Azerite Snake needs to be Nerfed

Multiplayer Discussion
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Azerite Snake needs to be nerfed again. No, not the cost. No not the damage it deals. But the mechanics of the card itself. Stealing a Hero’s MAX HP is THE MOST broken mechanic i’ve ever seen.

Only 3 classes have something that can effectively counter said effect without outright preventing the card in the first place, that being Blood Death Knight by increasing their Max HP, Priest by Copying the card, and Shaman by Copying the card. Copying the card or preventing it from ever being played in the first place should never be the “counter” to it. Winning the game before it comes out is not a counter to it.

It’s actually insane how Azerite Snake counters every single:
Healing Card in the Game
Lifesteal Card in the Game
Because it steals Max HP so you can never heal the damage.
Because it has such a low cost, players can infinitely juggle it using the Panda cards, Gorgon, and Celestial Projectionist.

It needs to be nerfed so that it DOESNT steal MAX HP it just steals HP but it can keep the bypassing of shielding effects (meaning it goes through divine shield, immune, etc). That should be the gimmick. Not this overtuned insanity.

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Just out of interest, in any given game of hearthstone, if you don’t win before your opponent wins, what happens?

I see this argument used a lot against inevitable win conditions and I think it’s bizarre. Slow strategies absolutely must run disruption, which is why we see Dirty Rat and Theotar in the slowest control decks, so that they can survive to get their late game win conditions online (honestly, this is more for Sif than Azerite Snake, which is a pitiful win condition since the nerf). More importantly however, decks need to have a proactive way to win the game. You will never and should never beat inevitability with a deck that isn’t trying to kill the opponent ever.

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It is an unhealthy card game if there is a card that has virtually no counterplay.

Dirty Rat and Theotar dont guarantee you a counter. You are adding cards into your deck for the RNG chance at countering their key card.

Any smart player will only trigger the Excavate on their turn with enough mana to drop the Snake and then copy the Snake which can be as soon as 8/9 Mana. And that is only if they want to play around any counters.

If they have to opportunity to drop it and know you’ve been using up your resources? They get a turn with A.Snake on the board and now have full mana to do max bounces/copies.

Winning before your opponent wins is not a counter. That is just winning the game. Counters are cards capable of interacting during an in-progress game to prevent or disrupt critical plays from your opponent.

With 9 mana they dropped snake, copied snake, picked up snake. Having 2 snakes in hand. And a hand of 8 cards.

The likelyhood Dirty Rat and Theotar hits both cards (when he revealed he had a second panda, and a celestial projectionist) means that it was an ludicrously slim. So while I cannot guarantee a counter they can virtually guarantee a win because they have 2 copies of Azerite Snake.

Turn 8 they steal 7. Turn 9 they can steal 14.

if you are 30 HP you are at a 9hp max.
If you are 35 HP max you are now at 14.

No amount of immunity will save you. All they need to do is to drop the card and the unless you are a mage running objections you lose.

Other classes allow you to interact. Such as silences, simply destroying minions, etc. Azerite Snake is the only card whose interactions given to you are limited. Vs decks that dont even require such a thing because their cards dont limit interactions.

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Good, because guaranteed counters are horrible. Imagine if you were allowed a card that was guaranteed to counter an entire strategy??

Perfect. They have to slow down their strategy to play around your counter, giving you an opportunity to punish them for doing so.

Interacting with your opponent can be as simple as threatening lethal or massive damage so that they can’t simply ignore what’s happening in the game and play out their strategy. The aforementioned Dirty Rat and Theotar are also capable of interacting during an in progress game.

They played very well. Or their opponent played very poorly. Or they were incredibly lucky. This is an exceptional scenario and if this is happening to you regularly, you are allowing it to happen. Also bare in mind that they can’t excavate the Snake AND make this play in the same turn unless they have 10 mana, a Smoke Stack, a viable target on board, be on their 4th excavate AND have all of the cards needed for this combo.

It isn’t reasonable to expect to be able to outlast an inevitable win condition with every deck, and those that can do it shouldn’t be able to consistently, because these kind of decks (slow control with low lethality) are supposed to be countered by inevitability.

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No it does not. If anything it needs to be buffed to 8 HP because it sucks at 7. A combo deck winning against your afk control deck is perfectly normal. If the warlock managed to throw 5 snakes at you it means you have not been doing much during the game to win and that’s on you. Try a different deck that actually wins games before turn 14, try to Dirty Rat or Theotar their snake or just assume your deck just has a bad matchup and move on. It’s like playing a board-based aggro deck and complaining Control is op just because they deal with your aggression too well.

Control is favored vs aggro
Combo is favored vs control
Aggro is favored vs combo

That’s just how the game works

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People look at this all wrong. Why do you need immunity or a hard counter to snake? It takes a while to fully drain someone and they get plenty of time to do something before being fully drained. Why does every game have to go 10 turns past fatigue to even be considered a game? Instead of try to win with fatigue vs everyone and everything try playing decks that do something. People build and play these aimless do nothing decks and complain when they don’t have potatoes for opponents. Maybe start your deck building by having a goal for the deck that isn’t just get to turn 40 and pray the opponent dies to fatigue before you do.

