So with the upcoming nerfs to Raza, Patches, corridor creeper and bonemare, a lot of people are afraid warlock is going to be too strong since none of their strong cards have been nerfed and almost none of them are rotating out of standard when the next expansion releases. Dark pact is one of these cards because it enables warlocks to keep using their hero power without worrying about their health, and at the same time it allows them to consistently kill their own carnivorous cubes and possessed lackey's before those can be silenced. So I have been thinking about what would be the best way to change dark pact.
One change most people first think about is changing the mana cost, but doing this prevents skulking geist from destroying it, so this could end up being more of a buff than a nerf.
Another way to nerf the card would be reducing the amount of healing the card provides. I think this would probably be a better change in general, but it's probably difficult to determine how much health it should restore instead. So I came up with the following change:
Dark Pact: 1 mana spell that reads: 'Destroy a friendly minion. Restore health to your hero equal to the remaining health total of the destroyed minion.'
Now this change still doesn't prevent warlocks from enabling their possessed lackey or carnivorous cube combos, but I think it does force warlocks to be more careful with their life total. It also makes using dark pact on small, useless minions like kobold librarian a lot worse, which right now is a very easy way to restore a large amount of health while not sacrificing enough in exchange.
I'm interested to see what other people think about this change and if it would be a good step in preventing warlock from (possibly) becoming too powerful.
Thanks! Yeah I know Blizzard probably won't make any card changes for a while, but I still thought it would be interesting to think of possible solutions ourselves :)
Cubelock loses Mistress and N'Zoth, I wouldn't call that nothing. And there are quite a few good counters to that deck which we will see more of after the nerfs.
Cubelock loses Mistress and N'Zoth, I wouldn't call that nothing. And there are quite a few good counters to that deck which we will see more of after the nerfs.
Name one "counter" to cubelock which isn''t unfavoured by about 80% to the rest of the current meta decks(not counting highlander priest, which will rotate soon).
On topic: while I certainly agree that the deck needs to be nerfed, I don't think dark pact is the problem card at all. If you think about it, the card is actually kind of bad in isolation, it's the combination with other cards that makes it broken. IMO they should be targeting lackey, possibly increasing mana cost to 6 and making it a 3/2 to sort of make up for it. It would make the deck way less oppressive against aggro decks, and actually give us a proper way to counter it.
Cubelock loses Mistress and N'Zoth, I wouldn't call that nothing. And there are quite a few good counters to that deck which we will see more of after the nerfs.
Name one "counter" to cubelock which isn''t unfavoured by about 80% to the rest of the current meta decks(not counting highlander priest, which will rotate soon).
Aggro Druid, Aggro Pally, Tempo Mage and even Evolve Shaman - yes, Shaman is a class, and no, it's not as bad as people say, especially against warlocks. But I'm sure the new expansion will make things much more interesting.
Cubelock loses Mistress and N'Zoth, I wouldn't call that nothing. And there are quite a few good counters to that deck which we will see more of after the nerfs.
Well I said almost nothing :p
But as far as I know, N'zoth isn't really essential to the deck (I could be wrong about this though) and you also have to keep in mind that warlock isn't the only class that loses cards in the next standard rotation.
Just give it a week or 2, cubelock is far from unbeatable, and now that aggro and razakus took a big hit, new decks specially designed to counter cubelock will emerge.
We might even see control shaman\mage decks become popular because they are terrible against priests and high tempo aggro but should be fine against warlocks.
Cubelock loses Mistress and N'Zoth, I wouldn't call that nothing. And there are quite a few good counters to that deck which we will see more of after the nerfs.
Name one "counter" to cubelock which isn''t unfavoured by about 80% to the rest of the current meta decks(not counting highlander priest, which will rotate soon).
Aggro Druid, Aggro Pally, Tempo Mage and even Evolve Shaman - yes, Shaman is a class, and no, it's not as bad as people say, especially against warlocks. But I'm sure the new expansion will make things much more interesting.
None of the decks you mentioned has over 55% against cubelock. I don't know what is your definition for the word "counter", but that's not mine.
Cubelock loses Mistress and N'Zoth, I wouldn't call that nothing. And there are quite a few good counters to that deck which we will see more of after the nerfs.
Well I said almost nothing :p
But as far as I know, N'zoth isn't really essential to the deck (I could be wrong about this though) and you also have to keep in mind that warlock isn't the only class that loses cards in the next standard rotation.
