Top 10 Biggest Nerfs in Hearthstone History

In honor of Hearthstone's 10th anniversary, I offer a chill look back at the top ten biggest balance changes in the history of the game.
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Sources:
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[@mrchundo]

I tried to pick all the biggest and most interesting nerfs - are there any you think should have been mentioned?

[@bountyextreme]

nice to see you back

[@dkkarma3339]

Maybe denathrius, since even thought the nerf wasn’t huge on paper, it took the card from being a juggernaut to almost unplayable

[@Papa-Bumblebee]

Kinda surprised u didn't mention Daddy Thaddeus getting nerfed given how he went from an auto win card an almost unplayable card

[@eiyukabe]

And after that STILL got nerfed. I was 100% certain Thaddeus was going to be #1.@@Papa-Bumblebee

[@leta2742]

Naga sea witch

[@maebemaebenot]

I've read "your charge minions have +1 attack" so many times that the words almost all meaning.

[@mrchundo]

same

[@zaer-ezart]

And to this day, 10 years later it is still the WORST nerf we've ever had. So unfathomably bad that people keep memeing on it to this day. I guess ben brode and his team had some strong ketamine that day

[@michaelandmoecams8020]

Jimminy jillickers!

[@HenryGengler]

To be honest tho with intro of patron, there was no way to nerf it without killing one of the cards. Bringing it down to 2 attack would've been bad too but there was no way to deal with it without killing it

[@wingbeat4037]

My favorite is Kael'thas getting unnerfed when he rotated to wild where he enabled degenerate decks for a month before they re-nerfed him. Kael'thas-draw-your-whole-deck Druid existed before the original nerf so everyone already knew that it would ruin the format but they brought him back anyway.

[@mrchundo]

Ohhhh I forgot about the whole kael'thas back and forth nerf and unnerf

[@ph1lny3]

That was such a silly revert. We were all thinking "uhhhhhhh did they remember when this was making Miracle Druid kill you as early as t3?" Evidently not

[@xlsdsdszczxc]

There was a turn 1 ftk with druid. First reliable ftk deck in hearthstone.

[@treesauce2625]

Missed when you said the card lines. You saying "Muzzle their magic" lives rent free in my head to this day.

[@mrchundo]

Oh wow I completely forgot about that - I will keep that in mind

[@maciejkolorowy3340]

One of the lines that I''ll never forget was: Nooo Moooreee tickets!! times 3 played against quest mage 😂😂

[@murlocaggrob2192]

Void Ripper was used in Odd Paladin for two reasons. One, it would turn your aura buffs into permenant stats. If you had a Raid Leader out, it would give your other minions +1 health even after the Leader died. Secondly, this was the era when Spreading Plague and Malfurion the Pestilent were everywhere, so Void Ripper would let you turn those pesky 1/5 taunts that wrecked your 1/1 dudes into easily-killed 5/1s.

[@mrchundo]

This is a good note!

[@DiabloTommaso]

Every aggro/board centric deck that could run that tec card runed it. Spreding plague was that opressive

[@Jarczenko]

Trueee I remember running it in odd rogue and getting first wild legend with it

[@ph1lny3]

Yep, remember running it in Odd Rogue just to deal with Spreading Plague.

[@nikospyridis9579]

Wait didn't most decks run Mossy Horror for Spreading Plague in Witchwood times? Void Ripper was only used in specific decks that could leverage it, like Odd pally.

[@kkpratt]

Warsong Commander received another large nerf, before the one you mentioned. When Hearthstone was released, it simply said, "Your other minions have charge."

[@Jack_Rakan]

Warsong Commander died for Frothing Berserker's sins. The problem with Patron Warrior at the time wasn't so much the swarm of charging 3/2's, because they rarely won the game on the spot by themselves. It was the two 30 attack charging Frothing Berserkers that means no matter how defensively you played up to the combo, you'd still lose.

[@MrEntinen]

Warsong Commander was absolutely the problem. If they touched any other piece in patron warrior it was only a matter of time before there would be another tier 0 Warsong Commander combo deck.