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Guaranteed counters are horrible? There is literally Mage in the game. They have cards that Guarantees countering A Spell or A Minion. Silences guarantee that you turn off effects such as deathrattles or other ignition effects.

There are TONS of cards that guarantee a counter to something. However, Snake does not have these guaranteed counters in Standard.

It is 100% logical to allow counterplay to snake besides “just win the game first”. That isnt counterplay. Only a Mage and Blood DK have direct counterplay in their card sets.

They don’t have to play slow at all. They are a control deck that can switch to aggro easily by getting great excavate cards and utilizing sludge to either go directly to your face, or clear your board. And by the time they hit 6 mana they’ve dropped your max HP by 7 increased their max by seven and then bounced their snake back into hand.

Interacting with an opponent isnt threatening lethal. Interactions are “Destroy effects, silence effects, random damage/targeted damage effects, Counter Minion/Spell, hand/deck disruption” attacking/dropping taunt minions is not interaction. Interactions are effects outside of combat between minions.

Dirty Rat and Theotar are interaction BUT THEY ARE RNG. You aren’t going to be running 2 Dirty Rat 1 Theotar. Lets assume you do run those 3. Congratulations, they run more than 8 excavate targets in their deck and can literally excavate a second snake in the event they lose their first one.

The only time you will attempt to Dirty Rat a Snake it would be when you have a 5/5+ already on board that can attack or a you have a spell to immediately destroy it. You are not going to Dirty Rat and leave it on the field to be bounced.

This means that by that time they already had the mana to bounce it at minimum 1 time. Meaning you are down 7 Max HP of irretrievable HP that you cant get back even through lifesteal.

It isnt an exceptional scenario because Warlock has plenty of draw power and Control cards. As well as the ability to heal the damage through sludges while simultaneously being aggro if you are also playing a control deck (by using sludges).

Be them
Have 7 mana. Drop Smoke Stack, Drop Snake, Drop Panda. 7 max HP decifit with an effective 7 hp heal.

Be you at 7 mana
Use Theotar 1 time because its 6 mana. Miss the Snake.
Lose the game because now they can drop snake again and then copy snake and bounce snake.
Be you at 7 Mana again. Try Double Dirty Rat “rng save me” Miss, hits Celestial Projectionist, Miss, hits Disposal Assistant. Lose for the same reason as above.

Mind you I had a 9/6 Lifesteal Windfury/Rush on board, removed Both their snakes and they STILL had another snake for bouncing because i was playing Paladin they Dont have a card that can prevent them from playing Snake.

They had a coin on 9 mana. So even with 19 damage on board after crashing in and putting them to 12 (They had already twice) they were capable of just Snaking 2 more times for game. despite the 9/6 lifesteal 6/6 lifesteal and 4/4 on my board. On 9 Mana.

That it is a card that **even when you have cards to play around it. You cannot put enough cards (2 dirty rat + theotar) to prevent them all because they have the ability to excavate naturally with 8 cards and can then bounce those excavate cards to excavate if their Snake was countered.

This doesn’t change the fact that taking Max HP instead of just stealing HP is the crux of the issue.

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The basic problem with Snake (pre- and post-nerf) is that losing Max HP feels yucky. Having Max HP stolen by the other player feels even worse. It removes a start-of-game condition that one should be able to depend on. Imagine playing Monopoly (sorry for the mental image), but when you land on another player’s property, they don’t just relieve you of your money, they take your little doggie figurine and force you to play as the thimble. It just ain’t right.

Why not just do damage, and let me recover with healing/ armor/what have you? Being hit for seven in the face at that price range is still good burst damage.

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Could you share your deck with us so we can see what you were playing against them? I personally only use the snake once maybe twice in a game and finish the opponent through other damage. A full bounce package seems like a bad idea in this meta where decks can beat you by turn 7 frequently without some early game.

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Those don’t counter strategies and have counterplay

not many entire strategies are built around those and in the case of deathrattle you could simply kill your own minion to guarantee the activation

Your opponents playing a weird deck if they’re running both sludge and excavate, and excavate cards are not what I would really call aggro given they have an upfront cost of a minimum of 1 mana with smoke stack but more then likely 2 mana with the kobold

If they’re getting to fatigue you either already lost or are doing something very weird which is hard countered by their strategy which is y’know just gonna happen

You do know Paladin has the highest winrate right now right?

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Hearthstone never has and never will the kind of disruption and hard counters to everything that you are looking for. The answer and always has been to make them explode into a crater before they get all their shenanigans going. No one class is able to counter everything at all times. People are so stuck on must counter everything always and forever. People should instead be looking at games of Hearthstone as a race and ask the question how do I do my thing faster than the opponent does their thing. Why are so many people trying to run a marathon when the game is set up as a sprint. Hearthstone isn’t build for marathon games it lacks the kind of cards and core game play features for marathon games. Stuff like real hard disruption and instant or if not full blown instants better ways to interact and interrupt opponents during their turn because waiting to react is too slow because after you see it happen you often soon become a crater. People haven’t grasped this concept about Hearthstone yet and it’s been 9 years already. Your control everything and playing solitaire vs a goldfire game isn’t ever going to be Hearthstone.

