A Case for an Unnerfing and Hall of Faming of Warsong Commander

I'm going to begin with making the assumption that there are a considerable amount of new players to Hearthstone who won't know what I'm talking about if I don't otherwise explain some HS history, so I'll start there. If you're already familiar with the history of this card, feel free to skip ahead.

Warsong Commander has a pretty significant history, though to a newer player, it probably wouldn't seem like it. That's because the current Warsong Commander is an entirely different card than that which was a crucial part in one of the most iconic decks of Hearthstone's history. In the very early days of Hearthstone, Warsong Commander looked like this:

This was actually after a very early buff to the card, in which it was given +1 Health. The issue with this card at the time was probably as obvious as it is now. This version of Warsong Commander caused games in which players had to be cautious of dealing damage to enemy Warriors, because at a certain point they would be able to play Warsong Commander, Molten Giant, Molten Giant, Youthful Brewmaster, Youthful Brewmaster, Molten Giant, Molten Giant, and often deal well over 30 damage. Keep in mind, this is during a time in the game in which giants were 10/10s and playing Warsong Commander into Boulderfist Ogre or Chillwind Yeti was among one of the strongest things you could do. So, the card was problematic. And it was rightfully nerfed, to this version:

This nerf was seen as extremely oppressive to the card, though all-in-all it was a pretty fair one. It was still obviously combo-able with Frothing Berserker and Raging Worgen to get potential lethals with Whirlwind and Inner Rage type effects, but it wasn't a very successful or popular deck; the burst the deck required just wasn't high enough. In 2014, Blackrock Mountain was released, and decks like Freeze Mage, Handlock, and fringe Dragon decks rose in popularity. Mech Mage, Oil Rogue, Face Hunter, Midrange Druid, Midrange Paladin, and Zoo Warlock were among the top tiered decks. From early on, it was apparent that what would become known as Patron Warrior would rise in popularity: "The fix to Warsong Commander* and the introduction of Emperor [Thaurissan] means we will be seeing a lot more huge Warrior combos using Frothing [Berserker], Raging Worgen, and now Grim Patron." (Tempo Storm Meta Snapshot #12)

* - Warsong Commander previously had an issue in which "token" minions, ie. minions from any source other than their own card, wouldn't gain Charge. Additionally, minions with 3-or-less Attack that gained additional Attack (giving them 4 or more) from their Battlecry would not gain Charge, circumventing how effect triggers are supposed to stack.

The additions of Grim Patron and Emperor Thaurissan gave tremendous support to the previously fringe Combo Warrior archetype, and the meta was well suited for Patron Warrior to take off. Decks running small, persistent minions like Haunted Creeper were regularly top tier, and Patron Warrior proved efficient at dealing with small-stats-but-very-wide boards, and these board states grew the power level of eventual Patron combo turns. Additionally, Patrons were impressively stable at dealing with the most powerful minion in the history of the game at that time, Dr. Boom, and nothing stopped Patron Warrior from just also running Boom. If you can sometimes beat 'em, who says you still can't play 'em? Patron Warrior became the anti-aggro police deck on ladder, effectively countering what most of all decks were doing.

Following Blackrock Mountain was The Grand Tournament, which did three major things worth noting. First, it offered Patron Warrior almost nothing (Bash would see play in Control Warrior, and Alexstrasza's Champion would see play in Dragon Warrior). However, all Warriors got one of the most crucial cards in the history of Warrior deckbuilding: Justicar Trueheart, who would immediately see play in most slower Warrior decks, inevitably being played in certain Patron builds slightly longer down the road. The second thing TGT did was introduce Mysterious Challenger, Murloc Knight, and Competitive Spirit. This gave the already solid Midrange Paladin the new name Secret Paladin, and it quickly became one of the best decks in the game. Lastly, it gave legs to the big breakout deck of the set, Dragon Priest, with the cards [Hearthstone Card (Wymrest Agent) Not Found], Twilight Guardian, and Chillmaw. However, these decks had no real way of stopping Patron Warrior in the hands of a knowledgeable player, because their few answers weren't enough to outnumber Warrior's removal package, and Patron remained king for several months.

Then, in October of 2015, Warsong Commander was nerfed a final time, and in the following months, it sunk further and further in popularity, until it was essentially a joke. The card read as it now does:

The card was regarded to have such a significant fall from grace that it spawned a lot of both grief and jokes from the community. The card became effectively useless and went from one of the most played cards in the game to one of the least. Only one month later, League of Explorers was released, and became regarded by many as one of the best Hearthstone sets ever. It gave support to the already solid Aggro Shaman, created an entirely new combo deck in Murloc Paladin, gave Priest great control tools in Entomb and Excavated Evil, blew people away with the incredibly efficient Tomb Pillager, birthed entire new archetypes with Sir Finley Mrrgglton, Brann Bronzebeard, Elise Starseeker, and Reno Jackson, and gave Warriors Cursed Blade, which was regarded mostly as a joke. Regardless, everyone was pretty happy with the set, as aggro, control, and combo decks all had support. And furthermore, the following set, Whispers of the Old Gods, completely transformed the game, both by introducing a massive number of archetypes, and by introducing the Wild/Standard formats. This upset a number of Patron players who thought the Wild format would have made a good home for Patron Warrior--others, however, believed Patron Warrior would simply dominate the format forever, and in hindsight there's certainly validity to both of those opinions at the time.

The Discussion in 2019

There are four major points I'd like to present as the primary reasons for which Warsong Commander should be changed yet again. Here's a little more backstory: in early 2017, massive issues with the Classic set were recognized when a number of cards from the set were frequent offenders in powerful decks (or regarded as improper to have in Standard). Ten cards (Conceal, Ice Lance, Power Overwhelming, Azure Drake, Captain's Parrot, Gelbin Mekkatorque, Elite Tauren Chieftain, Old Murk-Eye, Ragnaros the Firelord, and Sylvanas Windrunner) were removed from the Classic set and put into a new, Wild-only set, known as Hall of Fame. A year later, three additional cards (Coldlight Oracle, Ice Block, and Molten Giant) were moved from Classic to Hall of Fame. Molten Giant marked the first card to be unnerfed during this transition, with its cost dropping from a nerfed 25 back down to a pre-nerf 20. In 2019, an additional three cards from the Classic set were moved to the Hall of Fame (Naturalize, Divine Favor, and Doomguard). Again in 2019, an additional two cards were moved from an eternal set to Hall of Fame, however, this time it was from the Basic set (Mind Blast and Vanish). A number of cards were added to Basic and Classic to replace some holes in the set caused by these changes.

1. The first point is, considering that now both a) cards have been unnerfed when being moved from an eternal set to Hall of Fame and b) cards from the Basic set have been moved to Hall of Fame, there's no practical reason restricting Blizzard from making the decision of reverting Warsong Commander to it's text "Whenever you summon a minion with 3 or less Attack, give it Charge." and moving it from Basic to Hall of Fame. In other words, it is not a decision that would go against their previous conduct.

