As title reads; what are some cards that you think need more balancing? That is, having certain values altered, stats changed or completely removed.

I'll give an example what cards I think needs a tweak and that is because it's complete garbage.

I received my first (and possibly last?) Legendary card out of an Expert Pack a couple of days ago. It was Al'Alkir Windlord. As the Shaman is currently my favorite hero, I was very excited.

But, the card is crap. For those that do not know it is this card:

Now, Windfury is awesome, Charge can be useful, Divine Shield is obviously great and Taunt has its uses. And this minion has... all of them? Awesome!

Except... it's a 3/5. For 8 mana. That's crazy. All that stuff doesn't matter, in practice Al'Akir usually can't kill anything without dying himself because when a player has 8 mana to spend, there are some powerful minions on the board.

Best case scenario, you can trade him with 2 mediocre minions and still be alive (only to be destroyed when you give control to your opponent) or you can trade for 1 relatively tough minion and not even a strong one. You probably can't play any other cards either in that turn, and as it has Taunt, it will not survive for you to use twice. Thus, it's basically a Fireball spell except you can spread the damage around. For double mana cost.

I think this card needs to be stronger. It's a Legendary. Legendaries are supposed to be stronger than regular cards. Sunwalker, a rare, has 4 / 5 and Divine Shield and Taunt for 6 mana. For 2 mana more you get Charge and Windfury at the cost of 1 attack. Doesn't sound very legendary to me.

If this card was 4 / 5 for 7 mana or something I would feel better about it. Again, yeah, it sounds like a great card but there are almost no cases where it makes a difference.

What's your change?

I usually use Al-Akir as a finishing move. It's great in combination with other shaman cards, and I like the fact that it's not a card that can instantly win you a game like several other legendary cards.

My changes would involve making Ragnoros and Ysera activate at the BEGINNING of your turn, as opposed to the end of your turn, so your opponent can actually DO SOMETHING before you get a potentially huge advantage.

Unleash is the most OP card right now; should probably be 3 mana but sounds like they won't change it. Argent Commander is still ridiculous despite getting nerfed in the past and so is Defender of Argus.

There's a ton of cards that aren't quite up to snuff, so not gonna go through that list. As for cards that are overpowered I'd say the most obvious is still Unleash the Hounds. While the card itself isn't that great on it's own it combos too well with too many hunter cards. Even if the opponent only has 2 minions out it's pretty much either 4 man 2/1 creature, deal 2 damage and draw 2 cards, 3 mana 1/1 creature deal 4 damage or 4 mana 6/4 creature, deal 2 damage. While all of the options only become stronger if the opponent has more minions out, not to mention the fact that you can stack them and get crazy stuff like 7 mana, draw 4 cards 7/4 3/1 1/1 creatures, deal 4 damage.

The kinda rounds you can get with the card is just ridicolous.

Al' Akir was also my first (and only) legendary, I immediately turned him into a Big Game Hunter.

The only card I really dislike is Ragnaros. He's pretty much an auto-include in any deck that's not pure rushdown and a gross finisher in any control shell. Silence just turns him into a Giant, flooding the board with minions plays right into a sweeper and no matter what you do he already dealt 8 damage. I'd play him even as an 0/8 even though I dislike random effects.

I feel like Rogue in general is kinda underpowered unless you can actually combo all those cheap cards into something like Edwin van Cleef or Gagdetzan Auctioneer. The removal in Rogue is solid, but with almost no creatures you're left with a deck that leans quite heavily on neutral creatures.

Argent Commander is definitely up there on that list. It pisses me off and feels unbalanced every time I see it played.

Wisp is overpowered.

UTH is way too swinging as a card, and I could swear I saw my opponent get 5 hounds when I only had 4 creatures on the board.

@random45: So could you fireball with Rag and then silence him to do 16 in a single turn if it was advantageous?

To the OP: For fun with Al'akir, combo him with 2 rockbiters and smash your opponent's face with 18 dmg from your hand, 9 of which is protected by a divine shield if you want to take down minions instead.

@themasterds: Yeah, but you can already do that now. Either way, if you silence him after the turn you play him, you fireball once then get to attack once. Either way, you've already seen what the fireball effect hit, and can decide whether you should silence. So I'm not sure what you're getting at.

I think Ragnaros is pretty well balanced compared to other cards. Legendaries are allowed to be a bit more powerful in comparison to other cards. He does only 2 more damage than a Fireball spell, while costing double and it being random. He can't attack and there are many ways to destroy powerful minions. He will get that guaranteed 8 damage on a random target, but after that he is probably dead. If not, he might get another attack in, but after that it's probably over. Not too bad.

