High Tier Scrappy / Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Before the nerf, these were three little lines you never wanted to hear when facing a Warrior.^note actually the second one should have been "A fight? Count me in!", but it's not as memetic.

With a game with as many cards as Hearthstone, it was inevitable that some cards and decks would become infamous for dominating the game.

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Heroes/Specific Decks

Standard meta

• Aggro decks, as a whole. The gist of Aggro is to defeat your opponent as fast as possible before you run out of steam, usually with its player ignoring the enemy's board just to squeeze every last bit of damage in, leading to some games being more of a damage race instead of a true battle. Nearly every deck type has their fair share of hatred, but Aggro is detested for simply being everywhere from the start of the game. While it's never been truly overpowered as an archetype (save for the infamous Huntertaker), Aggro is generally favored by Hearthstone's innate mechanics, due to the ladder system rewarding min-maxing how much time you spend, 1 cost minions being very strong for their cost to compensate for the fact that they take a card slot, and generally having better mulligans than most decks due to their low curve. Players have complained about Aggro since the game's inception, and despite major efforts from Blizzard and extremely powerful defensive cards like Antique Healbot and Sludge Belcher, the decks just refuse to die. It's not all bad, however: Aggro's very popular among casual and newer players due to how cheap to make the decks are, making free to play accounts not only possible but rather easy, and the abundance of Aggro applies only to laddering; in the tournament scene, consistency matters more than trying to cheese out a fast win, meaning that slower decks are statistically more common than aggressive ones.
• In the beta, it was Freeze Mage. The deck has a pretty simple plan of delaying the game for as long as possible until they can get their game winning combo together. It's somewhat standard, but back then there were a few major factors to its strength. The most noticeable was just how easy it was to stall the game, as Mages had access to 3 cards that would freeze every enemy on the other end of the board, which basically guaranteed them to be able to take another turn afterwards. Frost Nova was the worst of the three, as it only cost 2 mana and as such could be cast in the same turn as the formerly broken 8-mana spell Pyroblast. The another, more significant problem was that healing sucked. Earthen Ring Farseer and Alexstrasza were the only neutral minions with healing effects that weren't awful, and even then Farseer could only heal 3 while Alexstrasza can only set her owner back up to 15 health. These problems meant that actually countering a Freeze Mage was very difficult outside of playing as Warrior, who could gain armor to go above the normal health cap and survive the combo, and even that wouldn't help because Freeze Mages also ran Alexstrasza, who originally removed armor on top of her normal effect. To give an idea of how good it was, once the deck became an issue the freeze cards all got their mana costs boosted by 1, Pyroblast was bumped to 10, Alexstrasza couldn't remove armor anymore, and better healing cards were introduced in Goblins Vs. Gnomes and yet the deck is still top tier without changing too many cards, aside from obvious later additions like Mad Scientist. Power aside, the deck is hated anyways for its lack of interactivity, as they don't play too many minions and are just stalling for time until the game ends. However, time was particularly unkind to Freeze Mage, as over the game's history it's lost most of the cards that made the deck competitive, leaving it in the gutter.
• Just a few weeks before the release of Curse of Naxxramas and after the nerfs to Freeze Mage, Zoo Warlock had a firm grasp on the metagame. It's a deck based around cheap, high value minions that create favorable trades while maintaining board control throughout the game, with Power Overwhelming and Doomguard used for extremely powerful burst damage. You couldn't go anywhere without anyone complaining about it. Even the Zoo players hated Zoo. Naxxramas certainly didn't help, as it added Nerubian Egg, Voidcaller, and Haunted Creeper which all became extremely strong additions to the deck. Thankfully, its power waned with the release of Goblins Vs. Gnomes, which added more healing and Mech decks, which ended up being better as aggro decks than Zoo was. Over time, Zoolock became hated less for its strength since it dips in and out of relevance with the phase of moon, but on those occasions where it does resurface, expect salt to ensue.
• In the same league as Zoolock was Miracle Rogue. Miracle was a combo deck based around abusing Gadgetzan Auctioneer to draw through their entire deck in one turn to either drop a fatass Edwin VanCleef or wreck face with Leeroy Jenkins. Its consistency was incredible, as most of its important cards were cheap enough that the game winning combo could be done early enough that even aggro decks struggled to get the kill in time. The deck got hammered with nerfs after nerfs after nerfs, with Curse of Naxxramas introducing several cards specifically tailored to shut it down, and it didn't die until Gadgetzan Auctioneer itself was nerfed in Goblins Vs. Gnomes. However, Mean Street of Gadgetzan seems to managed to bring the deck back to top tier with Counterfeit Coin and the Pirate package, although it doesn't get as much hate from the players due to being high skill.
• Hunter has gone through at least three different deck types that have been universally slammed for being overtly strong, utterly brainless, and completely luck-based to fight against. The first was the combo Hunter that used Unleash the Hounds in conjunction with Starving Buzzard to draw at least 4 cards for a measly 5 mana, with those 4 cards and the full board of dogs being used to finish off the opponent. After Buzzard got nerfed to oblivion, Huntertaker took its place, a deck that abused the snowball potential of Undertaker to either force the opponent to kill it as soon as possible or cause them to flat out lose. After Undertaker was nerfed, it was followed by Face Hunter, a deck designed to do nothing except steamroll the enemy hero and hope they don't die first (Though thankfully this is one is far less powerful than the other two, and it's mostly just good for climbing up the ladder quickly).
• Patron Warrior, pictured above, a combo deck based around using Warsong Commander in conjunction with Grim Patron and Frothing Berserker to clear the board or flat out OTK the opponent. Quite possibly the most consistent combo deck ever, possessing premium removal, ample health gain, a psychotic amount of draw, the ability to flood and clear the board for just 8 mana, and most importantly, if the combo didn't work the first time, they could just do it again, as none of the combo pieces were legendaries. It's saying something that even when Warsong Commander was brutally nerfed to make sure a deck like this could never exist again, it still managed to live on as a midrange anti-aggro deck. It was still a fantastic deck, just less able to kill enemies from 30 HP.
