I think the OP has overplayed his hand - he admits that there are only three ways to nerf a card, one of which is unacceptable. Sometimes Blizz nerfs cards by changing stats, sometimes by changing cost - it's difficult to see how either is "lazy".
I'm not a fan of the nerfs, because they undermine the entire rationale of the Hall of Fame, and Wild in general, while undercutting Blizzard's own philosophy of preserving a "safe place" for casual and part-time players to invest in building a collection that will "never go away." The only way to preserve that safe place is to take the HoF seriously, and begin supporting Wild - it's difficult to see how nerfing a bunch of evergreens in December, and Feb, a few months before HoF relegations are meant to take place, contributes to their own stated objectives, or the health of the game as a whole.
What I meant was that changing cards by changing their cost should only be done when a card by itself is too powerful. Examples of this are Emerald Spellstone and Call to Arms. If a card's cost is already what it should be given its stats and effect changing it will most likely kill the card, especially for the lower cost ones since going from 1 to 2 essentially means duplicating the cost. If you want to change the cost of the card because you think the effect is too good for the early game (see Mana Wyrm) you should also increase its stats. For example I think the new Mana Wyrm should have 4 health for it to be a balanced card (if you play 1 spell it would be better than a vanilla 2 drop and therefore worth it).
Most of the balace changes are good, and you are not right about them.
Equality was too powerfull with 2mana, and was an auto include in all non-Odd paladin decks...
The same thing can be told aboit Flametongue totem, it was in all decks, and it allowed Shamans to buff their early garbage minions very early on.
So if Equality is fair at 4 mana, could you explain how Shrinking Ray is not broken at 5? It seems like a substantially better card for 1 more mana. I'm not saying that equality wasn't a good card, it certainly was. I don't know if it needed a nerf but as it stands, duplicating its mana cost is not the best way to reduce its power level.
Regarding Flametongue Totem it was only played by aggressive decks. Now at 3 mana unless you're playing an extremely heavy totem deck you're just better off running Dire Wolf Alpha instead. Minions with 0 attack need to have really good upsides and a 3 mana Flametongue simply isn't worth it.
I love how most people look at the balance changes from the perspective of the most powerful decks that played them. Sure, the power of odd rogue has been reduced, but at what cost? Well, 1 more mana, to be precise. Cold Blood is now a joke of a card. Just compare it to Blessing of Might and tell me with a straight face that it's good game design. And I could say the same thing about Equality vs Shrinking Ray or Flametongue Totem vs Dire Wolf Alpha.
The truth is that cards in Hearthstone have an inherent balanced mana cost associated to them. A 2/3 minion should cost 2 mana, dealing 2 damage costs 1 mana and giving a minion +4/+4 costs 4 mana. When you combine all the effects of a card their inherent mana costs should add up to the total cost of the card. There are some slight exceptions to this when the effects of a single card are extremely synergistic, such as Vilebrood Skitterer's Poisonous + Rush. If two very synergistic effects exist on a 2 card combo there's a lot more leeway though, since the extra resources you spend come in the form of an extra card you have to draw and use.
To shake up the meta and to force people to use more expansion cards blizzard is tuning down the powerlevel of the Basic and Classic sets. Now this isn't bad on it's own. Personally I would much rather prefer to rotate all of Basic and Classic out of standard and add a clasic mode for new and old players alike. Still, if you're certain about keeping those cards away from rotation and reducing their power level so that people play with new cards the way blizzard has ignored the very basic rules of card design that i described earlier shows that they don't have a grand vision for what Basic and Classic should look like.
There are three basic ways to nerf a card. Change the stats, change the mana cost and change the effect. Since changing the effect beyond just tweaking numbers (stats and mana) changes the card entirely I don't think it's a good practice unless the effect itself is bad for the game and needs to be replaced. Changing the mana cost is bad since as I said earlier cards already have an inherent mana cost associated to them. Lastly I think that changing stats is the best way to nerf cards because it lets you do micronerfs that reduce a card's powerlevel without making it entirely useless. For example, Flametongue Totem could have had its health reduced to 2 while keeping its original mana cost. The card is less powerful than before but it still feels like a 2 drop.
"But I hate this deck, or this other deck!" Some people will say. "I don't want them to be viable at all!" Well, it's true that some decks can be oppressive to the game but the only way for that to happen is for some cards in them to be OP. Emerald Spellstone is actually a good example of this. 6/6 worth of stats and beast synergy with no downside for 5 mana already sounds pretty good. Add the fact that you can go all the way to 12/12 by playing secrets that you want in your deck anyways and you have a broken card. At 6 the card is balanced because no one would put a 6/6 for 6 in a deck. Hunters would just run Savannah Highmane instead. But if you run a lot of secrets it's worth it. There you have it, balanced design. Still, I feel like the only reason blizzard nerfed this card is because everyone was complaining about it and they would not have been able to get away with this batch of nerfs to basic and classic cards if they hadn't included this one.
So to sum up, blizzard is nerfing decks, not cards and they're nerfing the cards that didn't deserve it because they want weak basic and classic sets so they can print better expansion cards that will rotate and you need to buy. Nice to see what they really care about after all.
