It started with Starving Buzzard, just over a year ago. The 2-mana, 2/1 version of the Buzzard was clearly broken in conjunction with the (itself newly-nerfed) Unleash the Hounds, and everyone expected it to be nerfed…to 3 mana. Or maybe, on the outside, a 3-mana 1/1. But someone at Blizzard filled the nerf-bat with lead, and we got a card that costs more than Cult Master, has worse stats than Cult Master, and has quintessentially the same role as Cult Master…which is itself almost never played in Constructed.
Result: a card that vanished, never to be seen again, and the spawning of Face Hunter. Huzzah.
This Should Have Been: A nerf to a 3-mana 1/1.
Next up: Leeroy Jenkins. Leeroy was nerfed because of the success Miracle Rogue was having wiping the board with him, Shadowstep, and Cold Blood. Bumping Leeroy up to 5, however, removed him from usefulness not just for Miracle Rogue, but for every other archetype that used him -- and Miracle Rogue kept right on winning. Switching to Arcane Golem hurt very little, and Leeroy ended up remaining nerfed because Blizzard don't never change shit back once they've nerfed it.
Result: a card that has vanished, never to be seen again, without the intended effect of killing Miracle Rogue.
This Should Have Been: Completely unchanged, and Gadgetzan Auctioneer nerfed instead.
Shortly after that, Gadgetzan Auctioneer was nerfed, and finally, Miracle Rogue died the death Blizzard sought. But in so doing, they also killed the hopes of every other Miracle archetype out there. This was not the answer that was best for the variety of play experiences; quite the opposite.
Result: One Tier-1 archetype and several Tier-3 archetypes vanished overnight.
This Should Have Been: The anti-Gazlowe: "Whenever you cast a spell that costs more than 1 mana…"
A bit later, we had Undertaker. Never before has a 1-mana card spawned so many different archetypes. Huntertaker, Deathrattle Priest, Deathrattle Zoo, Egg Shaman, and more. It was simply too much of a tempo machine, and it absolutely needed to be nerfed. But Blizzard said in the release that Undertaker was "still one of the strongest one-drops in the game…" Oh, really? Where are they today?
Result: Two Tier-1 archetypes and several Tier-3 archetypes vanished overnight.
This Should Have Been: An increase to 2 mana. Done deal. Could be responded to by a 2/1 1-drop or any 1- or 2-cost nuke. No longer too big to handle by the time you had an answer, no longer trading across once or even twice and continuing to exist, just done.
And now, we have Warsong Commander. Don't get me wrong -- the WC needed a nerf, and badly. It's not even an issue of 'should have nerfed Frothing Berserker instead;' the Commander simply overly-limited Blizzard's design space. Every single Neutral and Warrior three-drop they created had to be balanced knowing that it would be combed with Warsong Commander, and that puts a lot of crimps on a lot of plans. But this was overkill in the extreme. A 3-mana 2|3 that grants +1 to Charge creatures would make a shit Neutral card; as a class card, it's as insulting as Starving Buzzard. Possibly worse.
Result: Too early to tell, but at minimum a Tier-1 archetype is gone forever.
This Should Have Been: At minimum a 2-cost 2|3 that added +1 to Charge minions. Probably better off as 3-cost, 2|1 Charge creature that gave any one other minion Charge the turn it entered play.
Blizzard's heavy-handed nerfs probably wouldn't be as bad if they ever went back and seriously examined the cards that they've changed to see if they needed redressing. But as it is, these "wait four months, nerf the card and hopefully the archetype that came with it into oblivion, and then wait for the next broken thing to dominate for another half-an-expansion-cycle" nerfs are aggravating both as a player and from a designer's perspective. Blizzard needs to take the lead back out of the nerf bat and focus on how to change a card enough to change the meta without whomping it so much that it joins the many-splendored ranks of Call Pet and Far Sight.
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I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
6 months after BRM same for UT.. it seems like for nerfing something OP blizzard needs to sell it first everyone got BRM cause of GP warrior at least... now they can sell it with dragon decks so np nerf patron now he isn't needed to sell BRM anymore.
