Hearthstone Nerf (Dec 19)

The Change: Wild Growth and Nourish Wild Growth and Nourish have always been points of contention for the Druid class. Being part of the Classic set, the pair has been infamously a part of almost every single ramp Druid deck. However, Druids currently have so many ways to make up for the lost tempo playing these Ramp cards such as Spreading Plague, Ultimate Infestation etc. This causes most player playing against Druids to have an un-fun experience since it makes the game hardly interactive.

If played on curve, these changes would slow down the ramp effectively by 2 whole turns.

How effective is this change? Honestly speaking, probably not too much. You would sometimes play these cards a turn later than the optimal turn and still do well anyway. They will also have a little less mana float to play their spells, but those spells are still as powerful as ever. It's still a good change -- it reels the deck in and potentially prevents it for overrunning the other decks after the other card nerfs take place.

The Change: Saronite Chain Gang

No more infinite Shudderwock! Death to another control deck! No more Soul Infusion + Saronite Chain Gang in Healock (minor) Saronite Chain Gang's Battlecry was the only reason why Shudderwock could go infinitely, since it allowed Shudderwock to make a copy of itself, and then returning the copies to its hand via Grumble the Earthshaker's battlecry.

How effective is this change? Love this change, Shudderwock has its time for long enough.

The Change: Level Up!

Odd Paladin is no longer top-tier! Level Up! was initially a great fit for the deck, since the hero power generated 2 tokens at once, alongside Lost in the Jungle, Vinecleaver and Unidentified Maul, giving more value to this card. However now that is even, it wouldn't even do well in even-paladin since are no even paladin cards that generate swarms of Silver hand recruits.

How effective is this change?

Extremely! Level Up was one of Odd Paladin's win conditions, and removing it severely hurts the deck. Even Paladin will also have a hard time using this card effectively.

The Change: Leeching Poison

Leeching Poison had little use except in one deck: Kingsbane Rogue. Having the permanent buff on Kingsbane gave the player the ability to sustain and kill off any minion throughout the entire game, and is a key card in making the deck possible. However, Kingsbane versus Kingsbane decks are really time-consuming since the correct answer to always hit each other's face and they go to fatigue (ala Control Warrior versus Control Warrior days).

How effective is this change?

Extremely. Maybe too effective -- Kingsbane Rogue was not top-tier until the release of this expansion with new support, and it has been barely less than two weeks before this deck is now suddenly not as viable anymore. It is possible that Kingsbane Rogue still runs this since it is 1-mana instead of 2 and is technically still viable, but it will be sitting in your hand for a long time until Kingsbane's attack became 7 or more and can be combo-ed with Doomerang to heal for a decent amount. Conclusion Although the nerf seemed to come sooner than expected, it was probably because this expansion did not shake up the metagame enough to cause some of the top-tier decks from the previous metagame to shift away. It is unfortunate that Kingsbane didn't get enough time to shine, but it definitely would have been nerfed sooner or later. Overall, these changes are more than welcome, and I can't wait to see new decks arise to replace the current ones!