Hearthpwn

Quote from ObsessiveComp >>

A 20 health swing with a 5 card requirement is fine, if it only happens once.  Just make it only happen the first time.  You shouldn't be able to be reuse or refresh it.

 Well if we wanted to keep the card mostly the same while preventing it being used back to back, then I like the idea of just adding the requirement "If your hero has less health than your opponent's" to it. You can use it once fairly easy, using it twice would mean letting your health drop from near forty to below 20, and killing off your opponent with the snake would mean letting your own health drop below 10. The card would still be good, especially at getting your health high in a pinch and/or out of otk range, but more likely you would try killing your opponent with something else once you softened them up.

In case blizzard were to see this tread, I'll try to summarize all the opinions of this discussion and try to make the most rational conclusions. 

1) "Make it steal 5 health". This would totally kill the card, and Warlock would be better off skipping all the new Excavate cards and go back to Thaddius meta (which has been around too long already)

2) "No nerf needed". There is counterplay on control, but you would literally have to run a counter deck to beat it consistently, which would compromise your deck against all other decks. Also, this misses the point of it being a sentiment outlier, not a power outlier. The problem is that the bouncing mechanic is not fun for anyone and kills many control decks if meta.

3) "Make it end of turn/death rattle". Reverb is a problem, which is why death rattle would be way better than end of turn, so you can get rid of the bouncing mechanic and make OTK possible only with 4 card combo on turn 10. Otherwise silence as counterplay. But this runs the risk of remaining too strong, because snake + reverb for 40 health swing would be easy to achieve and it would require decks to run silence, which they otherwise wouldn't want to do. 

4) "Make it lifesteal" or "deal 10 dmg gain 10 health". This is probably the best argument made. Because the deck is not a power outlier, the main problem is it killing other control decks, and those are the decks that have plenty of healing and armor mechanics already in use. However, this does not get rid of the bouncing mechanic.

As a conclusion, I think all Azerites would benefit from a bouncing mechanic, but is not widely used for the other decks, so it would be most in line with other Azerites if they made it according to 4). Thus, this is holistically the best solution I can think of as of now.

Edit: I forgot a few arguments. 

5) "Make it cost 5". This would be small nerf and make it inconsistent with other Azerites and would not really change anything. 

6) "Make it steal 7-8 damage". This would also be an interesting change, to just find the sweet spot of where it's not too strong, preferably 7 in this case to be on the safe side. However, doesn't get rid of bouncing mechanic and little counterplay.

7. "Make it 5 dmg first and 10 dmg when excavated 8 times". This is essentially 1) with a cherry on top. Not ideal. 

Conclusion 2: 6) would be ok alternative, 4) best alternative in my opinion

Quote from Thex_ >>

Quote from Sableflame >>

I have to add my voice to the masses here... this card is just ridiculously overpowered with the amount of bounce that's available.

Once again it's abundantly clear that the playtesters and balancers who work in Blizzard's Hearthstone department have absolutely no clue what they're doing, or are on so many drugs as to make them the single highest component of Colombia's GDP.

 Repeating it once again: the quality of QA is rarely ever at play in any situations of abundant bugs or imbalance issues. You can have the best QA in the world finding every single bug in the game, if no time is given to the devs to then address the bugs, they still make it in the release. And it's neither QA's fault nor the devs' who were told to prioritize something else.

In the case of blizzard, the issue is and has almost always been the amount of money allocated to testing at all. They have too few QA that cannot possibly cover everything there is to cover (and they keep doing mass layoff after mass layoff in the QA departments regardless to cut costs). Granted, the snake specifically should have been a very easy catch from even the design step, so idk what happened there, but you gotta stop blaming the QAs man, seriously. For personally knowing a lot of QAs, i can 100% assure you: if you complain about a bug in any game at all (that had QA at all obv), the QA absolutely knew about it but it was just never addressed for lack of time/resources.

 I'm a 23 year IT professional... I've worked in literally every aspect of the IT process from cybersecurity all the way up to long-haul network management...

Yes, we absolutely expect some things to slip by Q&A - we're human beings. The tiny cancer cell that's buried in the MRI behind 2 other layers of tissue and could simply be an aberration of a structure... I get. It happens. You find it down the line when it grows and becomes a discernible problem.

What I don't get is missing the stage 4 blastoma that's large enough to apply to the USPS for its own ZIP Code... missing just how insanely stupid this card/effect is doesn't fall into the realm of "oops, undermanned, sorry".

Quote from Hsmati5 >>

 

2) "No nerf needed". There is counterplay on control, but you would literally have to run a counter deck to beat it consistently, which would compromise your deck against all other decks. Also, this misses the point of it being a sentiment outlier, not a power outlier. The problem is that the bouncing mechanic is not fun for anyone and kills many control decks if meta.

There is no control counterplay to the Snake. I tried countering it as heavily as possible, running Warrior with 2x Call to the Stand, 2x Rat, Boomboss and my own bouncers for the Rats and the Boomboss. It never worked. One time I came very close, pulled both Warlock's Pandas, one of his Brewmasters and Zola, but the son of a gun was also running two Celestial Projectionists...

Here is an idea how to cripple the Snake and bouncing overall: Nerf the bouncers (Panda and Brewmaster). Change their Battlecry to: "Return a friendly minion to your hand, it costs (2 [perhaps 3?]) more (up to 10)."

