Weird that Medivh, ETC, and Lorewalker Cho are in the reveal trailer, but not in the game itself *shrugs* Got to save something for later, I guess.
There are a lot of characters in that trailer that aren't showing up yet. Nemsy Necrofizzle, Sally Whitemane, and Maiev Shadowsong are all given silhouettes in the glowing boxes part of the trailer, and Captain Eudora shows up in the art at the end of the trailer. They've got to save something for the expansions to the mode.
+1 to FortyDust here. From what we've seen so far, the game is very reminiscent of card-based Roguelike games, and this article from Hearthstone Top Decks does a pretty good job walking through what we know about packs and drop rates, concluding that you'd have a full collection by ~310 packs (potentially fewer depending on what the crafting economy looks like).
Two is certainly not a particularly impressive number of packs, but it's free and clearly just there to incentivize you to try out the game mode. I'd reserve any "extreme disappointment" until after the game actually launches.
I think you believe the gold cost will be far more punishing than it actually will be. I honestly don't see any of the people in your examples balking at the cost of building a village. The people who refuse to try Mercenaries because of the gold cost are hard-line free players who hold on to their gold with a death grip because they cannot or will not ever spend money on Hearthstone.
The assumption that Mercenaries will be totally unplayable without spending gold is ridiculous. A brand new player with no gold reserves at all has to be able to jump in and play without grinding gold in some other mode. There's no way Blizzard would make the mistake of excluding fresh blood like that. So it stands to reason that Mercenaries itself will give you a way to earn enough gold to get further into Mercenaries. F2P people who are dedicated to Hearthstone may choose to buy Hearthstone packs with that gold, and I'm sure many will, but I think most people won't mind using it on the village.
That's the beauty of having a shared resource. You can reinvest the gold in Mercenaries if you like it, or you get a nice "thanks for trying it out" parting gift if you choose to use the gold elsewhere.
I'm not assuming it will be oppressively expensive. I'm just saying that because it's clear that your village costs gold, there are open questions about the costs of the mode, and that's a legitimate reason to be frustrated by the reveal.
Based on the reveal, I think the only things we can say for certain about the F2P economics are that a) the mode will cost gold to develop your village, b) there's a separate currency for merc upgrades that you'll get by playing, and c) playing games will reward XP for the rewards track (which in turn will eventually give you gold). That's not much info, and I think it's a major failure on Blizzard's part not to provide more information on that (particularly because of the confusion around the packs in the store that feature Diamond portraits rather than "exclusive" mercs).
Or maybe they'll all end up costing gold, thus alienating any F2P player who might enjoy the mode but sees it as a risk of a crucial resource for other modes they already play.
I probably sound like a broken record, but there's really no reason for Blizzard to care about the feelings of free players who are going to pitch a fit over a little bit of gold. If they refuse to spend gold, that's a sign they will never, ever spend cash. Blizzard has nothing to gain from keeping that kind of non-customer happy.
Free-to-pay games aren't free because of a company's generosity. They are free in the hope that free players will eventually spend money. Gating content behind a small gold expenditure is actually a pretty smart way to weed out the ones who will never pay a dime.
What you're saying about Free-to-Play games is entirely correct, but the idea that weeding out players that won't pay a dime is a good idea is ridiculous. Blizzard has no idea why any individual player is F2P. Maybe they're F2P because they like to spend on cosmetics in game but weren't offered any (that's clearly true for some players, as Blizzard introduced Diamond cards and tons of new hero portraits). Maybe they're F2P because their financial situation is difficult right now, but in a few months they'll get a new job or promotion and have a little spending money to put into a game. Maybe they've just bored with traditional Hearthstone and looking for a new game mode that they'll love enough to spend money on.
Regardless of reason, the way F2P works is to cast a wide net and convert players into customers. They will have less success if they intentionally weed players out before they've even had a chance to try the game. That's why the question of cost to reach some "base fun play" state is important.