I don't want to be condescending, but repeating a comment that's already been made a dozen or so times in the thread that is devoted exclusively to the Grim Patron nerf is really not the point of this thread. Can we have a discussion here that's a bit more focused around the buff/nerf process in general, rather than using this as another place to gripe about one specific nerf?
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I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
I mean. Who cares? There's already tons of cards that aren't played and will never be played, that's just one more.
This isn't really damaging the game in any meaningful way. Some people got to play that version of that card for a while, now they don't. Game moves on.
I wish I could talk to the devs so I could hear their reasoning for their overnerfs. I've heard of plenty of good nerf ideas, but this seems overkill. I personally don't think the Leeroy nerf was as bad as the others you mentioned, I've still seen it played (though my example isn't great, it was played in Face decks for awhile). I think it just comes down to fear that tentative nerfs won't be enough, and then they'll have to keep changing it until there's a balance. But if they just nerf it into the dust they don't have to worry about it being a problem anymore.
That being said, I think a better solution to overnerfing cards would be to buff some of the worse cards too, to encourage people to try something new instead of being angry that the new OP deck got nerfed. But iunno, Blizz clearly knows better than any one of us does.
I mean. Who cares? There's already tons of cards that aren't played and will never be played, that's just one more.
This isn't really damaging the game in any meaningful way. Some people got to play that version of that card for a while, now they don't. Game moves on.
I don't know that it's necessarily damaging but I think it's more significant than "Eh the card's different just move on." We don't know if it's going to be damaging. This could enable decks worse than Patron, or it might encourage more interactive decks to play against. A lot of people are crying out about the increase in aggro decks that this will bring, though I don't know whether that will happen or not that could be potentially damaging.
Besides, can you really it say that it doesn't matter that Blizz goes too hard on nerfs? I think it matters... at least, a little bit.
I mean. Who cares? There's already tons of cards that aren't played and will never be played, that's just one more.
This isn't really damaging the game in any meaningful way. Some people got to play that version of that card for a while, now they don't. Game moves on.
This is the kind of mentality that is dangerous for a community. "Another nerf to oblivion? Who cares. There's more cards to play."
The examples listed are exactly the kind of things Blizzard needs to be scolded for. Taking a card that is seen as problematic and tweaking it to make it more balanced is one thing, but nerfing it to the point it's a worse version of cards that already exist is entirely another. Am I really supposed to believe that +1 health makes Warsong Commander v. 3.0 in any way better than Raid Leader ? That seems pretty laughable given how Raid Leader isn't often even a viable Arena pick let alone constructed quality. Even if she read "Friendly minions have +1 Attack" she'd still be worse than Leokk who often is the most undesirable rip of the three barring an Unleash combo or full board.
Besides, can you really it say that it doesn't matter that Blizz goes too hard on nerfs? I think it matters... at least, a little bit.
I mean. If you're a new player and invested all your dust into making a certain deck that then gets nerfed, it does suck. But it's just really hard in this game to change cheap cards to where they're still good but not as good. Even bumping auctioneer by 1 mana made is crap.
So really if they just take the safe route and nerf a problem card into oblivion, fine by me. Do you really want them to screw up and make warsong still good enough for people to play patron for 6 more months?
I don't want to be condescending, but repeating a comment that's already been made a dozen or so times in the thread that is devoted exclusively to the Grim Patron nerf is really not the point of this thread. Can we have a discussion here that's a bit more focused around the buff/nerf process in general, rather than using this as another place to gripe about one specific nerf?
What buff process? They'll lose money if the buff cards, instead of releasing them (salty).
Back to the topic.
Starving Buzzard should have gotten it's previous nerf (e.g. Draw cards whenever you play a beast).
Warsong Commander should have become an aura of charge for only minions with 3 or less attack.
For the rest I mostly agree. So yes, Blizzard (I feel I can say it) is going to destroy one of their best games.
