these days since I finished my season track. I haven’t enjoyed or adapted well to Buddies as a mechanic compared to Trinkets and Quests. But I’m surprised that Carapace Undead still needs the help. My experience has mostly been relying heavily on the consistency of Undead builds, or watching most players default to Undead for the same reason. Can someone explain to me why Coldlight Diver is so vital to the point where it needs nerfing? Also Cultist S’Thara? No issues with Bramblewitch going away, that minion always felt miserable to play against.

The feeling I get from dev commentary like this is that they’re absolutely terrified of seeing a repeat of United in Stormwind or The Caverns Below. I understand the sentiment given how the Questline-driven Standard meta seems to still rank as one of the games’ most miserable experiences, but this doesn’t seem to be congruent with the comment that there are “too many competitive Quests”. Right now there’s maybe two or three competitive quests – in my opinion, those would be Warlock and Paladin, maybe Warrior – of which, maybe Warlock needed the help to have something viable since the Emerald Dream meta. Paladin had a good run with Imbue Dragon Paladin and a brief heyday of Murloc experimentation; Dummy Warrior appears to have needed Endbringer Umbra and Elise the Navigator more than anything else.

But that’s still not “too many” competitive Quests, especially given how the rest of the Un’Goro just haven’t hit any stride even after the buffs. If anything, it’s a meta of only a few quests dominating the meta that leads to Caverns Below/Demon Seed flashbacks. Having enjoyed the latest iteration of Quest Warlock – I’ve had matches where I finish the requirements by Turn 4 – I genuinely feel like if any card needed a balancing, Escape the Underfel could easily have deserved a balance unbuff back to “Play 6 Temporary cards”. So I’m not sure why the team feels the need to make Animancer Warlock a thing. Even if Possessed Animancer became viable (I do run Kil’jaeden in my Quest Warlock for longevity + “win more” value with temporary Rotheart Dryad), that’s another option for a class that doesn’t need the help in the present meta.

Objectively the meta does feel somewhat balanced, but mostly because it’s been solved. The underlying issue that hasn’t been addressed is that most of the currently viable decks aren’t centered around the new expansion, but older decks supplemented by one or two of the new cards. The devs genuinely feel like they’ve managed to course correct themselves in the other direction, and doubled down time and time again, much to the consternation of the playerbase.

If Embers of the World Tree was any indication? It’s probably not “saved”. I’ll admit that from my impressions, EWT did better than I personally initially assumed. Petal Picker provided just enough support to make Imbue decks more consistent, Mage/Priest/Druid in particular, in that order – at least that’s what it felt like to me. Amirdrassil – and Quest Druid, for that matter, had to die for the sins of Owlonius. Everburning Phoenix was inevitably leveraged for Wild Rogue degeneracy.

Every other Fire spell was there just so Fyrakk had something to do. I still have misgivings about Fyrakk as the centrepiece of a deck. Disregarding Rogue’s ability to bounce Fyrakk several times, Fyrakk felt to me too hit-and-miss as a card. Remember Rune of the Archmage, and how it felt when you low-rolled 20 mana’s worth of Mage cards? Fyrakk is technically better due to the body, but I’ve seen too many times – both my side and my opponent’s – when Fyrakk overdrew with Burndown and Conflagration before nuking himself with Eat the Imp. Fyrakk is there mostly as a Shaladrassil corruptor or Elise the Navigator enabler than anything else.

What would it take to “save Standard”? On some level, I can kinda agree that the standard format is sort of varied – you’ve got aggro decks for several classes like Protoss Priest, Beast Token Hunter, I’ve even seen Busy-bot Mage a couple times. There’s the combo/lategame decks like Owlonius Druid and Testing Dummy Warrior. Imbue Paladin and Leech Starship Death Knight still exist. The problem is that running Quests would probably scupper the classes more than helps them. You’d need neutral tools like Questing Explorer and Sky Gen’ral Kragg to boost Quest viability in general, but how likely is a single draw or 4/2 Rush minion able to help Quests breach Tier 2 viability like Imbue Druid? That’s not even getting into the problem of any neutral Quest support would also have to benefit Quest Paladin, and I’m not sure we’d want a repeat of that. Even if Quest Paladin hasn’t been doing all that hot recently, a Quest Paladin buff would just make Golakka Depths the better quest to play all over again.

