Pretty much this entire expansion I've been fully loaded on hand disruption and its crazy how resilient Druid is. Renathal variants can shrug off things like Brann + Patchwerk since most of the time, they'll still be left with at least 1 combo to win the game.
That being said, I feel like there might still be some counterplay possible. Plaguespreader causes the game to devolve into a hot mess very quickly when it gets resummoned a couple times. It is still a bit clunky given that its a 4 drop, but against decks that have cards stick in their hand for a bit, they either are either forced into Plaguespreaders or they have to topdeck the combo fairly quickly. It still struggles against Celestial Alignment since that deck does such a great job of just drawing an ungodly amount of cards, but I feel like there's something there worth messing around with.
The new set symbol isn't available yet in the program we use to model the cards so we are just using the classic one for now. The actual set symbol will be on all the cards once the reveal season properly starts.
I'm on the side of being for an auction house for Hearthstone, depending on the implementation. Being able to trade gold for someone else's cards would be a great way to not only let newer players have the ability to 'pick and choose' what cards they want instead of having to rely on good pulls to disenchant, but also just give players more options to control their collection. Converting it to actual money it gets a bit sloppy, I know MTGO has been able to keep it that way for a while but just due to the nature of the games its not really possible to bot it and cause any reasonable form of inflation.
As for the polarization comments, I think that mainly just comes down to you and Ayala are using different interpretations of the word. Ultimately at the end of the day, winrates aren't affected by how a matchup feels. Like at the start of the expansion, quest mage vs handbuff paladin definitely felt bad for the paladin, but overall the matchup was much more even than it actually felt. The polarization that I believe Iksar to be referencing is stuff with the case of original Quest Rogue, where it would have some absolutely horrid matchups against some of the field, yet dominated a good chunk of the rest of it.
Ultimately I think that polarization is just thrown around too much to say a meta is bad. Ultimately different people like different types of metas, a more polarized one lets the player have more leniency to specifically target a deck while in a more level meta this would just be unreasonable. Hell, one of my favorite metas was the RPS meta back in MSOG and the post quest rogue Un'goro meta, despite both of them being heavily polarized.
Finally for your last point about not addressing the quests, I feel like this is mainly done as a way to try and keep hype for the new expansion up. Seeing cards that were literally the main attraction of the set get nerfed is not a good look hence why a lot of post-launch nerfs target older cards unless the newer ones are 100% the culprit, such as the case with Galakrond Shaman or Battleground Battlemaster. I can understand them not messing with the quests just yet, especially assuming there is going to be another mini expansion to hopefully give the underperformers new toys, as well as non-quest decks as a whole.
The same situation is already happening with people trying to complete achievements for battlepass xp. Way I see it, this idea just gives players another alternative to grinding with the meta decks and still be rewarded even if they have a subpar winrate compared to the best option.
Ultimately, this just gives another alternative to getting xp and because of that I'm 100% for it.
Thanks! It was fun doing all the math behind the questlines, except for DH. Playtesting for 4-5 hours where maybe like 3 and a half of it is spent shuffling Soul Fragments isn't my definition of fun, but the ends justify the means. Provided we see more cards that can get those types of breakdowns, expect more like them!
The Oasis Ally stuff is true, when deckbuilding I had an oversight and forgot that Flurry (Rank 1) existed. If I were to play this deck, I would swap the two.
As for the spells that target minions, while also true that they cannot be cast if there are no minions to target, I think its pretty safe to assume that the opponent is going to play some minions at some point that can be targeted. While this can mess up the application of the math against some decks that do not play many minions, it is a bit unreasonable that the opponent will not have play anything on the board. All of these articles assume a hypothetical 'ideal scenario', where the opponents aren't applying much pressure, but do have creatures on board if there needs to be some targeting.
We've gotten clarification from two different sources saying two different things and I haven't had the time to check out all the theorycrafting streams to see if it works the way I think it does. That being said, the Pen Flinger -> Blessed Goods -> Pen Flinger example you provided was accounted for in the math. The only time Pen Flinger speeds things up would be when you draw it in an earlier step, and then finish that step, allowing you to use Pen Flinger for more progress.
I can definitely see this card existing in a build of pirate warrior in wild, though I'm not sure if just fitting it into a typical list would work that well. Stuff that is normally very good in that deck, like Patches the Pirate and Parachute Brigand unfortunately do not progress the quest, and for the case of the Brigand, definitely hurt the completion rate of the quest.
