consistently inconsistent once again, but at least the deck is still legitimately awful unless you're playing against some ultra slow control deck with no pressure (and Priest can instantly shut it down with Illucia)
Right, so what have we, once again, learned about these extremely premature nerf takes everyone?
Questline hunter is one of the most overrated decks in standard, aka gigabad and warrior is barely playable. Vastly overshadowed by other quests such as mage (overplayed), warlock (quest nerf candidate #1) and rogue (quest nerf candidate #2).
Very ironic that you would call out others for premature nerf takes when Rogue and Warlock aren't even that powerful either, especially compared to what Mage is still doing.
Well i personaly haven't met that many Quest Warlocks - sure some but not much. And only once my opponent played a Flesh Giant - so i personaly did not notice a problem with the card. Sure , when the Card was released i was surprised that the original cost is not higher but right now i realy don't see him as the problem.
I do think that Stealer of Souls should get some sort of change just because it fucks up the damage breakpoints to the point of complete unpredictabilityy. I haven't played the Nightshade Matron variant, but my biggest issue with the Stealer OTK stuff is how vulnerable it is to large minions and wide boards because of the lack of actual removal.
I guess we'll have a meta report in a few days that accurately breaks down which builds actually work, but I still suspect Flesh Giant is a huge part of the deck's overall success.
but I'm literally just responding to what you're saying.
You said you wanted a game wide decrease in power and I'm telling you why that is a really bad idea. If I've strawmanned you on something that you don't believe you can just tell me.
Alright, did I get your attention? Now let me explain this. Since I've opened The Demon Seed I've been working hard to farm the achievement, because initially I thought it would get nerfed hard and therefore it would be better to start grinding now.
However, after playing with all 3 different builds (the Control deck burn one, the Zoo one, and the combo one) I came to realize that all these decks suffer from the exact problem most people cited for why the Quest would fail. You die very fast and getting downn the Quest reward is much harder than it might look like...and yet, people get run over by the deck, growing increasingly frustrated.
This one card is the ONLY reason why Warlock is even playable at this stage. The Quest is not as fast as it seems. Sure, sometimes you draw the absolute nuts and get Tamsin by turn 5, but that's only possible in the Zoo variant and doesn't happen often. It absolutely cannot race Mage or any aggro deck in any capacity. Most board centric decks can run you down before you even get to complete your quests, and not even an abundance of healing will save you. However, the Quest, and most importantly it's mid-rewards, allow you to turbo out Flesh Giants that then proceed to run over your opponent (try running [Hearthstone Card (Battlegrounds Battlemaster) Not Found] and see how many more games you win just by way of Giant beatdown).
I'm serious by the way, I've been playing the deck basically non-stop to complete the quest and 90% of the time I either win or lose before completing it. It's actually kind of funny how the deck whose main gameplan should be winning through fatigue redirection and lategame burst, but instead the Quest functions more as a 1-mana deal 6/heal 6/discount Giants by 2.
Mark my words, if Warlock gets ANY nerfs at all it will be Flesh Giant up to 10 or higher and the whole deck just falls on its face and dies to aggro to the point where not even hard control will keep them alive long enough to finish it (or will have to run so many survival tools that you won't complete the quest fast enough for it to be a threat).
Oh yeah, and nerf [Hearthstone Card (Battlegrounds Battlemaster) Not Found] into the fucking ground, that card is a retarded abomination and whoever thought it was acceptable to print should be forced to find client bugs for the rest of his career, holy fucking shit.
Are we far enough into the meta that we can agree that Battlegrounds Battlemaster is the most overpowered bullshit ever printed and I have no idea how much black tar heroin they had to inject to think that printing it at 5-mana was an acceptable decision in any part of the known universe? Because holy fuck it is so stupidly abuseable, not even just in Paladin but Warlock too.
