Hearthpwn

this is just stupid. Just dust it and it's donne

I bet he'll still be played though. If he drops a flamestrike it's already good.

Unpopular opinion but I liked Yogg'saron. Partly because of it's wild, dramatic effect of "Sometimes you get everything and sometimes MADNESS WILL CONSUME YOU" and the more relevant part being because of how it caused one to structure their decks. Since if one wanted to get a certain effect, like boardclear (which is what Yogg was generally used for), one had to have cast a sufficient amount of spells because statistics and all that nonsense.

As a player I really like spellheavy decks, I like control style games and Yogg fit perfectly into that niche because it was a card that had spell synergy in a non blatantly obvious fashion. It wasn't simply saying "Your spells deal +X damage." looking at you Flamewaker (and every spelldamage minion in the game) it had a huge "WoooooW" effect of "What's in the box this time?", would I get secrets? Would I get cards drawn? A call of the wild? Or would I burn half my deck and die from fatigue?

That said I realize the span between a good Yog and a bad Yogg is too heavy. A good Yog literally can win the game from nothing (casting pyroblast three times into the enemies face as an extreme example) and a bad Yogg loses a won game (dumps your hand with astral communion, fatigues you with 100000 drawn cards etc.) and that span is far too heavy to be acceptable. This change is not to adress any over the top power level Yogg has but to calm down the community in meming everything to death. In effect Yogg still has the RNG gulf between good and bad but it's a placebo to show that something has been done. Of course the card is going to be at a far lower powerlevel because Yogg has a propensity to kill himself (and yay now I can cast my 10 mana Twisting Nether)  but the main issue with the card itself has not been adressed namely the RNG.

However what needs to be acknowledged is the reason why Yogg became such a neccesity in the state of the game. Yes aggro and such are wide spread but it's simply because almost half of the classes lack effecient AoE removal to deal with boardflood effects. Either the AoE is not efficient enough or plain unusable in its state.

For Rogues: Fan of Knives doesn't get rid of any current threat right now as thing moved away from 1 HP minions except for utility ones such as abusive. And even then most 1 HP minions are stick in some form like Argent Horserider having Divine Shield or the Grandma in Hunter summoning the 1/1 Wolf and even the Fiery bat will throw some fire back into your face. Blade Flurry costed at 4 Mana and requiring previous setup (aka Poison+Daggerup).

Druids have a worse consecration in Starfall and Swipe is just a slightly different fan of knives. Heck even Paladins require a two card combo for their removal to be effective (Pyro+Equality Equality+Consec.)

And mages Flamestrike previously regarded as premium removal? Well it doesn't even get rid of a three mana card the Darkshire Councilman on top of costing 7 mana. In comparison for one mana more Warlocks have Twisting Nether and then that card was never even used until Reno Decks were a thing and then only because Warlocks needed cards to pad out the deck.

Yogg was or rather is neccessary because spells plain suck in Hearthstone. The only spell that was really strong or rather is still really strong is Call of the Wild. There is never a bad time to play a card which summons 12/10 worth of stats that protect your face grants immediate damage and is 1/3rd of  Bloodlust (thus serving as finisher or game clincher in the class that is set up to be the most aggressive in the game). Else than that I'd maybe count Brawl at being powerful for what it does but other than that all spells are not good because Hearthstone is suffering from a systemic issue of lacking any agency during the opposing turn (except for secrets but those are confined to three classes and are able to be played around). As long as this is not fixed all spells actually can't ever have a similar powerlevel to Call of the Wild.

Of course there are some workarounds to this which involve breaking up the class system that Blizzard is clinging to. In the effort to give each class their unique identity Blizzard is spreading the cardpool to thin by increasingly stacking redundant effects in the same class.

Give hundred iterations of fireball to mage ( of course all /slightly/ different). Give Priest and Paladin all the Health Restoring spells. Well you get what I am getting at.

Even though Blizzard or Ben Brode (in the wake of purify) stated that each class should have multiple workable archetypes (lets ignore the 50% winratio thing because that is all relatory) the confining of cardpools to so many classes simply leads to each class being forced into a set of one or two archetypes at most. The exception to this rules is more or less Warrior (and maybe Shaman) which seemingly can seamlessly adapt to aggro, midrange and control styles at the same time (and used to be able to run combo which in essence is basically just a variant of control).

Yoggsaron is merely the players trying to compensate the inherent weaknesses in their class that Blizzard isn't willing to adress by giving access to a wider variety of cardpools. And as long as this is not fixed Yogg will remain a neccessity in the game. This current variant of Yogg is certainly a very extreme version of what is needed and I do not dispute the nerf was needed in some form but then Blizzard should start by fixing the underlying issues that drive control oriented decks to including this card as a neccessery panic button over something like Deathwing.

Quote from Rzia1 >>

"Yogg is relatively weak in power level for nearly every class at every level, but is slightly above average in 2 decks – Tempo Mage and Token Druid"

 then how bout instead of nerfing yog you nerf tempo mage and token druid ?

 

"I don't think Yogg is dead. It's not a huge nerf."

consistently kills or polymorphs himself ever time he is played

"This is the most controversial card we've ever made. Some people LOVE Yogg, and others hate it.  We felt like seeing Yogg in tournaments was not where we originally hoped it would end up.  Yogg should be for players who want to have a lot of fun, but maybe not the card you see frequently in high-level tournaments"

They could've banned him from Ranked (Standard and Wild) and tournaments but keep him in Casual (Standard and Wild), so the players can have fun with him and won't effect competitive play.