As for this quest being "a solid win condition", while true that inevitably will win a game, I am concerned about decks that have their own dedicated late game plan. Stuff like Lord Jaraxxus kinda puts the reward to shame or with a hypothetical Quest Dude paladin having a button that creates 2 5/3 divine shields per turn. We've had slow value win conditions in the past, mainly Lakkari Sacrifice, and while this one is significantly easier to complete, it still runs into the main issue that slow incremental value is typically too slow.
While hand size issues can become a bit of an issue, especially when Field Contact is still on the board, I think that Rogue is still able to dump their hand on the board fast enough to make this not much of an issue.
As for running minions that draw like Loot Hoarder, thats a good idea, but then the issue becomes it does not really synergize that well with the rest of the deck. We'll just have to see how the quest turns out ultimately as with this one, theres lots of room to try different things out.
As for the 'no more benefit from the reward' part, I'm not quite sure what your getting at. A lot of the time there was still a decent chunk of the deck left to draw, mainly due to Glide, so you are getting some value out of it. On top of this, more often than not there is still a decent amount of card draw, so you can reasonably draw the rest of the deck and hit people fairly hard with Lion's Frenzy. The questline is certainly weird and definitely looks bad at first glance, but I definitely think there is potential, whether its just as a fun pet deck or even a tiered deck.
While I did not say this in the article, I completely agree with that take. For aggro matchups, the quest is just too risky to try and rush, but against a slower control deck, you can just go to town on yourself since there's not much they can do against the quest, especially if you finish the last step and play Tamsin in the same turn.
Going the elemental route to use things such as Primal Dungeoneer more effectively is undoubtedly pretty strong given that Elemental Shaman is already a very strong deck. The main reason why I didn't want to do that is simply because the overload and tempo loss from a lack of a 1 drop is too much. I can certainly be wrong about that, especially given some of the other new toys shaman has been given, but I just dont see the two mixing well.
As for running cards like Investment Opportunity and Overdraft, this is mainly because I like testing out new cards and seeing how they line up. I'd totally understand if this quest does eventually just turn into only nature spells because a 3 mana 2/3 draw 2 is just too powerful most the time.
And yeah, the double overload once the quest is completed is kind of a big deal as well.
Yeah questlines are probably the best flavor legendaries they've done in a long time. It makes me wish that Blizzard would try doing more story telling on the cards instead of just saying stuff like "oh yeah and this thing was here as well".
Yep, it starts at x-4 because that leaves us with the amount of cards in the deck that arent 1 of the 4 cards we are looking for. It gets larger as it goes on because we draw more cards, reducing X. X initially starts at 30, but realistically you would just replace X with whatever the current library size is when you start the calculations. For example, if theres 24 cards left, you'd start with 1-((24-4)*(24-5)*etc)/(24*(24-1)*etc).
Good point! Tradable cards definitely help with consistency, I'm just not a huge fan of the ones currently printed. Hopefully the mechanic becomes evergreen because I'm a diehard mtg cycling fanatic and I feel like giving more classes the ability to be versatile can lead to a very interesting meta.
The 46% is refering to the chances of not finding one of those cards by the turn. Sorry if that was not clear enough.
As for how most of calculations were done, there is too many ways of calculating, these being either hypergeometric distribution, which finds the odds of finding success given a total population size, the amount of successes within the total population, the sample size, and the amount of successes we want to see. The other method is through a formula such as 1-((x-4)*(x-5)*(x-6)*etc)/(x*(x-1)*(x-2)*etc), where X is the cards in deck. What this equation does is calculate the chances of not drawing the desired card, and then the 1- part finds 'flips it' to figure out the chances of drawing the cards we want.
Primordial Protector definitely has a lot of potential in these decks, but I feel more often than not its just too clunky for its own good. By the time you have reached the final step of the quest, usually you will have drawn the 7 drop and 8 drop already. As for tutoring for the reward, sure that certainly helps with casting the card as soon as possible, but at that point it is not really an 8 drop for the quest and it hurts the odds quite a bit. Does the flexibility still outweigh this? Probably, but I still think just better tools to stave off aggro might be more useful.
Also, encase it is not obvious, this list I was using the math with is a bit of a hot mess in terms of what is being ran. I did not have a clear idea of what this deck should be while making it and I think it shows very clearly.
Yeah frost spells are definitely the main limiters for this quest right now. Brain Freeze is very solid, and Cone of Cold and Oasis Ally can be playable, but the rest are either too slow or too low impact to make them feel worth running. As more frost spells get added to mage, I can see this quest becoming significantly better since there already is a rather healthy pool of arcane and fire spells for it.