Also I get the feeling that WarlockQuest (at least in Standard) might be ever so slightly overrated. A lot of the power in that deck comes from the fact that it's stupidly easy to discount Flesh Giant and if that card was nerfed to 10-mana (or more) it would be far less easy for the deck to just snowball out of control.
but then what do they rely on? Do we go back to complete inevitability where Control Warrior can just win by pressing armor up every turn because they know they have more life than their opponent has burn?
It sounds like what you want is the return to old Midrange Hunter who played sligthly above average cards every turn and hoped to squeeze in ennonugh damage before the eventual boardclear left him gassed out. Your described scenario basically just drags out games into a topdeck war, which is even worse than being blown out. At least if you get wiped by Barov + Rancor it's a decisive loss. Would you rather we have 5 turns of Steady Shot vs. Armor Up until Hunter finally topdecks their burn spell of choice and closes out the game like it used to be?
You still can experiment with gimmicky decks because gimmicky decks benefit the most from having a few good plays alongside their meme plan. I remember back in Rastakhan's Rumble Discard Quest Warlock was actually fun to play because despite the obvious glaring flaws of the archetype we had stuff like Zilliax and Defile to actually support it. Discolock would have been entirely unplayable without these powerful cards
The only time when these swing turns are ruining the game is when they are part of decks that are too efficient at their gameplan or have too few weaknesses. Overall the game massively benefits when every class has powerful plays as long as those plays don't just straight up close out the game instantly (which rarely happens consistently enough to be a problem and when it does is dealt with appropriately).
To me this is a clear case of you not realizing what it is you're asking for and what it would lead to.
but it's not though. If he specifically complains about "have an answer or lose turns" then those have been a thing ever the game stopped being about who got the better curve early on which was a change for the better objectively. Sure, occasionally things get out of hand when classes like Druid can consistently shit out a board on turn 1 that cannot be dealt with, but on paper, the concept of forcing your opponents to have an answer or fall severly behind is fine.
One of the worst experiences in the old days of hearthstone (specifically until K&C when swing turns became way more common) was how awful it felt if you were playing any sort of midrange deck and missed one of the early curve plays with no way of catching up. This all got fixed when Rush was implemented as a keyword and board centric decks were allowed to actually fight back against swarm instead of having to play a bunch of do-nothing cards and hope their opponents run out of stuff first. As a direct result other playstyles had to become more efficient instead, which is why now have way better removal and healing than before.
Do I need to remind you that some of the worst metas happened during "low power" times? Remember the year of the Dragon until DoD? remember how impossibly obnoxious Quest and Evolve Shaman were? That wasn't because everyone had big bad swing turns, but because they were the only decks who could actually put threatening stats on the board quick and because of the low power environment no other decks could contest it. Lowering the overall power level doesn't work because some deck will always come up with some cheesy strategy that can only thrive if nothing is around to challenge it.
I think the Barrens meta did well in that regard. The overall powerlevel was relatively low, but every class had powerful things going for them (talking specifically post Wailing Caverns to include Shaman). Some of it was out of hand (like Token Druid and whatever Priest was doing) but overall every class had playable decks (not counting Warlock, that's a different story) and had a fighting chance. In a low power environment we wouldn't get stuff like Troublemaker because that's too much of a swing turn, meaning Rush Warrior wouldn't have been able to exist due to lack of actual endgame. We also wouldn't have gotten Deathrattle DH because N'zoth wouldn't be allowed to go down to 9-mana, because, guess what, swing turn.
I mean, for fuck's sake, they literally printed Mutanus specifically to give slower decks a way to curb their opponent's lategame bombs and the ability to recover health while or after clearing the board also went up significantly (to the point where Apotheosis + Samuro had to be nerfed because it was too efficient in a class that already had a surplus of healing and removal).
Have you played Classic lately? There's not a lot of interaction going on there either. It's just playing your curve out as best as you can while hoping to get to your important cards in time.
The only time when swing turns are terrible in modern Hearthstone is when they set up lethal in a way that cannot be interacted with (which usually gets adresssed) or if the entire gameplan revolves around avoiding actually playing the game as intended (which is what the current oTK decks are doing, which is also going to be adressed).
