Hearthstone
TheoryNerf - 3 Cards With Numbers Changed To 3
Context - We're three weeks into the Scholomance Acadamey Expansion. Kael'thas Sunstrider, who was broken before Day 1, has been fixed, but no other nerfs for Standard have been introduced (Mindrender Illucia was mostly for Wild).
HSReplay has the Tier 1 decks as Libram Paladin (58.1%), Face Hunter (57.4%), Stealth Rogue (57.2%), and Aggro Demon Hunter (55.9%).
My suggested nerfs:
Libram of Wisdom - Change the cost from 2-mana to 3-mana. This wouldn't affect the end-game power of the card or of Lady Liadrin, but would make for a much fairer early-game and mid-game. At first I speculated on changing stats or discounts of Aldor Attendant or Aldor Truthseeker, but their stats and effects are generally balanced for the other Librams. You want wisdom? You need to study harder and longer first.
Voracious Reader - Change the cost from 2-mana to 3-mana. There's nothing to over-think here. Make the card slower. Make it harder for a player to empty their hand on the same turn they play this. Make it come down later when the opponent can more easily deal with it. We all knew this card was too good as printed, and it's overdue for a nerf.
Secret Passage - Change "Replace your hand with 5 cards from your deck" to "3 cards." The Soularium was an excellent legendary spell. This draws more, is more consistent, and has no down-side. It's barely RNG to use this card to search for a game-winning Eviscerate or Sinister Strike. Making this change won't alter a single deck-list in current Rogue decks, but would hopefully shave a few tenths of a percent off their win-rate.
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Context - We're three weeks into the Scholomance Acadamey Expansion. Kael'thas Sunstrider, who was broken before Day 1, has been fixed, but no other nerfs for Standard have been introduced (Mindrender Illucia was mostly for Wild).
HSReplay has the Tier 1 decks as Libram Paladin (58.1%), Face Hunter (57.4%), Stealth Rogue (57.2%), and Aggro Demon Hunter (55.9%).
My suggested nerfs:
Libram of Wisdom - Change the cost from 2-mana to 3-mana. This wouldn't affect the end-game power of the card or of Lady Liadrin, but would make for a much fairer early-game and mid-game. At first I speculated on changing stats or discounts of Aldor Attendant or Aldor Truthseeker, but their stats and effects are generally balanced for the other Librams. You want wisdom? You need to study harder and longer first.
Voracious Reader - Change the cost from 2-mana to 3-mana. There's nothing to over-think here. Make the card slower. Make it harder for a player to empty their hand on the same turn they play this. Make it come down later when the opponent can more easily deal with it. We all knew this card was too good as printed, and it's overdue for a nerf.
Secret Passage - Change "Replace your hand with 5 cards from your deck" to "3 cards." The Soularium was an excellent legendary spell. This draws more, is more consistent, and has no down-side. It's barely RNG to use this card to search for a game-winning Eviscerate or Sinister Strike. Making this change won't alter a single deck-list in current Rogue decks, but would hopefully shave a few tenths of a percent off their win-rate.
Please have a read at the latest VS report.
None of the nerfs you suggested is actually neccessary atm (nor are they good anyway imo, except possibly that of the Reader).
PS: even with just the stats you reported, there's no need for a nerf: anything below 60% is perfectly fine, especially in a yet dynamic meta.
PPS: bare Sinister Strike is a BAD card, and decks that regularly die at some unbuffed Sinister Strike are BAD decks, that absolutely need to be refined. There are no excuses for that.
1) In regards to the stats: many variants of those decks are running well above 60% on HSReplay. The aggregate variants across all ranks is what drops them below 60%. I don't have premium HSReplay so admittedly my analysis is limited. I read the VS report at your suggestion, and while the meta is generally healthy (I wasn't trying to be negative about the state of the game in my OP), I think there are clear issues.
2) Sinister Strike IS a bad card. It's also run in many variants of rogue that are performing above 63% on HSReplay. That's a testament to the power of Secret Passage. It's why it's Viscious Syndicate's metabreaker of the week, and the most played deck at competitive ranks. There are a lot of lethal outs for Rogue - maybe I shouldn't have focused on Sinister Strike. Secret Passage is broken on its face, and there's only one thing really keeping it in check.
3) What does best against Rogue? Even more aggressive Hunter and Demon Hunter decks that are powered by Voracious Reader. If you nerf Secret Passage you can't ignore the even more aggressive decks.
