Hearthstone Nerfs: Winners and Losers
Author: PVDDR - Twitter | TwitchTV
Hello! As you’ve probably heard, Leeroy Jenkins and Starving Buzzard were both nerfed this past Monday. I don’t think the cards were actually overwhelmingly powerful, but they were overwhelmingly oppressive and overwhelmingly unfun to play against, so I’m glad they were nerfed. Playing against Hunter every second Ladder game was getting quite annoying and, in this spot, perceived power is as much of a problem as actual power.
These were nerfs directed at Hunter, Rogue and, to a lesser extent, Warlock, but that doesn’t mean only decks that used those cards will be affected by them - the whole metagame is going to change as a response, and I believe it’s going to get significantly slower. In this article, I’m going to analyse this new metagame, and I’m going to talk about who I think are the biggest winners and biggest losers from the changes. We’ll start with decks, then move to individual cards.
Loser: Hunter
Well, this one is pretty obvious. A lot of Hunter’s power came from its ability to have a powerful early and a powerful late game, and a big part of that mid-late game was the Unleash the Hounds and Starving Buzzard combo. You still get Unleash, but now you don’t draw cards for your troubles, so you are a little more all-in on the early threats; if you let yourself fall behind on board while the opponent is still at a high life total, you’re probably not winning the game anymore.
A week ago, we had the first preview of a Buzzardless metagame with the second Prismata Cup. In that tournament, Buzzard and Leeroy were globally banned, and not a single soul played a Hunter deck. Does this mean Hunter is dead? No, I don’t think it necessarily is, it’s much weaker, that’s for sure, but I don’t think it’ll disappear entirely.
The big thing about Hunter is that it’s now going to occupy a unique spot in the metagame - it will be the most aggressive deck that doesn’t care as much about Taunts. As a tournament counter to things like Handlock and Freeze Mage, I believe it’s still going to be decent. In a way, being nerfed is a blessing for Hunter, because people will change their decks drastically on the expectation that they will not face Hunter, and then you can catch them off guard with it.
“But PV, if Hunter is still viable as a counterpick, why did no one play it at the Prismata Cup?”. Three main reasons. One, Prismata Cup was Blind Pick. That made playing Counter decks very risky, as you could simply not get paired against the deck you are supposed to counter. In a different tournament format, one you know you are going to be paired against a certain deck, that could be different. Two, there were only three deck slots in the Prismata Cup, and people didn’t want to use one for something fringe like a Counter when they would have to end up playing that deck against a lot of different archetypes. Three, the nerf was (and still is) super new, and people hadn’t had the time to fully explore it. I believe that in the future we might see some decent Hunter decks.
Winner: Handlock
The nerfs affect Handlock positively and negatively, but the positives vastly outweigh the negatives. The positive, of course, is that the single best deck against you - Hunter - is now much less popular. In Magic, we have a saying that “you want to be either much faster than your opponent, or a little slower”. If you’re a lot slower, they will kill you before you can cast your spells, and if you’re a little faster, you won’t be able to do that to them and you will eventually lose to their more powerful cards. In a land of big decks, Handlock is the biggest, and when speed and life are not a factor, it reigns supreme. I believe we are looking into a land of slow decks. Almost every player in the Prismata Cup had a Warlock deck (of the 12 players in the finals, only Jab and Dog didn’t have it), and I believe most of those were Handlock.
That being said, the nerfs did hit Handlock. First, Miracle Rogue is now less of a prevalent deck, and that was one of your good matchups. If Miracle Rogue does exist, it might run Malygos, which would make them better against you than the Leeroy version, since you can’t hide under a wall of Taunts anymore. Second, you lost your own Leeroy burst combo of Leeroy + Power Overwhelming + Faceless. That combo was cool, but I don’t think it was exactly needed - you can always just kill them slowly with something like Lord Jaraxxus, you don’t need the burst. If you want to, you can run Arcane Golem + double Power Overwhelming + Faceless Manipulator, but my inclination is that you don’t want to. In the Prismata Cup finals, not a single player played any Charge guy, though most people played Faceless Manipulator anyway and some even played Power Overwhelming (one guy played two Power Overwhelmings and no Charge guys!)