I just don't like it when people come in with the rose tinted glasses of "everything was better when things weren't as powerful" while completely ignoring all the dumb shit we had to deal with for years.
Don't think it's going to go like that. Large Swings turns are pretty much the default now, whether we like it or not and I doubt it's going to change anytime soon. That being said, midrange can still be played if you have some amount of swing turns of your own (nothing game ending, just a decent powerplay that demands a response).
I don#T think we really need to go back to the time where you either had your 1, 2, 3 curve or lost miserably.
I thought so too, but after playing the deck myself (because of the achievement) I realised it's actually wildly inconsistent and can brick really hard to the point of unplayability.
But all of that is irrelevant because it's only viable because of a bug which lets the Bleeds be affected by Spell Damage, which they shouldn't (at least based on every other Cast when drawn damage card)
I mean, if you unironically play boar memes you can't expect not to get absolutely shat on.
Also, minion based decks still work against Warlock and Shadow Priest can catch people off guard with Illucia (which should be an autoinclude these days).
I'm not saying that the meta isn't kind of awful and a lot of the new decks need to be curbed heavily, but it's not entirely unplayable (except against Mage, fuck those guys). Just complete achievements while you wait for the whole thing to blow over.
I'm sorry but no, the biggest thing that had been holding half the classes back for years and forced them into the same streamlined archetypes was the fact that they weren't allowed to actually play their cards.
NOw we're finally at a point where Priests, Hunters, Shamans and Warriors are actually allowed diverge into different archetypes.
Power Creep is not only inevitable but also necessary unless you wanna go back to the boring slogfest that is Classic.
It appears Garrote Rogue has entered the competition to beat Mage for position of best single player deck.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we get a hotfix nerf for both of those decks within a week. I don't think we've ever had a meta were combo decks are faster at killing you than the actual aggro decks.
At least garrote may actually be a bug because the bleeds for some reason works with spell damage.
I think so too because I read on reddit that JAlexander said that the bleeds don't work with Spell Damage since that interaction had been removed back when Hakkar came out...but apparently Rogue doesn't care about the rules.
Either way, I suspect that even without the bonus spell damage that deck still remains a festering cancer. It's just gonna draw through it's entire deck regardless and the spell damage shenanigans will help the burn spells in hand while Cloak of Shadows makes you practically invulnerable. Maybe Auctioneer should have been yeeted from the Core set altogether...
It appears Garrote Rogue has entered the competition to beat Mage for position of best single player deck.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we get a hotfix nerf for both of those decks within a week. I don't think we've ever had a meta were combo decks are faster at killing you than the actual aggro decks.
It's funny how grossly the community under-rated these. Before the expansion the overall sentiment was that quests would be ridiculously slow and that by the time they were completed the game would be over. But as it turns out, the majority of these can be completed before turn 7-8 fairly consistently.
In terms of the meta, things are still being figured out and new decks will still have to be tested and refined, but mages do seem to be over powered and should probably be nerfed soon. I'm guessing they'll hit Incanter's Flow since it isn't a new card and has been shown to be borderline broken in the past.
Hitting just Flow won't do shit.
They have to get rid of Flow, then make it so the Quest steps need to be completed in one turn (there is no other way, the quest will always get completed on turn 6 or 7 otherwise) and finally reduce the Spell Damage to +2 because +3 is retarded in a world where Cram Session exists.
They will definitely need to hit more than a single card, I'm just not sure exactly what the other cards might be.
At this point Incanter's Flow feels obvious, especially with the new shaman elemental doing the same thing for double the cost. If they nerf the quest I believe the most likely thing would be reducing the spell damage to +2. Changing it to make all 3 spells have to be cast in a single turn is less likely. I would rather see mages nerfed to reduce their capacity to cast lots of spells in a single turn rather then force them to cast lots of spells in a single turn. If they wanted to slow mages down I think they would target cards like Ray of Frost, Hot Streak, or First Flame. Another option would be to simply reduce mages draw by hitting Cram Session or Font of Power.
