First let's compare Innervate to the other druid ramp spell of choice, Wild Growth. Wild Growth costs 2 mana to play but assuming you play it on turn 2 it will give you 7 consecutive turns of having more mana than you normally would; you pay a cost in tempo up front by doing nothing that actually effects the board in hope that you make use of the majority of the extra mana you will gain from the effect, requiring at least 3 turns of full mana usage to even be worth the initial investment. This can be quite the tempo gain when you play ahead of curve several turns in a row, but it requires you to draw those cards to fill out the mana curve (weaving in Shapeshift to hit your opponent's face is not quite worth it) and missing out on early turns of extra mana can really leave you high and dry.
Wild Growth is also a completely brick draw in the mid-game as you are incredibly unlikely to want to spend your turn playing ramp instead of actually developing board, so chances are you'll save the growth until turn 10+ when you can cycle it for another card, essentially being an even worse version of the Hunter Spell “Flare” a card that sees no real competitive usage. Sometimes against super fast decks like Aggro Shaman, Face Hunter and to some extent Secret Paladin you can't even afford to play Wild Growth on turn 2 as you fall too far behind, against most of those decks you'd rather have actual minions like Darnassus Aspirant or removal spells such as Wrath to help contest your opponent's cards. In essence Wild Growth is a powerful ramp spell, but it has clear and significant downsides.
Innervate, unlike Wild Growth, does not require any initial mana investment so it is completely tempo neutral as anything you could have done before playing Innervate you can certainly do after playing it. Also unlike growth, Innervate does not require you to wait to get the benefit of the extra mana, as long as you have 2 open Mana Crystals Innervate will resolve fully and ramp you up at no cost. Innervate is also capable of giving you access to more than 10 mana in a turn as made infamous by the "double combo" play of casting Force of Nature and two copies of Savage Roar on turn 10 thanks to Innervate. Essentially what Innervate does is it allows the Druid class to cheat the very balance of Hearthstone itself. The game is balanced by having the cards with more powerful effects costed at higher mana costs than those with weaker effects, Innervate bypasses this balance by essentially making any card in a Druid deck cost 2 whole mana less. The only downside to Innervate is that it is a worse topdeck in the very late game when you've run out of cards and cannot gain a benefit from the extra mana, however this happens in less than 5% of games so it's basically negligible.
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**Example of Innervate being broken:**
Keeper of the Grove is a well balanced card at 4 mana both it's stats and its two different effects are completely fair when played on turn 3 (With the coin), turn 4 or when saved for a later turn. However Keeper of the Grove is completely unfair when played on turn 2. When a Druid plays against an aggressive deck, let's say Zoo Warlock, and the Zoo player makes an aggressive play by summoning a Knife Juggler by using The Coin on turn 1, the Druid player can now respond on their Turn 2 with Innervate + Keeper of the Grove to destroy the opponent's Knife Juggler and summon a 2/4 body at the same time the result is completely game winning and it's almost impossible for the Zoo deck to recover from something like this.
In the above example the Druid player has traded 1 resource (Innervate) for 1 of our opponent's resources (Knife Juggler) a fair exchange in terms of cards, yet in terms of tempo the druid has developed a body that is above curve for turn 2 as a 2/4 is very difficult for both 2 mana spells and 2 mana minions to contest 1-for-1 thus meaning that the Keeper of the Grove is capable of trading up against every card the Zoo player can reasonably be expected to respond with and therefore they will fall further behind as the Druid has time now to develop their slower more powerful minions. What this example and situations like it mean is that the cost of playing Innervate, which is the initial card loss is very rarely a real cost. Since the card that the Druid is able to play is much more powerful than it should be for a card played on the given turn it is unlikely that it trades 1-for-1 and instead will trade 2-for-1 resulting in an overall 2-for-2 trade yet with the additional upside of being an incredibly powerful tempo swing if not completely game winning if done early enough. This is fundamentally unfair and unhealthy for the game as a whole as it gives the Druid class a natural advantage over all other decks in the metagame simply because they can draw Innervate early and win the game by making unfairly powerful plays ahead of curve.