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'There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact'
What would you have said if they released all those cards in their nerfed form? Maybe post 1 thread about how they're a waste of dust? Who cares what they used to be. They're different cards now, so treat them like it.
someone already said it but blizzard only nerfs cards when they know they have got their money out of it. leeroy was a deserving nerf, since it was played in a lot of decks that could push 20 damage comboing him. heck even handlock played leeroy. Blizzard tried to learn how to balance cards in development and shortly after release, and realized it wasnt worth their time and the money they could be making. its the same reason they make better versions of old cards instead of buffing the old ones, power creep is good for business as long as old players stay and newer players are mostly screwed without spending money.
the community wants a healthy game, the developers need to make money so they make the game limp based on their intended bad balancing.
if all cards were semi playable then there would be no reason for people to pay money in their game
6 months after BRM same for UT.. it seems like for nerfing something OP blizzard needs to sell it first everyone got BRM cause of GP warrior at least... now they can sell it with dragon decks so np nerf patron now he isn't needed to sell BRM anymore.
Like a posted in another thread, blizzard is just heavy handed with their nerfs. The majority of the time the nerfs are misdirected. Even though people have discussed possible changes for all the card that they nerfed that would keep them viable, they just say "lo,l fuk u guys' and completely make cards unplayable.
It's like they don't play their own game, or do much internal testing. Instead of taking advice from the hundreds of thousands of people that play HS, or even the pros for that matter, they just do what they please and ruin cards and decks that people enjoyed playing.
Next card will probably be Mysterious Challenger. Although it does need a small change, they will probably find a way to destroy it.
A couple of comments. 1, The Undertaker nerf didn't really kill any decks. Aggressive hunter is still around. Zoo is still around. Kind of. The playstyle of those decks weren't built around the Undertaker. That just helped shape the decks to make them better. It is impossible to play miracle rogue without Auctioneer, but not impossible to flood the board with cheap minions as warlock without Undertaker.
2, The Leeroy nerf, as you point out yourself, only killed the card and no decks, so that shouldn't really be a big deal. And i am ok with killing that card. It gave handlock, one of the most controlling decks around, one of the biggest bursts around. Didn't people even start putting that in control warrior? 'Card was nuts.
3, Warsong nerf can only have killed one deck. Unless you count potential future decks, which probably would never have happened since Patron was so fucking good. Why just build a worse warrior deck?
But you have a good point that they sometimes overnerf things. Especially the Buzzard and Warsong. But there's already been rationalizations in this thread for Warsong. They would have to take a very hard look at that for any small minions released in the future. It's just a nightmare for design, and would probably soak up an unreasonable amount of playtesting. Having a single card be that important for the design of the entire game is probably not that smart. On the other hand they should have realized that from the start and never have printed the card in this form at all. Remember when it gave all minions charge and there was a Molten Giant otk deck? That sure was interactive.
When it comes to Buzzard... While that was a combo with Unleash the Hounds, it has advantages over Cult Master beyond that. When you're running out of cards you could play Buzzard and some small beast and just keep drawing more beasts, which is terrifying when it comes to an aggressive deck. It just combos with so many cards, and will also be a big limit on future design.
It's comparable to what priest can do with Northshire Cleric, but way easier. It's not enough to combo Norhtshire with a Circle. You first need to either set up the board so that many creatures are damaged (which is difficult), or you need a Pyromancer and some other spell. And there's not that many cards beyond Circle and Holy Nova that really does anything with Cleric, while almost all cards in a hunter deck would go with Buzzard. Also priest has no aggressive deck so it's not nearly as scary when they do it.
Some of these nerfs i still find reasonable, and the others may be Blizzard A: making their job easier, and B: opening up more possibilities for future releases. Maybe there would have been really cool cards that could have never been printed because they'd bee too crazy with Warsong Commander, and that would have been sad. On the other hand, if the don't have a Warsong Commander to work with, what exactly will make them cool? Patron itself is a gimmick card, and it will never see play unless the effect can be abused. It's like Blizzard wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to print very cool cards, but they also want to game to stay at a certain balance/play style. Exactly how interesting can the game get?
[oops, not done rambling] See, big combos are really cool and really fun, and they require a lot of ingenuity to figure out, and possibly a lot of skill to execute. But since you can't put fewer than 30 cards in your deck, a big combo can only be so reliable. It has to be super powerful if it's going to see play. If it's not super powerful it won't be worth building a deck around. How interesting can the game get with a "Play minion. Attack minion."-playstyle and no worthwhile combos around? I don't know. It'll be balanced i guess...
