Finally, a balance update was released just before the weekend. It’s not big or anything, in fact just two cards got nerfed, but it also led to some interesting reveals, so I honestly don’t mind. As for the specific cards – Edwin VanCleef and Boggspine Knuckles were the ones touched (+Elistra the Immortal in BG).
Knuckles were basically a given, that’s the most important card in Evolve Shaman, so the best way to make the deck less powerful. Decreasing attack from 4 to 3 didn’t seem like much, but it helped – the biggest difference is that Shamans are no longer able to play Knuckles and drop Dread Corsair for 0 mana on the same turn, which means that they can’t start creating a powerful board on the same turn they equip Knuckles. Plus, less attack means less damage to the opponent or worse trades. I wouldn’t say that Evolve Shaman is now bad or anything, no, the deck is still strong, but it was a solid nerf. I just hope that they will react faster next time (and they should since it took quite a while last time because of the holiday season).
As for the Edwin, I don’t think that anyone expected it. Yes, people have asked for that nerf for years now, but it just never happened, Blizzard nerfed everything around it, but not Edwin. Now with the overpowered combos with Foxy Fraud, they’ve decided to nerf Edwin instead of Foxy… most likely because they’ve planned to rotate Edwin out of Standard in the coming months anyway. To Hall of Fame. Which won’t really be Hall of Fame, because it will no longer exist as it did… Yes, I’m just as confused, we should learn more about it soon, but for now we only have the information Alec Dawson shared on Twitter (read more about it here and here).
It’s too early to tell how the nerfs have affected the meta – or if they really mattered at all. For now, the obvious thing is that the number of Shamans has dropped, but Rogues mostly switched to faster builds instead and are still very much present. We’ll get back to that next week once we have more data!
Because there wasn’t enough time to make a compilation just from the pre-nerf decks (it came out just 2 days ago), I’ve also included pre-nerf decks. Honestly – most of them are still good. Even the ones that were affected by the nerfs are still good for the most part.
Below, you will find a full list of the Legend decks from last week, sorted by the highest placement.
If you want to see all of the current top meta decks, go to our Hearthstone Meta Tier List post!
If you’re looking for the best Wild Format decks, check out our Wild Meta Tier List!
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Anyone know why Silis is not corrupting Tickitus?
Silas, sorry.
What was interesting was that since the uther story dropped and they didn’t use the normal cards of Librams both the aldors and Librams spells, plus the lightforge cards I am wondering if those cards will be added to the core set when these cards go. Just hoping we don’t have to use are Arcane dust to get them if that happens.
My biggest hope is that they make the entire core set free. The game is already expensive enough, so it would be amazing for new players to be able to get into the game and actually own a bunch of solid cards they can play immediately.
The core set could contain some cards from current Classic, some cards from older expansions and some cards newly created just for that purpose. Librams or Lightforged (Pure) cards would make a great add. It would make sense to add Paladin some class identity in core set, because right now it doesn’t have one.
Of course, that’s just what I would love to see, it probably won’t happen, but one can dream 🙂 Still, I can’t wait to learn more about the Classic rework and what they’re planning. Besides the Battle Pass issues (which have been fixed already) the game has been heading in the right direction for a while now.
I think to let you know on my own opinion they should have more of the core set cards available to ftp player. Weird as it is I have only bought 1 thing just now and that was the Paladin bundle and I think I should get a refund because if they said you wouldn’t get duplicate cards for have 2 of every card I think they just broke that because I am missing dalarin cards and I got duplicates of Outland cards????. Your thoughts on that.