2. The second point is that the card in its most previous iteration would not go against the design team's philosophy of interaction in the Wild format. Hearthstone is a game with specific types of interaction, which gives a specific perception on how interactive a deck, card, combo, mechanic, or interaction can be. To efficiently interact, you need specific ways of preemptively resisting or negating what your opponent will do, in the context of dealing with combo (otherwise, interaction can be as simple as using a spell to remove an in-play creature, but in this instance we're discussing preventing OTKs). Keeping Patron Warrior's history in mind, we can make note of a couple of things: a) Warsong Commander was nerfed before the introduction of the Wild format, b) cards designed explicitly for Wild have so far not been made (at least not as a part of Standard sets), c) Patron Warrior typically requires Emperor Thaurissan to function optimally, which is mostly considered very slow for combos in Wild, and d) cards have been made since the nerfing of Warsong Commander that either preemptively interact with or simply outpace Patron Warrior. Existing cards that can collectively hinder the power of Patron Warrior include Ice Block, Evasion, Explosive Runes, Potion of Polymorph, Reno Jackson, Ironwood Golem, Thing from Below, Sludge Belcher, Twilight Guardian, Rotten Applebaum, Zilliax, Tar Creeper Obsidian Statue (and several Big Priest cards), Voidlord, Mal'Ganis, Bloodreaver Gul'dan, Molten Giant, Mountain Giant, Arcane Giant, Defender of Argus, Loatheb, Dirty Rat, Hecklebot, Chillmaw, Tunnel Blaster, Twin Emperor Vek'lor, and Soggoth the Slitherer, and decks that would likely do well or average against Patron Warrior include Quest Mage, Big Priest, Handlock/Control Warlock, Control/Odd Warrior, Control Paladin, Odd Rogue, Taunt Druid, and certain Shudderwock Shaman builds. It's also worth noting that in regards to interactivity, many have argued that certain Wild decks have little options in regards to effective interaction, and while these complaints have been officially addressed, no solutions have so far been made, and considerable buffs and options have been given to those decks since (chiefly, I'm talking about Big Priest).

3. The third point is actually a challenge to the design team's Hall of Fame philosophy and the broader concept of the Wild format. In 2017, former Lead Producer Yong Woo spoke about their plans for Hall of Fame, stating "For us, the most important aspect of [the] Standard format is diversity. If a metagame largely consists of decks with similar cores and ideas, we'll consider making changes." (Woo's interview with invenglobal). I want to challenge that statement in an honestly sneaky way, but I believe it to be relevant. The Basic and Classic sets seem to exist with two ideas in mind that were to an extent relevant at inception and especially relevant now: to introduce a pool of cards to new players that offer some level of significance to basic deckbuilding without being abhorrently quintessential to certain decks or strategies, and to offer experienced players some deckbuilding options when theoretically superior options aren't available at the time or when there is a significant importance from what that card offers without being build-around cards themselves (Novice Engineer and Fireball being two examples; Mind Blast and Vanish being not (thus the Hall of Fame rotation)). Out of the 133 cards currently in the Basic set, many are playable and relevant both in the hands of new players and veterans, and can often be bought up in discussion as potential inclusions in competitive decks. What statistically unplayable/underplayed cards in the Basic set means is that those cards are likely inherently unusable in decks for any player regardless of their level of skill or experience. When options in the Basic set are compromised by unplayable/unused cards, those who feel it the most are the newer players. Moving back to actual design philosophy, here's another extract from that same interview with Yong Woo. When asked what to expect for the Wild format, Woo says, "We think of the Wild format as a place to play with all the cards that ever have been or will be a part of Hearthstone, so we want to support the format accordingly." This obviously should not be taken at strictly face value, because when a card is nerfed, fixed, or tweaked, it is technically no longer that original card. But what if a card's name, cost, stats, and art remain the same, but the effect changes entirely? When comparing the current and previous iterations of Warsong Commander, they're all very different, but it's quite obvious that the most previous iteration is a direct nerf from the iteration before it. However, the current iteration of Warsong Commander isn't functionally similar to the most previous iteration in any way other than the stats, and that the word Charge appears on the card. It's an entirely different card, and the previous version, a nerf from it's even earlier version, is no longer a usable card in the game, despite being a considerable part of the game's history.

4. The fourth point is an address to part of the reason why Warsong Commander/Patron Warrior was nerfed in the first place, and why a lot of cards historically got nerfed in Hearthstone: they were too tournament-meta warping, and in part with that, cards that eventually required nerfs typically limited design space in some way. Steamer TrumpHS and former Hearthstone Game Director Ben Brode cover it best. In Wild, Patron Warrior with the inclusion of Warsong Commander has enough strong counters against it that considerable tournament meta warping is unlikely aside from being great tech against decks like Odd Paladin and Murloc Shaman. In Wild, an eternal format, the issue of cards limiting design space is far less of an issue considering that the card pool in Wild is considerably larger with a greater number cards that counteract the impacts of otherwise problematic cards that may cause issues in formats that have smaller card pools, like Standard. Often times, card game designers must ban cards for the health of their game, but later find the opportunities to unban those cards once more cards have been added to the format in question. In the case of Hearthstone, bans and unbans don't exist outside of the Odd/Even effective-bans in Standard, so an unnerfing of an older card isn't something to shy away from.

5. The fifth point may be a bit ridiculous to some, but it's absolutely worth mentioning. Patron Warrior had a considerable difference in win rate based on the player's skill with the deck. Many players had remarkably low win rates with the deck, while others dominated the ladder. The deck was likely a difficult one to nerf because it heavily rewarded skilled players, rather than rewarding players for just playing it, like many decks get accused of having the issue of.

6. The final point I'd like to present has less to do with Hearthstone, and more to do with games that see updates and changes over long periods of time. I want to refer to an example from another card game, Magic: the Gathering, and a specific story from it, that I'll call The Boogeyman. I'd like you to take a break from reading, if you want, and watch a video--don't worry, you don't need to know anything about the game to enjoy the video. If you're familiar with the legend of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, you're fine, but I still recommend that video. Jace, the Mind Sculptor has a very interesting story. In Standard, a format near-identical to Hearthstone's, Jace, the Mind Sculptor dominated on all levels, and the decks playing it were consistently winning--it was metawarping. In the right hands, it often felt unbeatable, and at a point the format became significantly warped around the card that mirror matches were decided and won by the deck that specifically planned ahead to win the mirror match. It didn't win with combo, but when the pieces moved it often felt like one. One year after the release of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and its dominance over Standard, the new eternal format Modern was created, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor was immediately banned from being played in Modern. For seven years it was remembered by Modern players as overpowered, infuriating, and scary, until it was unbanned in February of 2018. People lost their minds, but as it turned out, Jace underperformed after his debut into the format. The card is played, and in some of the best decks in the format, but it seemed the legacy had outhyped the legend. A big consideration of how Warsong Commander would impact Wild is the meta; it historically had really great success against decks flooding the board with small bodies, and that isn't what's currently dominating the ladder. People are playing control, and combo, and decks oozing with value. The dominance of Jace, the Mind Sculptor over the pool of cards in MTG's Standard at the time and the relative unimpressive performance in MTG's Modern seems comparable to the potential impact Warsong Commander would have over Hearthstone's Wild when remembering only its Standard.

In closing, I quite obviously believe in a return of pre-nerf Warsong Commander to exclusively Wild, but I am very curious what others think about this topic. 

Some Nostalgia

Gotta Agree with most points here. Also the team is moving away from charge minions, so warsong commander wont get future support for standar.

This card is in the "basic" set.  If you left it unnerfed, it would be more powerful than most cards in standard or wild sets which is something the devs have said time and time again they don't want to do.  In wild it would make Warrior more toxic than Resurrection priest or "big priest" which gets so much hate it keeps players from touching wild format.  I never want to see a card that reads "Give all your minons charge" because it just ruins the game, and makes it super unfun!  Especially since it's only 3 mana, like give me a break dude!  I like the position that hearthstone is getting away from OTK combo decks, they were fun for the last year and they exist now which is fine as long as their niche'.  When this Heroes of Uldum set comes out, the meta will have a flood of board clears making control decks super powerful, and thus most people will play control, and if you've played the game for a long time you would know that control vs control is the most unfun garbage you can play.

/thread

They should just unnerf and HoF everything.  I'm not salty about Big Priest, but you can't deny that it's powerful.  Unnerfed anything would be no more powerful than how Big Priest already is and enable people to play some of their favorite decks from the past.  A lot of these cards are literally seeing no play since their nerfs, so they serve no purpose sitting around in standard

Charge should not be given more possibilities of Combo, especially in Wild, where options will grow indefinitely.