The long and short of it is this; team 5 wasn't prepared for the long term affects of their cards when they created the game. They didn't intend to invest into it this heavily back when they created cards like starving buzzard and warsong commander, and they had much worse designers back then. Those cards limit design space /ridiculously/. Nerfing them into the ground is a better approach than trying to find their sweet spot, as that lets them add 3 or less attack minions, or beasts, without worrying about breaking the game. The results have been excellent, and will continue to be.
While warsong commander and starving buzzard are clearly overkill, I don't agree that overtaker and leeroy nerf are too much.
Overtaker is exactly what blizzard claimed what it is: a strong 1 drop. And that's just not good enough to build a deck around. It doesn't make it a bad card though.
As for leeroy, increasing mana cost to 5 was necessary to disable leeroy - shadowstep - leeroy - shadowstep - leeroy (which is you know... what defines miracle rogue?). I do think it could of had 7 attack as a compromise though.
My point is that, one can't put all the blame on blizzard when it comes to nerfing. While they certainly made bad decisions in the past, not every nerf was bad. Cards like Novice Engineer, Charge and Tinkmaster Overspark are in their most balanced form possible after the nerf (novice engineer should have been 1/1.5 to be balanced. But that's just not possible).
Thing is, because the numbers in HS are so low, it is impossible to balance every card because some will have to have half a point here or there.
But as it is, these "wait four months, nerf the card and hopefully the archetype that came with it into oblivion, and then wait for the next broken thing to dominate for another half-an-expansion-cycle" nerfs are aggravating both as a player and from a designer's perspective.
Archetypes are not supposed to last forever. They had their time in the light and now it's time to open up opportunities for new decks. It happens in every card game.
Embrace change. There's nothing wrong with what Blizzard is doing and I for one am very excited to experience the new post-Patron Warrior meta. In a way, it's like we're getting an entire new expansion of cards just by nerfing one card!!
To their credit...nerfing of cards in a TCG isn't exactly a thing other than restricting or banning cards...the only times I can honestly say something was actually NERFED in a real TCG was MTG turning Legend from a Type to a Supertype which killed my Infinite Helm of Kaldra combo and Yu-Gi-Oh! errating Bazoo the Soul Eater due to a translation error making that thing a damned beast.
Yeah this nerf is a total overkill. What's even worse, only 3 weeks ago Brode stated in an interview that GPW is fine and in no need of a nerf. This seems like the devs don't really have anidea of what what they are doing and makes me feel worried about the future of the game. :/
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It started with Starving Buzzard, just over a year ago. The 2-mana, 2/1 version of the Buzzard was clearly broken in conjunction with the (itself newly-nerfed) Unleash the Hounds, and everyone expected it to be nerfed…to 3 mana. Or maybe, on the outside, a 3-mana 1/1. But someone at Blizzard filled the nerf-bat with lead, and we got a card that costs more than Cult Master, has worse stats than Cult Master, and has quintessentially the same role as Cult Master…which is itself almost never played in Constructed.
Result: a card that vanished, never to be seen again, and the spawning of Face Hunter. Huzzah.
This Should Have Been: A nerf to a 3-mana 1/1.
Next up: Leeroy Jenkins. Leeroy was nerfed because of the success Miracle Rogue was having wiping the board with him, Shadowstep, and Cold Blood. Bumping Leeroy up to 5, however, removed him from usefulness not just for Miracle Rogue, but for every other archetype that used him -- and Miracle Rogue kept right on winning. Switching to Arcane Golem hurt very little, and Leeroy ended up remaining nerfed because Blizzard don't never change shit back once they've nerfed it.
Result: a card that has vanished, never to be seen again, without the intended effect of killing Miracle Rogue.
This Should Have Been: Completely unchanged, and Gadgetzan Auctioneer nerfed instead.
Shortly after that, Gadgetzan Auctioneer was nerfed, and finally, Miracle Rogue died the death Blizzard sought. But in so doing, they also killed the hopes of every other Miracle archetype out there. This was not the answer that was best for the variety of play experiences; quite the opposite.
Result: One Tier-1 archetype and several Tier-3 archetypes vanished overnight.