We’d need individual class tools to try and force the Quests to be viable, some more than others, and this is on top of the fact that the devs aren’t interested in tweaking the Quests/Rewards anymore. I’d also caveat that the following suggestions are likely to also benefit non-Quest decks, probably more than the Quest decks, and if EWT is anything to go by, Team 5 is probably going to go a completely different direction with their archetypes, like making every class Fire-themed for some reason. Thus folks are welcome to criticize me for my analyses (probably biased based on what decks I have access to).

– Death Knight: A minion that’s a combination of Lifesteal, Corpse spending/generating, or both. The feeling I get for Quest DK is that it falls too far behind before it gains corpses or spends them. Paleomancy’s a joke. Keeping 3 Undead means nothing if DK can’t contest the board immediately.

– Demon Hunter: I don’t think there’s anything to be done here that doesn’t just make the Quest more… “win more”. We have thrown every possible source of “deal exactly 2 damage” at the deck at this point. Throw even more, and that’ll just make it easier to not run the Quest in the deck anyway.

– Druid: Weirdly enough, we have enough board fillers; the problem is most of them are either delayed, require your opponent to trade into those token spammers, or just take too long to get online. Would a class-specific version of Maze Guide be too much? Or a token generator like Imp Master (without the self-damage), basically functioning as a soft taunt? It’s probably going to still be too slow. You are only finishing the Druid Quest on Turn 6, at best, if you’re very lucky. Druid is a fun deck to play that simply never gets to do so because trading and removal is everywhere. It’s Quest Paladin but a third as consistent on a good day.

– Hunter: There’s already just enough decent Quest-fulfilment Beasts to run on a good day, and Hunter already has the Discover package to synergize with Shokk – maybe the solution is to add another Beast with an even number Attack stat and a decent effect? The package is there, there’s just no payoff. If you’re losing to Quest Hunter it’s from Pterrorwing Ravager more than Shokk, I think.

– Mage: Look, we’re at a point where Mage can finish Discovering 7 things by Turn 4, and it still wouldn’t make the deck any less of a dice roll. This is where I feel Lost City might have been better off as the first set of this year because there’d be less filler spells to sit through. Best case scenario, No Minion Quest Mage gets a card that summons a random minion whose Cost equals the number of times you’ve Discovered that game just so they have board presence besides Spot the Difference.

– Paladin: Also what I’d like to call “Quest Druid but playable”. We have enough Murloc minions and generators. I don’t think there’s a need to look further besides maybe unnerfing Hot Spring Glider, but that might be a step too far. Holy Spell synergy, maybe? Nerfing Imbued Paladin’s Hero Power? Another trio of mini-set cards like the last one that might as well not exist?

– Priest: Reach Equilibrium might actually be one of the more fun Wild decks I play now because there’s an actual quantity of Holy/Shadow spells, plus the ability to clone or resurrect Sol’etos multiple times. Either a spell generator or another means of copying Sol’etos could be enough, because Cloud Serpent ain’t it.

– Rogue: They could make a card that says “Battlecry: Make all cards that didn’t start in your deck Cast when Drawn” and that still wouldn’t save it.

– Shaman: Quest Shaman works, but folks seem to gravitate more towards Shudderblocking Murloc Growfin instead as a finisher. Team 5 might wish to make another Elemental to support Bralma Searstone instead because the tools for Quest Shaman are all there – minion types, draw power, etc. Another totem perhaps?

– Warlock: Most of the oxygen in the room seems to be taken by Agamaggan and Wheel Warlock, last I remember. Does Quest Warlock need the help? Maybe more options to generate Temporary stuff would help but I’m not sure that’s necessary if the deck’s already over 50% win rate.

– Warrior: I don’t know what’s worse, a Warrior that can’t see their quest finish or a Warrior that just won’t die. We’d need tools to help Warrior survive long enough to last 10 turns and at that point they’d might as well play Testing Dummy Warrior. Warrior will likely always have tools to survive either way.

The most charitable suggestion that could be made is that maybe the Lost City could have been the first expansion of the year over Emerald Dream. Un’Goro was the first set of its rotation after all, and it would at least go some distance in explaining away why the Quests feel so horrifically underbaked. But then again, we’d still be coming after the high of Starcraft and who knows how much dismantling of old cards would need to happen then.