You are reasoning mainly in favor of Patron Warrior, and that's ok, but Charge is Charge, and even if you limit its targets, it's dangerous.

At (3) 2/3 it would be too damn efficient for the pre-nerf effect, even the mild one, because it would be available too early. It would probably turn out in Aggro decks more than in Patron Reborn. And Wild has enough Aggro power already.

The only fair compromise i can see with the proposed unnerf is also tuning the mana to higher level, say (5). That way the effect is restricted to later stages of the game, where it belongs. Compare with Tundra Rhino.

Warsong Commander is good just where it is.

Intriguing read, thank you! I really would like to see the deck in action once. 

Quote From NightCrawler

They should just unnerf and HoF everything.  I'm not salty about Big Priest, but you can't deny that it's powerful.  Unnerfed anything would be no more powerful than how Big Priest already is and enable people to play some of their favorite decks from the past.  A lot of these cards are literally seeing no play since their nerfs, so they serve no purpose sitting around in standard

Uhm... what about new/returning players or people with a limited amount of dust?

I personally think, that it would be a good idea to have two different versions of the Basic/Classic set for both formats - one would include the initial state of the cards, so that people would enjoy playing their old decks again, and the other would be designed accordingly to the standard environment. However I have said it before - some cards (like Warsong Commander, Charge or Starving Buzzard) should be redesigned with caution. I agree with most what OP said and I admire the time and effort they put in writing that post, but Charge is Charge and imho it would limit design space for future cards, which may support Grim Patron Warrior and return it back to its glory days or just create an entirely new (and oppressive) archtype.

I can't deny, that at the moment this may not be the case. I don't see any problematic minions with 3 or less Attack, that would create annoying combos with Warsong Commander (except [Hearthstone Card (Vicious Fledgling) Not Found] maybe). There are some mechs though and warrior is one of the 3 classes, that utilizes magnetize, so this could be considered a counter-argument (even though not a strong one). But outside of combo decks, aggressive lists like Pirate Warrior would consider playing it just because the Commander gives their early-game minions charge.

https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/minion?display=3&filter-attack-op=5&filter-attack-val=3&filter-class=1025&filter-premium=1

/I prefer to use a hearthpwn link, because the list is visually better. Sorry, mods./

Considering that Wild will grow always more powerfull, unnerfing old problematic cards may only lead to other terrible situations.

On top of that Warsong Commander reverted back would indeed limit design space for future expansions considering its cheap cost and what a powerfull ability like Charge can do easily.

No thanks.

The nerf was massive overkill, i never understood why they didn't just have on it "Your minions with 3 or less attack have charge" when they initially nerfed it, small wording change that would stop the OTK without destroying the card.

In standard with the push from charge to rush, it's likely that warsong will now only ever have 18 possible targets (2 of which being targets of the charge spell) which isn't really enough support for such a weak card.

Also the argument of her being classic shouldn't affect the decision to unnerf and move to hall of fame as she wouldn't be classic anymore once moved to wild and so wouldn't limit design space

You could change Warsong Commander to useful minion. I would not go back to any previous iteration of it. Giving all minions charge is damn OP. Giving small minions is less OP but as mentioned above it would be quite OK if just worked on small attack minions and stop when they gain higher attack.

But generally Charge is much more oppressive and prone to being problematic than Rush.

That's why I would like to see Warsong going in this way.

It could be something like: "Your minions with 3 or less attack have Rush" or if this could be problematic than maybe something like "Your minions with Rush have +1 (or +2) attack."

If Warsong interact in some way with Rush instead of Charge he will be much more useful as there will be more and more Rush minions.

not Warsong Commander

They should unnerf Tinkmaster Overspark

Just unnerf it and change the keyword to rush, so it fits the actual theme of warrior, is strong but not unbalanced, and lets you clear boards and create a huge berserker without killing you in the same turn (except if it was already on the board).

That would be fair.

Quote From Kovachut

Quote From NightCrawler

They should just unnerf and HoF everything.  I'm not salty about Big Priest, but you can't deny that it's powerful.  Unnerfed anything would be no more powerful than how Big Priest already is and enable people to play some of their favorite decks from the past.  A lot of these cards are literally seeing no play since their nerfs, so they serve no purpose sitting around in standard

Uhm... what about new/returning players or people with a limited amount of dust?

I personally think, that it would be a good idea to have two different versions of the Basic/Classic set for both formats - one would include the initial state of the cards, so that people would enjoy playing their old decks again, and the other would be designed accordingly to the standard environment. However I have said it before - some cards (like Warsong Commander, Charge or Starving Buzzard) should be redesigned with caution. I agree with most what OP said and I admire the time and effort they put in writing that post, but Charge is Charge and imho it would limit design space for future cards, which may support Grim Patron Warrior and return it back to its glory days or just create an entirely new (and oppressive) archtype.

I can't deny, that at the moment this may not be the case. I don't see any problematic minions with 3 or less Attack, that would create annoying combos with Warsong Commander (except Vicious Fledgling maybe). There are some mechs though and warrior is one of the 3 classes, that utilizes magnetize, so this could be considered a counter-argument (even though not a strong one). But outside of combo decks, aggressive lists like Pirate Warrior would consider playing it just because the Commander gives their early-game minions charge.

https://www.hearthpwn.com/cards/minion?display=3&filter-attack-op=5&filter-attack-val=3&filter-class=1025&filter-premium=1

/I prefer to use a hearthpwn link, because the list is visually better. Sorry, mods./

I'm not sure what you mean regarding new players with little dust.  Blizzard always prints new classic cards to replace anything they HoF and if anything, warsong commander being replaced by a halfway playable card would make warrior's basic set a lot less abysmal for f2p players

As for limiting design space, I say look towards Big Priest again.  It's an amalgamation of cards that, in a balanced meta, should have limited design space all by themselves.  Yet last expansion we still got Vargoth and Katerina, which pushed its power level to new heights.  It would seem that they do not care about the power level of things in wild nor let wild cards that limit design space get in the way of making new cards

It's not just Big Priest either.  There's mech decks making infinitly large things with with sn1p-sn4p, turn 4 voidlords, quest mages that can finish their quest as early as turn 4 and refill their hand in the same turn, standard-like rogues with patches and shark+fungalmancer.  Everyone is already doing insane stuff.  So what if you die on turn 7 or 8 to some kind of warsong combo?  This is exactly the kind of thing that happens in wild.  Mech hunters would call this lethal slow

Personally, I think bringing Patron Warrior back would at the very least put a dent in Odd Paladin's playrate, along with other aggro decks. By itself that is a good thing.

I'm just not certain about restoring it to its old form or a new one that prevents big Frothing Berserkers to gain charge too. She could have an aura that grants minions with 3 attack or less charge, instead of granting it once they are summoned.

Regardless of the change chosen, I wouldn't mind seeing Patron Warrior regaining power. I think point 5 is actually the best reason. It's been a while since Hearthstone has been populated by decks that make you feel like you lost to someone smart, or at least smarter than you.

Very well-written, and I agree with most your points. I don't think they should completely unnerf it, but I had the same keyword change in mind as Thomback (your minions with 3 or less attack has charge). Alternatively, it could grant rush to all your minions. This would allow your patrons to run rampant on a small wide board, without having a 20+ attack Frothing Berserker roundhouse kick you in the teeth the same turn it was played.

But as I said, very well-written.

I would like this idea, just change the charge to rush, so there wouldn't be an insane OTK. As the person above stated it would be an excelent counter to Odd pally(or token druid), and still could be countered by strong control deck(Hellfire one-shot them, sadly big priest would demolish it, and Flamestrike is still there). So it's a good idea. I always wanted to try a complete, old-school patron warrior.

A very good post here.  However, I'm not sure it convinced me.

