Hearthstone: Requiescat in Pace, Lady Aviana

We're going to get balance changes to Hearthstone later this month! It's a bit of an interesting time for this to come because I actually haven't been playing a lot of Hearthstone lately -- busy schedule and all that, although I did play a whole lot of Wild last season.

We've got the announcement of three nerfs to three cards... two of them, I saw coming, the third, not really! First up, let's get the obvious one out of the way -- Giggling Inventor, who's gotten a whopping two mana increase from 5 to 7, which is just... kind of ridiculous. Everyone noted that Giggling Inventor was easily going to be hit by the nerf-hammer, but raking up the cost to 7... really could've thrown Giggling Inventor a bit of a bone there, maybe make the Giggling body a 2/2 or 2/3? I dunno. In Wild, she's definitely not as bad as people make her out to be, what with there being a fair bit of five-mana/six-mana taunts for you to pick from. But I realize that she's easily one of the biggest offenders and cards that people complain about in Standard, so seeing her nerfed isn't a huge surprise.

Aviana is a bane in Wild due to ridiculous combos leading to Druids ramping up to turn 10 pretty quickly, drawing a combo with Juicy Psychmelon, and then just bombing the board with Aviana/Kun/Medivh/Star Aligner. Throw in Brann in there sometimes. Or maybe fucking you up for a slow death with Aviana/Kun/Togwaggle/Azalina. Or, in a less spectacular fashion, Aviana/Kun/Malygos/Floop, sometimes with Gloop Splayers and Faceless Manipulators thrown in. Whatever the case, I've been running Dirty Rats and Gnomeferatus just to counter Aviana decks -- they aren't unbeatable, but god damn if they aren't frustrating to fight. It's either Aviana or Kun that has to go, and this time around, Aviana gets increased to 10-mana... and as much as it does sort of make Aviana reduced from one of the most influential Wild cards to probably impractically unplayable. It's not just the matter of using Thaurissan to reduce Aviana's cost, or to put Innervate into your deck, either. It's the fact that Kun and Aviana now share the same mana cost, and that just wrecks the Juicy Psychmelon combos. I personally think Kun himself is kind of problematic himself and really would've loved to see a bit of a change to him as well, I'll take this Aviana nerf with thanks.

The last one feels a bit overdue, even if Mana Wyrm itself isn't particularly oppressive at the moment. It's a simple increase from 1-mana to 2-mana... without any increase in stats. And I'd honestly argue that Mana Wyrm is still pretty strong even then. Definitely not an auto-include anymore in tempo decks, and it's been definitely defanged, but powerful one-drops has been one of the bigger problems in Hearthstone -- it's not as prominent in Wild where everyone has their own poison, but for a Classic card, the only real way to deal with Mana Wyrm is to either nerf or hall of fame it, and I guess they kinda wanted to open up design space a little.

Overall, definitely a great set of changes! Not much to say here. RIP Aviana, you were great, then mostly just annoying.