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Yeah, definitely a whoopsie by my side: sometimes cards have such similar names that nailing them each time can become difficult.

Thanks for pointing it out: it is now fixed ;)

Hysteria needed the nerf...just not now of all times.

Now both Priest and Warlock just have to roll over and die to any board above 3 health. in the early game.

Well, Spring Water was a broken card and I agree with their change.

Give them time: they are the devs, they have more data than all of us. Trust the process.

Just noticed: Mankrik holds his Sword in the right hand, while Pissed Mankrik holds it in the left.

except at least one spell less will be discounted and also  the different between doing nothing on turn 2 and doing nothing on turn 3 is HUGE.

That way both fast and slow decks get more time to set things up so they Mage can't just Spring Water on 4 that easily.

Meanwhile right now all they need to do is just not mulligan for Spring Water anymore because they want to discount it first so it's the exact same as before.

I have no idea why people are so fixated on the idea that 0-mana draw 2 is such a busted effect in Hearthstone when we've seen this effect before (Cutting Class, hello?) and it wasn't nearly as powerful. Meanwhile a permanent Thaurissan to your entire deck for 2-mana (that you can run twice) is somehow not an issue?

However, reducing Fiendish Rites’s cost to 3 mana not only allows us to break the vanilla rule and play more stats than we should for their cost, but it also opens up interesting scenarios with cards like Ritual of Doom.

I think you meant to have Fiendish Circle linked here instead of Fiendish Rites, just a small thing I noticed.

Great write-up otherwise!

but that's the point. If the hit Flow immediately (just make it 3-mana, you figured it out for Wild Growth, how is this any different?)

Then their turn 4 is Spring Waterx2 to draw 4 cards for 0 mana & continue to clear your board + hit face... Nothing changes.

Might be a bit unnecessary but I felt like they should have just removed Aggem Thorncurse as well. Mainly because it's weird for there to be a better Menagerie card than Lightfang. It just feels like it makes Lightfang pointless. Maybe it's just me though.

Crabrider - love it. Still good, not busted.

Mankrik - fine.

Spring water - massive miss. The obvioos change was refresh 1 mana/spell. Making it 5 mana does almost nothing.

Not nerfing Incanters Flow - inexplicable.1.

Hysteria - unnecessary. It was fine, if deeply annoying.

First day of school - surely a nerf should make a card worse, not better?

Hysteria nerf would have had to happen at some point anyways. Priest and Warlock usually get a lot of small and big boardclears as time goes on and the only way to play around those is by keeping about 2 or 3 medium sized minions around, which is exactly what Hysteria punishes, so this way it allows tempo decks to at least get a foothold. The issue is that they nerfed it way too early because now both classses have extremely limited early game removal and Paladin isn't getting any weaker.

Inquisitor buff is literally just an apology because they f*cked up the initial design. We're not getting any new Corrupt cards and the current pool is dogshit, so there's no way Corrupt Priest will ever be viable anyways (because there is no deck that loses the Clowns that they don't already beat anyways, outside of the mirror).

I didn't even bother to mention the N'zoth buff because it's just so inconsequential. If you ever need to play N'zoth at turn 9 you're probably losing and at 9-mana you still can't combo it with anything relevant.

Deck of Chaos could be interesting if Warlock gets a way to tutor Shadow Spells, but until that happens you can't reliably run a deck full of giant minions that relies on drawing and playing 5-mana do nothing on turn 5.

The funny thing about Paladin is that they are actually very close to being balanced enough (while still being one of the best decks ofc), but Blizzard just keeps failing at addressing the very few specific spells that actually matter.

First Day should just have had the mana increase to gut it completely because it's not a healthy card in any way, at least not in a world where the core set removed just about every terrible 1-drop in existence. Oh My Yogg! needs to be reworked into unplayabilty because it is literally a better version of Counterspell in 9/10 cases and nothing is more frustrating than just losing the game to a 1-mana card that you cannot possibly play around in any capacity. Finally, only Conviction needed to be dealt with and that would easily be fixed by setting it to 2-mana so it's not so goddamn easy to just throw in regularly without losing any steam.

Only 3 cards and the class would be fine for the forseeable future, but they picked just one of them and even managed to fuck that one up.

Alright time for my shitty review of the nerfs and buffs.

Crabrider this is nerfed in a way I did not expect it. I kind of like it though. It loses its burst potential but keeps it low cost and high health.

[Hearthstone Card (Refreshing Springwater) Not Found] Why they didn't nerf Incanter's Flow is beyond me. But hey, I have two golden copies of this card. This was a very good draw card in a class that has very good draw already. All it does it makes Spell Mage more inconsistent. 

Mankrik Fair

First Day of School this card effectively took the role of a one drop in the time that Paladin sorely lacked 1 drops. Now they have 1 drops I don't think this nerf is as effective as it would have been. But we shall see.

Hysteria I did not expect them to nerf this card. Now don't get me wrong. This card is the single best removal card in the game. It is so efficient and most of the time it just clears your opponents board. It is a broken card at 3 and you won't be able to convice me otherwise. 

Now onto the buffs in general they seem to be small changes here and there. 

Razorboar Not a very big change, but atleast now it will be able to trade better with 1 more attack.

Unbound Elemental , Tidal Surge and Lilypad Lurker are all good buffs that are not going to matter in the slightest. With that I mean in a vacuum it is a good thing, Unbound Elemental Should have been at 3/4 to begin with, and it might see play in an overload centric deck now, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Tidal Surge should have never been 4 mana. In what world is it reasonable that you pay 2 mana more for 1 more damage than Penance and Drain Life [Hearthstone Card (.Lilypad Lurker) Not Found] good card without useful synergy becomes a better card without useful synergy. What Shaman is lacking sorely is card draw. These are all good buffs in a vacuum, but not what Shaman needs.