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**Closing Thoughts:**
Innervate is far too powerful of a card to exist in Hearthstone. It has an effect of comparable strength to cards from other TCG's such as Magic: The Gathering's Black Lotus, a card which is famous for how unfair it is (the card is banned in all formats except 1 where it is limited to 1 copy in a 60 card deck). There will literally never be a constructed Druid deck that does not include Innervate as a 2-of as it is a completely staple auto-include in all archetypes combo, control, tempo, aggro, and midrange. Finally, until Innervate is nerfed Druid will continue to be a Tier 1 class in the metagame simply because of how big of an advantage getting to cheat on mana is.
I'll leave you with a few versions of the card that I believe would bring it more in line with what is an acceptable power level.
You telegraph to your opponent that you are playing ahead of curve and give them a turn to prepare for it. You can never have access to more than 10 mana in a turn as the card will do nothing on turn 10+ since you cannot have more than 10 mana crystals.
Now a minion version of Preparation, still allows you to cheat out minions but does not have the flexibility of letting you play whatever you want ahead of curve. Also only cost reduces a single target so you can't as easily take advantage of all of the mana it gives you.
Does not allow you to play ahead of curve at all, but still allows you to play more than the normal amount of cards in a turn. If it's turn 4 you can play a Shredder and Innervate out a Darnassus Aspirant but you can't cheat out an Emperor Thaurissan. Double Combo is still available but the most broken part of the card is neutered. (My personal favorite)
While it may seem overpowered in theory, ramp druid is not really being played right now, and instead a mid-range druid is being played. It does allow for double savage roar/force of nature combo, but that is more an issue with those two cards than Innervate. As for preparation, that card reduces a spell by three and not two like innervate would.
lol what are you talking about druid not seeing play????? it's the #1 deck on tempo storms most recent like three meta snapshots, it's a staple in almost every pro's tournament line-up and you see it all over the ladder especially at high ranks I see it even more than secret paladin in legend.
I like to think of it like when you innervate out a card you make it cost two less but also give it the text "discard a card" since the primary downside to Innervate is sometimes you Innervate something out really early but then you run out of steam pretty quickly. I do agree with you though that it is a broken card. The thing is though that every class has broken cards *looks at rogue crying in the corner* so it kind of balances out.
You really can't counter innervate, that's the thing. They play stuff you can't handle ahead of curve because the removal you have access to doesn't answer it, and even if it does you give up all initiative and the druid just develops another threat again that you have to answer.
It's not even like I need to "get better" I hit legend rank every season, I'm just sick and tired of this stupid card not getting the flack it honestly deserves.
you realize every midrange druid plays 2 innervate, right? Not just ramp druid, not just egg druid, but literally EVERY druid plays 2 Innervate.
I swear the world 'literally' has become hyperbolical
except here its literally literal. There are zero recorded competitive Druid decks without Innervate right now. Aggro, Mid and Ramp all play 2 of it.
Yes its literally a fact majority will play two innervate, but there's a different than majority and literally, literally. One record would literally invalidate it. Yea I'll admit if I werent nitpicking I'd be lying.
The problem is if Blizzard gonna nerf Innervate, they will have to give Druid smt to deal with the board (more AoE cards for example), which take away what Druid is special about.
I guess the whole class Druid kind of balance it a little bit. So despite of Innervate is a really powerful card, I doubt Blizzard will nerf it soon.
Druid is literally the single most broken thing in the game, both innervate and combo is insanely stupid and needs to seriously be looked into. It is disgusting.
Gotta love how people are complaining about a card that's only broken when Druid is actually usable in the meta. This card isn't new, it isn't broken, and Druid was pretty awful only a couple of seasons ago. Innervate is tempo advantage for card disadvantage. Right now, it's incredibly strong because the meta is very tempo dependent, but a few expansions down the line, it'll be perfectly balanced like it was in the patron/hunter metas of the recent past.
Gotta love when people who have no idea how druid has been broken since release, or its just a druid player defending druid add comments on how its balanced.
It's funny as a Magic player and a Hearthstone noob, Innervate is that kind of card I looked at in the beginning and thought that the card would break Magic in half and would get insta banned/restricted in all formats.
However playing against it, I think the card is fine. When the most broken thing you can do is to land a T2 Shredder it's not as frightening as it could be. I do however think it will get nerfed at some point, when the card pool increases. If Hearthstone is anything like MtG, then fast mana is always dangerous territory.
