[Review] Blizzard's Apathy Toward Timely 'Hearthstone' Nerfs Is Absolutely Unbearable

[Love Pulse]

I’m supposed to be playing Resident Evil 7 right now, but instead find myself logging onto Hearthstone for the millionth time. It’s a game I keep coming back to, a “competitive” title that is less demanding than shooters, and one that I can play on pretty much any device I own at this point.

I love it, but I hate it. So, so much.

Things are starting to reach a breaking point with Hearthstone. While the game has many issues -- and you can argue about the pace and quality of expansions and adventures -- the use of its different modes between Wild and Standard and Arena, there’s really only one glaring problem that is absolutely tanking the game, and has been for eons now. For reasons that have never fully been made clear, Blizzard is horribly, stupidly slow when it comes to balancing the game, making Hearthstone almost unbearable for months at a time due to a select handful of cards.

The easiest example is one that I’m sure all current Hearthstone players will know even before I say it: Small-Time Buccaneer.

The card is a 1 mana 1/2 Pirate that gets +2 attack if you’ve equipped a weapon. Combined with a new legendary card, the 1/1 Patches that has charge and is summoned automatically (from your deck) when you play your first pirate, it’s created a hyper-aggressive, entirely broken meta in the favor of few select classes.

If they have a Coin, a Warrior on turn one can play a 1/1 N’zoth’s First Mate, which gives them a 1/3 weapon, a 3/2 Buccaneer (empowered by the instant weapon), and a 1/1 charging Patches. Two automatic damage on turn one, and potentially 6+ on turn two, depending on what’s able to be removed or what the Warrior can send charging out next.
For Shaman, a class that has almost never used pirates, the Buccaneer is used because of this early pressure synergizing with both Patches and Shaman’s collection of cheap weapons like Spirit Claws and Jade Claws. For Rogue, who has some native pirates and a weapon as a hero power, it’s also strong, though not as strong as the others perhaps due to the class’s more general weakness.

Small-Time Buccaneer was identified as a problematic card within a few days of its release as Pirate Warriors stormed the ladder. And then it became an auto-include in more or less any aggro deck with a class that could hold a weapon.

Nothing has been done about the card in two full months since its release. Not a thing. It’s possible Patches is also a problem -- and it’s certain low-cost weapons are a more general problem -- but Small-Time Buccaneer is such an obviously broken card that it’s simply inexcusable for Blizzard to sit back and do nothing about it for months on end. This is not new behavior, of course, as veteran players will remember the months-long terror of the Undertaker, another absurdly overpowered 1-drop that dominated the meta until Blizzard finally got around to nerfing it ages after they should have.

It’s not just the Buccaneer, even though that’s the most obvious example. The entire Jade mechanic has proven itself to be leagues beyond the other classes in the meta, for the most part. The hand-buff cards of the Goons gang are so weak that Warrior never uses any of them, Paladin is rarely seen, and Hunter has disappeared from the game altogether. The potions of Mage, Priest and Warlock are a little better, but only because of one card, Kazakus, as the potions themselves are mostly just fairly standard spells. And once Reno is rotated out, Kazakus decks may not even be viable at all.

Jade Golems, meanwhile, dominate absolutely any match-up that goes into late game, creating enormous 1-2 mana minions that are 6/6, 7/7 or 8/8, or in the case of Jade Druid, a constant flood of 1-mana 10 / 10s, 11 / 11s and 12 / 12s by the end of the game thanks to the infinite cycling of Auctioneer.

All of these problems combine into make one very specific class ridiculously overpowered and therefore endlessly overplayed: Shaman.

Shaman makes use not only of Buccaneer in many decks, but also the Jade mechanic, and also an absurd amount of cards that have frankly been way overpowered for over half a year at this point. You may recall that I wrote a very similar article to this one about Blizzard being too slow with nerfs last year, and guess what? It was also mainly about Shaman.

I listed a number of ridiculously strong cards the class had, but out of all of them, only Tuskar was nerfed severely because it was so broken it was literally starting to be banned from tournaments. But in addition to pirates and golems, cards like Tunnel Trogg, Spirit Claws, Totem Golem, and hell, even Thing From Below make aggro Jade Shaman the most po[CENSORED]r deck in competitive Hearthstone by far. The class has powerful minions, burn spells, weapons, board clear, single-target removal - literally everything. You see Shaman everywhere, but in high levels it’s even more prevalent.