They did it. They finally did it. Blizzard said they wouldn't change the Grim Patron deck but they finally gave in. In the next week, Blizzard will nerf Warsong Commander so that it will no longer give other minions charge. Instead, it will give minions who already had charge +1 attack, essentially killing the Grim Patron Warrior deck.

Here's what Blizzard had to say on it:

The following balance change will be made in an upcoming patch:

Warsong Commander now reads: Your Charge minions have +1 Attack.

Over the course of the short but impactful history of Hearthstone, we’ve taken a strong stance that we’d like to make changes to cards only when they are completely necessary. The direction of gameplay and the metagame should be defined by our players, and as the meta is evolving, many different types of decks can emerge. Cards that were once impactful in the meta can be less so once new strategies emerge, and that change is brought on by the constant need and drive for innovation by our players.

Innovation is just one way a game can evolve, and the best way to shake up the meta and innovate in Hearthstone is by introducing new cards into the game. Introducing new cards to Hearthstone is our preferred method of changing the current state of the game. It’s exciting to discover a deck that may have an advantage over a popular deck out there, and new cards lead to the discovery of new combinations, and new conversations. Hearthstone thrives off of stories about enjoying a fast-paced, fun game with friends that’s full of delightful surprises.

Going forward, we will continue to stand by our stance that we will only make adjustments to cards when we feel it is completely necessary and allow the injection of new cards into the game help our players define what the meta evolves into. In the case of Warsong Commander, we felt this change was necessary to help expand both future design space and to stand by our overarching game philosophy that battles between minions and fighting for board control is what makes Hearthstone fun and compelling.

Soo instead of fixing an (arguably) OP card that's the whole linchpin of the deck and started it in the first place, they decided to nerf a card that was perfectly fine before and not even used in ranked before Patron decks ... Good stuff.

Sight, I used to experiment with a Nax+WarsongC. warrior for funzies for a time (before Blackrock), with a lot of small deathrattles and it was super fun to play (since no one expected it) just not competitive or anything. Then they broke Warsong's effect and it took like half a year to fix, now they are just basically completely killing this cool card to the point where it will be just another never used pariah.

Sometimes Blizzard patch balancing decisions really blow my mind.

Weird, Patron isn't even dominant right now; it might technically be the best deck in the game but it is far from the most prevalent on ladder. Plain old Control Warrior, Cancer Paladin, Druid, and Tempo Mage have that honor (3 of which tend to go face a lot; so that doesn't even make sense with their statement). Mysterious Challenger is probably more OP than Dr. Balanced, though obviously they'd never nerf a card from the most recent expansion.

Shame as it was maybe the only deck on ladder that required a high amount of skill.

Warsong Commander being basic means this patch doesn't give out free dust either.

:( I really liked my pre-patron charge deck. Guess we can't ever have that mechanic back either since it would just bring back the patron deck. I thought if they did decide to nerf patron then reducing its hit points to 2 would have been enough.

@dixavd: Making it a 4/3 works.

Kinda sad to see it getting shafted so bad. Then again, that's how Blizzard balances cards: make them unplayable.

I think a better change would've been to make it a 2/1. Patron Warrior would not be entirely dead, just the capability to OTK with no board would be severely limited.

Then again, charge is a very dangerous ability, and Warsong in its current state is a card which severely limits design space (like Shredder or BGH). So for the sake of future cards it makes sense that they cripple it completely.

Oh well. Still, this is a net positive to the game, at least its competitice aspect. Great to see that the world championships will feature a more diverse lineup.

@tennmuerti: Warsong commander has always been a problem card (much like Unleash). Patron wasn't the first time the card was central in an overpowered deck, and much of the reason why it wasn't used for a long period of time was because it was bugged. People could (and have) argue all day long about what card is the core "problem" with Patron decks, but at the end of the day it has been proven time and time again that any card that allows you to get a bunch of charge minions is just super problematic and creates a meta that's not very healthy for the game.

Having that said, the nerf is fucking garbage. There are plenty of ways they could've changed the card and it would've still remained interesting, but for some reason they decided to add another card to the "absolute garbage" pile. It's almost like they're rubbing it in, going "you wanted a nerf, well here you go!".