In this case, the whole "pay to win" outcry has been particularly strange to me. They clearly state -- both in the video and on the dev blog -- that PvP matchmaking will not match you against a vastly stronger opponent. Slightly stronger (or weaker)? Maybe, occasionally, but only to prevent long queue times -- similar to the way Hearthstone might occasionally match you with someone one rank higher or lower on ladder. I'd love to hear anyone's ideas on how it could realistically be better than that.
And make no mistake, that small possibility of a small power differential would not disappear if they removed all monetization from the game. You would still occasionally encounter a free player who has been grinding longer than you. There's no way around it.
The other weird complaint is, "How dare they steal my precious gold?!" The obvious answer is: If Hearthstone cards are more important to you than building a town in Mercenaries, don't build the town. There's no reason to be mad about it. Free players have to make these decisions all the time. You aren't required to play Mercenaries at all. But if you choose to play, there's nothing wrong with asking you to pay a bit of gold. It's pretty unrealistic to expect this humongous new game mode to be given to you for free. If a little gold is all you have to fork over to get your town up and running, that's actually quite generous on Blizzard's part. Free games are not a human right.
I agree that there's nothing really wrong with them asking players to pay a bit for a product they like, but I think one of the big things is the the question of how much it will cost to have fun with the format. For example, you can spend money or gold to get the Battlegrounds Perks and various cosmetics, but even if you don't do that you'll still be able to play Battlegrounds as a full game mode (albeit with fewer heroes to choose from, and without emotes). It's not that hard to have fun with it despite paying nothing.
The reveal blogpost about this makes clear that "when you first enter the Village, [the Workshop] will be your only [building]." The reveal video seemed to state that all buildings and building upgrades would cost gold, so I think there's some legitimate open questions about what the costs are associated with just getting a basic village up and running so you can actually play the full game mode. Maybe it will turn out that all Level 0 buildings are free or just part of a quest-style progression. Or maybe they'll all end up costing gold, thus alienating any F2P player who might enjoy the mode but sees it as a risk of a crucial resource for other modes they already play.
While I don't hate the current Standard meta, I still think Control (as all other archetypes) should have room in it. Right now the strength of the Questline rewards makes it very difficult for them to exist and it's basically the combo-ish Questlines vs aggressive decks that have the ability to rush them down.
The challenge here is that it's very clear how a lot of these questlines can support a variety of archetypes. I think we've seen several archetypes for The Demon Seed already, and it will fit nicely into a more traditional Control Warlock deck after rotation because it will lose a lot of the cards it uses for its faster combo decks. Command the Elements can make for a lot of burst potential, but with spells like Tidal Surge and Tidal Wave it could also be a strong tool in a Control deck. Same deal with Mage - the spell damage boost could make for a powerful addition to any control deck, not just the infinite burn Ignite decks we've seen. Defend the Dwarven District can create a "Razakus" style combo endgame, but it also opens up targeting minions, and the spell synergies in Standard (e.g. Kolkar Pack Runner, Krolusk Barkstripper, and Lock and Load) support a more board-centric/value-oriented Hunter. Pirate Warrior will probably never be a Control deck, but I think Raid the Docks at least supports Aggro and Midrange nicely thanks to support like Shiver Their Timbers! and Cargo Guard.
The reality is that the quests that have mostly failed (e.g. Seek Guidance and Find the Imposter) have failed because they fit a very narrow set of archetypes (Quest Priest has to be control, Quest Rogue's SI:7 support forces a Tempo archetype) and those archetypes just haven't had success. I think Blizzard has been smart not to touch the questlines at all, but rather focus on the key cards (like Flesh Giant) that have made certain archetype/quest pairs too powerful and too popular*. There may yet be more work to be done, but the flexibility of these questlines is something to be lauded, and any adjustments need to be made with extreme care.
Maybe the "increase to 7 mana" suggestion is appropriate, but the risk there is making the rewards so hard to use on the same turn the quest is completed that all Quest decks becomes highly vulnerable to Mutanus the Devourer. I'm not convinced a metagame where every quest deck is easily disrupted by control is a good thing, as that would harm the many non-combo ways to play questlines.