I don't really want to nerf the quest since it is legendary and blizzard would rather avoid nerfing legendaries if possible, but also because there are a lot of factors that go into whether or not a quest is viable, and I would like to see how it plays out when mages don't have access to tons of other over powered spells.
No no no, we're not doing the Barrens nerf again where the obvious issue (Incanter's Flow) gets ignored and another card becomes collateral which ruins every other Mage deck that might have used it. The Quest is very obviously the issue here and Flow is part of the problem. Cram Session is a perfectly fine card as long as spell damage comes with an actual cost and counterplay. The same goes for all the other new cards including Ignite. They're literally balanced around not having permanent +3 damage so get rid of that part. Just nuke it like the Priest Quest. It's not a playstyle that should exist, the old Freeze Mage got yeeted for this exact reason.
That's fair. I would still like to see Incanter's Flow nerfed just to reduce mages capacity to cheat out stupid amounts of spells in a single turn, but you are probably right that the quest should be nerfed. There are two avenues that can be taken, either embrace the fact that the quest is super easy to complete and reduce the spell damage to make the quest more reliable but less powerful. Or embrace the fact that the reward is crazy powerful and make the quest significantly harder to complete to make the deck more combo oriented.
Oh don't worry, I'M with you on Flow, that thing is independently overpowered, i'm just saying that nerfing it won't actually fix the Quest problem. Technically they could get away with leaving Flow untouched if the Quest gets nerfed into the ground, but Flow will break the game again sooner or later (unless the next expansion only prints minions for Mage)
It's funny how grossly the community under-rated these. Before the expansion the overall sentiment was that quests would be ridiculously slow and that by the time they were completed the game would be over. But as it turns out, the majority of these can be completed before turn 7-8 fairly consistently.
In terms of the meta, things are still being figured out and new decks will still have to be tested and refined, but mages do seem to be over powered and should probably be nerfed soon. I'm guessing they'll hit Incanter's Flow since it isn't a new card and has been shown to be borderline broken in the past.
Hitting just Flow won't do shit.
They have to get rid of Flow, then make it so the Quest steps need to be completed in one turn (there is no other way, the quest will always get completed on turn 6 or 7 otherwise) and finally reduce the Spell Damage to +2 because +3 is retarded in a world where Cram Session exists.
They will definitely need to hit more than a single card, I'm just not sure exactly what the other cards might be.
At this point Incanter's Flow feels obvious, especially with the new shaman elemental doing the same thing for double the cost. If they nerf the quest I believe the most likely thing would be reducing the spell damage to +2. Changing it to make all 3 spells have to be cast in a single turn is less likely. I would rather see mages nerfed to reduce their capacity to cast lots of spells in a single turn rather then force them to cast lots of spells in a single turn. If they wanted to slow mages down I think they would target cards like Ray of Frost, Hot Streak, or First Flame. Another option would be to simply reduce mages draw by hitting Cram Session or Font of Power.
I don't really want to nerf the quest since it is legendary and blizzard would rather avoid nerfing legendaries if possible, but also because there are a lot of factors that go into whether or not a quest is viable, and I would like to see how it plays out when mages don't have access to tons of other over powered spells.
No no no, we're not doing the Barrens nerf again where the obvious issue (Incanter's Flow) gets ignored and another card becomes collateral which ruins every other Mage deck that might have used it. The Quest is very obviously the issue here and Flow is part of the problem. Cram Session is a perfectly fine card as long as spell damage comes with an actual cost and counterplay. The same goes for all the other new cards including Ignite. They're literally balanced around not having permanent +3 damage so get rid of that part. Just nuke it like the Priest Quest. It's not a playstyle that should exist, the old Freeze Mage got yeeted for this exact reason.
