Blizzard Kills Patron Warrior With Hearthstone Card Nerf

[The Philistine]

The big question now is why they left Tundra Rhino alone, if giving charge is a problem. Sure it's more expensive, but it doesn't have the 3-attack proviso and with 5 health is a lot stickier.

There isn't any multiplying beasts. And hunters don't have a card like frothing. So there is no chance of a hunter OTK with a rhino from an empty board. Also a turn 5 hp is not that difficult to deal with. Almost every 5 drop has either 5 attack or is going to counter the effect with taunt or healing anyways.

Go and watch Ben Brode's video explaining the decision; the issue Blizz has with Warsong Commander is with cards granting charge, not cards summoning more minions (either as a deathrattle or due to taking damage).

Tundra Rhino can be played for 1 with call pet so you have up to 10 mana maximum to play with.
I can easily see 21 damage in a turn with the right combo, though that requires an exact set of cards.
(24 in fact if you have 2x Elven archer and Ghaz'rilla in hand, and against a hunter with Explosive trap that's 48 damage to face, though hunters deserve it.)
Get Emperor out with the right cards in hand and it just gets higher and higher, exceeding Patron levels, just requiring more luck.

That's basically otk worgen decks in terms of gimmick level, with the added reliance on a very lucky call pet draw. There's very good reason you rarely see those type of gimmicks in ladder, while patron is all too common. Patron warrior can set up several win conditions that can grind through most defenses and close the game at turn 7 or 8. Gimmick decks rely too much on comboing off 1 or two cards. Warsong is what makes patron so difficult to counter outside of rushing the warrior down.

 

[gigastar]

But theese people that play and enjoy Hearthstone (you may have guessed, but im not one of them) would have heard about theese changes through friends, ingame chat or Blizzards channels long before it got posted here.

And it is slightly annoying to see what seems like every little thing about Heathstone getting covered here when theres other games out there that deserve attention as well. For example, i cant find an article on Warframe that isnt over 2 years old now, and as an avid Warframe player over the last 2 years i can tell you that the game that was and the game as is are massively different.

I'm sorry, but you're literally saying that a gaming news website should not post gaming news because they can get it from other news sites? I'm sure that works well as a business strategy.

Wow, a strawman argument. Havent gotten one of those in a while.

Please direct your attention here;

And it is slightly annoying to see what seems like every little thing about Heathstone getting covered here when theres other games out there that deserve attention as well.

Now my opinion is, Hearthstone is getting far too much attention and im willing to bet at this point everyones either playing it, quit playing it or is avoiding it.

My point is that reporting on a balance change, no matter how impactful it is to the game, is far too much focus on Heathstone while (for example) the only article ive seen about NYCC so far is the cosplay gallery.

 

[Redryhno]

Now my opinion is, Hearthstone is getting far too much attention and im willing to bet at this point everyones either playing it, quit playing it or is avoiding it.

My point is that reporting on a balance change, no matter how impactful it is to the game, is far too much focus on Heathstone while (for example) the only article ive seen about NYCC so far is the cosplay gallery.

To be fair, if it's not SDCC, there's not really ever much to report on of substance.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I mean a nerf to Patron was going to come at some point because from what I hear, tournaments were literally just Patron decks and decks made to specifically counter Patron so Blizz had to do something eventually.

Dunno why they fucked WC so hard though, Warrior is only getting worse per expansion now with other classes getting cool shit like Rhonin, Bear Trap, Lock and Load, Murloc Knight etc etc and Warrior gets crap like Bolster and King's Defender albeit Alextraza's Champion is passable to good if you can make a Dragon Warrior but even then it's not as good as Dragon Priest by a mile.

You basically have to play Wallet Warrior or nothing. Well, maybe they could try to play the utter cheese that is the charging Raging Worgen for like 25 damage where you stack all the Enrage buffs on him and use Charge for the OTK.