This Should Have Been: The anti-Gazlowe: "Whenever you cast a spell that costs more than 1 mana…"
A bit later, we had Undertaker. Never before has a 1-mana card spawned so many different archetypes. Huntertaker, Deathrattle Priest, Deathrattle Zoo, Egg Shaman, and more. It was simply too much of a tempo machine, and it absolutely needed to be nerfed. But Blizzard said in the release that Undertaker was "still one of the strongest one-drops in the game…" Oh, really? Where are they today?
Result: Two Tier-1 archetypes and several Tier-3 archetypes vanished overnight.
This Should Have Been: An increase to 2 mana. Done deal. Could be responded to by a 2/1 1-drop or any 1- or 2-cost nuke. No longer too big to handle by the time you had an answer, no longer trading across once or even twice and continuing to exist, just done.
And now, we have Warsong Commander. Don't get me wrong -- the WC needed a nerf, and badly. It's not even an issue of 'should have nerfed Frothing Berserker instead;' the Commander simply overly-limited Blizzard's design space. Every single Neutral and Warrior three-drop they created had to be balanced knowing that it would be combed with Warsong Commander, and that puts a lot of crimps on a lot of plans. But this was overkill in the extreme. A 3-mana 2|3 that grants +1 to Charge creatures would make a shit Neutral card; as a class card, it's as insulting as Starving Buzzard. Possibly worse.
Result: Too early to tell, but at minimum a Tier-1 archetype is gone forever.
This Should Have Been: At minimum a 2-cost 2|3 that added +1 to Charge minions. Probably better off as 3-cost, 2|1 Charge creature that gave any one other minion Charge the turn it entered play.
Blizzard's heavy-handed nerfs probably wouldn't be as bad if they ever went back and seriously examined the cards that they've changed to see if they needed redressing. But as it is, these "wait four months, nerf the card and hopefully the archetype that came with it into oblivion, and then wait for the next broken thing to dominate for another half-an-expansion-cycle" nerfs are aggravating both as a player and from a designer's perspective. Blizzard needs to take the lead back out of the nerf bat and focus on how to change a card enough to change the meta without whomping it so much that it joins the many-splendored ranks of Call Pet and Far Sight.
I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
6 months after BRM same for UT.. it seems like for nerfing something OP blizzard needs to sell it first everyone got BRM cause of GP warrior at least... now they can sell it with dragon decks so np nerf patron now he isn't needed to sell BRM anymore.
I don't want to be condescending, but repeating a comment that's already been made a dozen or so times in the thread that is devoted exclusively to the Grim Patron nerf is really not the point of this thread. Can we have a discussion here that's a bit more focused around the buff/nerf process in general, rather than using this as another place to gripe about one specific nerf?
I looked at this card originally and I thought, you know, it's a card, and you play this card. The card will be that card that you play so you're playing a card. So, it is one thing to play a card. If you're opponent doesn't really have any cards, the card will screw up the card pretty hard, and that means it's a pretty good card.
I mean. Who cares?
There's already tons of cards that aren't played and will never be played, that's just one more.
This isn't really damaging the game in any meaningful way. Some people got to play that version of that card for a while, now they don't. Game moves on.
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I wish I could talk to the devs so I could hear their reasoning for their overnerfs. I've heard of plenty of good nerf ideas, but this seems overkill. I personally don't think the Leeroy nerf was as bad as the others you mentioned, I've still seen it played (though my example isn't great, it was played in Face decks for awhile). I think it just comes down to fear that tentative nerfs won't be enough, and then they'll have to keep changing it until there's a balance. But if they just nerf it into the dust they don't have to worry about it being a problem anymore.
That being said, I think a better solution to overnerfing cards would be to buff some of the worse cards too, to encourage people to try something new instead of being angry that the new OP deck got nerfed. But iunno, Blizz clearly knows better than any one of us does.
I don't know that it's necessarily damaging but I think it's more significant than "Eh the card's different just move on." We don't know if it's going to be damaging. This could enable decks worse than Patron, or it might encourage more interactive decks to play against. A lot of people are crying out about the increase in aggro decks that this will bring, though I don't know whether that will happen or not that could be potentially damaging.
Besides, can you really it say that it doesn't matter that Blizz goes too hard on nerfs? I think it matters... at least, a little bit.