N'Zoth has a huge board impact usually bringing back at least 3 Voidlords, that's why I mentioned it. I have been playing with a Cubelock deck recently (along with a few others) and many decks managed to clear the board after Gul'dan, but the second board refill is usually too much. If what people say will come true and Warlocks will eventually stop running Doomguards then Shaman will be one of the best counters to it: Devolve or Hex and there you have a Gul'dan with no effect other than the hero power. Yes, Devolve will rotate too, but let's just stay at the post-nerf meta. And Quest Mage laughs at Control Warlock.
Cubelock loses Mistress and N'Zoth, I wouldn't call that nothing. And there are quite a few good counters to that deck which we will see more of after the nerfs.
Name one "counter" to cubelock which isn''t unfavoured by about 80% to the rest of the current meta decks(not counting highlander priest, which will rotate soon).
Aggro Druid, Aggro Pally, Tempo Mage and even Evolve Shaman - yes, Shaman is a class, and no, it's not as bad as people say, especially against warlocks. But I'm sure the new expansion will make things much more interesting.
None of the decks you mentioned has over 55% against cubelock. I don't know what is your definition for the word "counter", but that's not mine.
First of all, Aggro Paladin has 60% against it, Tempo Druid has 59% (66% against Control Warlock), Tempo Mage and Face Hunter 58%. Secondly, you really can't judge a deck by it's overall winrate. Highlander Priest has been around 52-53% and still we know how powerful it is. There are many decks with a decent chance at beating Cubelock if piloted properly, and with average draws from both sides. I'm not saying it shouldn't be nerfed but it's not as oppressive as people claim. And Blizz knows stuff about the next expansion that we don't, you should take that into consideration too.
What is wrong my dear smorc bmers?Are you afraid that for once your wretched kind won't dominate the ladder?Are you afraid that you will stay back at rank 15 where you belong? :P Well don't be.There are plenty cancerous decks that are favoured against any controllock deck,like exodia mage and tempo mage and then there are non cancerous decks like control shaman,control pally,miracle rogue and other amazing decks that see no play because of the power lvl of smorc (oh yeah not smorc but tempo/midrangy bla bla) and raza priests.
What is wrong my dear smorc bmers?Are you afraid that for once your wretched kind won't dominate the ladder?Are you afraid that you will stay back at rank 15 where you belong? :P Well don't be.There plenty cancerous decks like are favoured against any controllock deck,like exodia mage and tempo mage and then there non cancerous decks like control shaman,control pally,miracle rogue and other amazing decks that see no play because of the power lvl of smorc (oh yeah not smorc but tempo/midrangy bla bla) and raza priests.
What is wrong my dear smorc bmers?Are you afraid that for once your wretched kind won't dominate the ladder?Are you afraid that you will stay back at rank 15 where you belong? :P Well don't be.There plenty cancerous decks like are favoured against any controllock deck,like exodia mage and tempo mage and then there non cancerous decks like control shaman,control pally,miracle rogue and other amazing decks that see no play because of the power lvl of smorc (oh yeah not smorc but tempo/midrangy bla bla) and raza priests.
Just give it a week or 2, cubelock is far from unbeatable, and now that aggro and razakus took a big hit, new decks specially designed to counter cubelock will emerge.
We might even see control shaman\mage decks become popular because they are were terrible against priests and high tempo aggro bit should be fine against warlocks.
This seems like good advice.
Midrange has been completely pushed out of the meta-game by all the Tempo-based Pirate-Creeper-Scalebane-Bonemare decks. It seems reasonable to guess that those decks will disappear after the nerfs, and open up more space for MR. The Raza nerf will also open up space for other Priest decks - Duskbreaker was the most-hyped card of K&C, but MR Dragon Priest hasn't really had much of an opportunity to shine, despite having a favourable match-up against Cubes. A couple of different MR Paladin builds were quite popular during Un'Goro and KFT, and those sorts of decks received some nice new toys in K&C - but again, they simply didn't have any opportunity to see much play in a meta-game dominated by all the powerful neutrals. Murloc Paladin used to be a very mid-rangey MR deck - it only loses Creeper to the nerfs, and could easily substitute some of the cards it used to play, like The Curator, or a tech-card like Spellbreaker. Tirion no longer sees play - perhaps the death of Tempo will provide enough space for the big guy to return to the ladder - I've seen folks playing greedy MR Paladin in Wild, running Cubes along with Tirion, Belchers and N'Zoth. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next couple months . . .
Among decks which already see play, Secret Mage seems like the big winner - the best-performing builds on HSReplays currently don't run Corridor Creeper, and the deck is almost 60/40 against Cubes.
