Krapgar

Maybe should have put this in the salt thread, because I am definitely pretty salty right now ... but maybe their is some room for discussion here. 

IMHO, Something needs to be done about the Giant / Kadgar / CC combo. Crazy, over-the-top combo's in Tier 3 decks are one thing. They are another when they are Tier 1, and shaping a big part of the meta. 

If they get the nut draw, it's pretty much game over on Turn 5-6 if you can't deal with an 8/8 on Turn 4. Once you are staring down four 8/8's or 7/8 taunts, the options are pretty limited. 

And even without the nuts, you are facing death anytime you can't remove a giant. And even THEN, they can play the entire combo from hand at some point. 

I know there has been talk of HoF'ing giants, but I am kinda against that. Just bump the cost of CC to 5. The combo potential is still there, but it at least pushes it back a couple turns. 

Thoughts? 

I dislike nerfing CC because the card is fine in a vacuum. It's oppressive due to the availability of discountable minions, and especially Mountain Giant because there are only 2 minions that cost 12.

Some people want there to be another 12-cost minion with crap stats to hurt the MG+CC combo, but that's rather awkward because 10+ mana discountable minions are still very strongly associated with giants. An inelegant but effective solution would be to have CC summon minions for the manacost they were played rather than their printed cost. It'd probably kill the conjurer deck though, and I'm not convinced that something that drastic is warranted. It may be a top tourney deck, but it's not like there's no competition to it, and ladder is still all mech hunters and bomb warriors.

If you're that bothered by conjurer mage, try playing aggro for a bit. Mages are a free win and you'll quickly come to resent warriors instead.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Giants as always been good cards in different kind of decks, both control and aggro, but they've never been the problem. Conjurer's Calling is the problem: too much value, low cost, very flexible, too powerfull. HoF'ing or nerfing giants is not the right solution: CC is what should be addressed.

Everyone knows it's a problem but it's also the only thing making mage viable. Pretty much every mage deck has giants and CC (freeze, cyclone, dragon etc).

Mage only has an average win rate but it's very polarised. Every game I have played as mage you either swarm the opponent with early high cost minions they cannot deal with or you really struggle if they do. 

Quote From AliRadicali

I dislike nerfing CC because the card is fine in a vacuum. It's oppressive due to the availability of discountable minions, and especially Mountain Giant because there are only 2 minions that cost 12.

Some people want there to be another 12-cost minion with crap stats to hurt the MG+CC combo, but that's rather awkward because 10+ mana discountable minions are still very strongly associated with giants. An inelegant but effective solution would be to have CC summon minions for the manacost they were played rather than their printed cost. It'd probably kill the conjurer deck though, and I'm not convinced that something that drastic is warranted. It may be a top tourney deck, but it's not like there's no competition to it, and ladder is still all mech hunters and bomb warriors.

 

If you're that bothered by conjurer mage, try playing aggro for a bit. Mages are a free win and you'll quickly come to resent warriors instead.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is the situation pretty much spot on.  It's a cool mage deck but maybe a bit overpowered, but tinkering with it in almost any way probably kills it. 

I also think changing the mana cost of grave horror up or down one would make the deck a lot more balanced.  Getting boardlocked by several giant taunts is what makes the deck so strong even against aggressive decks.  

Quote From Lightspoon

Giants as always been good cards in different kind of decks, both control and aggro, but they've never been the problem. Conjurer's Calling is the problem: too much value, low cost, very flexible, too powerfull. HoF'ing or nerfing giants is not the right solution: CC is what should be addressed.

I would strongly disagree.  Conjurer's calling is a pretty balanced card when you're not talking about mana cheat giant situations.  I would say if you're going to nerf this or giant you probably just nerf this though.  A one mana bump on conjurer's calling is another possible solution, if a solution is needed.

HoF giants is the only balanced fix, since it's not a threat in Wild, just a good drop for Hand strategy.

CC is perfectly balanced at (3).

Quote From Chimera

I doubt they will actually change anything further after announcing the set and releasing a huge patch. They are probably hoping that they they can mitigate people's frustration with Conjurer's Calling and Mountain Giant by giving us new options in Saviors of Uldum. We know at the very least Priest has Plague of Death now.

