Hearthstone Patch 19.6 Notes went live during Blizzcon and brought news to the Standard meta! High Abbess Alura, one of the cornerstone cards of the infamous Cheese Paladin, which has wreaked havoc since the release of Darkmoon Races back in late January, just received a nerf.
For those few who live under a rock and don't know what we're talking about, Cheese Paladin was a deck whose goal was playing either Nozdormu the Timeless or High Abbess Alura as early as possible and the quickly snowball the game by playing big hitters turn after turn or filling the entire board with Murlocs thanks to Tip the Scales from Alura's Spellburst trigger.
The deck was able to high roll with way too much consistency, especially thanks to Redscale Dragontamer's ability to tutor out Nozdormu, and not many heroes had the necessary tools to withstand waves and waves of stats. Therefore, here's what we think of this change.
Cost increased from 4 to 5 mana.
Possibly not the only nerf people of Standard (and Wild) were asking for, but surely a welcome one. While in Hearthstone's eternal format Alura is less of a problem, in Standard it created quite a back-breaking swing together with Tip the Scales - thanks to her Spellburst effect, you were able to fill your board with Murlocs as early as turn 4. It doesn't need to be said that very few classes have an answer for that, and the chances of winning the game on the spot are very high.
With this change, Alura's functionality remains exactly the same, but the increase in mana cost brings the consequence that it will take a bit more time to exploit her swingy effect, so that other decks will have a larger breathing room to build a board and, therefore, to win the game.
All in all, a good change - however, it's quite sad that Alura is getting touched mainly because of a rotating card like Tip the Scales, which was able to break the meta not once but even twice. On the other hand, Paladin is not in a bad spot at all, so Uther should definitely survive this change.
What do you think of this nerf? Did you want to see any other changes in the meta? Let us know in the comments below!
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 12 - Day 2 [Finished]](dark-beyond-reveals-day-2-thumb.webp)
Comments
This is a good nerf. I played Ramp Paladin all the way up to Legend this month, and I won a ton of games simply by having Alura on turn 4 or 5 with either the coin or something off Wandmaker. Having my murloc board dealt with was EXTREMELY rare that early in the game. Alura will still be fun and playable, but this will cut down on some of the nonsense I and many others were getting away with.
Now this nerf is completely justified, its a very strong card that limits design space. Any time a strong priest or paladin spell gets released, we need to ask the question wether or not Alura won't break the meta.
But I do need to vent my frustrations here: One of the reasons I have been disliking the game more and more lately, is the consistency of them nerfing strange or quirky decks that I enjoy personally, but not touching the decks that are equally powerful or otherwise strong in the meta. Why touch Alura, but not some of the Hunter cards? or Nitroboost?
Because a lot more decks have ways to deal with Hunter cards and Nitroboost. A turn 4 Alura + Coin was an unstoppable game-winner the vast majority of the time. Nitroboost doesn't even come close to that.
When i read this article i understood. It's priest card too. Lol. So many dual cards are only playble in one of them.
Same -- TIL
I had a Golden Alura, so I promptly and gladly claimed my 3,200 dust.
Pretty sure this is entirely justified.
They only use for her way always going to be highrolling on turn 4 and winning the game from there, it just happens that Tip the Scales was the most consistent way to highroll. It's not like Libram Paladin was any more fair with a turn 4 8/8 with taunt and divine shield (it just wasn't guaranteed to happen).
I'm assuming Cheese Pally just fades away now and Libram Pally just cuts her entirely (or she's just used for draw)
Honestly, I was surprised this didn't happen half a year ago since she has always been cheesing out Libram of Hope. It was never quite as back-breaking or consistent as with Tip the Scales at the moment, but it was always a nonsense high-roll to have to face on turn 4.
Anyway, I'm glad I can finally get rid of my golden one and turn it into something I'll actually enjoy using.
a good nerf ... even if I didn't like her too much. In my Pure/Libroom Paladin decks she often cast the weapon spell when there is no need for it, wasting an useful resource ...