For reference, here is Kolento’s Prismata Cup winning deck:
Handlock being awesome doesn’t mean it can’t be beaten, of course. It does have some unfavorable matchups, such as Shaman or Paladin, but it will beat those decks a lot of the time since it’s so much more consistent than they are. I think that, post-nerfs, Handlock will be the single most popular deck, both in Ladder and in tournaments, and people will change their decks specifically to beat it.
Loser: Miracle Rogue
Miracle Rogue lost its kill condition and, unlike Handlock, it actually needed it. You often draw your entire deck with Miracle Rogue, and you need to have something to actually kill them after that happens. Now you have three options:
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You play Malygos. This is much more expensive than what you previously had, and a card like Shadowstep was much better than Sinister Strike is outside of their respective combos, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Playing Malygos might have some outside benefits such as being better against Handlock’s taunts.
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You play Southsea Deckhand, double Cold Blood and Faceless Manipulator. This is not so bad, and it uses the same four cards people usually used before (2 Shadowstep + Leeroy + Cold Blood versus 2 Cold Blood, Deckhand, Faceless).
I imagine this will be the go-to build after people experiment a bit, but it’s certainly worse than what you had before, since it requires drawing at least three specific cards for it to do anything whereas Leeroy by itself would already deal 6 damage and Leeroy + 1 Shadowstep was already often enough to win the game.
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You play fair. This means playing minions like Sludge Belcher, Azure Drake, Shade of Naxxramas and Violet Teacher. I’m not a super fan of this approach because I think it’s very possible that, when facing decks such as Control Warrior, you draw a big part of your deck - even all of it - and you are simply unable to win the game. Playing those minions gives you a potentially better early-game, but they are bad cards late, and in a deck such as Miracle you know you will draw them late (since you draw everything). Here is Freshca’s deck from the Prismata Cup as an example:
On top of that, one of Miracle’s worst matchups, Handlock, just got even more popular. The saving grace is that a lot of the decks that beat Handlock are weak to Miracle Rogue, even in its toned-down version, so we might have a metagame going around in circles where if people warp their decks and deck choices too much with Handlock in mind, they will get punished by Miracle.
Loser: Undertaker Priest
The “Zoo Priest” deck was one that prayed on fast decks by going slightly bigger than they would. Now, in this new metagame, most of the time it’s going to be the deck that is slightly smaller, and you don’t want that. By virtue of playing cards like Zombie Chow and Undertaker, this deck sacrifices late game for early game, but its goal is to control the board, not to race with damage, and it’s going to be matched up against decks that don’t particularly care about the board because they will overwhelm you later on regardless of how far ahead you think you are.
Winner: Control Priest
If Priest wants to succeed, I think it’ll need to take a slower approach, with Mind Control, Thoughtsteal, late-game cards, and two Shadow Word: Deaths. This is Kolento’s build:
Winner: Freeze Mage
This is a reflection of your worst matchup - Hunter - being gone. I thought that, without that threat, people would dust off their Freeze Mage decks and be eager to try them again, but surprisingly zero people at the Prismata finals chose this deck. I think we will see a resurgence of them on Ladder, however, at least in the beginning, because it’s one of the most obviously impacted by the nerfs and people will want to try it.
There are two different Freeze versions you can play - the normal one, that kills with burn, or Hyp3d’s one, that kills with minions. I think both have pros and cons, and a lot of it will depend on how much you think Control Warrior is going to be popular, since the normal version couldn’t beat it if its life depended on it, whereas the one with more creatures has a much better chance.
Winner: Paladin
Paladin is a control deck that, like Handlock, is supposed to be favored against other Control decks, due to its Hero Power and its multiple ways to deal with high-powered minions. It’s even supposed to have a good matchup versus Handlock itself, which might just be the most popular deck. It is, however, much less consistent than Handlock, and loses a lot more games to its good matchups than Handlock does due to simply not finding the right cards in the right order.
