I’m rounding up a bunch of the reactions to the upcoming nerfs to: Fiery War Axe, Hex, Innervate, Murloc Warleader, and Spreading Plague. If you missed it, Ben Brode also responded to some of the criticism on Reddit, you can check that out here.
Pro/Streamer Player Reactions
Fibonacci, who is viewed as the best Control Warrior player, reacted to the Fiery War Axe nerf unfavorably:
“nerfing war axe around aggro deck that rotates out in 8 month but crippling all other archetypes forever. also reasoning is just insulting” – Source
There was a full Reddit reaction thread to this Tweet which you can read here. Ben Brode also left a response in it.
Rdu left a long response on Twitter about the nerfs. I don’t want to paste the whole thing, but you can read it all here. He pinpointed one of the most likely factors in the immense outrage to the changes:
Another thing that I didn’t like in the blog post was the way some of their nerfing explanations where written down, in similar fashion to the already classic not implementing more deck slots because it’s too complicated for new players. Even if as game designers they need to make things very intuitive and easy, you shouldn’t really tell that to the players explicitly or else a big percentage of people will have their intelligence insulted and that’s not a good thing. It’s kind of as if a company who makes doors would come forward and say the reason they put a push bar on the door is for the people to not pull a door that is supposed to be pushed, it’s a logical process in designing anything to try to make it as simple and intuitive as possible but it shouldn’t be pointed out. I think they really need to find a different way of writing things so that the players don’t feel dumb or feel like Blizzard is only catering to new players.For example instead of saying that one of the reasons they nerfed Fiery War Axe is that it’s easier to see the cost of the card than the attack they could just say it was a dominant card for way too much time, it could cause a lot of problems in the future and just end the explanation there.
I think there would be far less outrage over these changes if the design decisions listed made more practical sense.
Cydonia also wrote a long analysis of the nerfs. Here are a couple of interesting quotes from the post:
One thing to keep in mind is how crippling nerfs that add 1 mana to the casting cost or slightly reduce the power or health of a minion are, especially for low mana cost cards that are meant to be played on curve. There are many examples of cards like Spirit Claws, Rockbiter Weapon, Leper Gnome, and Abusive Sergeant that were once ubiquitous and were rendered obsolete by a small nerf. A low mana cost card like Execute, that is not meant to be played on curve, will typically retain playability better than cards that are more powerful on curve like Call of the Wild.
The impact of the Fiery War Axe change:
The immediate impact of the change will be to weaken Pirate Warrior in the current metagame. This could have been accomplished by nerfing any of the other core cards of the deck. However, Blizzard has a preference towards changing or removing Classic cards, as mentioned previously and Fiery War Axe has been a Warrior staple since the beginning. More than that, it has been the main reason Warrior has always had its place near the top of the metagame, whether it is Control, Patron, Dragon, Tempo or Pirate. Fiery War Axe has been one of the strongest cards in the game for a long time, but personally for nostalgic reasons I am sad to see it changed. I am also worried, like others, that Warrior will be relegated to being a weak class in the near future. From a flavor point of view, I am disappointed that Warrior, which I see as the weapon class, has its iconic weapon reduced to being a strictly worse Eaglehorn Bow, Rallying Blade or Shadowblade. It does open up space to design more powerful Warrior cards in the next expansion, but as we have seen following the Blade Flurry nerf, this is all but guaranteed.
His meta prediction:
The buzz around the community is that Priest is the second strongest deck already before the nerf, and since it wasn’t touched it is fairly easy to join everyone and predict it to be the deck to beat. Like Jade Druid, Priest can do everything and has a nearly unbeatable late game with the Raza / Anduin combo. It can already beat all the aggro decks with appropriate tech choices so it is unclear what can be done to beat Priest after the nerfs. It might become the ban of choice instead of Druid. Of the aggro decks, Pirate Warrior has been hit the hardest, followed by Aggro Druid and Murloc Paladin. It is unlikely any of those decks can stand up to Priest after the nerfs, so unless Secret Mage or some kind of Warlock, Rogue or Hunter emerge, Shaman is the best deck to remain untouched. Shaman will probably have a better winrate after the nerfs, especially since Jade Druid is currently its main weakness on ladder. If I must predict a top 3 of ladder decks post nerf, I would go with Raza Priest, Evolve Shaman and Jade Druid, with an honorable mention to Big Priest, as much as I dislike that deck and everything it stands for.
