Came up with this idea in another thread. Thought it deserved its own. The idea is simple, even if it messes with Hearthstone’s screwy idea of flavor.
Azerite Snake: If this entered your hand with excavate, steals 10 health from the enemy hero when played.
And boom. Why ditch the battlecry keyword when it’s a battlecry? Breaks Brann synergy. Why have the condition of it having entered your hand with excavate? Breaks juggling the snake.
The way I see it, the snake itself isn’t broken. It’s the fact that you can juggle it or, in Wild at least, double it. I’m at least decently confident that this will leave the card powerful enough to be strong, be used, keep excavate Warlocks alive, while also killing cheap game swinging OTK’s with sometimes a single snake.
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Interesting! Maybe doing something like:
Battlecry: Steal 5 health from the enemy.
Quickdraw: Steal 5 more
That would be a really smart change that would soften both the Brann and the bouncing potential.
I am not very happy with the nerf in general tbh, although I understand why they do it. I think they need to let metas breathe for a bit unless something is so strong that it quickly warps the meta and stops all experimentation. This is not the case with the snake. Mining lock is a pretty mid deck that would go down in wr quick without a nerf as soon as people stop playing the bad experimental decks and realize it folds to any proper game plan. Less wr = less playrate = less of a problem. But well, I understand they don’t want people dropping the expansion when it just started so I guess the nerf is fine.
This kind of nerf would be perfect. It would keep a nice strong card strong with less of the bad feels. And it will still be oppressive against decks that do nothing; which is a good thing (rock, paper, scissors, etc, etc).
Good one @Chapuzo, I think is a more realistic nerf. This also allows for reducing the enemy’s maximum health to be far more reasonable. How would this work with it being generated? Does quickdraw still apply?
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It does if it’s generated in your turn or if played immediately after bouncing. So with that change, if you excavate and play the snake right after, it will work the way it does now (although with brann it would now steal 15 HP instead of 20). But you couldn’t keep it in your hand to wait for a bounce so you can play it again the next turn, because then you’d end up stealing the same amount (5+5). It really limits the abuse potential of the card and would just be a nice excavate reward that you should play as soon as you get it.
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I appreciate your being reasonable about this, and not going full “destroy this card” mode. Please, entertain me and read this discussion that begins here. Let me know whatcha think. Thanks!
Welp, I think there are a couple factors at play with all this:
1- People come here to vent about something, rarely trying to discuss what’s good for the game or what balance really is.
2- People really, really hate losing. And there is one way of losing that really takes the salt crown: losing by concede button. Imagine two excavate decks that are somehow identical except in their excavate legendary, which you are meant to bounce and play over and over. Let’s say 1 deck’s legendary excavate says something like: Summon a boar with 10/10 and Charge. The other has a wincon that says: reduce you opponent’s max mana by 3. Now guess which deck would fill up these forums with tears. I am willing to bet that both would, but the second one would probably double the first in number; even though the first would probably be infinitely better at winning.
Snake does a similar thing. It’s a win condition that requires a lot of effort to pull off. In fact, losing directly to a snake is very rare. But just 1 or 2 snakes is enough to make any slow deck cry in despair. The next reasonable step is to come here, twitter or reddit and vent about it. That’s essentially why it’s being nerfed despite the deck it’s in being quite mid.
Edit: on a side note, I think it’s hilarious (/s) that we had to endure a month of Yogg, which was an infinitely bigger problem than this and was warping the meta to an extreme; and now we can’t go 3 days with a ‘feelsbad’ wincon that isn’t even top of the game. Still think the nerf is understandable but damn blizz sometimes works in mysterious ways.
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Simple fix would seem to make it “at the end of your turn”. Problem solved.
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The stats we have so far are saying this deck, and therefore this card, are not problematic. What the heck…
Let me be childish, but I’m going to play this deck as much as possible, or that I can anyway, to spite this nonsense. Forgive me, Schyla, but I don’t understand why you think there needs to even be a “fix”. This is merely to pacify salty players, truly.
Edited for addition and grammar.
That works too. Anything that limits the potential for bouncing and brann but keeps the card as strong as is on a 1-off play I think is good. I can see the deck keeping the bremasters and zola just to use them on the excavate cards instead. Warlock excavate cards are terrible.
Make it Immune maybe? Means a stuck 5/5 but at least then you can armor/taunt/heal etc.
That would help with Brann potentially but I don’t think it would stop juggling hard enough. Quickdraw means if it was added to your hand this turn. Which if you bounce it back the same turn you can just play it again. Yes they have a mana to consider. But unless you have a win condition ready to pop immediately, a big health succ is very likely to get them out of the danger zone.
