Tale as old as time… Nozdormu has to be the most problematic card in the history of Hearthstone, and it tries to defend its title once more (despite no other card even coming close to contest it). The most notorious problem with the card is that the shorter timer is, well, not always working as it should be. Cards you play on your turns that cause long animation sometimes “eat up” a part of your opponent’s turn. Normally it’s not a big deal, because you still have 60 or so seconds to do whatever you wanted to do. But with Nozdormu’s 15 second turn timers, it’s now much easier to force your opponent to skip (or nearly skip) their turn. Instead of 15 seconds, they get 2-3 seconds or maybe not even that.
It was an issue multiple times in the past (after each time Blizzard came up with a fix, but they all turned out to be only temporary), and it happened once again. When pro player & streamer Eggowaffle got Nozdormu from Dragonqueen Alexstrasza and then opposing Quest Warlock dropped Plot Twist (and everyone who played around with the card knows how long it can take to shuffle everything and refill the hand, especially when Aranasi Broodmother healing is also popping up), it forced to nearly skip Eggowaffle’s turn, leaving him with only a couple of seconds to perform their turn. Here’s the clip:
Other players have reported similar issues. It’s obviously not common, because basically no one is putting Nozdormu into their decks, but it’s still possible to get him from random effects (including aforementioned Dragonqueen Alexstrasza, or Ysera, Unleashed‘s Dream Portals). If you mix that with Quest Warlock becoming more popular on the ladder and the insanely long animation time of Plot Twist, you’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster.
Of course, it’s not like Blizzard has ignored the problem. But if I had a dollar for every time they have attempted to fix it, I would have… well, at least a few dollars. Over the years, players have asked to just remove the card completely or rework it. Because it has never seen any competitive play (and almost no meme play for that matter), but it has lead to turn-skipping bugs so many times. While the effect is cool and a good showcase of what you can do in a digital card game that would be very difficult to implement in a physical one, it’s just doesn’t seem to be worth it.
But maybe it’s the last time we’re hearing about broken Nozdormu. Blizzard has replied to the calls of multiple pro players who asked to just get rid of the card, saying that they are aware of those bugs and they’re being investigated. However, what’s more promising is that they’ve also mentioned that they’re working on a “long-term fix” for the card.
We are aware of instances where playing Norzdormu can skip your opponent’s turn. This is being actively investigated as a bug. We are working on a longer-term fix for Nozdormu related bugs, but in the meantime please continue reporting these issues as they crop up.
— Hearthstone (@PlayHearthstone) May 27, 2020
We truly hope that instead of patching it up once again and leaving as it is, they’re going to get rid of the current effect and replace it with something else. Something thematically fitting, but not allowing the rope to burn out before one can even say “Nozdormu”.
It happened to me while playing a druid who played Ysera unleashed. They got 6 dragons out in one turn and the first was Nozdormu.
Remember the Warsong Commander nerfr ? Just make him do something else, the 15 second turns was the dumbest idea anyway, and if they had no problems changing Warsong Commander to a terrible unplayable card, they can do the same to a card no one intends to play anyway,
they should really do something about animation (like having the possibility to disable them or at lest speed them up), I’m playing on mobile device and they are really really slow and can’t count how many turn I lost because of it.
Just give me back my 1600 dust and I’ll be happy.
I never understood why they don’t just skip over all remaining animation when a player clicks end turn. Or at least wait to start the next players timer untill it’s over.
The answer is most likely that they can’t cut animations completely without causing some errors.
And as for your second point – that’s exactly what they’ve tried to do multiple times already. For the second player’s turn timer to not start until everything is finished, or at least for each animation to add some time to second player’s timer. But every now and then a new card turns out to break it again.
That’s why I think that rework might be the best option. If they tried to fix the card 5 times and it still doesn’t work properly, then there’s probably nothing they can do about it.
Ah okej so they have at least tried. Strange that cutting animations and extending time should be so difficult. Hope they just don’t make the card boring and/or usless.