This is the kind of mentality that is dangerous for a community. "Another nerf to oblivion? Who cares. There's more cards to play."
The examples listed are exactly the kind of things Blizzard needs to be scolded for. Taking a card that is seen as problematic and tweaking it to make it more balanced is one thing, but nerfing it to the point it's a worse version of cards that already exist is entirely another. Am I really supposed to believe that +1 health makes Warsong Commander v. 3.0 in any way better than Raid Leader ? That seems pretty laughable given how Raid Leader isn't often even a viable Arena pick let alone constructed quality. Even if she read "Friendly minions have +1 Attack" she'd still be worse than Leokk who often is the most undesirable rip of the three barring an Unleash combo or full board.
Balancing busted cards version 1.0.
I mean. If you're a new player and invested all your dust into making a certain deck that then gets nerfed, it does suck.
But it's just really hard in this game to change cheap cards to where they're still good but not as good. Even bumping auctioneer by 1 mana made is crap.
So really if they just take the safe route and nerf a problem card into oblivion, fine by me. Do you really want them to screw up and make warsong still good enough for people to play patron for 6 more months?
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What buff process? They'll lose money if the buff cards, instead of releasing them (salty).
Back to the topic.
Starving Buzzard should have gotten it's previous nerf (e.g. Draw cards whenever you play a beast).
Warsong Commander should have become an aura of charge for only minions with 3 or less attack.
For the rest I mostly agree. So yes, Blizzard (I feel I can say it) is going to destroy one of their best games.
'There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact'
Sherlock Holmes
How's that backseat dev job working out for you?
What would you have said if they released all those cards in their nerfed form? Maybe post 1 thread about how they're a waste of dust? Who cares what they used to be. They're different cards now, so treat them like it.
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My mandibles which are capable of pressing down and tearing, my talons which are known to intercept and hold.
someone already said it but blizzard only nerfs cards when they know they have got their money out of it. leeroy was a deserving nerf, since it was played in a lot of decks that could push 20 damage comboing him. heck even handlock played leeroy. Blizzard tried to learn how to balance cards in development and shortly after release, and realized it wasnt worth their time and the money they could be making. its the same reason they make better versions of old cards instead of buffing the old ones, power creep is good for business as long as old players stay and newer players are mostly screwed without spending money.
the community wants a healthy game, the developers need to make money so they make the game limp based on their intended bad balancing.
if all cards were semi playable then there would be no reason for people to pay money in their game
Dang, you hit the nail right smack on the head.
My hat off to you sir.
Slowclap....
Like a posted in another thread, blizzard is just heavy handed with their nerfs. The majority of the time the nerfs are misdirected. Even though people have discussed possible changes for all the card that they nerfed that would keep them viable, they just say "lo,l fuk u guys' and completely make cards unplayable.
It's like they don't play their own game, or do much internal testing. Instead of taking advice from the hundreds of thousands of people that play HS, or even the pros for that matter, they just do what they please and ruin cards and decks that people enjoyed playing.
Next card will probably be Mysterious Challenger. Although it does need a small change, they will probably find a way to destroy it.
A couple of comments. 1, The Undertaker nerf didn't really kill any decks. Aggressive hunter is still around. Zoo is still around. Kind of. The playstyle of those decks weren't built around the Undertaker. That just helped shape the decks to make them better. It is impossible to play miracle rogue without Auctioneer, but not impossible to flood the board with cheap minions as warlock without Undertaker.
2, The Leeroy nerf, as you point out yourself, only killed the card and no decks, so that shouldn't really be a big deal. And i am ok with killing that card. It gave handlock, one of the most controlling decks around, one of the biggest bursts around. Didn't people even start putting that in control warrior? 'Card was nuts.
3, Warsong nerf can only have killed one deck. Unless you count potential future decks, which probably would never have happened since Patron was so fucking good. Why just build a worse warrior deck?
But you have a good point that they sometimes overnerf things. Especially the Buzzard and Warsong. But there's already been rationalizations in this thread for Warsong. They would have to take a very hard look at that for any small minions released in the future. It's just a nightmare for design, and would probably soak up an unreasonable amount of playtesting. Having a single card be that important for the design of the entire game is probably not that smart. On the other hand they should have realized that from the start and never have printed the card in this form at all. Remember when it gave all minions charge and there was a Molten Giant otk deck? That sure was interactive.