*The popularity here is a particularly important thing to note. If the metagame were 20% Combo quests, 80% Aggro, that would mean there's room for Control to eat into the Aggro success. The metagame just prior to the latest nerfs looked more like 40% Combo/60% Aggro, which is basically an impossible place for Control to thrive without 85%+ winrates against Aggro.
Yes, and I attempted to allude to that by calling out the piloting difficulties - I suppose I could have been more straightforward. To be clear, I'm not saying I expect it to be high on the list. I'm just surprised it doesn't make any appearance because it's a counter to two very popular decks that are on the list.
It's interesting to me that the D6 version of Questlock isn't on that list somewhere. I know it's a lot harder to pilot than other versions, but if we're assuming top 1% MMR players then it stands to reason that wouldn't be a major factor, and a lot of streamers have highlighted it as one of the most powerful decks in the metagame. It's also called out as a very popular version of Questlock at high legend play (based on the latest Vicious Syndicate report)
Finally got around to trying That Which Has No Life again in Duels using CookieMawnster's deck. The only game I managed to assemble the sword in was Game 1, but that was enough to get the achievement. Ended it on Twilight's Call into Shadow Word: Horror into swing before the animations all resolved (as per @dapperdog's suggestion).
I've almost run out of achievements that are doable without crafting epic/legendary cards. Has anyone been offered any key achievement cards in Duels (e.g. Bolner Hammerbeak, The Rat King, or Grand Magus Antonidas)? That was a big part of how I completed the Sayge and Shek'zara achievements, but I haven't seen any of the legendaries I've been looking for so far in Duels.
Unfortunately, if you like to play CCGs so you can run slower, board-centric or control decks, you're just not going to find a home in this metagame. But there are several very cheap aggro options that you could play to beat the Warlock decks (Aggro Shaman and Face Hunter each cost about 1200 dust), and you can spend this time gaining gold and dust so that whenever the next nerfs come through to sort things out, you'd be able to build a deck you like better.
Also, I know for a lot of players (myself included) it feels bad dusting old cards, but if your daughter's account had a collection a couple of years ago that has all rotated out to Wild, those could be dusted to build more expensive decks for Standard.
+1 to trying to get this done in Duels. There was a "12 win" duels deck posted on this site a few days back (linked below) that makes it pretty easy to get the sword in Duels.
That said, I tried it and got the sword in the first game but had to first attack a taunt minion. My opponent conceded before I could get a lethal swing in. I'll probably try it again eventually, but these achievements that rely on your opponent being thoughtful are all a huge nuisance.
The Demon Seed needs to lose lifesteal. Warlock has too much life gain to make the self-pain matter much.
Either way, the meta doesn't feel good at all. When combo decks are closing out games prior to turn 8 it makes the deck choices binary and that's boring AF.
They can't remove the lifesteal from the Questline because that would obliterate the quest forever by forcing you to deal 21 damage to yourself rather than 15 to get the thing online. As is, this quest will lose a ton of power at rotation because most of the key cards in these Questlock decks come from Year of the Phoenix.
Warlock got exactly one healing card in Forged in the Barrens (Blood Shard Bristleback), and one in United in Stormwind (Touch of the Nathrezim). I'm not saying we all ought to wait until rotation in March/April 2022 to see a change in the metagame, but I think if any cards get nerfed, it's way more likely to be the Year of the Phoenix cards that a) are a major part of these decks and b) will be rotating sooner (and are therefore safer to nerf without pissing people off).
Not all classes are created equal. Almost every expansion there's one or two classes that are completely unplayable. Getting stuck on those would be frustrating as all hell. So, no.
I'm not convinced of your conclusion here. First, this would encourage deck diversity on ladder, which might mean more playable matches, leading to higher win rates for underperforming classes. Second, I think it would be hard to come out negative here even if you're playing a "bad class."