[@harryblocks]

The Jailer.... it's literally unplayable now

[@mrchundo]

yeah that was a tough one

[@TheKrislaf]

It's honestly just a worse deathwing. And Deathwind wasn't even that good back in Classic.

[@alexandersong5753]

4:17 lmao i remember using void ripper as anti-cubelock tech back in the day so a single VoidLord doesn't shut down your attack

[@felipeandrades2759]

I remember opening a Golden Illucia and being so happy, what a fun card, my opponent was probably not having fun, but Hearthstone is a single player game when you use a control deck

[@mrchundo]

Absolutely - the opponent is probably a bot anyway

[@offsale8911]

As Chundo brings forth freedom, from the very primordial mud of hearthstone content. The purest form, is that of Chundo. Follow Chundolism, and it will guide you. Guide you to freedom. Free yourselves from the firmament. Break the skies, for Chundo will save us from all lies.

[@mrchundo]

Always wonder if you make these beforehand or come up with them on the spot! Don’t know what’s worse!

[@offsale8911]

for your information, its on the spot@@mrchundo

[@GumshoeClassic]

*Cast away the ties that bind and march towards Chundeliverance!*

[@yaboikiba4302]

Finding a Chundo video in my recommended tab is like finding a friend you haven't seen in years while walking down the street. I just say "Chundo?" out loud whenever I see a Hearthstone thumbnail that looks like it was done with MSPaint, and god, is it a treat when it actually is a Chundo video

[@MonKeyGuy131]

i will always remember the reckless experimenter nerd because of snip snap otk

[@mrchundo]

Ohhh that’s another good one. Echo in general as well

[@wysp8178]

You forgot the biggest nerf: Jaina

[@jdksportsyt]

Patches deserved at least an honorable mention 🏴‍☠

[@mrchundo]

It does but it does still see play even when nerfed

[@lucjanl1262]

It got nerfed hard but was absurdly strong. Imagine any other minion losing charge (for example Leeroy or Doomguard) and still being played in the best decks years later.

[@GooberGobIin]

Chundo just want you to know I binged all your videos when my roommate threw up all over his desk and I had to sleep in the lounge, thank you

[@mrchundo]

I am glad I could be a comfort to you in that trying time

[@Skrek-qw1jz]

16:01 On top of that, you can't even do this combo anymore since any card that spends your health directly deducts needed amount from your hero's hp pool, unless you manage somehow to outheal all damage dealt.

[@usb061]

How are you using Equality to clear The Jailer? Sure he's 1 health now but he still takes no damage.

[@mrchundo]

Looking back - I was definitely thinking of Shrink Ray

[@thiccnoodles6767]

Here we go... Spirit of the frog, firemancer flurgl, spectral pillager, cataclysm and grey sage parrot are the 5 kinda "iconic" nerfs from 2022-2023 era. Whats stupid is 2/3 decks are actually still playable after losing a core card, and 1 is even still good today (thx rommath)

[@ayarjayuh]

6:27 happy feet! wombo combo!

[@irisstarsterio8960]

I really think starving buzzard should've been "when a friendly beast dies" instead. Would lower the immediate draw it had and fits more thematically, implying it eats the remains of the beast like a buzzard does.

[@argossoares8613]

The Jailer nerf really is a slap to the face, like could they not have reduced the cost of destroying your ENTIRE deck? Destroying your deck for ONE imune 10/10 is WAY too much

[@danieldancza6171]

For consecration I remember at the time people saying it going to 3 would have been a bigger nerf because then it wouldn't be usable in even paladin

[@thomasackerman6415]

Just found this channel and I love how this differs from most HS content. Subscribed!

[@mrchundo]

Thanks!

[@AdrianE1337]

Subbed after binging on your channel! Keep up the content man

[@Kosixon]

In terms of stealer of souls - they nerfed it on a whole different level. They didnt only change the text, but also changed the immune mechanic for heroes, so you actually take dmg from cards that cost health even if you're immune.

[@mrchundo]

Oh I didn’t know that! That should have made the list proper then

[@Kosixon]

@@mrchundo also using cards that cost health (like drawn with stealer of souls or the 5health treant) dont progress warlocks questline anymore due to that change. It doesnt consider it as self damage anymore.