@ares42: What was the overpowered deck with Warsong Commander before? Because I don't ever really recall a WC deck being dominant in Hearthstone before Patron (tho it's been a while now). Even back when WC got broken I had to search out that info on it being bugged because almost no one gave a shit since there were no real serious competitive decks that used it at the time. Speaking of charge minions, shout out to Druid FoN decks, those have been alive far longer then Patron.

Regarding the unhealthy meta. That's all well and good to think about, except we have now had a agro centered meta for a huge chunk of time now. And if anything is making a game less fun it's not just a fair weather Patron deck that actually takes at least some thought to play instead of just shitting out cards on the board. At this point that excuse sounds like an empty platitude tbh.

@tennmuerti: Which card would you have changed? I've seen people complain about Warsong Commander, Frothing Berserker, Battle Rage, Emperor Thaurissan, and to a lesser extent Grim Patron. Releasing Patron and Emperor basically gave Math Warrior the consistency it needed to close out games where they died before assembling combo and allowed that archetype to become today's Patron. I don't think any one of the cards is broken in a vacuum, just that the deck you put all of them has so much synergy and a damage potential that might as well be limitless. In Magic, it would be like if a Modern deck was being played in Standard.

I'm disappointed that they decided to outright kill the deck (especially since it's a skill-intensive one), but the point that Warsong limits the design space for future cards that are summoned with 3 or less attack and Charge is a legitimate one. I would have liked to see a 3 health Frothing and maybe an Emperor that can't lower card costs below 1 mana first, but I guess they didn't want to see the standard Patron/Handlock/MidDruid trifecta as the only thing anyone plays at Blizzcon. I'm almost certain Midrange Druid will still be on most Conquest lists, but perhaps some Handlocks will be dropped for something else and they'll mostly get what they wanted.

It just seems extra bad that Warsong Commander has been made into a piece of trash for arena too. It really ought to have cost-appropriate stats or maybe a +2 attack aura to give it something that doesn't just make it super-niche Raid Leader, which is already a bad card.

The potentially gross thing about the patron deck wasn't actually the patron itself. It was the synergy between warsong, patron, and frothing berserkers that made it so deadly. I'd go so far as to say the warsong + frothing combo was the most dangerous thing in the deck. The patron portion of it was just there to help clear taunts / make your opponents spend resources.

That said, this nerf is definitely too much. Killing a deck outright should never be the goal unless repeated incremental attempts are met with failure. One possible consideration could have been having warsong give charge only to minions as long as their attack was 3 or less, and removing it if their attack value ever went above that, killing off the frothing side of things but leaving the patron combo alive and well. That would have defanged the deck significantly, but not crushed it outright. Alternatively, nerf the berserker itself.

Also, for the record, this is the second time Warsong has been significantly nerfed. Its original incarnation gave charge to all other minions, giving rise to some disgusting molten giant one turn kill type decks.

Edit: All the comments stating that the previous existence of warsong heavily limited the design space is very true. However, the flip side of that statement is there will now be an expectation that Blizzard makes use of their newly freed up space, and we won't be seeing any fruits there for awhile.

Finally. It's good to see them ease up on the no changes to cards stance they've had for awhile now. Maybe I'll spend some money on cards now that I see they're willing to balance things again. Even if it is just one change.

@tafae: Patron. All the other cards have existed before and they were not enough to make a viable competitive deck even. Thaurissan is just an extra enabler for Patron combo. Giving patron 1 extra attack would have been enough. The problem only really occurs because it's a 3 attack minion (hence WC charge) that can replicate itself during the same turn, giving potentially infinite charge cards. We have an insane amount of 3 attack and lower drops that already worked with WC, yet none of them produced a huge problem. It's just a double confluence that created a perfect fit.

@turambar See my above reply. I know that it's the combination that created the effect. But aside from Patron everything else in that combination has already been around for a while. WC+frothing was a cool combo for a long time, but that's it, it didn't spiral out of control ever until Patron came along, because you were naturally limited on how much board you could play on 1 turn and how much you could buff Frothing.