• With Patron Warrior good and buried, Secret Paladin had taken the crown as the most hated deck in the game. Thanks to Mysterious Challenger, they are able to play five secrets from their deck for free, and without Flare (a Hunter spell that no one really plays) or Kezan Mystic (which isn’t played that much either and only steals one secret), your turn is spent doing nothing but buffing his minions so he can attack you next turn for an insane amount of damage. This isn't helped by the fact that Paladin can easily summon 3 of Silver Hand Recruits using Muster For Battle and a decent 2 Mana minion Shielded Minibot and can protect them with buffs or cards that give Divine Shield. This means that the Paladin can guarantee to have minions to be buffed by the Competitive Spirit and Avenge secrets, making simple 1/1s into 5/4 powerhouses.
• In Whispers of the Old Gods, Blizzard took the complaints about Shaman's atrociousness to heart, but a little too well, unfortunately, and ended up creating Face Shaman. The Face Shaman is incredibly cheap to build and takes no effort to play at all, using lots of cheap, cost-effective cards early game (such as Tunnel Trogg, Tuskarr Totemic, and especially Flamewreathed Faceless) to try to quickly take the lead and then just rely on Shaman's innate ability to maintain a consistent amount of pressure on the opponent to blast the foe into the dirt by turn 8. In addition to the heavy amount of aggro in the deck, there is also a lot of synergy with overload cards and Tunnel Trogg, as well as combos that dish out as much as ten damage a turn on their own, alongside their heavy board presence. The deck is considered very boring to play with and against, and it is everywhere.
• After One Night in Karazhan, Blizzard delivered a bunch of nerfs to some overpowered cards to hopefully make the meta more diverse and fun, but unfortunately only one deck came out of the nerfs alive: Midrange Shaman. The deck was flat out better at everything than anybody else: it had better removal than Warrior and Mage, better minions than Hunter and Paladin, the ability to flood the board after a wipe, burst damage, and the best weapon in the game in Spirit Claws. The only reason someone didn't play it was because they didn't want to. Mean Streets of Gadgetzan put it in its place by giving the Kabal classes (Mage, Priest, and Warlock) extremely powerful board wipes, making them less effective at flooding the board while the Year of the Kraken effectively kill off the deck by cycling out its monstrous early games.
• Mean Streets of Gadgetzan brought back Aggro Shaman (see above, but with pirates and Jade Golems), and introduced Pirate Warrior. Pirate Warrior had existed as far back as Whispers of the Old Gods, and was useful as an anti-midrange aggro deck but was ruined by control, meaning that it could be frustrating but was still balanced, and it had some uniqueness as a weapon-oriented aggro deck, so it still had the "fun to play" factor. Gadgetzan then introduced two more early game Pirates that propelled the deck into high-tier insanity. Key aspects include the ability to flood the board and equip a weapon for little mana, insane damage output, Bloodsail Corsair and Upgrade! to boost weapon charges, and potent, cheap minions like Small-Time Buccaneer and Frothing Berserker. It's very rare for any game against the deck to last more than 6 turns, and you'd be lucky to get even that.
• Gadgetzan also brought forth Reno Mage which, while not as fast as the other top decks of the meta, is every bit as frustrating. It has strong defensive cards, multiple build options (Freeze Mage variants, Antonidas variants, and Medivh variants are the most popular, but N'Zoth and Yogg-Saron versions aren't unheard of), extremely powerful game winners in Reno Jackson and Kazakus+Brann Bronzebeard, and high-RNG card generators. It's a control deck that slaughters other control decks while being good against everything else, even Shaman, and unlike the other entries here can pull downright evil wins right out its ass with Babbling Book and Cabalist's Tome.
• Arena Mages. While not the top class in Arena (that'd be Rogue, who usually gets a pass by virtue of being difficult to play), Mage gets tons of hate for their ridiculously good common cards, meaning that it's difficult to play them in Arena without encountering at least 3 of their top tier cards. Flamestrike is the most obvious one, but there's also their myriad of burn spells (Fireball, Frostbolt, Forgotten Torch), great minions (Faceless Summoner, Water Elemental, Ethereal Conjurer), and hard removal (Polymorph). To get an idea of how hated they are, just take a look at any of the forums following One Night at Karazhan's reveal of Firelands Portal, and digest the raw, unfiltered salt. It got to the point where when Arena was rebalanced by banning some overtly weak cards to give help to weaker classes, Mage was straight up nerfed, by removing Forgotten Torch and Faceless Summoner.
• Jade Druid was one of the stronger decks introduced in Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, possesses an infinite value, fatigue-proof game-winning card that was Jade Idol, which also had some nasty synergy with Fandral Staghelm and Gadgetzan Auctioneer. It was at its strongest in Knights of the Frozen Throne which introduced several new cards that were incredibly strong in the deck and moved it into one of the strongest decks in the meta. Even counterpicking against the deck was hard because Token Druid was also viable during then. Year of the Mammoth has helped the deck substantially, with rotation took out many of the super aggressive decks it was bad against while Journey to Un'Goro added more defensive option for the deck with many strong Taunt minions like Primordial Drake and Tar Creeper as well as Earthern Scale allows Malfurion to take advantage of the Jade minions he summoned through buffing and gaining Armor. The only real flaw Jade Druid had was that it was slow and therefore not a popular choice for ladder climbers and it crumpled against aggro decks and didn't fare all that well against midrange and combo decks, either, but it was so oppressive against other control decks that it drove them out of the meta, which is where most of the hate comes from.