Paladin’s biggest problem remains the same - it’s sloooow. A lot of your games go to fatigue and are super hard to play optimally, and every mistake costs. You need to be patient. I believe it’ll not spike in popularity on Ladder because of that, but it should become a much better tournament deck with this new metagame. Here’s Kolento’s deck again for reference:
Now, onto individual cards that I think are winners or losers:
Zombie Chow is a board-control minion; as a rush type of card, he is pretty bad and usually ends up doing less damage than a Wisp would. In the new metagame that I imagine is going to emerge, there won’t be much for him to actually kill, and he will be a liability in fatigue wars - not because of the five life, but because Zombie Chow is simply not a real card in the super late-game, so it’ll be like playing with 28. When you draw a big portion of your deck in every match, you have to be very mindful of what you put in it. I think we’re going to see a lot less of this guy in the future.
I’m not a huge fan of Thoughtsteal, but I think it got a lot better in this new, slower metagame; you have more powerful late-game cards to actually steal, and it’s kind of like the opposite of what I said about Zombie Chow - it lets you play with 32 instead of 30. At the same time, there will be less decks that can punish you for spending three mana on something that doesn’t affect the board. I wouldn’t play Thoughtsteal in the Zoo Priest deck, but I would in the control Priest deck, and that should be the Priest deck of choice for most people.
Winner: Big Game Hunter
This is a reflection of Handlock being so good. This card is amazing against them, and I expect it to see a lot of play, mostly as a one-of. In some decks that have a hard time with big minions, such as Warrior or Druid, I could easily see playing two.
The metagame should have slowed down, and Mind Control is incredibly valuable in a slower metagame. It’s a bit too expensive to play two, but most priest decks should have one, and if you play against Priest you’ll have to try to play around it in the late-game by baiting it with a less powerful minion.
A lot of the appeal of Shadow Madness for me was the ability to steal Hunter’s Deathrattle Minions. When they played Houndmaster on Webspinner and you got to steal that, kill both his guys and get a Beast for your troubles, that was particularly glorious. Now those scenarios won’t happen anymore, and I think the card is weaker as a result. It’s still fine for stealing Sludge Belchers and Dark Cultists, but I fear that you often won’t even have anything to throw those into. I’d be inclined to cut Shadow Madness from my Priest decks in the future, but people at the Prismata Cup still played it, so I could easily be wrong.
Ragnaros is an unfortunate victim of Big Game Hunter’s resurgence. If people do adopt more Big Game Hunters in the future, then I think it’ll be wise to not play Ragnaros as your only high-costed minion, because it’s just going to die to it a large number of the time (and you don’t want to get it Mind Controlled either). In a deck that already has multiple targets, such as Handlock, then it’s fine - they will kill your Giants anyway if they don’t kill your Ragnaroses - but in a deck like Priest, where it would be the only target, then I’d strongly advise moving away from it and choosing a different high-costed minion, like Ysera or even Kel’Thuzad (though I don’t love this card).
Faceless Manipulator is very strong now as a simple copy effect. It does lose its buddy Leeroy, but I think it actually came out as a stronger card, because you will have great targets for it all the time - yours or your opponent’s - and it lets you break the fundamental rule of one powerful spell per turn. In the late games that you get with control mirrors, it’s usually common for someone to play a threat, only to have it be answered the next turn, until someone is out of threats or out of answers. Threats cost a lot of mana, so it’s rare that someone can both play an answer and play a threat, or play two threats. Faceless Manipulator is an eight-mana threat that costs only five mana, leaving you with five more mana to work with, and I expect him to see more play right now simply because he’s a solid minion. In my Handlock deck, for example, I actually play two Faceless now, even though there is no combo with him.
Cenarius is quite unique in that it’s a very solid threat that is somewhat resistant to Big Game Hunter, Mind Control and Faceless Manipulator. If unopposed, he’s very much a nine-mana threat, but if they somehow steal or copy it, then they aren’t getting nine mana worth of value - they’re getting something closer to six or seven, and you keep something for your troubles. Most Ramp decks already played Cenarius, but I imagine that all of them will from now on.
Well, that’s what I have for today! I hope this article was enjoyable and I hope it helps you adapting to the new metagame that will emerge.
See you next week,
PV
(twitch.tv/pvddr, @pvddr on Twitter).
Deck list images from HearthHead
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