The Hearthstone developers have announced the next set of nerfs to come to the game. The Hearthstone new card nerfs were Giggling Inventor, Mana Wyrm and Aviana. Only three cards were chosen, with one of them being exclusively in Wild play. A lot of pros are disappointed by the lack of nerfs to Druid class cards, as Druid has sat atop of the meta for a while now.
Giggling Inventor
Giggling Inventor has been the most prevalent card in the meta. This nerf comes after the In The Works update stated that they weren’t planning any changes to the card. Inventor goes from five mana to seven mana with the nerf. This removes the issue of it being included in decks that it really shouldn’t.
A lot of cards that were being played to counter it will now also move out of the meta, like Blood Knight. Mossy Horror might not completely go away just because Spreading Plague was left untouched. The nerf lowers the card in Quest Rogue which was able to really abuse it.
They sort of intended the nerf to hit Quest Rogue the hardest, but now aggressive decks that abuse the card will no longer have a cheap taunt tool with many targets for Fungalmancer. Blizzard also mentioned that they were play testing the card with unreleased cards at six mana. They said it was still too powerful as a stand alone card, which seems to imply that they are not printing another powerful neutral taunt like that in the near future.
Mana Wyrm
The Mana Wyrm nerf has already been mentioned as being reminiscent of the Hex nerf for Shaman. Mage isn’t really a very good class right now, and nerfing this card seems out of place. The nerf for Mana Wyrm has been long overdue, from when the game had many very powerful one drop cards.
This was the nail in the coffin for Aggro Mage players. The intent is to open up future design space for the cards in the Mage class.
Many players felt that relying on getting a one drop on turn one to win the majority of their games just didn’t feel good.
They stated that the card veered them away from cheap and powerful Mage spells. So this could open up some new aggressive Mage spells in the future which might revive the Aggro Mage deck. For now, Mage will have to suffer in the cellar.
Aviana
Aviana is being increased to 10 mana from 9. This nerf significantly slows down all of the wild combo decks that use Aviana and Kun the Forgotten King. Juicy Psychmelon will no longer draw both of the cards and now innervate or the coin will be required in order to even use the combo.
This change was certainly a necessity for Wild play. However, given the status of Standard play, it seems strange to choose this nerf over other Standard cards that might be more needing of a nerf. Druid will still be highly impactful in Wild anyway due to the strength of all of the other Druid class cards.
Many professional players have voiced their disappointment at the overall lack of nerfs for Druid in Standard play. Many would like to have seen nerfs to cards like Spreading Plague, due to its ability to simply buy a lot of time for the powerful late games of Druid. Hopefully, the Hearthstone balance team addresses Druid in the near future.
Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment via the official Hearthstone website.
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