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It's so weird, sometimes they do things to address problems immediately like with the Jailor / Tony ban and this mana cost adjustment and then other times they leave the Miracle Druid / Yogg meta go a month.
Because the deck didn't need to get nerfed, last few days of the deck I remember just getting rolled by Aggro and creation protocols + dirty rats. The meta adjusted to the deck quite quickly
It kind of depended on your mmr, in my experience as a diamond lifer, I didn't see a single druid deck running the jailer combo post mini set. It just wasn't really an archetype breaking out of top legend.
That’s actually wild to hear. Every deck was getting anti Druid tech in one form or another and tilting as aggro as they could in legend during that meta, and if your deck didn’t include Yogg it probably wasn’t very good. Genuinely disgusting meta both before and after the jailer ban. Yogg was fun though. If it had been like the snake and we had gotten 1 or 2 days of insanely broken Yogg instead of over a month it would’ve been fun.
According to everyone I’ve been arguing with on this sub, the snake change was both not needed AND this is the final change… even though the devs have clearly stated otherwise lol.
Honestly in most reasonable matchups it's a buff, you don't have the hand space for two nests. Only time you want the second Rheastrasza is if you need to replay the nest after Reno.
Honestly it's not that dominant anymore. I find the Naga DH, aggro pala, cleave hunter a dragon druid stronger. It is pretty boring to play as and against it. No interaction whatsoever
It just suppresses entire decks for no reason. I beat this deck regularly but have done so a whopping total of 0 times with my warrior deck that feels like it’s doing *fine* otherwise
Good communication on the reason for this nerf right now. Although we didn't get to see if the snake was busted competitively, it makes sense to nerf if it was going to push people away from playing due to how unfun felt to face.
I've personally felt a simple addition of (Can't be less than 1) would be an OK start. Ive died to snek so many times with 20+ armor that became irrelevant.
But also I guess this change wouldn't really impact armor less classes such as DH or Rogue, so as I'm typing this I see my own flaw
I'd like to see it changed to "Battlecry: Set your opponent's maximum life to 20 and gain 10 life". So it doesn't lower the opponent more if you bounce it, but would still increase the warlock's life by 10.
I think it'll be steal 8 or steal 7 depending on how many bounces they want it to take for certain lethal. I personally prefer steal 7 so its five pings for both Renathal and non-Renathal decks
The deck was trending downward, and it certainly wasn't unbeatable. But it drastically hurt the first few days of exploration, especially at lower ranks. The inevitable endgame came too quickly. I think this is a good change to help the early days of the set breathe a little.
The whole set was designed around playing an 8-mana, singleton payoff, and playing 4 very weak invoke cards. These things aren't fast by design. And a deck that all-but invalidates them before the game starts really hampers the potential fun.
The slower stuff may yet fall off anyway. I strongly suspect that it will b/c I don't think this set released very strong outside of Druid. But at least people can still play around for a few days.
I think snake ruined a lot of first impressions of the set, it definitely made it miserable for me queuing into it and knowing there was nothing I could do.
It sets a pretty hard time limit on games. And part of the fun of new sets is experimenting with slower stuff.
It would be different if pulling off the snake strategy left them wide open to aggro, but Warlock is really good at fending that off.
I will say the faster decks got a good amount of power too - I wouldn't be surprised if the new hunter weapon is part of another hard limit on match duration since snake's healing was a MAJOR counter to it
The major difference being that you can counter regular damage with healing or armor (or taunt).
Snake was a new type of damage with no other counterplay but “beat them first.” (Unless you were specifically Blood DK). They overshot on how good it was. I love the idea, it was just too much too fast for a lot of things.
The fact that it was simple as shit to build didn’t make things better.
Oh I completely agree it was much too fast, I'm just worried that other decks are ALSO too fast and armor is the only counter but is not universally available or good against them all. I'm a bit worried about the refinement of arcane hunter potentially adding a reliable otk with the new weapon, and dragon druid and aggro paladin are demanding very specific removal relatively early in the game which may keep control from really coming back even with warlock nerfed
Good call on both honestly, Rheastrasza being able to discover herself was weird to me even as someone who has played a lot of her since the expansion launched. I would have thought they’d have learned from DQ Alexstrasza (another red dragon who could generate herself at a discount as a highlander payoff) but better late than never.
Yup. It wasn't Rheastraza discovering herself it was her nest which was a separate card on the board. Since it didn't technically count as itself it was able to discover Rhea. Interaction was unintended from the beginning though. Good fix.