It's funny how grossly the community under-rated these. Before the expansion the overall sentiment was that quests would be ridiculously slow and that by the time they were completed the game would be over. But as it turns out, the majority of these can be completed before turn 7-8 fairly consistently.
In terms of the meta, things are still being figured out and new decks will still have to be tested and refined, but mages do seem to be over powered and should probably be nerfed soon. I'm guessing they'll hit Incanter's Flow since it isn't a new card and has been shown to be borderline broken in the past.
Hitting just Flow won't do shit.
They have to get rid of Flow, then make it so the Quest steps need to be completed in one turn (there is no other way, the quest will always get completed on turn 6 or 7 otherwise) and finally reduce the Spell Damage to +2 because +3 is retarded in a world where Cram Session exists.
Gotta admit, it would be fun to see specialists format where everyone plays Turbo Questlock and every game ends after 6 turns.
consistently inconsistent once again, but at least the deck is still legitimately awful unless you're playing against some ultra slow control deck with no pressure (and Priest can instantly shut it down with Illucia)
Seeing how nothing in Duels is balanced whatsoever, would it really be that much of a loss if they just removed it altogether?
Very ironic that you would call out others for premature nerf takes when Rogue and Warlock aren't even that powerful either, especially compared to what Mage is still doing.
I do think that Stealer of Souls should get some sort of change just because it fucks up the damage breakpoints to the point of complete unpredictabilityy. I haven't played the Nightshade Matron variant, but my biggest issue with the Stealer OTK stuff is how vulnerable it is to large minions and wide boards because of the lack of actual removal.
I guess we'll have a meta report in a few days that accurately breaks down which builds actually work, but I still suspect Flesh Giant is a huge part of the deck's overall success.
but I'm literally just responding to what you're saying.
You said you wanted a game wide decrease in power and I'm telling you why that is a really bad idea. If I've strawmanned you on something that you don't believe you can just tell me.
Alright, did I get your attention? Now let me explain this. Since I've opened The Demon Seed I've been working hard to farm the achievement, because initially I thought it would get nerfed hard and therefore it would be better to start grinding now.
However, after playing with all 3 different builds (the Control deck burn one, the Zoo one, and the combo one) I came to realize that all these decks suffer from the exact problem most people cited for why the Quest would fail. You die very fast and getting downn the Quest reward is much harder than it might look like...and yet, people get run over by the deck, growing increasingly frustrated.
So how does that work?
Flesh Giant
Flesh Giant is how that works.
This one card is the ONLY reason why Warlock is even playable at this stage. The Quest is not as fast as it seems. Sure, sometimes you draw the absolute nuts and get Tamsin by turn 5, but that's only possible in the Zoo variant and doesn't happen often. It absolutely cannot race Mage or any aggro deck in any capacity. Most board centric decks can run you down before you even get to complete your quests, and not even an abundance of healing will save you. However, the Quest, and most importantly it's mid-rewards, allow you to turbo out Flesh Giants that then proceed to run over your opponent (try running [Hearthstone Card (Battlegrounds Battlemaster) Not Found] and see how many more games you win just by way of Giant beatdown).
I'm serious by the way, I've been playing the deck basically non-stop to complete the quest and 90% of the time I either win or lose before completing it. It's actually kind of funny how the deck whose main gameplan should be winning through fatigue redirection and lategame burst, but instead the Quest functions more as a 1-mana deal 6/heal 6/discount Giants by 2.
Mark my words, if Warlock gets ANY nerfs at all it will be Flesh Giant up to 10 or higher and the whole deck just falls on its face and dies to aggro to the point where not even hard control will keep them alive long enough to finish it (or will have to run so many survival tools that you won't complete the quest fast enough for it to be a threat).
Oh yeah, and nerf [Hearthstone Card (Battlegrounds Battlemaster) Not Found] into the fucking ground, that card is a retarded abomination and whoever thought it was acceptable to print should be forced to find client bugs for the rest of his career, holy fucking shit.