• After the Innervate nerf, Highlander Priest took Jade Druid's place as the new "fun police" deck. This deck is like Reno Mage on steroids: it has incredible versatility in its card choices and build, strong board clear, and incredibly potent card generators with Shadow Visions, Elise the Traiblazer, Curious Glimmerroot and Lyra the Sunshard (note that only Shadow Visions actually generate cards started in the Priest's deck, making it that the Priest can pull multiple wins out of cards that didn't even start in their deck). The real nightmare is its strong burst damage with Raza the Chained + Shadowreaper Anduin which couples with the Priest's natural healing and cheap spells allow them to burst down control deck while outlasted aggressive ones with a decent hand.
• Following the nerf to Raza the Chained that reduced the damage output of Shadowreaper Anduin, Cube Warlock would take its place. The deck is focused around using Skull of the Man'ari and Possessed Lackey to cheat out Doomguard to avoid its debilitating Battlecry, or pull out Voidlord ahead of time to create a very stubborn wall of Taunts, before eating them with Carnivorous Cube and duplicating them by deliberately destroying the Cube. This results in strong burst damage if the Cube eats Doomguard, or even more Taunts if it consumes Voidlord. To top it all off, the deck has Bloodreaver Gul'dan as a finisher that revives dead Demons — and since Doomguard, Voidlord, and Voidwalker are the only Demons likely to die during the game, it easily results in several Doomguards protected by numerous Taunts.
• Quest Rogue, a deck introduced in Journey to Un'Goro, is a very polarizing deck. The deck has single-minded objective of completing the Quest, 'The Caverns Below, as fast as possible, and once they play Crystal Core, the deck absolutely slaughters the opponent through repeated pressure of cheap 5/5 minions and burst damage from Charge minions. This is not to mention the fact that with Preparation and lucky draw, the deck can completing their Quest at turn 4-5 and then quickly run over their opponent through burst damage and persist pressure through the cheap 5/5 minions with little room for counterplay. The problem was the Rogue's inherent lack of healing and board clear, leaving it to be completely slaughtered by aggressive decks. While being very difficult to play and build, the deck receive hatred from the fanbase for encouraging aggressive decks and limiting slower ones. The community's response has prompted a nerf to the card that bumped the requirement up to 5 minions of the same name from 4, effectively killing the deck... but then it came back with a vengeance in The Witchwood, thanks to Rush and Lifesteal effects from things like Vicious Scalehide that greatly aided the deck's survivability and board control, necessitating another nerf that reduced the stats given to 4/4.
• Aggro Paladin is another deck that became widely loathed during 2017-2018. Simply put, Paladins can flood the board with minions like no other class, using the annoyingly tough Righteous Protector to fend off enemy aggro while filling the board with Silver Hand Recruits and things to buff them. Kobolds and Catacombs really put Aggro Paladin on the map by giving them Call to Arms, which as stated on the Game Breaker page and really bears repeating here, is probably the most broken board flooding card in the game. And even if the opponent does get a defense going, Paladin has strong board-clear options like the Equality-Consecration combo and Sunkeeper Tarim, making it extremely hard to stop the Paladin's advance. The Year of the Raven only made things worse as Paladin can make good use of both Genn Greymane and Baku the Mooneater, letting them spam out Recruits like never before; it's gotten to the point where playing against Paladin basically boils down to "draw at least two board clears by turn 4 or lose".
  • Paladin had so many good options to use that both Odd and Even Paladin were contenders. Even Paladin, with its 1-mana Hero Power, not only had the aforementioned Call to Arms, but also had access to Tarim, Tirion, and the Lich King, which are incredibly strong Legendary Taunt minions. On top of that, it had Equality, Consecrate, and Wild Pyromancer for board control if things go awry, and Lightfused Stegodon to adapt its Recruits. Odd Paladin may not have had those options, but compensated with sheer quantity, as its upgraded Hero Power put out two Silver Hand Recruits each time, on top of access to Lost in the Jungle and Vinecleaver to do the same. Level Up gave all its recruits a +2/+2 boost on top of creating a wide Taunt wall, and Fungalmancer could do the same on a smaller board. Even if it lacked access to the big three Taunt minions for Paladin, there's nothing stopping Stonehill Defender from discovering them. The value of Call to Arms, especially in Even Paladin where it was guaranteed to pull three 2-drops, set Even Paladin squarely above Odd, and the nerf to that card brought both variants to roughly equal power level... at least until Odd Paladin lost Level Up!, one of its primary buff cards, after its cost was bumped up by one.
• Druid in general has drawn more and more balance complaints over time. Historically, Druid decks went for either an aggressive, board-flooding aggro strategy with a weak late-game and little comeback potential, or a slower approach based on ramping mana and getting big minions faster at the cost of sacrificing early-game board presence and card advantage. However, they've also received cards that let them generate huge boards on demand, draw a ton of cards, and gain huge amounts of armor, all of which can easily be thrown into the same deck, effectively turning Druid into a Master of All and removing most of their glaring weaknesses. Knights of the Frozen Throne and Kobolds and Catacombs in particular gave Druid a lot of new toys to play with, and the class subsequently became the high-end scrappy of The Witchwood with no fewer than three top-tier Druid decks terrorizing the ladder (Taunt Druid, Malygos Druid, and Token Druid). The Druid hate only intensified in The Boomsday Project due to the release of things like Juicy Psychmelon and Star Aligner giving Combo Druid free reign to terrorize the Wild format, subsequently drawing tons of salt from players that are sick and tired of Druidstone.
• Shudderwock Shaman quickly became the only viable Shaman deck on the Witchwood ladder, and certainly one of the most hated. By forgoing the OTK approach and comboing it with Hagatha the Witch, Shudderwock becomes an infinitely-reusable board clear that also siphons the opponent's health and leaves a number of 6/3 bodies on the board to beat the opponent down with. At that point, the game's basically unwinnable for the opponent, since any minion they play will promptly get wiped off the board while their health is slowly drained. Furthermore, Shaman has the control tools and card draw they need to survive into the late game, making it much easier to last until Shudderwock gets to hit the board. This deck, along with Druid as a class, was mostly responsible for the meta shifting gears toward aggro since slow decks didn't have a hope in hell of winning against it. Shudderwock Shaman was eventually killed off by a nerf to Saronite Chain Gang (its Battlecry now summons a base-statted Saronite Chain Gang rather than an exact copy of itself), preventing Shudderwock from infinitely replicating.
