Rejoice, Wild players! You will no longer take 100 damage on Turn 5 every couple of games. Blizzard has pushed out a ban for The Ceaseless Expanse.
Even before launch, players have figured out that it would be a perfect card to combo with Paladin’s Holy Wrath. Before The Great Dark Beyond, the card would only do 20-25 damage when paired with Molten Giant or Shirvallah, the Tiger, which is obviously still a lot, but not enough to just straight up kill most of the opponents.
The card will still be usable in all other formats. I assume that the ban is temporary and it will be back in Wild too once some other balancing measures are taken (a common idea is to revert Order in the Court‘s nerf so it once again draws a card).
We are ceasing The Ceaseless Expanse in Wild Mode. The card will still be usable in other formats. pic.twitter.com/MIykzKKVNU
— Hearthstone (@PlayHearthstone) November 8, 2024
Make the Expanse cost 0 when it’s in your deck!?
maybe the solution would be:
“destroy the top card of your deck, then draw a card and deal damage equal to its cost”
this would destroy the ceaseless expanse and then deal 25 from shirvallah, while still keping the giants active in case you draw shirvallah and/or expanse.
personally i think the “draw a paladin card from your deck and deal damage equal to its cost” is the more elegant solution, but you would need ways to shuffle shirvallah back into your deck or else the deck would fizzle upon drawing it
Holy Wrath can target only minion (and maybe cost 4)? Hello genius. BTW it was a deck pretty symple to farm with flamewalker mage (divine shield on your face and it’s done).
Nah, that’d completely kill the deck
Yeah, the deck had a lot of counters, but it warped the meta completely – you had to play Holy Wrath Paladin or one of the decks that counters it. It heavily limited the number of viable decks. That’s not a very fun experience so I’m glad they’re dealing with it.
It’s going to be tough to nerf Holy Wrath without completely killing the deck. Your idea that it can only target minions kills the deck (that version wouldn’t see any play even at 3 mana, maybe at 2, haha).
“Buffing” Order in the Court so it draws again is also tough but at least you can still deal 20/25 with Molten Giant. Or you can combo Ceaseless with Lorekeeper Polkelt but that’s 2 more mana, and 2 mana is A LOT (+he’s a Legendary so you have only a single copy).
Maybe Holy Wrath only drawing Paladin cards, that would make it so you can hit them for 25 with Shirvallah but it wouldn’t work with Ceaseless (however then it also wouldn’t work with Giants).
Before Ceaseless it was mostly used in Reno Paladin as an alternative win condition and it wasn’t really problematic, so killing Holy Wrath because of Ceaseless feels pretty bad.