Mage rockin’ that 43.8% winrate after the nerfs (and falling). I don’t spend a lot of money on Hearthstone, I mostly only build serious decks for the Mage class, and now that is no longer possible. See you guys come December, maybe the next expansion will make Mage playable again.

Mage is getting wrecked, Priest is getting an appropriate nerf, Warrior is getting a slap in the wrist, Hunter and Paladin are getting a free pass. Guess it’s a Warrior + Hunter + Paladin meta up ahead.

Crafting golden legendaries is a good strategy to get free dust from cards that are about to be moved to the Hall of Fame. It’s not something you want to do with cards that are only getting nerfed.

For nerfed cards, there is a 2 week window where you can disenchant those for 100% of the dust it costs to craft them. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to disenchant them in this situation unless you’re actively using them, since you can just craft them again later for the same amount of dust

Haha, that sounds like a lot of fun actually

Did you already have every single Rise of Shadows legendary? That’s the only circumstance under which you should be getting a duplicate legendary card.

Secretkeeper is a candidate, IMO. Super high mulligan winrate, core card in secret hunter that also sees play in Highlander Hunter, and it’s a 1-mana minion that is capable of snowballing an early game lead, similar to (though not as powerful as) pre-nerf Mana Wyrm. That and Hyena Alpha are cards I’d pay attention to.

As far as Bomb Hunter is concerned, I’d look at Ursatron and Snip-Snap. I don’t think they’re super likely to be nerfed, but if you did want to nerf Bomb Hunter, those would be at the top of my list.

I would include Hunter in the list of classes that could see nerfs. It has the highest overall winrate.

Oh wow, these are a LOT of decks to check out. Thanks for the great work, Stonekeep!

Good deck, but only if you’re going for an all-golden version. You don’t want to be mistaken for a Plebeian while piloting this deck.

My final comment on this topic: Kripparian suggested what I think is a great solution to this problem, which is as follows:

Make it so that if you pay X mana to play a minion, that minion shows a mana cost of X while on the board. So if you have a full hand and play a 3-mana Mountain Giant, and then play Conjurer’s Calling on it, you’d get double 3-drops. Or if you play Luna’s Pocket Galaxy into a 1-mana King Phaoris into Conjurer’s Calling on King Phaoris, you’d get double 1-drops. Same deal for Shaman’s 7-mana rush minion into Mutate, and so on. I’d definitely be on board with that solution.

Okay, I can definitely believe a big spike in winrate from playing Luna’s Pocket Galaxy on curve, similar to a Year of the Raven aggro deck with a turn 2 Keleseth or a turn 4 Barnes on Big Priest as you mentioned, so that can be pretty frustrating as there’s not a lot of in-game counterplay to that.

At the same time, Mage decks’ winrates seem to be right where you’d want them to be right now, so nerfing Mage would risk leaving the class in a hole and reducing class diversity as Mage players switch to other, more viable decks and classes. Because preserving a diverse metagame is more important than nerfing obnoxious cards when it’s time to do a balance patch, Mage should not be nerfed right now, IMO. That said, if players refine Mage decks further and Mage winrate climbs to the point where they merit a nerf, Luna’s Pocket Galaxy should be the first card they should be looking at.

Good that they’re changing it up, Specialist was a train wreck of a format in the Grandmasters League.

Hey Skoopy!

I disagree about nerfing Mage (you can read my reply to SANDRG in this same comment thread as to why). As for card winrates, I’m not surprised that 15 of the top 16 winrate cards are Control Warrior cards, but that doesn’t really tell us much. If Control Warrior is the highest winrate archetype, and it plays a bunch of cards that no other archetypes use, then naturally all of those cards that only see play in Control Warrior will have a very high winrate. You can have a completely unassuming card like Shield Block that most people would agree doesn’t merit a nerf, and it’s gonna have a huge winrate because the card is played in a DECK that is overpowered. A ton of Control Warrior cards having high winrate only really tells us that Control Warrior has a high winrate.

As far as game design and balance: To see how card nerfs affect a deck, you have to think in terms of what the best alternative for the nerfed card is. So, imagine you nerfed Restless Mummy to 5 mana, how does that affect Control Warrior? Well, it would get replaced by Militia Commander, which is a bit worse. The nerf is relevant, but not huge. Compare that to nerfing Warpath to 3 mana. What does Warrior replace Warpath with? There is no good replacement, you either play the more expensive version of Warpath or just remove it from your deck and lose a ton of AoE removal capacity, making you much more vulnerable to decks like Token Druid or Murloc Shaman. Any nerfs to Warrior’s AoE removal spells, or to its key Mechs like Dyn-o-matic and Omega Devastator, would be pretty painful because there are no obvious replacements for those.

