Reverted Nerfs Announced - Druid, Hunter & Mage
A selection of Nerfed cards will see their nerfs reverted later this month and before Forged in the Barrens goes live. Blizzard announced the cards for Druid, Hunter and Mage, as well as technically Demon Hunter, which sees no cards being reverted.
The Changes:
- Keeper of the Grove from 2/2 stat line back to a 2/4 stat line.
- Ancient of Lore Same stats, now has choice to draw 2 cards, instead of 1 again.
- Starving Buzzard Now a 2 mana 2/1 with same card text again.
- Flare Now costs 1 Mana.
- Dinotamer Brann Now costs 7 Mana again.
- Hunter's Mark Now costs 1 Mana.
- Mana Wyrm Now a 1 Mana 1/2 stat line.
- Conjurer's Calling Now costs 3 Mana again.
- Dragoncaster Now costs 6 Mana again.
Accompanying this will be a change to Wyrm Weaver to a 4 Mana 3/5 statline with the Spellburst effect "Summon two 1/2 Mana Wyrms".
Quote from Alec DawsonWhen the 20.0 patch goes live later this month, there'll be a number of nerf reverts. This is before content unlock/rotation, so for a short period of time there will be a very interesting Standard meta. When considering reverts for 2021, we also considered future rotations. 1/4
Quote from Alec DawsonCould a card come back into Standard? We chose to softly revert those, as we'd like to avoid cards shifting between two costs or statlines each year. This will be the case for cards like Mana Wyrm or Flametongue Totem. They'll be back one day! 2/4
Quote from Alec DawsonAnother factor was looking at the level of positivity a revert brings to the Wild environment. Adding power to already strong archetypes wasn't high on our list so you won't see cards like Level Up being reverted this year. Want these reverts to enable you to play old decks. 3/4
Quote from Alec DawsonHere's a batch for today. DH gets none, so we'll do Druid, Hunter, and Mage. Full revert unless noted.
Druid:
Keeper of the Grove
Ancient of Lore (*editor's note, originally tweeted Ancient of War, but corrected to Lore later.)
Hunter:
Starving Buzzard
Flare
Dinotamer Brann
Hunter's Mark (costs 1)
Mage:
Mana Wyrm (1 mana, 1/2)
Conjurer's Calling
Dragoncaster
Quote from Alec DawsonAs part of this Wyrm Weaver moves down to a 4 mana, 3/5 and summons two 1/2 Mana Wyrms.
I'm completely aware that these are buffs. But my question still stands valid, mana shift from odd to even and vice versa can be seen as a nerf for certain Genn/Baku decks.
This is a greedy loophole finding mentality. Sad you even asked. Blizzard is finally being more proactive with card changes and people like you discourage them from doing so.
Then change a card in a way it doesn't shift the mana cost from odd to even and vice versa. It's Blizzards fault that such loophole exists, since they were well aware what they were doing printing Genn and Baku. And I why it's such a problem when I'm asking a simple question about full dust disenchant value? I mean the whole idea behind rotating core set is to get rid of HoF and so Blizzard don't need to give free dust for people anymore.
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Actually in Modern Hearthstone, Ancient of Lore is super weak. There are better card draws and stronger cards overall. I'd take Marsh Hydra anytime over this.
The only huge card is Starving Buzzard. This will shake things A LOT. I still insist that they could make the text say "play" instead of "summon" so that it won't get abused.
Exactly!
Buzzard + trigger some beast summons, this is big.
I dont know if Unleash the Hounds is still available, if so Buzzard + UTH for 5 mana is completely broken.
Oh the irony.
For the cards that rarely saw play, huzzah! For the cards that were still being commonly used, what the heck!?
Which of the above cards are seeing play in Wild?
Honestly, I am very pleased with the reverse nerf for Ancient of Lore. I remember this guy from the Warcraft 3 days and I always enjoyed playing it in my druid decks all the way from the beginning until the nerf in April 2016. The nerf felt harsh and unnecessary at that time.
It seems that the reason for nerfing it has been undermined by time because of druids good card drawing options:
"Drawing cards is powerful in Hearthstone, and Ancient of Lore easily found its way into nearly every popular Druid deck. We’d like Druid players to feel that other cards can compete with Ancient of Lore, so we’ve reduced the number of cards drawn from 2 to 1."
Yep, so we rather print 5 mana 5/4 stealth beast tag minion which draws 2 cards every time it attacks.
And for rogue we rather print 1 mana draw 4 cards. Why? Because we can!
Well sure Scholomance introduced some next level drawing options that managed to be meta defining (2 of them nerfed and we're likely not done), but the ancient of lore nerf was 4 years ago friend. Your Guinea pig has already died twice in this time frame, where getting two cards + a body has just lost its impact significantly. Mainly because mid range decks have moved from value to tempo focused plays and control decks run cheap draw + removal to survive the tempo and aggro decks we've gotten.
I was mostly reffering to this part "Drawing cards is powerful in Hearthstone...". Yeah, it was 5 years ago, but this statement is and will be truthful as long Hearthstone exists.
And then they printed Ultimate Infestation a year later. Maybe they thought it wouldn't see play with Ancient of Lore around?
same, it's also not really about the class but moreso about the card imo . the card definitely did need more love although this may have been a bit too much ...
Now get equality back to 2 mana pls.
They didn't fully revert the Hunter's Mark nerf either!
Blizzard looks more clueless than ever
Starving Buzzard ? OMG! I love it, finaly card draw for hunter, maybe we can build control decks?!
I'm thinking more in a quest/token mid range vibe, but an actual control Hunter "revival" is more than welcome.