[@phirefly2993]

Love these videos! You make really great content 👍

[@FightingForceSoulless]

That Warsong Commander nerf... Oof. That's the one I remember when playing back then. Like, that card went from having decks built around it to not even picked in arena.

[@buddhatraveleroftheburning4102]

These are great videos. im loving this channel

[@mrchundo]

Thank you!

[@ph1lny3]

There actually was one funny way of cheating jailer out... in Wild. Melchezar's Imp + Tome Tampering (main combo got Tome Tampering banned in Wild, though for Discolock's sins). Was the premium way to play mechathun warlock for a while

[@treederrpah6503]

nah but why'd he start reciting "first they came." I love that poem

[@keithmaclennan1932]

The thing that kills me about the Illucia nerf was that they kept the mana cost increase AND destroyed the effect

[@synchronium24]

4:59 Appreciate the reference to my dear Mayor of Value Town.

[@andredepadua8799]

Getting the nerfed Demon Hunter combo from Harth Stonebrew makes "What have YOU sacrificed?" get a whole new meaning

[@555Soupy555]

I thought the title was hearthstones biggest nerds

[@mrchundo]

That would be me #1

[@roxashenry8315]

Oh damn I thought warsong was gonna be number 1, this was a great video

[@Stealth-16]

I feel like Naga Sea Witch deserves at least a mention. The card fundamentally altered how the team approached wild balance- from completely ignoring it and letting it be broken, to having to intervene to deal with new broken decks. The card, by itself, caused a mechanics change with how cost reduction was calculated and forced blizzard to pay attention to wild.

[@kang1983]

Crazy how demon hunter was so strong it changed team 5s philosophy to balancing

[@badcatgames783]

The celestial alignment nerf made Mecha'thun worse. But nothing beats the war crime that was the Cataclysm Nerf

[@blazegamingx3]

just wana mention this little bit about warsong commander, in beta or very early from launch, it used to say “your other minions have charge” so what people would do is play warsong commander, be below 10 health (which was easy because it was classic and you were warrior) two molten giants and two sea giants and that was 32 damage from hand with as low as 3 mana. at it’s worse it was 24 damage for 10 mana which was insane in classic, the play pattern was so toxic and not fun to play against.

[@Castoma]

Jailer wasn't banned in wild because he was strong in the meta. I have no idea why they banned him for a brief moment in wild, but as a wild player, wild is too fast for Jailer and the bolf combo was easily countered by numerous board clears, one of them being poison seeds which there's always an abundance of druids in wild.

[@mrchundo]

Very interesting - thanks for letting me know. Wild is usually my weak spot for these videos

[@Castoma]

@@mrchundo No worries

[@johnj4471]

The illucia nerf actually made a fun twist deck in the first season where you could steal their whole hand with harvester of envy

[@valetboy21]

The Demon Seed and Test Subject got significant wild only nerfs and Mechwarper got the wild ban a couple months ago and has yet to return.

[@alexoneil1423]

Nice trip down memory lane, thanks for this.

[@mrchundo]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@PeterZaitcev]

IMAO, the proper nerf for the Jailer would be "... Give your minions *Immune* ."

[@leta2742]

I would have included the ex 5 mana 5/5 naga that set the price of all your cards to 5 mana, to cheat giants if i remember well, it was called naga sea witch

[@meruempro]

My honorable mentions: 1) Raza (although now unnerfed I was really pissed back then when they killed a deck 2 moths before it rotates for good) 2) Drek’thar 3) Stormwind questlines

[@zsep8688]

Literally spit out my water when i saw the starving buzzard nerf for the first time. An absolutely insane example of overadjusting imo.

[@avatarathos46]

It's 4 am and I just woke up. I thought the title of this video was "Top 10 Biggest Nerds in Hearthstone History." I mean this is fine, too :)

[@kilowyatt1107]

I think another underated nerf for a strong card was patches. I remember the days of when druid was running it with bloodsair crossair just so they can play it on turn 1

[@dadodice21]

I love your videos chundo!! What was you’re favorite expansion?