Eh, Bear Trap and Lock and Load are nice, but I'd still rather have Freezing because if you need to get hit to get a card out with Hunter, you fucked up with deck building or drew the worst hand imaginable twice in a row(not to say that is' a bad card, but you're essentially playing Warlock at that point). And L&L is a lategame card to get any amount of value out of it with most Hunter decks, and Hunter doesn't really have any spells that are worth sticking in unless you build around board control. And if you're doing that, then it's either a waste of a card because you cleared the board earlier and didn't have the mana to use L&L, or you don't need the card draw all that badly because you can shoot down whatever's thrown out on the board.

I should preface this by saying the only Hunter deck I play is full swag Malygos Hunter (because Alleria is a classy lady who doesn't stoop down to Face Hunter levels like that fuckboy Rexxar,) but running one Bear Trap can be good. It can deny some board control for example; when a Mage removes something early with a turn 2 Frostbolt, goes face then you get the bear out and she has used the minion attack and lacks the mana to kill it so you get board control back for free and you can drop Summon Huffer on turn 3. My deck has so much reliance on Secrets in the early game that a Secret that gives me a 3/3 is pretty useful when compared to any other conventional Hunter deck since they'd just be flooding the board with shit anyway so the bear doesn't make much difference.

Thaurissan makes Malygos Hunter weirdly decent too. If you have double Arcane Shot in hand they cost zero so you can just drop Malygos turn 9 and do 14 face damage on the spot. 23 damage if you have the 1 mana Quick Shot and wait til turn 10 to drop him.

Hell, for as much as Blizz are going on about limited design space cuz of Charge being difficult to balance, Thaurissan is a ticking timebomb waiting to explode during later expansions.

But yeah i've not seen a single Lock and Load deck even during the start of TGT, probably shouldn't have used it as a positive example. It's just that it looks good when you compare it to the new Warrior cards.

 

[babinro]

As someone who never ran a patron deck but played against it a lot I had no issues with the archetype. It was top tier worthy but so were various other ranked decks involving face, aggro, and control tactics. In my eyes we had a healthy meta.

In addition I really didn't get flooded with Patron matchups all day long either. I see more Pally Secret decks and Face Hunters than anything else. Patron came in about as frequently as dragon priest, token druid, and mage.

Personal opinion aside...the nerf on paper seems genuinely awful.

Ben Brode admits the card was turned into something weak....why?

There's no justification for this. Blizzard makes powerful cards all the time in new expansions so why is it suddenly impossible to give Warrior a playable Warsong Commander? Even if it has nothing to do with Charge players would rather have a compelling and useful card rather than a deliberately weak version of a NEUTRAL card.

 

[kajinking]

Boy does nothing drive people up a wall like a serious nerfing. For once I'm glad I'm out of the way since I don't play Heartstone (is that game hard to get into?) but I know what it's like after something like this happens.

I still remember the nightmare that was PS2 Vanu max units back when I played and how they splattered everything for months until they got hit with the nerf bat, the fourms were on fire for days after that.

 

[rcs619]

Boy does nothing drive people up a wall like a serious nerfing. For once I'm glad I'm out of the way since I don't play Heartstone (is that game hard to get into?) but I know what it's like after something like this happens.

I still remember the nightmare that was PS2 Vanu max units back when I played and how they splattered everything for months until they got hit with the nerf bat, the fourms were on fire for days after that.

It's actually a pretty simple game to get into. The basic mechanics are easy enough to get a grip on, but it does take some experience and some practice to really begin understanding some of the more advanced things you can do. But, it's also free, so there's nothing to keep you from test-driving it for a while before you decide if you wanna commit to it

And yeah, I tend to disagree with this sort of nerf (I used to run a deck way back in the day that Blizzard also killed by nerfing one minion into unplayability), but I *can* kind of see where they're coming from. The Grim Patron deck has been the strongest deck in the game for like, 6 months now, and even with other decks tweaking themselves to perform better against it, it's still very powerful in the right hands (it does take a skilled player too. It's actually a very difficult deck to run properly) and that hasn't shown any sign of changing.

