This patch just oozes incompetence and the Hearthstone team’s overall apathy towards their players. There has been nothing but valid criticism towards the handling of Aberrations in BGs and the imbalance they bring to every game. And now the only solution that you’ve come up with is nerfing all of the deity stat stackers by 25%. It just seems like ego that’s stopping them from simply removing the tribe until they’re actually balanced. Most of the community agrees that the meta of this season is to play Aberrations unless you want to lose. It’s not even about whether Aberrations are stronger late game, whether they highroll faster or even greater than other tribes. It’s so obvious if you play a couple games that the cost you pay in health by not playing Aberrations early makes it impossible to play other tribes unless you have an insanely lucky start.
Not a single Trinket for Aberrations has been touched in this patch. Aberrations still get crazy value to their Deities through nearly every Lesser Trinket.
+4/+4 when you cast a Tavern Spell, doubled if you discard either of the Aberration specific Tavern Spells. Compound that with any of the many minions that do the same effect and your Deity can have at least 50/50 worth of stats the turn Lesser Trinkets are dealt. For C’thun that’s 100/100 worth of stats at a point in the game where no other tribe can combat it. And that’s a minion you can’t top from being summoned, and where no counter exists.
The Mindslasher Portrait literally triples the stats that minions gains when you cast a Tavern Spell. I just want to know why that’s something that’s allowed to exist when for nearly the same cost and a condition that’s both harder to achieve and necessary to play Demons: the Soul Rewinder portrait gives your Soul Rewinders 2 attack when they trigger. If you play this trinket with Y’Shaarj as your deity, you may as well be sextupling the stats it gives since not only do you need to kill a massive Mindslasher twice, but also an equally massive Deity.
Faceless converter is such a ridiculous minion I’m amazed it somehow still exists. There is no way you can nerf this card that will still make it feel fair. Make it a Battlecry? I doubt it would kill the card, but it would still be too much of a swing if you’re lucky enough to get it, and people with an early Brann would get to large of a swing to be manageable. If you make it an activation that costs at least 2 you would maybe force players to choose between their gold for quick strength vs a board that scales harder. I’ll say this, nerfing the stats per Tavern spell cast will do nothing. It’s the wide consensus that this minion being Deathrattle is too strong, especially with the Faceless Converter sticker. That trinket needs to be removed or entirely reworked with the minion.
The deities summoning after 3 aberrations dying is too easy a task and rewards players too quickly. Why are they allowed an extra free minion that so early on is stronger than a typical tier 1 or 2 minion, while doing 3 damage if they survive. Unless it’s Y’shaarj who does however much damage the minions inside him are if he’s the last to die.
In my personal opinion, C’thun should not be able to give his stats to non aberrations. Not only does it make no sense flavor-wise for him to reward those who don’t follow him, but it allows boards that abuse overpowered combos like Faceless Converter and Titus to exist. You only need two Converters and a throwaway Aberration to get the full massive reward of a huge C’thun.
I’d say something about Y’sharj but I’ve never seen a game on long enough for him to do something outstanding.
And lastly in Duos, everyone knows about the Cloner card. It’s basically impossible to win in Duos right now if you don’t abuse that card. There is no way the card shouldn’t have been removed or reworked day one. The only way that card can be balanced is if it’s effect can only trigger once per discard, no matter how many you have on your board, and if it only applies only to Tavern Spells. This way you can’t create multiple spells from one discard, and you can’t duplicate multiple golden minions. It would also bring the card closer to the flavor of Aberrations, since discarding Tavern spells for greater effects is what they do.
Hopefully some actual fixes come out, because it’s really annoying that there seems to be no acknowledgement from the team about anything the community has been saying, and it’s really frustrating because everyone enjoys playing BG, but no one who has real love for the game like Aberrations. Aberrations have killed the feeling of excitement that comes from realizing that “I’m playing X Tribe this game” because you have a great setup for them. Every game is an Aberration game.
And would it not have been better to call them Horrors?