As of writing this, the worst Standard class win rate on HSReplay is Rogue with 46.1%. If you treat that number as the win rate for any generically "bad class," you still only need an average of seven games to get your three wins and move on to another class, and that 3-4 record still nets you two stars thanks to the doubling effect (rather than the typical net loss of one). For that matter, any win rate north of 33.3% should expect to at least break even on stars by the time it reaches three wins. And if you get a class with a high win rate (let's say 65%), you'd have an average record of 3-2 before you switch classes, netting you four stars where you might have otherwise gotten only one.
And this doesn't even get into how many bonus stars you already have from the previous month's ranked play, or the potential for win streaks. In the most extreme case I think you could theoretically leapfrog from Bronze 10 to Gold 5 in a three-game win streak.
Regarding Caligraphy Lessons in Mage, it looks like each proc counts as 5 mana even when it hits a spell that costs less than 5, meaning you really just need to trigger Celestial Ink Set 15/30/60 times to complete the achievement.
Questline Shaman might be able to beat the Handlock version of Questline Warlock. Hex and Torrent both offer meaningful answers to single big enemies, and the slightly slower Flesh Giant and Battleground Battlemaster might make those tools easier to put together. Also, the double cast for your spells is a powerful finisher that might outpace the secondary win condition Quest Handlock has from Blightborn Tamsin.
There's a guide that basically goes through it on the deck, but the basic idea is that you shuffle a ton of Persistent Peddlers into your deck, and eventually they end up costing 0. Despite costing 0, drawing them after completing the questline still counts as a 2-mana discount for the sake of completing achievements.
The wild meta means you won't always have a productive match up for this deck, but when you do you can really grind through every achievement quickly. Also, this deck (obviously) loses a lot of games, so be sure to be at a ranked floor.
Okay, that's not the deck I was thinking of when you said deck burn, I imagined one more focused on getting the quest online in order to fatigue the enemy to death. That deck tends to use Darkglare, and doesn't run the Flesh Giant scam.
The Demon Seed is a super flexible questline (as evidenced by the number of different archetypes it showed up in), so I wouldn't be surprised to see that some version of it remains Tier 1. But I think you might be underestimating the impact of Darkglare going from a 2 mana 2/3 to a 3 mana 3/4. I know it only impacts the deck at the margins, but slowing down a Control Questlock just a bit can leave room for slower, midrange decks to win, which may in turn decrease the popularity of the deck.
At the end of the day, I think that's really what these nerfs are trying to do - disincentivize these combos decks just enough to drive their frequency down without nerfing them out of existence, which should in turn make room for slower decks to be successful.
One of the best things about this achievement is that while some methods of killing an opponent end the game the moment they drop to 0 or less HP, the "cast when drawn" triggers keep going until your hand fills or you run out of cards to draw, making it very easy to rack up damage for this achievement.
On a related note, Augmented Elekk interacts with Tradeable as you'd expect (i.e. shuffles a second copy into the deck). I've been trying it out to power through the Spam Caller achievement for Demon Hunter, but so far the pace of the Wild meta has made that a bit challenging.
This is maybe pretty obvious, but a decent way to get Join the Dark Side if you don't have Darkbishop Benedictus is to play Duels with the Mind Tether hero power. Obviously you can also just play Shadowform in a typical Priest deck, but that's much slower since you have to draw the spell before you can make progress.
There are a lot of characters in that trailer that aren't showing up yet. Nemsy Necrofizzle, Sally Whitemane, and Maiev Shadowsong are all given silhouettes in the glowing boxes part of the trailer, and Captain Eudora shows up in the art at the end of the trailer. They've got to save something for the expansions to the mode.
+1 to FortyDust here. From what we've seen so far, the game is very reminiscent of card-based Roguelike games, and this article from Hearthstone Top Decks does a pretty good job walking through what we know about packs and drop rates, concluding that you'd have a full collection by ~310 packs (potentially fewer depending on what the crafting economy looks like).
