by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

While a lot of people scream for nerfs when cards feel overpowered, I don’t see many people calling for buffs to long forgotten cards. In my mind, every non-joke card should at least be a decent fit in a viable deck. Also, the meta would grow a lot more interesting if a wider array of cards suddenly started seeing play. So without further ado…

Welcome back to Mending Mondays, a weekly feature where I, Dannie “IAmDiR23” Ray will take a look at some of the worst cards in the Hearthstone and evaluate why they are deemed to be horrible, and what could be done to fix them.

This week we go wild! The Ironfur Grizzly is your basic 3-drop basic taunter, but this bear might be just way too basic. Much like fellow beast taunter, Silverback Patriarch, the Grizzly doesn’t see much action outside starter decks; is there anything we can do to increase its viability?

Why is it so bad?

The Ironfur Grizzly just doesn’t trade well enough to justify inclusion. There are plenty of 2-drops at 3/2, and those trade 1 for 1 against our beastly friend. But even if you kill 2/3’s “for free”, your Grizzly then stands at 1 HP and can be taken out by a simple hero power. That’s also the case when trading with 2/1’s, which many of the popular 1-drops are.  And while the Grizzly was well equipped to handle 3-drops on the base set. Blackwing Technician, Spider Tank, and Dark Cultist have appeared since, and now we have plenty of three drops that walk all over the Grizzly.

Many cards that don’t trade well on their mana range make some of it up by having the ability to trade up if left unchecked, but at 3/3 the Grizzly doesn’t even offer this possibility. Our friend is absolutely obliterated by most of the 4 drops that see serious play. Perhaps the best thing this Ironfur beast can do is to take out an Acolyte of Pain or Grim Patron in a single blow.

Being a beast is certainly a positive, but Beast Synergy isn’t good enough to carry this card into top-end decks. Perhaps we would see more Beast decks if basic beasts such as Bloodfen Raptor, River Croc, Silverback Patriarch, and the Grizzly were just a little better.  In fact, maybe if the earlier taunt cards were stronger, extreme aggro decks such as the much maligned Face Hunter wouldn’t be that popular.

Now, I certainly understand why you’d want most basic cards to be simple, vanilla, and something you upgrade out of. But having these Beasts be admittedly bad cards just weakens an entire archetype of decks. Maybe if the Beast Synergy cards were amazing you could justify putting in subpar cards, but that’s just not the case. Even Murlocs, that have much better tribal effects, don’t really see competitive play.  The Beasts just deserve better.

Summary of Badness:

• Doesn’t trade too well on curve.
• There’s no reason to play him.

Finding this Card’s Heart

An obvious buff to this card would be to turn it into Dr. Boom or Emperor T. But that’s not what we are interested on, we want to stay true to the heart of the card and thus we need ask ourselves what is what really defines this card.

The Ironfur Grizzly isn’t a complicated card, it’s just a beast, a taunt, and a 3-drop. Lets have fun with him!

Possible Improvements

The Grizzly is in a bit of a rough spot, you can’t really buff its stats or reduce his cost without making him insane.  This bear will require conditional effects or special abilities before it can truly shine. Perhaps that Beast Synergy that we talked about earlier could start to shine if Ironfur Grizzly had a tribal effect of its own.

The Results

This is pretty much a Tinkertown Technician. For 3 mana, you get a 3/3 that has the chance to become much more. An early 3/4 taunt can go a long way towards protecting your HP total and getting you the initiative back. While this doesn’t give you a Spare Part, it is a Beast itself, which would enable further synergy down the road.

Now we have a Dread Corsair knock-off. Just like the Pirate, this would be a 3/3 Taunt that could see its cost reduced. A turn 1 beast into a turn 2 Grizzly seems like a decent start, but you would still need stronger 1-mana Beasts to make this worth the trouble. It’s not like Dread Corsair sees much play anyway, right? Still, having a card like this would at least open some future potential.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t think this added ability would do much to make Grizzly, and Beasts decks in general, viable. Yet, it is a nice thing to have. This Bear eats up 2-attack minions and can quickly come back to full form to take out another. The big problem is that this still dies to 3/2’s, so the relative power of this card would heavily depend on whether 2/3s or 3/2s are more popular in the current metagame.

Do you think some of the versions above are still too weak? Maybe absurdly overpowered? Messing with cards without the ability to test them is actually pretty challenging, but I try to do my best.

Be sure to check out past editions of Mending Mondays, and if you have any suggestions, be sure to leave them on the comments or hit me up on Twitter @DannieRay23.

See you next Monday!