I think we all agree that the card is insanely OP. Deal 10 Damage and Heal 10 even without a minion already has a value of 10 mana. 

This card not only does that, but it reduces max health, it costs only 4 mana, it has a 5/5 body and it can be used repeatedly. 

What other 2 card combo in the game can deal 20 damage to the enemy, heal your hero for 20 and generate a 5/5 body and a 3/2 body? It simply makes no sense and I don't know who approved this to be released on launch. 

Possible Solutions:

1) Change card ability to an end of turn effect
2) Reduce lifesteal to 8 and make it possible to heal back up (without reducing max hp)
3) Make it cost 8 mana and make it possible to heal back up
4) Completely remove the minion and just create a spell that steals 10 Hp, it's better than a 4 mana pyro. Create another one after another 4 excavates
5) Change it to simply 6 Mana 5/5 "Deal 10 damage, heal 10". It's honestly more than good enough.
6) Change it to Dormant for 2 turns, Steal 10 HP at the begining of your turn. Then at least it takes 6-8 turns before you die. At least this offers the opportunity to fight back and try to win first. 
7) Change the Mana Cost to: Costs 30 Mana, Minus one for every card you draw from your deck. Then it's still a great 1 turn kill if the warlock gets you almost to fatigue.

Quote from HR_Rearden >>

Quote from Hsmati5 >>

 

2) "No nerf needed". There is counterplay on control, but you would literally have to run a counter deck to beat it consistently, which would compromise your deck against all other decks. Also, this misses the point of it being a sentiment outlier, not a power outlier. The problem is that the bouncing mechanic is not fun for anyone and kills many control decks if meta.

There is no control counterplay to the Snake. I tried countering it as heavily as possible, running Warrior with 2x Call to the Stand, 2x Rat, Boomboss and my own bouncers for the Rats and the Boomboss. It never worked. One time I came very close, pulled both Warlock's Pandas, one of his Brewmasters and Zola, but the son of a gun was also running two Celestial Projectionists...

Here is an idea how to cripple the Snake and bouncing overall: Nerf the bouncers (Panda and Brewmaster). Change their Battlecry to: "Return a friendly minion to your hand, it costs (2 [perhaps 3?]) more (up to 10)."

 I found the only way to beat it as a control warrior is to go full aggro. Ignis a 5 mana weapon with windfury that generates minions and flood the board. And that's only doable if you get Ignis + forge early. Everything else is too slow. 

So when this vomit will be removed already? 5 games out 8 are against this bs

Put renathal decks back to 40 hp opens up design space for deck builders to counter it with control not saying it works but maybe

Cant i craft Azerite snake anymore ?

Pure Paladin runs all over this deck. Instead of bouncing dirty rats, the move is to kill them before turn 10. Dragon Druid also wrecks the snek. Nobody is playing arcane hunter, but I’d bet it does great. I suspect there is a miracle rogue deck that can kill before shenanigans ensue too. The best counter is lethal damage, not dirty rat. Think about it. The whole community is complaining that rock completely kills scissor and they are scissor enthusiasts, so nerf rock. But nobody is playing paper.

Everybody is complaining that rock is killing scissors AND other rocks. 

This card is trash. Nerf it immediately. How the hell did you let this pass through dev/testing? 

This card is so good that you can see how good the deck is, Paladinstone over a year and this card is the problem. Paladin class is absolutely broken fix that and then look at the other stuff

What about giving the Snake "Lifesteal, deal 10 damage to the enemy hero", removing also the ability to permanently lower the enemy hero health cap?

It allows the opponent to heal back and it would make armor more valuable in this matchup.

Quote from ak3medo >>

What about giving the Snake "Lifesteal, deal 10 damage to the enemy hero", removing also the ability to permanently lower the enemy hero health cap?

It allows the opponent to heal back and it would make armor more valuable in this matchup.

 Sounds like a worse version of  Dar'Khan Drathir

Quote from Legend_Entomber >>

Quote from ak3medo >>

What about giving the Snake "Lifesteal, deal 10 damage to the enemy hero", removing also the ability to permanently lower the enemy hero health cap?

It allows the opponent to heal back and it would make armor more valuable in this matchup.

 Sounds like a worse version of  Dar'Khan Drathir

 I mean, it would still be better cause the fact that it is a battlecry makes it a good target to bounce back, keeping the same strategy 

I'd say give it the same sort of scaling as the Rouge excavate legendary, have it steal 5 Health at first but when you excavate 8 times it can steal 10. I know the Rouge restriction was probably added because that class has more ways to bounce or copy cards compared to Warlock, but it would stop the snake from basically being a 3 turn timer

Quote from Zizka >>

After experiencing various opposite decks, Azurite Snake is fine. The other decks just as busted. Leave it alone.

 Here comes the warlock…

So it seems the best Warlock deck for now is just good old Chadlock, that nobody wanted to play even before Badlands because it was so old. So the best thing you can do as Warlock is just ignore Badlands set entirely and you'll be fine. Hilarious.

Quote from Woxic >>

This card is so good that you can see how good the deck is, Paladinstone over a year and this card is the problem. Paladin class is absolutely broken fix that and then look at the other stuff

 Seriously. Any time Warlock reaches high win rates it gets nerfed immediately, meanwhile Paladin seems to get multiple archetypes approaching 60% WR every expansion.