Here’s a detailed explanation why crusader aura isn’t strong.
In a nutshell, crusader is a 4 mana do-nothing card.
It’s a literal waste of 4 mana.
There are conditions which make it strong, but in a nutshell, in a vacuum, the card is a waste of 4 mana.
Let’s take a historical journey through balance changes of similar cards, from the newest towards the older:
Brann was changed from 4 mana to 6 mana. Didn’t help. Then it was changed from 6 mana to 8 mana. Didn’t help. Why? Because it’s x mana do nothing card.
Warlock location - from 3 mana to 4 mana. Did it help? No. That same patch, warlock had 3 decks in tier 1 (snake, sludge, insanity). Again, it’s a x mana do nothing card, so all the decks just got rid of it and became stronger.
Deputization aura - mana cost nerf + dmg nerf - Did it help? For a while, yeah, but because it wasn’t the only thing nerfed. Now it’s again a part of 2 of the 3 most broken decks on the ladder (highlander and handbuff pally)
Why? Because nerfing cards that do nothing, shockingly, does nothing to balance the game. If you wanna nerf a deck, nerf the ENABLING/SUPPORT cards, not the one card which seems to be broken, cuz it most likely is NOT.
I hope this helps people understand why crusader aura is NOT a strong card.
There’s two ways to delay giants coming too early:
nerf the giants, or
nerf the other self-dmg cards to slow them down.
Ofc, they choose the easier way out, which in this case means nerfing one card which is as old as this game, sees 0 play and depends on 28 other cards being strong.
But they shouldn’t have. That card is fine. Actually it’s not even fine, it’s TOO WEAK. If it was stronger, maybe it would see play in other classes, not just one warlock deck. But it’s not. It’s weak. And you’re nerfing it and just delaying the chaos for future patches.
No, it has immediate impact on the existing board, and how your opponent plays their next few turns.
That’s like saying shroomscavate was a do nothing card.
Didn’t help because the card says “I win now.” It doesn’t matter what turn you play that in a control deck. You win.
Yes. It slowed down the stat cheat that lock was using. Just because they pivoted to other strategies that were also broken doesn’t mean that it was wrong to nerf that.
Yeah, but again, those pivoted to other broken interactions and strategies. Hearthstone has more than you can count right now because every new card is being made with an eye toward competing with stuff that’s already too strong.
The data only shows what’s too strong right now. It doesn’t mean the next thing won’t be just as frustrating. The game needs massive wide reaching nerfs to reset the card power levels and designs to somewhere about 5-6 years ago.
And that’s the whole point of it. Until those other broken interactions and strategies, what I call enablers/support cards, are nerfed, you’re just delaying dealing with the true problems
I’ve literally shown how pointless it is to nerf cards which do nothing on their own, and you’re simply negating what is obvious, so I guess I’m done here xD
The problem is that they often aren’t even related. Like, we nerfed forge of wills when sludge lock and wheel lock were big, and suddenly the insanity package was being used.
We have several sets of broken packages in the game. When you go heavy handed on nerfs, it’s impossible to know which next one rises to the top. Sometimes they were virtually unplayable prior to that.
That’s why I want them to start with nuking everything from orbit at a design level. Then go back to the drawing board and cultivate the strategies that don’t make people stop playing for the day when they run into it.
Not a single high legend player understands the location nerf and will never do, because it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
It was only problematic in Wheellock, and wheellock had 2 broken cards which enable forge of wills to be broken - 4 mana summon a 8/8 or 9/9 and Endgame, 2 mana resummon 8/8 or 9/9
Those are the real culprits, not the location. Location was a 3 mana do nothing card, and now it’s a 4 mana do nothing card.
And guess what? If you played enough warlock decks you would understand that now it’s unplayable NOT BECAUSE IT COSTS 1 MANA MORE…
but BECAUSE IT COMPETES WITH OTHER CARDS THAT COST 4 MANA.
You don’t wanna keep 10 4-mana cost cards in your hand. You want them to curve out.
THAT is why the location no longer sees play. Every warlock deck has numerous competing 4-drops to play and putting a 4 mana do nothing in the deck to compete with them makes no sense.
You and I can disagree about many things, and it’s fine, but I’m a bit of an expert on warlock decks since I basically play only them in the last 3-4 months, so here is where you listen and learn rather than disagree.
Don’t start to cry about everything please… Crusader Aura is the only usable Aura at the moment… and it is not so easy to play it. Need to have a board and many AOE’s are able to stop it… since there are too many board clears in the game anyway…
It made perfect sense… It was frequently just an extra 5/7 in sludge lock on 4, or an extra 15/15 on turn 6 in wheel lock.
They complained about the nerf, but the card was creating non-games. It did things that often could not be responded to on curve or with removals available by most classes.
It wasn’t the only problem, but it was A problem.
The issue Blizzard has is that they tend to just nerf 1 card when nerfing a deck, and they try to preserve the core gameplay of the deck when doing so. They kind of refuse to fix the problem when it’s the core gameplay loop people hate (Brann) because that requires card redesigns.
Well, yes… It was made statistically bad on the curve and that level of gameplay is decided on the margins like that. It doesn’t make forge of wills fine on 3 mana, just means it’s bad at 4.
