Small-Time Buccaneer & Spirit Claws Are Being Nerfed, Ranked Changes Incoming
Nerfs are coming! Hopefully there's going to be a little less Yaaarrrr and guiding spirits in the future. The Patch does not yet have a release date, but is scheduled for the end of February.
- Small-Time Buccaneer's Health is now 1. (Down from 2)
- Spirit Claws's Mana is now 2. (Up from 1)
Discuss This Nerf
Discuss This Nerf
The new and improved cards!
Oh yeah, there's a wicked ranked change too.
- Once you hit Rank 15, 10, or 5, you cannot de-rank past that rank - exactly how it works at Rank 20 today.
Quote from ZeriyahUpdate 7.1 Ranked Play Changes – Floors
We’re continuously looking for ways to refine the Ranked Play experience. One thing we can do immediately to help the Ranked Play experience is to make the overall climb from rank to rank feel like more an accomplishment once you hit a certain milestone. In order to promote deck experimentation and reduce some of the feelings of ladder anxiety some players may face, we’re introducing additional Ranked Play floors.
Once a player hits Rank 15, 10, or 5, they will no longer be able to de-rank past that rank once it is achieved within a season, similar to the existing floors at Rank 20 and Legend. For example, when a player achieves Rank 15, regardless of how many losses a player accumulates within the season, that player will not de-rank back to 16. We hope this promotes additional deck experimentation between ranks, and that any losses that may occur feel less punishing.
Update 7.1 Balance Changes
With the upcoming update, we will be making balance changes to the following two cards: Small-Time Buccaneer and Spirit Claws.
Small-Time Buccaneer now has 1 Health (Down from 2)
The combination of Small Time Buccaneer and Patches the Pirate has been showing up too often in the meta. Weapon-utilizing classes have been heavily utilizing this combination of cards, especially Shaman, and we’d like to see more diversity in the meta overall. Small Time Buccaneer’s Health will be reduced to 1 to make it easier for additional classes to remove from the board.
Spirit Claws now costs 2 Mana (Up from 1)
Spirit Claws has been a notably powerful Shaman weapon. At one mana, Spirit Claws has been able to capitalize on cards such as Bloodmage Thalnos or the Shaman Hero power to provide extremely efficient minion removal on curve. Increasing its mana by one will slow down Spirit Claws’ ability to curve out as efficiently.
These changes will occur in an upcoming update near the end of February. We’ll see you in the Tavern!
I like these ranked change ideas. But I would do smaller steps of 2 or 3 ranks instead of 5 (yeah i'm a greedy bastard).
What happened to the Classic/Basic card nerf or movement to Wild? if anyone knows please reply. Thank you.
Patches was good because of Buckner. Like I lot of people I crafted patches because everyone else was playing him so you needed him to be competitive. If I knew he was going to be nerfed and only good in pirates I don't like a lot of people would have spent the dust. Blizzard needs ti give us a full remind to dust patches.
Buckner narfed!
Wow 1mana wisp
So, Blizzard needs 2 more weeks to publish a patch? Okay
There's a QC process Blizz has to undergo in order to patch the game across multiple platforms and clients.
imagine though. turn 1 small time buccaneer + patches + coin + evolve into totem golem + 4 mana 7/7. immidiate gg
It seems to be great nerfs, but it only affects aggro and midrange. Not looking forward to have Reno decks being stronger and ofcourse the Jade midrange decks. Aggro has a job of keeping greedy decks on their toes.
remember that reno jackson will rotate with the next expansion and even with this nerfs aggro will still be powerful
Awesome changes
Nice
At least its something on the aggro side. Good job on the ladder improvements
I heard blizz was banning everybody that crafted a golden buccaneer.
Then why don't you nerf Cogmaster as well?
It's not Small-time Buccaneer that is problematic. It's pirate warrior.
Sorry, but i think it won't be enough to stop the Shamanstone clown fiesta meta, as for Pirate warrior, the nerf doesn't change anything, since all Pirate decks will run STB. All in all, i am still hoping to see a slower, midrange and control meta. However, i am affraid that i won' t take it anymore if shamans will stay T1 and unfortunately everything is going this direction :/
finally thank you blizzard.