Fiendish Circle I guess a 3 mana 4/4 isn't to bad. 

Deck of Chaos This card will still be an unplayable meme.

Dark Inquisitor Xanesh This is how the card should have been from the start it feels shit being punished for corrupting your cards. 

Whirling Combatant , Shieldmaiden both buffs that seems to make control Warrior stronger They are okay I guess? 

N'Zoth, God of the Deep I would love for this card to be playable I don't think the problem is cost, but moreso the lack of synergies you get in your deck with play a ton of different tribes. 

team5 love their creations and they dont want to nerf the power cards they just introduced. anyone surprised that after the supposed deck of lunacy nerf that mage was still the most played class in grandmasters? anyone want to bet with me that mage will continue to be the most played class still?

just a reminder the card "crystal core" . how many nerfs? till they decided yeah we have to kill it and make sure it stays dead ( at least for a few years )

I think team5 is aiming to bury that record.

It seems that the OG has deleted his salty post.

I like this round of buffs/nerfs, I think they give some room for other archetypes.

It'd be really funny if people actually got mad enough that Blizzard would listen and just nerf a card not because it's overpowered or easily abused but just because it's not aesthetically pleasing lmao.

there’s some spicy stuff.

Where?

quick note. they said DH would see more play. i guess its because of the other changes, cause that beast going to 3 attack is not gonna boost DH alone

N'ZOTH CHANGED TO 9 MANA?? B-But muh immersion.

Currently, the in Twitch timer is showing 2/4 hours.

Hysteria nerf is very good. I highly approve every nerf of priest.

but that's the point. If the hit Flow immediately (just make it 3-mana, you figured it out for Wild Growth, how is this any different?) they'd have a much better picture of Mage powerlevel as a whole (aka not being forced to decide whether or not making new spells will completely break the class again)

Point is, if Spring Water wasn't the problem then it is still never going to be unnerfed, meaning it got sacrificed for no reason.

Funny how the new buff to N'Zoth is now a nerf to this deck 🤣 can no longer guarantee the draw off of Taelan Fordring

Just want to point out, holistically they don't nerf cards for the state of Wild, so while you may be upset that "APM mage" didn't get touched, it's because unless something is EXTREMELY broken (like tiller/hysteria combo) they don't make those nerfs for wild.

Wild perspective:
Surprisingly reasonable patch, all things considered. The Spring Water nerf gives APMage a huge gaping hole on the 4 mana turn, and the inability to draw for free may force the deck to go off a turn later, or may potentially break the combo when they do go off. Doesn't make the underlying brokenness any better though and that's concerning. They did a similar thing with Aggro Token Druid, where the absolutely crazy shit they could do is still possible, they just hurt their refill so people felt demotivated to play the deck. The things the deck did well, it still does just as well and it's still just as uninteractable. And it's only going to take one or two cards to make it just as broken as it was before because none of the key stuff was touched (Flamewaker, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Incanter's Flow in the case of APMage, Embiggen, Pirate package, Gibberling, Adorable Infestation in the case of Aggro Token Druid.)

The wrecking of Crabrider is well deserved, though the fact that Animated Broomstick is still somehow left intact baffles me. There's absolutely no way a Neutral 1/1 for 1 should be doing as much as that thing does. It would be absurd and complained about if it were class-specific, in Neutral it's just unacceptable. Either raise the cost, or make it give Rush to one guy. Doesn't even make sense flavour-wise that an entire board can ride the one damn broomstick anyway.

First Day of School not being literally the single best turn 1 card outside of Pirates is also nice. Now you actually need a reason to play the card (e.g. handbuffing), rather than this being the default.

From the others...the N'Zoth buff would be interesting for Wild if playing a control game was actually possible. You can put it in like an Odd Taunt Druid now or in Reno Hunter but you fold to the plethora of combo decks out there and most aggro is too fast, so why do you bother? And when it comes to control mirrors the two Priests and Warlock have a chokehold on that anyway. Plus it's now the only Old God that doesn't cost 10, which is weird.

The Shieldmaiden buff is nice, but doesn't change anything for Odd Warrior's viability. You don't have the luxury of armoring up for 5 mana against aggro, control laughs at your attempt to develop a board with a 5 mana 5/5, and the lack of any win condition, especially after the loss of Elysiana leaves the deck dead in the water.

Unbound Elemental's improved stats are definitely a step in the right direction, but doesn't fix the fact the card is just awkward to play in an Overload-centric deck, as are all non-Overload cards. If you're playing a classic Overload Shaman curve, you drop Tunnel Trogg on 1, Totem Golem/Jade Claws on 2 and then you're locked out of your Unbound Elemental mana. Essentially, outside of the turn 1 play of Tunnel Trogg or Surging Tempest, you want to string Overload cards one after another. When you play an Overload card, you get a powerful effect for cheaper now at the cost of tempo later. But if you then follow that up with another Overload card, you never really lose the tempo because you never really pay "full mana" for anything. When you start having to weave in non-overload cards like Unbound Elemental, it gets really awkward because you're forced to play them off curve, on turn 4 or 5. +1 attack on Unbound Elemental doesn't fix that. A reduction in mana cost would.

I don't know if its completely dead, but its a lot weaker now

Seems weird that they didn't nerf Tough Tusk, that many stats on tier 2 and it can easily have a divine shield?  Deflect-o-Bot is crying.