Charge is a very dangerous mechanic to involve in the game.  That was the core issue behind Warsong Commander 

The first point is correct in that there's nothing stopping them from doing this change as other cards have been changed in the same way. Thus the question isn't 'can' but 'should'.

As far as the second point, I'm not quite so willing to state that there's enough solutions for old Patron.  Many of those choices you stated either had already proven not good enough (mal'ganis.. seriously?) or are far too weak to even stand to any meta (no one is going to play Soggoth for any reason).  You can't just say "there's taunt, so it'll be fine."  It has to be in a strong deck, and it has to be in a deck that can stabnd up to the rest of the meta as well.  Making a deck that can ONLY  beat Patron and nothing else isn't going to be viable enough of an answer.  

I'm not a Wild player, so I have to ask here, of all of those decks you bring up, including Control Paladin, Quest Mage, and Handlock, which are actually doing well in the meta right now?  THOSE are the ones that will have to fight Patron Warrior after all.  Handlock beating Patron won't mean much if Handlock can't survive, say, Big Priest.

Lastly, the last sidepoint, the issue of Wild having little interaction is a point against Patron.  If decks that offer very little interaction is a problem in Wild, adding another deck that is VERY uninteractive, like Patron, is adding a problem to a problem.  

Note that Blizzard has said that they are looking into addressing Big priest which suggests that such decks are NOT acceptable in the long-term in Wild.  Which, again, puts Patron in question.

On the third point... what ARE you getting at here?

You talk about the usability of cards in the basic and classic set. However, are you aware that the current team is actively TRYING to make the sets less used?  The entire point to the HoF is to make the sets less playable so that the meta becomes less stagnant.  We don't HoF bad cards. We HoF good ones.  Thus the usability of Warsong isn't an issue as it's already underplayed.  If we move it, we won't replace it with something more usable.  Thus Warsong isn't harming the new player experience in a way that Blizzard isn't intending since it being a bad card doesn't make it any worse than, say, Radiance.

Also note that Yong Woo's philosophy no longer applies here.  The current Hearthstone team has been pretty aggressive with ditching many of the old ideas from the old team, meaning they are not holding themselves to anything that was said by people like Woo or Brode.  Wild has unnerfed cards, but also kept cards in their nerfed state (combo druid is still not an option).  

On the fourth point while it is truth that design limiters isn't an issue, decks that limit the meta ARE issues.  It's why they nerfed Raza priest after all.  Meanwhile I don't think you established your first point enough to leave it an assumption that there's enough counters for Patron Warrior.  You also aren't considering possible interactions due to the new cards. For example, the key cards in Patron are all odd, making them viable as a Baku deck.  Warrior also has a lot more ways to self-damage their cards, making it easier to make a patron board, and ways to put cards back in their deck, which is something they didn't have in the past.  

So not only are we not sure that the current decks are strong enough against Old Patron, but we won't be facing the old deck, but a NEW deck using 4 years of cards build under the assumption that Warsong doesn't exist.

That's not even GETTING at the unknown factor and the grand reason why Warsong, and not Patron, was nerfed.  The issue wasn't just Patron being Patron but that Warsong would interact with ANYTHING 3 attack or less. Thus nerfing just Ptaron still left a potential nightmare ready to blow later on.

So have you looked at the 4 years of cards made afterwards that would LOVE to have charge?  What decks will be made that are NOT Patron but be much worse.

On the fifth point... this was talked about by Frodan in a tournament at one point but it sort of hit me in an interesting way.

Patron wasn't as skill-intensive as we remember it being.

In 2015, the deck was literally playing 3d chess compared to the aggro-loving meta then, and there are some high end choices to be made.  But compared to the decks pros play now and the meta....not so much.  The #1 biggest factor that caused people to lose in the past was the mathmatics of the final swing:having to figure out whether you have lethal while giving yourself enough time to start the combo.  It was the first deck to ever have that issue.  We've had A LOT of decks that have demanded such things since then, many of which demand it just for board clears.  

Decks have long since moved away from 'do me face' of those days.  They are  A LOT more difficult to manage, not only including the raw math calculations of Patron, but also the ability to adapt to unknown cards, the need to decide whether to go offensive, defensive, or value oriented.  Compared to the current crop of decks, Patron is MUCH easier to manage, but MUCH more devastating as Patron's big calculation is "do you die now."

Patron was the start of complicated, deeper thinking decks in hearthstone.  But we've moved on to much better worlds since then.  

The final point is really the first point addressed again: that the deck isn't as powerful as what we have now, except you are using Jace to show an example of it happening.  

But again we don't know.  And that WOULD be fine except that Blizzard still hasn't shown enough speed of making changes to Wild in case this isn't a Jace situation.  We've seen one card change utterly gut the Wild meta. This can easily be as much a Sea Witch or a Jace.  Is Blizzard willing to fix things if it turns into the former?  Is reviving Patron really that needed when it's FAR from the only deck of our past that we can't return to.  I can't play Raza Priest. I can't play Miracle Rogue like I used to.  I can't play Undertaker Hunter.  I can't play Beta Murloc Warlock or 2014 Midrange Hunter. 

The concept of preserving history using Wild is already a ship that sailed.  Bringing back Patron alone for that reason is arbitrary and extremely risky.  If Blizzard is willing to try to bring as many of the old decks back into Wild or some other format, with the williness to rapid release changes if things turn south then I'm for it. 

As we stand now, with how they are acting now, I'm not convinced that Patron can't sit in the same afterlife that Combo Druid and Yogg Druid currently sit.    

Oh 1 more thing to add this discussion, I mean 1 more thing that Warsong Commander needs to be unnerfed or changed again is There is not any support to Charge keyword anymore.

Charge keyword is simply replaced with Rush that means Warsong Commander won't get any support anymore.

It needs to unnerf and move to wild like Mind Blast and Vanish or need to be redesigned. I don't think there is a reason to hold it like that forever in the standard because it will be always a dead card without any new charge minions.

There are 3 options which blizzard should reconsider for Warsong Commander;

• Producing new minions with charge
• Unnerfing it and moving it to the HoF set
• Redisgning the card again with something different

If the card gave <4 mana minions rush instead of charge it'd make the card playable without OTK potential. Would that bring back patron warrior? No, probably not, but it'd make the commander a solid card once again, basically a mini-houndmaster Shaw, without putting a giant design constraint on future warrior and neutral cards that generate tokens in some fashion.

They should have a tavern brawl where all cards from all expansions are un-nerfed, then give everyone a full classic collection. just for a week, thats all I want, one week.

There's a lot of valid opinions and ideas on alternative changes to Warsong Commander here, and I very much appreciate that feedback. Thanks!

Quote From Dakarian

As far as the second point, I'm not quite so willing to state that there's enough solutions for old Patron.  Many of those choices you stated either had already proven not good enough (mal'ganis.. seriously?) or are far too weak to even stand to any meta (no one is going to play Soggoth for any reason).  You can't just say "there's taunt, so it'll be fine."  It has to be in a strong deck, and it has to be in a deck that can stabnd up to the rest of the meta as well.  Making a deck that can ONLY  beat Patron and nothing else isn't going to be viable enough of an answer.  

I'm not a Wild player, so I have to ask here, of all of those decks you bring up, including Control Paladin, Quest Mage, and Handlock, which are actually doing well in the meta right now?  THOSE are the ones that will have to fight Patron Warrior after all.  Handlock beating Patron won't mean much if Handlock can't survive, say, Big Priest. 

Lastly, the last sidepoint, the issue of Wild having little interaction is a point against Patron.  If decks that offer very little interaction is a problem in Wild, adding another deck that is VERY uninteractive, like Patron, is adding a problem to a problem.  