Are we far enough into the meta that we can agree that Battlegrounds Battlemaster is the most overpowered bullshit ever printed and I have no idea how much black tar heroin they had to inject to think that printing it at 5-mana was an acceptable decision in any part of the known universe? Because holy fuck it is so stupidly abuseable, not even just in Paladin but Warlock too.
Also I get the feeling that WarlockQuest (at least in Standard) might be ever so slightly overrated. A lot of the power in that deck comes from the fact that it's stupidly easy to discount Flesh Giant and if that card was nerfed to 10-mana (or more) it would be far less easy for the deck to just snowball out of control.
but then what do they rely on? Do we go back to complete inevitability where Control Warrior can just win by pressing armor up every turn because they know they have more life than their opponent has burn?
It sounds like what you want is the return to old Midrange Hunter who played sligthly above average cards every turn and hoped to squeeze in ennonugh damage before the eventual boardclear left him gassed out. Your described scenario basically just drags out games into a topdeck war, which is even worse than being blown out. At least if you get wiped by Barov + Rancor it's a decisive loss. Would you rather we have 5 turns of Steady Shot vs. Armor Up until Hunter finally topdecks their burn spell of choice and closes out the game like it used to be?
You still can experiment with gimmicky decks because gimmicky decks benefit the most from having a few good plays alongside their meme plan. I remember back in Rastakhan's Rumble Discard Quest Warlock was actually fun to play because despite the obvious glaring flaws of the archetype we had stuff like Zilliax and Defile to actually support it. Discolock would have been entirely unplayable without these powerful cards
The only time when these swing turns are ruining the game is when they are part of decks that are too efficient at their gameplan or have too few weaknesses. Overall the game massively benefits when every class has powerful plays as long as those plays don't just straight up close out the game instantly (which rarely happens consistently enough to be a problem and when it does is dealt with appropriately).
To me this is a clear case of you not realizing what it is you're asking for and what it would lead to.
but it's not though. If he specifically complains about "have an answer or lose turns" then those have been a thing ever the game stopped being about who got the better curve early on which was a change for the better objectively. Sure, occasionally things get out of hand when classes like Druid can consistently shit out a board on turn 1 that cannot be dealt with, but on paper, the concept of forcing your opponents to have an answer or fall severly behind is fine.
One of the worst experiences in the old days of hearthstone (specifically until K&C when swing turns became way more common) was how awful it felt if you were playing any sort of midrange deck and missed one of the early curve plays with no way of catching up. This all got fixed when Rush was implemented as a keyword and board centric decks were allowed to actually fight back against swarm instead of having to play a bunch of do-nothing cards and hope their opponents run out of stuff first. As a direct result other playstyles had to become more efficient instead, which is why now have way better removal and healing than before.
Do I need to remind you that some of the worst metas happened during "low power" times? Remember the year of the Dragon until DoD? remember how impossibly obnoxious Quest and Evolve Shaman were? That wasn't because everyone had big bad swing turns, but because they were the only decks who could actually put threatening stats on the board quick and because of the low power environment no other decks could contest it. Lowering the overall power level doesn't work because some deck will always come up with some cheesy strategy that can only thrive if nothing is around to challenge it.
I think the Barrens meta did well in that regard. The overall powerlevel was relatively low, but every class had powerful things going for them (talking specifically post Wailing Caverns to include Shaman). Some of it was out of hand (like Token Druid and whatever Priest was doing) but overall every class had playable decks (not counting Warlock, that's a different story) and had a fighting chance. In a low power environment we wouldn't get stuff like Troublemaker because that's too much of a swing turn, meaning Rush Warrior wouldn't have been able to exist due to lack of actual endgame. We also wouldn't have gotten Deathrattle DH because N'zoth wouldn't be allowed to go down to 9-mana, because, guess what, swing turn.
I mean, for fuck's sake, they literally printed Mutanus specifically to give slower decks a way to curb their opponent's lategame bombs and the ability to recover health while or after clearing the board also went up significantly (to the point where Apotheosis + Samuro had to be nerfed because it was too efficient in a class that already had a surplus of healing and removal).