Because of that, Blizzard literally could not add any new cards to the warrior class that might improve patron. They also had to analyze a lot of the neutral cards before they add them and go "could this be used in patron?"

So yeah, it sucks that they're killing the deck, but my hope is that if they're being this proactive, then maybe they also have a backlog of cards that they've been wanting to release but couldn't. If they give warriors new toys to play with, then I think the nerf would even out to be fine overall. I can't stand nerfs that *only* take away peoples' toys though. So, we'll just have to see how this shakes out.

On the bright side, the meta may change and shift, but Handlock continues to stand the test of time, relatively unchanged for millions and millions of years, much like the noble great white shark.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Glad to see this nerf hit.

I've said it before but to reiterate: I maintain that Patron Warrior is the nastiest combo deck to come out of Hearthstone. Far, far worse than something like Miracle Rogue. And the reason for that is that there are just too many things that work way, way too well in it.

The dream is to propagate a ton of Patrons and build a gigantic Frothing Berserker to hit for 20+ damage. But outside of that there was just too much, too good going on. Other combo decks suffered badly from having certain parts of the combo being absolutely crucial and a relative weaknesses by having them be largely dead cards outside of the combo. Classically Miracle Rogue was literally all about surviving and cycling and doing a little bit of damage until you could pull off your Leeroy combo.

Patron Warrior didn't have that problem; and you can be much more proactive with the deck. Individual parts of combos were decent cards in and of themselves and you could get away with an awful lot more than in other combo-type decks.

The change makes a lot of sense to me in light of how they realised how restrictive it will be for future cards as well.

 

[thetoddo]

I'm ok with it. It's probably only going to see play in a charge deck, but if you're patient it can let you drop a heap of hurt late game via low-cost charge minions. Go with a Taunt/Deny deck build for early game to try and build your hand for a turn 9 heap of charge hurt. Probably won't be a top-tier competitive deck, but would be an unpleasant surprise when it hits. And given that the game got slowed down a bit with the latest xpac's cards it might be worth a try. (Not 100% up on the meta for the new cards)

 

[EbonBehelit]

And it is slightly annoying to see what seems like every little thing about Heathstone getting covered here when theres other games out there that deserve attention as well. For example, i cant find an article on Warframe that isnt over 2 years old now, and as an avid Warframe player over the last 2 years i can tell you that the game that was and the game as is are massively different.

I find it odd that the meta changing in a competitive game is considered newsworthy too. It's very tabloid-esque.

Even so, I don't think Warframe is a great example to use here: I've been playing the game since just after the Gradivus Dilemma (almost 2 years ago) and 'massively different' is NOT a term I would use to describe the game now compared to back then. The game was entirely about grinding weapons to 30 then, and it's still entirely about that now. Nothing significant about the game has changed.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Just wondering, why is a balance change in Hearthstone any more newsworthy than a balance change in any other game?

Because lots of people play it and it's turned into a widely viewed E-Sport.

But theese people that play and enjoy Hearthstone (you may have guessed, but im not one of them) would have heard about theese changes through friends, ingame chat or Blizzards channels long before it got posted here.

And it is slightly annoying to see what seems like every little thing about Heathstone getting covered here when theres other games out there that deserve attention as well. For example, i cant find an article on Warframe that isnt over 2 years old now, and as an avid Warframe player over the last 2 years i can tell you that the game that was and the game as is are massively different.

Oh please, if they were covering every little thing Hearthstone, they'd be covering all of the tournaments, especially the regional finals that just occurred.

I know seeing them cover a balance change may SEEM like they're covering the game a lot, but the thing is, Blizzard rarely balances the game. The previous balance update was almost 9 months ago. If you look here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/hearthstone you'll see that for one of the most popular multiplayer games around, it's really not covered that much at all.

