Join The Club
Predicting where the nerfbat will fall...
What may be the biggest change in the history of Hearthstone is coming soon—the advent of the Standard and Wild formats. With the Classic set being evergreen in the Standard format, Blizzard plans to take a fresh look at its most powerful cards to rebalance them. My name is Andrey Yanyuk, better known as Reynad of Tempo Storm, and I’m here to give some insight on the cards most likely to be changed, and how I think Blizzard should alter them.
Now let’s get into it...
Big Game Hunter
Big Game Hunter, or “BGH” has been a topic of discussion in the Hearthstone community for a long time. Having pretty reasonable stats for 3 mana, there is little risk in including the card in your decks. The potential upside, on the other hand, is massive. Not only do you get a two-for-one exchange in terms of card advantage, but you’re spending 3 mana to destroy a 7+ mana minion of the opponent’s while developing your board. It is such a massive swing that including any 7+ attack minions in your deck at all has a lot of risk involved.
I would take this balance patch as an opportunity to tone down the strength of BGH significantly, so that we see more large and exciting minions being played. I recommend changing the card to only destroy Dragons, but leaving the stats and cost the same. This would also introduce a counter-measure to an archetype that does not otherwise have one.
Molten Giant
0-mana 8/8s will always find a way into the top-tier decks. Molten Giant is an extremely powerful card that has previously led to nerfs of cards such as Warsong Commander. This card punishes midrange strategies that do not have access to 10+ points of burst damage by enabling a player to completely flip the state of the board with a timely Molten Giant. Whether combined with a taunt effect like Sunfury Protector, or healing in Antique Healbot, or more unique effects such as Shadowflame and Echo of Medivh, the Molten Giant enables degenerate strategies. I would increase the cost of the card to 23.
Mountain Giant
Together with Molten Giant, Mountain Giant enables the Warlock archetype known as “Handlock” to exist in all future Standard formats. While this is one of my favorite decks to play in the game, I must say that it is inherently oppressive to midrange strategies that try to play a balanced game of jockeying for board position. Playing an 8/8 on turn four every game punishes any deck that has not flooded the board by that point, which in itself would leave a player vulnerable to Hellfire or Molten Giant.
Druid Combo—Force of Nature + Savage Roar
The Druid combo has been consistently ending the game from turn eight since the inception of Hearthstone, and enough is enough. Having a 14-damage burst available from an empty board allows Malfurion to completely ignore fighting for the board throughout the midgame and just push to bring the opponent down to that magic health threshold. Not only has this combination kept Druid within the top tier of competitive decks for two years, but it limits new ways to build Druid decks. It’s hard to justify playing large, slow minions like Ancient of War and Cenarius when you can just finish every game with the combo.
Knife Juggler
Where to begin with Knife Juggler? I’ve certainly had my qualms about it. Knife Juggler has been ubiquitous in aggro decks for the past two years, and simply provides too much value for 2 mana. You get passable stats for the price, and if it happens to live you get to obliterate the opponent’s board (maybe). The key issue with Knife Juggler is its inconsistency. From a very early stage of the game, the state of the board is left up to chance. A coin flip can decide whether your overpowered 3/2 survives, or whether the pesky 2/1 on the opponent’s side of the board will live to trade with it. Like the Druid combo, Knife Juggler limits variety in deck building by being present in most aggressive decks in the game, whether that’s Secret Paladin or Zoo or Hunter. I would change the card to a 3 mana 3/3 to keep its power level in-line with other minions.
Alexstrasza
Alexstrasza has been a core part of combo-oriented decks throughout the history of Hearthstone. Setting your opponent from full life to 15 with a single card allows for strategies that completely ignore the state of the board during most of the game before finishing the opponent off with a flurry of burn spells or charge minions. Like Handlock, this is inherently strong against midrange decks that try to interact with their opponent in the traditional sense of trading creatures and card advantage.
Leper Gnome
The entire Face Hunter archetype is possible to build using the classic set alone. This means that every single expansion from here on out will be obligated to provide the tools to deal with it. Cards like Zombie Chow, Antique Healbot, and Refreshment Vendor are necessary to give decks the tools to compete with this type of strategy. This starts a slippery slope of making sets have “prerequisite” cards, which leads to less room for new designs. It is not Leper Gnome in particular that pushes strategies such as Face Hunter over the top. The card isn't what I would call “broken”. The issue is that collectively, there are too many cards for this type of strategy in the classic set, Abusive Sergeant being another obvious offender. Leper Gnome is simply the common denominator in all of them due to the lack of suitable aggressive 1-drops. If this concentration of aggressive direct damage minions remains in the game, it limits Blizzard’s ability to print new cards along the lines of Quick Shot or Divine Favor. I propose simply reducing Leper Gnome’s stat line to 1/1. This halves the card’s impact when left on the board to attack for a turn or two.
Ironbeak Owl
Like Big Game Hunter, Ironbeak Owl hates fun. Ironbeak was incorporated into the game as a way to give decks countermeasures against a myriad of strategies including minion buffs, walls of Taunt, and Deathrattle effects. At the end of the day, the card’s flexibility and low opportunity cost to include has made it opress strategies like Inner Fire Priest and Ramp Druid. It is ubiquitous in aggressive and control decks alike, having seen play in most major archetypes at one point or another. While I believe that slower silence effects such as Spellbreaker are fine for the game, Ironbeak Owl remains just a bit too efficient and flexible at what it does. I propose limiting the card to only being able to silence a minion with Taunt.
Ice Block
Freeze Mage and its variants have long been a staple of competitive Hearthstone play. The archetype tends to have a slew of lopsided matchups, whether in the Mage’s favor or not. When playing against the deck, players often feels like they have little control over the outcome of the game and almost no ways to interact. The deck is built in such a way that traditional removal spells such as Wrath are nearly useless against it.
Innervate
This might be the strongest card in all of Hearthstone. Innervate creates some of the most disgusting opening plays imaginable. Not only does it limit deck choices in every Druid list to 28 cards, but it creates one of the most draw-dependent strategies in the game. I believe that effects like Wild Growth or Darnassus Aspirant are healthy, but Innervate allows for too many plays that are simply too strong and difficult to account for. “Do I play out my 3/2 minion on turn 2, or play around the off-chance that the Druid has Innervate + Keeper of the Grove in his opening hand?”
