⚙
Learn More
Cosmetics
Related Cards
Card Pools
✕
×
PopCard Settings
Click on the buttons to change the PopCard background.
Elements settings
Click on the button to hide or unhide popcard elements.
Click on the buttons to change the PopCard background.
Click on the button to hide or unhide popcard elements.
I don't remember seeing any post saying Druid would be OP in this expansion when all the cards were announced but the expansion had not gone live. A lot of people expressed their idea that Ultimate Infestation is just a plain good card but not impressed with its 10-mana cost. Many considered Malfurion the Pestilent to be a "bland" card. Spreading Plague weren't all that much discussed other than "will it interact with Gadgetzan Auctioneer? (gasp)".
Now, we are all pointing fingers at the designers, hm... I am not quite sure I follow this logic.
Before ye'all show up with your torches and pitchforks, let me say that I am on the side that Innervate should be changed. You see, I played druid way before the word "Jade" was even printed on any cards, way before Standard was even a thing. I played with Violet Teacher, Power of the Wild, Gadgetzan Auctioneer, Emperor Thaurissan and Malygos in all sorts of token/miracle/spelldmg decks, and am at the receiving end of many stunned silences from my opponents. The only real enabler to all these ridiculous decks, was Innervate. Druid never really get very powerful late-game cards because Innervate exists. Ramping spells like Wild Growth is okay because you are often skipping your entire turn to try to time walk your opponent in terms of mana crystal. Innervate is not that at all. I don't know if you still remember, but there was a time when those hyper-aggressive decks were running amok and aggro druid was among one of them. Those decks forego any Wild Growth and opt for Innervate to enable them to play bigger minions really early in the game.
My point is, Wild Growth is a ramp card, but Innervate is not. Innervate is a cost reduction card. The closest comparison to this card is probably Preparation (aside from The Coin, but we will talk about that later). They both cost nothing to cast (aside from using a card, of course), are spells, and help cast things at a reduced cost. Take a look at Preparation and its limitations. It is limited to "spells". It is limited to the "next" "single" spell. It belongs to the Rogue class, and rogue doesn't have ramp spells. Does Innervate have all these limitations? No. The mana gained can be splitted to two 1-mana spells if need; it can be used to cast anything from your hand; and more importantly, Druids can ramp.
I still remember how devastating it is to have your opponent goes Preparation into Sprint. If your opponent did not have certain keycards, now he/she will have them. If your opponent had run out of cards to deal with your early aggression, now he/she is back in the game. How is it that the design team could have missed the idea that Innervate into Ultimate Infestation with Ramp spells as backup might just be a wee-bit OP? I don't know. I am not here to bag on them. I am also one of those that just look at the cards as individuals and think, "Hey, how bad could it be for this to be cast on turn 9/10, right?", "Hey, is that 5 damage impactful enough to justify casting it?".
We can all say that Ultimate Infestation is badly designed; that Spreading Plague shouldn't even exist. But we are wrong if we do. Ultimate Infestation is a fun card. It is a 10-mana spell. It should do something backbreaking, or why would I even consider throwing in a potentially dead card for 90% of my games into the deck? The loudest complain right now, is along these lines: "OMG they just RAMP RAMP Innervate Ultimate Infestation refill hand 5 DMG 5 ARMOR OMG OMG" and "Ultimate Infestation was never cast on turn 9 or 10, it is cast on as early as turn 6! How could other decks handle this kind of play?" And the enabler for this? Innervate.
So you see, Innervate is a card that has to be changed, or it has to go. The reason is not that the card is OP or what. It looks innocent enough, to be honest. But the problem is, with this card still in Standard, the designers will never be able to print good cards with high mana cost for the Druid class. Imagine if the expansion only gives you Malfurion the Pestilent and some crappy cards with ridiculous cost and underwhelming power, would you be happy? The outcry would certainly be much less, but that makes nobody happy either.
If I were to propose a change to Innervate, it would be to rephrase the "Gain 2 mana crystals this turn only" into "Refresh up to 2 used mana crystals". This limits the ceiling of spell cost a druid could cast in a specific turn while still enabling the miracle style of play to exist. Aggro decks can still use it to accelerate without the ridiculous Innervate Innervate Sludge Belcher line of play. This puts the "you can only cast X cost spells only when you have X mana crystals" limit back into place.
But seeing that they just outright killed Patron Warrior and the Rogue quest, I suppose they are just lazy and will just come up with some lousy way to kill the card.
Edit: It is Malfurion the Pestilent, not Malfurion the Pestilence. Oh wait...
"Are you not entertained?! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"
"What we do in life, echoes in eternity." - Maximus Decimus Meridius
Guys, calm down everything is fine. Look outside the window and you will see that the world hasn't ended. Life is still beautiful even if Jade Druid is dominating the ladder. No need to make a big deal out of it.
How to make hearthstone community happy.
Step 1: nerf everything. i.e 1 mana 1/1, 2 mana 2/2 etc. No effects and no abilities.
Step 2: spells will either heal or deal damage equal to mana cost.