This is now the end of Yoggy's hope to ever be played again

Quote from yagozk >>

I don't think Yogg is dead. It's not a huge nerf.

I'm afraid this nerf on Yogg won't give us full dust refund. It's kind of like how they changed Bane of Doom. The actual card text didn't change so players didn't get full value.

I won't spend another penny on this game if they do that because I've crafted a golden Yogg and now it's pretty much worthless.

The most fun card in the game gets nerfed... Would have been better to move him to wild prematurely. I liked it better when they didn't nerf cards left and right. I thought that was what Standard was supposed to do.

I think the stated reason for the Yogg nerf is pretty strange. If the problem really is.."...maybe not the card you see frequently in high-level tournaments.", then why not just ban the card from Tournament play? So. Very. Weird.

Harambe disapproves!!!

yogg always dies too quickly

The problem with tempo mage and token druid is not Yogg. It's that those archetypes are full of efficient cheap spells, and they can forego all late game by adding Yogg, and thus have more, efficient, early game. Other classes must rely on early game and lower their chances of drawing early game tools, unless they're early-game only, such as aggro. If you survive aggro for 6 turns, they run out of steam and lose, unless they're hunter, survive 2 (now 3) turns, and play CotW. 

I have a fat priest with Malchezaar, very specific minions, Yogg, and a bunch of spells. It's not competitive even on rank 15. But I can pull off a 50%+ winrate depending on my matchups, especially because of Yogg. My best matchups are other decks that also play Yogg (if I play Yogg first, their Yogg just fatigues them out, if they play it first, mine usually is ok, because my deck has something like 38 cards (30 + 5 legendaries from Malchezaar, + 2 entombed enemy minions, + map to golden monkey / golden monkey). I always lose against aggro and OTK (because priest can't go over 30 health), but have pretty good matchups against control, and can survive against midrange (thanks only to Yogg). In control vs control matchups, I don't even play Yogg, except as a Hail Mary.

The only decks that I have fun playing nowadays on ladder are Yogg-druid (but I agree it's OP), Evolve Shaman (hit by the Tuskarr Totemic nerf, but it's not that bad), and my fat Yogg priest (completely killed now, and it was my favorite deck to play). But yeah, I'll go back to my regime of brawl + arena, and on Mondays and Tuesdays (and weeks where brawl will not reliably generate gold, such as this one) that I'm under 150 gold, play some not-fun netdeck and screw every other player experience just to farm my gold.

How can it be that even though I've seen a lot of comments calling for a change that would nerf Yogg to oblivion, the opinion of the majority of people who participated in the survey does not match Blizzard's decision? About my opinion, I don't like the nerf but we'll see

Also, it's not true that Yogg is a card that can destroy all game that came before. Exactly as C'Thun, it needs preparation, and it takes your whole turn to be played. The player running Yogg usually must forego board presence and be more subject to being killed (except for Token Druid and Tempo Mage: that's the real problem!), so 

1. The player assumes tremendous risks for all the game, not only the turn Yogg's been played

2. The player must use his whole turn to play Yogg

3. Yogg still can have a negative outcome

C'Thun and N'Zoth have *always* good outcomes. Some will be worst than you're expecting, some will be better. If you run a Chillmaw, N'Zoth will even protect your face. C'Thun will also help you before getting into the game, by buffing your minions, giving you health and armor, duplicating your solid taunt minion (or tripling it with Brann). They are OLD GODS, they MUST be OP, amazing, etc. Even more in a so aggressive meta, the only reward for playing slower archetypes is the satisfaction you get for the result of an Old God. Blizzard destroyed the fun. I have not been playing ranked since LoE. And I could go back, but my happiness has been cut short. 

Quote from SpeakCrocodile >>

How can it be that even though I've seen a lot of comments calling for a change that would nerf Yogg to oblivion, the opinion of the majority of people who participated in the survey does not match Blizzard's decision? About my opinion, I don't like the nerf but we'll see

If Yogg is the one casting the spells and the spells stop if he is killed/silenced/etc., then why should Overload affect the player?  Yogg is the one being "overloaded" -- totally inconsistent in light of the fact that effects that require the player to target the minion to have an effect do not affect Yogg.

Which is it? Is he casting, or the player?

I completely agree that the Old Gods should be powerful game-changers because they are so slow to play.  All nerfing Yogg accomplishes is to further weaken an archetype that is nearly extinct and proves that Blizzard's idea of a "competitive" meta is one in which everyone plays aggro/midrange.  By nerfing Yogg and Charge, they've really taken the wind from beneath the wings of control/combo decks that were never dominating the game to begin with.  

amazaballz to the max

Honestly the nerf is fair. Won't see anymore play in competitive and on ladder will be really rare. Now is just a card for the LULS and  a heavy hit to Trolden. I'm happy with the Yogg overall and  the first reason is because team5 had the chance to understand what ,a large share of the community , don't want to see in this game. Obviously there will be always mixed opinions but this is the norm also for other things in this society (look at the fans out of the justice court cheering for serial killers). Personally I look at the game for his competitive aspect and I'm not so openminded toward opinions that are out of this environment, this because who play competitive see the very core of the game and put the emotion aside when it comes to make considerations on power levels. It's funny that after all the bitching on Yogg, this poll is slighlty versus the nerf, but probably many, not all, are trolls here for the LULs.