How Good Is the New Whizbang? Should You Craft Splendiferous Whizbang?

One of the ways Blizzard has reminisced about the first ten years of Hearthstone in Whizbang’s Workshop is its namesake, Splendiferous Whizbang. The original Whizbang the Wonderful was released in The Boomsday Project in 2018, and it offered players a cheap way to play a wide variety of decks. A deck that consisted of Whizbang alone gave you access to the recipe decks for all classes, chosen randomly for each game. While the recipe decks were not great, they were enough to enjoy on some parts of the ladder. All you needed was to own this one Legendary card! What made it even better was how the recipes it used were updated for each expansion, allowing you to enjoy Whizbang to the fullest in every new expansion.

Splendiferous Whizbang is a little bit different. You still add it to a deck alone, and it gives you access to random decks, but this time, the decks come from a separate pool. Therefore, I don’t expect them to be updated on a regular basis. They also don’t follow the usual deck-building rules. We presented the new Whizbang decks in an earlier article, and now it is time to dig a bit deeper.

Are the new Whizbang decks any good? Is this your one-stop craft to enjoy the lower and middle ranks of the ladder? Now that the expansion has been out for a while, we have some statistics on their performance and can look into whether Whizbang is worth it.

Whizbang Deck Performance

The win rates of various Whizbang decks according to the current statistics are as follows:

Death Knight – Rainbow Deck:

• All ranks: 37.7%
• Diamond-Legend: 28.8%

Demon Hunter – Deck of Wishes:

• All ranks: 63.2%
• Diamond-Legend: 52.3%

Druid – Deck of Discovery:

• All ranks: 31.3%
• Diamond-Legend: 21.8%

Hunter – Deck of Legends:

• All ranks: 47.4%
• Diamond-Legend: 36.5%

Mage – Deck of Wonders:

• All ranks: ?
• Diamond-Legend: ?
• None of the statistics sites appear to be capable of tracking this deck as it has no collectible cards in it.

Paladin – Deck of Heroes:

• All ranks: 31.3%
• Diamond-Legend: 17.0%

Priest – Septuplet Deck:

• All ranks: 76.1%
• Diamond-Legend: 34.5%

Rogue – Deck of Treasures:

• All ranks: 44.4%
• Diamond-Legend: 37.2%

Shaman – Questing Deck:

• All ranks: 26.9%
• Diamond-Legend: 17.0%

Warlock – Shrunken Deck:

• All ranks: 62.0%
• Diamond-Legend: 53.8%

Warrior – Deck of Villains:

• All ranks: 22.5%
• Diamond-Legend: 12.4%

Individual deck performance brackets, all ranks:

• 50+: 3 decks
• 40-49: 2 decks
• 30-39: 3 decks
• 20-29: 2 decks

Individual deck performance brackets, Diamond-Legend:

• 50+: 2 decks
• 40-49: 0 decks
• 30-39: 3 decks
• 20-29: 2 decks
• 10-19: 3 decks

Average expected Whizbang performance (excluding Mage):

• All ranks: 44.3%
• Diamond-Legend: 30.5%

Demon Hunter and Warlock are the best Whizbang decks, and the only ones capable of reaching above 50% win rates in Diamond-Legend. They are also the only Whizbang decks that can reach an above-40% win rate in Diamond-Legend (yes, the gap is that big).

At the other end, Paladin, Shaman, and Warrior are miserable, dipping down to below 20% in Diamond-Legend. Druid and Death Knight are only slightly better.

Rogue, Priest, and Hunter are mediocre at best, but more capable than the weakest decks, especially at lower ranks.

Should You Craft Splendiferous Whizbang?

Sadly, the answer right now is a resounding no. Nope. No way. Looking at the performance of Whizbang decks, too many of them are so abysmal that they will suck the joy out of you. A deck in the 40s can still be fun. Sure, you lose more than you win, but there are enough victories that if it is otherwise enjoyable, it can be fun. A deck in the 20s is miserable. You will hardly ever win and it is just pure misery.

I tested the new player experience recently and decided to use that account to try out Whizbang decks in their natural habitat. I had 1700 dust after completing the apprentice track, just enough to craft a shiny new Legendary card, so I crafted Whizbang. I had an x5 star bonus at the start of the ladder and took my Whizbang decks to that fairly low-MMR meta. I met a mix of meta decks, including some Demon Hunters, and some strange off-meta decks, the kind of meta you can expect in the less competitive part of the ladder. After a few hours, I ended up with a slightly above 50% win rate. Had I played a meta deck, I would have expected a 70% win rate. I did not dare to repeat the same experiment against experienced opponents. Had I been a “real” new player, I would have been in a lot of trouble with Whizbang.

