April 2016 Card Nerf
It was announced on April 20th, 2016 that Ancient of Lore would receive a nerf.
- Card draw reduced to 1 card, down from 2.
Quote from BlizzardDrawing cards is powerful in Hearthstone, and Ancient of Lore easily found its way into nearly every popular Druid deck. We’d like Druid players to feel that other cards can compete with Ancient of Lore, so we’ve reduced the number of cards drawn from 2 to 1.
Drawing two cards is almost always better than restoring 5 health, unless you're facing an aggro deck and you really need to survive this turn. Using Poe's formula, drawing two is worth about 3 mana, while restoring 5 health is only worth 2, if that. Still, both modes are quite solid, and it's no wonder why this minion is considered an essential Druid card.
Definitely my favorite card in the game, I can't imagine running my druid decks without it.
It probably was close back before they nerfed it (from 8hp to 5hp healed). Now, it's just a really solid minion. I've actually won many, many, many more games because of Ancient of War. If played correctly, AoW is much stronger imo.
My gripe with AoW is that you may not get immediate value out of it because it gets instantly removed by a spell or returned back to hand by Sap. Would still prefer AoL over him unless I'm against Zoo.