Nerfs

Nerfs are coming in February. No word yet on when but until then everyone should hold onto the nerfed cards. (Source)

• Bonemare now costs 8 mana, up from 7.
• Corridor Creeper now has 2 attack, down from 5.
• Patches the Pirate no longer has charge. His voice line will also be changing. (Source)
• Raza the Chained's effect now sets your Hero Power to 1 mana, up from 0.

In my opinion these are some good changes. Patches was in almost every aggressive deck. At one point in patch's lifetime, it was in 50% of all decks above rank 5 according to blizzard. Corridor Creeper is just as op. It is in multiple decks from paladins, druid to even certain priest. And Bonemare was op in arena and op in ranked. Suffice to say I won't miss any of these cards.

Ranked Play

Ranked will also be undergoing some changes. Now when the season changes, you only lose 4 ranks from the previous season. Also you only need to win 5 games in order to get the cardback each season instead of reaching rank 20.

It feels like a bit of a slap in the face that they're only acknowledging the brokenness of these cards now, when 2/4 are just about to rotate out of Standard in a couple months. "Oh whoops, these cards are going to be broken in Wild forever if we don't do something about them now, but lol guess you had to play against them nonstop since they were released, hope that was a fun year of Hearthstone."

Raza is the exception since he didn't become truly nuts until Shadowreaper Anduin came out, but the other 3 have been OP since pretty much the moment they were printed. I've been playing the game less this past year, and I think it's partly because it's so boring playing against aggro and midrangey decks for the last few months that all contain the same backbone of cards. They're all going to have some combination of Pirates (purely because Patches is so good, the rest of the tribe is forever garbo except as Patches enabler), Keleseth, Cobalt Scalebane, Bonemare, Corridor Creeper, and Spiteful Summoner. It feels like I'm seeing the same half-dozen neutral cards in every match I play because their power level is so clearly above most other minions in Standard right now.

Starting with Gadgetzaan onwards, it feels like the power creep has spiraled out of control, and they don't issue nerfs often enough to correct the problem cards. I honestly wish they'd release more dud sets like The Grand Tournament instead of every single set having to up the ante on the previous set, because it's just getting ridiculous. Kobolds & Catacombs is the closest thing they've released to a dud set in a while since as a whole almost all of the themes and synergies they were pushing in the expansion went nowhere, but a small handful of cards (Corridor Creeper, Call to Arms, Duskbreaker, Elven Minstrel, Spiteful Summoner, and almost every K&C Warlock card lol) turned out to be so strong that the set made an impact. I mean, it feels bad to see most of the cards see no play, but I think I'd rather that than every successive expansion upending game balance in favour of new, even more OP cards.

Anyway, the nerfs are nice, but I honestly feel like balance is so constantly poor in Hearthstone that I'd love to see more regular nerfs, like every 2-3 months. I'm sure there's some chart somewhere in Blizzard that says if they actually did that, too many players would uninstall because they'd rather use overpowered cards than play an overall better balanced game.

@bisonhero: I feel like the actions taken now is a response to pretty much the exact sentiment you're expressing. Not that I have any real data, but my anecdotal evidence indicates that interest in the game started to diminish with MSoG and it's just gotten worse and worse for every expansion.

I think the big problem is that they stopped making technical cards and instead just made more and more power cards. The idea of "super mega powerful class legendary" every expansion combined with a smattering of high value cards has lead to a situation where every deck is just filled with power cards and it devolves into who gets the best draw. We barely see decks like control warrior or freeze mage or miracle rogue anymore because they just can't compete with the constant barrage of strong boards.

I dunno, maybe they've just reached the point where the limitations of the game is holding it back. We've gone through mostly every possible type of meta by now, and with the small deck sizes, linear mana curve, limited health pool and Blizzards fairly stubborn core philosophies for the game (quick games, splashy moments and little no card interactions beyond the board and draw) it just can't adapt enough to facilitate new ideas.

@bisonhero: Eh I would disagree with the idea that the timing is a slap in the face. Patches is overdue, granted, but the other three are not in that same conversation. Corridor Creeper has existed for less than 2 months, Raza has only been a going concern since the last round of nerfs midway through KotFT and Bonemare is only an edge case for a nerf in my opinion. The timing seems reasonable.

Your greater point about powerful neutrals is an interesting topic, though its one that comes with its pros as well as its cons. Homogenization can certainly be an issue over time, but I'd argue that having solid creatures that can slot into any basic mid rangey deck is a very good thing for accessibility. I think most people would agree the card acquisition model in Hearthstone is a huge slog for new and F2P players, and having cheap useful neutrals like Bonemare and Scalebane is a major boon for those people. Late last year I got a couple friends into Hearthstone and the ability to point to these very easy to acquire cards with the advice that they can just stick two of each in all of their decks got them on the path to winning and having fun much faster than they might have otherwise. This obviously only applies to cards in the common slot. I'm fully against these types of cards in the epic slot and am quite happy Creeper is being nerfed out of ubiquity.

As for the nerfs themselves: Positive changes all around, though I can't help but feel let down by what didn't get changed. For my money the slow Warlock decks are the most pressing issue in the meta right now. That Possessed Lackey/Voidlord wasn't touched at all is very worrisome. With a change to that package I think the last month of this rotation could have been really fascinating, but now it's hard to say. It's fully on the back of whatever attempts to counter Control Warlock to breed an interesting meta.

@enemylandlord: Agreed that Patches is the most overdue, but I could at least understand how the card was printed in its original form because it's a fairly unique ability that even with playtesting was perhaps hard to evaluate just how powerful it would be. So yeah, the timing of Bonemare and Corridor Creeper is less egregious, but good lord, how did either of those cards ever see the light of day in the first place. They're just absurdly good stats for their mana cost that never should have made it out the door in that state. It feels like all the people who learned any lessons from Undertaker and his eventual nerf left the Hearthstone team earlier this year, and the people who took over were like "Yeah, let's print some neutral minions that have way too many stats for their mana cost! Woooooo!"

I get the point about having some neutral cards to point newcomers to that will be strong cards in several decks, but there will always be a handful of decently strong neutral minions that stand somewhat ahead of the rest of the pack. But it's boring when they're so far ahead of the rest of the pack that nobody ever even plays the other cards. The problem I see right now is that Bonemare and Scalebane and Creeper are such absurd outliers that they completely outclass all other neutral cards. I guess I'm basically talking about the rationale for why they Hall of Famed Azure Drake, Ragnaros, and Sylvanas, which is that they were objectively the strongest 5-mana, 8-mana, and 6-mana minions (or at least were perceived as such by a vast majority of the playerbase) so it was stifling design because many other minions they made at those mana costs compared unfavourably and never saw play. Bonemare and Scalebane are pretty much the 7-mana and 5-mana Ragnaros of any aggro or midrangey deck, in that they outclass pretty much any other similarly costed minion and they're pretty much an autoinclude. And that's just bad for deck variety, in the same way that it got really boring seeing Dr. Boom in pretty much every deck for over a year.

As strictly a Wild player, I'm really glad they nerfed Raza. If you thought Raza was bad in Standard, then you never played against someone using it in combination with Spawn of Shadows which allowed an OTK with Spawn and any 4 other playable cards. The combo is so strong that Wild Reno Priest doesn't even run Velen because it isn't good enough.

The deck may still actually be a thing in Wild thanks to Emperor, but at least it will take a bit longer to find lethal.