Hearthstone: More Nerfs and Buffs?

 Wow, they aren't kidding with 'more balance patches will come later on', huh? I have barely even settled into this new meta, and we're getting a third slew of balance patches? Jeez. Part of me likes it, since it means that the meta isn't going to go stale just yet, but I'm just starting to learn these cards, dang-nabbit! I do like the fact that we're actually getting buffs, too, which I appreciate.

I just wished that... hey, maybe some of the older cards, particularly legendary ones, that are pretty... well, shall we say terrible or unplayable got a bit of a look-see, y'know? Not so much that suddenly making GvG and TGT cards suddenly break the Wild meta, but a couple of stat adjustments for, well, cards like... I dunno, I look through the cards in my collection for a lot of the older sets and I really do feel like many of them could've had their stats tweaked around a bit to make them not so much suddenly Tier 1 cards in the game, but maybe to keep them playable in situations the same way that some decks still run like, Loatheb, y'know? Or how some cards are still 'neat' if you meet them in Arena or Solo Aventures? Like... I dunno, is there any real reason to keep cards like Vol'jin or Hemet Nesingwary or Nozdormu or Princess Huhuran or Boogeymonster or Nat Pagle or Gazlowe or Rend Blackhand or Skeleton Knight and keep them as underwhelming as they are? Couldn't they do a Boomsday-weekend buff spree and take random older cards in older sets and give them a little bump? I know, I know, baby steps, but still.

Let's talk about the buffs and nerfs that we did get, yeah? As I have mentioned many times before, I am a primarily Wild player, and Wild generally runs on a higher power level than Standard does, so there's no shortage of overpowered cards to just swap around, but it is still very interesting how many of these changes are going to affect the game in general.

Demon Hunter gets hit with another wave of nerfs, and one of them is something that the community was surprised was untouched in the first two nerf-hammers for Demon Hunter -- Priestess of Fury, who goes from a 6/7 to a 6/5. I do appreciate that her effect went untouched, a good part of Priestess of Fury's power from the fact that she's a relatively fair body for seven mana that essentially does a large amount of damage to a board at the end of the turn. Your opponent loses their board, and still has to deal with a 6/7. A 6/5 with the same effect is... she's still powerful, and I don't think that the decks that are already running Priestess of Fury are going to cut her out... but she's a lot more manageable, y'know? A 6/5 comes into a range of a bunch of removals like Fireball or Evasive Wyrm or Aeon Reaver that wouldn't have otherwise killed Priestess of Fury before, so that's a nice way to keep her power in check. I really do find it neat that they're basically doing gradual nerfs to Demon Hunter to really keep it at bay, without instantly killing the class entirely. Making Demon Hunter bereft of any good cards is dangerous considering how much less cards they have compared to the rest of the classes.

Another one that's far, far more significant for Demon Hunter is the Crimson Sigil Runner, going from a 2/1 to a 1/1. He's a very common card to see in practically all Demon Hunter decks, and no wonder, right? He's like Novice Engineer, only one mana cheaper, and also with better stats. Sure, Outcast is a thing, but as long as you kind of play your cards right, for the most part Crimson Sigil Runner is a guaranteed card draw that also is premium stats for its cost. Unlike Priestess of Fury, though, turning a 2/1 into a 1/1 is far more significant than the change from 6/7 to 6/5... these stat changes on early-game cards are far, far more impactful, because maybe now for some particularly super-aggressive Demon Hunter lists you just don't put Crimson Sigil Runner as an automatic inclusion anymore. It doesn't kill the card for sure, it just makes him fair, which, I think, is what we want more out of these nerfs. Both of these make real sense, and I don't mind any of these. Standard would love these changes, I feel, and while Demon Hunter isn't quite that rampant in Wild, it will probably keep the power level in check as we near the next expansion.

We're going from the four top classes that are getting nerfs, so Rogue also gets hit with some... and it's admittedly a bit surprising because I've seen the Secret package maybe like three times in my journey through the Wild ladder. It's apparently mighty enough in Standard to warrant a nerf? Shadowjeweler Hanar goes from a 3 mana 1/5 to a 1/4, although he keeps his effect. It's... it's an all right nerf, and 5 health is kind of a lot to take out on turn 3. It's the same nerf given to EVIL Miscreant a while back, and... I think it's fair. Hanar is a pretty powerful card with a very cool but potentially irritating effect, and while I don't think it's potentially game-breaking... it's a card whose power level I respect enough to understand the nerf. Blackjack Stunner goes from being a Freezing Trap effect to merely increasing the cost by 1. I mean... sure. It's a bit more interesting than just tweaking the cost or the stats of the card, although I'm not sure if that little bit of inconvenience is going to be enough. Freezing Trap is pretty punishing, and even then it's starting to get cut out here and there. Blackjack Stunner is a far more proactive version where the user gets to dictate which card gets disabled, though, which is probably where they realize the card's perhaps a wee bit too powerful. I'm not entirely sure I agree with the direction they took this, but I dunno -- Blackjack Stunner doesn't really get to see much play in Wild, so.