When it comes to Buzzard... While that was a combo with Unleash the Hounds, it has advantages over Cult Master beyond that. When you're running out of cards you could play Buzzard and some small beast and just keep drawing more beasts, which is terrifying when it comes to an aggressive deck. It just combos with so many cards, and will also be a big limit on future design.
It's comparable to what priest can do with Northshire Cleric, but way easier. It's not enough to combo Norhtshire with a Circle. You first need to either set up the board so that many creatures are damaged (which is difficult), or you need a Pyromancer and some other spell. And there's not that many cards beyond Circle and Holy Nova that really does anything with Cleric, while almost all cards in a hunter deck would go with Buzzard. Also priest has no aggressive deck so it's not nearly as scary when they do it.
Some of these nerfs i still find reasonable, and the others may be Blizzard A: making their job easier, and B: opening up more possibilities for future releases. Maybe there would have been really cool cards that could have never been printed because they'd bee too crazy with Warsong Commander, and that would have been sad. On the other hand, if the don't have a Warsong Commander to work with, what exactly will make them cool? Patron itself is a gimmick card, and it will never see play unless the effect can be abused. It's like Blizzard wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to print very cool cards, but they also want to game to stay at a certain balance/play style. Exactly how interesting can the game get?
[oops, not done rambling] See, big combos are really cool and really fun, and they require a lot of ingenuity to figure out, and possibly a lot of skill to execute. But since you can't put fewer than 30 cards in your deck, a big combo can only be so reliable. It has to be super powerful if it's going to see play. If it's not super powerful it won't be worth building a deck around. How interesting can the game get with a "Play minion. Attack minion."-playstyle and no worthwhile combos around? I don't know. It'll be balanced i guess...
The long and short of it is this; team 5 wasn't prepared for the long term affects of their cards when they created the game. They didn't intend to invest into it this heavily back when they created cards like starving buzzard and warsong commander, and they had much worse designers back then. Those cards limit design space /ridiculously/. Nerfing them into the ground is a better approach than trying to find their sweet spot, as that lets them add 3 or less attack minions, or beasts, without worrying about breaking the game. The results have been excellent, and will continue to be.
While warsong commander and starving buzzard are clearly overkill, I don't agree that overtaker and leeroy nerf are too much.
Overtaker is exactly what blizzard claimed what it is: a strong 1 drop. And that's just not good enough to build a deck around. It doesn't make it a bad card though.
As for leeroy, increasing mana cost to 5 was necessary to disable leeroy - shadowstep - leeroy - shadowstep - leeroy (which is you know... what defines miracle rogue?). I do think it could of had 7 attack as a compromise though.
My point is that, one can't put all the blame on blizzard when it comes to nerfing. While they certainly made bad decisions in the past, not every nerf was bad. Cards like Novice Engineer, Charge and Tinkmaster Overspark are in their most balanced form possible after the nerf (novice engineer should have been 1/1.5 to be balanced. But that's just not possible).
Thing is, because the numbers in HS are so low, it is impossible to balance every card because some will have to have half a point here or there.
Archetypes are not supposed to last forever. They had their time in the light and now it's time to open up opportunities for new decks. It happens in every card game.
Embrace change. There's nothing wrong with what Blizzard is doing and I for one am very excited to experience the new post-Patron Warrior meta. In a way, it's like we're getting an entire new expansion of cards just by nerfing one card!!
To their credit...nerfing of cards in a TCG isn't exactly a thing other than restricting or banning cards...the only times I can honestly say something was actually NERFED in a real TCG was MTG turning Legend from a Type to a Supertype which killed my Infinite Helm of Kaldra combo and Yu-Gi-Oh! errating Bazoo the Soul Eater due to a translation error making that thing a damned beast.
After Urzas block a set of cards was errated to shittyness from being undgodly op.
Yeah this nerf is a total overkill. What's even worse, only 3 weeks ago Brode stated in an interview that GPW is fine and in no need of a nerf. This seems like the devs don't really have anidea of what what they are doing and makes me feel worried about the future of the game. :/