When a deck is overpowered, the idea is to nerf it until it’s not overpowered anymore, yet still viable. You could achieve that in a number of ways, such as a devastating nerf to a key card (e.g. nerfing Dr. Boom Mad Genius into the ground, making it utterly unplayable), or multiple smaller nerfs. Regardless of how you do it, the idea is that the deck’s overall power falls until it’s no longer out of line, and once that happens, a bunch of cards that used to be oppressive will cease to be. For instance, Waggle Pick felt pretty oppressive in the opening month of the Rise of Shadows expansion and EVERYONE was running weapon removal against it, but then Blizzard nerfed Rogue cards like Preparation and Raiding Party, and then Waggle Pick no longer felt oppressive, even though it wasn’t directly nerfed. It’s the overall power of the deck that’s the problem, and nerfs to any of the cards the deck uses will help reduce that. Galaxy to 6, Conj to 4, Boom to 8, Brawl to 6: Yes, yes, yes and yes, all of those nerfs would reduce the power level of the decks that use them 🙂

Kibler made the same point about nerfing Mage, but I disagree. Data has to be a crucial consideration when it comes to deciding whether to nerf a deck or not, and the data doesn’t tell me Mage needs a nerf. HSReplay tells me that the most popular Warrior deck archetype, Control Warrior, has a 61.9% winrate with its most popular decklist. The second most popular archetype, Aggro Warrior, has 59.83%. The most popular Mage archetype, Control Mage, has 55.68%, followed (in popularity) by Highlander Mage with 57.12%. For reference, Secret Hunter’s winrate is 59.81%, Mech Hunter’s is 59.38%, Murloc Paladin’s is 58.42%, Quest Paladin’s is 58.02%, Combo Priest’s is 59.39%, Murloc Shaman’s is 59.7%, and Tempo Rogue’s is 57.99%. Warlock and Druid also have archetypes with comparable winrates to Mage’s.

There’s other considerations as to why you might want to nerf a deck- maybe it’s really un-fun to play against, like Quest Rogue, or has very polarized matchups where winning or losing is mostly decided by who you’re paired up against in matchmaking. Polarized matchups are easy to check for, and I can tell you that Mage doesn’t suffer from those, with winrates between 40 and 60% in matchups against other popular archetypes. Do you feel like Mage archetypes are especially un-fun to play against? And if so, why? This could be a legitimate reason to want to nerf Mage, but other than that, Mage looks fine to me at the moment.

I think increasing Dr. Boom Mad Genius’ mana cost to 10 specifically would be a very big deal, delaying a Control Warrior from being fully operational by one turn. Control Warrior already has a very awkward turn 9, which can be exploited by playing giant minions that would be prime targets for Omega Devastator’s Battlecry right before Warrior’s turn 9. After that, on turn 10, Warrior can do crazy powerful things: with Dr. Boom already online, you can Omega Assembly, Omega Devastator, Dyn-o-Matic, and rush both minions into any board your opponent might have left over. The story would be very different if turn 10 made you choose between playing Dr. Boom Mad Genius, or playing your Omega Devastator plus something else, but without Rush and delaying the point where the Dr. Boom hero power comes online. Then again, changing its battlecry that gives mechs Rush into something else would also do a lot to bring the card’s power level down to a better place.

Ultimately, nerfing just about any of the cards that Control Warriors put in their decks would reduce the power level of the deck: Eternium Rover, Omega Assembly, Omega Devastator, Dyn-o-Matic, etc. Yet I agree that Dr. Boom Mad Genius is the right one to nerf. It’s kinda crazy that a 7 mana card has the highest mulligan winrate in the deck, higher than great turn 1 plays like Town Crier and Eternium Rover. It’s the most powerful card in the deck by Drawn winrate as well, and if you nerf Warrior’s other tools and keep Dr. Boom Mad Genius as is, then Warrior is gonna fall off a cliff when the April 2020 rotation sends him into Wild. I just think that this card is less likely to be nerfed than Brawl because Blizzard has so far shown to be more trigger-happy with nerfs to Classic & Basic cards ^^

Welp, looks like I was completely wrong to rate Reno the Relicologist one star. Thanks for the update Stonekeep, this is great stuff as usual ^^

On a side note, I’m ready to start making Control Warrior nerf predictions. I think the card that is most likely to be nerfed is Brawl (up to 6 mana), because
A. It’s way better than comparable AoE spells like Twisting Nether, and
B. Blizzard loves nerfing cards from the Classic & Basic sets.

I see. I guess there’s still a chance he’ll make a guest appearance in the Solo Adventure!

The break-even point on Bloodlust vs. Savage Roar is actually 2 minions: +2 attack to 3 targets = +3 attack to 2 targets, so Bloodlust gives you more damage with 3 or more minions.

My biggest lore question is… when did Harrison Jones fall out with the rest of the League of Explorers? Why is he lost and forgotten in a dark corner while Brann, Reno, Elise and Finley are in the limelight?

Darn, so close. 11 wins with Quest Druid.