I was looking more at old Control Druid, which was one of my favorite decks all time. Where Taunt act as survival and not as a combo/N’Zoth-style win-condition for Hadronox Druid.
Druid’s wincondition should be similar to Odd Warrior + Dr.Boom, out-value and win at late-game with tough minions (and no, not with infinite Jades). What Warrior does with armor and boardclear Druid should do it with Taunts, Ramp and Choose One (Charge/Rush/Taunt/Poison/Lifesteal).
That deck only worked (somewhat) when the game only had the Classic set & Naxx. A Control Druid deck based on taunts, fatties, and long-term value play (without Hadronox) hasn’t existed since 2015. Druids do not have the cards to even build this kind of deck anymore after all the nerfs.
Druid’s have no early game of any kind … so the deck couldn’t survive Aggro.
Druids have no utility to speak of … so it couldn’t stop other players from just dominating whatever minions they even did manage to summon.
Druids can’t ramp anymore … so by the time they can even summon minions that had the stats to value trade, their opponents are summoning stuff just as good or better.
Without a complete flush of the entire Druid Classic/Basic set, I don’t see how they could win games with Taunts, Ramp, and Choose One. There’s nothing to work with.
First and foremost, I am on your side in regards to the overboard nature of Blizz’s recent attack on Druid. That said I wouldnt dismiss Wrath so quickly. It was a staple card until UI & BP were introduced, and both of those are rotating. Short of (better) replacement card draw for the class I wouldn’t be surprised for it to return to being a staple on rotation.
I would love it if they would actually give a sneak peek or any indication of what a class is going to get in the future when they do these nerfs. Druid has been kneecapped so badly that they don’t have a leg to stand on. I also don’t have any faith that they will get anything worthwhile in the new year.
Here’s something to think about druids.
Choose one:
Nerf Druid or Censor Lunara
Throw in Fandral for the ultimate castration.
The blog mentioned this, but it’s mostly a future proofing thing. If Druid is very weak at single target removal it makes it easier to give them cards that make them great at other things. When you play against Druid one of the gameplay identities of that class is that they will have a hard time dealing with giant creatures. Naturalize going away reinforces that.
I for one am okay with that decision in fact most of the Classic cards needs to be HoF to make room for new expansions so Standard has more room for variety.
Would you care to confirm what the devs current views on the identity for each class is?
We have a thread discussing it here:
It would be nice to know what the devs envision each classes “identity” to be.
Thanks Dean.
Druid’s fine, it has been near the top for most of Hearthstone, now it’s having a short period near the bottom. Priest, Shaman and recently Warrior all laugh at the Druid tears.
Nothing wrong with Druid being weak. I don’t hate Druid but it’s nice to have a change.
As for Naturalize and class identity, it used to be that Naturalize was unplayable. Druid had Mulch for a while and that was generally seen as a pretty bad card that some Druid decks ran out of necessity. Now the game has changed so Naturalize is good, I’ve no problem with it getting hof-ed on that basis but I am a bit sad because the Mill aspect of the card made it interesting.
As for Druid identity generally, it’s still got Ramp, Miracle and Token going on. I expect them to see support going forward. I also hope that there’s more Treant support, and that Druid still gets some Mill identity. There’s also ‘Big Druid’ and Beast.
Having Druid have weak single target removal, and weak aoe (Spreading Plague was a huge mistake imo), is fine, it gives the devs the opportunities to print strong, interesting cards in other areas. The mistake recently was making Druid have virtually no weaknesses.
It would have been probably better to nerf Branching Paths and UI instead of the basics. These two cards alone (Ferocious Howl, Naturalize and Spellstone helped a little bit) single handedly carried most Druid archetypes.
Still, auto-include B/C cards like Nourish and WGrowth are way more unhealthy for the game (Sylvanas & Rag were HOFed for a reason). All Druids except Spiteful and fledgling/hydra token have always made use of ramp. This goes further than “class identity”: not all Mages run Flamestrike, not all Warriors run Brawl, not all Hunters run Rhyno and Hyena, not all Priests run Cleric. Any of these is powerful but has never been metabreaking (Cleric could be an exception).
Would UI have been so powerful, if given to a rampless class?
In conclusion: Nothing has ever been Naturalize’s fault. Naturalize could have been kept in Standard despite its optimal removal potential, having a downside just like Hellfire.
What needed to be done was the ramp nerf: Growth and Nourish, if untouched, would have probably kept shaping the game for an incredibly long time. Warsong Commander was hit harder than any Druid card, despite being situational: why shouldn’t ramp be hit?
at least this makes more sense than the claim naturalize been neutralizing that weakness since 2014…(why wasnt this posted instead ?)
