Quest Rogue Nerf Announcement!
by hsdecktech - 7 years ago show comments
Early this morning, Blizzard announced that Quest Rogue would be getting a nerf to its core card–the quest itself, The Caverns Below. The card will now require five of the same card to be played, instead of four.
The nerf is interesting because, as has been documented and reported time and again, Quest Rogue is not an oppressive–or even good–ladder deck. According to the most recent Vicious Syndicate report, Quest Rogue is the fourth most popular deck (with 7.39% of the meta across all ranks) and is just barely viable (50.77% winrate across all ranks). Moreover, as we have all seen and as the announcement admits, the meta is in a great place right now by almost all metrics: there are a ton of viable decks and nearly every class has representation on the ladder.
Yet, Blizzard thinks we can do more. This nerf is to encourage yet more deck diversity (namely, control decks). This makes some sense considering that the ladder format already inherently discourages control decks (because longer games means it takes a lot more time, or a much better winrate, to get to the top of the ladder). It’s also probably to quell complaints by players in the lower end of the ladder that believe Quest Rogue to over-powered, even though it is not. Yet, it seems a little unfair to nerf Quest Rogue when all the problems with it aren’t actually with it at all.
Check out the full announcement and let us know what you think below. Will Quest Rogue still be viable when it needs one more bounce to go off?
The Caverns Below.
The Caverns Below now reads:
Quest: Play five minions with the same name. Reward: Crystal Core.
Since the release of Journey to Un’Goro, Hearthstone has enjoyed a wider variety of competitively viable classes and decks than ever before. We’ve been monitoring overall gameplay, and we’ve decided that—even though everything is varied and many decks are viable—a change to The Caverns Below is still warranted.
The Caverns Below is uniquely powerful versus several slower, control-oriented decks and played often enough that it’s pushing those decks out of play. This change should help expand the deck options available to players both now and after the release of the next expansion.
