Hearthpwn

Warlock

I know, Warlock is not on the most recent list of classes to be nerfed, and I am a ControlLock player (always have been, even when it was bad / mediocre) so I am someone initially reluctant to Warlock nerfs; but when people feel that a class is too oppressive, even when it may not be, it can be a good hint about to attempt some soft nerfs / changes to sooth their design (I personally find Jaraxxus to be more problematic, in practice, than Tickatus, although I admit that Tickatus is conceptually damaging).

• Tickatus
  
  Rationale: the card currently has the effect of removing value / key cards from the opponent AND also accelerating the fatigue race in an uninteractive way which can feel oppressive when the effect is repeated a second (and even a third time). The suggested change achieves the following:
  
  • The adversary can now choose to slow down its rate of resource acquisition by not necessarily playing the expired tickets, giving them the win condition of letting the Warlock die of its own fatigue;
  • Expired tickets become valid targets for successive battlecries of Tickatus, thus reducing, on average the total amount of cards disrupted (soft reduction of it).
  • It gives another way to tech against Tickatus: build a deck that abuses 0-mana-do-nothing spells, such as Mozaki, Master Duelist
  • It thus decreases a bit its effectiveness against control deck, while remaining effective against slow combo decks, which Tickatus is by design intended to counter.
  • And last but not least: it preserves the lore of the card, which is something not to be overlooked (hence why removing the Demon tag, for instance, does not seem appropriate to me).

Question: this has the side-effect of removing the direct information about removed cards. While for some other cards this could be an improvement, I don't think this is a good thing for Tickatus (at least for the player getting tick'ed): if a combo deck gets its win condition removed, let's save both players some time by letting the combo player concede based off that information. So I would imagine this information still being available in the card history (and thus, deck-trackers), until they get a nice UI effect. One way to easily get this effect visually would be to keep the current Tickatus effect (remove 5 cards from the deck), and then shuffling as many expired tickets in the deck.

• Finally, maybe Lord Jaraxxus should be tweaked a little bit: it is supposed to be a card that generates a lot of long-term value, but I've personally found Jaraxxus to also be kind of a countdown-kind of card: with 24 possible damage to face, and thus just needing one instance of 6 damage, the attack of the summoned infernals, to add up to 30; the face damage burn is real. I'd thus suggest the durability of the weapon be reduced a bit, down to, say, 5, or something along those lines.

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Paladin

• Sword of the Fallen
  
  Rationale:
  • reducing the durability of this weapon, or increasing its mana cost, is a very likely change. The current 2-mana Light's Justice that draws three cards reducing their cost by one (approximate evaluation of its effect), cheats too much for that cost.
  • Given the curve-into-3-drop intended design by Blizzard for this deck archetype, increasing the mana cost to 3-mana seems too severe.
  • Let's thus reduce its durability by 1. To make the nerf milder (given that I'll suggest other cards be mildly nerfed too), and to increase the skill / interactivity related to this card, I have added the option to pick the secret being pulled from the deck. This is both a tiny boost within the nerf, but also an improvement w.r.t. to the play experience: there is a dimension of mental plays around secrets that is completely lost when the secret is cast randomly (e.g., consider saving The Coin in your hand to play around Oh My Yogg!: with this new design, there are mind games to be done about this where there weren't 🙂)
• Oh My Yogg! I would change it to cast a random spell that costs (1) more: it being RNG-based does not change the fact that the newly given spell ends up doing nothing compared to the initially intended spell; we are thus talking about an effect of a power level very close to that of Counterspell, which is a very solid 3-mana secret.

• Avenge perhaps not so surprisingly, this secret has always been available when Secret Paladin has been oppressive. Giving 2 health on a random minion makes playing around it quite RNG-based, and giving 3 attack leads to big attack swings based off this initial RNG. I suspect this secret cheats more wins than meets the eye, although I admit I don't have access to the premium data to back this claim. Assuming I am not too wrong, I would nerf 1-stat off this card (I don't really care which, I personally lean towards +3/+1, but if this is felt as too strong of a nerf, I guess +2/+2 is fine too). Another option would be to give the stats to an adjacent minion (which would also be flavourful).
  
  
• Similar reasoning applies to the Crossroads Gossiper: +2/+2 while Oh My Yogg! and the other secrets are around, leads back to this big-attack-swing-based-off-RNG I was talking about. I would thus nerf 1-stat off its effect as well; with, again, a preference for `+2/+1` rather than `+1/+2`, but I think it could go either way.

Note: I think applying all 4 nerfs (+ Pen Flinger's) may be too much, so I wouldn't be against skipping one of the suggested nerfs.

Mage

• Pot of Greed err Refreshing Spring Water: I suggest a basic +1 mana cost.
  
  
  
• Deck of Lunacy I find this card hard to tweak without killing it entirely, but I guess that changing the spells to spells that cost (2) more (or to make the transformed spells cost (1) more) could be enough? The idea is that a card should not give value AND tempo. That's where bad design lies.
  
  
• Apexis Blast
  

Rogue

• Jandice Barov (pardon the typo 😅)
   

Neutral

• Pen Flinger
  
  It's hard to come up with a change to this card that does not outright destroy it (e.g., changing its cost to 2 mana each time), or which may not be enough (e.g., making it target minions only), all while keeping the (granted, annoying) flavour of the card.
  I am quite pleased with this suggestion, though: it increases the mana cost of playing Pen Flingers by 1 per turn rather than 1 per time played, so as to keep it a bit playable in cheap-spell heavy decks.
  
  
• Watch posts? These card are very hard to tweak, since the moment they got more classic stats, they become quite bad. I think the Far Watch Post is strong but not too strong to warrant a nerf to any of its stats; so that only leaves potentially nerfing the attack Mor'shan Watch Post by 1? I don't know.

So, what are your thoughts on this? I personally find that many tiny tweaks are better than a few big ones, and I have tried to be fair in distributing these tiny nerfs across the most (un)popular decks right now, while also trying to keep them playable (a deck should and can be playable without being oppressive). Remember: nerf something too hard and that will just allow other decks to rise and shine oppress

As you can see, I have made an effort to justify the reasoning behind most changes, and made suggestions in a constructive manner. We'd all benefit from you doing the same 🙂