Weirdly enough, so much of the current metagame feels like they’re running how 2024 archetypes were supposed to work. Testing Dummy Warrior, Incindius Rogue and Shaman, decks and ideas that should have worked in 2024 but just didn’t for one reason or another. (Off the top of my head, I’m not going to name all the insane stuff we got in 2023, but Titans and Reno Lone Ranger were one hell of a trip…) It’s as if 2025 was an attempt to make up for the underwhelming 10th anniversary that was 2024, and even then, it still hasn’t panned out. Which seems to add up when we look at how 2024 was when the team quietly stopped creating new gameboards and brought them back for Un’Goro, saddled with monetisation tie-ins.

(Also… does anyone else feel confused about the King Krush pet? I’ve played against opponents who have it a little more frequently over the past few weeks, and it genuinely looks negligible to me being on the other side of the board. I get to click it, it reacts, and that’s it? If it played a part in a defeat animation like the Ragnaros hero then I’d see the appeal. Right now all it tells me is my opponent bought or botted it for a hundred and sixty bucks…)

Buffs:
Mama Bear
Raptor Elder
Goldrinn, the Great Wolf
Stray Satyr
Insatiable Ur’zul
Silent Enforcer
Gleaming Trader
Deep Blue Crooner
Hot-Air Surveyor
Ride-or-Die
Eternal Knight
Anub’arak, Nerubian King
Jelly Belly
Noisul of the Many Faces
Nalaa the Redeemer
Sanctify

Nerfs:
Stomping Stegodon
Blue Whelp
Nimble Hatchling
Twilight Watcher
Lantern Lava
Coldlight Diver
Floatsam Flinger
Magicfin Mycologist
Greedy Snaketongue
Bigwig Bandit
Nimble Wingbeat

Balances:
Sundered Matriarch
Lost City Looter
Captain Sanders
Gem Smuggler
Friendly Geist
Selfish Bounty
Mounting Avalanche

Added:
Tardy Traveler
Crater Miner
Accord-o-Tron
P-0UL-TR-0N
Mrglin’ Burglar

Removed:
Windfall Tornado
Mooncatcher
Young Murk-Eye
Bannerboar
Exceptional Caretaker

Now to wait half a day before all of these get posted by Team 5, lol.

“An Ancient of Yore?”
“PERRY the Ancient of Yore?!”

They’re only launching the Wronchi trailer on June 23? Well, you can’t say they didn’t save the best for last.

Came across a Holy Wrath Paladin deck and cobbled together a brew of my own. This is probably not the full list that I encountered, and maybe half as competent. Knight of Anointment to draw Holy Wrath, Coin generators to turbo out the combo, Tradeable cards to keep rolling for Order, and Finley to shuffle back two Expanses. Funnily enough, Wind-Up Enforcer turned into a Turn 6 9/15 wall in one game…

### Brawl Deck
# Class: Paladin
# Format: Wild
#
# 1x (1) Knight of Anointment
# 1x (1) Sir Finley, Sea Guide
# 1x (2) Greedy Partner
# 1x (2) Mailbox Dancer
# 1x (2) Order in the Court
# 1x (2) Ring of Courage
# 1x (3) Day at the Faire
# 1x (5) Holy Wrath
# 1x (6) Wind-Up Enforcer
# 1x (125) The Ceaseless Expanse
#
AAEBAYrlBgqzA6LeA8zrA875A9WsBOWwBMDiBJCDBtyyBqrqBgAAAA==
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

There’s a couple nuances that I’d like to bring to the table of finding the fun in Hearthstone.

One aspect of being able to have fun in Hearthstone is not only the sort of decks you like playing – but more importantly, in my opinion, having access to the resources that enable you to succeed. As a F2P player since open beta, if I feel like I have to burn arcane dust on multiple expensive cards to have complete, reasonably functioning decks, or just to feel like I’m getting somewhere in that set’s meta, it’s not a fun time. Perils in Paradise might be a good example of that, where the reliance on so many legendary Tourists made budgeting a miserable experience. Feeling like you low-rolled badly on multiple free Rewards Track legendaries feels terrible knowing that you’re going to struggle to make progress.

