by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

Ok, I know that Undertaker being OP is not news. But I do know that Twizz felt the need to make a deck just to counter Undertaker decks.

But more importantly, JR made a suggestion on how to put the Undertaker back in line. A slight nerf of sorts that would make the Undertaker go from game-breakingly strong to just a cool powerful card. If you haven’t read the article, I recommend you do so now. But if you are too lazy to be helped, I’ll add the images here.

It was looking at the nerfed version when I realized I had an objective way of showing just how out of control the Undertaker is. I think you can all agree that the 1/3 version proposed by JR is less powerful version of the Undertaker, right? Now compare that nerfed version with other existing cards. First of all, there’s no neutral one mana minions in Hearthstone that boast that 1/3 statline.

But we can find one mana cost 1/3’s if we look at class cards, lets make the comparison.

Lets focus on Warbot and Mana Wyrm, which have the most similar effects. Warbot caps at 1 extra attack and needs to be damaged so at most it is a 2/2 which is still fairly easy to remove. Mana Wyrm on the other hand is the exact same as JR’s nerfed Taker, but with spells rather than Deathrattle minions. The thing is, unlike Minions, spells need an appropriate target to make the most use of it, so you kind of depend on your opponent. Deathrattle minions are things that you can just drop and they’ll likely stick on the board.

So we can see how even a nerfed Undertaker is better than both Warbot and Mana Wyrm, even if Class Cards usually have a bigger stat budget.

But lets compare it to other cards that give or gave permanent boosts and were nerfed for it

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Just like the live server Undertaker, the pre-nerf Dark Iron Dwarf and Shattered Sun Cleric had standard bodies for their mana costs. They gave 2 stat worth of permanent boost on the condition that you already had a minion down. Yet, they where deemed too powerful and had to be nerfed. Meanwhile, Undertaker doesn’t even need the Deathrattle minions to be on the board to get the boost, you can just drop it on a clean board and watch it grow next turn. Our OP friend basically gives every Deathrattle minion the Shattered Sun Cleric’s Battlecry, the only condition is that it has to be aimed at the Undertaker. But it is not just +1/+1, it can be +2/+2, +3/+3 or whatever you can manage as long as your opponent doesn’t have a way to deal with his ever growing body.

And speaking about Answers, how often do you see a one-drop commanding hard removal?

The Undertaker simply has the means to get as powerful as he wants, on his own. Sure you, need the Deathrattle cards but they don’t get wasted feeding Undertaker, you just play them and used them like you would’ve used them if you hadn’t had Undertaker on the table. Now lets compare Undertaker to other card that gets bigger on its own, namely, Shade of Naxx.

Like you can see above, Shade gives up 2-attack and jumps two rarities to get the ability to get +1/+1 each turn. That’s pretty much comparable to Undertaker on a Deathrattle deck, but our little Taker also has the option to get multiple boosts a turn if you drew a bunch of 1-drops. Once again you can see how Undertaker is as strong or even stronger than both Class Cards of the same rarity and good Epic Cards.

But what about smaller creatures that grow? Something that Undertaker can really compare to?

Take your pick, they all have limits. Lightwarden is the only one that can grow infinitely and that’s just attack, also Healing Characters isn’t a really easy thing to do. Mana Addict gets it easier, but its just temporary attack. Finally, we have Cogmaster. The Crazy Gnome is a newer and admittedly better card, and even then it only grows to 3/2. It’s a strong card that can challenge most 2 drops as long as you have a mech around.

So what do we do with the Undertaker?

You could always go through with JR’s nerf, even if in my estimation it is still too strong. It would be on the right side of overpowered. I know that it would make a difference at all since you get it from Naxx, but I would make Undertaker a Rare or even Epic card.

But now lets grasp how strong Undertaker is, I’m going to show you a few nerfed versions that would actually make for decent common cards.

So yeah, Undertaker needs a nerf yesterday. But despite any possible nerfs, it will likely still be a strong and widely used card.