They used to do that.  They also used to say that they never buff.  I don't expect anything now, especially since mages are supposed to be not that great as minion swarms and making a mass of 12 drops sounds rather..swarmy to me.

Myself I feel that we aren't going to die if mage stays as is.  They aren't oppressive or polarizing.  But I CAN see a change happening as well.  If so I'm guessing either buffing Grave Horror to 1 mana less or HoFing Giant.  Though I can also see them tearing into CC or Kadgar if they wanted to push that mage identity.

I'm fine with any of these or none of them.  

^ Buffing Grave horror to 11 would have indirect consequences on a bunch of other decks though. It probably wouldn't matter that much for Nomi priest, but any deck that runs sea giants and lackeys (zoo, water rogue, token druid, bloodlust shaman) can now evolve their sea giants into horrors (and then potentially MGs).

It wouldn't come up as often as the conjurer trick obviously, but especially with rogue it would be a pretty regular occurrence, and I assume people would just complain about that instead.

Quote From AliRadicali

^ Buffing Grave horror to 11 would have indirect consequences on a bunch of other decks though. It probably wouldn't matter that much for Nomi priest, but any deck that runs sea giants and lackeys (zoo, water rogue, token druid, bloodlust shaman) can now evolve their sea giants into horrors (and then potentially MGs).

 

It wouldn't come up as often as the conjurer trick obviously, but especially with rogue it would be a pretty regular occurrence, and I assume people would just complain about that instead.

You'd need a sea giant in your deck, AND a witchy lackey you didn't immediately use.  And it's changing 1 minion for another.  If all CC did was convert a mountain giant into one Grave horror no one would care beyond face decks.  it's having an 7/8 AND a 8/8 or having 4 of the bloody things at turn 5-6 that sets people into a rage.

Besides, right now if you witchy a sea giant it turns into another sea giant anyway so we're not exactly talking about MAJOR UNLIMITED VALUE here. Turns out I was wrong here so this would give an advantage as now hitting a sea giant doesn't let you 'heal' it so there's that.  Also we're not talking about whether people complain since that always happens no matter what you do.  It's about whether the combo is too strong and if it is what can be done about it and buffing Grave 1 mana would do the job without gutting the deck (you still get 2-4 giants out of a CC. You just now have the ability to die if you do it at the wrong time).

Personally I don't think it's too strong to NEED a nerf, but a proposal like the above seems like a very elegant idea to keep the overall power level while removing one of the biggest complaints that is one of the annoying elements of the deck (also eliminates a 'coin flip win/lose' RNG element).

Of course you CAN question whether such a change is even needed.  But if you feel you do I feel this would do nicely for all parties involved.

The deck is very hard countered by decks like Mech Hunter in standard, and in wild the archtype is far from problematic so I don't see the point of nerfing another card or cards simply because standard is a train wreck because of its disastrously small card pool. 

Plus, we have new cards coming out and I'd rather let card design shape the meta by introducing new counter strategies as opposed to the lazy design approach of requiring players to not think and just request artificial power exchanges from one deck to another by nerfing something that could have otherwise been handled with a new card that preyed on the weaknesses/strengths of other synergies.

If they nerf mage they should also nerf mech hunter and if they nerf mech hunter they should also nerf warrior and if they nerf warrior they should also nerf murloc shaman/tempo rogue and so on. If a mech hunter has perfect curve you (as a mage that only pinged until then) are completely dead on turn 5 with 5 minions on board and wargear magnetizing in somewhere. Almost any aggro deck with good curve that is left unchallenged for 5 turns will kill the mage, so no need to nerf it in my view.

Well it´s a decent deck but i do not see it as a big problem - normaly it is only problem if he has the Nuts draw - and that does not happen every game. Almost every T1/T2 deck or even T3 deck could kill you turn 5 or 6 with the nuts draw - therefor i don't think something about this deck needs to be nerfed!

I have another solution for this kind of situations, I mean it is not even a nerf or moving hof.

