Got to Rank 5 in Wild; it's really fun up until around Rank 8ish when it becomes try hardville again; very few druids compared to standard up until then. Teched in double ooze/reno for the very common pirate warrior, kind of amazing how effective just 3 different cards are in a highlander deck, does make the deck worse in the mirror though; albeit that's still mostly a coinflip on who draws/plays raza and shadow anduin first, but I no longer have the chance to outplay the opponent as much in the mirror which is a bit of a bummer. But crushing Pirate Warrior is highly entertaining so its cool. Wonder what % of HS is Rank 5 in both. 7-5 is very difficult but Rank 5 itself is a cakewalk just like standard.

Blizzard is currently looking at Druid very carefully. Which means that a possible nerf is incoming because that's what they usually say right before a nerf. The question is "what will be nerfed?" My bet is they will nerf wild growth or jade blossom because two ramp turns and +1/+1 to jades is pretty insane. With these nerfs, they probably won't nerf Ultimate Infestation since Blizzard has said they don't think it's a problem and nerfing ramp might make it less viable.

Source: Blizzard Interview

@acura_max: I still think the line of thinking that Ultimate Infestation isn't a problem is ass backwards.

All that ramp was in Standard 2 months ago, and it wasn't a problem because if you put that much in your deck, you'd ramp most of your hand away and be able to play what, 1-2 big minions then just be top decking forever? Or you'd draw Nourish and have to pass most of a turn doing nothing but drawing.

Ultimate Infestation shouldn't give so many things. I almost feel like they should completely cut the 5 damage or cut the 5/5 minion, or make it a choose one out of those 2. As is, it gives decent tempo while also drawing a crazy number of cards, and it's all too much. It's absurd that they would consider touching any card other than Ultimate Infestation.

I sincerely doubt Blizzard will nerf any ramp cards. If anything I could see them reducing the number of cards drawn from Ultimate Infestation down to 2 or 3 and leaving the rest of the card as it is. Ramp was never a problem on it's own until Ultimate Infestation showed up, nerfing ramp seems backwards.

Druid Nerfs incoming. Considering that Blizzard is taking feedback from the community and not relying solely on their team, Ultimate Infestation will likely see a nerf.

Speed on the nerfs is probably still going to be fairly slow I'd guess. Jade Idol, Spreading Plague, and UI likely candidates; the problem with Wild Growth and Innervate is they're essentially unnerfable and too close to the class identity bullshit; though there's some small chance they HoF innervate; I'd be surprised though. Saleswise I'm sure they'd prefer not to touch current expansion stuff but don't think that would work. Spreading Plague is actually somewhat balanced in my opinion, and all the obvious ways to nerf it wouldn't really impact its power level, so not sure what you do with that. UI is probably still busted if it draws 2-3 cards instead of 5. Jade Idol/package is ultimately the root cause of what killed the control meta since the other versions of druid can be countered while still retaining a solid deck.

I'm really interested in their approach to druid at the moment. As is almost always the case when balance is out of whack, the fault is not with any single card, but rather the perfect storm of tiny unbalances that pushes a class over the edge. Ramp cards in and off themselves are not problematic, because they don't typically generate value, but mainly tempo. Similarly, Ultimate Infestation by turn 10 or later, while still very powerful, is not as big of a swing.

In the case of jade druid though, Ultimate Infestation offsets the lack of value of the 8 ramp cards they can play now. They can replace the cards they sacrificed for tempo while generating a board and potentially dealing with one. All the while, Jade Idol lets them disregard the value of the cards they have to put into their deck, because it generates infinite value on its own.

The number 1 change I would see (one I would deem the most realistic action for Blizzard to take), is to change Jade Idol so that any shuffled in Idols lose the "Choose" effect and can only generate a jade.

Aside from that, although I doubt they're going to touch basic cards at this point, I think changing Innervate to not grant temporary mana crystals, but rather refresh empty ones, would be good. The class that naturally (get it?) ramps ahead of its opponents shouldn't be allowed to get an additional 2 turn boost. However, they'll likely try to sit it out and put it into the Hall of Fame next year.

Looks like they made some balance changes.

Innervate now only grants 1 empty crystal, down from two and spreading plague is a bit slower by costing 6. They also nerfed Hex and Firey War Axe which I thought was weird.

I'm not really a Druid player so those nerfs are ok for me. Would have really liked a nerf to Ultimate Infestation but I guess Blizzard didn't.

Edit: It makes sense that UI will be nerfed indirectly by the innervate nerf. That card will no longer be played on turn 6 which is nice.

Innervate just went from being potentially the best card in Hearthstone to being a Counterfeit Coin that probably won't see play in any Druid decks.

RIP Warriors in Arena. Hex is like borderline best card in the game at 3 mana so whatever. Warriors are about 95-99% Pirate when they used to be one of the most intelligent classes in HS, War Axe nerf probably mandatory in that regard. Will get buffed until control warrior works again in a few expansions (works right now sort of sometimes).

Well as someone who has never played Druid since beta but was excited to give it a shot after opening Malfurion last night...damn, dude.