There's one last thing I want to try out in this post. Below you can see some cards I made a while back for my custom expansion. Their mana costs have been removed and what I want you to do is reply below with what you think they should cost and why. I'm not expecting everyone to guess correctly but I'm interested to see if cards really do have this inherent mana cost I've talked about.
So, what do you think? Am I crazy and what blizzard is doing is good game design or do I offer some pretty solid points? Do cards have an inherent mana cost? Let's find out.
What I meant was that changing cards by changing their cost should only be done when a card by itself is too powerful. Examples of this are Emerald Spellstone and Call to Arms. If a card's cost is already what it should be given its stats and effect changing it will most likely kill the card, especially for the lower cost ones since going from 1 to 2 essentially means duplicating the cost. If you want to change the cost of the card because you think the effect is too good for the early game (see Mana Wyrm) you should also increase its stats. For example I think the new Mana Wyrm should have 4 health for it to be a balanced card (if you play 1 spell it would be better than a vanilla 2 drop and therefore worth it).
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
So if Equality is fair at 4 mana, could you explain how Shrinking Ray is not broken at 5? It seems like a substantially better card for 1 more mana. I'm not saying that equality wasn't a good card, it certainly was. I don't know if it needed a nerf but as it stands, duplicating its mana cost is not the best way to reduce its power level.
Regarding Flametongue Totem it was only played by aggressive decks. Now at 3 mana unless you're playing an extremely heavy totem deck you're just better off running Dire Wolf Alpha instead. Minions with 0 attack need to have really good upsides and a 3 mana Flametongue simply isn't worth it.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands
I love how most people look at the balance changes from the perspective of the most powerful decks that played them. Sure, the power of odd rogue has been reduced, but at what cost? Well, 1 more mana, to be precise. Cold Blood is now a joke of a card. Just compare it to Blessing of Might and tell me with a straight face that it's good game design. And I could say the same thing about Equality vs Shrinking Ray or Flametongue Totem vs Dire Wolf Alpha.
The truth is that cards in Hearthstone have an inherent balanced mana cost associated to them. A 2/3 minion should cost 2 mana, dealing 2 damage costs 1 mana and giving a minion +4/+4 costs 4 mana. When you combine all the effects of a card their inherent mana costs should add up to the total cost of the card. There are some slight exceptions to this when the effects of a single card are extremely synergistic, such as Vilebrood Skitterer's Poisonous + Rush. If two very synergistic effects exist on a 2 card combo there's a lot more leeway though, since the extra resources you spend come in the form of an extra card you have to draw and use.
To shake up the meta and to force people to use more expansion cards blizzard is tuning down the powerlevel of the Basic and Classic sets. Now this isn't bad on it's own. Personally I would much rather prefer to rotate all of Basic and Classic out of standard and add a clasic mode for new and old players alike. Still, if you're certain about keeping those cards away from rotation and reducing their power level so that people play with new cards the way blizzard has ignored the very basic rules of card design that i described earlier shows that they don't have a grand vision for what Basic and Classic should look like.
There are three basic ways to nerf a card. Change the stats, change the mana cost and change the effect. Since changing the effect beyond just tweaking numbers (stats and mana) changes the card entirely I don't think it's a good practice unless the effect itself is bad for the game and needs to be replaced. Changing the mana cost is bad since as I said earlier cards already have an inherent mana cost associated to them. Lastly I think that changing stats is the best way to nerf cards because it lets you do micronerfs that reduce a card's powerlevel without making it entirely useless. For example, Flametongue Totem could have had its health reduced to 2 while keeping its original mana cost. The card is less powerful than before but it still feels like a 2 drop.
"But I hate this deck, or this other deck!" Some people will say. "I don't want them to be viable at all!" Well, it's true that some decks can be oppressive to the game but the only way for that to happen is for some cards in them to be OP. Emerald Spellstone is actually a good example of this. 6/6 worth of stats and beast synergy with no downside for 5 mana already sounds pretty good. Add the fact that you can go all the way to 12/12 by playing secrets that you want in your deck anyways and you have a broken card. At 6 the card is balanced because no one would put a 6/6 for 6 in a deck. Hunters would just run Savannah Highmane instead. But if you run a lot of secrets it's worth it. There you have it, balanced design. Still, I feel like the only reason blizzard nerfed this card is because everyone was complaining about it and they would not have been able to get away with this batch of nerfs to basic and classic cards if they hadn't included this one.
So to sum up, blizzard is nerfing decks, not cards and they're nerfing the cards that didn't deserve it because they want weak basic and classic sets so they can print better expansion cards that will rotate and you need to buy. Nice to see what they really care about after all.
There's one last thing I want to try out in this post. Below you can see some cards I made a while back for my custom expansion. Their mana costs have been removed and what I want you to do is reply below with what you think they should cost and why. I'm not expecting everyone to guess correctly but I'm interested to see if cards really do have this inherent mana cost I've talked about.
So, what do you think? Am I crazy and what blizzard is doing is good game design or do I offer some pretty solid points? Do cards have an inherent mana cost? Let's find out.
Check out my Hearthstone expansion: The Shifting Sands