Blizzard is changing the Patron Warrior’s flagship card, the Warsong Commander.
Blizzard is changing the card to try to counter the ever-dominant Patron Warrior deck tech, which has it hit the board full of patrons and frothing berserkers and has the potential to deal over 30 damage in a turn.
Likely the most substantial card change since leaving beta last March (or the nerfing of the Starving Buzzard to combat overdraw for Hunters way back when), the Warsong Commander card will now read “Your Charge minions have +1 attack,” rather than her unique ability to boost any >3 attack minion with Charge.
This change completely undermines the Patron Warrior, who would use Warrior-exclusive cards such as Whirlwind or the Death’s Bite Deathrattle to damage the Patron cards to build up a small army then hit the board with a Warsong Commander and have potentially 6 3/3 minions all attacking at once.
The deck was further strengthened by interplay with the Frothing Berserker, who gained 1 attack each time a minion took damage (which naturally synergized well with Whirlwind and gained Charge from a Warsong Commander if played before the damage took place).
This change is naturally being welcomed with open arms from the Hearthstone community, as the ranked play ladder has been littered with Grim Patron Warriors ever since the combo was discovered following the card’s arrival in April’s Blackrock Mountain expansion.
Although Frothing Berserker, Whirlwind or Death’s Bite and Grim Patron still work well together, the loss of Warsong Commander’s ability means the deck has lost all of the aggressive burst damage that made it so effective and the one turn KO that led to it becoming the “wombo combo” it is known as today.
Zeriyah, a Blizzard community manager, explained on the forums that they only choose to nerf cards “when they are completely necessary,” and that they felt this change to Warsong Commander necessary to “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.”
Warsong Commander’s ability will be changed in a small upcoming patch for Hearthstone, so get to playing with it while she still has the Charge attack. At last we will see a decent shift in the meta.