Hearthstone is changing next week with five card nerfs, one being only for wild, so its time that we look at decks that we can play before they get hit with the nerfbat on Monday.
For a quick recap, here are the changes. You can read more about why they are changing here.
- Conjurer's Calling now costs 4 mana (Up from 3)
- Luna's Pocket Galaxy now costs 7 mana (Up from 5)
- Dr. Boom, Mad Genius now costs 9 mana (Up from 7)
- Extra Arms now costs 3 mana (Up from 2)
- Barnes now costs 5 mana (Up from 4)
Crafting any of the above cards now means you can disenchant them for their full value once the patch hits Monday. No losses for a weekend of fun!
I'll probably disenchant my Golden Conjurers and Golden Pocket Galaxy since I'm not using them atm.
Mages and their Puzzle Box
Two for the price of one! Puzzle Box mages make use of both Conjurer's Calling and Luna's Pocket Galaxy relying on big hands, dropping down them Mountain Giants and getting crazy value. Pocket Galaxy is very likely to be immediately thrown to the side making the current iteration of this deck playable only for a short amount of time.
As someone who has personally piloted the deck, yeah, this was quite fun while it lasted and will be missed.
Control Warrior
If you haven't experienced this nonsense yet as the player, this is your last chance to make people concede on 7. Control Warrior with the mad genius has been a very popular deck for several sets now much to the hate of the playerbase.
Personally, I've extremely happy this turd won't be dropped every single turn 7 for Warriors anymore. Every time turn 7 hit I would say "and here my opponent plays Dr. Boom" and every damn time it was right. A couple extra turns delay is good, though I would have preferred to just see the card lose its Rush ability or better yet - deleted from the game. We had much too long of a wait on this card adjustment.
Combo Priest
We've got the classic Divine Spirit and Inner Fire Combo with a solid early-game play that'll stick your minions to the board thanks to all these arms.
If you want to learn more about the deck or how to play against it, NudeWookie featured in this week's Rock, Paper, Scissors article.
WILD: Zoo Priest
Watermelon86 has an awesome Zoo Priest deck that makes use of Extra Arms and for the non-wild players out there, as long as you've been collecting cards for the past 2 years you already have most of what you need to play it.
You'll really want to read the guide for this deck.
WILD: Barnes Priest
This is the deck you see everyone complaining about when Barnes has been brought up with Wild player complaints. We got the list off HSReplay and it is currently the top performing deck with Barnes in it. Huge minions, great board effects, and plenty of revival makes for limitless value. Barnes being bumped up by 1-mana will certainly slow things down a little.
WILD: Barnes and his Big Rogue
Similar to Priest, we've got a bunch of big dudes with great effects that we want to copy out early on. It may not be your last chance to play with Barnes to great success in wild, but it is certainly the last time we'll ever seen him at 4 mana.
Comments
Hero cards have warrior a terrible one. A year passed and they gave it a good one. Broken hero cards were around such as rexxar guldan and jaina. Nobody was nerfed cause they all existed. Mad genius remained the only good one for late game and thus it had to be nerfed. Probably the only one to be nerfed just cause there wasnt any of its level around in standard.
Also Bomb Warrior, Wild Spell Hunter and Wild Big Paladin
The nerf to warrior isn’t nearly enough, especially with the new taunt buff mechanic that made its way into control warrior. That deck is toxic and blizzard really need to get their act together. I think it’s the first negative comment I do on patch notes for Hearthstone
Big Priest on the main page...
Sorry Flux, you know I love ya. But I also hate BP too much not to mention it :P
Its sad that a number of fun decks in wild like Big Rogue will probably be more damaged by the collateral damage from the Barnes nerf than Big priest itself. Barnes was an often brutal turn 4 play to be sure, but Vargoth and the resurrection/ graveyard mechanic as a whole are much more problematic, imo. Having said that, I'm glad that Blizzard finally pulled the trigger on the nerf, but worry that Big Priest will continue to plague us more or less indefinitely. Maybe the lack of an early statue or Yshaarj will allow aggro decks to push through that much more easily, who knows?
Agreed. Big Priest doesn't need Barnes anymore at all. Just hard mulligan for Vargoth. Opponent kills it priest just resses it twice. Don't kill it and you risk facing double Shadow Essence
I've actually been thinking for a while now that Vargoth is a much better card in that deck than Barnes. The only upside of Barnes was playing him on turn 3/4 and getting something amazing to bring back over and over again. But once he died he was a terrible rez target himself. But Vargoth is an amazing rez target can still be played 3/4, and is much more impactful when summoned by Shadow Essence as well. The other great benefits of Vargoth outweight the lack of a 1/1 summoned when played.
I held onto my two copies of golden conj i opened at ROS week one because I knew that shit would be nerfed.
Boom isn't going anywhere by the way. It was appropriately nerfed but warrior players are probably happy about these nerfs overall due to not getting farmed by mage.
Linking a big priest deck on the frontpage? You're playing with fire here, Flux...
I don't think extra arms nerf will hit so hard the combo itself (since IF/DS were kept untouched)
But it will definitely make any sort of aggro/tempo priest unfeasible... that's a shame
I've been having tons of fun with some aggro decks in wild in which turn 2 Extra Arms or Shadow Ascendant was probably the most important step...
In the end, Priest will be brought back to it's original place - either a degenerate/broken combo, or dumpster....
Mage deck might be fun to play, but it sure aint fun to play against. If they get an OK to good hand, often whatever you do you can't win and the game is effectively over turn 5.
I hope all classes can have something powerful, viable, skill testing but not crazy broken. I can dream :)
Maybe Combo Priest could survive with Embalming Ritual and/or Holy Ripple instead of Extra Arms (mainly for Pyro purposes).
Surely not the same, but it could be enough.
Combo Priest was a brief, yet fun experience
Will it find a way to stick around or is Priest back out of standard?
My guess is that combo priest will still be around, but it will either morph into a new, slightly less effective aggro variant or shift to look more like RR's wall priest. Which outcome I think it depends greatly on how popular control warrior is post-nerf, since that is currently dictating what aggro decks are viable. Boom on 9 is still pretty strong so maybe CW is still around just with ~3% fewer wins. On the other hand, I could also see a lot of players just dust him immediately for the full refund and then play other decks while waiting to see the new meta before possibly recrafting. If everyone does that it will drastically shake up the meta.
I don't think priest is going to go hiding, though it certainly did take a decent hit. Extra Arms felt so great to play, it is a shame =(
Cannot wait to burn my barnes for that sweet 1600 dust