• Prior to the removal of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, Murloc/Quest Shaman was hated and seen as a successor to Patron Warrior, especially since it didn't rely so much on stalling the game. The main issue was the fact that it relied on the player summoning a bunch of Murlocs, who usually only have 1/1 or 2/1, very quickly. What made it only slightly less annoying than pre-nerf Patron Warrior was due to the fact that they couldn't charge and constantly wear out the opposing player, thus making them susceptible to cards like Arcane Explosion, Explosive Trap, Consecration, Swipe, or even Whirlwind (Since most murlocs had only one health, Whirlwind would clear the board). What became worse was when a shaman placed down the Murloc Warleader. While the card itself is bad enough now, it used to be worse since it would buff all murlocs with one additional health, making them able to withstand a couple more board clears. Combine this with Grimscale Oracle, and you can practically OTK with a field full of 1/1 and a few 2/1 murlocs.
  • What's more, even though Call in the Finishers was usually the clincher (completing 40% of the quest right there), the Murloc build was practically RNG-proof. You sometimes wouldn't even need to draw Call in the Finishers to get the quest completed - all Call in the Finishers did was make you get it even earlier. Depending on whether or not you went second and got some Murloc Tidehunters (which summoned an extra Murloc, and this counted towards the quest), you could easily throw murlocs on the field all day. Unless your opponent manages to constantly stall you with frozen or board clearing, it was a real "I win" button. This deck was considered to be so overpowered that the Murloc Warleader was nerfed.
• After the nerfs in Rastakhan's Rumble brought Druid down to size, rendered Shudderwock extinct, and emasculated Odd Paladin, Hunter became the next class to fall under scrutiny for escaping completely unscathed, with several viable decks all running rampant due to their primary competition being removed. Secret Hunter saw a resurgence due to getting its own Mysterious Challenger, Deathrattle Hunter and Spell Hunter are still going strong from the last few expansions, and even the long-lost Face Hunter is making a comeback as a budget pubstomping deck with its new tools. While the class has its defenders due to Hunter decks having more play-around potential and interactivity than, say, Shudderwock Shaman, many others are concerned about Hunterstone taking over the Rastakhan's Rumble era.
  • This is not helped by one card in particular: Tundra Rhino. This is a classic card that grants any Beasts on the board, including itself, Charge - not rush, Charge. Combine with a fully charged Emerald Spellstone for 14 damage from an empty board and you have a two-card combo like the Force Of Nature/Savage Roar druid combo of old. It's not surprising that the armor-heavy Odd Warriors and healing-heavy Quest Priests emerged as Hunter surged in popularity.
• Bomb Warrior from Rise of Shadows is known for being an annoying deck with the potential to randomly punish you for drawing cards. The deck is based around a set of cards that shuffle Bombs into the opponent's deck, which deal 5 damage when drawn. It has many of the strengths provided by Control Warrior, mostly thanks to Dr. Boom, Mad Genius, as well as decent tempo and a lot of unfun highroll potential. The design of the deck gets a lot of derision, since it's literally just all the Bomb cards from RoS mixed with the established Control deck, bound by the parasitic Blastmaster Boom legendary^note Arguably, including Augmented Elekk in the deck is somewhat interesting, although that ultimately just means more bombs. Even if Tempo Rogue remains the aggressive boogeyman of the set, Bomb Warrior has patently unfun gameplay.
• Galakrond Shaman took Battlecry Shaman, what was already a Master of All deck, into new heights. Most Invoke cards have a drawback of being low tempo, but Galakrond, the Tempest's Hero Power completely negates that, summoning a 2/1 with Rush, which gives them a ton of board control throughout the game. Upgrading Galakrond is also easy since Corrupted Elementalist Invokes twice, and Dragon's Pack summons 2 5/6s with Taunt, well over double the card's value, once you Invoked twice, and is pretty much a game-winning tempo play if you coined out your Corrupted Elementalist. There's also Galakrond himself, giving you two 8/8s with Rush when fully upgraded, which is enough to take the board and apply immense pressure if they trade into anything that doesn't kill them. And this was just talking about the Galakrond package on its own. Now imagine having to deal with Galakrond's Battlecry 3 times from Corrupt the Waters and Shudderwock. The Descent of Dragons release actually saw a decline in the number of Standard players (likely from players taking refuge in Wild and Battlegrounds), since attempting to climb the ladder against Galakrond Shamans with literally anything else is an exercise in futility. The resulting outcry was so bad that Blizzard decided to break out the nerfbat three days after the release and implemented the nerf six days later; for reference, the previous fastest recorded nerf (to Spreading Plague) took three weeks.
• Deathrattle Rogue quickly became the other widely-hated deck in Descent of Dragons for the newly-introduced synergy between Necrium Apothecary and Anubisath Warbringer, letting the Rogue quickly build hugely overstatted minions with the ensuing handbuffs to steamroll the mid-game. If even a few of those minions were Charges, the opponent was inevitably going to most to all of their health out of nowhere, forcing players to Taunt up like there was no tomorrow. A turn 3-5 mana curve of Necrium Blade into Necrium Apothecary into Necrium Vial could easily give every minion in the Rogue's hand a horrifying +9/+9 buff, enough to overrun nearly any opponent. While Necrium Apothecary dodged the first wave of Descent buffs, it didn't escape the second, to no one's complaint.
