Against Aggro, Volcanic Potion would probably be a better tech card, actually! Most of the time, you lose games against Aggro if you fall behind in the early game, Turn 7 is often too late to come back even if you AoE down the board. And that 2 damage early AoE damage can work wonders against some of the faster decks.

And I think that you should replace Pyroblast instead of Firelands Portal while we’re at it.

There is a card substitutions section at the bottom of the guide.

The deck is neither good or popular, even after the nerfs. It loses hard to any fast/aggressive deck. Yes, it has some good matchups (Control/Cube Warlock, Big Priest), but the bad ones far outweigh the good ones. You can check some stats here: https://hsreplay.net/archetypes/151/mill-rogue#tab=matchups

Most notably, Aggro and Murloc Paladin are at about 10% win rate… That’s why it’s not on the list under the best decks.

I could put it under the interesting/off-meta decks, but I didn’t see any list from a pro player (I generally prefer to put decks tested by the best players to give them more credibility). But I might put it in the next compilation if I stumble upon one!

I’m afraid that Blizzard didn’t provide any official list for the “slight adjustments”, and since they seem to adjust the cards quite often, unofficial list would be incredibly hard to make. For the most part, it was just guessing made based on what cards people pick at what rate. For example, Hunter’s Flanking Strike and Wandering Monster probably show less often than they should.

Here’s a source thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/7muauz/lets_talk_about_micro_adjustments_in_arena_and/

It will no longer be playable in the current form. But it’s actually a third iteration of Tempo Mage (first one was pre-BRM, second one created after BRM and third one shaped out after Un’Goro), so I believe that it will eventually find its way to get back into the meta.

The deck has a strong classic shell – cards like Mana Wyrm, Frostbolt, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Arcane Intellect, Kirin Tor Mage or Fireball will still be there. Not to mention that a lot of the good cards from 2017 are still staying (e.g. Arcanologist, Primordial Glyph, Aluneth).

At this point, it really depends on what Blizzard decides to print for Mage in the first expansion of 2018.

It’s probably irrelevant to most, but I actually love the decks that are fully made with class cards. It makes them feel like they truly belong to that class. Decks that are running half of the neutral cards are definitely losing a lot in terms of identity.

Those cards are banned from drafts, not from the random cards pool. It’s weird and pretty lazy, I know, but that’s how Blizzard decided to handle it.

I’m going to update the post and make that clear, sorry for confusion.

I’ve seen a few Malygos Druid before the nerf patch, even played a few games myself. Pretty fun deck, but didn’t really know how well it will be doing right now. Might include it in the next compilation (if there will be one).

Did he play the Quest or non-Quest version, by the way?

I’m running Silence instead. Spellbreaker / Kabal Songstealer are good options.

I think that Shadowreaper Anduin might be a good option, but I’d rather play him instead of one of the Psychic Screams.

Yes, Potion of Madness ruins the Diamond Spellstones, but it’s a price you have to pay in order to not lose against Aggro and have a better matchup vs Warlock (since you can counter Lackeys with Potion of Madness).

There’s really no point in playing this deck without Kazakus. He’s one of the two reasons why you would want to go Highlander in the first place instead of just playing a normal Control/Cube Warlock 🙂

You don’t necessarily play Rallying Blade to buff your stuff (and still, you have 2x Righteous Protector which you can hit with the buff). You use it as a 3/2 weapon most of the time.

3 attack part is important, because it kills much more than the Unidentified Maul. This deck alone has EIGHT 1-3 mana minions with 3 health that you wouldn’t be able to kill with Maul. Other minions like that include Mana Wyrm, Arcanologist, Plated Beetle, Radiant Elemental, Netherspite Historian, Northshire Cleric and a few more cards.

Even though Maul gets an extra effect, 3 attack is just so much better for the early game board control.

Unlicensed Apothecary was never bugged with Evolve. It always worked correctly. I don’t know where this rumor started, but it’s just not true. There’s not a single piece of evidence showing that interaction (and there are hundreds of posts and clips for the Thrall one, even though it’s in the game for only ~2 months).

And the interaction with Thrall was NOT fixed in the last patch. It’s still bugged.