4) Despite the hyper-aggression, Libram Paladin is incredibly versatile and dominant, even if it doesn't quite top the chart at the highest levels of competition. What makes it unfair? I looked at Argent Braggart, First Day of School, and High Abbess Alura, but ultimately the problem is that Libram of Wisdom is over-powered at every stage of the game. I'm open to a different suggestion of how to deal with that, but I couldn't think of a better one.
5) Basically, if you agree that Voracious Reader should be nerfed as a versatile neutral that's pushing zoo/aggro too far over the top, you also have to look at keeping Rogue and Paladin in check. I thought the nerfs I suggested, only three cards in total, were pretty conservative, and don't kill their utility.
The nerf you suggested for Secret Passage outright kills the card. It's not conservative at all.
Because The Soularium DRAWS cards (they are ADDED to your previous hand, and you can then calculate the best synergies after that), while Secret Passage REPLACES WITH 5 cards (this means you cannot calculate synergies with your hands, you can only GAMBLE).
SP equalled to draw 5 is just wrong.
Also the soularium a draw engine historically did quite poorly. It works now in Wild because of Discard and Pain synergies - which Passage doesn't have.
Additionally, this is entirely new level of powercreep with Scholomance, comparing with cards from the past will only show part of the truth.
Decks regularly dieing to Sinister Strike says nothing about Secret Passage - it's telling instead of how these decks provide poor counterstrategy to chip damage: sinister strike becomes useful ONLY IF you let the Rogue deal 27 damage to your face before. It's a dead card in hand before that.
Ofc SP is a very good card, but given the powerlevel of the meta, it's actually a pretty fair one.
I've been trying my way up the ladder with out of meta decks and I still don't find anything wrong with the cards you listed for nerfs.
Voracious Reader is hardly a problem. Its been a while since I saw someone play this for a draw more than 1, a testament to how difficult it is to get value out of this card, especially in the early game.
Secret Passage is probably the most deserving in your list, but even then it doesn't really seem like a problem card. The real problem at the moment is how rogue abuses the many stealth minions they have, and the lack of a good healing card in standard right now. That's why most hunter decks just bulldozes aggro rogue with Explosive Trap. I like how secret passage allows rogue to play stuff that until now never saw the light of day, and if nerfing it means its all back to galakrond rogue, then I'm okay with secret passage staying unnerfed until the next expansion.
And finally Libram of Wisdom. Despite what you read in hsreplay or other stats, paladin is neither oppressive or hard to counter. If anything, its the most fair of all the classes, and any nerf to its core cards will instantly relegate paladin to unplayable for yet another expansion. On the discussion of whether libram of wisdom is broken? The real question would be would you keep this in your mulligan if you don't get to play Aldor Attendant on 1? The answer is no, and that is why it remains fair at 2 mana.
The problem with Libram of wisdom is late game its just too much value to deal with a free 7/7 worth a buffs every turn is impossibleto deal with.
Kenny's little poet. 😇
Most people use secret passage to find lethal thats why people don't like it the ability to easily find lethal. Basically zephrys in aggro rogue
Kenny's little poet. 😇
On Secret Passage finding lethal. Yes, that's true. But that does not make aggro rogue unbearable or uncounterable. Its mostly the stealth minions that tend to be oppressive, but aside from pain warlock, I don't see this deck terrorizing anything.
On the Libram of Wisdom late game value. I've played around with libram paladin way before this expansion, and a great deal during this expansion. In only a small number of games that I am able to get Lady Liadrin out without dying and even fewer of these games was libram of wisdom ever coming close to being the most valuable card. In many cases if paladin wins at all its usually because of tempo swings from Lightforged Zealot or they simply could not deal with Goody Two-Shields on 3. The late game value you are talking about almost never happens. There's just too many ways to either beat paladin way before they get there, or to completely remove those librams via silences or sap.
The only time libram of wisdom come close to being broken is ironically in pure pally mirrors. In fact, paladin is so fair that a good player can easily beat paladin even in sub optimal matchups which is why none of the grandmasters would even think of bringing paladin (I know in week 1 a couple did, targetting druid and losing nearly every other matchup)
Nope. Zephrys offers you versatile tools for diverse situations. Aggro Rogues have little to none of that in their decks.
More like Leeroy Jenkins back in Aggro Rogue - which is honestly perfectly fitting an Aggro deck.
Aggro Rogue can be dealt with in different ways: out-Aggro, Taunt/Tempo, Armor/Heal, cheap board clears (or a mix of these). Ofc it takes people to adjust their decks instead of netdecking stuff that is already obsolete the moment it is popular.
But apparently it's easier to complain of "1-munah-drhuw-5!!!11!1!" without even stopping to think...
As if we had never faced Aggro in the meta before btw.