If a card is too strong on 3, but bad on 4 Mana, it probably needed a redesign rather than a Mana nerf.
I focus way more on the gameplay flow when talking about balance changes than most. I’m not a huge fan of simple Mana nerfs as a balancing method as it often has a pretty binary effect of played vs not played.
I’m also not really a fan of the current package design for that reason. You either do, or do not use the fatigue package. There really isn’t anything you can do with say, just crescendo. And the overall power of card packages as win conditions ruins most deck building experiences, as you are unlikely to find something better than the obvious package win cons.
Bad example. Immediately after nerf, sludgelock got launched from tier 3 to tier 1, without the location.
Without other problems, this wouldn’t ever be a problem.
Incorrect. If it cost 5 mana it would again see play, because warlocks don’t have anything playable which costs 5 mana. I’d be the first one to include it back in most of the decks.
Again incorrect xD People run just crescendo in their versions of painlock as it’s good against flood pally, hunter and in some clutch situations for extra heal with popgar.
a) existence of Painlock
b) existence of Insanitylock
and God knows how many more, to one person: Sunq.
You either have it in your or you don’t. Just because something is unlikely, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
For sure, he suffered a lot of rank drops while experimenting, but he also hit rank 1 numerous times thanks to coming up with original, new, metabreakers.
I mean, sure, you could just stop lock from having obscene stat minions with “downsides.” Id like them to do that, personally. In a world where locks couldn’t drop a 5/7 or 7/7 on turn 4, forge of wills isn’t a big deal, but since they could, well… Now there’s a problem.
Blizz just preserved the card with the “downside” instead.
Did it? I recalled lock being gutted for a bit after that nerf. I remember insanity lock growing, but I haven’t seen sludge having a meta foothold since the forge of wills nerf.
And yeah, Sunq is very, VERY good at finding meta breaker decks. He is one of the very few deckbuilders that can pull that off consistently.
Yep. The very same day the nerf dropped, I removed the location, borrowed a few card ideas from habugabu’s sludgelock version, put a few new cards and voila! tier 1 sludgelock was made. Insanitylock came 3-4 days afterwards.
Later, Makiahtime replaced 2 cards and took (most of) the credit:
I was on stream when a player named Altair told me that his Sludge Warlock was killing Warriors, so I decided to try it.
He hit rank 10 on EU and Asia with that sludgelock xD His previous record was rank 43, similar to mine. That was 23 days ago, so the date was April 29.
Next VS report was for May 1st - May 7th and it showed insanitylock as tier 1 and sludgelock as tier 2, but those are power rankings calculated God knows how. They put Reno warrior in tier 2 as well, which is nonsensical, since all the other decks existed because of reno warrior being too strong.
Scrotie’s adjusted winrate analysis put it into tier 1 but I can’t find it right now.
Whatever you decide to blame, I urge you to stop blaming x mana do nothing cards.
You can’t do anything to those cards to make them more balanced than they currently are. Sooner or later a synergy will be found which will make that card strong again, and it’s never because of that card alone, it’s because of the other cards.
I still call BS on crusader aura being in your “do nothing” category though. By that logic, ticking pylon Zilliax also is a do nothing card. Just because a card requires setup doesn’t make it a do nothing card.
And just because something is a do nothing card (Brann) doesn’t mean the card is fine.
It’s not, it never was, but it was made and there’s no turning back now. It’s a design flaw.
But instead of nerfing the same card over and over again and expecting a different result, they should just make warrior weaker in other fields of gameplay, such as armor generation and removal.
Hitting the most broken card ever made is a good start (Safety Goggles) as it indirectly nerfs sanitize, as well.
It’s been and will remain to be, a meta tyrant, not JUST because of 8 mana do nothing card, but because the other cards weren’t properly adjusted to it.
It’s done. The card is made. You can’t do anything about it, but nerf the support cards.
It is. It doesn’t have to be though. Blizz can fix it, they just choose not to.
I want blizzard to be WAY more willing to adjust card text than they currently are. Sticking to Mana costs is stupidly limiting, and like, 90% of why this game is not getting better after balance changes.
They did start applying textual changes, like what they did to highlander
I guess if they found a way to change the text to make it more bearable, they would do it, but what you suggest is akin to simply deleting the card, and that’s not something you wanna do (at least not for new cards, which aren’t a part of the core set - we all know they don’t shy away from deleting core cards).
It doesn’t even need to be a deletion. A 6 mana Brann that said “next turn you get double battlecries” would still be a good card, it just wouldn’t be nearly as overwhelming in the late game. Sure, it would still combo obnoxiously well with boomboss, but that design would at least red flag you to use your dirty rats right then and there in the way that flash of lightning does for totem stompers.
Unfortunately when blizz does text changes, they often do go the deletion route (Jailer).
I was definitely hoping that when blizz made their big “player agency” post, that they actually meant that they planned to go after all of the cards that were basically deciding games on the spot, and designing them in a way that made them stop doing that.
Instead we just got more of the same “it does the same thing, but now slightly later!”
Yeah, we largely get nerfs that are like “well, maybe people will stop playing this card if it costs X.” and sometimes it works, sometimes it just kills the deck, other times they pivot to something equally broken, and other times paladin is suddenly the worst class until other nerfs happen and suddenly it’s tier 1 again.