The power level of cards change greatly, either for better or worse, based on the other cards in the format's pool. Mal'Ganis is a great example of a card that outperforms in Wild despite previously seeing less impressive play in Pre-Standard. In Wild, Voidlord, Voidcaller, and Bloodreaver Gul'dan are often packaged alongside Mal'Ganis, developing board states that are as effective against Big Priest or Quest Mage as they would be against Patron Warrior. Control Warlock/Handlock/Evenlock are all decks that saw considerable success in Wild when the meta allowed for it--just a few months ago, a hand-style Evenlock was perhaps the best deck in the format.

Further on Wild metagame, Quest Mage is currently the top deck in the format, though it often gets referred to as Cyclone Mage, because it's built more around Mana Cyclone than it is around Open the Waygate. The other decks listed are either proven, successful decks that would likely see success against Patron Warrior, or decks likely to be favored against Patron Warrior.

Decks being uninteractive in Wild aren't really an issue. As it stands currently, some of the best decks in Wild include Odd Paladin, Odd Rogue, Murlock Shaman, Even Shaman, Jade Druid, and Aggro Druid. These decks succeed because they're consistently able to apply a ton of pressure to the board in a small amount of time that decks not running sufficient protection or interaction against aggressive board states fold pretty quickly. This implies a few things. First off, it obviously requires other decks to sport a pretty big package of interaction. Big Priest can no longer focus on greedier packages, and must substitute some power for protection.

Quote From Dakarian

Note that Blizzard has said that they are looking into addressing Big priest which suggests that such decks are NOT acceptable in the long-term in Wild.  Which, again, puts Patron in question.    

Duly noted, but actions speak louder than words; the recent, unapologetic inclusions of Archmage Vargoth, Catrina Muerte, Mass Hysteria, Forbidden Words, and Mass Resurrection have all been considerable buffs to Big Priest.

Quote From Dakarian

On the third point... what ARE you getting at here?

You talk about the usability of cards in the basic and classic set. However, are you aware that the current team is actively TRYING to make the sets less used?  The entire point to the HoF is to make the sets less playable so that the meta becomes less stagnant.  We don't HoF bad cards. We HoF good ones.  Thus the usability of Warsong isn't an issue as it's already underplayed.  If we move it, we won't replace it with something more usable.  Thus Warsong isn't harming the new player experience in a way that Blizzard isn't intending since it being a bad card doesn't make it any worse than, say, Radiance.

Also note that Yong Woo's philosophy no longer applies here.  The current Hearthstone team has been pretty aggressive with ditching many of the old ideas from the old team, meaning they are not holding themselves to anything that was said by people like Woo or Brode.  Wild has unnerfed cards, but also kept cards in their nerfed state (combo druid is still not an option).   

I'm implying that Basic cards shouldn't be extremely powerful, but still be playable. The current form of Warsong Commander offers very little to new players, and will offer less and less as Charge sees less print. If Warsong Commander were to be reverted to its original text, it would likely be too powerful for the Basic set, and need rotation, but as it currently stands, the card appears to be useless now and for the future of Hearthstone. Other Basic cards at least serve some purpose, and can be used as reasonable substitutes by newer players who don't yet have superior alternatives.

I don't mean to waggle my finger and claim Team 5's divergence from previous leadership's ideas. Woo's and Brode's quotes are still experts' opinions.

Quote From Dakarian

On the fourth point while it is truth that design limiters isn't an issue, decks that limit the meta ARE issues.  It's why they nerfed Raza priest after all.  Meanwhile I don't think you established your first point enough to leave it an assumption that there's enough counters for Patron Warrior.  You also aren't considering possible interactions due to the new cards. For example, the key cards in Patron are all odd, making them viable as a Baku deck.  Warrior also has a lot more ways to self-damage their cards, making it easier to make a patron board, and ways to put cards back in their deck, which is something they didn't have in the past.  

So not only are we not sure that the current decks are strong enough against Old Patron, but we won't be facing the old deck, but a NEW deck using 4 years of cards build under the assumption that Warsong doesn't exist.

That's not even GETTING at the unknown factor and the grand reason why Warsong, and not Patron, was nerfed.  The issue wasn't just Patron being Patron but that Warsong would interact with ANYTHING 3 attack or less. Thus nerfing just Ptaron still left a potential nightmare ready to blow later on.

So have you looked at the 4 years of cards made afterwards that would LOVE to have charge?  What decks will be made that are NOT Patron but be much worse.

These are some really interesting points, but slightly confusing, so apologies if I'm breaking them down incorrectly.

It's pretty apparent that cards that limit design space are issues. However, point four refers to how a card's impact on a meta is directly related to the format's card pool. I believe you slightly misconstrued that argument.

I have considered new interactions between Grim Patron and newer cards, but none of the newer cards interact with it stronger than Inner Rage and Whirlwind, because cost efficiency is a very, very important thing. I think visualizing an Odd Patron Warrior is a misunderstanding of how much the deck required Emperor Thaurissan to actually OTK. Odd Patron Warrior also abandons Inner Rage, Armorsmith, Battle Rage, Slam, Execute, Death's Bite/Blood Razor, and Unstable Ghoul. Do you mean to say that the power of what Baku provides is stronger than the synergies that allowed the deck to be successful to begin with? I understand your concern for problematic interactions with Warsong Commander, as others have considered, but few things appear objectively more powerful than what Patron Warrior was doing way back in 2014 and 2015. If you can find any problematic cards from the past 4 years that would be problematic with pre-nerf Warsong Commander, I would definitely like to hear them (keep in mind, strong is not problematic. SN1P-SN4P is a great card that would work really well with it, but less so than with Patron or Berserker).

Quote From Dakarian

On the fifth point... this was talked about by Frodan in a tournament at one point but it sort of hit me in an interesting way.

Patron wasn't as skill-intensive as we remember it being.

In 2015, the deck was literally playing 3d chess compared to the aggro-loving meta then, and there are some high end choices to be made.  But compared to the decks pros play now and the meta....not so much.  The #1 biggest factor that caused people to lose in the past was the mathmatics of the final swing:having to figure out whether you have lethal while giving yourself enough time to start the combo.  It was the first deck to ever have that issue.  We've had A LOT of decks that have demanded such things since then, many of which demand it just for board clears.  

Decks have long since moved away from 'do me face' of those days.  They are  A LOT more difficult to manage, not only including the raw math calculations of Patron, but also the ability to adapt to unknown cards, the need to decide whether to go offensive, defensive, or value oriented.  Compared to the current crop of decks, Patron is MUCH easier to manage, but MUCH more devastating as Patron's big calculation is "do you die now."

Patron was the start of complicated, deeper thinking decks in hearthstone.  But we've moved on to much better worlds since then.      

I don't really understand what you're implying by this, because it feels like a concession that Patron Warrior was the precursor to Hearthstone's shift in ideology, in that you imply decks now require on average higher consideration and deeper thinking than before. I understand the point you're trying to make that the game has become more about fair board control and an accumulation of damage over time, but in a way that had always been the case, and Patron Warrior was king because it efficiently controlled the board, and the most skilled players knew when to throw away potential OTK outs to control the state of the board. I think you absence in Wild could effect your opinion on this; three good examples of relative non-interaction in Wild are Odd Paladin's ability to go wide turn-for-turn considerably faster than other decks and thus force their opponents into initiating trades while taking considerable face damage, Odd Rogue's ability to present high, often incremental stat advantages each turn while having a very effective way of interacting with the board without sacrificing board presence in its Hero Power, which also synergizes with much of its deck, and Big Priest's ability to often just go face. These decks demand their opponents to have an excessive amount of answers, and the current, less powerful version of Patron Warrior has pretty good success against these otherwise seemingly broken, hyper-aggressive decks (I of course mean the aggro decks, not Big Priest).

Quote From Dakarian

The final point is really the first point addressed again: that the deck isn't as powerful as what we have now, except you are using Jace to show an example of it happening.  

