The dreaded Aggro Shaman is getting some substantial nerfs.
There was a time where Blizzard was fairly “hands-off” when it came to nerfing Hearthstone cards. It’s philosophy was to allow players to find their own strategies, and to have new cards counter old, powerful cards. But that all changed when the standard format launched earlier in the year, and more cards were nerfed in a single patch than the entire history of the game.
Now Blizzard is at it again, announcing nerfs for seven cards in a single patch, with Warrior, Hunter, and Yogg-Saron decks taking the brunt of things. Check out the nerfs in the gallery below, and the summary of what was nerfed and why below that:
- Yogg-Saron: Yogg now stops casting spells if it is killed, transformed, or returned to your hand. This is a fairly huge nerf, as Yogg is already the wildest wild card out there, and a huge risk to play. Playing a ten mana minion after deliberately playing as many spells as possible during the game to buff it, only to have it immediately assassinate itself is not great. This nerf hits token Druid and tempo Mage the hardest, and my prediction is that Yogg won’t really see much play anymore.
- Rockbiter Weapon: The first Shaman nerf kills the “16 damage Doomhammer” combo, in which players could equip the Doomhammer and cast two Rockbiter Weapons on it for insane burst potential. Increasing the mana cost by one kills the combo while still keeping the spell as a viable removal.
- Abusive Sergeant: A staple in aggro and zoo decks, the problem with this card is that while the effect is very powerful, its not uncommon for players to simply play the card “naked” if they have no better plays, in order to start racking up face damage with its 2 attack. Reducing it to 1 attack makes it more of a utility card.
- Tuskarr Totemic: This is the really big one: Tuskarr Totemic now only summons one of the basic four Shaman totems that his hero power can summon. Having a Tuskarr drop a Totem Golem, or a Flametounge Totem was such an incredible tempo swing for a mere 3 mana.
- Charge: Blizzard really, really doesn’t like “One-hit KO” decks – decks that build up a specific combo of cards in your hand in order to deal over 30 damage in a single turn. The latest such OHKO deck revolved around Raging Worgen and Charge. This change kills the deck, and to be honest, kills Charge as a card as well.
- Call of The Wild: This card essentially read: “If you have board control, win the game. If you don’t, get board control.” It was an incredibly powerful swing card for just 8 mana. Increasing it to 9 mana is a decent nerf, keeping it viable but reducing its value.
- Execute: Execute is such an efficient removal for just 1 mana. If you have any minions on the board, it’s essentially a 1 mana Assassinate, and with all the cheap chip damage Warrior has at its disposal, such as Whirlwind and Inner Rage, means that Warrior can essentially remove any minion for extremely cheap. I think this is a fair nerf
As always, when the nerfs go live in the next patch, all of these cards will be disenchantable for their full dust values. That means if you have a Yogg-Saron, you can disenchant it for 1600 dust!
Source: Blizzard
