Hearthstone developer Blizzard will make a significant edit to one of the game’s most divisive minions, the Warsong Commander, in a bid to counter the growing dominance of the Patron Warrior strategy.
In what could be the most significant card change yet since Hearthstone left beta in March 2014, the Warsong Commander is set to lose her unique ability to give charge to any minion with 3 or less attack. Following an upcoming patch for the game, the minion’s new ability will read: “Your Charge minions have +1 Attack.”
Such a change will singlehandedly weaken the potential of the Grim Patron minion, which has 3 attack and duplicates itself whenever damaged. Many Hearthstone competitors who play as the Warrior tend to play Warsong Commander and Grim Patron together, thereby creating a small mobile army in a single turn. This strategy, widely known as “Patron Warrior”, can be made even deadlier with Warrior-specific cards that deliver damage to the entire board (as shown in the video above).
Grim Patron was added to the Heartstone in April, via the Blackrock Mountain adventure add-on, and since then the Patron Warrior has become a dominating deck in Hearthstone.
The meta shifted towards this control strategy even further after it was discovered the Frothing Berserker, another Warrior-exclusive card which gains +1 attack each time any minion takes damage, has remarkable potential in the Patron Warrior deck. This is because a Warsong Commander can give it immediate charge, while the war machine of Grim Patron can then buff the Berserker’s attack way beyond thirty damage. That results in instant kills, regardless of opponent’s health.
It remains a possibility that Warrior fans will still play Frothing Berserker and Grim Patron following the upcoming nerf. Players have discovered numerous strategies to capitalise on both minions. However, the change to Warsong Commander will mean that Patron Warrior decks will have lost virtually all their burst, which should significantly limit its effectiveness.
Writing on the official Hearthstone forum, a Blizzard community manager going by the name ‘Zeriyah’ said that the studio chooses to nerf cards “only when they are completely necessary.”
She wrote: “The direction of gameplay and the metagame should be defined by our players, and as the meta is evolving, many different types of decks can emerge.
“Going forward, we will continue to stand by our stance that we will only make adjustments to cards when we feel it is completely necessary and allow the injection of new cards into the game help our players define what the meta evolves into. In the case of Warsong Commander, we felt this change was necessary to help expand both future design space and to stand by our overarching game philosophy that battles between minions and fighting for board control is what makes Hearthstone fun and compelling.”
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