In general, the fact that viable decks will no longer have to be good against three different decks - Raza, Cubes and Tempo - and can simply concentrate on beating Cubes post-nerf, should open up a lot of space for alternate builds and tech choices.
...But if everyone focuses on beating Cubelock, the deck that beats the decks that are favored against Cubelock will be the most effective. It's always fun to see people forecasting what the meta will look like when pro players can't judge single cards properly.
It's simple, really. Silence and then destroy a friendly minion.
Well yeah but that likely kills the card entirely, don't you think? What about "choose a friendly minion. At the end of your turn, destroy it and restore 8 health to your hero"? Just a thought.
I don't think dark pact should even have healing if lackey stays as it is. It should be destroy a friendly minion and take 7 damage (or maybe 5, 7 is a bit much). A dark pact is supposed to have a downside. It wouldn't make sense looking at the card in isolation, but right now it's all good stuff - 1 mana heal 7 summon at least one doomguard or voidlord (depending on whether they use it on lackey or a cube). If I could get an equivalent deal like that on a dark pact with a demon in real life I'd be thrilled, but usually they want to torture your soul for all eternity in exchange which is a fairly big downside.
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So with the upcoming nerfs to Raza, Patches, corridor creeper and bonemare, a lot of people are afraid warlock is going to be too strong since none of their strong cards have been nerfed and almost none of them are rotating out of standard when the next expansion releases. Dark pact is one of these cards because it enables warlocks to keep using their hero power without worrying about their health, and at the same time it allows them to consistently kill their own carnivorous cubes and possessed lackey's before those can be silenced. So I have been thinking about what would be the best way to change dark pact.
One change most people first think about is changing the mana cost, but doing this prevents skulking geist from destroying it, so this could end up being more of a buff than a nerf.
Another way to nerf the card would be reducing the amount of healing the card provides. I think this would probably be a better change in general, but it's probably difficult to determine how much health it should restore instead. So I came up with the following change:
Dark Pact: 1 mana spell that reads: 'Destroy a friendly minion. Restore health to your hero equal to the remaining health total of the destroyed minion.'
Now this change still doesn't prevent warlocks from enabling their possessed lackey or carnivorous cube combos, but I think it does force warlocks to be more careful with their life total. It also makes using dark pact on small, useless minions like kobold librarian a lot worse, which right now is a very easy way to restore a large amount of health while not sacrificing enough in exchange.
I'm interested to see what other people think about this change and if it would be a good step in preventing warlock from (possibly) becoming too powerful.
Great idea but we probably won't get another set of Nerfs for at least 4 months.
Thanks! Yeah I know Blizzard probably won't make any card changes for a while, but I still thought it would be interesting to think of possible solutions ourselves :)
Cubelock loses Mistress and N'Zoth, I wouldn't call that nothing. And there are quite a few good counters to that deck which we will see more of after the nerfs.
I would still prefer the text to read “Destroy a friendly demon”. That way you can heal yourself but not trigger the cube or lackey
Just give it a week or 2, cubelock is far from unbeatable, and now that aggro and razakus took a big hit, new decks specially designed to counter cubelock will emerge.
We might even see control shaman\mage decks become popular because they are terrible against priests and high tempo aggro but should be fine against warlocks.
It's simple, really. Silence and then destroy a friendly minion.
What is wrong my dear smorc bmers?Are you afraid that for once your wretched kind won't dominate the ladder?Are you afraid that you will stay back at rank 15 where you belong? :P Well don't be.There are plenty cancerous decks that are favoured against any controllock deck,like exodia mage and tempo mage and then there are non cancerous decks like control shaman,control pally,miracle rogue and other amazing decks that see no play because of the power lvl of smorc (oh yeah not smorc but tempo/midrangy bla bla) and raza priests.
If blizzard nerfs it., they would make it a 2 mana spell.
Personally I think the problem with cubelock is the charge not dark pact
Edit: and actually just cheating minions in general.
...But if everyone focuses on beating Cubelock, the deck that beats the decks that are favored against Cubelock will be the most effective. It's always fun to see people forecasting what the meta will look like when pro players can't judge single cards properly.
I don't think dark pact should even have healing if lackey stays as it is. It should be destroy a friendly minion and take 7 damage (or maybe 5, 7 is a bit much). A dark pact is supposed to have a downside. It wouldn't make sense looking at the card in isolation, but right now it's all good stuff - 1 mana heal 7 summon at least one doomguard or voidlord (depending on whether they use it on lackey or a cube). If I could get an equivalent deal like that on a dark pact with a demon in real life I'd be thrilled, but usually they want to torture your soul for all eternity in exchange which is a fairly big downside.