I just need to remember, that particularly since the stats apparently reset at the start of month, that a battle between 2 rank 20 players has no guarantee of comparable cards. I have maybe 1 epic card to my paladin deck, rest are pretty common. Just last night this hunter drops an absurd number of epic/legendary quality cards. I couldn't believe it at first, we had a reasonable match going for the most part, but then by sheer quality of cards it became so clear that I was outclassed in all respects. I am not saying that he shouldn't have used those cards, I know I would if I had them in my deck(I am not gonna pay for any decks though).

@bisonhero: Yeah but in this case you'd be getting your 8 damage a turn early in addition to being able to direct it. Would make silence more useful really in order to use him to finish.

Seems like silence is going to be really important once Naxxramas comes out what with all the death rattles. New meta. It would be interesting if new Rag played into that.

Al'akir isn't unusuable, synergies that work include flametongue or rockbiter weapons. I'm pretty sure I've seen it used at competition level by Ekop. The kidnapper and twisting nether have been dead cards for me, slightly lower mana costs for both would be nice.

I wouldn't compare must-answer threats that stick around to one-off spells but fair enough. He does need backup and a good early game to be really effective but I keep finding myself in desperate situations against him, an unwillingness to use Naturalize as a druid and bad luck on my part.

I thought this was going to be about Unleash the Hounds and instead I see Al'Akir bashing? Madness.

I wish they changed the Warlock hero power, so tired of Zoo. But if they did they would have to change their class cards as well, and that's not happening.

No you wouldn't. Current Rag > You cast him, he fireballs, your opponent takes their turn, you silence and attack. Proposed Rag > You cast him, your opponent takes their turn, he fireballs, you silence and attack. The only difference between the two is the proposed Rag doesn't fireball until after your opponent has had a chance to kill him.

I wouldn't say it's over powered but Unleash The Hounds is really annoying. Sure all you get are a bunch of 1/1s with charge but when every hunter and their grandmother is using it that card gets really old fast. I do agree with everyone that said Argent Commander is OP. Charge and divine shield for only 6 mana is pretty rough. At least make him 7 mana or something.

@starvinggamer: Yeah, exactly what I was getting at. If you're casting a silence in both situations, I don't see a meaningful difference (since we're assuming Rag lives through the opponent turn), other than maybe your opponent lays down a taunt creature, and start of turn damage from Rag could get it out of the way, whereas it never would've been a possible target for end of turn damage from Rag. That's like, a tiny situational benefit to start of turn damage, compared to the massive drawback that your opponent now has a one turn window to assassinate/hex/polymorph Rag before he does anything.

@bisonhero: Don't forget Big Game Hunter/Faceless

While we're talking about Rag, I had an arena game where a druid hit turn 4 double Innervate > Ragnaros > turn 5 Faceless Manipulator

Tilted me sooo hard

@starvinggamer: Outplayed sir.

@fredchuckdave: It's true, my opponent was clearly an RNGenius. Heart of the cards!

He's talking about silencing your own ragnaros, so you can deal 16 damage with it in a turn. The question is would you prefer a card that guarantees 8 damage, or will do either 0 or 16 if you have a silence.

I do wish some of the legendaries weren't such complete trash. Millhouse Manastorm for example is one of the absolute worst cards I can think of in the deck.

I see a lot of people hating on Argent Commander. I don't use him myself, but I also don't really mind someone else using him. When someone uses him, he dies before they can use him again 95 out of 100 times. Dealing 4 damage for 6 mana is really not that amazing. Sure, I have to spend some mana to get rid of it, but that's usually pretty easy with 2 health.

@turambar Agreed. Legendaries should be a tiny bit more powerful than other cards for the mana cost. But there are a bunch of Legendary cards that help your opponent more than you.

More importantly, there needs to be more class specific legendaries. My issue with cards like Rag or Leeroy isn't that they are good, but that they are too ubiquitous regardless of your class. I have a Cairn, and I can't think of a single deck where he wouldn't have a decent fit.

Infinite value!

I know he's talking about silencing your own (I feel like this should be pretty clear by now) but I still don't see why we're talking about this like maybe it's some secret advantage. You would almost always prefer the guaranteed 8 damage, except in the taunt scenario I laid out a few posts ago. Let me break out the cases, assuming you play Ragnaros on turn 8 and your opponent can't kill it on their next turn.