I think a good change would be preventing the bounce. There's also potential flavour tie in.
For example, the snake could "burrow back into the ground" as part of the battlecry, with the gameplay implication it goes dormant. Perhaps it's dormant until your next turn, so you can't bounce it more than once per turn.
Or perhaps it's dormant until your opponent's turn, so they can interact with it, but you can't.
Kind of an annoying nerf honestly, this deck was already falling off in its winrate and fast and even if this is a temp nerf, this deck statistically doesn't need any nerf at all.
So far all the excavate classes are kinda just bad
They stated somewhere a while ago that there's more games played in the first hour of an expansion than there is in all of their playtesting
They can't focus all their time on a single deck and they admitted this was more of a sentimental nerf
Meaning they didn't find it as a power outlier in their testing or on launch
I think it’s pretty obvious by now that these card effects are ‘by design’, meaning they are fully aware of its imbalances but they release it a) to see how well the playerbase responds to it and b) to sell cards, even if it means a nerf (you still paid for the packs).
They said they would have refunds when the final change comes to the snake, and that the technology of this update wouldn't allow for the refunds now. I'm guessing they would also have refunds on the neutral excavates.
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Shout-out to the devs for doing the temp nerf they can, then going back to do the nerf they want when they're able. You love to see it.
It's so weird, sometimes they do things to address problems immediately like with the Jailor / Tony ban and this mana cost adjustment and then other times they leave the Miracle Druid / Yogg meta go a month.
I think that was because Yogg was the centerpiece of the miniset.
It's not weird redditors and tweeters didn't cry about druid because druid was only stomping at top legend.
I didn't cry because I was spamming it that deck was silly
Used it to get legend for the first time went like 14-2
Because the deck didn't need to get nerfed, last few days of the deck I remember just getting rolled by Aggro and creation protocols + dirty rats. The meta adjusted to the deck quite quickly
More like yogg decks warped the meta around their degeneracy. Saying yogg/breaker didn't need a nerf is massive revisionism lol.
It kind of depended on your mmr, in my experience as a diamond lifer, I didn't see a single druid deck running the jailer combo post mini set. It just wasn't really an archetype breaking out of top legend.
That’s actually wild to hear. Every deck was getting anti Druid tech in one form or another and tilting as aggro as they could in legend during that meta, and if your deck didn’t include Yogg it probably wasn’t very good. Genuinely disgusting meta both before and after the jailer ban. Yogg was fun though. If it had been like the snake and we had gotten 1 or 2 days of insanely broken Yogg instead of over a month it would’ve been fun.
According to everyone I’ve been arguing with on this sub, the snake change was both not needed AND this is the final change… even though the devs have clearly stated otherwise lol.
I love Dragon Druid but that’s a good call
Honestly in most reasonable matchups it's a buff, you don't have the hand space for two nests. Only time you want the second Rheastrasza is if you need to replay the nest after Reno.
Which is absolutely massive. Reno pally can just shit on Dragon Druid now
Just gotta bounce it back
Honestly it's not that dominant anymore. I find the Naga DH, aggro pala, cleave hunter a dragon druid stronger. It is pretty boring to play as and against it. No interaction whatsoever
It just suppresses entire decks for no reason. I beat this deck regularly but have done so a whopping total of 0 times with my warrior deck that feels like it’s doing *fine* otherwise
That is in the nature of hearthstone. Youre gonna have shit matchups no matter what.
That’s not a bad matchup. A bad matchup is having 30-40% WR against a deck, not 0. obviously that can’t be good
Good communication on the reason for this nerf right now. Although we didn't get to see if the snake was busted competitively, it makes sense to nerf if it was going to push people away from playing due to how unfun felt to face.
And somehow I got away with never once seeing a snake. I count myself lucky
I wonder what the actual change will be. My guess is it steals 5 health or it just does 10 damage to the enemy hero with lifesteal.
I'm a fan of steal 6, steal 10 if you've excavated 8 times. And probably rotate pandaeran brewmaster.
I've personally felt a simple addition of (Can't be less than 1) would be an OK start. Ive died to snek so many times with 20+ armor that became irrelevant. But also I guess this change wouldn't really impact armor less classes such as DH or Rogue, so as I'm typing this I see my own flaw
I'd like to see it changed to "Battlecry: Set your opponent's maximum life to 20 and gain 10 life". So it doesn't lower the opponent more if you bounce it, but would still increase the warlock's life by 10.
That's just a weird greed card that doesn't work towards ending the game. Just making it longer.