• Demon Hunters understandably had to be made good enough to compete with the veteran classes, but it turned out Blizzard did too good of a job keeping the class at a high power level. The class instantly began to dominate the ladder and playrate, and not just because everyone wanted to try out the new class. Demon Hunters have insanely strong card draw, strong early-game minions, Lifesteal cards to sustain damage unlike Rogues, powerful defensive midrange cards, and high combo potential. Some of their biggest offenders were Skull of Gul'dan, where with the Outcast effect is a -4 Mana Draw 3, Eye Beam and Aldrachi Warblades for very efficient early-game removal with healing, and Imprisoned Antaen as a delayed but super-high-tempo finisher and removal. Early previews from streamers showed how good the class was, and Blizzard couldn't get the nerfs out in time before the official release, which puts these nerfs at a record time of one day after release. The ladder was so infested with Demon Hunters that the few Warlocks running around began main-decking Sacrificial Pact of all things - a card that's completely useless against the other eight classes - just to deal with them.
  • Demon Hunter was so hated, the entire class was voted the tenth most hated card of 2020. You read that right. Enough people broke the rules to hate on DH that a class actually made its way into the top 10 on a list of cards.
• Paladin in the Year of the Phoenix had a modest start... but then just kept getting good card after good card until they shot to the top of the tier list and stayed there. Ashes of Outland gave them the Libram package, which had a few good things but weren't quite enough to make them strong. Then Scholomance Academy gave them several more good cards (like High Abbess Alura, Blessing of Authority, and Goody Two-Shields) and buffed Aldor Attendant to 1 mana, and suddenly Paladin turned into a tempo monster capable of churning out more giant beaters than most control decks can handle and with the ability to shut down aggro from even the previously-dreaded Demon Hunters. Combine that with the Pure Paladin package from Descent of Dragons for more mid-game board control and late-game value, and you've got a true powerhouse of a class, making them a Master of All with a stranglehold on the ladder.
  • Paladin's dominance not only continued into the start of the Year of the Gryphon, but grew immensely. This is thanks to the fact that Uther was just utterly spoiled: he had all of the powerful tools he'd gained throughout the Year of the Phoenix, the rotation and revised Core set meant some weaker cards went away, and the Paladin set from Forged in the Barrens had almost no bad cards. While the Pure package was dead and buried thanks to rotation, a new secret package would effectively take its place, crop up in just about every Paladin deck, and proceed to take over the Standard ladder. HARD. After the launch of Forged in the Barrens, some form of Paladin was in the top spot of most Standard tier lists up until the Wailing Caverns miniset launched- it was initially a new version of Secret Paladin, but after the second round of nerfs, it was supplanted by previous top contender Libram Paladin. That's not saying much, though, considering that Secret Paladin didn't even fall out of tier one and Libram Paladin was using the secret package anyway. Wild wasn't safe either, with Handbuff Paladin making a surprise comeback and becoming a top-tier deck there as well. After almost a full year of Paladin's nonsense, players were relieved when Wailing Caverns brought with it powerful tools for some of the other classes, and the continual nerfs to Paladin's cards finally took their toll, bumping Paladin from the very top to the very bottom.
• Introduced with the Year of the Gryphon after a couple cards from the prior year had hinted at it, No Minion Mage, depending on the meta, can be one of the most frustrating decks to play against, to the extent that players who run into one are advised to just concede at turn one to save time. As the name implies, it is a deck comprised solely of spells, which sounds like a terrible strategy on paper, but with the tools it has, it can lead to matches where you can't interact with anything and are practically guaranteed to lose. Among the most notable of these tools are Incanter's Flow, which reduces the mana cost of all spells in your deck by one, meaning that your precious endgame board can be wiped out with several zero mana removals; Refreshing Spring Water, a spell that draws two cards and refunds 2 mana for every spell drawn, making it an Arcane Intellect that practically costs nothing; and Runed Orb deals damage and lets you Discover another spell to find whatever you might need. While these tools have all made this deck unfun for a lot of people, what made it notorious for the first couple of weeks of Forged in the Barrens was the Legendary Darkmoon Faire spell Deck of Lunacy, which replaces all the spells in your deck with random spells from any class that cost 3 more than the originals... and the new spells keep the originals' costs. This turns Mage's deck of nothing but spells into a "wacky" bag of tricks with answers for just about anything, including board clears, heals, summons, and so much more. Thankfully, Deck of Lunacy recieved a massive nerf two weeks after Barrens launched, reducing No Minion Mage's annoyance factor, even if only slightly.
  • This whole situation got even more uninteractive with the release of United in Stormwind, which introduced the Questline Sorcerer's Gambit, which has conditions that are very easy to fulfill, thanks in part to Flow's cost reduction, and the reward is a 7/7 minion that buffs the hero with a spell damage boost. This turns No Minion Mage into Questline Mage, essentially Quest Mage but in an even more terrifying form. This post goes into even more detail.
  • What makes all this even worse is that these were the only good decks Mage had in Standard for the longest time following the start of the Year of the Gryphon, as other archetypes couldn't compete with what other classes could bring. Currently, following various nerfs (including the aforementioned Deck of Lunacy nerf, as well as nerfs to Refreshing Spring Water, Incanter's Flow, and Arcanist Dawngrasp, the aforementioned 7/7 minion) and the introduction of additional cards, both No Minion Mage and Questline Mage have become notably worse decks, to the point that Mages in Standard are starting to finally run minions in their decks again.
• Paladin rose to notoriety as one of the meta boogeymen in the Year of the Wolf, with two particularly notorious decks:
  • First, there was Aggro Paladin. Paladin had received a new toy that year in the form of Auras, which grant a continuous effect for a few turns after being cast. These included Crusader Aura, which gives +2/+1 to a minion when it attacks and amounts to a recurring Savage Roar for any of the Paladin's minions that are allowed to live long enough to swing, and Deputization Aura, which gives your left-most minion +3 Attack and Lifesteal and is particularly tough to deal with since killing the buffed minion just passes the buff to the next minion over, and clever minion placement allows multiple minions to benefit in one turn. Paladin also got Boogie Down, which is basically the second coming of Call to Arms except it can only pull 1-drops, not that it was much of a problem considering just how many good 1-drops Paladin had at the time, most of which were either sticky or had Divine Shield. If that wasn't enough, Shroomscavate meant that Paladin now had easy access to Windfury. If you didn't clean up a Paladin's board immediately, any minion left over will get buffed to high heaven and smash your face in. Thankfully, Boogie Down was taken down a peg by the Year of the Pegasus rotation, which took out most of the good 1-drops...