Pretty much this entire expansion I've been fully loaded on hand disruption and its crazy how resilient Druid is. Renathal variants can shrug off things like Brann + Patchwerk since most of the time, they'll still be left with at least 1 combo to win the game.
That being said, I feel like there might still be some counterplay possible. Plaguespreader causes the game to devolve into a hot mess very quickly when it gets resummoned a couple times. It is still a bit clunky given that its a 4 drop, but against decks that have cards stick in their hand for a bit, they either are either forced into Plaguespreaders or they have to topdeck the combo fairly quickly. It still struggles against Celestial Alignment since that deck does such a great job of just drawing an ungodly amount of cards, but I feel like there's something there worth messing around with.
Yep, you only get 1 choice if it is activated.
The new set symbol isn't available yet in the program we use to model the cards so we are just using the classic one for now. The actual set symbol will be on all the cards once the reveal season properly starts.
I'm on the side of being for an auction house for Hearthstone, depending on the implementation. Being able to trade gold for someone else's cards would be a great way to not only let newer players have the ability to 'pick and choose' what cards they want instead of having to rely on good pulls to disenchant, but also just give players more options to control their collection. Converting it to actual money it gets a bit sloppy, I know MTGO has been able to keep it that way for a while but just due to the nature of the games its not really possible to bot it and cause any reasonable form of inflation.
As for the polarization comments, I think that mainly just comes down to you and Ayala are using different interpretations of the word. Ultimately at the end of the day, winrates aren't affected by how a matchup feels. Like at the start of the expansion, quest mage vs handbuff paladin definitely felt bad for the paladin, but overall the matchup was much more even than it actually felt. The polarization that I believe Iksar to be referencing is stuff with the case of original Quest Rogue, where it would have some absolutely horrid matchups against some of the field, yet dominated a good chunk of the rest of it.
Ultimately I think that polarization is just thrown around too much to say a meta is bad. Ultimately different people like different types of metas, a more polarized one lets the player have more leniency to specifically target a deck while in a more level meta this would just be unreasonable. Hell, one of my favorite metas was the RPS meta back in MSOG and the post quest rogue Un'goro meta, despite both of them being heavily polarized.
Finally for your last point about not addressing the quests, I feel like this is mainly done as a way to try and keep hype for the new expansion up. Seeing cards that were literally the main attraction of the set get nerfed is not a good look hence why a lot of post-launch nerfs target older cards unless the newer ones are 100% the culprit, such as the case with Galakrond Shaman or Battleground Battlemaster. I can understand them not messing with the quests just yet, especially assuming there is going to be another mini expansion to hopefully give the underperformers new toys, as well as non-quest decks as a whole.
The same situation is already happening with people trying to complete achievements for battlepass xp. Way I see it, this idea just gives players another alternative to grinding with the meta decks and still be rewarded even if they have a subpar winrate compared to the best option.
Ultimately, this just gives another alternative to getting xp and because of that I'm 100% for it.
Thanks! It was fun doing all the math behind the questlines, except for DH. Playtesting for 4-5 hours where maybe like 3 and a half of it is spent shuffling Soul Fragments isn't my definition of fun, but the ends justify the means. Provided we see more cards that can get those types of breakdowns, expect more like them!
The Oasis Ally stuff is true, when deckbuilding I had an oversight and forgot that Flurry (Rank 1) existed. If I were to play this deck, I would swap the two.
As for the spells that target minions, while also true that they cannot be cast if there are no minions to target, I think its pretty safe to assume that the opponent is going to play some minions at some point that can be targeted. While this can mess up the application of the math against some decks that do not play many minions, it is a bit unreasonable that the opponent will not have play anything on the board. All of these articles assume a hypothetical 'ideal scenario', where the opponents aren't applying much pressure, but do have creatures on board if there needs to be some targeting.
We've gotten clarification from two different sources saying two different things and I haven't had the time to check out all the theorycrafting streams to see if it works the way I think it does. That being said, the Pen Flinger -> Blessed Goods -> Pen Flinger example you provided was accounted for in the math. The only time Pen Flinger speeds things up would be when you draw it in an earlier step, and then finish that step, allowing you to use Pen Flinger for more progress.
I can definitely see this card existing in a build of pirate warrior in wild, though I'm not sure if just fitting it into a typical list would work that well. Stuff that is normally very good in that deck, like Patches the Pirate and Parachute Brigand unfortunately do not progress the quest, and for the case of the Brigand, definitely hurt the completion rate of the quest.