Two is certainly not a particularly impressive number of packs, but it's free and clearly just there to incentivize you to try out the game mode. I'd reserve any "extreme disappointment" until after the game actually launches.
I'm not assuming it will be oppressively expensive. I'm just saying that because it's clear that your village costs gold, there are open questions about the costs of the mode, and that's a legitimate reason to be frustrated by the reveal.
Based on the reveal, I think the only things we can say for certain about the F2P economics are that a) the mode will cost gold to develop your village, b) there's a separate currency for merc upgrades that you'll get by playing, and c) playing games will reward XP for the rewards track (which in turn will eventually give you gold). That's not much info, and I think it's a major failure on Blizzard's part not to provide more information on that (particularly because of the confusion around the packs in the store that feature Diamond portraits rather than "exclusive" mercs).
What you're saying about Free-to-Play games is entirely correct, but the idea that weeding out players that won't pay a dime is a good idea is ridiculous. Blizzard has no idea why any individual player is F2P. Maybe they're F2P because they like to spend on cosmetics in game but weren't offered any (that's clearly true for some players, as Blizzard introduced Diamond cards and tons of new hero portraits). Maybe they're F2P because their financial situation is difficult right now, but in a few months they'll get a new job or promotion and have a little spending money to put into a game. Maybe they've just bored with traditional Hearthstone and looking for a new game mode that they'll love enough to spend money on.
Regardless of reason, the way F2P works is to cast a wide net and convert players into customers. They will have less success if they intentionally weed players out before they've even had a chance to try the game. That's why the question of cost to reach some "base fun play" state is important.
I agree that there's nothing really wrong with them asking players to pay a bit for a product they like, but I think one of the big things is the the question of how much it will cost to have fun with the format. For example, you can spend money or gold to get the Battlegrounds Perks and various cosmetics, but even if you don't do that you'll still be able to play Battlegrounds as a full game mode (albeit with fewer heroes to choose from, and without emotes). It's not that hard to have fun with it despite paying nothing.
The reveal blogpost about this makes clear that "when you first enter the Village, [the Workshop] will be your only [building]." The reveal video seemed to state that all buildings and building upgrades would cost gold, so I think there's some legitimate open questions about what the costs are associated with just getting a basic village up and running so you can actually play the full game mode. Maybe it will turn out that all Level 0 buildings are free or just part of a quest-style progression. Or maybe they'll all end up costing gold, thus alienating any F2P player who might enjoy the mode but sees it as a risk of a crucial resource for other modes they already play.
The challenge here is that it's very clear how a lot of these questlines can support a variety of archetypes. I think we've seen several archetypes for The Demon Seed already, and it will fit nicely into a more traditional Control Warlock deck after rotation because it will lose a lot of the cards it uses for its faster combo decks. Command the Elements can make for a lot of burst potential, but with spells like Tidal Surge and Tidal Wave it could also be a strong tool in a Control deck. Same deal with Mage - the spell damage boost could make for a powerful addition to any control deck, not just the infinite burn Ignite decks we've seen. Defend the Dwarven District can create a "Razakus" style combo endgame, but it also opens up targeting minions, and the spell synergies in Standard (e.g. Kolkar Pack Runner, Krolusk Barkstripper, and Lock and Load) support a more board-centric/value-oriented Hunter. Pirate Warrior will probably never be a Control deck, but I think Raid the Docks at least supports Aggro and Midrange nicely thanks to support like Shiver Their Timbers! and Cargo Guard.
The reality is that the quests that have mostly failed (e.g. Seek Guidance and Find the Imposter) have failed because they fit a very narrow set of archetypes (Quest Priest has to be control, Quest Rogue's SI:7 support forces a Tempo archetype) and those archetypes just haven't had success. I think Blizzard has been smart not to touch the questlines at all, but rather focus on the key cards (like Flesh Giant) that have made certain archetype/quest pairs too powerful and too popular*. There may yet be more work to be done, but the flexibility of these questlines is something to be lauded, and any adjustments need to be made with extreme care.