  • ... only for Handbuff Paladin to pick up where Aggro Paladin left off. In addition to having some decent handbuff options to begin with, Paladin also got Painter's Virtue from Whizbang's Workshop, a 2/3 weapon with Lifesteal that buffs all minions in your hand by +1/+1 when your hero attacks. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Well... the Year of the Pegasus Core set also brought back Southsea Deckhand and Leeroy Jenkins. All of Paladin's handbuffs combined with their board buffs from Auras and Shroomscavate meant that Paladins immediately became public enemy #1 after the launch of Whizbang's Workshop for their ability to end games with 30+ damage worth of Charge straight into the opponent's face, and they had enough control tools that rushing them down was no easy task. It should come as no surprise that Handbuff Paladin was crushed by the very first balance patch of Whizbang's Workshop.
• Plague Death Knight, while never becoming as broken as contemporaries like Odyn Warrior and Handbuff Paladin, has never been particularly well-regarded due to its rather un-fun playstyle in the same vein as Bomb Warrior, and for basically the same reasons. The deck's playstyle involves shuffling Plague cards into the opponent's deck, which cast when drawn to damage their hero and either heal you (Blood Plague), summon a 2/2 Ghoul for you (Unholy Plague), or increase the cost of their next card by 1 (Frost Plague). In some ways, it made drawing cards even more of a punishing, RNG-heavy mess because Frost Plague was particularly nasty on early turns. As of Showdown in the Badlands, the Plague package is almost always mashed up with the Excavate package to out-tempo the opponent and eventually pair the high-end bombs of the two playstyles, shuffling Plagues to discount Chained Guardian and then resurrect it with The Azerite Rat, while also having just the right Runes to drop Reska, the Pit Boss and make the opponent punch the wall at least once. Because the mash-up of two packages means the deck has little room for anything else, this results in a very linear build and playstyle.

Wild meta

• Big/Resurrect Priest is a deck that revolves around cheating out small copies of big, high-value minions, letting them die, then abusing Priest's many resurrection effects to bring them back at full power and spam the hell out of annoying and destructive Deathrattle effects (as well as using Priest's many removal effects available in Wild to ensure this happens). While the deck struggles against aggro decks that can bum-rush it down before it starts gathering steam, any other deck that doesn't try to go face against it immediately will have problems, as the Priest will most likely have many more resurrection effects than most control decks have removal. The deck is also very high-rolly, and they can start setting up their win condition as early as Turn 3^note Thought pre-nerf Barnes on Turn 4 was bad? Now they can use Illuminate to Dredge up a 3-mana Shadow Essence. This was such a problem that Shadow Essence got nerfed to 7 mana so Illuminate discounts it to 4. or as late as Turn 7-8 if they're unlucky. While numerous tech cards have been devised as a counter to Big Priest, most of them ended up being a little too slow or impractical to really put a stop to it, and while more experienced players argue it's a Tier 2 Wild deck at best, it remained an extremely popular deck due to its dumb highroll potential, inefficient tech cards against it, and its generally low skill floor, and since the deck hasn't been particularly powerful in Standard, most of its tools remained untouched for most of its lifetime, with the only notable nerf having Barnes increased in mana cost. When the entire Knights of the Frozen Throne set was temporarily added to the Standard rotation in the Year of the Kraken, it showed just how degenerate Big Priest can get if it isn't contested by hyper-aggressive Wild aggro decks.
• Secret Mage is the other scourge of Wild next to Big Priest, having the benefits of Tempo Mage but with added confusion and defensive plays from Secrets. It's far less prominent in Standard where it has a more predictable set of Secrets to play around and less Secret synergy cards to work with, but gets only better with age in Wild, where it gets to keep everything. It can cheat out a ton of Mana for Secrets with Kabal Lackey, Mad Scientist, Ancient Mysteries, and Kirin Tor Mage, wipe the board with Arcane Flakmage and Chatty Bartender, remove minions or go face with Medivh's Valet and Cloud Prince, and tempo out hefty 0-cost minions on board with Kabal Crystal Runner and Contract Conjurer, all while having access to great card draw. It's also an easy deck to get fast wins with, and relatively inexpensive; none of its core cards are Legendary. Kabal Lackey actually became part of the post-Caverns of Time Wild nerfs, making it reduce a Secret's cost to 1 instead of 0, to make it less oppressive right from turn 1.
• BEEEES!!! Druid, AKA 2563 Armor Druid (yes, you read that number right). This is a deck that utilizes the interaction between BEEEES!!!, Linecracker, and Earthen Scales, three otherwise unremarkable cards, to generate an absurd amount of armor. Using a tick of Emperor Thaurissan, you can play double BEEEES!!! on a Linecracker followed by double Earthen to generate that ridiculous number, letting the Druid then comfortably go AFK for the rest of the game and still win. Unless you're running an instant-win condition, you may as well concede once they get the combo off. But, the issue is getting the combo off. It needs five specific cards, a turn setting up with Thaurissan, and 10 mana. In the breakneck pace of Wild, that's not exactly consistent. And as noted, it does literally nothing to stop Mecha'thun. At best, this combo is shockingly Awesome, but Impractical. Just to solidify the deck's weakness, Descent of Dragons gave Armor Druid the Skulking Geist treatment and introduced Platebreaker, a Common minion that destroys all of the opponent's armor.