As for this quest being "a solid win condition", while true that inevitably will win a game, I am concerned about decks that have their own dedicated late game plan. Stuff like Lord Jaraxxus kinda puts the reward to shame or with a hypothetical Quest Dude paladin having a button that creates 2 5/3 divine shields per turn. We've had slow value win conditions in the past, mainly Lakkari Sacrifice, and while this one is significantly easier to complete, it still runs into the main issue that slow incremental value is typically too slow.
While hand size issues can become a bit of an issue, especially when Field Contact is still on the board, I think that Rogue is still able to dump their hand on the board fast enough to make this not much of an issue.
As for running minions that draw like Loot Hoarder, thats a good idea, but then the issue becomes it does not really synergize that well with the rest of the deck. We'll just have to see how the quest turns out ultimately as with this one, theres lots of room to try different things out.
Glad you enjoyed it!
As for the 'no more benefit from the reward' part, I'm not quite sure what your getting at. A lot of the time there was still a decent chunk of the deck left to draw, mainly due to Glide, so you are getting some value out of it. On top of this, more often than not there is still a decent amount of card draw, so you can reasonably draw the rest of the deck and hit people fairly hard with Lion's Frenzy. The questline is certainly weird and definitely looks bad at first glance, but I definitely think there is potential, whether its just as a fun pet deck or even a tiered deck.
While I did not say this in the article, I completely agree with that take. For aggro matchups, the quest is just too risky to try and rush, but against a slower control deck, you can just go to town on yourself since there's not much they can do against the quest, especially if you finish the last step and play Tamsin in the same turn.
Going the elemental route to use things such as Primal Dungeoneer more effectively is undoubtedly pretty strong given that Elemental Shaman is already a very strong deck. The main reason why I didn't want to do that is simply because the overload and tempo loss from a lack of a 1 drop is too much. I can certainly be wrong about that, especially given some of the other new toys shaman has been given, but I just dont see the two mixing well.
As for running cards like Investment Opportunity and Overdraft, this is mainly because I like testing out new cards and seeing how they line up. I'd totally understand if this quest does eventually just turn into only nature spells because a 3 mana 2/3 draw 2 is just too powerful most the time.
And yeah, the double overload once the quest is completed is kind of a big deal as well.
They do not care about the order at which the cards are played, it just matters that the right mana cost card is played on a given step.
Yeah questlines are probably the best flavor legendaries they've done in a long time. It makes me wish that Blizzard would try doing more story telling on the cards instead of just saying stuff like "oh yeah and this thing was here as well".
Yep, it starts at x-4 because that leaves us with the amount of cards in the deck that arent 1 of the 4 cards we are looking for. It gets larger as it goes on because we draw more cards, reducing X. X initially starts at 30, but realistically you would just replace X with whatever the current library size is when you start the calculations. For example, if theres 24 cards left, you'd start with 1-((24-4)*(24-5)*etc)/(24*(24-1)*etc).
Good point! Tradable cards definitely help with consistency, I'm just not a huge fan of the ones currently printed. Hopefully the mechanic becomes evergreen because I'm a diehard mtg cycling fanatic and I feel like giving more classes the ability to be versatile can lead to a very interesting meta.
The 46% is refering to the chances of not finding one of those cards by the turn. Sorry if that was not clear enough.
As for how most of calculations were done, there is too many ways of calculating, these being either hypergeometric distribution, which finds the odds of finding success given a total population size, the amount of successes within the total population, the sample size, and the amount of successes we want to see. The other method is through a formula such as 1-((x-4)*(x-5)*(x-6)*etc)/(x*(x-1)*(x-2)*etc), where X is the cards in deck. What this equation does is calculate the chances of not drawing the desired card, and then the 1- part finds 'flips it' to figure out the chances of drawing the cards we want.
Primordial Protector definitely has a lot of potential in these decks, but I feel more often than not its just too clunky for its own good. By the time you have reached the final step of the quest, usually you will have drawn the 7 drop and 8 drop already. As for tutoring for the reward, sure that certainly helps with casting the card as soon as possible, but at that point it is not really an 8 drop for the quest and it hurts the odds quite a bit. Does the flexibility still outweigh this? Probably, but I still think just better tools to stave off aggro might be more useful.
Also, encase it is not obvious, this list I was using the math with is a bit of a hot mess in terms of what is being ran. I did not have a clear idea of what this deck should be while making it and I think it shows very clearly.
Yeah frost spells are definitely the main limiters for this quest right now. Brain Freeze is very solid, and Cone of Cold and Oasis Ally can be playable, but the rest are either too slow or too low impact to make them feel worth running. As more frost spells get added to mage, I can see this quest becoming significantly better since there already is a rather healthy pool of arcane and fire spells for it.