Maybe the "increase to 7 mana" suggestion is appropriate, but the risk there is making the rewards so hard to use on the same turn the quest is completed that all Quest decks becomes highly vulnerable to Mutanus the Devourer. I'm not convinced a metagame where every quest deck is easily disrupted by control is a good thing, as that would harm the many non-combo ways to play questlines.
*The popularity here is a particularly important thing to note. If the metagame were 20% Combo quests, 80% Aggro, that would mean there's room for Control to eat into the Aggro success. The metagame just prior to the latest nerfs looked more like 40% Combo/60% Aggro, which is basically an impossible place for Control to thrive without 85%+ winrates against Aggro.
Yes, and I attempted to allude to that by calling out the piloting difficulties - I suppose I could have been more straightforward. To be clear, I'm not saying I expect it to be high on the list. I'm just surprised it doesn't make any appearance because it's a counter to two very popular decks that are on the list.
It's interesting to me that the D6 version of Questlock isn't on that list somewhere. I know it's a lot harder to pilot than other versions, but if we're assuming top 1% MMR players then it stands to reason that wouldn't be a major factor, and a lot of streamers have highlighted it as one of the most powerful decks in the metagame. It's also called out as a very popular version of Questlock at high legend play (based on the latest Vicious Syndicate report)
Finally got around to trying That Which Has No Life again in Duels using CookieMawnster's deck. The only game I managed to assemble the sword in was Game 1, but that was enough to get the achievement. Ended it on Twilight's Call into Shadow Word: Horror into swing before the animations all resolved (as per @dapperdog's suggestion).
I've almost run out of achievements that are doable without crafting epic/legendary cards. Has anyone been offered any key achievement cards in Duels (e.g. Bolner Hammerbeak, The Rat King, or Grand Magus Antonidas)? That was a big part of how I completed the Sayge and Shek'zara achievements, but I haven't seen any of the legendaries I've been looking for so far in Duels.
Unfortunately, if you like to play CCGs so you can run slower, board-centric or control decks, you're just not going to find a home in this metagame. But there are several very cheap aggro options that you could play to beat the Warlock decks (Aggro Shaman and Face Hunter each cost about 1200 dust), and you can spend this time gaining gold and dust so that whenever the next nerfs come through to sort things out, you'd be able to build a deck you like better.
Also, I know for a lot of players (myself included) it feels bad dusting old cards, but if your daughter's account had a collection a couple of years ago that has all rotated out to Wild, those could be dusted to build more expensive decks for Standard.
+1 to trying to get this done in Duels. There was a "12 win" duels deck posted on this site a few days back (linked below) that makes it pretty easy to get the sword in Duels.
That said, I tried it and got the sword in the first game but had to first attack a taunt minion. My opponent conceded before I could get a lethal swing in. I'll probably try it again eventually, but these achievements that rely on your opponent being thoughtful are all a huge nuisance.
They can't remove the lifesteal from the Questline because that would obliterate the quest forever by forcing you to deal 21 damage to yourself rather than 15 to get the thing online. As is, this quest will lose a ton of power at rotation because most of the key cards in these Questlock decks come from Year of the Phoenix.
Warlock got exactly one healing card in Forged in the Barrens (Blood Shard Bristleback), and one in United in Stormwind (Touch of the Nathrezim). I'm not saying we all ought to wait until rotation in March/April 2022 to see a change in the metagame, but I think if any cards get nerfed, it's way more likely to be the Year of the Phoenix cards that a) are a major part of these decks and b) will be rotating sooner (and are therefore safer to nerf without pissing people off).
I'm not convinced of your conclusion here. First, this would encourage deck diversity on ladder, which might mean more playable matches, leading to higher win rates for underperforming classes. Second, I think it would be hard to come out negative here even if you're playing a "bad class."