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You need to play it FIVE times to kill the opponent.

Calm down, it should be buffed to 8 hp.

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You dont though. Because if they’ve already dealt damage to you then that reduces the amount times they have to play it.

If they have you are 14 damage they only need to play it 2 times. They dont steal your HP from 35. I steals it from its current value.

And Playing it 5 times is nothing as they have multiple bounce and copy cards in the deck. that only cost them 2 and 3 mana respectively. You are bouncing things at 6 mana crystals. 5 if you have a coin (which they can generate coins with the 2 drop). And they also run Doomkin allowing for a small pseudo ramp and mana disruption so that they can reach the bounce phase faster.

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Maybe if you had a plan of your own besides being hyper focused on must stop any and all drain you could beat Drain Warlock. Playing right into the Warlock game plan of extending the game instead of executing your own plan that forces the Warlock to respond to you. Wait and see is too slow for Hearthstone. You need to get ahead of the opponent instead of being all passive and waiting to react all the time. It’s a common trap people fall into being too passive and not pressuring the opponent off their game plan.

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I wasnt playing passively though. I was playing on curve, filling the board with minions and The amount of lifesteal and control they were capable of outputting was simply more than enough to stabilize.

I was playing Paladin with the cards I have and dropping minions each turn on curve. but because my minions werent all above 5 health there isnt anything I can do against a 4 damage all board wipe.

If you try to suggest “Well then just don’t play minions into the board clear” That would, by definition be playing passively, which is what warlock wants their opponents to do so they can get the snake combo up.

There is a reason to by hyper focused on snake. Because it has a virtuallyuncounterable game mechanic to it. And is their main win condition.

So If I was playing mage for example, I’d literally be holding onto an Objection forever against a warlock make sure I can attempt to snipe the snake when I believe that its their best play at the time.

I’m not going to drop 2 objections on useless minions.

In the same vein, as I explained because i was going face when needed but Warlock has the tools to stabilize easily do the sheer amount of removal and lifesteal cards they have.

And even though I had lifesteal on the board. Nothing I can do with it because, again, it steal max hp. Meaning there is nothing to lifesteal even with my 15 points of lifesteal damage on board.

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Okay dude, you LOST a game, wow big deal.

Is that the first game you’ve lost a game ?

Do you want EVERY single deck you lost to to be nerfed ? Think about it for a sec.

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I dont have to think about it. You’ve literally contributed nothing to the conversation at all.

Imagine thinking a single game is what made me come to the forums rather than a consistent and systemic issue with a Mechanic that castrates Lifesteal Cards and Healing Cards. Which make up a MASSIVE portion of the game.

It needs to be nerfed plain and simple. I’ve lost tons of times and this is the first time I ever come to the forum to point out a clear problem with draining MAX HP vs just draining HP.

All you are doing is failing to prove that it isnt a overtuned and non-interactive mechanic.

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According to HSReplay, Mining Warlock is unfavored against the three main Paladin Archetypes. Now this is only from games collected by HSReplay of course and certainly doesn’t discount your own experience. It does show that other Paladin players are not having the same experience as you though.

I don’t think anyone will argue about it being non-interactive, but given it’s current win rate it doesn’t seem to be over tuned at all. It’s a slow combo deck that takes many turns to kill the opponent, while also being vulnerable to some available forms of disruption. I agree it feels bad to lose to, but over the entire course of this game there haven’t been many meta decks I’ve actually enjoyed losing against.

Your choice of deck will occasionally line up poorly against someone else’s choice of deck. You can change your deck and have a favorable matchup against Mining Warlock. In fact, the deck appears to have more bad matchups than good.

I wouldn’t count on this card being nerfed again, so I hope you are able to have a more enjoyable experience in the future.

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The reason I state that was overtuned is due to its ability to cripple 2 Card Keywords nearly in their entirety in addition to its other effects.

in instances where you have the lifesteal or healing available to completely heal yourself (thus attempting to stabilize a bored if you are getting pressured for some reason or to keep a healthy HP advantage) They permanently cripple the players healing effectiveness through the Max HP stealing mechanic.

I also dont play Meta entirely because I dont spend much money on the game at all. I have to work with what I have. But I am in the process of trying to reach some semblance of Meta. So while I had a powerful board presence 9/6 Lifesteal 6/6 Lifesteal, 4/4 on board I was immediately shut down because he just bounced Snake enoughs that my Lifesteal Creatures were essentially just normal monsters staring down something that used to be at 12 HP but was now at 36. Meaning they could just ignore the damage entirely for 1 turn.

Removing Max HP to me is way too insane of a mechanic that turns off or cripples too many cards with a single drop.