Hearthpwn

The original Call of the Wild (8 mana) was considered very broken.  Ultimate Infestation is even more ridiculous, particularly when it can be played on turn 8.

With Skulking Geist, every Druid that I've played against that runs two copies of ultimate infestation has fatigued themselves to death. Turns out that drawing your whole deck is kinda bad if you can't add infinite cards back into it.

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from scorpyon >>

 You can do 2 damage for 1 mana (with a few different cards) - so therefore 5 damage is approximately 2.5 mana.
Pretty standard.

 That is not how the effects work in the game. You do 2 Damage for 1 Mana, but only 3 for 2 Mana, and as it goes up it doesn't improve much better. By your idea, you would do 10 Damage for 5 Mana, where in reality, they put that effect at 10 Mana.

If you look at card draw, the first card draw is costed at around 2 Mana worth, but once you add a second card to that, it only cost 1 additional mana, at 3, but then it goes back to 2 mana for a third and fourth card.

The way they prices effects is not always linear and there are probably reasons for that to happen. You don't see any in game effect of 5 damage for 2.5 Mana, the closest you see is Mind Blast, which is not 5 damage for 2.5 Mana, it's 5 Conditional Damage for 2 Mana. (They tend to do this. Eviscerate does 4 damage for 2 Mana, if you Combo.)

FFs is time that we the higher mana  players finally got a strong high mana card, aggro has been getting broken 1 drops they don't have to build around since forever while control had to conform with things such as Avian Watcher norsthea karaken or Tyrantus which are broderline unplayable, why can't control players get a strong non-build around 10 drop every once in a while???

It's a fine card in a variety of Druid decks, but I would never see any reason to play 2 of these in any deck that isn't specifically Jungle Giants ramp.  It feels so bad to draw the second one off of the first one, and not being able to play it because of how many cards you would mill.

It might be 20 mana worth of value on 1 card, but it's very selective in its abilities. Sometimes the 5/5 or the 5 damage isn't all that relevant, especially when you're spending 10 mana. The 5 armor is always good, but usually won't be a difference maker in the game. Finally, drawing 5 cards can sometimes be VERY BAD, especially if you plan to play this spell twice for 10 cards; fatigue is an issue unless you're going infinite with Jade Idol, and even then you have Skulking Geist to worry about. On top of that, a lot of the time you use Nourish to draw, and that can make UI useless unless you want to burn cards later in the game.

All in all, I think it's a super powered card, but not OP because of the many ways it can hurt you or just be useless in hand and you have to spend your whole turn casting it.

Quote from Echtvad >>

Ill take ultimate infestation any day over those damn jade druids - Never been so mad at a deck before.

The thing that screws me the most with Control Paladin against Jade Druid, is not drawing my clears after Skulking Geist; allowing Jade Druids to smash me with whatever minions they have on the board, and then, when I kinda stabilize, they just Ultimate Infestation me in the face - the card, aside from the obvious benefits, gives Druid extra reach, where there was only 2x Swipe before (to circumvent Taunts). Not sure if it's broken tho.

Do people actually run 2 Ultimate Infestations?  I run one in my hadronox druid.  2 just seems like a really stupid idea.  I agree the card is borderline busted, but I don't believe it will get nerfed.  In the end you're giving up a turn to do all this stuff and while you get a 5 mana 5/5 minion that's not a lot of board presence for 10 mana.  Really it's only broken in combination with jade idol, and really if you're facing a lot of jades on the ladder, you should just run Skulking Geist and then it's not a huge issue.  Jade Druids don't run much if any removal in their decks so it's not like they're gonna draw many answers to whatever you've got at that point.

Quote from Aegis24 >>

Do people actually run 2 Ultimate Infestations?  I run one in my hadronox druid.  2 just seems like a really stupid idea.  I agree the card is borderline busted, but I don't believe it will get nerfed.  In the end you're giving up a turn to do all this stuff and while you get a 5 mana 5/5 minion that's not a lot of board presence for 10 mana.  Really it's only broken in combination with jade idol, and really if you're facing a lot of jades on the ladder, you should just run Skulking Geist and then it's not a huge issue.  Jade Druids don't run much if any removal in their decks so it's not like they're gonna draw many answers to whatever you've got at that point.

Jade druids are using ultimate infestation, its makes the deck even more cancer if that wasn't already possible.

Granted, my experience is in Wild but I've run into Ultimate Infestation a few times so far in both Jade and Taunt Ramp Druids and I've yet to lose to it playing any of my current lists, from Reno Elemage to Reno Shadowreaper to Reno Demonlock. Every time the card is played I just think, "Well, the 5/5 is pretty irrelevant, the 5 armor is meaningless, the 5 damage hurts but isn't really that bad, and the 5 draws would probably be great if I didn't just remove everything he played with ease. Oh, he's in fatigue and has no cards/My board presence or machine gun hero power has ended the game."

It's worth noting that this is the experience of someone playing decks that can either push massive lategame board states or infinite value or infinite damage, but given that context I can say that I've never actually felt threatened by Ultimate Infestation. It seems pretty tough with Jade Idols, but I've even managed to strangle that comfortably with my deck selections. For all its value its in-the-moment impact is pretty low for 10 mana, especially against some of the higher power long-game options out there. Not to say it isn't a powerful card, but it's more limited than people make it out to be.

Quote from beskules >>

It is definitely  really strong but it also has the downside that you can often end up milling yourself or burn some cards if you didn't manage to dump your hand to not more then 4 cards

Definitely an OP card. I just don't know why they decided that Druid needed even more card draw, especially with Jade Idol still around. Nearly every Druid uses Nourish, Wrath, Wild Growth, which can all provide card draw, and some of the Druid decks that felt unfair were slightly balanced because it was harder to draw cards. Aviana/Kun/C'Thun, Astral Communion/Ramp, Jungle Giants, Malygos, all hindered to an extent because they needed to draw so many cards to be effective, and now they have the potential for 16 cards through 2 x Ultimate Infestation and 2 x Nourish. Gadgetzan Auctioneer being in Standard makes it even worse! Think of how hard it is to cycle with Hunter most of the time.

Ultimate Infestation is an abomination, it's pure cancer. Without it, we could be enjoying this expansion a lot, but no, Blizzard just had to release a totally broken card as always. Why do they do this? Are they retarded or something? This card doesn't even need to be tested to understand how powerful it is. WTF, just WTF... Currently now, I'm at rank 7 playing with Handlock, but seriously I'm really tired of this shit. I only continue playing because I love most of the deathknights and matches against other classes than druid are usually very enjoyable.

All you fools saying this isn't broken because it's a turn 10 card, smh.  I've had this bastard played on me on the games "Turn 5."  He had burned several cards ramping and was at 7 mana, then coined and innervated and killed my thing from below, gained 5 armor, put a stout minion on the board and replenished his hand.

Quote from zeroxz >>

its not as OP as some people are saying its 10 mana you must have low amount of cards in hand or you burn some plus fatgue unless ofc u are jade.

I don't think the card needs a nerf, but I do think it's overpowered. You know a card is good when people play 2 copies of it even though the 2nd copy is bad, just for the consistency of drawing it because it's that good. It's definitely one of the best cards in the expansion without a doubt.

No reason to skulk about this card.  I have a good hunch that it's the penultimate infestation and its ultimate incarnation will be markedly subdued.