A round of card balance updates is arriving this week focusing on Turtle Mage and Guardian Druid.
Quote From Blizzard Tortollan Pilgrim
- Old: Battlecry: Discover a copy of a spell in your deck and cast it with random targets. → New: Battlecry: Discover a spell in your deck and cast it with random targets.
Guardian Animals
- Old: [Cost 7] → New: [Cost 8]
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I'm ok with both nerfs, wasn't really looking for them, but both are fair enough. Neither type of deck was that oppressive, but I can see why they did both of them.
Having said that I definitely did not enjoy playing against turtle mage.
RIP Odd Druid. I was having great fun with the deck and it was surprisingly good. I do hope that the nerf get reverted when the set gets rotated.
Imagine not nerfing Hunter instead... Oh nevermind Guardian animals is a Hunter card on paper too. That being said, nerfing Guardian Animals is probably the right call. That card is insane, as recruit effects have always been very strong.
As for the Turtle Mage nerf.. I want to start out with saying I enjoyed playing that deck, it provided an interesting take and something I hadn´t seen before. The only thing that comes close is Shudderwock Shaman. While I personally enjoy the rush of being on a timer when facing decks like these, I can imagine that having your board frozen over and over is really unfun to play against. This was not an oppressive deck, it was unfun to play against for most and thats why it was nerfed. The same reason Cabal Acolyte got nerfed with the last batch of them, its super unfun to play against. . Unfortunutely for me, it still has its effect, but hey can´t have it all.
So, since the nerf will kill of the deck and I am dumpster Legend, I will spend the day playing just this deck. <3
Not gonna comment much on tortollan, im fairly indifferent ob the matter, as I didnt have a particular dislike towards turtle mage.
But what a shame this nerf to ga is. I theory crafted so many different ways they could work around the card and upping the mana just makes it a druid only card. Instead they could leave it at 7 but remove the rush component - that way hunter could still run it with tundra rhino, which, admittedly, wasn't done, but it would be an option for wanting hunter players, who would look for an edge in the use of the card over druids, also the latter still would have the option to rush the pulled beasts with broom, at a now 8 mana cost. Another, albeit much more obscure option was making twilight runner a hunter class card, move thresher to druid and make teachers pet a neutral card. It isn't clean due to the discussion of class identity and such, but the shift in power levels would be very appropriate imo as well as introducing a decent defensive midrange card for some decks.
Speaking from a purely wild perspective, I didn't think turtle mage was a problem, at least no stronger than other infinite value decks eg DMH warrior, Shudderwock shaman, Shadowcaster rogue - they are slow and they can be thwarted. It's a slight pity to lose some deck variety in wild (albeit a drop in the ocean), hopefully they'll unnerf the card when it goes to wild.
YES
I actually think it is a shame Turtle Mage got killed and it is because some fun meme decks utilized it to actually make other non-competitive cards see a bit more play than they had before (which in many cases was zero play before Turtle Mage). Ra combo decks and Bancient One decks will go back into much more difficult to actually play obscurity once more, which is a big shame.
So, Guardian Animals is officially no longer a dual-class card. Cool.
How have you come to that conclusion?
I suppose because Hunter wouldn't play it at 8 Mana, while Druid's ramp means it's not terribly bothered by waiting one extra turn. Still a powerful card.
I am ok with the Tortolan nerf, but I think the problem in Druid is the ramp and I would rather see that or the Twilight Runner nerfed.
So, Shadows got nerfed then?
Thank God that stupid Card is gone!
One less unfun/uninteractive Combo Deck for Mage.
Well, I was thinking when and if team5 was ever going to do something about turtle mage and today to my amazement, they did. I personally dont think the deck was consistent enough for standard anyway, but when it works its just about the most cancerous combo deck currently in existence. Maybe it's not entirely dead yet, with Educated Elekk being so handy.
That nerf to Guardian Animals means they cant just go hard on turn 5 after an Overgrowth without another card like Innervate, but I'd much rather they simply nerf Twilight Runner instead. Maybe even Lake Thresher. But when will team5 just address that massive problem with druid right now, which is the ridiculous ramp they can get to. I swear there are games where a druid can be 5 mana ahead, and that's just wrong.
Agreed. Guardian Animals is fair at 7 mana. The unfair part is that Druid can consistently play a 7 mana card on turn 4.
I totally just crafted Tortollan Pilgrims this morning to play that cancer of a deck. Not going to lie, I'm a little pissed about that. But at least I can get my dust back.
I think the only way to make it a viable option anymore is if the copy that is played gets to be copied by Educated Elekk
Excellent changes
Some needed changes but i feel like they could have gone in a different direction for Druid. Nerfing Twilight Runner to 6 or Overgrowth to 5 would probably be a lot better. Guardian Animals is also a Hunter card and Hunter doesn't have access to ramp to play it faster which makes the increased cost a lot more devastating to them. The card is dead for Hunter before it even started seeing some real experimentation.
I'm not sad in the slightest that Turtle Mage is dead. But Pilgrim also seems a lot worse for any Control/Highlander Mage. Instead of providing a high value battlecry that makes high cost spells more worthwhile, now it will remove the spell and increase your fatigue counter by 1. That's a big deal against other control decks. I don't think it's worth using it anymore.
I can understand the nerf to turtle mage as the deck is just super unfun to lose to. But the rest of the meta was, again, so good. No top tier decks and like 7/10 classes had highly competitive decks. Druid really didn't feel like it needed another nerf this early.
Thank God, tortollan mage is gone. One of the dumbest decks in Hearthstone, no argument here.
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