But again we don't know.  And that WOULD be fine except that Blizzard still hasn't shown enough speed of making changes to Wild in case this isn't a Jace situation.  We've seen one card change utterly gut the Wild meta. This can easily be as much a Sea Witch or a Jace.  Is Blizzard willing to fix things if it turns into the former?  Is reviving Patron really that needed when it's FAR from the only deck of our past that we can't return to.  I can't play Raza Priest. I can't play Miracle Rogue like I used to.  I can't play Undertaker Hunter.  I can't play Beta Murloc Warlock or 2014 Midrange Hunter. 

The concept of preserving history using Wild is already a ship that sailed.  Bringing back Patron alone for that reason is arbitrary and extremely risky.  If Blizzard is willing to try to bring as many of the old decks back into Wild or some other format, with the williness to rapid release changes if things turn south then I'm for it. 

As we stand now, with how they are acting now, I'm not convinced that Patron can't sit in the same afterlife that Combo Druid and Yogg Druid currently sit.    

The final point is actually addressing the very human effect of memory and experience on decision making and rationality (also, the first point had nothing to do with what you implied it did).

I hold the belief that things like Raza Priest and Undertaker Hunter could eventually see unnerfs in the later future when the format allows for it (personally I can't see either unnerf breaking Wild). If by Miracle Rogue you mean the deck that employed a 4-cost Leeroy Jenkins and Shadowstep to deal ~18 damage in one turn, an unnerfing and Hall of Faming of Leeroy would actually do interesting things for Wild while removing a potentially design limiting card from Standard; it would remove him from Odd decks while giving Miracle decks a burst that's not super absurd independently. Force of Nature Savage Roar, while no doubt strong, would likely not be absurd to see now if moved to Wild. And while I will always praise Yogg, comparing Yogg to any other nerf seems a bit silly, since most nerfs discussed in this thread had to do with removing or nerfing a combo, while Yogg was considered independently too good for almost all tournament decks because it would often allow players who otherwise would have lost to simply flip a coin on who would win the game by playing Yogg, and it was regarded as never wrong to play.

Quote From Almaniarra

Oh 1 more thing to add this discussion, I mean 1 more thing that Warsong Commander needs to be unnerfed or changed again is There is not any support to Charge keyword anymore.

Charge keyword is simply replaced with Rush that means Warsong Commander won't get any support anymore.

It needs to unnerf and move to wild like Mind Blast and Vanish or need to be redesigned. I don't think there is a reason to hold it like that forever in the standard because it will be always a dead card without any new charge minions.

There are 3 options which blizzard should reconsider for Warsong Commander;

• Producing new minions with charge
• Unnerfing it and moving it to the HoF set
• Redisgning the card again with something different

That's a very relevant point, I'm sad I missed it!

Quote From NightCrawler

 

I'm not sure what you mean regarding new players with little dust.  Blizzard always prints new classic cards to replace anything they HoF and if anything, warsong commander being replaced by a halfway playable card would make warrior's basic set a lot less abysmal for f2p players

As for limiting design space, I say look towards Big Priest again.  It's an amalgamation of cards that, in a balanced meta, should have limited design space all by themselves.  Yet last expansion we still got Vargoth and Katerina, which pushed its power level to new heights.  It would seem that they do not care about the power level of things in wild nor let wild cards that limit design space get in the way of making new cards

It's not just Big Priest either.  There's mech decks making infinitly large things with with sn1p-sn4p, turn 4 voidlords, quest mages that can finish their quest as early as turn 4 and refill their hand in the same turn, standard-like rogues with patches and shark+fungalmancer.  Everyone is already doing insane stuff.  So what if you die on turn 7 or 8 to some kind of warsong combo?  This is exactly the kind of thing that happens in wild.  Mech hunters would call this lethal slow

1) Yes, that's true. However we can't predict what kind of cards the devs would implement, if they were to HOF the aforementioned sets. If those happen to be on the same power-level as the recently released ones, new or budget players would have a hard time dealing with an opponent, whose deck is tuned by the more powerful standard sets. You can disregard this counter-argument if you want, since this is just a speculation, but I doubt that the replacements would be as good as the pre-nerfed Basic and Classic sets. Also, the following is just my personal opinion, but I think it would be kinda selfish to let only wild players enjoy playing with iconic class spells or characters (especially if those are big fans of the warcraft RTS games and the MMORPG). People would feel forced to play a specific set, which wouldn't feel hospitable for them. Cuz' let's be honest, wild is not an attractive format for people with a limited collection. It becomes cheaper in the long term and I also love playing there, but I can't ignore the fact, that some have difficulties entering it.

2) and 3) I see where you are going with the "design space limitation" argument. It's true, that the power-level in wild is tremendously higher than in standard and people can do insane things early on. Though I would like to state, that design limiting cards don't come from the Basic or the Classic sets - most of them originate from the expansions. Furthermore, it's not like the devs haven't nerfed wild cards before, in order to balance the meta a bit - like the case with Aviana, Naga Sea Witch, Shadowboxer and I would argue, that Patches the Pirate and Raza the Chained are also part of this category (because back in K&C Reno Priest was a very dominant deck in wild). So the cards or combos you've mentioned above might be changed in the near future. And due to the big variety of cards there, most of the quoted combos can be countered - mech hunter is extremely vulnerable to Devolve, Defile or Brawl, Mass Hysteria, if you manage to survive until turn 5; Voidcaller is silenceable; Quest Mage needs a godlike hand to pull off such turns, which could be compared to the high-roll potential of Aggro Paladin (High Priest Thekal + Molten Giants); SN1P-SN4P requires you to have 3 other combo pieces before going off.

My issue with charge is, that there isn't much counterplay from the opponent aside from playing taunts (which didn't stop Worgen Warrior from seeing a lot of competitive play back in the days). Dakarian made a very good post, where they explained the issues of returning GP Warrior back to competitive hearthstone. And I talked about Warsong Commander's problems outside that deck - even in plain non-combo lists. Correct me if I'm wrong, but warrior didn't have a good aggro package prior to WotOG. The class slowly received a very solid pirate one, which became dominant during MSoG, and now warriors can run a burst-y mid-range mech deck in standard. Point is, Warsong Commander would be auto-included in such lists for the sake of the free face damage (and the potential burst you would get from Frothing Berserker). Speaking of which, isn't this why we see hunters playing Tundra Rhino, into Scavenging Hyena and Unleash the Hounds? Dakarian also stated, that warriors now have more ways to enrage the berserker, so charging a 15- or 20-Attack minion into the opponent's face may not be a rare scenario. And after stating this, I would like to bring another topic- in your opinion would people warmly welcome the unnerfed version of Charge?

THIS!  This is what I wanted to say, revert it back to the way it was if you must but change "CHARGE" to "RUSH"

I asked for some opinions on this over on reddit, check it out if you're interested.

Quote From Kovachut

Quote From NightCrawler

 

1) Yes, that's true. However we can't predict what kind of cards the devs would implement, if they were to HOF the aforementioned sets. If those happen to be on the same power-level as the recently released ones, new or budget players would have a hard time dealing with an opponent, whose deck is tuned by the more powerful standard sets. You can disregard this counter-argument if you want, since this is just a speculation, but I doubt that the replacements would be as good as the pre-nerfed Basic and Classic sets. Also, the following is just my personal opinion, but I think it would be kinda selfish to let only wild players enjoy playing with iconic class spells or characters (especially if those are big fans of the warcraft RTS games and the MMORPG). People would feel forced to play a specific set, which wouldn't feel hospitable for them. Cuz' let's be honest, wild is not an attractive format for people with a limited collection. It becomes cheaper in the long term and I also love playing there, but I can't ignore the fact, that some have difficulties entering it.