About the comments below. People having no clue about anything are shouting loudest.

While Quest Rogue might not be the hardest deck to play right now, the deck is incredibly punishing for the mistakes and that’s what makes it one of the decks requiring most skill to pilot really well. Yes, it has very low skill floor, the basic idea is very simple, everyone can play it. But the problem is that even the smallest decisions matter A LOT. There is no room for mistakes, even the smallest ones can lose you the game against a good player. And there are quite a lot of decision to make – like which minion to bounce, whether to bounce a sub-optimal minion to finish Quest faster or wait one or two more turns for something better, how many minions you can use pre-Quest and how many you will need to finish the game with 5/5’s (e.g. whether you can afford to play that Southsea Deckhand pre-Quest to remove something or maybe you won’t have enough steam to work with after you finish it), the Vanish timing, even picking the best target with Glacial Shard (no, it’s not always that easy). Which makes the skill ceiling of the deck really high. Of course, if you play at low rank, those mistakes can easily go unpunished. But Quest Rogue games at the high level are really close ones, often one more turn would change the outcome of the whole game.

Rank 15 Pirate Warrior would still beat Legend players quite consistently if he just went face all the time without really making any hard decisions. That’s just how the deck works, yes, there are decisions, but making the sub-optimal ones can go unpunished very easily. Rank 15 Quest Rogue would struggle so hard in the high Legend/tournament meta, where everyone knows exactly how to play against the deck, how to counter it and are running decks that are optimized against it. He would need perfect hand to win, otherwise his poor decision-making would make him lose majority of his games.

Is the deck stupid and “cancerous” for the meta? Yes, of course. Is it easy to play? Not by a long shot, and if you don’t realize that, you probably never have played at the higher level.

Sorry, too much copy-pasting 😀 I’ve fixed that!

Yes, it was released on iPad and Windows Tablets much sooner. But let’s be fair, number of people using those is really small as opposed to people using smartphones. The “real” mobile release was over a year after the game’s release.

But of course, I understand. I was on the same boat for a while, but in my case it was my main PC breaking down (GPU burned :/). I still had an old laptop, but it was hard to use it for anything besides browsing reddit. HS on mobile was a blessing, since I still could play whenever I want and wherever I want.

I was just saying that I’m almost sure that Gwent will get the mobile version eventually, but it might take a while like it took with Hearthstone. Porting a PC game to mobile AND making those two versions work with each other is quite a task.

Remember that the game is still in the Open Beta! I’m almost sure that the game get a mobile version sooner or later. Devs said that they are aware that the feature is wanted, but they want to polish the game first.

To be fair, they still have plenty of time. Hearthstone came out on Android/iPhone over a year after the game’s release.

Sadly not. You really need them.

In theory, the idea of Stonehill Defenders isn’t that bad. But in practice, it’s probably isn’t that good.

First problem is mana cost. To even match the 8 damage mitigation you get from the Barrier, you’d need to pay at least 6 mana in total most of the time, while Barrier costs 3. You rarely have “spare” mana playing as the Freeze Mage, each one of your turns is full of things you want to do, so having to pay extra 3 mana for the same effect is pretty bad (for that 3 mana you could play another Acolyte of Arcane Intellect to dig further into your deck).

Barrier also increases the Arcanologist consistency. With just 2 Blocks, you often end up drawing 1 or even 2 before your Arcanologists (on average, second one will be useless).

And last, but not least, Mage has no class Taunts. You’re only picking from the Neutrals, which makes it significantly worse than in e.g. Paladin, Warrior or Shaman, which have pretty powerful class Taunts.

The build was updated pre-May season (like 2 weeks ago) for the then best working build. Builds in the guides are updated monthly – there is simply no way to update them every time something changes, because the guide also needs getting changed when other cards are getting played. But the Un’Goro meta is pretty specific, because even though we’re over a month into it, it’s still constantly changing and even a week from now some builds might already get outdated. On the one hand, it’s great for the players, but it’s really hard to keep up for the writers like me.

If the meta hasn’t stabilised yet, you should browse the “Featured Decks” for the latest builds. Majority of this guide still applies, so you can get the latest build and then read this guide for some gameplay advice.