Hearthstone Card Nerfs For May 2018 Announced By Blizzard

The current meta in Hearthstone is essentially Cubelocks, Even Paladins, Quest Rogues, Spiteful Druids, Spiteful Priests, and Spiteful… everything. In an effort to change up the meta and make the game enjoyable again for those who are bored of coming up against the same decks day in, day out, Blizzard have announced a series of nerfs to cards that play a major role in the top tier decks currently.

Spiteful Summoner

One of the biggest culprits for cheating out minions before they should be played is Spiteful Summoner. Druids and Priests can easily highroll a Tyrantus as early as turn five, meaning 16/16 worth of stats. Due to the small pool of 10-cost minions, the lowest reward is 12/12 worth of stats if a giant is pulled instead. Blizzard have recognised this and increased the mana cost of Spiteful Summoner to seven. Not quite the drastic nerf some were expecting, but it means those decks have to wait an extra turn before summoning their spite.

Caverns Below/Crystal Core

In one of the rare occasions a card is so powerful it has to be nerfed twice, the Rogue quest has been nerfed once again. It used to require only four minions with the same name to turn all your minions into 5/5s, before it was nerfed last year to require five minions. Now, it requires five minions to turn them all into 4/4s instead. It’ll be interesting to see just how much of a nerf this is to the Quest Rogue archetype, now that all the minions can die to cards like Flamestrike, or a Duskbreaker + Spirit Lash combo.

Call To Arms

Perhaps the biggest nerf of the set, Call To Arms used to be a 4-cost spell that recruited three minions from your deck that cost two or less. It was the backbone of the Even Paladin archetype, used to pull out Knife Jugglers, Drygulch Jailors, Wild Pyromancers, and more, but now the cost has been increased by one. This nerf means it cannot be played in Even Paladin, and Odd Paladin is unlikely to run it because they don’t have any two drops, meaning they can only pull 1-cost minions from their deck, and three 1-cost minions for five mana isn’t too appealing. It will likely still be played in Murloc Paladin, but this could be goodbye to Call To Arms for the foreseeable future.

Possessed Lackey & Dark Pact

In an effort to stop Cubelock’s dominance, Blizzard have nerfed two separate cards that are both staples to the deck. Possessed Lackey is a very understatted 2/2 minion for five mana, but it now costs six meaning it will have to be played a turn later. It’s unlikely to have too much of an effect on the deck, but then they’ve also changed Dark Pact to only restore four health to your hero instead of eight. This essentially means Cubelock players will have to carefully consider just how much they life tap over the course of a match, as they can’t restore anywhere near as much health at once.

Naga Sea Witch

In the only Wild change this patch, Naga Sea Witch has had an enormous cost increase, from five mana to eight. As a 5-cost card, Wild players were able to cheat out multiple giants, one after another with the use of NSW, and while it will still be possible, they’ll be very limited to how many they can play on the same turn. While it has been a problem for a while and the community were often very vocal about it, one Reddit user, /u/JamieFTW, created and paid for a Reddit advertisement that called out Blizzard on their reluctance to change the card, and it garnered thousands of upvotes. We may never know if it had any impact on Blizzard’s decision, but /u/JamieFTW is now considered a hero in the Wild Hearthstone community.

You can read up on all of the changes here on Blizzard’s website, where they explain their reasoning behind each adjustment. The changes aren’t in play yet, as Blizzard are waiting for the HCT Playoffs to conclude, so you can expect them at the very end of the month or very early in June. If you’ve been out of the game for a while, last month Blizzard made another change to two oppressive cards; Shudderwock and Lifedrinker.

(Header image courtesy of /u/JamieFTW's Reddit advert.)