**So why is Innervate broken?**
First let's compare Innervate to the other druid ramp spell of choice, Wild Growth. Wild Growth costs 2 mana to play but assuming you play it on turn 2 it will give you 7 consecutive turns of having more mana than you normally would; you pay a cost in tempo up front by doing nothing that actually effects the board in hope that you make use of the majority of the extra mana you will gain from the effect, requiring at least 3 turns of full mana usage to even be worth the initial investment. This can be quite the tempo gain when you play ahead of curve several turns in a row, but it requires you to draw those cards to fill out the mana curve (weaving in Shapeshift to hit your opponent's face is not quite worth it) and missing out on early turns of extra mana can really leave you high and dry.
Wild Growth is also a completely brick draw in the mid-game as you are incredibly unlikely to want to spend your turn playing ramp instead of actually developing board, so chances are you'll save the growth until turn 10+ when you can cycle it for another card, essentially being an even worse version of the Hunter Spell “Flare” a card that sees no real competitive usage. Sometimes against super fast decks like Aggro Shaman, Face Hunter and to some extent Secret Paladin you can't even afford to play Wild Growth on turn 2 as you fall too far behind, against most of those decks you'd rather have actual minions like Darnassus Aspirant or removal spells such as Wrath to help contest your opponent's cards. In essence Wild Growth is a powerful ramp spell, but it has clear and significant downsides.
Innervate, unlike Wild Growth, does not require any initial mana investment so it is completely tempo neutral as anything you could have done before playing Innervate you can certainly do after playing it. Also unlike growth, Innervate does not require you to wait to get the benefit of the extra mana, as long as you have 2 open Mana Crystals Innervate will resolve fully and ramp you up at no cost. Innervate is also capable of giving you access to more than 10 mana in a turn as made infamous by the "double combo" play of casting Force of Nature and two copies of Savage Roar on turn 10 thanks to Innervate. Essentially what Innervate does is it allows the Druid class to cheat the very balance of Hearthstone itself. The game is balanced by having the cards with more powerful effects costed at higher mana costs than those with weaker effects, Innervate bypasses this balance by essentially making any card in a Druid deck cost 2 whole mana less. The only downside to Innervate is that it is a worse topdeck in the very late game when you've run out of cards and cannot gain a benefit from the extra mana, however this happens in less than 5% of games so it's basically negligible.
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**Example of Innervate being broken:**
Keeper of the Grove is a well balanced card at 4 mana both it's stats and its two different effects are completely fair when played on turn 3 (With the coin), turn 4 or when saved for a later turn. However Keeper of the Grove is completely unfair when played on turn 2. When a Druid plays against an aggressive deck, let's say Zoo Warlock, and the Zoo player makes an aggressive play by summoning a Knife Juggler by using The Coin on turn 1, the Druid player can now respond on their Turn 2 with Innervate + Keeper of the Grove to destroy the opponent's Knife Juggler and summon a 2/4 body at the same time the result is completely game winning and it's almost impossible for the Zoo deck to recover from something like this.
In the above example the Druid player has traded 1 resource (Innervate) for 1 of our opponent's resources (Knife Juggler) a fair exchange in terms of cards, yet in terms of tempo the druid has developed a body that is above curve for turn 2 as a 2/4 is very difficult for both 2 mana spells and 2 mana minions to contest 1-for-1 thus meaning that the Keeper of the Grove is capable of trading up against every card the Zoo player can reasonably be expected to respond with and therefore they will fall further behind as the Druid has time now to develop their slower more powerful minions. What this example and situations like it mean is that the cost of playing Innervate, which is the initial card loss is very rarely a real cost. Since the card that the Druid is able to play is much more powerful than it should be for a card played on the given turn it is unlikely that it trades 1-for-1 and instead will trade 2-for-1 resulting in an overall 2-for-2 trade yet with the additional upside of being an incredibly powerful tempo swing if not completely game winning if done early enough. This is fundamentally unfair and unhealthy for the game as a whole as it gives the Druid class a natural advantage over all other decks in the metagame simply because they can draw Innervate early and win the game by making unfairly powerful plays ahead of curve.