War axe should have something added to it like Battlecry: gain 3 armor
Losing this powerful a card will kill all Warrior decks in the future.
Control Warrior is a great deck to have in any meta as it helps keep SMORC decks in check.
What is next on the chopping block, Fireball now costs 5 mana?
Lol fireball could easily be 5 mana and still be played
Whatever. Blizzard doesn’t nerf a “cancerous deck” and everyone complains. Blizzard does provide nerfs and people complain it didn’t happen soon enough, it happened too quickly, or it shouldn’t have happened at all.
People complain the meta is stale while complaining Blizzard is providing too many expansions for the F2P people to stay competitive.
People complain the game costs too much while not paying anything at all.
People complain Blizzard doesn’t listen to its user base and then complain when they try to explain their reasoning. (Listening is a two-way activity.)
Really? Appreciate the fact Blizzard isn’t letting the game stagnate, other people are willing to pay for the content (since Blizzard is not a charity, nor are they pushing advertising), and they seem genuinely interested in adding new ideas to the game.
Just my two cents, for what it’s worth.
Setting aside all the vitriol over these changes, does anyone know when they’re supposed to go live? I’d rather know how much time I have to make changes to my decks than spend it reading everyone’s superlative complaints and wishes about what had been done instead.
In a future update.
just make fiery war axe a 3mana 3attack 3durability weapon..
THANK YOU!!!
Lol, so buff it instead of nerfing it. The nerf is just fine, the other classes have nothing in basic set as powerfull as win axe. 33 would be insane.
Making it a 2 cost 3,1 weapon would have been an acceptable nerf i feel like. simply because pirates can buff its durability anyways.
Pirate warriors decks must die, Blizzard made a good nerf
Typical blizzard BS…ruin staple cards that were essentially free, to open up slots for their next expansion forcing players to spend more money…they do not care what so ever about their customers, they just want to squeeze as much money from you as possible… If ppl thought infest was getting a nerd ( which should have been the fix ) they were delusional, why would they need a new in demand card that costs them your dollars.. look forward to facing nothing but priests in the future, … blizzard is staffed by officious little pricks, who are trained to wring money from your wallets.. the state of the game is sadder then ever, only 2 viable classes at the top of ladder instead of each class having viable decks for top competition.. there are many ways to do this but their chief and immeadiate concern has been and will continue to be sucking up your money in the most efficient way possible.. I dropped $500 dollars on KotF that is the last $$ blizzard will ever get of my money after this obvious money grab.
play Gwent
Maybe don’t drop $500 on a digital card game dumbass
I like this kind of post thank you for taking time to compile this!
Glad you enjoyed it, I wasn’t sure if people would like this kind of post!
really sad FWA is getting a nerf. just for it to try to weaken pirate warrior will make all the other decks much weaker especially after when pirates rotate out next year. as a f2p player it is hard for me to make manydecks and i have focused on only makin gwarrior decks this year, from this nerf warrior could be much weaker. hopefully blizard makes better weapons and cards to support the different archetypes in the upcoming sets
Raza Priest needs to be addressed. It’s out of control.
“Shaman is the best deck to remain untouched.”
No comment.
Going off the stats off a site like vicious syndicate the comment makes perfect sense. After Pirate Warrior, Murloc Pally, Jade and Aggro Druid, shaman has the next highest percentage winrate.
Since all of the aforementioned decks are receiving a nerf then “Shaman is the best deck to remain untouched.”