Pen Flinger Nerf was much worse then most thought. The end game of Paly deck suffered a lot. Maybe cost would have been a better choice. What they did makes him near worthless on end game.
Think it’d become unplayable at 2 mana. With this nerf it can at least be used in board control strategies.
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He can help after a Libram of Justice and an occasional Divine Sheild hit. The situational uses are still there. But Paly can become light on cards end game. Many classes can wipe the board or deal with a buffed minion. Pen Flinger was a huge help to close the deal at end game. Now he feels bad.
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He just did the the game finishing part too well. That’s what instigated this nerf.
By using him mid game you could start chipping health off the hero. Now you don’t have that health removed and it’s much harder to put pressure on them end game. Try it. You will see what I’m seeing. You will try to buff with Libram’s of Wisdom but your minions will keep getting cleared off board. Slower draw at end game leaves you with several libram of wisdoms and a worthless pen flinger with one draw every round. This nerf killed the deck. It’s no good now.
I’ve played plenty of the deck. Honestly I find it pretty oppressive once things are set (librams cost 0 and you have both pen flingers in your hand as well as 2-8 librams of wisdom). At that point most decks can just pull out their hair and/or concede.
Repetitive chip damage was part of the reason he was nerfed as well. Others knew it, so if Blizz did something about it than I’d think it was justified. 
Veden answer quite right here…
pen flinger was too strong in both pally and rogue, both those classes could easily deal between 10-15 damage minimum with pen flingers alone whilst not having a good counter option because it usually ends in their hand at the end of their turn
I agree it was too strong. But without it the deck is too weak. The nerf seemed logical but in actual play it’s way too much. It killed both the paly and rogue deck. Go play a handful with paly and you will find end game not good now. The times you ended with nothing but libs and pen flinger is a lose now. Before you could win those. The deck is still strong with good draw but it lost a lot of win situations with this nerf. I think the small change made a huge difference and it went to far.
the only other change i can think of to make the card slightly less of an issue in pally is to change the libram reduction from a reduction all game to just reducing it in hand and deck or to make them never cost less than 1 so they cant play librams every single turn with 10 free damage. but then you still have rogue and their insane amount of low cost spells and card draw.
In the end pen flinger as a card is just an example of bad design, too strong as a base card but pretty bad with any nerf
Reduce the libram to 1 would have been a better nerf. It limits the use but does not change the game play. They made a mistake on this one for sure.
but then there is still the issue of 1. the card is still way too strong in rogue, 2. it might limit card designs until it rotates out because the powerlevel of the card is just that high
You would think they could figure this crap out with beta…not after I spend $ to build decks. Tired of Blizzard moving goal posts.
Replace it with something else then. Like Elven Archer if you want face damage.
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Pen Flinger did not deserve a nerf like I see nothing wrong with card it what I call a Finisher card if you run cheap spells only with a pen flinger you would hath huge spell disadvantage for a gimmick card
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spell burst returning to your hand is key
Well, then you have to change your strategy and replace the cards with something that is a win-con.
Ginger did a nice post to give an idea of why beta testing has its draw backs ECT.
i bought the pre orders as an almost entirely new player and have crafted most things i could want to play rn and still have nearly 20k dust. its not like i had a ton of stuff to just randomly de either. did you create 9348759384754 legendaries for 1 deck and then are now sad you can’t just faceroll everyone to a free legend?
Kid? WTF you talking about young punk. I’m 47. And maybe I’m crying just a little…so be it.
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