Actually, Thaurissan and Death's bite are far more important in getting that combo to perform far above what it has in the past, Thaurissan in particular. If you have a limit to what you can play in one turn, just make everything cost less. 0 cost whirlwinds are kind of amazing.

@turambar: You have a good point about Thurissan.

I kind of wish they nerfed some part of the combo other than Warsong, but anything that gives minions charge for free is always going to limit the design space to some extent, so I imagine they chose to nerf Warsong as a means of futureproofing.

The nerf itself is awful though, probably the worst nerf they've ever done. This card is more unusable than even Buzzard now, and only further hurts arena warriors which they could have had a free opportunity to even slightly remedy.

I will not miss Patron particularly, but I continue to hate Blizzard's stance on balancing.

I've accepted that the Hearthstone designers are in way over their heads. They know how to design new cards for new sets, but when it comes to either maintaining(rebalancing cards in) the ranked metagame, or maintaining Arena where it is in any way healthy, they just don't seem to know what they're doing.

At least MtG had the sense to make a joke card that acknowledges some of the emergency bans they've had to do after realizing a card is way too strong (the DCI is the name of the group that governs tournament play for MtG, they handle banning cards that are basically so strong they ruin tournament play).

Would making the Patron 4/3 have definitely fixed the issue? The Patrons wouldn't get charge, but all of the combo pieces with Frothing Berserker still work, in that you would keep making Patrons, and all your Whirlwinds and Death's Bite deathrattles and so on would possibly still power up a OTK Berserker regardless of whether the Patrons have charge or not.

I shit on Blizzard's balancing decisions, but I do wonder if they briefly playtested a 4/3 Patron and found that Patron Warrior was still like 95% as effective and it wasn't really enough.

Still, their balance decision makes Warsong Commander and Frothing Berserker deader than they've ever been. Grim Patron could still be played (probably in the way Blizzard originally intended), where it's just an annoyingly self-replicating 3/3. I mean, Patron could still be played but it won't be, because the playerbase usually really overreacts to nerfs (Nat Pagle and Undertaker are still playable, but yes their current form is much less advantageous compared to how wildly OP they were before).

@imsh_pl: Press X to give up and go back to playing Control Warrior.

I hope it is really disheartening to Blizzard how few decks are actually viable with Warrior, especially now that Patron Warrior will cease to exist.

@bisonhero: We might see a more midrange-y and aggressive version of Dragon Warrior being tried.

And at least Warriors have an archetype they can play, compared to Shaman (not quite there) and Rogue (NEVER.).

@imsh_pl: Shaman has always been in a weird spot, but at least Rogue has options (Oil Rogue, Mill Rogue is always there if you want to fuck around). Not super top tier options, but not much better or worse than like, the best deck you could make with Shaman.

But what do you even do with Warrior other than make Control Warrior, or a variant of Control Warrior (which is basically all the current form of Dragon Warrior is)? It just feels like the class cards they've made for Warrior railroad you into a certain deck type more than most of the classes, since most of the controllish cards are much stronger than most of the cards more suited to aggro or midrange.

Not only that but there is also another limiting factor: their hero power. It dictates the class' playstyle to be more defensive. Combine that with a lot of warrior cards being armor centric and a held back approach to the game just makes more sense. For the same reason Control Hunter will never be a thing; the hero power makes it so that you benefit more from being the aggressor.

Interestingly enough, a version of face/mech warrior has been recently been played around with by some of the streamers, although it's probably a fad since the surprise factor an unfamiliarity with it is what makes the deck do as good as it does.

Overall I don't think that Control Warrior being the only strong archetype for the class is necessarily a bad thing. The core cards like removal, weapons and armor gain are the same, yes, but you have a lot of room when it comes to putting in your big finishers and midgame threats - Ysera, Alextrasza, Nefarian, Ragnaros, Geddon, Harrison, Loatheb, Gorehowl... Compare it to Hunter whose three dominant archetypes - Face, Hybrid, and Midrange - often times differ by maybe 5-6 cards. Additionally, control decks reward the better player because there is more decisions to make, meaning that the novice is more likely to make an incorrect play.

