Stonekeep takes a look at which cards are still potentially problematic in the Classic Set!

Introduction

Hearthstone has one, huge advantage compared to the other popular card games. It’s digital. There are no paper cards, there is no way to play the game with real cards, unless you print them out yourself and simplify the rules. There are a lot of voices that say Blizzard isn’t using this advantage to its full extent, but I’m not here to argue about that.

Being a digital card game means that, like in any other online game, balance changes are very easy to make. You change one card – everyone who owns the card has it updated to its new version. The last batch of changes was made around 4 months ago, with the release of Whispers of the Old Gods expansion and formats.

Standard Format – is it Balanced?

Standard is the format where you can use cards from (about) the last 2 years worth of expansions and cards from the Classic set. It means that there is a constant factor – Classic cards, at least not according to what Blizzard says right now – are never going to rotate out. It means that we’ll always see cards like Fireball, Chillwind Yeti or Sylvanas Windrunner. It means that in order to keep the overall balance of the competitive format, the Classic set should be as balanced as possible. But is it?

I’ve heard a lot of voices, including the ones from pro players, that the balance changes to the Classic weren’t enough. That there are still some cards that are too strong, that will be always staples. It’s not really healthy for the game and Blizzard knows that – Ben Brode has said that they don’t rule out potential future nerfs or even removing cards from Classic altogether. As the recent Purify drama has shown, they are also willing to increase/decrease showing rate of certain cards in Arena to balance things out, but that’s a topic for another article.

There is also another thing. The Classic set is supposed to be core for deck building. Cards that you can always get back and put them into your deck, something like a basic kit, with expansions and adventures being more advanced deck building blocks. To achieve that, Blizzard should also consider adding certain cards from expansions into the Classic set. Some cards are crucial for the class identity, and are really well-rounded might as well be played until the end of time.

As someone who has been playing since Closed Beta, I’ve seen every expansion in action. How cards were wrongly evaluated, how the initial meta was shaping, how we’ve been surprised with a lot of decks that no one thought would work. And even crazy expansions like Goblins vs Gnomes had a fair share of balanced cards.

Since I like theorycrafting, I’ll write about two things. In this article – cards that could use nerfs if they’re going to be played forever and in the second one – cards from the expansions we have so far that could make their way to the Classic set. It’s based mostly on my own feelings – a semi-competitive player with over ten thousand Constructed matches under his belt. I won’t list everything, because it would take way too long, so I’ll focus on the cards that I think deserve it (nerf or spot in Classic) most.

Cards That I Would See Nerfed

This list will probably be slightly controversial. I mean, some of them are pretty easy and clear, but others… let’s say that there is no way to nerf them without making them useless. We all know that it’s usually the way Blizzard nerfs things in Hearthstone – they make them terrible. I’ll try to give some ideas for each card listed, but in reality it would require a lot of playtesting to see whether the new version would be balanced.

I was really surprised when Blizzard didn’t nerf it and decided to nerf Force of Nature instead. I think Savage Roar was a real problem here. The card is really broken, because it scales so well with the amount of minions you have on the board. But unlike Bloodlust, 2 minions on the board are enough to make the card good (not to mention that it’s 2 mana cheaper). Savage Roar limits design, because now adding ways to flood the board or minions that are sticky for Druid or to the neutral pool is risky. I think the best way to approach this card would be to remove the +2 Attack it gives to your Hero. It won’t matter that much if you have a lot of minions on the board, but it won’t be good with only 1 or 2 of them. It would be much more in line with Bloodlust (2 attack to minions instead of 3, but for 2 mana less), which in my opinion is well-balanced.

Another card I’ve suspected of being nerfed. This card promotes very uninteractive gameplay, is often played in a combo decks that want to stall the game. It has little to no counterplay, because current card that destroys Secret suck and would only be good if virtually everyone plays decks with Secrets. But I think that nerf is a bad word here. I don’t think you can nerf that card – they would have to completely remake it into doing something else. That would probably be the end of Freeze Mage, but I wouldn’t cry. While I like playing with the deck, it’s probably the most solitaire-style deck ever and it’s not fun to play against it.

Oh, this card might even be on the top of my “I hate this” list. I think the card is really poorly designed. It punishes people for doing what the slow decks are supposed to do – getting card advantage. Usually there is zero counterplay to this card if you play a slower deck. You will just have much more cards, because your cards cost more. On the other hand, Aggro Paladin can throw their whole hand onto the board by turn 4-5 and then refill it with this card. This card means that Blizzard can’t really print too many strong Paladin low drops, because Aggro Paladin will just be too strong. Or heck, even printing aggressive neutral drops is scary. I think the card should be nerfed to prevent the potential catastrophe in the future. I think the easiest way to nerf it would be to limit the maximum cards you can draw. Let’s say to 4. Drawing 4 for 3 mana would still be insane if you manage to do it, but nothing close to drawing 5 or 6, which happens. Alternatively, change the mana cost to 4 and it would be fine.