2) and 3) I see where you are going with the "design space limitation" argument. It's true, that the power-level in wild is tremendously higher than in standard and people can do insane things early on. Though I would like to state, that design limiting cards don't come from the Basic or the Classic sets - most of them originate from the expansions. Furthermore, it's not like the devs haven't nerfed wild cards before, in order to balance the meta a bit - like the case with Aviana, Naga Sea Witch, Shadowboxer and I would argue, that Patches the Pirate and Raza the Chained are also part of this category (because back in K&C Reno Priest was a very dominant deck in wild). So the cards or combos you've mentioned above might be changed in the near future. And due to the big variety of cards there, most of the quoted combos can be countered - mech hunter is extremely vulnerable to Devolve, Defile or Brawl, Mass Hysteria, if you manage to survive until turn 5; Voidcaller is silenceable; Quest Mage needs a godlike hand to pull off such turns, which could be compared to the high-roll potential of Aggro Paladin (High Priest Thekal + Molten Giants); SN1P-SN4P requires you to have 3 other combo pieces before going off.

My issue with charge is, that there isn't much counterplay from the opponent aside from playing taunts (which didn't stop Worgen Warrior from seeing a lot of competitive play back in the days). Dakarian made a very good post, where they explained the issues of returning GP Warrior back to competitive hearthstone. And I talked about Warsong Commander's problems outside that deck - even in plain non-combo lists. Correct me if I'm wrong, but warrior didn't have a good aggro package prior to WotOG. The class slowly received a very solid pirate one, which became dominant during MSoG, and now warriors can run a burst-y mid-range mech deck in standard. Point is, Warsong Commander would be auto-included in such lists for the sake of the free face damage (and the potential burst you would get from Frothing Berserker). Speaking of which, isn't this why we see hunters playing Tundra Rhino, into Scavenging Hyena and Unleash the Hounds? Dakarian also stated, that warriors now have more ways to enrage the berserker, so charging a 15- or 20-Attack minion into the opponent's face may not be a rare scenario. And after stating this, I would like to bring another topic- in your opinion would people warmly welcome the unnerfed version of Charge?

1) You're right.  I suppose we can make a distinction between "all nerfed cards in history" and "cards nerfed so badly that they see no play".  If the power level isn't too terrible (Leeroy, Edwin, unleash the hounds), you could still enjoy the card in standard.  Cards like Warsong Commander and Starving Buzzard are worse than river crocolisk and chillwind yeti.  These are cards that aren't playable in wild OR standard and there's a whole load of other basic cards you'd put in a 30 card deck over these.  Even if we get new Radiance as the replacement, nothing of value was lost but on the other hand, there's the chance they give us something better than yeti

2) Seems to me like Blizzard has set a precedent for letting design limiting cards be until they need attention.  They are not hesitating to make new cards that could conflict with existing ones in wild - when this happens they either ignore the problem or change the wild card in question.  Which option they choose appears consistently inconsistent, but what matters is that they're not letting it get in the way of new cards.  Unnerfed warsong, charge and other nerfed cards would not cause problems in the current card pool, so why not let us have our fun while nothing is conflicting?  In addition, there a lot of nerfed cards that were nerfed simply because of power level, not design space issues.  Druid ramp cards, for example (I admit, these were what I was thinking of when I wished they'd unnerf everything lol)

3) You can rat, hecklebot or deathlord out their commander (or berserker, or worgen), especially if it's in a more combo oriented list.  You can unseen saboteur their charge.  Warlocks can play their gnome or demonic project.  Mages are running ice block and paladins could theoretically run time out.  Big Priest can spam an army of obsidian statues or convincing infiltrators to kill your charger or warsong.  They're also one of wild control warrior's worst matchups.  Of course, the most effective way to beat combo in wild is to just hit them very hard until they die and the top tier decks are very good at that

How broken is this combo even?  You compare it with hunter's rhino combo but that combo is completely fair.  It's comprised fully of classic/basic cards but has seen little play until recently, making the class 4th or 5th best in the standard meta.  Making a charging 15+ attack minion with warrior is possible, but requires a lot (relative to wild) of mana and combo pieces

Pirate warriors are often in topdeck mode by turn 6 if I'm being generous, so they're not a good shell for charging a big berserker at face and unlike a worgen combo like warrior, taunts would actually be decent counterplay.  They can still run the card, but they can only use it to hit you with maybe one or two regular stated minions in a "combo" turn, not buffed up berserkers.  They can even play it on curve and make the opponent have an answer.  That's powerful, but IMO it's still on par with the power level of wild (in fact, I liken it to ship's cannon).  As for standard midrange mech/bomb warrior, they only exist in standard.  Their board fighting abilities isn't good enough to keep up with the wild midrange or faster decks.  

I didnt read all that, but im fine with the idea of unnerfing warsong commander and moving it to wild. I would love if they unnerfed thinkmaster too so i can use it to counter mountain giants.

Just wanted to say, as a relatively new (18 months-ish) casual player, that I really enjoyed reading your OP. It was a lovely insight into the early days and decks, so thank you! 

Quote From NightCrawler

Before I continue, I would like apologize, if you don't find my arguments convincing or well-structured in this post or I miss some of your points. I don't have much time atm, because in one hour my mother and I would travel to Barcelona for one week and I won't be able to continue our little discussion. Don't be rush replying to me, you have plenty of time. :D

 "If the power level isn't too terrible (Leeroy, Edwin, unleash the hounds), you could still enjoy the card in standard.  Cards like Warsong Commander and Starving Buzzard are worse than river crocolisk and chillwind yeti.  These are cards that aren't playable in wild OR standard and there's a whole load of other basic cards you'd put in a 30 card deck over these. "

I can't argue with that. And don't get me wrong, I always welcome card improvements such as direct buffs or redesigns, which would make underwhelming cards like WC to become playable again. But my issue is, that charge is a very sensitive topic in hearthstone. When I was a new player, I would have never imagined, that Stonetusk Boar would become a frustrating card. But in Un'goro and in K&C it was a core piece in Quest Rogue, in Boomsday it took part of a famous TopsyTurvy Priest deck (it was weak, but pro players would achieve some victories with it). It also enhanced Deathstalker Rexxar by giving the zombeasts charge. So it's not hard to imagine how an unnerfed WC would cause problems in wild.

"Unnerfed warsong, charge and other nerfed cards would not cause problems in the current card pool, so why not let us have our fun while nothing is conflicting? In addition, there a lot of nerfed cards that were nerfed simply because of power level, not design space issues."

I am not a warrior expert and I don't typically build combo decks, but imho just because we can't see the problematic deck right now, it doesn't mean that it wouldn't exist. I've linked all of the 3- or less Attack minions in my first post on this thread, so if someone has the mood to come up with a warrior combo deck, they are welcome to share their theorycraft. In this line of thoughts, I would like to give an example of one deck, that came out of the blue - Star Aligner Druid. When I saw that epic's reveal for the first time, I was very curious to see how people would play it. But I would have never imagined, that people would use it in a competitive deck, yet alone in wild. One very clever person saw the connections and they built it. You know the deck and how dominant it was in wild, so I won't talk about it any longer - imho the charge mechanic is more obvious to abuse.

" You can rat, hecklebot or deathlord out their commander (or berserker, or worgen), especially if it's in a more combo oriented list. You can unseen saboteur their charge. Warlocks can play their gnome or demonic project. Mages are running ice block and paladins could theoretically run time out."

I've expected you would say that. And I can't deny that hand/deck-disruption cards exist in wild, but I would like to state, that those aren't always reliable. If we see some lists, that run very few minions (most pre-standard Mecha'thun decks and AK75), you would easily pull a combo piece. But in the case with Mecha'thun warlock, where people ran many minions and can hold onto them, in order to minimize the chances of losing something important, the rat can whiff. Regarding Big Priest and other taunt decks - there is always a Brawl for those moments. I would play them right before I decide to go for the kill, but I agree with you, that Priest has way too many resurrect spells and the OTK warrior won't be able to deal with them at one point.