Imprisoned Scrap Imp also gets a brief nerf to its stats, with the hand-buff going down from +2/+2 to +2/+1. Zoo Warlock is an evergreen archetype that keeps getting more and more power added to it, particularly in Wild, and Imprisoned Scrap Imp, while pretty dang powerful when it gets off... is way too slow in Wild. In Standard, though, I could definitely see this being pretty toxic and irritating, with very little way to interact with the Imp and just wait for the inevitable hand-buff, and reducing the mass health buff by 1 is definitely going to go a long way to making this feel less of a bad feeling. A good nerf.

Warrior gets two nerfs, Bloodboil Brute being a very solid card that goes from a 6/8 Rush that gets discounted easily to a 5/8 Rush that gets discounted easily. It's kind of a minor nerf, really, and I don't think it's going to really affect the card's playability a whole ton. A 5/8 Rush that you can discount for pretty much the same thing that you've been doing is still going to help deal significant damage to the board.

The very cool Bloodsworn Mercenary (one of my hands-down favourite pieces of artwork from Uldum, even though it had nothing to do with the theme) also gets nerfed, and I've always thought that Bloodsworn Mercenary is one of the most powerful cards to come out of Uldum... but never actually saw much play. A 3-mana 3/3, essentially vanilla stats, that summons a copy of a minion? That's pretty powerful! And yet it's not quite enough for her to see too much play. And I guess there's a list in Standard that puts the Mercenary to duplicate a powerful minion and then use that combo to help discount the 6/8 rushing Bloodboil Brute even more. Bloodsworn goes down from a 3/3 to a 2/2, which... again, I think is still a pretty fair nerf, even if it's perhaps a bit more drastic than all of the others getting a nerf this patch.

All in all, it feels less of a nerf hammer going down, and more of a nerf screwdriver slowly tightening the meta together by adjusting some of the more broken cards into being just merely powerful. But we get another series of buffs, which is... definitely surprising, considering how seldom Blizzard ever does buffs anymore.

Paladin's Libram package, as much as everyone tried to make it work, did not work and still fell flat on its face in Wild. Although, to be fair, Silence is a bit more prevalent in Wild and while you could be cute by stacking librams on the Immortal Prelate or combo-ing it with Lynessa Sunsorrow or a Galvadon deck, but even with the random buff to Libram of Justice, it's still a weak deck. So now Aldor Attendant goes from being a 2-mana 2/3 to a 1-mana 1/3. No one cares about the stat change, but cutting the cost by half and potentially allowing you to get a body out by turn 1 to get buffed by the 2-cost Libram of Wisdom might actually be the thing that makes the tempo of the deck really work. I still remain skeptical, but it's a pretty powerful buff and at least in standardit might just make the deck powerful enough.

Shaman gets three buffs. Wow, I guess they just realized that they gave Shaman jack-all in this expansion after the Galakrond stuff, huh? I barely even remember any of these cards existing, since I've never seen them in ladder... so good on Shaman for getting some buffs. And The Lurker Below is one of those legendaries that I mentioned, the sort of card that is in the same ballpark of something like the Skeleton Knight or Maexxna. A 6-mana 6/3 that can maybe, potentially, wipe out an entire zoo board, but will most of the time just be a more terrible Fire Elemental that can be taken out by anything with 3 health? It's also bizarrely one of the cards that people overrate way too much, and while I know Wild has a larger amount of variety than Standard, I think I am comfortable in saying that the original version of Lurker Below is kind of the weakest legendary in the set. With 5 health, at least it has the potential to live on board, making it exactly a Fire Elemental with the potential to maybe wipe out the board. It doesn't mean people are rushing to put Lurker in their decks, but at least it's actually a good card now, y'know?

Shattered Rumbler gets a far more negligible buff, going from a 4/6 to a 5/6. Its biggest weakness, I think, in how it doesn't see play, has more to do with the fact that the Rumble damages your own side of the board, and guess what 2 damage kills perfectly? All totems. So yeah, sure, now it has vanilla stats, but the card's effect is so detrimental to most Shaman decks and for the life of me I can't really think of any deck that would willingly run Shattered Rumbler. Torrent, at least, is a good card, essentially being a cheaper Flame Lance, and going down from a base 5 mana to 4 mana (which, in turn, makes the discounted cost go from 2 to 1) far more appealing. I'm still struggling to see what sort of 'Spell Every Turn' Shaman is trying to do, though, because one of the biggest weakness of this bizarre archetype is that... there really isn't any big payoff, yeah? It's just some vague tempo in one-off battlecries and discounts, and that's not quite enough. Torrent, at least, like Lurker Below, are just simply powerful cards you can slot in most Shaman decks. Probably not in Wild, but... hey, you never know. 8 damage for 1 mana is a lot of damage.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with this round of changes. The ladder changes is perhaps the biggest quality of life change in Hearthstone, and that has kept me around in Hearthstone right at about the time that I was starting to considering stopping playing the game. So yeah, maybe it's best for the game that it keeps trying to change the game, even in miniscule tweaks like this, before it even starts to become stale. We're also getting the Ashes of Outland story mode in like a month or something, and I am actually pretty excited about that since we're ditching the (IMO outdated and poorly executed) Galakrond's Awakening adventure model and going into something that's more dungeon-run-esque. Neat!