Case 1 (current version): Turn 8 you get 8 random damage end of turn, Turn 9 you silence and attack something for 8 damage (16 damage total, half random half targeted, surely it won't live to see another turn)

Case 2 (current version): Turn 8 you get 8 random damage end of turn, Turn 9 you don't silence and get 8 random damage end of turn (16 damage total, all random, surely it won't live to see another turn)

Case 3 (start of turn version): Turn 8 you get no damage, Turn 9 you start with 8 random damage then silence and attack for 8 more damage (16 damage total, half random half targeted, surely it won't live to see another turn)

Case 4 (start of turn version): Turn 8 you get no damage, Turn 9 you start with 8 random damage and don't silence (8 damage total, all random, surely it won't live to see another turn)

The original question posed by TheMasterDS was "So could you fireball with Rag and then silence him to do 16 in a single turn if it was advantageous?", and yes, you could, and that would almost always be advantageous and is still strictly worse than the current version (unless on the intervening turn your opponent plays a taunt creature and Rag's random damage happens to kill that taunt creature allowing you an opening to attack). If he only deals damage at start of turn, if you don't silence, he almost certainly would only get to deal 8 damage before dying. However, that's still much more limiting than the current version.

Maybe I'm misconstruing what everyone's saying, but I don't see why everyone's getting in a tizzy about dealing 16 damage in one turn. 8 damage one turn, 8 damage the next is also 16 damage, so who cares? "Ragnaros deals the damage at start of turn" is the obvious nerf you could make.

As a Hunter main, fuck y'all and your Unleash the Hounds hate.

I also completely understand and apologise.

Naturalize could use a buff. I don't have big game hunter so I'm running Naturalize and I don't want to use it unless it's a finisher.

I think Pyroblast is OP as shit. I'm able to outlast them and have like 5 creatures on the board then Pyroblast comes out. Make it deal 8 damage and not 10.

They are not supposed to be stronger.

My only issue with UtH is that you get three cards from the bird draw, can buff the hyena with their death, and can +1 bonus from the dire. Combo is easily fixed by making them them the same as Spirit Wolves which are Minions and not beasts but its a pretty big hunter nerf if they do that.

Best way to fight hunters stop summoning all of da minions!

@zirilius said:

@shortbreadtom said:

As a Hunter main, fuck y'all and your Unleash the Hounds hate.

I also completely understand and apologise.

My only issue with UtH is that you get three cards from the bird draw, can buff the hyena with their death, and can +1 bonus from the dire. Combo is easily fixed by making them them the same as Spirit Wolves which are Minions and not beasts but its a pretty big hunter nerf if they do that.

Best way to fight hunters stop summoning all of da minions!

It's actually been really fun playing against Hunters recently, and just constantly only keeping one creature on the board and really aggressively using my hero ability (assuming I'm not Paladin or Shaman). It feels like they're constantly waiting for that moment where I give them an opportunity by having 2 or more creatures out at once, so I just never give it to them, and they're usually hilariously impotent except for the select few that are good enough players to adapt. Most seem to be relying on the trolololol card advantage they get from Unleash the Hounds and Starving Buzzard, and don't know what to do with themselves if that never happens.

That's insane. Legendaries all have batshit effects that can only be countered by specific class cards or strong combos. If your opponent plays a legendary and you don't have a combo or disable ready you're fucked.

But they are. They have more health or do more damage (or both) and usually have pretty crazy abilities compared to other cards.

For example, the highest damage Charge cards in the game that aren't Legendaries are Reckless Rocketeer and Doomguard. Both do 5 damage. King Crush does 8. And yeah he costs 9 mana, but charge with 3 additional attack AND 8 health for 3-4 more mana isn't a bad deal.

Almost as fun as riding Faerie Dragons to victory against a Mage or sticking to minions with 4 attack against a Priest.

Crush is a class specific legendary they have bonus value.

Mana Cost x 2 + 1 = Normal Card Value

So crush has a default value of 17, which 16 are spent on being an 8/8. Charge is valued at 3 points putting him two points over normal curve, class specific cards get a bit of boost due to their being part of the class flavor and is why you see Northshire, Mana Worm, Void Walker, etc.. being roughly 2 points over curve.

The vast majority of hearthstone cards fit perfectly into Blizzard cost formula, cards only seem over powered when you add in more card to make a combo.

@turambar: I think Cairne is a little overrated, I mean he might be the 5th best neutral legendary but his impact is minimal relative to Ysera/Rag/Sylvanas/Alexstrasza. Cairne is mainly just annoying.

@salarn: Yes, it makes sense in numbers. In practice, Legendary's are worth more overall. They trade for more cards then their cost compared to other cards. I named King Crush specifically as I can recall the couple times I faced him he took out 3 minions and dealt 8 damage to my hero in very similar situations where Reckless Rocketeer would kill 1, no hero damage.

