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• Leeroy Jenkins now costs 5
• Starving Buzzard now costs 5 (up from 2) and now has 3 Attack and 2 Health (up from 2 Attack and 1 Health)

The Leeroy nerf seems excessive to me after the release of Naxxramas. The standard answer Blizzard would give when previously asked about Leeroy would be that they wanted to release new cards to counter old ones instead of just nerfing them outright. Naxxramas is over a month old and Miracle Rogue on ladder has pretty much fallen in line with the rest of the decks. You occasionally see it and all the main decks have about an even chance against it. It seemed to me that Naxxramas did its job and they nerfed Miracle without changing any cards. But then they just decide that they're going to nerf it anyway.

The Starving Buzzard nerf is bizarre, not because of its much higher cost, but because its new stats don't match up at all with the new cost. I could be wrong but I think Starving Buzzard now has the greatest disparity in terms of stats to mana cost. That's 5 mana for 2 mana worth of stats. That means that Blizzard thinks the ability to draw cards every time you play a beast is worth 3 mana. Gadgetzan is a 5 mana 4/4 and can be triggered with 0 mana spells. Class specific cards are supposed to be slightly stronger than neutrals and there are no 0 mana beasts in the game. My idea before all this was to prevent any card drawn by the Buzzard to be played on that turn. That way you couldn't Buzzard/Unleash and chain draws with low cost beasts or use Hunter's Marks to clear the board or Kill Command to burst damage.

I'm especially sore because I just crafted a ton of Hunter cards to climb ladder with.

I'm ok with it. Unleash the hounds + the buzzard is far too accessible and is a total game changer.

Also, I was probably just few days away from saving up enough dust for Leeroy, might pick something else now, not sure what though.

Leeroy is still fine just not in miracle rogue, doesn't really impact Miracle Rogue that much since Arcane Golem exists. Starving Buzzard nerf is completely ridiculous; yes Buzzard needed a nerf but it didn't need to be removed from the game entirely which is essentially what happened here. Auctioneer remains overpowered and unchanged. I believe Zoo is going to come back into vogue, a much more annoying deck to play against than hunters.

@fredchuckdave: Eh, 5 mana for 12 damage vs. 8 mana for 18. Miracle Rogue, in tournaments and ladder, had so many moments where they were able to win with exactly 18 damage from Leeroy/Shadowstep. Now they're battling stuff like Loatheb and Sludge Belcher and then to top it off Leeroy costs one more. I think Miracle is done.

As for what the top deck will be now, Warrior was already nipping at the heels of Hunter for first place. It's such a solid deck, it's got a decent matchup against pretty much everything. I just hope for whatever reason Handlock doesn't return in a big way. It's such a boring deck to fight against/watch/play.

Welp, time to rebuild my Hunter deck. RIP Starving Buzzard.

@hansolol: Leeroy victories are almost always on or past turn 8, very seldom where this isn't the case, Miracle draws the entire deck so it doesn't actually matter how many cards it takes. Arcane golem + double cold blood = 12 damage for 5 mana.

Top deck is probably hand lock so have fun with that; though warrior will remain viable as well.

Card draw was got so insane with Starving Buzzard that this needed to happen. With 30 card decks card draw is so important that Starving Buzzard became not a kill condition but the easy way to get to your kill condition.

They may have gone too far and made it unplayable now.

The Leeroy one seems like a calculated more to remove the Leeroy+double shadow step combo. Thank god.

I wonder if an Auctioneer nerf is coming.

My buzzard!

Leeroy change isn't too bad in comparison the value from using it over say Reckless Rocketeer is lessenoned quite a bit which is a shame.

But making Buzzard cost 5 MANA is friggin insane deathknell stuff. Make it cost 3 mana as well and that'd be a lot more palatable. but at 5 mana hunters now lack good card draw.

Hunter's dead. Starving Buzzard and UTH combo is absolutely essential to the Hunter deck, and now it's practically impossible. Are you going to wait until turn 8 (or seven with coin) just to get card draw? The combo is now only slightly better than Sprint, a card almost everyone agrees is worthless. If the Buzzard was a worthy 5 cost in terms of stats (maybe a 4/3?) along with the effect, the nerf would would make much more sense. Blizzard is being way too extreme with their response to a currently powerful deck by basically nerfing the whole class out of existence. Seems like a ridiculous knee jerk reaction to me.

They also have done nothing to nerf Zoo. I know it's not a big deal in the higher ranks, but 15-10 (on the European servers at least) are absolutely rife with Zoo.

@fredchuckdave: True, but then doesn't the problem become surviving the onslaught from your opponent til you can draw what you need? Miracle always needed that magical 12 damage to get through before they could pull off the combo. Now they're running double Sap, double Cold Blood and dealing with the opponent's minions?

Miracle always had that annoying problem against Warriors and Paladins where they didn't have enough damage by the time they drew their 30th card to finish the opponent. I think this problem, with the Naxx cards and Leeroy nerf, will spread to other matchups.

The game is just running into the same old shit over and over again. Now that I finally have enough of the cards where I can make passable decks, it's just even more horrendous. Right now you could play hunter and win 90 percent of the games you play. I guess this patch fixes that, but it's become monotonous to play against people the further away from nax we get.

Game is just long in the tooth. Time to move on.