There is nothing sad about this. Cards that have tutor functionality tend to break the meta. It has happened too many times. Team 5 needs to learn to be a lot more careful when designing cards that are so obviously prone to abuse.
I will never shed a tear over a nerf to a card that tutors or cheats mana, and this one does both.
Well i hope once she rotate sin a year /when tip scales rotates out will be reverted.
Changing her to only cast targeted spells would be better imo. This would stop her from casting Tip the Scales and would also make her a viable card for Priest. Nobody even gave a thought if this would have any significance for Priest. That's because she is completely unviable for the class in this state. She can only be used in decks that abandon most forms of targeted removal and AoE and Priest simply can't afford to do that. Tempo Priest simply doesn't work. It just runs out of resources way too easily and is too dependent on creating an early game snowball to win games. It's just way too unreliable.
wouldn't that make her way too good in Paladin though? Her main strength is drawing and casting a buff from your deck with the worst outcomes being First Day of School and Libram of Justice.
With those two eliminated she would be a 4-mana (assumign 0-cost activator) 4/7 at worst with exclusively amazing other outcomes
That is definitely a possibility. But some other adjustments could help offset that. I just don't like the idea of having a legendary card that's simply not playable in the class it supposedly belongs to. Their whole idea of forcing any sort of Tempo/Aggro/Buff Priest simply has not paid off so far. All the cards that were released for these archetypes simply see no play and that even includes the cards that replaced the Hall of Fame ones in the classic set. The Tempo cards were buffed but that didn't do anything to improve their viability. Temple Enforcer is good on paper but it requires a target for its buff and Priest just struggles to maintain their board against any of the other Tempo/Aggro classes.
The rotation of two of the class' main draw engines (Northshire Cleric and Acolyte of Pain) also causes serious issues when it comes to maintaining a steady flow of resources. Card generation doesn't help because it's simply too unreliable and Tempo Priest decks require their cards to synergize well with each other. Control Priest can get away with card generation because they have better sustainability and can live long enough to make use of any random resources they generate. But Tempo Priest doesn't have that luxury. They need to win fast against slow decks and they can't afford to lose the board once against any other Aggro/Tempo class. The hand gets clogged too easily with buff spells which are completely useless without anything to buff. Paladins have their 1/1 dudes to buff in case they don't have any other minions. Priest only has a heal that does nothing when you don't need healing and it is too weak for the current level of Aggro power creep in the game.
TL, DR: Tempo Priest is hopeless. Most of its cards are simply not playable and the class can't compete against the other classes in terms of draw consistency.
I get your point, but that would make her literally just a paladin card without any usefulness whatsoever when generated for Priest (the only one that can actually generate her). I think since it's a dual class card, and even if it's unused by Priest, it should at least be neutral to Priest, and not detrimental to it.
What are you talking about? How is she not detrimental to Priest in her current state? You can't play her if you generate her from Galakrond. She is just going to waste one of your key removals in an extremely inefficient manner and could even wipe your whole board with a Plague of Death. If she could only cast targeted spells this would never happen as Plague of Death isn't a targeted spell. You could still run Shadow Word: Death as she isn't eligible as a target for the card. This would open her up as an option for filtering. You could use her to cast some specific targeted spells (thus removing that card from deck) while conserving your ability to run all sorts of non-targeted removal and AoE without any risk of her wasting those resources inefficiently.
I don't even play this as much as I would like because of the RNG to it
Probably relegate ramp paladin a great deal now that its one additional turn to bear before Alura, assuming you'd even have that card in hand, devastate the board with murlocs. To me it was an unexpected nerf, given that most of the power cards like Tip the Scales and nozdormu would be rotating in about a month, but I guess the fact that one card practically cheeses the whole meta wouldn't exactly make it a fun time for everyone else.
I agree that anything that can create such huge board swings that early is not fun to play against, so I'd prefer it changed. Not that I play ranked much, but just in principle. So yeah, I like the change. How much will it impact the deck? We'll see.
I, for one, thought Tip the Scales should have been nerfed. It's not that I happen to have a golden copy... No, definitely reasons. Other than that.
Sweet sweet dust.