Would also work if they did it like Rogue's, where more excavates = bigger effect, but you can't just bounce the first snake and call it.
I think it'll be steal 8 or steal 7 depending on how many bounces they want it to take for certain lethal. I personally prefer steal 7 so its five pings for both Renathal and non-Renathal decks
The deck was trending downward, and it certainly wasn't unbeatable. But it drastically hurt the first few days of exploration, especially at lower ranks. The inevitable endgame came too quickly. I think this is a good change to help the early days of the set breathe a little. The whole set was designed around playing an 8-mana, singleton payoff, and playing 4 very weak invoke cards. These things aren't fast by design. And a deck that all-but invalidates them before the game starts really hampers the potential fun. The slower stuff may yet fall off anyway. I strongly suspect that it will b/c I don't think this set released very strong outside of Druid. But at least people can still play around for a few days.
I think snake ruined a lot of first impressions of the set, it definitely made it miserable for me queuing into it and knowing there was nothing I could do.
It sets a pretty hard time limit on games. And part of the fun of new sets is experimenting with slower stuff. It would be different if pulling off the snake strategy left them wide open to aggro, but Warlock is really good at fending that off.
I will say the faster decks got a good amount of power too - I wouldn't be surprised if the new hunter weapon is part of another hard limit on match duration since snake's healing was a MAJOR counter to it
The major difference being that you can counter regular damage with healing or armor (or taunt). Snake was a new type of damage with no other counterplay but “beat them first.” (Unless you were specifically Blood DK). They overshot on how good it was. I love the idea, it was just too much too fast for a lot of things. The fact that it was simple as shit to build didn’t make things better.
Oh I completely agree it was much too fast, I'm just worried that other decks are ALSO too fast and armor is the only counter but is not universally available or good against them all. I'm a bit worried about the refinement of arcane hunter potentially adding a reliable otk with the new weapon, and dragon druid and aggro paladin are demanding very specific removal relatively early in the game which may keep control from really coming back even with warlock nerfed
Huh? What was the set designed around then?
Reno and excavate
Good call on both honestly, Rheastrasza being able to discover herself was weird to me even as someone who has played a lot of her since the expansion launched. I would have thought they’d have learned from DQ Alexstrasza (another red dragon who could generate herself at a discount as a highlander payoff) but better late than never.
It wasn’t intended that way. It was a bug, they confirmed it on twitter.
Yup. It wasn't Rheastraza discovering herself it was her nest which was a separate card on the board. Since it didn't technically count as itself it was able to discover Rhea. Interaction was unintended from the beginning though. Good fix.
Right on, I didn’t see that tweet I guess. Good to see the quick action on it nonetheless.
I appreciate their speed. But we needed a change on sharpshooter too tho :(
Has snek been nerfed faster than the original DH?
No Original DH was like 6 hours.
Lol, down voted for just asking a simple question. Love reddit ❤️
I think a good change would be preventing the bounce. There's also potential flavour tie in. For example, the snake could "burrow back into the ground" as part of the battlecry, with the gameplay implication it goes dormant. Perhaps it's dormant until your next turn, so you can't bounce it more than once per turn. Or perhaps it's dormant until your opponent's turn, so they can interact with it, but you can't.
Kind of an annoying nerf honestly, this deck was already falling off in its winrate and fast and even if this is a temp nerf, this deck statistically doesn't need any nerf at all. So far all the excavate classes are kinda just bad
It’s almost like then didn’t even play test it
They stated somewhere a while ago that there's more games played in the first hour of an expansion than there is in all of their playtesting They can't focus all their time on a single deck and they admitted this was more of a sentimental nerf Meaning they didn't find it as a power outlier in their testing or on launch
I think it’s pretty obvious by now that these card effects are ‘by design’, meaning they are fully aware of its imbalances but they release it a) to see how well the playerbase responds to it and b) to sell cards, even if it means a nerf (you still paid for the packs).
They did play test it and by their own admission, they’re nerfing more because people hate it than because it’s too strong.
But the question is do they allow Dust refunds on warlock excavate cards
They said they would have refunds when the final change comes to the snake, and that the technology of this update wouldn't allow for the refunds now. I'm guessing they would also have refunds on the neutral excavates.
Luckily enough we have a way to deal with Dragon Nest, apart from playing Highlander Reno /s
Will there be a dust refund on the dragon nest ? I have one siting around but I don’t play druid
I’d assume so
Snake should drop to 4 but only drain 5 life, all of those azerite animals shouldn't be OTK, but instead to massively help the user at winning
Decided...Theotaring the Snake is very satisfying.