I don’t think I’m alone in voicing disesteem towards the Warrior Pirate Quest Reward: the infamous “Juggernaut”.
Yes, ultimate quest rewards should be just that - rewarding. But my gripe with the Juggernaut is that it’s contribution to the game eclipses strategy and instead opts for adding blatant randomness to an already RNG-infested game. (Yes, I’ve come to accept that RNG is a part of card games - especially Hearthstone).
But the fact that it’s invincible. It cannot be touched - this irks me. There’s no counter to it. It’s a “random stuff happens every turn that’s in my favor card”. Atleast give it like… 10 health and untargetable by enemy magic if you want it hard to kill? Something? This “you can’t counter it, and it may or may not give me what I need next turn” is… I wish this game opted to avoid such design philosophy when possible. It feels like lazy design. Thoughts? Is the Juggernaut more OP than other quest rewards for their respective classes? Or are these just the ramblings of a salty loser to 3 Pirate Warriors in a row?
On second thought, maybe I should just accept RNG /Pirate Warrior wherever it rears its ugly head and stop complaining…
Completing any quest gives you a permanent bonus the rest of the game. Pirate’s just happens be manifest as the juggernaut, so I don’t think this is the right fix.
I think Smite should not come out of the ship, and the canons should not be able to hit face unless their are no enemy minions.
Yes correct. Except for the druid one which is one off (but usually sufficient to finish off the opponent), the rest are permanent, so to make the juggernaut killable, we should also have a way of reversing the hunter’s ability to refresh the hero power, or to make the shaman cast the spells only once etc.
I don’t think it should be killable, but the rewards could be nerfed. Like keep firing 2 shots every turn but alternate between equipping a weapon and summoning a pirate or something.
I think the way to change pirate warrior without killing it is simple.
Make the dmg from the juggernaut and defias canonneer do 1 dmg twice.
and remove the pirate tag from smite.
I would like them to remove the randomness from juggernaut too. Make the pirate always be a 3/3 and let the weapon always be a 3/2 (maybe swordeaters sword to stick with the pirate theme).
The cannons only going face, when there are no minions is an interesting idea, even though I think that would be a buff.
Don’t make it killable, as that just takes away the big reward feel. Only 2 of the Quests (Rogue and Druid, as well as arguably Priest) don’t get permanent rewards, so if Juggernaut wasn’t permanent they’d have to completely rework it.
I think that The Juggernaut is fine as it is, but the main issue (at least in Wild) is how absurdly easy it is to complete all three steps of the quest line. I think that, if a change needs to be made, bumping all 3 steps to require playing 3 pirates would balance it out sufficiently, as it has The Juggernaut come down a few turns later so that you have more mana and have seen more cards to be able to respond to the pressure that it presents.
Honestly “favouring minions” would not be the worst thing to add to a lot of cards (like Mask of C’thun). But it’d also make them… better, so I dunno. I wouldn’t want them to do that for the Juggernaut.
The juggernaut just gives too much value. Cap it at 4 cost pirates and weapons.
I know this is an old post, but the quest itself also adds to the troublesomeness of the juggernaught. At least other quests require some though with deck building like quest priest, which then relies on draws and the stage of the quest, quest lines such as warriors and hunters having the same steps for every part makes it feel less like a quest and more like a “if you draw a pirate play it” which severally undermines the skill of the game because the steps to winning while playing quest warrior are draw nine pirates, win in the next 5 turns at most
Meanwhile, in reality, Pirate Warrior has a 47.14% winrate in Diamond 4-1. https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-237/
So 52.86% of the meta counters it, but you say “there is no counter” because you can’t remove self-imposed restrictions and you’d rather complain your way into a nerf than fix yourself.