Have you played Classic lately? There's not a lot of interaction going on there either. It's just playing your curve out as best as you can while hoping to get to your important cards in time.
The only time when swing turns are terrible in modern Hearthstone is when they set up lethal in a way that cannot be interacted with (which usually gets adresssed) or if the entire gameplan revolves around avoiding actually playing the game as intended (which is what the current oTK decks are doing, which is also going to be adressed).
I just don't like it when people come in with the rose tinted glasses of "everything was better when things weren't as powerful" while completely ignoring all the dumb shit we had to deal with for years.
Don't think it's going to go like that. Large Swings turns are pretty much the default now, whether we like it or not and I doubt it's going to change anytime soon. That being said, midrange can still be played if you have some amount of swing turns of your own (nothing game ending, just a decent powerplay that demands a response).
I don#T think we really need to go back to the time where you either had your 1, 2, 3 curve or lost miserably.
We were this close to greatness....
I thought so too, but after playing the deck myself (because of the achievement) I realised it's actually wildly inconsistent and can brick really hard to the point of unplayability.
But all of that is irrelevant because it's only viable because of a bug which lets the Bleeds be affected by Spell Damage, which they shouldn't (at least based on every other Cast when drawn damage card)
I mean, if you unironically play boar memes you can't expect not to get absolutely shat on.
Also, minion based decks still work against Warlock and Shadow Priest can catch people off guard with Illucia (which should be an autoinclude these days).
I'm not saying that the meta isn't kind of awful and a lot of the new decks need to be curbed heavily, but it's not entirely unplayable (except against Mage, fuck those guys). Just complete achievements while you wait for the whole thing to blow over.
I'm sorry but no, the biggest thing that had been holding half the classes back for years and forced them into the same streamlined archetypes was the fact that they weren't allowed to actually play their cards.
NOw we're finally at a point where Priests, Hunters, Shamans and Warriors are actually allowed diverge into different archetypes.
Power Creep is not only inevitable but also necessary unless you wanna go back to the boring slogfest that is Classic.
I think so too because I read on reddit that JAlexander said that the bleeds don't work with Spell Damage since that interaction had been removed back when Hakkar came out...but apparently Rogue doesn't care about the rules.
Either way, I suspect that even without the bonus spell damage that deck still remains a festering cancer. It's just gonna draw through it's entire deck regardless and the spell damage shenanigans will help the burn spells in hand while Cloak of Shadows makes you practically invulnerable. Maybe Auctioneer should have been yeeted from the Core set altogether...
It appears Garrote Rogue has entered the competition to beat Mage for position of best single player deck.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we get a hotfix nerf for both of those decks within a week. I don't think we've ever had a meta were combo decks are faster at killing you than the actual aggro decks.
Oh don't worry, I'M with you on Flow, that thing is independently overpowered, i'm just saying that nerfing it won't actually fix the Quest problem. Technically they could get away with leaving Flow untouched if the Quest gets nerfed into the ground, but Flow will break the game again sooner or later (unless the next expansion only prints minions for Mage)
No no no, we're not doing the Barrens nerf again where the obvious issue (Incanter's Flow) gets ignored and another card becomes collateral which ruins every other Mage deck that might have used it. The Quest is very obviously the issue here and Flow is part of the problem. Cram Session is a perfectly fine card as long as spell damage comes with an actual cost and counterplay. The same goes for all the other new cards including Ignite. They're literally balanced around not having permanent +3 damage so get rid of that part. Just nuke it like the Priest Quest. It's not a playstyle that should exist, the old Freeze Mage got yeeted for this exact reason.
Hitting just Flow won't do shit.
They have to get rid of Flow, then make it so the Quest steps need to be completed in one turn (there is no other way, the quest will always get completed on turn 6 or 7 otherwise) and finally reduce the Spell Damage to +2 because +3 is retarded in a world where Cram Session exists.