• Quest Mage, also introduced in Journey to Un'Goro, was not a great deck when it was first introduced. The deck's key combo is to complete the quest Open the Waygate, get four Sorcerer's Apprentices onto the board with the help of Molten Reflection, use the Time Warp from the quest to refill mana, then drop Archmage Antonidas and Fireball the opponent to death. The deck was hated for how extremely uninteractive it was to play against, since Mage has an absolute plethora of defensive options (such as Ice Block and Counterspell) to make sure they survive until they draw their combo pieces and a large number of spell-generating cards like Cabalist's Tome and Primordial Glyph to quickly finish the quest. Add on the fact that they can simply hold onto their key cards and drop them all onto the board at once when their combo is assembled, and you've got a deck with extremely limited options for counterplay for slower control decks. On the other hand, it's glacially slow and dies to aggro decks in short order, and since the combo's the only thing the deck has going for it, it gets gutted by the likes of Dirty Rat (which destroys the combo) and Eater of Secrets (which removes Ice Block). Once it rotated out of the Standard format, it immediately shot up in power level due to the fact the new cards introduced in Rise of Shadows like Mana Cyclone greatly sped up quest completion time, and the fact Archmage Vargoth lets you take three turns in a row. At that point, Quest Mage skipped going for the combo and went with playing low-cost Giant the turn they play Time Warp to beat down the opponent. The deck was just as uninteractive to play against, only this time they got to their wincon faster. The Quest received a nerf that increased the number of cards needed to play to complete the Quest, but that didn't kill its play rate.
• While Wild has had decks that have lorded over the format, no deck archetype has dominated the format's ladder to the utmost degree and been hated as much as Darkglare Warlock. This archetype centers around utilizing its namesake and Warlock's array of self-damage tools to cheat mana out and create nigh-unbeatable early-game board states with minions like Molten Giant and, after Scholomance Academy dropped, Flesh Giant. While the Warlock would be taking large amounts of damage, that wouldn't matter much if you were suddenly facing a board with up to 4 8/8 minions and little mana to work with. While most assumed these decks would fade away after Darkglare was nerfed not long after Scholomance launched, they instead found their feet again insanely fast and continued to rule over the format with practically no methods of counterplay, assuming you weren't facing someone who wasn't playing the deck optimally. It cannot be understated just how strong this archetype was- the amount of pure, undiluted hatred it received would make other despised Wild decks, like Big Priest, blush. And despite this, Blizzard simply let it run rampant for nearly a whole year before Darkglare became problematic in Standard as well following the launch of United in Stormwind, forcing them to both nerf it again and also nerf Flesh Giant for good measure.
• ...However, where one Warlock archetype fell, another rose to take its place. Various variations of Questline Warlock, utilizing the United in Stormwind Questline The Demon Seed to push degenerate self-damage and card draw strategies, very much akin to Darkglare Warlock, had already been proving themselves to be ridiculously powerful before Darkglare and Flesh Giant were nerfed, and the fact that they were resiliant enough to not only shake off those nerfs, but an additional nerf to Flesh Giant and a nerf to a particular variation's central card, Stealer of Souls (see its section below, in cards, for more info) only proved that these decks were just that ridiculous. It also didn't matter whether you were playing Standard or Wild- Questline Warlock had its tendrils firmly rooted in both formats, with the archetype being considered Tier S in the latter. It got so bad that Blizzard eventually not only heavily nerfed The Demon Seed by increasing the completion requirements for the first two steps, but also banned the card in Wild due to the format having a lot of efficient self-damage cards, finally knocking Gul'dan off the pedestal he'd been sitting on for a good year.

Twist Meta

New Age

• The New Age format of Twist has every set from Ashes of Outland onward legal, and bans the use of Neutral cards, and perhaps no deck benefited from this quite like Questline Druid. Lost in the Park requires you to give your hero 4, then 5, then 6 Attack, rewarding you with 5 armor, 5 armor and a draw, and Guff the Tuff, a 5-Mana 8/8 with Taunt that gives your hero +8 Attack for the turn and 8 Armor respectively. What made this especially good was the Hero attack-centered cards in Festival of Legends could be combined with the ones from United in Stormwind to go through the Questline lightning fast. An especially important card in the deck is Crypt Keeper, an 8-mana 4/6 with Taunt that costs 1less for each armor your hero has. Considering the aforementioned Questline reward, and the fact that most Attack-givers grant Armor as well, this lead to absurd situations such as playing it on Turn 2.

Other

• Tess, the Tracker is this for the Monster Hunt. Most players complain that her run is just too easy to complete due to the absurd tempo provided by her card pool while her Hero Power (Scavenge) let her to never run out of value, fixing one of the most glaring weakness of the Rogue class that she was the stand in for.
• The Duels of the Death Knights Brawl has players start the game as the Death Knight of their chosen class. However, in doing so, some Death Knights end up being a lot weaker than the others due to missing out on their very potent Battlecry.^note Not all hope's lost for Uther and Garrosh, who start with their signature weapons equipped. With long-term value being relegated to their Hero Power, Frost Lich Jaina is easily the strongest of them all, as she turns 1-health minions into 3/6 Water Elementals with Lifesteal that are difficult to dispatch. This deters the opponent from playing their early-game minions for fear of losing them to the Hero Power, and if you mull aggressively you can get Water Elementals starting from turn 3, snowballing your way to victory.
• The Burndown Brawl imposes a unique set of rules. Each player begins with a deck, randomly chosen from a list of presets. Players who lose matches during the Brawl will have their deck forcibly switched to the winner's deck, so the game mode by design will eventually boil down to mirror matches as the weaker decks are culled off. One deck is particularly infamous: "Mercenaries", a Pirate Warrior aggro deck. Because the preset lists defy normal deck building rules, you can have abnormal numbers of cards in a deck. When this means four copies of Patches the Pirate in a single deck, it's a recipe for disaster, as most of the other presets are not equipped to handle such an early board flood.