On the other hand, there’s also been metas where even when you do have what you need, you end up running into the same deck(s) over and over that it becomes a chore even when you do enjoy the deck. Slow Rainbow Death Knight during Whizbang’s Workshop before the mass nerfs is my favourite example of this. Every match became “build a board, watch it get wiped multiple times”, not helped by Team 5 experimenting with winning 10 matches on Standard. I imagine for other players it was the same for Starcraft meta, Year of the Odd and Even decks and so on. Being able to enjoy a versatile range of decks can help contribute to having fun, surely, because it gives you the ability to switch to other decks when your current favourite is taking a beating. But that also relies on a fine balance – not only do you need the resources to make multiple viable decks, if you keep switching decks and losing anyway, you’re going to feel worse.

Perhaps the value of versatility is always having the option to stop and try something else. There was a time when I had a blast playing Mill Rogue unranked at any opportunity I could; now the Wild format has become increasingly inhospitable to that archetype I no longer do it nearly as frequently. But I’ve found other archetypes to enjoy like Blood/Unholy Leech Death Knight and Starship Wheel Warlock that scratch the itch of whittling another player to death. Do I regret crafting Kil’jaeden and Headless Horseman on an early 2025 meta whim? Maybe. But am I having fun? Yeah.

In another timeline, maybe Team 5 could have made Ravenous Felhunter and Ferocious Felbat only resurrect Demons? It would have been more in line with what they wanted out of the Big Demon DH list – summon more Spirit Peddlers and Omens and the like. It would probably not have been good but at least it wouldn’t have kneecapped Starship decks either. (Your opinion will vary on whether that’s also a good thing, but it feels good to know that Among Us DH gets to be a thing.)

2024 was a strange year in Hearthstone. The TL;DR of experiences this year could be that it didn’t feel like much of a celebration, but this was objectively going to be a difficult thing for the developers to do – living up to the hype of a 10 year anniversary isn’t easy. I wouldn’t presume to claim that the team should have had easily achieved banger after banger this year. But I’d also like to quote Stonekeep’s reply to me a few months ago on my observation about the weekly quest revert:

“I agree about the 10th Anniversary stuff. I think they fumbled it pretty hard. I know it’s subjective, but I don’t think that Whizbang’s Workshop was a great tribute. And the year should be packed with fun events and NEW things. But so far they’ve mostly been taking things away and making them worse this year. An online game surviving for 10 years and still doing pretty well after all this time is a great result and it should be an amazing reason for the whole community to celebrate. But if we don’t count the reopening of Chinese servers, I bet that the game lost A LOT of players this year.”

If we look at 2024 from the perspective that it should have been the best year ever, then yes, 2024 wasn’t great. The developers genuinely tried to push for so many changes and tributes all at once, the year felt more disorganized and messy than it really needed to be. Was it the worst year? I know it’s never a great look when the best thing one has to say about anything is “at least it wasn’t the worst”. But objectively, taking away the hype of the 10th anniversary and the other things taken away from us such as animated intros and new boards, 2024 was… okay. Play patterns were not so miserable like they were in maybe Rastakhan’s Rumble or United in Stormwind, two of the most reviled expansions – the biggest grind was the need to win 10 matches, not the fact that everyone was running a control, handbuff Death Knight build that week. The themes this year did deliver in doing what Hearthstone has always done best: never taking itself too seriously but going all in on the feel-good aspects of Alliance and Horde having fun, whether it’s a toy store or resort run by pirates. The classes all took a few turns getting some dominance in this year whether it was fair or absolutely miserably broken.

If there was something in Hearthstone that helped you smile this year, I think that’s a win. If not… we can all take a seat at the tavern, have a good grumble, and recall what Rarran and Cimo say to each other every time they review each other’s broken cards. “Why do you still play this game?” “I could ask you the same question…” Maybe, as cliché as it sounds, it really was the friends made along the way. The idea that we can honestly criticize, respond, and have a good laugh is something severely underrated in our postmodern era, and that should be worth celebrating.

Have a good 2025.

I’ve noticed that game devs tend to disfavour making things too easy for players. One major perk of the currently refreshed weekly quest design is the fact that you don’t have to win Standard laddering games; you only have to play them. This was a huge improvement on the original, and especially so after the controversy, because having to win 10 games is an absolutely miserable experience on your worst day, particularly when the current format is incredibly unenjoyable. (Watching entire fields die to Sickly Grimewalker over and over again made that climb one of the most banal, repetitive experiences I’ve had in Hearthstone.)

