The Quest Mage in Hearthstone is in trouble. Its final reward will be massively weakened to allow for more counterplay.
Although Hearthstone just released the mini-set “The Death Mines”, many players are currently bored with the current meta. Particularly in the lower ranks, where most players are, the matches often feel similar. This is mainly due to the “Quest Mage”, a currently very popular archetype that is also causing boredom.
What is changing? Blizzard is weakening the final reward of the Mage Quest “Wizard’s Gambit”, the minion “Spell Assassin Duskgrip”. From now on, his Battlecry will only increase spell damage by 2 for the rest of the game instead of 3.
What are the implications? The effectiveness of the quest reward is reduced by 33% with this change. As a result, the Mage will require more spells to reduce the opponent’s health points and achieve victory. It may also become sensible to include a few minions in the deck or to consider alternative strategies for the deck to gain additional spell damage in other ways.
Why was the deck nerfed? In fact, the “Quest Deck” for the Mage is not that incredibly successful. Especially at higher ranks, the deck often loses relevance and is quickly crushed by better decks. Currently, on the analysis site HSReplay.net, the win rate of this deck is only 48.69% and thus quite far behind the Aggro Druid (an incredible 62.07%) or the Quest Warrior (57.79%) – as of 10.11.2021, 11:30 Uhr.
In the lower ranks, however, it feels like every other match is against a Quest Mage, leading to boredom. Often, Mages can complete their quest as early as turn 5 or 6 and quickly play out the Spell Assassin Duskgrip against less optimized decks.
This is followed by the ability to overwhelm the opponent with spells within 2 turns, reducing their health from 30 to 0 without being able to do anything about it.
This leads to little fun in gameplay, which is why many players immediately give up when facing a Mage.
Why is Blizzard nerfing it anyway? That Blizzard is nerfing this quest line, even though the win rate is not that high, likely has a simple reason: The games are boring. Blizzard explained some time ago that nerfs are generally made when at least one of two factors is met:
- A deck proves to be too strong.
- A deck bores the community because it occurs too often over a long period and does not provide exciting gameplay.
Apparently the second reason has now occurred, and Blizzard is taking action.
When will the patch be released? There is no exact date yet, but Blizzard has announced it for “early next week”. It will likely happen on November 15 or 16. So players wanting to enjoy the full strength of the Quest Mage should hurry.
Players who play Mage and are annoyed by the adjustment can exchange the quest card directly for the full dust cost after the nerf – as is standard with nerfs in Hearthstone.
What do you think about the change to the Quest Mage?