Now, Whizbang is not meant to be a competitive card. But there is a difference between a non-competitive card that can still be loved by players, and a card that is so bad that you cannot bring yourself to play it even if you’d like to enjoy it. The original Whizbang managed to strike a better balance between staying out of the top competition but still offering great experiences lower on the ladder.

Could Blizzard Fix Whizbang?

We have data on Whizbang’s performance, and Blizzard has even more data about it. If they wanted to, then yes, they could change some Whizbang decks to make it a more enjoyable experience. They’d just need to find the right balance. The decks must not be too strong, but they should not be too weak, either.

If you consider the 40-49 percent win rate bracket to be the lowest where you can play a deck and not feel terrible about it, then half of the Whizbang decks are in that category or better in all ranks. In Diamond to Legend, only two Whizbang decks are playable: Warlock and Demon Hunter. Whizbang does not have to be playable in Diamond, but it should be playable in Bronze and Silver.

To see how bad things are, just consider the Whizbang Warlock deck. A 20-card deck that benefits from running low on cards and has almost all the good tools there are in the game for such a purpose is only the third-best Warlock archetype in the game! Both Wheel Warlock and Sludge Warlock are superior decks. Before looking at the stats, I had actually pondered whether the Whizbang Warlock deck should be nerfed because it feels incredibly strong, but I had been playing some off-meta decks lately, so the comparison to real ladder decks shows that even the best that Whizbang has to offer is barely on par with the regular ladder decks. The Warlock deck is fine. It is right where the strongest Whizbang deck should be: quite competitive, but still inferior to the real top meta decks.

Therefore, none of the Whizbang decks are too strong. The Demon Hunter deck will undoubtedly be affected by some future nerfs, as it is based on the same Umpire's Grasp and Window Shopper duo as the real meta decks, just in a weaker form. Whizbang could become a fun card, if some of its weaker decks were buffed.

Paladin, Shaman, and Warrior are close to unplayable, so they would need the most attention.

The Paladin deck is a Highlander deck that has Highlander cards from multiple classes, but it is missing the most recent batch. Adding the new synergy cards, especially Reno, Lone Ranger and Theldurin the Lost to help the deck stabilize, would help it out immensely. I would actually be a little scared of adding something like Rheastrasza into the deck in addition to the defensive tools, although it is unlikely that the deck would be too strong even then. Perhaps Doctor Holli'dae would be a good third addition as a mix of defensive and offensive power. Without additional defensive tools, the deck crumbles too easily and any other additions do not matter.

The Shaman deck gives you three Shaman Questlines: Command the Elements, Corrupt the Waters, and Unite the Murlocs. Unfortunately, the deck only has real support for the Murloc Quest, and it lacks the best Murloc synergy cards, Murloc Warleader and Coldlight Seer. You can try to generate them randomly, but there are no guarantees. I went through 19 random Murlocs without seeing a single copy of either in my attempts with the deck! The smallest possible change to the deck would be to remove some of the weakest expensive cards and add those cards to the main deck. Or just rework it completely, because those Quests don’t really synergize with each other, so trying to complete three at the same time feels terrible.

The Warrior deck can get a lot done early with tons of Lackeys, but its late-game bombs are completely obsolete. Arch-Villain Rafaam and Arch-Thief Rafaam are just plain useless nowadays. Give it some more defensive tools, and it just might pull something off with Heistbaron Togwaggle and Togwaggle's Scheme.

The Druid deck is hard to fix. It has ramp and cards that Discover things. There’s not much that can be done without changing the entire concept. If the Druid deck was the weakest deck of the bunch, that might be acceptable. At least it is not as bad as Paladin, Shaman, and Warrior.

The Death Knight is a curious Rainbow deck. It is not a Rainbow of Runes, but rather a Rainbow of Spell Schools. It can only really win with Coral Keeper or Elemental Inspiration, but its board clears are a bit lackluster. Perhaps cutting some of the weakest cards and adding Discovery of Magic and Inquisitive Creation could help.

Blizzard would need to do a bunch of changes to make Whizbang tolerable on the ladder and worth playing even in Bronze. For many of the decks, improvements are possible without compromising their original concepts, so this is not out of their reach.

Obviously, this is outside of players’ control. For an individual player, crafting Whizbang now is not advisable. However, if Blizzard were to announce changes to the decks, Whizbang could become a card that you can play for fun in the lower ranks.