[@petersimonetti4875]

Keep up the good work chundo. Commenting for engagement

[@mrchundo]

Commenting to say thank you

[@sanguisuga6825]

I think lightning bloom at least deserved an honourable mention

[@keres-toramonline]

Demon hunter might get nerf one day one, but you forgot they brought back the old first edition demon hunter card into standard thanks to ci’cil legendary card. “Straight from Outland, perfectly balanced”

[@RebirthOfJack]

I absolutely hate how Blizzard balances things out, they either just do a boring nerf (instead of buffing or changing the card just a bit) or ANNIHILATE the card into obscurity and uselessness; these nerfs are the greatest examples of it. Blizzard seems incapable of balacing some cards out, instead opting to tkidnap them, take them to a bridge, shoot them 5 times in the back of the head, tying rocks to their ankles and throwing them over it while claiming it was suicide.

[@manrommav9240]

Damn, that joke from start of the video is best so far, keep it up!

[@maximhyland5843]

Great video as always! If i were to change something I would've added The Demon Seed. Paying 30 life for the effect now is real steep compared to what it was prior.

[@mrchundo]

That is true but demon seed might get in in another video

[@Skullhawk13]

Except demon seed is still way too good. The nerf wasn’t a big deal.

[@crash3879]

I still cant believe that prenerf celestial alignment made it into the game before a rework happend

[@Desturel]

The other class to get completely gutted by changes besides demon hunter was Priest where they pretty much deleted the class and started over at one point.

[@symon1033]

[@TheBigMan0706]

The only other reason Jailer got that giant nerf was if, while playing this card in Wild, you had Bolf Ramshield on the board after the Jailer was played, you would become unkillable

[@Papa-Bumblebee]

So i know you talked about the warsong nerf, cuz it is one of the most iconic nerfs ever, but I am puzzled as to why you didn't mention its recent unnerfing. I know its not nearly as strong as it used go be but i do find it interesting that for a while it had people experimenting again with it new grim patron strategies coming to life again

[@mrchundo]

That is a good point - much like starving buzzard I should have mentioned the revert

[@jarredjenkins8054]

When they released demon hunter it was my FIRST TIME getting legend. In like 5 hours. That deck was broken.

[@schumerus6786]

Warsong commander should really have been either bumped up to like 5 Mana just like the buzzard or the minions attack reduced to 2 rather then 3 for it to gain charge

[@KeroTheInvincible]

I left Hearthstone a long time ago, but this was still interesting to see. When I got to The Jailer, I was wondering what ridiculous card was going to somehow make such an absolute end-game Timmy card become broken. I nearly laughed out loud when I saw that "Tony, King of Piracy".....THING. That has to be the absolute stupidest design for a card I've ever seen in my life. Why would they think that was a good idea? They thought having your entire deck taken away and replaced with something else would be FUN? PvP is NOT Adventure Mode! What was even the idea there, that people would just add it to a completely normal deck? The Jailer's crippling downside would have stayed just that if they hadn't made a completely unrelated brainfart of a card that somehow made it a win-con.

[@tazoolnynx3947]

This channel is gonna be huge someday.

[@liams-h]

These were probably not as interesting to talk about but, Kaelthats (both), leeching poison, cataclysm, and naga sea witch.

[@LopaRB]

The Jailer + Mal'ganis was a crazy combo too

[@solumlupus9018]

It´s hard to think about Yogg-Saron, Unleashed change as a nerf for me, because the old version was just a bad design. Not only the mana reduction part, but most importantly it didn't feel like you played Yogg, there wasn't any chaos, it was just always good.

[@Madara354]

remember when warsong commander used to give all minions charge. wild times

[@OldWindmill]

These cards may have been nerfed, but Chundo’s upload schedule has been buffed big-time

[@rltt379]

The fact you didn't include jailer bolf feels insulting xD

[@robertlupa8273]

The Jailer nerf makes me really sad. While he's a very mocked and disliked character in WoW (and for good reasons), at least Blizzard intended him to be this powerful, ultimate villain and his Hearthstone incarnation reflected that quite well. He even turned the memetically weak Bolf Ramshield into a "lethal joke character" (as TV Tropes calls it), since an Immune Bolf will make your hero Immune to damage too. Now however he's a slow card with a huge downside and almost no payoff.