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**Closing Thoughts:**
Innervate is far too powerful of a card to exist in Hearthstone. It has an effect of comparable strength to cards from other TCG's such as Magic: The Gathering's Black Lotus, a card which is famous for how unfair it is (the card is banned in all formats except 1 where it is limited to 1 copy in a 60 card deck). There will literally never be a constructed Druid deck that does not include Innervate as a 2-of as it is a completely staple auto-include in all archetypes combo, control, tempo, aggro, and midrange. Finally, until Innervate is nerfed Druid will continue to be a Tier 1 class in the metagame simply because of how big of an advantage getting to cheat on mana is.
I'll leave you with a few versions of the card that I believe would bring it more in line with what is an acceptable power level.
Version 1: http://imgur.com/YrykMrX
You telegraph to your opponent that you are playing ahead of curve and give them a turn to prepare for it. You can never have access to more than 10 mana in a turn as the card will do nothing on turn 10+ since you cannot have more than 10 mana crystals.
Version 2: http://imgur.com/j6l7MvO
Now a minion version of Preparation, still allows you to cheat out minions but does not have the flexibility of letting you play whatever you want ahead of curve. Also only cost reduces a single target so you can't as easily take advantage of all of the mana it gives you.
Version 3: http://imgur.com/FyXnYkp
Does not allow you to play ahead of curve at all, but still allows you to play more than the normal amount of cards in a turn. If it's turn 4 you can play a Shredder and Innervate out a Darnassus Aspirant but you can't cheat out an Emperor Thaurissan. Double Combo is still available but the most broken part of the card is neutered. (My personal favorite)
While it may seem overpowered in theory, ramp druid is not really being played right now, and instead a mid-range druid is being played. It does allow for double savage roar/force of nature combo, but that is more an issue with those two cards than Innervate. As for preparation, that card reduces a spell by three and not two like innervate would.
you realize every midrange druid plays 2 innervate, right? Not just ramp druid, not just egg druid, but literally EVERY druid plays 2 Innervate.
Honestly without innervate druid would be almost 100% unplayable. Already doesn't see a whole lot of play as it is
lol what are you talking about druid not seeing play????? it's the #1 deck on tempo storms most recent like three meta snapshots, it's a staple in almost every pro's tournament line-up and you see it all over the ladder especially at high ranks I see it even more than secret paladin in legend.
I like to think of it like when you innervate out a card you make it cost two less but also give it the text "discard a card" since the primary downside to Innervate is sometimes you Innervate something out really early but then you run out of steam pretty quickly. I do agree with you though that it is a broken card. The thing is though that every class has broken cards *looks at rogue crying in the corner* so it kind of balances out.
Everytime a different deck sees increased ladder play people start bitching that something is broken.
Stop. Get better. Counter it.
You really can't counter innervate, that's the thing. They play stuff you can't handle ahead of curve because the removal you have access to doesn't answer it, and even if it does you give up all initiative and the druid just develops another threat again that you have to answer.
It's not even like I need to "get better" I hit legend rank every season, I'm just sick and tired of this stupid card not getting the flack it honestly deserves.
The problem is if Blizzard gonna nerf Innervate, they will have to give Druid smt to deal with the board (more AoE cards for example), which take away what Druid is special about.
I guess the whole class Druid kind of balance it a little bit. So despite of Innervate is a really powerful card, I doubt Blizzard will nerf it soon.
If you hit legend every season, you wouldn't be complaining
Druid is literally the single most broken thing in the game, both innervate and combo is insanely stupid and needs to seriously be looked into. It is disgusting.
#turn3drboomisfair
Turn 3 dr boom, turn 4 roar....
Gotta love how people are complaining about a card that's only broken when Druid is actually usable in the meta. This card isn't new, it isn't broken, and Druid was pretty awful only a couple of seasons ago. Innervate is tempo advantage for card disadvantage. Right now, it's incredibly strong because the meta is very tempo dependent, but a few expansions down the line, it'll be perfectly balanced like it was in the patron/hunter metas of the recent past.
Gotta love when people who have no idea how druid has been broken since release, or its just a druid player defending druid add comments on how its balanced.
It's funny as a Magic player and a Hearthstone noob, Innervate is that kind of card I looked at in the beginning and thought that the card would break Magic in half and would get insta banned/restricted in all formats.
However playing against it, I think the card is fine. When the most broken thing you can do is to land a T2 Shredder it's not as frightening as it could be. I do however think it will get nerfed at some point, when the card pool increases. If Hearthstone is anything like MtG, then fast mana is always dangerous territory.
Sorry,
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