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 can finally play my Jade Golem Druid, instead of being forced to play aggro to climb
Now if only they would BUFF cards as well. Seriously, why the hell does Team 5 refuse to buff cards? You can't have balance if all you do is nerf. Buffs are more exciting as they made old content thought to be unusable finally usable.
Why buff a card when you can just put an improved version in a new set? Putting them in the set rotation means that there'll be so much more mone- er design space to be had.
There's break times inbetween expansions, so they could make changes then to keep the community active.
STB nerf is shit. The problem with it wasn't being OP. Many decks irrelevant to Pirates use it. Whatever, I think we will see the whine about 10/10, 13/13 golems soon. Control Warrior isn't really powerful while there are so many Renos and Jades. I hope Warrior will not be dead too.
So according you Azure Drake is OP? Or Ragnaros? They are good, that's all.
I have a great time playing Pirate Warrior even when I don't draw Small-Time Buccaneer at all. This is just free dust for me.
You're the reason these changes are being made. Your type of cancer knows no bounds.
I think team 5 has learned from the overwatch devs about how "not" to nerf something to the ground. FeelsGoodMan
To everyone complaining that "now that aggro is nerfed, Reno is going to be cancer" I hope you realize that by minimizing how oppressive aggro is, midrange decks will actually be viable again, and they can completely destroy Reno decks. Remember, the current meta of Pirates vs. Reno was created because Reno was the only way to survive against aggro, and any non-Reno deck would get rolled over. Now that aggro decks have weaker opening turns, you aren't forced to play only Pirates and by extension, only Reno. Hunter can see play! Paladin can see play! Decks that come online in the midgame no longer lose automatically on turn 1 because they can't run an OP 1 drop, and they can overpower defensive Reno decks with their bigger midgame minions.
Overall, I'm a fan of the nerfs. I would, however, have preferred -1 durability on the spirit claws rather than the +1 mana. The floors are really exciting, too.
I feel like we should also get our dust back for patches since STB auto included patches anyway. Now, patches is also a pretty useless card because of this.
lol
I didn't get full dust refund for my golden Mekkatorque when Leper Gnome got nerfed, so nah not happening.
I should get a full dust refund on my pirate warrior deck because you nerfed buccaneer
Patches is still pretty damn good. Gives anyone who is playing pirates a living roots that can attack with one of them at the very least. What could they possibly do to nerf patches? Make him a 0/1 that comes out of the deck to look cool?
You don't deserve any of it back
You have ruined so many player's fun and enjoyment with your cancerous aggro decks
I will never get why people play aggro and what part of clicking all cards in your hand and then clicking on the opponents face is challenging and/or fun