I guess the problem lays in discountablity and solution is The discounted minion have its discounted cost in battleground. If you play a 3-cost giant, It stays as 3-cost in the battlefield.

Same thing have been a problem in Evolve times too. They are playing it for 4 mana, upgrading it for 1 mana and it became 12 cost for 5 mana. it should have been transformed to 5 mana instead of 12 mana again.

A rule change fixes the problem instead of nerfs and hof'ing.

Quote From Dakarian

Quote From AliRadicali

^ Buffing Grave horror to 11 would have indirect consequences on a bunch of other decks though. It probably wouldn't matter that much for Nomi priest, but any deck that runs sea giants and lackeys (zoo, water rogue, token druid, bloodlust shaman) can now evolve their sea giants into horrors (and then potentially MGs).

 

It wouldn't come up as often as the conjurer trick obviously, but especially with rogue it would be a pretty regular occurrence, and I assume people would just complain about that instead.

You'd need a sea giant in your deck, AND a witchy lackey you didn't immediately use.  And it's changing 1 minion for another.  If all CC did was convert a mountain giant into one Grave horror no one would care beyond face decks.  it's having an 7/8 AND a 8/8 or having 4 of the bloody things at turn 5-6 that sets people into a rage.

Besides, right now if you witchy a sea giant it turns into another sea giant anyway so we're not exactly talking about MAJOR UNLIMITED VALUE here. Also we're not talking about whether people complain since that always happens no matter what you do.  It's about whether the combo is too strong and if it is what can be done about it and buffing Grave 1 mana would do the job without gutting the deck (you still get 2-4 giants out of a CC. You just now have the ability to die if you do it at the wrong time).

Personally I don't think it's too strong to NEED a nerf, but a proposal like the above seems like a very elegant idea to keep the overall power level while removing one of the biggest complaints that is one of the annoying elements of the deck (also eliminates a 'coin flip win/lose' RNG element).

Of course you CAN question whether such a change is even needed.  But if you feel you do I feel this would do nicely for all parties involved.

This is false. If you evolve/devolve a minion into a mana cost that doesn't exist, nothing happens. You won't get a full health Sea Giant, your giant will remain damaged. Trust me, I've tried early on in the season, not realising that Snowfury Giant had rotated out.

That's why this would be a significant change to the decks I mentioned, all of which typically do run giants and lackeys.

Quote From AliRadicali

 

This is false. If you evolve/devolve a minion into a mana cost that doesn't exist, nothing happens. You won't get a full health Sea Giant, your giant will remain damaged. Trust me, I've tried early on in the season, not realising that Snowfury Giant had rotated out.

That's why this would be a significant change to the decks I mentioned, all of which typically do run giants and lackeys.

Didn't realize that and edited the post accordingly.  Still though the rest of the overall argument is still valid and the question isn't whether people will complain about a new feature of a deck (they will) but whether that addition for those decks is worse than what mages do now.  

Upping a few T2-3 decks slightly with a stable upgrade to slightly diminish an RNG based advantage to a tier 1 deck seems like a nice trade compared to, say, completely removing mountain giants from standard or gutting the mage deck entirely.  

Again whether we need to do something is up for debate, but if we do, I'm not seeing a better alternative.

I'm truly surprised that this thread wasn't nerfed. But here it is in all its glory. I for one am in favor of the new name "Krapgar." I think this thread was created because another similar thread was locked by a moderator. The discussion here must be nicer.

My two cents: When the Mage has the nuts, it's really not fun to play against the mage. As has been usually true in other moments of other years, it's sort of like watching a person playing solitaire. When the mage doesn't have the nuts (probably 50% of the time) it's pretty much an easy victory for the non-mage, excluding the Warriors out there. The Warriors must cycle through all their stuff to eventually die against the mages, even when the mages didn't have a nice nut (draw).

So where am I going with this? Warrior right now is huge problem. Stop picking on the classes that have the tools to hard counter Warrior. Nerf the hard counter to warrior, watch warrior just become the 100% win rate deck to autopilot itself to Hearthstone Nirvana.