The problem for devs is that if people don’t need to win games, it means they spend less time on the game. Playing 10 games is not nearly as time-intensive as having to win 5 of them. In the same way that Niantic jacked up the cost of Remote Raid Tickets to force players to physically go out and do Pokemon Raids, Team 5 wants Hearthstone players to spend more time and/or money – they just haven’t found the perfect balance of stick and carrot to do so. At least to them. Meanwhile players are absolutely not going to like this decision, and the fact that the team has chosen their 10th year anniversary celebration to do all these player-unfriendly decisions has been nothing short of baffling.

(Side note, has anyone else felt how un-10th anniversary The Great Dark Beyond has felt so far? No playful references to beloved characters, just a brand new project to reference major aspects of Warcraft lore. No complaints, personally, the theme and art and direction feels suitably epic – it just hasn’t got the same feel as the last two sets attempting to celebrate 10 years of heritage. Then again… the way Whizbang’s Workshop and Perils in Paradise have felt somewhat insipid and uninspired to the point of being lazy, which is not something you want for your 10 year anniversary. We might not get any references or call-backs at all this set, and I’m fine with it being that way. The 10th year has not felt like much of a celebration.)

Your mileage may vary, but in my limited playing experience, I feel like I have to err on the side of Stonekeep/Old Guardian. Big Spell Mage isn’t unbeatable, and the early builds which I netdecked lost as much to faster aggro decks as they won. I think I prefer the LvGe list that Stonekeep recently profiled, if only because it’s essentially a “shove every good card available together” deck like Hybrid/Tempo Druid in the early PiP days. It has the distinct benefit of having something to do other than pray for the few key cards your deck is built around. But then that build doesn’t run Surfalopod or Under the Sea, so I’m not sure what a nerf to that would do.

I will agree, though, that having to face Turn 4/5 Tsunami feels miserable, and buffs to the other miniset cards would probably be a vast improvement. The theme is great, but I legitimately cannot recall what most of them are. They’re that unremarkable, or desperately praying that the third set this year redeems them.

So shuffle five Heat Waves into the deck that cost for free, and if your opponent doesn’t trade multiple aggro minions into this, those Heat Waves get even stronger.

Some madman will figure out a Shudderblock deck with this, maybe with Sharp-Eyed Seeker for even more spiciness (pun not intended).

Certainly getting Deadmines vibes all over again, mini-set to one of the most detested sets in Hearthstone history (not for me, personally, probably because I had most of the Questline cards that mattered).

Pirate synergies, I fear, are going to break this set wide open in the same way Mr. Smite did back in 2021.

I imagine it’ll be a good play in Sharpshooter Naga Demon Hunter, allowing you to get more copies of 0-mana spells to fire another 2-damage bullet.

It’s not unheard of for developers to plan for some changes they want, but preface it by pushing out some drastic, player-unfriendly changes that cause massive backlash, and then offer a compromise by “meeting players halfway” – they won’t be as nasty but some of the changes the dev team wants are still going to stick. It’s something that, realistically, people across a lot of walks of life will do to get what they want. Parents don’t require their kids to eat all the vegetables on the plate. Students and teachers bargain over assignments. Bosses and workers argue about how many hours to work in a day. And so on.

These were good changes. Requiring people to win matches is something that is absolutely brutal especially if you’re having a bad run, even more so if you’re having a bad day. Which is also strange because Blizzard already realized this way back in the day with their class specific quests. Perhaps they chose to gamble by dipping their toe in the water to see how much they could risk – and chose poorly.

So the nerfs have felt necessary, not helped by the fact that laddering this week felt intensely painful. The sheer range of removals and wipes that Death Knight has at any point means that my Monday weeklies-clearing experience has been almost nothing but slow, grindy, DK mirror matches over and over. The hit to Grimewalker and making Plagues less viable makes sense. The hit to Warrior feels hurtful but probably justified, as much as praying for Brann to drop doesn’t feel as consistent without Dredge in the format. Dirty Rat is still run very frequently so the moment Brann or Boomboss gets yanked out, there goes your game plan.

But ouch, that indirect Sif nerf. I don’t see Rainbow Mage recovering from this.

“We almost called it the Wheel of FINAL!!!”

Well… theoretically they don’t need fixes. There was one round of Mythic I couldn’t complete because Vanndar’s conquest of Alterac Valley was complete, so he was just attacking all of my heroes with +50 attack on Speed 2 without waiting for the cooldown. But that’s what happens when you leave a game mode completely to pasture.