"How broken is this combo even? You compare it with hunter's rhino combo but that combo is completely fair. It's comprised fully of classic/basic cards but has seen little play until recently, making the class 4th or 5th best in the standard meta. Making a charging 15+ attack minion with warrior is possible, but requires a lot (relative to wild) of mana and combo pieces"

I didn't want to say, that this combo is broken. I wanted to say, that it would become popular the same way hunters use Tundra Rhino and Hyenas frequently. Also, I would like to disgree with you, that only now this combo is seeing a good amount of play. The truth is, almost everytime when (beast) mid-range hunter is popular, this 3-card combo is being run.

" As for standard midrange mech/bomb warrior, they only exist in standard. Their board fighting abilities isn't good enough to keep up with the wild midrange or faster decks. "

Why not? I have seen wild lists utilizing Coldlight Oracle to either make the opponent mill crucial cards or to draw bombs faster.

Regarding the rest of your post - I agree with it more or less.

[Note] - In my last post I forgot to say, that designing 100+ new cards, if the devs were to HoF the two sets, would be very hard to do. They have to spend a lot of time designing cards, that fit their philosophy regarding the 9 classes, their strenghts and weaknesses.

I'd just make it 2 mana 2/3, basic card for beginners to fool around with weak charge decks. And it will be an OK 2 drop for warrior in arena, they need as many of those as possible because they suffer the most from heropowering on 2

Quote From Kovachut

"imho just because we can't see the problematic deck right now, it doesn't mean that it wouldn't exist"

I don't think it really matters what powerful card combinations we can come up with in the current card pool; the fact of the matter is, the "combo shell" or "midrange-tempo shell" that warrior has isn't really good enough to facilitate a tier 1 or 2 deck featuring this card

AK75 druid needed a lot more than just the printing of star aligners and their interaction with the combo pieces to work.  You needed a 4 mana, draw exactly your combo pieces (and when this stopped working via the Aviana nerf, the deck immediately fell off the meta); extremely powerful stall, health gain and ramp.  Even before star aligner, all sorts of combo druids were high tier because of the power of their combo shell.  Meanwhile, a combo warrior of any kind can't ramp and will have inferior stall, health gain and draw.  Unlike theorycrafting the warsong combo itself, the wild community had plenty of time to come up with and refine better combo shells featuring other, though perhaps weaker, combo finishers.  The best we've got is the pyromancer-based shell that worgen warrior had and while it's functional, it's not wild-tier

Tempo, midrange and bomb warrior are not decks mentioned on VS nor HSReplay.  Again, the shell is not quite there.  Wild decks that focus on tempo can generate a lot more tempo than standard decks that focus on tempo.  Standard bomb warriors are good because clockwork goblins are considered good tempo in standard.  For tempo vs tempo matchups, the player with less tempo is at a huge disadvantage.  A tempo warrior can get in a lot of early chip damage in standard, but will be pushed off the board in wild.  Wild combo and control decks have much better control tools and recovery... I suppose your bomb warrior would be good against the newly popular OTK mages due to them having to draw your bombs before they can OTK, but the point is moot because they would have ice blocks against a warsong combo

All that remains is pirate warrior, which I mentioned before

"And I can't deny that hand/deck-disruption cards exist in wild, but I would like to state, that those aren't always reliable."

Well, that's just how disruption vs combo works.  Rats would be broken if they worked every time and combo decks would become worthless, wouldn't they? :P

"So it's not hard to imagine how an unnerfed WC would cause problems in wild."

My response to this is #2 in the previous post.  It's not currently causing problems but should start to, it still won't interfere with Blizzard designing new cards

"designing 100+ new cards, if the devs were to HoF the two sets, would be very hard to do. They have to spend a lot of time designing cards, that fit their philosophy regarding the 9 classes, their strenghts and weaknesses."

Did you confuse me with someone else? :)  I never said we should HoF two sets, just cards that have been nerfed and has since seen no or little play.  In any case, I think you're underestimating how many resources the HS team has.  Every expansion these days is accompanied by some solo content.  Each has new heroes, new bosses, new mechanics, new treasure cards, new boss-only cards, new hero powers, new voicelines, new card interactions, new art and more.  While I am extremely grateful for the bonus content, the quality and quantity of these show us how much more they're capable of doing.  Most of the solo content is one-and-done and most of us won't get to experience their hard work again unless we get those daily quests to monster hunt or something.  In other words, solo content is small potatoes compared to designing core cards that will be used every day and in every game mode.  Putting the effort into something of this importance would not be that unreasonable.  Blizzard is also not a small indie company; they could always increase their resource investment at any time if they were inclined

Also ... Barcelona at this time of year lol.  Aren't you afraid of burning to a crisp?

What statistically unplayable/underplayed cards in the Basic set means is that those cards are likely inherently unusable in decks for any player regardless of their level of skill or experience.

I think that's the root of the problem.

As a new player who joined early in 2019, I was enthused by the then-rotated cards, and left at a MASSIVE loss following this Spring's rotation, even in spite of my small collection.

Some of the standard and classic cards feel like absolute useless junk that will never be usable again as they stand, and some are even Legendaries...so many cards feel just rotten when you open them (Nat Pagle, Tinkmaster, that 1/4 taunt ape every one laughs about...)

I thought they were filler (well the ape seems to be), but only later did I realise they were leftovers of once powerful cards.

It's just a bit sad and it feels like they deserve something to be done about them: replace, un-nerf (partial or total), or just plain HoF.

That said, I now enjoy playing Wild now and then: HoF is not a proper solution and either Wild needs to be looked after properly and respectfully, or new play modes need to be invented so old cards can be used.

I really love the mature approach taken by TES:Legends, accepting "strong enough" nerfs to keep cards but not rotating anything.

To me it is the strength of the digital format, that old cards can always be fixed instantly with global reach, not just banned.

Banning or nerfing to the rock-bottom is just a lazy, unimaginative, disrespectful solution to the players who spent time and money into the game.

Quote From bananaMurloc

Banning or nerfing to the rock-bottom is just a lazy, unimaginative, disrespectful solution to the players who spent time and money into the game.

Using words like this to describe developers is extremely hyperbolic, vitriolic, and debasing for the work the devs put into the game.

You honestly think that the developers are those adjectives?

Lazy:  They've put in more work in this game, then you have probably put into one thing your entire life.

Unimaginative:  Right.  The developers who've come up with the cards, flavor text, interactions, and fun style of hearthstone are 'unimaginative'

Disprespectful:  So you think the developers SOLE purpose with nerfs, is to piss you (and other players LIKE you) off?  You honestly think that?  "Dev #1: Hey fellow devs.  Let's nerf this card.  But let's do it JUST TO PISS people off. Dev#2:HAHA YEA THAT SOUNDS AWESOME!" 

I believe everyone is welcome to give feedback, both positive and negative.  But using language like you chose, is just pathetic.  It's a hallmark language signal of a generation of newer gamers who are ...frankly speaking...entitled little shits. 

If you want to give feedback,  my suggestion is drop the cutesey sarcastic bit.  Sarcasm doesn't get anyone anywhere, especially in written/internet communication.  Leave sarcasm where it's best used, verbal communication.  Where the nuances of sarcasm can come into play, and not be misconstrued at all by any interested parties.  I'd also suggest whenever you want to write feedback, especially regarding a creative process; take a step back; think about how you would feel if YOU were the person who created the very thing you were criticizing; and then remember that there are people on the other end of your posts.

Developers are not some nameless shadowy figure who is this wispy embodiment of evil when things are bad, and this apparition of blessedness when things are fun.  They are people.  Who make both good and bad decisions sometimes.

There's an important quote that I hope you read and take away some meaning from regarding this topic:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

― Theodore Roosevelt