[@Zkeleton969]

I swear they’ve just reduced themselves to “print first nerf later”

[@mohammedmoutaman8327]

15:48 Equality can't deal with Jailer

[@RenounceDarkness_]

Patches has to be the biggest nerf for me. The change was small but they had to also change his iconic voiceline which is pretty sad

[@dmfamzo]

Shocked to realize Demon hunter was #1 but then again I had to remember that I completely stopped playing HS after Outlands due to DH so it kinda makes sense. 🤣🤣🤣

[@Blorfs]

Commenting for the algorithm, banger content as always chundonagan

[@mirohulsmann1811]

I remember it like it was yesterday, when i opened packs from the galakrond Expansion on a school trip and i crafted a shudderwock galakrond deck with 99.6% purity like im Walter white

[@IamNeo94]

i wish we could play day 1 aggro dh mirror brawl at least sometimes. It was awesome time!

[@marcinmolitor3834]

Void Ripper was played to counter spreading plague

[@magicsinglez]

Surely the nerf of Wilde Seeds cannot be one of the top most devastating nerfs of all time?

[@ethankennedykemwashere3360]

First thing i do when home is watch the new Chundo video

[@guilhermemadureira5885]

day 1 demon hunter nerfs are so impressive that they are making a new card that gives u day 1 dh cards as "treasures" and theres like 10 different ones lol

[@xicy133x]

4:18 void ripper was good against spreading plague

[@terrariku2010]

To this day; I still don't understand the Wildseed nerfs. They were great on paper, but in practice they were slower than aggro, without the big payoff of proper Control. They were expecially bad against homebew decks, which usually lose to net decks. I say this as someone whom almost exclusively homebrew weird stuff.

[@Movman82]

I'm surprised Shudderwhack isn't in here.

[@blankuchan4394]

Don't forget, Jailer + Bolf made you immortal

[@ZeroCatalyst]

Odd plai ran void ripper as a way to deal with large taunts like mosh ogg enforcer and sleepy dragon which were in popular druid decks back then because druid was cheating them out with master oakheart and dragon callers

[@BoarBound]

IT'S CHUWENSDAY BABEY. LET'S GO!

[@McChookter]

I sub to chundo now and we like that

[@thatguy....IDKHWO]

Why didn't they at least make the jailer 5-10/10 ? It would make sense, for warlock or other type of decks or like "destroy 10 cards from your deck" or it could be 10-10/10 discard 10 cards from each player deck imune"

[@quarasique3029]

top 1 biggest nerf imo was undertaker +1/0 instead +1/1 since that meta almost all classes used to play this card or just lose the game.

[@slaiminus]

You know why demon hunter in first place when they release whole legendary about this nerfs (cicigi)

[@electricVGC]

Wild Spirits was the only card in WIld Seeds that needed the nerf after the Stag nerf. Wild Spirits was so much stronger than all the other summon effects because of the turn cheat

[@electricVGC]

also IMO jailer just should say immune, battlecry: destroy your deck or give it rush or smth

[@xicy133x]

I think yogg right now is perfect, still sees competitive play while not being too dominating

[@Random-person-on-the-internet]

I remember the wild meta when yogg was not nerfed. Yogg rogue would just play like 5 copies of yogg by bouncing it and steal any board you may have by like turn 5, with little counterplay. Good riddance. These kind of nerfs would be for the most fundamentally un-fun and broken of cards, and I hope to not see a card broken enough to warrant it.

[@Derpe69420]

Im so mad blizzard nerfed tony, i had the signature but just disenchanted it since it became useless

[@bluskies3554]

Is it a stretch to say pre nerf yogg unleashed is within the top 5 strongest neutral cards ever printed?

[@antonuralskiy6512]

Naaaah. The biggest two nerfs in Hearthstone's history are Jaina's portrait and Secretkeeper. (DAT ASS)