I actually like Blizzard's reasoning here. I think playing around patron alone can be fun and interesting, but having a card that just gives minions charge allows for single turn upheavals that I never thought felt very fun.

@captain_max707: I think Charge creatures in general are not fun in a game where attacker decides combat (by comparison, combat in MtG is decided by a mix of attacker and defender so you can't always attack face).

Charge creatures are just not interactive in any way unless you have a Taunt out. They've already had to nerf out of existence two deck types that were pretty much focused on Charge minions that could do 20+ damage in one turn (Miracle Rogue with Leeroy Jenkins, Patron Warrior with Warsong Commander). Most of the top tier Druid decks are hoping to win with 14 Charge damage as a result of Force of Nature + Savage Roar that you have to constantly keep in mind. Face Hunter is obnoxious and I feel stifles the meta because it has so many fast tools available to it, so decks have to have some combination of Taunt, life gain, or board clear and draw them, because otherwise you can't outrace Face Hunter (in a perfect world, Blizzard never would've made Quick Shot). Oil Rogue often relies on Southsea Deckhand to be the Tinker's Sharpsword Oil target so they can get maximum value off the spell. There are just so many decks where your opponent can have an empty board at the end of your turn, but if you don't have a Taunt out you have to just hope they don't have the two cards that win them the game. Yes, yes, high level Hearthstone play becomes about having that knowledge and playing around the burst damage they can suddenly deal, but I still think it's bad game design.

Charge is just not a very good mechanic for Hearthstone since the attacking player already has complete control of how combat plays out, but this is me railing against something fundamental that Hearthstone is, and wishing it were a CCG with more nuance that doesn't just always let the attacker make combat play out exactly the way they want.

@tennmuerti: The Molten Giant panda OTK warrior was the reason the card got the attack power restriction the first time around. You can see some examples of it here.

And ye, FoN is also a problem card (which also has gone through nerfs), but druid is completely dead in the water without it so they can't really address it at this point. But it's fairly obvious that these cards all makes playing agasint these decks very constraining. Against patron and hunter you can't put more than 2 minions on the board (and vs patron they have to be big as well) and against druid you can't ever allow them to have a minion stick. It's not just certain cards that requires maneuvering around, it's this overhanging playstyle the decks forces on their opponents.

Personally, they nerfed the wrong card. Frothing and Battle Rage were the cards causing the issues. I mean at this rate, if "charge" is in their eyes the issue, why does Druid combo get a pass?

@bobby_the_great: Probably because Druid combo is still countered by Loatheb and taunts as they have worse removal than warriors. Also because Druid combo still has a relatively low damage burst - only 14, which mages, shaman, and other classes can already do. I think it comes down to card draw though. Druids can't draw their entire deck the way old miracle rogues or patron warrios can. If Druids had some way to super consistantly get off innervate double combo every match it'd probably be nerfed too.

Blizzard does seem to hate Charge though. Druid combo isn't problematic enough to change at the moment but given the chance now I bet they wouldn't have put it in the game in the first place.

I feel like changing it to 2 or less attack get charge would be a reasonable solution. It doesn't completely kill the deck as the frothing combo still works but is also stops them from being able to easily flood the board with patrons in a single turn.

Novice player with barely any experience with the Patron deck but just wondering, doesn't this just mean that a Patron Warrior can not attack on the same turn they do all the Grim Patron, Whirlwind, Frothing Berserker stuff? They just have to wait for their next turn to do 30 damage?

I guess that gives the opponent enough time to take out minions that are already damage from Whirlwind and that Taunt minion that deals damage. Is it just too easy to clear the board if Patron Warrior has to wait till next turn?

@lukeweizer: Ye, the general rule for competitive decks is that just putting a bunch of "stats" on the board that doesn't immediatiely do anything isn't worth it because it will most likely not stick around for the next turn. The exception with Handlock (and to some degree dragon priest) works because all the big creatures are extremely effective (both mana and cardwise) which allow you to have so many that your opponent eventually runs out of answers.

For most decks almost every minion in the deck will usually both have good stats and some sort of immediate effect.

