Hearthstone Nerfs Set To Arrive August 26

Several problematic cards are being tweaked to hopefully improve the current meta.

Blizzard has announced the newest nerfs to cards for the Saviors of Uldum expansion. The meta has so far been quite diverse, but certain cards have been running a wild bit too much. This set of nerfs comes with two reversions of previous buffs, as well as a nerf for Wild.

Mage, in particular, is hit the most, with two of the most problematic cards in its repertoire getting whacked. Luna’s Pocket Galaxy was previously buffed from 7 mana to 5 in the Rise of the Mechs event a while back, where it languished in obscurity until the newest expansion brought it to the forefront. That buff has now been reverted, which hopefully gives the player more breathing room to rush the Mage player down before the 0 mana Mountain Giants hit the table and get multiplied by Conjurer’s Calling.

Speaking of which, Conjurer’s Calling likewise gets the bat, being nerfed from 3 mana to 4 (an overall nerf of 2 mana across the two castings you get with Twinspell), which should likewise slow down the dominant Conjure Mage deck.

Over in Warrior, the infamous Dr. Boom gets a nerf both to its mechanics and flavor, becoming 9 mana rather than 7 (a move that would cause Boom himself to have an aneurysm I’m sure). This stops “Doctor 7” from running the game over quite as early as he does, and perhaps, more importantly, prevents the Warrior player from playing Boom and then immediately using his Hero Power when drawn on turns 9 or 10, making it more of a risk to play since it no longer gains you tempo.

The other nerf reversion hits Priest, with Extra Arms (likewise buffed in Rise of the Mechs) going from 2 mana back to its original 3. The original buff came at a time when Priest was in a rough spot in Standard, but Saviors of Uldum gave rise to a powerful, oppressively aggressive Priest Deck which made heavy use of the card to achieve a commanding lead in the early game and snowball easily to a combo-oriented victory.

Finally, Wild gets a nerf to Barnes (also somewhat of an indirect nerf to Priest for the most part), moving ist mana from 4 to 5. Barnes has long been the scourge of Wild (and Standard when he was in rotation) with decks like Big Priest cheating out insane minions on turn 4 and then repeatedly resurrecting them for easy wins. This nerf puts the card on a mana cost where many opponents can react with removal cards to counter the early “mana cheating” for huge cards like Y’Shaarj.

I see these changes largely as positive and hope that having to revert two buffs doesn’t leave Blizzard leery of trying it again. With those two exceptions the Rise of the Mechs buffs were largely successful in making cards that were rarely or never used components in successful decks, and some of them ending up a little too successful an expansion later is, to me, a small price to pay for cards like Glowstone Technician becoming playable, and even powerful.