I'm sorry Warframe doesn't get covered as much as you like, but it just seems like common sense that the most popular games would get the most coverage. To give you an idea, Hearthstone is usually around 2nd-4th on the Twitch viewer count.

 

[Jandau]

I'm mixed on this...

On one hand, the Patron Warrior deck was a bit out of hand and needed to be reigned in. And I agree that targeting the Warsong Commander was the right thing to do, as Patron isn't an issue in any other deck. Simply nerfing the Patron itself would make the card completely unplayable for anyone else. Blizz correctly identified where the problem is and dealt with it.

On the other hand, the actual nerf resulted in a card that wouldn't be playable at release, let alone now, after a few expansions worth of power creep. A 2/3 with such a weak effect would be a 2-drop at best. For a 3-drop, a 3/4 wouldn't be unreasonable, since the effect is quite limited. Or the effect could have been improved, perhaps by making it +2 or even +3 attack to minions with Charge. Maybe make the original Charge-granting effect a one-time thing; something like giving the next summoned minion Charge (perhaps add a max power limitation to that), or have it give one target minion Charge.

Yes, this is overall a good thing (killing an OP deck is a positive move), but there really was no need to obliterate Warsong Commander to that extent...

 

[PunkRex]

Why's it always poor Warsong who gets nerfed, the poor gurl's already had that crap pulled before!

Seriously, I love her character design, sucks that this will probably knock her out of the game.

 

[rcs619]

Why's it always poor Warsong who gets nerfed, the poor gurl's already had that crap pulled before!

Seriously, I love her character design, sucks that this will probably knock her out of the game.

Yeah, the artwork for her is really nice. I hope that once she sees exactly 0 play, they re-purpose her into a card that people will actually use.

 

[squid5580]

Why's it always poor Warsong who gets nerfed, the poor gurl's already had that crap pulled before!

Seriously, I love her character design, sucks that this will probably knock her out of the game.

Yeah, the artwork for her is really nice. I hope that once she sees exactly 0 play, they re-purpose her into a card that people will actually use.

Lol probably not. When Blizz kills a card it stays dead. Nat Pagle, TInk, starvin buzzard all got serious nerfs and haven't managed to find a buff back into serious play. And since open beta there hasn't been a single card that was buffed.

There is still one use for her though. Unfortunately it is an 11 mana play. But you could combo her with Grommash if you needed 5 damage to kill a minion. Like a sludge belcher

 

[DoPo]

There is still one use for her though. Unfortunately it is an 11 mana play. But you could combo her with Grommash if you needed 5 damage to kill a minion. Like a sludge belcher

Instead of playing Warsong Commander, you can just play Raid Leader. There, that fits in the 10 mana budget.

 

[MoltenSilver]

I understand why people are upset about a deck being completely killed rather than nerfed, and as much as I strongly disagree with Ben Brode 95% of the time, I'm actually with him on the reasoning on this one: Warsong Commander doesn't just enable the most crappy un-interactive parts of Patron Warrior but it also means there can never be a good non-class 1/2/3 attack minion. The main argument I've seen in favour of Patron's existence that I see the value in is the idea that it's the highest skill-ceiling deck in Hearthstone by a huge margin, but the big problem with that argument is it only goes one-way, that while it's high skill for the player it's 0-skill for the opponent, you just get to be dragged along for the ride while the other person causes the win or loss.

Honestly though this just makes me think there's still a deep underlying issue in Hearthstone that needs to be thought through better, and it's that it feels like the same reason leads to every OP anti-fun deck in Hearthstone: decks that have a way to shut down opponent interaction(Freeze Mage, pretty much any deck that relies on charge minions and especially the Hunter hero power, Miracle Rogue, Druid to an extent). Considering so many exist despite the Hearthstone dev team claiming their entire raison d'être is making a game where both players feel involved points to there being some deeper problem in the design of the game that needs a second look and far more than an occasional heavy-handed nerfs months apart.

