Hearthpwn

the cancerous zoo will run wild once again. Live zoo. LIVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I will preface this with my thought upon reading the nerf. 

"As expected. But this makes me sad."

This nerf makes me thought back to the banning of an M:tG card, Birthing Pod. For those who have never played Magic, this is a card with a mechanic that can bring a chain of creatures (a.k.a minions), of the pilot's choice, to the board by sacrificing a lower-costed creature. The deck is very robust and consistent, and can gain a lot of value through creatures that come back to life after being sacrificed, triggering their "Enter the Battlefield" (a.k.a Battlecry) effect upon their revival. Their explanation for the banning is that this card stops the printing of new creatures, as every creatures designed has to take into account the impact it can have with Birthing Pod. While reasonable, I still found it devastating. The card is a lot of fun to play with, and can inspire a lot of ideas with its "Toolbox" approach. At that point, I turned away from Magic. There is no curses, no cry for injustice. Like a broken up couple, "There is nothing left to say."

Fast forwarded to this Warsong Commander nerf. I have to preface this by saying that I don't play Grim Patron decks. I simply do not enjoy that playstyle. But in my humble opinion, this nerf is recklessly done. Instead of trying to fix the problem, they just throw that card away. They might as well have turned it into a 3-cost 2/3 vanilla minion. The deck, while certainly annoying with all the draw engines and some explosive plays, are very manageable. We as a player base, or rather, I as a player, have learnt how to play against the deck. And now this. No explanation as to why this is the suitable time. No explanation addressing how they approach the issue. Just a blanket statement crap "battles between minions and fighting for board control is what makes Hearthstone fun and compelling" and just BAM. Gone. 

The change to the card is laughable. Again, no explanation as to why the card is being changed into the current state. It is as if they just take off their trousers, pee all over the card, then shake, pee some more, and then just walk off. 

TL:DR - The change may be necessary, but it was implemented without the finesse required, or proper communication. I as a player am very disappointed.

I was expecting something like 3/3 or 4/2 Frothing. This kind of nerf actually makes Warsong irrelevant from this time on.

Patron probably won't die because you can still play it with Charge like old OTK Warrior deck but it felt from T1 to edge of T3 deck. 

R.I.P. Patron meta. 

Yay!  Blizzard buffed secret pally by removing it's hard counter.  Now every other deck on ladder will be cancer pally instead of every one in three!

So I was thinking, strongest turn 5 play is:

>Grim Patron

>Inner Rage

>Death's Bite

You end with a:

5/1, 3/2, 3/3, 3/3

You can still do that right now, and you can still flood the board, just without charge. Now you can substitute Warsong Commander with Charge, and just make Frothing Berserker your primary win condition. You just have to have two Whirlwind effects and drop Frothing and Charge on any sort of board and BANG, Patron is meta again.

OMG, this is a terrible change.

R.I.P. Patron

I always assumed that the patron nerf would see minions with greater than 3 attack lose their charge, so that patron was still playable but no longer op. It seems lost on people some times but, Grim Patron and Warsong aren't OP, even together in a deck. They are pretty easy to play around by slowing down so the patron's get decreased value, or speeding up so you deal serious damage before patrons come into play, or playing minions with 3 attack or more, etc. Their are plenty of ways to play around it depending on your deck, but the problem comes in when they combine together with Frothing. When you have all three cards, you can't rush the board or you might get wrecked by a Frothing play early, nor can you wait because playing Emperor into a warsong+frothing+patron+AoEs combo is a OTKO. The combination of "infinite" bodies (that also have charge) combine with AoE to buff up a charging frothing is quite insane and you can normally hit close to 30 damage between the frothing and the patrons you spawn without any intervention from your opponent. However, now you are taking the grim patrons out of the mix (for dealing damage) and letting the Frothing (you can replace Warsong with Charge) deal all the damage, which can be quite high, but no longer an OTKO. Basically a more highly conditional, more card intensive, version of FoN+SR that can deal a bit more damage.

I didn't really see the need for a change at my level of play, but surely they didn't need to destroy the deck entirely. The OTK was the problem. Now two cards at minimum are useless and one is far less playable than before. 

Wtf. I never had a problem with patron. Now the palladin cancer will destroy us all.

Good job Blizzard, you just made a class card weaker than an irrelevant neutral card.Dire Wolf Alpha

Quote from ainatan >>

Good job Blizzard, you just made a class card weaker than an irrelevant neutral card.Dire Wolf Alpha

Technically Dire Wolf Alpha is one of the Best 2 Drops Zoo can run along with Knife Juggler, Nerubian Egg, and Haunted Creeper.

Quote from ainatan >>

Good job Blizzard, you just made a class card weaker than an irrelevant neutral card.Dire Wolf Alpha

Actually Dire Wolf Alpha is a good card in, for example, Zoo decks...

Quote from ainatan >>

Good job Blizzard, you just made a class card weaker than an irrelevant neutral card.Dire Wolf Alpha

wat dire wolf alpha sees play in zoo your the card your looking for is Raid Leader

Most of the time when i manage to get the combo, its on an empty board.

Another card turned into unusable crap.The game already have too manny cards that none uses they are doing the opposite of what the game needs.Sadly I'm not surprised they do this kind of shit on each of their games (WOW,D3,HS), they create something too good (most of the time by sheer luck since they just throw stuffs around and the people come up with deck,builds,etc) and then ,they nerf it into oblivion.

Warsong was the correct card to nerf but they did it in the wrong way...it should have been, simply:

"Friendly minions with 3 or less attack have charge"

Solves the frothing problem without changing the fundamental nature of the card and still making grim patron usable.

it is so stupid to make such a change because it directly destroy a deck or say one kind of strategy. In my opinion, patron warrior deserves nerf due to its property of OTK, say that it lacks interaction with the opponent to some extent. However, it is maybe the only combo deck in current meta and playing well need many many skills which means it deserves Blizzard's support. If such a skillful deck deserves destroy, why not delete secret paladin which is much more stupid than many other control/midrage decks?