As of writing this, the worst Standard class win rate on HSReplay is Rogue with 46.1%. If you treat that number as the win rate for any generically "bad class," you still only need an average of seven games to get your three wins and move on to another class, and that 3-4 record still nets you two stars thanks to the doubling effect (rather than the typical net loss of one). For that matter, any win rate north of 33.3% should expect to at least break even on stars by the time it reaches three wins. And if you get a class with a high win rate (let's say 65%), you'd have an average record of 3-2 before you switch classes, netting you four stars where you might have otherwise gotten only one.
And this doesn't even get into how many bonus stars you already have from the previous month's ranked play, or the potential for win streaks. In the most extreme case I think you could theoretically leapfrog from Bronze 10 to Gold 5 in a three-game win streak.
Regarding Caligraphy Lessons in Mage, it looks like each proc counts as 5 mana even when it hits a spell that costs less than 5, meaning you really just need to trigger Celestial Ink Set 15/30/60 times to complete the achievement.
The best approach here is probably to just run 2x Celestial Ink Set, 2x Hoard Pillager, and 2x Rummaging Kobold along with a ton of spells in Wild to have a max of 12 procs per game.
Questline Shaman might be able to beat the Handlock version of Questline Warlock. Hex and Torrent both offer meaningful answers to single big enemies, and the slightly slower Flesh Giant and Battleground Battlemaster might make those tools easier to put together. Also, the double cast for your spells is a powerful finisher that might outpace the secondary win condition Quest Handlock has from Blightborn Tamsin.
Just wrapped up the Demon Hunter achievements with this deck:
There's a guide that basically goes through it on the deck, but the basic idea is that you shuffle a ton of Persistent Peddlers into your deck, and eventually they end up costing 0. Despite costing 0, drawing them after completing the questline still counts as a 2-mana discount for the sake of completing achievements.
The wild meta means you won't always have a productive match up for this deck, but when you do you can really grind through every achievement quickly. Also, this deck (obviously) loses a lot of games, so be sure to be at a ranked floor.
Okay, that's not the deck I was thinking of when you said deck burn, I imagined one more focused on getting the quest online in order to fatigue the enemy to death. That deck tends to use Darkglare, and doesn't run the Flesh Giant scam.
The Demon Seed is a super flexible questline (as evidenced by the number of different archetypes it showed up in), so I wouldn't be surprised to see that some version of it remains Tier 1. But I think you might be underestimating the impact of Darkglare going from a 2 mana 2/3 to a 3 mana 3/4. I know it only impacts the deck at the margins, but slowing down a Control Questlock just a bit can leave room for slower, midrange decks to win, which may in turn decrease the popularity of the deck.
At the end of the day, I think that's really what these nerfs are trying to do - disincentivize these combos decks just enough to drive their frequency down without nerfing them out of existence, which should in turn make room for slower decks to be successful.
The Nobody Makes Me Bleed My Own Blood Rogue achievement is particularly easy in Wild with Augmented Elekk. I ran a deck that used Augmented Elekk and Garrote to get lots of Bleeds, Grand Empress Shek'zara and Stowaway for tutoring, and Spellzerker, Efficient Octo-bot and a bunch of small damage spells like Shiv and Backstab to speed things along. Everything else is just whatever you want to draw/cycle your deck.
One of the best things about this achievement is that while some methods of killing an opponent end the game the moment they drop to 0 or less HP, the "cast when drawn" triggers keep going until your hand fills or you run out of cards to draw, making it very easy to rack up damage for this achievement.
On a related note, Augmented Elekk interacts with Tradeable as you'd expect (i.e. shuffles a second copy into the deck). I've been trying it out to power through the Spam Caller achievement for Demon Hunter, but so far the pace of the Wild meta has made that a bit challenging.
This is maybe pretty obvious, but a decent way to get Join the Dark Side if you don't have Darkbishop Benedictus is to play Duels with the Mind Tether hero power. Obviously you can also just play Shadowform in a typical Priest deck, but that's much slower since you have to draw the spell before you can make progress.