Done. That's how you satisfy the hearthstone community, it's annoying AF that the only threads that pop up are nerf this! Nerf that! Ffs people. If you're getting wrekt by jade druid then make a deck that has the appropriate responses to them.. and watch then wonder how the pros give zero fcks about a jade match up.. bait jade to over extend = punish jade.
I myself hate and jade match up, don't get me wrong.. and there are a lot of them.. but I play around them and make the appropriate adjustments to my winning condition. Sometimes it works out well, a lot of the time actually. Others not so much because trading with those big bastards can be a fruitless effort.
Blizzard should only be nerfing what's IMPOSSIBLE to play around..
It's not a healthy approach to shout nerf instead of discussing real/smart solutions to the archetype.. once the deck gets thumped a lot of the time then they'll stop playing it.
I personally don't play jade druid as I'm against playing toilet decks. I'm currently running razakus priest which is a lot of fun and has a bunch of answers for druids.
I suppose the other solution would be to just go aggro.. then the meta changes.. then people shouting nerf that deck.. I'm now waiting for the threads to populate nerf big priest.
If this game is too hard for you to win because you cannot adapt then go play Pokémon tcg or something.
Oh, man, Blizzard apologists are getting more and more annoying.
How can you defend such incompetence?
If Druid were 90% of the ladder, would you still say ''it's fine, you just need to adapt"?
Lol dude.. all I'm trying to say, and maybe this is a subjective issue, but I just find it hard to believe that druid is unbeatable.. because I beat them.. and I've watched a lot of other players do it too.
And I'm not raging about druid specifically, I'm saying it's a massive pain in the dick to only ever read about nerf nerf nerf.. nerf everything until it's unplayable.. then moan again because nothing is strong enough.
Remember a while ago the the community was moaning about ice block.. needs to be nerfed bla bla bla.. but how can you be taken seriously if you're not even bothered to put at least one eater of secrets in your deck..
There is no doubt that druid is dominating the meta dude, the tier s deck lists consists of ONLY druid.. which is no laughing matter I agree. But is it entirely blizzards fault? We could just as easily moan about big priest as I say.. but it hasn't quite reached that level of popularity yet. Once it does.. the community is screaming nerf again.. so once again.. the only solution for these people who's 1st thought is to moan on forums and not actually offer any useful discussions around the problem is to change all the cards into unplayable trash.. will be a colourful game of poker then nobody plays it.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
ModeratorStop complaining about a simple meta, if everyone is playing druid you have two choices, either counter druids or decks that counter druids. And if you can somehow manage to do both, you're golden for 70% of the games.
If you cant beat them, join them LUL
I'm playing Druid because I can't win with any other deck out there.
If we do the math, what's the biggest jade they can play if geist has killed the idols? (Assuming no idols summoned a jade prior to the geist drop)
Against Druids Geist use to be among the last 5 cards in deck.
While everyone is on the Jade wagon they haven't detect yet how ridiculously OP Aggro druid is.
Kaladin's RoS Set Review
Join me at Out of Cards!
and against Pirates always in my opener
Innervate is, and always was, a powerful card, but it isn't the problem here. The problem is obscenely overpowered cards like Spreading Plague, Earthen Scales, and, to a lesser degree, Ultimate Infestation.
The developers, I think, have it wrong by talking about not wanting cards that are an "auto-include" - that's what class cards are. They help define the class, make it unique and flavorful. Druid having ramp is part of what makes Druid what they are. If we're going to nerf all auto-include cards, might as well get rid of Fireball, Fiery War Axe, Animal Companion, Backstab, etc. These are all cards that are pretty much an auto-include in most decks. Nerfing Innervate isn't going to solve the problem. Innervate has never been an issue, and I haven't seen relentless threads over the years calling for a nerf to that card.
The problem is the developers made cards that have allowed Druid to bypass what kept Jade Idol in check. Aggro kept Jade Idol in check, and basically made the archetype go away for quite a while. But now with Spreading Plague, Druid can survive aggro all day long. If Plague had created 1/2 taunts, or even 1/3, it would probably be a fair card. But at 1/5, it's essentially game over for aggro decks.
Same with Earthen Scales. You could say it's fair because you have to have a minon on board, and that minon has to be decent, but for a Jade deck, you can get a powerful minon for one mana (Jade Idol), and then make it even stronger, and give yourself obscene armor, for another one mana. It's too strong in combination with Jade Idol. If Idol didn't exist, Earthen Scales would probably be a fair card, but in this vacuum of Standard, it's borderline broken.
As for Ultimate Infestation, sure it's a powerful card, but in my opinion it's not the great evil that is making Druid run rampant. It's ten mana - it's supposed to be powerful. But being able to play it on turn six or sooner is borderline broken, and that's why there is all this attention on Innervate. This is where the developers put themselves in a corner - they either nerf this fun, powerful, very-Hearthstone-ish card that they created for KotFT, or they nerf a basic card that is part of Druid.
The reality is, if they were any good at card game design, they wouldn't have let this happen in the first place. They would have tested this shit, and went: damn we can't allow this to happen.