Okay, I have no intention of beating a dead horse. I think that Priest in the current state deserves only buffs. But it’s not about the current state – it’s about the balance in years to come. And I think that Power Word: Shield is one of the strongest cards in the whole game. You basically play it in every Priest deck. Every single one. It doesn’t matter what archetype you play, it’s not a meta call, the card isn’t high risk – you just put 2 copies into each deck. And you would probably put 2 copies of it into almost any deck in the game. It’s that strong. First of all – for almost no cost, it thins your deck. Unless you play a fatigue deck, you want your deck to be as thin as possible. Why? Because it gives you a higher chance to get to the highest priority cards fast. Or to draw your win condition faster.

Giving a minion +2 health often means that you can get a free trade. You have a 3/2 on the board, enemy plays 2/3. You PW:S your minion and trade. For only 1 mana and 0 cards, you have kept your minion alive while killing your opponent’s one. And last, but not least, it’s a spell for the sake of spell synergies, like Wild Pyromancer – PW:S is the reason why a lot of Priest decks run 2 copies of those. To nerf it, but not make it completely useless, you could change the health gain to 1 from 2. So it would be 1 mana +1 health, draw a card. It would still be played in Control Priest for Pyro synergy and in Combo Priest for cycle, but it wouldn’t be an auto-include into every deck.

Once again, I was surprised that this wasn’t nerfed. It’s a spell-only version of Innervate, and I think it’s really one of the strongest spells. While it gives you no card advantage whatsoever, it allows Rogue to get insane tempo plays. After all, getting 3 mana for free is very strong. But not only that. The even crazier thing is how well it combos with Gadgetzan Auctioneer – not only do you get up to 3 mana for free, but you also draw a card. The fact that it costs 0 mana makes it way too flexible. I think that the best way to change it would be to make it cost 1 mana. Seemingly not a big change, but it would make a huge deal. First of all – you couldn’t play t6 Auctioneer and immediately follow it up with a bunch of spells thanks to the Preparation. Then, some other insane tempo turns like Azure Drake + Prep + Fan of Knives would be nerfed. It would require one more mana to do the whole thing. Once again – even though Preparation might be not particularly op right now outside of the Miracle, now Blizzard has to think twice before giving any strong spells to Rogue, because of how easy it is to play it with Preparation. Have you noticed that Rogue has gotten almost no spells for the last few expansions? And the only good one above 1 mana he got is Shadow Strike, which isn’t even THAT strong.

Oh the dreadful Doomhammer + Rockbiter Weapon. The main offender here is Aggro Shaman, but it’s also broken in more aggressive Midrange Shaman builds. I actually think that the cards by themselves are balanced. Rockbiter is fine, it’s a good early game board control tool. And Doomhammer is also fine, because even though it deals quite a lot of damage, it’s over 4 turns and is countered by weapon destruction. When you combine both cards, though, you have insane burst turn. Rockbiter Weapon on something with Windfury means… 6 damage for 1 mana. A 1 mana Fireball into the face. It’s a bit too much in a class that already has so much burst available. And there is an easy fix to prevent that. Make the target affected by Rockbiter unable to attack opponent’s Hero. This way, it will stay as an early board clear tool. And combined with Doomhammer will still be able to kill two 5 health minions. But it won’t be the broken burst combo it is now. Plus it will fix not only the Doomhammer problem. It will reduce the burst potential of Al'Akir the Windlord and possibly other things in the future. Shaman is known for Windfury stuff. And in my opinion it’s not good to have Windfury and cheap attack buffs in the same class.

The card by itself is really balanced. It would be okay or meh in most of the other classes. But in Warrior? In Warrior it leads to the decks like Patron Warrior or Tempo Warrior cycling like crazy. Yes, the card is situational and requires set-up, but it’s just so easy to set it up in such a deck. Assuming that your Hero is damaged (and it generally should be if you play a deck like that), it takes only 1 damaged minion to make this card good. Who wouldn’t play 2 mana for 2 cards? Then, things get crazy with more minions. Getting 4+ draws for 2 mana is broken if it doesn’t require THAT much setup. Not to mention that “cycling” it for 2 draws is extremely easy.

I don’t think the card should be nerfed hard, because after all it requires some setup and it’s not unconditional, but I think that – just like in case of Divine Favor – limiting the potential draw would be good idea. In that case, I think the card would be balanced at max 3 draws. That’s still a lot, but kind of limits the card’s broken potential. Another way would be to not count the Hero for card draw and only draw a card per damaged minion. This wouldn’t limit the max potential as much (it could still possibly draw up to 7 cards), but it would be harder to set up the huge draws. Yet another way that I just thought of would be to slightly remake the card. It might say “Draw a card. If you have a damaged minion, draw 2 cards instead.” – meaning it would be in line with other card draws. It could only draw 2, under a slight condition, but for 2 mana as opposed to “standard” 3 mana (Arcane Intellect). But I think that it might be a bit too much.

