by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

Blizzard recently announced it would be turning the Hearthstone meta on its head by nerfing Warsong Commander, one of the lynchpin cards of the Patron Warrior archetype. The new card will keep its current mana cost, attack and health stats, but will now read “Your Charge minions have +1 Attack.” This particular nerf has been met with mixed reviews. Since the release of Blackrock Mountain, Patron Warrior has warped the tournament meta. This was underscored in the Hearthstone EU championships, where Patron Warrior and two of the decks that fare reasonably well against it (handlock and midrange druid) were far and away the most popular decks brought to the tournament. Also, the deck combines two of the most negative play experiences in Hearthstone. Patron Warrior can produce a one turn kill with ease, especially in combination with Emperor Thaurissan, and it punishes players for dropping too many minions, which further increases the attack of Frothing Berserker from whirlwind effects. In this sense, the deck deserved to be nerfed in some way.

The opposite side of that coin, however, is that Blizzard chose not to lessen the strength of the deck, but to completely obliterate it from the meta. Possible nerfs to Battle Rage and/or Frothing Berserker could have rendered the deck less powerful but still playable. The current iterations of Patron Warrior will not survive this nerf, and Warsong Commander has gone from a card that creates interesting game scenarios to a card that will likely no longer see competitive play. And as much of a negative experience the deck could be to play against, it indisputably requires a great deal of skill to pilot effectively. As Firebat opined on Twitter: “Welp the only deck I still felt like players can outplay people with is removed.”

In response to all this Warsong Commander nerf angst, Hearthstone senior game designer Ben Brode made a Designer Insights video about the change.

First, I want to touch on the interesting things Ben DID say. The mantra of “We only want to nerf cards as a last resort” has been a constant theme of Blizzard’s balance design for this game. Patron Warrior has been a dominating force in the meta for about six months now. Only after the dust settled from the TGT expansion did Blizzard finally decide that the deck needed to be nerfed. This probably also means that any other cards the community feels could be nerf-deserving (I’m looking at you, Dr. Boom and Mysterious Challenger) are safe for the foreseeable future.

Another important aspect Ben highlighted was that when Blizzard changes cards, they want the cards to still “feel” the same. Most of the recent card nerfs have involved changing mana cost instead of the actual effect of the card. Flare, Gadgetzan Auctioneer, and Leeroy Jenkins are all examples of cards that had their mana cost increased by one. Warsong Commander is one of the few cards that had its effect changed, but ultimately, Team 5 decided to keep the card still associated with the charge mechanic. Ben mentions that the old version of Warsong Commander limits the design space for the game. This will allow Blizzard to create interesting 1-3 attack minions that will not have to be always be evaluated in relationship to how they interact with Warsong Commander.

Finally, the fact that Warsong Commander is a basic card seemed to play a much larger role in the nerf Blizzard chose than I would have anticipated. Ben is correct in that the card was relatively complicated for the basic set – not only did it give a keyword to minions both played from hand and summoned, the benefit was also conditional. A popular response to a potential Patron Warrior nerf was to make Warsong Commander even more conditional – for example, minions could lose charge if they went above a certain threshold of health, or the effect would only apply to minions played from the hand. It appears that because the card in question is in the basic set, none of these nerfs were feasible, and Blizzard was much more interested in making the card both simple and something new players could build a deck around.

The most fascinating aspect of this video, however, is what Ben Brode DOESN’T say. At no point in the video does he mention Patron Warrior’s win rate, either in the tournament scene, the legend ranks of the ladder, or the ladder overall. Ben seems to be speaking to the much more casual, wider swath of the Hearthstone player base, when he describes how the deck does not promote a positive play experience. But just as with Miracle Rogue, Patron Warrior was not nerfed solely because of the play experience – it was also the flat out best deck for a very long stretch of time.

Piggybacking on this point, nothing was said about the timing of this nerf. All of the Hearthstone regional qualifiers are complete, and BlizzCon is rapidly approaching. Players will have just a few short weeks to both drop Patron out of their lineups, and guess adjust to what a Patron-less tournament scene will be. As someone not playing for a very large prize pool at BlizzCon, I am very excited to see what decks players will bring now. I also understand if the BlizzCon participants are justifiably upset over this last minute monkey wrench. This video would have made a lot more sense to me, if both it and the Warsong nerf had been announced right after the World Championships.

The nerf to Warsong Commander, and by extension Patron Warrior, will definitely do a lot to liven up the tournament meta. Whatever your opinion may be, I think we can all agree that it is awesome that the designers of the game we enjoy take time out of their busy schedules to give us their perspective on big picture design questions for Hearthstone.