In general though I wish they would really get their butts into gear sometime and be more decisive on issues. Their usual excuse is 'lets wait for the meta to adapt', the hell? One of the big reasons they claimed behind the nerf is Patron Warrior is not interactive (true), but Patron Warrior was not going to be any more interactive two, three, six months down from the point it was refined, if anything the goal of its refinements were to make it less interactive. No one was going to suddenly find another 1-mana or even 2-mana card that could reliably challenge Undertaker for tempo and value (and if someone did it would just be a sign there's a bigger screw up somewhere else). They also claim they want to 'fix things by printing new cards' yet we're still waiting for more cards like Mal'Ganis and Loatheb that can give a big middle finger to face-burn spells for longer than one turn a game (If you even draw it). They claimed they don't want discard mechanics in the game because they feel they're anti-fun; alright that's their call as a dev team but then what other way does any deck have to interact with a combo deck? There's no way to punish card draw, no way to punish spells besides a 1-only Loatheb, no way to stop charge minions, no way to 'reverse-Thaurisan' and stop a combo by increasing its mana baring something self-destructive like Weblord and Mana Wraith or again a 1-turn-only-Loatheb, no way to punish an opponent stringing together an absurd number of cards after Thaurisan discount...

 

[Mangod]

There is still one use for her though. Unfortunately it is an 11 mana play. But you could combo her with Grommash if you needed 5 damage to kill a minion. Like a sludge belcher

Instead of playing Warsong Commander, you can just play Raid Leader. There, that fits in the 10 mana budget.

So we've made Raid Leader playable in one (1) combo, at the meager price of killing an entire deck, and making Warsong Commander unplayable instead. Hurray! [http://media1.giphy.com/media/12oFkAoWAajS8M/giphy.gif]

More seriously, while I can understand the reason for nerf-batting Patron Warrior (I've both played the combo and been on the recieving end of it), making Warsong Commander utterly unplayable makes no sense. The only thing it's got going for it now is that unlike Raid Leader, it won't die to any 2 Damage card like Explosive Trap or Cleave. Otherwise, it's worthless.

If the problem was that Frothing Berserker was getting too big without the opponent being able to kill it or break up the combo before it completed, they could have just changed WC to say "Minions with 2/3 or less Attack have Charge." That'd make it so that once the Frothing grows to 3/4 Attack, it loses Charge, and the opponent can counter it.

 

[NPC009]

There is still one use for her though. Unfortunately it is an 11 mana play. But you could combo her with Grommash if you needed 5 damage to kill a minion. Like a sludge belcher

Instead of playing Warsong Commander, you can just play Raid Leader. There, that fits in the 10 mana budget.

Raid Leader is also 3 mana. Dire Wolf Alpha (2/2, 2 mana, adjecent minions have +1 attack) makes more sense.

 

[DoPo]

There is still one use for her though. Unfortunately it is an 11 mana play. But you could combo her with Grommash if you needed 5 damage to kill a minion. Like a sludge belcher

Instead of playing Warsong Commander, you can just play Raid Leader. There, that fits in the 10 mana budget.

Raid Leader is also 3 mana.

Ah, damn, you are right. I will just use this as an example of how not played the card is - I was under the impression it was 2 mana and it's still not in any of my decks, as if I had played it, I'd know the actual cost. And Warsong Commander is still worse than Raid Leader, since the latter buffs all minions, as opposed to just charge ones.

But yeah - Dire Wolf is the replacement, then. And again, that's only if you want to kill a 5 HP minion for 10 mana, using Grommash. Not really a combo I'd consider building towards, really - there are plenty of other cards that synergise way better with Grommash - Whirlwind and Cruel Taskmaster can both be used to do 5 damage in 10 mana but work way better instead of Raid Leader/Warsong Commander/Dire Wolf.