I wasn't even going to play jade because I'm not that big of a dick; just a straightforward ramp-control. But this innervate nerf is huge and now I don't know what to do with Druid barring jade.

This is truly baffling to me: instead of nerfing actual jade cards, they nerf two cards that are also used in ALL other Druid decks. This seems to put jade even further in the lead of viable Druid decks and will constrain variation in the class from 98% jade to 99% jade. .

@nnickers: With the changes I think Jade is like 3rd best deck in the game instead of by far the best; aggro druid moves down to 7th-10thish. Non Murloc Aggro Paladin is probably main new thing that could work well; but Raza Priest can deal with aggro. However the best priest deck is very difficult to play optimally so its no big deal if that's the best deck (much like the Patron Warrior days where you play 10 players and each game goes differently based on skill instead of draw), long as its not "Big Priest."

I'm not the biggest warrior player myself and I think pirate warrior particularly "cheats" a lot of the critical aspects of the game. But man, that War Axe nerf is way overboard and should never go through. Yes, it's a strong card, but if they want to tackle the actual problem with weapons, they should have them break when going face.

Also, Jade Idol not being touched is worrying. I had a match where the Druid played 11 Idols while I was desperately looking for Skulking Geist. Needless to say having Blizzard's dedicated "counter" in the bottom 4 is not a solution to the problem of infinite value.

Here I am just looking for a decent Control/Freeze mage list, in that I am playing every version I can find until I find the one I like best. Its actually been kinda dope coming back to this game after 2 expansions away and having most of the cards (plus the $$$ to spend) to build a deck I always wanted to be better. It ain't top tier, but the idea of playing Jade Druid is just boring too me, and Control Mage has a pretty good match up (or so the stats say) vs it. Not sure if I'm gonna have spend some of the 10k dust I've got on some other deck if my deck of choice is now no longer good enough. (Cause it sure does have a crap percentage towards Priest)

And darn it..I want my control Paladin back! I would love to be maining Paladin..but I don't want to play a murloc themed aggro deck, and I don't feel like invested in a deck that is going to rotate out of standard relatively soon would be a very good investment.

Still, the meta is way more open then it was back in April, in my head at least. Yah, its druid all day every day, but since I'm currently maining a counter to Druid I enjoy playing, I'm cool with that. If not, then it means a healthier ladder experience so that's good too.

Also, everyone go fight the Lich-king and put a the 0 mana 1/1 penguin in your deck, restart until you can play it. Best easter-egg ever.

I don't really like what these changes mean for Blizzard's stance on card design. When they first introduced Standard the argument was that as the card pool increased they would be forced to design around single cards from older sets. They illustrated this by saying Animated Armor was originally a neutral card but changed it because Rogue could stealth it and break the game.

That was a fine philosophy in my book. It meant Standard would keep changing and they could design cards that would have been impossible to balance before. The Basic and Classic cards were evergreen, keeping a bit of familiarity in the game.

However, these changes point to a shift, first seen with the Hall of Fame. Blizzard admitted, rightfully so, that some Classic cards were too strong, so rather than continue to design around them they simply took them out of Standard. These changes now show Blizzard is willing to simply rebalance and change Basic cards to suit their design needs for new cards.

As pointed out by others this creates a bigger problem. Blizzard has said Basic cards (and Classic) will form the backbone of most decks, however these changes seem to be made with only specific (popular) deck archetypes in mind. Essentially every Warrior and Druid deck includes Fiery War Axe and Innervate. They weren't considered too overpowered until new cards were added that gave rise to specific decks.

I understand Blizzard's dilemma. The conversation around the game has been about the lack of diversity in the meta, where it feels like everyone is playing Pirate Warrior or Jade Druid. They felt they needed to try and change that balance, I just don't think nerfing basic cards is the way to go.

Nerf's coming up on monday, in celebration I did two consecutive 12 win arena runs with Druid. First deck had Plague, Skillmare x1, Cenarius (who I drew in like 12 out of 14 games), and Ultimate Infestation. Second deck had Innervate, 2x ramp, Skillmare x2, and Ultimate Infestation. Kept UI in opening hand going first multiple times, was a good strategy each time. Totally balanced card obv. The first deck was alright just had weak early game, second deck was really good though. Won a game with turn 1 (going second) innervate Fledgling, felt very skillful. Lost 2 games each run, one a bullshit priest loss and the other just standard tempo stuff. Both runs went 7-2 then 12-2.

Totally ready for priest to be broken tier (they already win every matchup except Druid with the right list), but they'll still lose to Jade so ladder'll be 50% Priest 50% Jade, but people will realize they need to have a pulse to play Priest so that'll fade to like 35% Priest 65% Jade methinks.

Can I just point out how wrong I was about prince keleseth? I can not believe that card is a thing; feels like a "Dr. boom is bad" moment for me, haha. This meta was a real hard one to predict. It was also hard to see that druid and priest was going to snuff out any other control or midrange deck due to the sheer power of some of their cards they got.