Edit:
Drakkari Enchanter costs the same amount of mana as Brann. You would just have to swap him out. Plus this opens up the potential to lack an immediate removal. And suddenly the not so threatening to stay on board 5/5 is a serious issue. I mean sure it’s not like you won’t equally have or will more often have a way to deal with it. But on sheer principle it would basically be a buff to its board presence.
Also niche, but since innate minion end turn effects trigger before end turn self-destruction, this version of the snake could be brought back by Habeas Corpses for a free succ. Just think that’s worth noting.
It shouldnt steal health period
It should just be lifesteal
Warlock is a class that should be taking self damage as part of their gameplan so it offering lifesteal fits fine
The problem with the card is it stealing health from the opponent since it takes away all interaction. How is it fair that now you have max 20 hp for the rest of the game and the warlock has 40 cus of 1 card?
It isnt fair. Its bad design. No stealing health. Only lifesteal will be an acceptable change
Making it lifesteal also means classes that gain armor have ways to play around it. Its dumb that i can have 40 armor and still die to 3 snakes
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it should steal the life more than 20 like if it is 35 hp than 15 hp is stolen if it is 21 hp than 1 hp is stolen.
There are plenty of ways to do it:
- Somebody mentioned - 5HP, quickdraw - extra 5. This way if you keep it for next turn, you get less from it and you cant do 20 in one turn.
- Make it the same as Rogue: Steal 5HP, If you excavated 8 times, steal 10.
- Making it lifesteal, so you can heal/armor up
- Making it 7 HP would be quite “safe bet” too - this way you need to play it 4times to get into 2HP range.
There are probably more ways to do it, any of them is better than the current situation.
Stats yesterday had it as the 3rd best deck. Plus, the overwhelming amount of people playing it play a part.
If half of all people play the deck, it won’t be the best deck in the meta stat wise because it would be close to a 50% win rate due to mirror matches.
When you look at the matchup spread, you can see the the real problem. The counter play everyone talks about isn’t really a counter play. It’s not really susceptible to dirty rat or copying effects… it’s beating decks that run that.
It’s gotta be warping the meta hard and the devs must have seen that to come out within 36 hours and announce a hotfix nerf for it.
Right now, as we speak, it’s 17% of all decks at Top1k, meaning everyone is actively trying to counter it or playing decks that counter it, and it’s near 30% of all decks at Diamond.
Now, it’s 30% of all decks at Diamond and still has a 56% win rate there. That should tell you all you need to know - It gets pushed to 50% win rate in all of its mirror matches but yet still wins so much against other decks that it’s at 56%. Statistically, that’s remarkable.
I don’t think this change really does much. It will prevent 5 damage the first time Snake comes out but they will get the other 10 every other time it’s played since they’re looking to play it 2-4 times a turn (depending on if they have Thaddius or not).
It does prevent 10 damage overall but I’m not sure that’s SUPER meaningful when warlock usually gets you down to 20 or less life total over the course of the game meaning you’re still on a 2 turn timer. I think this is maybe meaningful ONLY if you either are playing Renathal (nobody is right now because every deck is looking for their wincons ASAP) or you’ve taken no more than 9 damage before they start using it. This of course is different if they have Thaddius, in which case you lose that turn.
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You make a valid point, and forgive me if I was out of line. I was very tired, aggravated at arena mode (I couldn’t seem to win a match last night / early this morning), and frankly being irrational. It’s entirely understandable the problem folks have with this card. Coming into this expansion having missed any reveal and thus blind, I was, being honest, surprised when I generated and saw this card’s effect and mana cost. Seemed off, right? Like… clearly off.
So, any who, I apologize. Aside from my tiredness and aggravation, what really bothers me is this seeming trend that expansions lately seem to pin warlock as the griefing class, because it’s the class I like most (mostly as an ex-WoW player). Alas, don’t get mad at me anyone if you see me running this card. It’s beyond me. 
Edited for grammar.
What’s wrong with just bumping to 5-mana? Slows down the combo to 3 turns unless the warlock generates some coins, and prevents some Thaddius shenanigans.
It still puts them outside of lethal range against anything that isn’t Dragon Druid or Odyn Warrior (Odyn warrior’s winrate went from high 50s to low 40s single-handedly because of Snakelock btw). Depending on the board state Hunter might be able to push for damage but the removal in the deck is so abundant that, in my experience playing the deck to legend (and in), hunter can’t keep a board or do any meaningful damage with the amount of healing the deck has.
Only decks with huge burst or overwhelming boards can really pressure the deck.
That said, dragon druid is also on my radar of decks that need hit. I don’t think the Snake is the only card that needs addressing.
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I haven’t played a lot this week since I’m on honeymoon, but the little I watched and played against snake warlock left a bitter taste. I saw some dragon druid videos and that felt very powerful as well but I couldn’t suggest nerfs yet.