One of the strongest removals in the game. I never had problem with Execute when Control Warrior was the only deck using it. But when Midrange Warrior decks started popping up, it occurred to me that the card is just too strong – it gives too much of a tempo swing for the Warrior and the condition isn’t hard to meet at all. We all know by now that one of the Warrior’s identities are Whirlwind cards and it gets something like that in nearly every expansion. If the trend will continue and cards like Death's Bite or Ravaging Ghoul will still be released, Execute’s activation will remain a trivial task. Most of the time, Execute is a 1 mana removal. Playing against a deck that already out tempos you, you try to protect yourself with a Taunt or at least play some big minion to make the trades on the board. And then you get it removed. Okay, every class can do that. But Warrior can do that WHILE developing its own tempo. He drops Ravaging Ghoul, Executes and that’s a 3/3 + a removed minion you want for only 4 mana, which still leaves Warrior with a lot of room in the late game. I think that at 2 mana Execute would still be great removal, but it would slightly reduce the tempo effectiveness of the card.

That might be the biggest offender in Warrior. But honestly – I don’t really know how to handle this. On the one hand, Fiery War Axe might be the single strongest card in the game. Having it on turn 2 vs not having it might change the win rate of some matchups by almost 20%. And that’s A LOT. I don’t know a single Warrior deck that doesn’t play 2 copies of FWA, no matter if it’s Aggro, Midrange, Control, whatever. On the other hand, it’s really hard to nerf the card without making it completely useless. Subtle nerfs are hard on such a straightforward card. You increase mana cost by 1 or decrease attack by 1 and it will suddenly be way, way worse. So while I think that the card really deserves a nerf, I also think that it’s necessary to keep the slow Warrior lists consistency in the early game. So in this case, I have no idea what to do with the card.

The backbone of every Aggro and Zoo-like deck. It has one of the most impactful Battlecries among low mana minions. Giving something +2 Attack, even if not permanently, either means you trade it up or deal 2 more face damage. Turning a 1/1 minion into a 3/1 for the sake of trading into let’s say a 3/3 is really big. It’s great at gaining the board control, and then it can also be used as a surprise burst. After all, 2 damage for 1 mana (as long as you have a minion to play it on) is awesome. And I think it’s a bit too awesome. If a 4 mana 4/4 with the same effect as this 1-drop is sometimes played in Zoo (Dark Iron Dwarf), I think it really shows how strong this card is. And it has the “vanilla” 1-drop stats too – 2/1. I think this card should be changed and there are two ways to approach it. Either give it a Leper Gnome treatment – reduce the stats to 1/1 and make people play it mostly for the effect OR reduce the Attack gained from Battlecry to 1. Either way, it would leave the minion playable in Zoo-like decks, but it would no longer be an auto-include in almost every fast deck.

I think that Azure Drake is THE most common neutral minion in the game. And according to vS stats, it’s THE most common card played in the whole game (their sample size is over 500k games, so I believe it). And I honestly think that it’s not broken and I wouldn’t change it in any way. But I’ve put it here to discuss one matter which seems really weird to me. We have no strong, mid game card draw minions in the game. The reason why Azure Drake is played so much isn’t because the card is overpowered – it’s because we’re in a heavy Midrange meta and there are no other options when it comes to card draw. If you play a Midrange deck and you need card draw, you’ll usually end up putting Azure Drake into your deck.

Gnomish Inventor is an alternative, but the card is much weaker. It costs only 1 less mana, but it loses 2 points of Attack and spell damage. Some decks run it, but mostly for the cycle part, they don’t care about the body. I think that nerfing Azure Drake wouldn’t be the best idea, because it would nerf the whole Midrange archetype. Instead, it would be nice to add more card draw options, so there would be a choice beyond “do I need a single copy of Azure Drake or two”. Even better, add more options to the Classic Set.

Closing

Standard format is, surprisingly, quite balanced. Even though one class (Priest) clearly stands out, overall the game is in a decent state. However, it doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be better. If the Classic cards will stay with us forever, the set should be perfectly balanced. If we get some terrible balance down the road, in some expansion, at least we know that it will go away eventually. It’s not the case with Classic cards.

Obviously, in perfect world we’d also see a buffs to underplayed cards that are interesting. There are a lot of cards that would make interesting decks if they were slightly stronger. But I don’t expect that, because Blizzard rarely buffs things. I would be happy if they, at the very least, made some nerfs.

This is only the first part of the article, in the second one I’ll talk about the cards from expansions that I would see in Standard. Stay tuned!