Wrath was only abandoned because of how much better Lesser Jasper Spellstone was for one less mana.
We’ll see what these new tools are to help druids deal with board because they literally have nothing now that ramp was completely gutted.
I always thought that naturalize didnt mix with the druids identity. But to say it actually stopped you from giving new druid cards…i just dont think so
Naturalize didnt see play except of course when you forced it in decks. For ex Hadronox taunt druid and mecha’thun druid had naturalize as a combo piece not as removal. Naturalize saw 0 play as removal and let me remind you that when mulch was in standard (3 mana vs 1) mulch so much more play.
Anyways i ve already understood well that you want druid out of the meta for the next year (like it happened with shaman and warrior) so yeah, nothing suprises me anymore…
About this, i dont understand your logic, do you sincerely believe that some classes need to be unplayable at certain metas? Cause i dont, i wanna be able to play with all the classes.
Also speaking of shaman and warrior, shaman had a 2 year dominance and pirate warrior had a 1.5 year dominance. Druid was never bad but he wasnt that much dominant either (except for the 2 months of jade druid in koft). So lets not compare things that are uncomparable.
As for your comment is druids identity in general ramp is dead, miracle is something that druid shouldnt be able to do, and token are too low right now at least. Anyways…
No, I’m not saying Druid should be unplayable. Druid isn’t unplayable. Currently it has a tier 1 deck on VS. In all 3 ranking categories.
If you can’t see comparing different ways that classes have dominated as useful then you’ve got a very reductive view of the game.
Druid has cards to enable both Ramp and Token builds. We’ll see how the upcoming expansions support those builds.
As for Miracle, it’ll always be a thing for classes with low, especially 0, cost spells whilst GA is around. You got a link to that rule saying Druid shouldn’t be able to do it?
This decision will make the Druid class almost 100% entirely dependent on cards from expansions. The Classic/Basic set has been butchered. There is nothing left in it worth including in a Druid deck. The only way C/B cards can be used anymore is when some other card artificially makes the C/B card better (such as the Loti Brawl deck this week). But by themselves, the cards are dumpster tier garbage. That sucks.
As it stands, Druids are in desperate need of decent summons … particularly for turns 1-4. The summons need to buck up Druid game in the following mixture of ways…
Druid summons need to be very sticky. Druid minions are easy to remove, kill, and otherwise neutralize. That must change. Druid minions need to be VERY hard to get rid of because historically, Druid minions have been too easily removed and do not “cost” the opponent enough resources to get rid of - which leaves the Druid far behind in value and tempo. Druid minions must be insanely sticky so opponents have to blow 2, 3, or 4 times the card value to deal one Druid minion rather than just brushing them aside 1 for 1.
Druid minions need to provide extremely strong value. Currently, Druid minions are high cost/low value minions. This was because (formerly) Druid ramp made the higher cost easier to reach. That’s gone away … and so Druids have been left with the worst of both words … slow ramping in order to summon crap-value junk. That must now change. Since Druids will no longer be ramping until the mid-game or later, the minions they summon must be costed in such a way as to provide value commensurate to their cost. You must rebalance all Druid costs down, and the stats up.
Druid minions need to be high priority targets. All the Druid minions in the C/B sets (and the current expansions) can be safely ignored by an opponent. That means Aggro classes can just ignore them. That means Tempo decks can just trade with them or ignore them. It means Combo and Control decks can just leave them on the board and keep on doing whatever they want without concern. That must change. The moment a Druid drops any minion on the board the opponent should be thinking, “Oh crap … I need to get rid of that or I’m screwed.” Druid minions must be so powerful that they demand the opponent to burn their resources to deal with them to the point where they are forced to make BAD exchanges (value-wise) to get them off the board.
Since you have gimped the Druid Classic & Basic cards, that means you are going to have to guarantee that all Druid cards in the expansions provide them with minions with this sort of value. Oh - and you’re going to have to do this in every meta for all time. That’s a weird design limitation you’ve imposed on yourselves for bad reasons, so I hope you enjoy living with the shackles you’ve put on yourselves.
Oh Riddler, you know better than that. Its their goal to have ALL classes reliant on expansions like Paladin, Priest & Shaman have been since the game went live. The continued destruction of the evergreen set shows it.
I wouldn’t mind if they just went ahead and blew up the Classic/Basic set on a 2 year basis. That’s what all self-respecting CCGs do because they figured out CCGs need to do this over 30 years ago.
The fact that Team5 refuses to do a basic CCG function … which the genre figured out was a critical game requirement in the early 1990s … can only be ascribed to laziness or a denial of reality.