@lukeweizer: Yeah, you have the general idea correct. For competitive-tier decks, removing a handful of 3 or 4 health minions is pretty simple, so you really have to protect your Frothing Berserkers for a turn if you want to get them to high attack values and Grim Patron becomes much less useful as a board-clearing tool when they don't have Charge as you generate them.

Since Patron Warrior decks generally only run 4 cards that represent game winning threats (2 Frothing Berserkers and 2 Grim Patrons), dealing with those 4 cards generally means that you have won the game against them. The reason that the deck is/was so strong is that you could keep all of the cards you needed in your hand until you were ready to play them, play several Whirlwind effects with the help of Emperor Thaurissan, and then attack with them on the same turn with the help of Warsong Commander. On top of that, all of the cards in the deck that weren't major threats did at least one of the following: a) help you draw into the cards you needed, b) enable your huge combo turns, or c) efficiently remove enemy creatures to help you survive longer. Since the deck has such a low threat density and there's not really a feasible way to protect your threats (by keeping them in hand) anymore, it's going to die off.

A video has been uploaded by Blizzard where Ben Brode talks a bit about the thinking that went into this nerf.

A few points get brought up, one that has already been mentioned here. The "give other minions charge" effect itself was something that they wanted to get rid of for good because it constrained design options too much. An interesting bit of trivia is that apparently Dreadstead was suppose to be a neutral card for Naxx, but was scrapped for this specific reason.

There was also a desire to keep the card ability simple due to its position as a basic card while saving abilities with multiple conditions attached for cards from packs, hence why they opted to not do something a bit more complex such as "give minion charge as long as attack is under 3", or the like. This kind of fits Blizzards general design philosophy for their games in general, really. There was also discussion on why the card itself was kept at 3 mana, specifically not wanting to leave warriors with no 3 mana class basics.

The above points make sense at the least, even if I don't wholly agree with all of them. However, there was also justification given for why the stats remained a 2/3, citing that the attack/defense is the "soul" of a card. Considering that "soul" was thrown aside the last time a card was nerfed quite this thoroughly (starving buzzard went from a 2/1 to a 3/2), that simply makes no sense.

Here's Ben Brode's video on this particular nerf:

@turambar: Yeah, it continues to be baffling that some cards get the minor, 1-mana nerf/1 minor tweak of their stats, and then some cards get the super nerf where they are rendered unusable.

I wish they weren't afraid of small balance tweaks, it's still really silly how Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom are near auto includes purely for value and flexibility reasons.

@dixavd: So we made this card a smoldering pile of basic shit, because it was just too complicated. Warrior basic cards other than Fiery War Axe are pretty awful (execute is okay but requires combos, ditto shield block; actually execute is maybe the most complicated single target hard removal spell in the game, mulch and naturalize are the only two I can think of in the same region). Warsong Commander is now one of the worst cards in the game, being almost universally inferior to the stalwart Raid Leader.

The game has no basic level regardless, that's non existent; you can't play a basic deck, period. The only mode the game really has that appeals to new players is Tavern Brawl, and while that's a great mode you can only play it at level 20 and past the first or second day of a brawl no one but legend players grinding gold play it for all intents and purposes; and while it's fun to play against those players for me (since they're generally better than the morons on the ranked ladder up to rank 5 or so) it wouldn't be too insightful for a new player. Also half the time Brawl is impossible to play for new players since they won't have the requisite cards.

This is the same with every card game and to a looser extent with virtually every long lived often updated competitive game period that it becomes much harder to get into over time.

@turambar: I think there is some truth to the thought that it restricts design. If they ever want to make any 3 attack (or less) minion with an ability that could benefit from charge they have to then take the time to decide if it will be too powerful when paired with Warsong Commander. It still doesn't seem like the ideal way to solve this problem but I can at least understand where they are coming from.

Weird enough, XIXO was able to pilot Patron Warrior to rank 4 swapping out the Warsong Commanders for Grom and Dr Boom. Go figure.

@c0v3rt: The deck is functional I imagine but not ridiculous anymore. Xixo is also really good at ranked so not necessarily the best example.