Your value might make sense on paper, but in practice Legendary's are more powerful than other cards overall with some exceptions. And that is totally fine, but some of them are terrible, others are almost OP.

Not to be that guy who compares every CCG to Magic, but I think Charge is kinda stupid in Hearthstone in general compared to Magic. Magic has the same rule where when creatures come into play they can't attack that turn (unless they have Haste). But in Magic, under normal circumstances the only way creatures can attack is by directly attacking the opposing player, and it is the defender who decides which of his creatures block the attacking creatures (if any) and then those creatures deal damage to each other. So effectively, every creature in Magic sort of has taunt, except they can only block one creature so if the attacker has more creatures than the defender, some amount of them will just waltz right on by to hit the defending player.

So Haste creatures in Magic ain't even all that, because while it adds some pressure that the defender wasn't prepared for, the defender can still choose the most advantageous blocks possible. Conversely, Charge creatures in Hearthstone are almost always immediate damage to the face + then the defending player has to spend their next turn often doing a 1-1 trade to kill off that Charge creature. Barring a taunt creature being in the way, or some manner of Secret, Charge creatures are often 1-1 trades that guarantee some player damage before they die. The Battlecry of Leeroy Jenkins could give the other player 8 fucking whelp minions for all that it matters, because the fact that it's a creature is almost completely irrelevant, because everyone just waits for a situation where they can essentially use it as a Fireball to win the game. I honestly think the whelps should have taunt so at least the player will have to expend a Whirlwind/Swipe/whatever to get them out of the way before Jenkins can deal the final blow.

So combine that with the fact that every class already has a bunch of direct damage spells and can play Ragnaros or whatever, and Hearthstone often feels like "Damage Race: The Game", and the class differences are pretty slight in the grand scheme of things. Putting combat decision making solely in the hands of the player whose turn it is just makes the game really aggro focused because if you can just get out more creatures first, you tend to get a lead that snowballs, barring an incredibly well timed Flamestrike or Twisting Nether or something that completely wipes your board. There are control decks, but it feels like they exist in spite of the game's core mechanics.

I know there is subtlety to knowing when you can just attack the face or you should attack a minion instead (which I know newcomers struggle with, because good lord, look at those streams Patrick has done), but I feel like this sort of "the aggressor decides what attacks what" system just ends up being really shallow

@wolfgame said:

I sure do love when I'm playing a Rank 19 player whose Priest deck contains gold versions of literally every basic Priest card that he plays (Northshire Cleric, Holy Nova, Shadow Word: Death), plus basically every playable Rare and Epic Priest card and also a Ragnaros. Yeah, it's not like that guy's Priest playtime alone is clearly double or triple my playtime for the entire game. Nope, no sarcasm in this post.

Jesus, how have people not reranked by now? The ladder reset almost a week ago.

UTH is fine it's the hunters mark that is rediculous. It basically nullifies taunts and makes UTH so strong. In case anyone doesn't know it's a 0 cost card that reduces an enemy minion's health to 1. Without it you drop a huge taunt and just laugh at there silly dogs.

I gotta say these two cards are totally OP.

They're both so cheap and versatile that they can damage pretty much any opponent's strategy.

I have SERIOUSLY tried to get into Hearthstone, but every time I do, I just think about how much more I'd like to be playing MTG.

Nonetheless, the only things I've honestly seen a problem with are Argent Commander or whatever it is called, at least one of the Shadow Words from the Priest, and the Hero Power for Mages. Mages are so broken solely because they have a Hero Power that can do work to both a hero AND minions. That just seems crazy. Maybe it's just the low end matches that I'm playing in (I think I have a deck to level 11? 12?), but it seems like that Mage hero power is just problematic for everyone. The only one that seems worse is the Paladin's hero power, but a lot of that is probably just me coming from MTG and thinking "goddamn Elspeth, fuck off!"

@cabelhigh: Yeah. I'm not sure if OP is the correct term for most priest decks but they are just annoying as hell to play against. Most of their tactics just involve getting really lucky draws and screwing you over for little mana. Plus games against them tend to be soooooo drawn out. It's not that they're impossible to beat I just think it's really dull and annoying to play against them.

Weird. Al'Akir was my first and only Legendary, too. I was so excited that I leveled up Shaman and made a Shaman deck to use it. It wasn't till I was already in a game with it that I realised it mana cost to attack/health was way outta whack. It's a pretty good card if you've got buffs already in play and ready to go, but it's a bit more situational than you'd think first looking at it.