Undertaker Nerf Incoming
by JR Cook - 9 years ago show comments
Hunters have been owning the ranking ladder thanks to the Undertaker. He’s tough to deal with when he’s a 1 drop that just snowballs and gets out of control thanks to the addition of more 1 mana deathrattle minions.
I wrote an article a few weeks ago (that got a lot of flack from the community) on how to handle Undertaker. One of my suggestions was to just increase his attack instead of health. I also suggested increasing his health from 2 to 3 so he’s not a worse version of Micro Machine.
Looks like Blizzard had roughly the same idea. Undertaker in an upcoming patch will now only increase attack, however, his other stats stay the same.
This pretty much kills any value Undertaker has and you probably won’t see him played anymore. Many will rejoice in this. However, do you think the nerf is a little too much? Personally I would have liked to have seen the 3 health added as well.
You can read the full announcement of the nerf here
After the release of Goblins vs Gnomes, we kept an eye on the state of game balance as more matches were played with the new cards we introduced to Hearthstone. After careful consideration we have decided to make a balance change to the card Undertaker.
The following balance change will be made in an upcoming patch:
Undertaker now reads: Whenever you summon a minion with Deathrattle, gain +1 Attack.
- Undertaker was frustrating to play against. It often gained both Attack and Health stats significantly above those of other inexpensive minions very early in the game. With this change, we expect Undertaker will still be better than other 1-Mana minions when played in a deck with a Deathrattle theme, but more likely to die in combat against other minions.
The golden version of Undertaker can be disenchanted for its full cost for a limited time once this balance change goes live.
We will continue to make balance changes to Hearthstone when we feel they are necessary in order to increase the variety of cards seen at all levels of play, with the goal of making Hearthstone a more fun and interactive game for everyone.
This change makes perfect sense to me. That’s what I would have done in the first place if I was designing it. The health gain was always what made it spiral out of control, because it could trade with several small minions, or take out a small minion then trade up into a much larger one in a couple turns.
As for the 2 vs. 3 health, I think it’s good at 2 health if it’s going to stay at a single mana. Like you said in your article, it was strictly better than class-specific one-drops. If it was 1/3, it would be similar to Mana Wyrm but still even better because the trigger is easier and more beneficial than casting spells. You’re playing good deathrattle minions anyway, and they’re already giving you plenty of value.
If it’s staying a one drop, I think 1/2 is the right stat line. It dies to removal spells that are also a single mana like Arcane Shot and Holy Smite, and that’s perfectly fine for a common neutral minion in my book. I think you can still run the same decks just fine.
about time
Justified nerf but a bit harsh in the end no? Do you think micro machines will replace it ?
Maybe, if they aren’t running MM already. But MM is also a 2-drop instead. Decks like zoolock love their 1 drops.
How does making cards unplayable increase the ” variety” of cards that are played? I think this is a sad day. Blizzard are too eager to nerf cards, all these cards they nerf are never played again. The idea is too use cards to get an advantage, undertaker took some work in order to do this. They should increase the number of good one drops
Having seen the results of this over the past couple weeks, I can tell you that Undertaker is still good and it’s still getting played, just not quite as much. The basic “huntertaker” deck still works just fine, it’s just not completely stupid with the perfect UT opening.
well i played for six hours straight as i am wont to do on a sunday and did not see a single undertaker. or flair. or autioneer. or leeroy jenkins, or starving buzzard. now it dies to nearly all mass removal, its not just worth the effort to build up your undertaker. no one will play it