Cards

Constructed

• Early on, the most hated card was Harvest Golem. It was a 2/3 for 3 mana that summoned a 2/1 Damaged Golem when it died. It was reasonable on paper (after all, it's just a 2 mana minion with a 1 mana minion attached), but in practice it was a sticky, annoying piece of crap that always required 2 answers and outclassed every other 3 mana minion in the game. Most decks used it, and most players were actually hollering for nerfs just because it was so good. That said, its hatred died off after Naxxramas introduced Shade of Naxxramas and the Priest-exclusive Dark Cultist, both very solid 3-drops that competed with Harvest Golem, while Goblins Vs. Gnomes straight up killed it by creating Spider Tank, a vanilla 3/4 mech that wound up being a superior 3-drop in most respects.
• Another pre-nerf card would be Blood Imp, a 1/1 for 1 Mana Warlock demon that increases EVERY minions' health the Warlock player control by 1, potentially offer HUGE favorable trade of minions. If that not bad enough, the Imp has permanent Stealth and is a solid addition to the already widely revived Zoolock deck - meaning that when the opponent played this card, you just have pray to draw your board clear or got lucky with your random effect to wipe it out soon enough that you still have a board to regain advantage, which is exactly what a Zoolock player wants so they can safely follow up with even more powerful minions; not to mention the fact that it is a Common minion - cheap to create, easy to pick in Arena and can played two of them in a standard Constructive deck. This was fixed by the brutal nerf the Imp to 0/1 for 1 mana and the ability was changed to "At the end of your turn, give another random friendly minion +1 Health", making it mostly useless.
• Many players dread the cry of LEEEEEROY JENKINS! for he is usually played as the last thing they hear before they lose. He is an extremely efficient Charger at 6 attack for 4 mana and his supposed drawback, summoning 2 1/1 Whelps to the opponent's side of the field, can be made inconsequential by either using him as a finisher or using an Area of Effect spell against the Whelps. Also, he can be comboed for ridiculous amounts of damage, such as with the aforementioned Miracle Rogue. It was so easy for people to win in one turn with Leeroy that his mana cost was later increased up to 5 to make him more manageable to deal with. This, however, has not stopped Leeroy's ubiquitous usage in virtually every aggressive deck throughout his entire lifespan. Whenever a deck needs a burst damage finisher, Leeroy manages to weasel into them constantly. By the Year of the Phoenix, Leeroy's reign was finally put to rest and was entered into the Hall of Fame.
• Flamestrike, as mentioned multiple times in this site, is a basic card that everyone gets as a lvl 10 Mage. But it's the single most feared board clear in the game, so much that whenever you play against a Mage, you have to always assume your opponent has it in her hand by turn 7, ready to wipe the board clean. About the only Mage deck that doesn't use Flamestrike is Freeze Mage, but they replace it with an even nastier Frost Nova + Doomsayer combo. It gets even worse in Arena due to the emphasis on minions and board control, and that you're not bound by the '2 copies of the same card' rule. The current record is seven Flamestrikes at once, and this deck actually got the maximum 12 Arena wins.
• In terms of cards, Kel'Thuzad. Acquiring him isn't random (you are guaranteed to get him if you finish the Naxxramas single player adventure, which you more or less must buy your way into), his attack (6) puts him just below the range of Big Game Hunter, and his effect will usually win the game for his controller unless he's dealt with immediately. Advice: if you're up against a Deathrattle deck, save that Polymorph card.
• Pre-nerf Undertaker was a one mana 1/2 minion that gained one attack and one health every time a minion with deathrattle was played. This allowed certain classes (most notoriously the Hunter class) to win the game through playing Undertaker and then following up with cheap death rattle minions, buffing up the Undertaker to the point where it could be a 4/5 minion by turn three, usually resulting in a lost game for the opponent.
• Dr. Boom is universally considered to be the best card in the Goblins Vs. Gnomes expansion and is run in every deck. A 7/7 for 7 mana, Dr. Boom also spawns two 1/1 Boom Bots (that explode when they die, dealing 1-4 damage to a random enemy character) when he is summoned. A large part of Hearthstone play is based around the concept of favorable trading, or using one card to take out more than one of the opponents' cards. While some cards can force a player to trade unfavorably, Doctor Boom is one of the few cards in the game that is all but impossible to favorably trade against. The Boom Bots demand using AOE spells or other creatures to clear, but that doesn't answer the 7/7 creature on the board (and the Boom Bots' explosions may end up killing some minions anyway). Similarly, taking out the 7/7 creature leaves the Boom Bots intact. The only AOE spells that works against Dr. Boom are Twisting Nether and Shadowflame, both of which are Warlock exclusive cards, the first of which is almost never run anyway, and the latter still demands sacrificing one of your own minions. The priest spell Lightbomb also works, but it weakens your own board as well and still leaves them open to the boom bots anyhow. The only "weaknesses" accessible to all classes that Doctor Boom has are Big Game Hunter (which will kill the 7/7 creature but leave the Boom Bots alive) and Mind Control Tech, which is far from consistent.
  • Doctor Boom was so overpowered that he completely destroyed the meta - almost every deck had a Big Game Hunter to counter him, making 7 and up attack minions not even worth the risk to play because big creatures like that would usually take up your whole turn and with BGH it only took 3 mana (now 5) to get rid of it. Doctor Boom was so overpowered his mere existence nerfed all 7+ attack minions. He's been rotated out with the introduction of Standard, so only those playing Wild will need to worry about him.
• Velen's Chosen, a 3 mana Priest spell that buffs the minion by 2/4 and gives it +1 Spell Damage. This card is considered one of the best Priest cards ever printed in the game because its cost allows the Priest to buff their early game minions to be a giant trading machine that the Priest can keep healing back. That is without talking about the Spell Damage it offered, which allows the Priest to buff their board clear to be more mana-efficient. Many players bemoan the loss of this card when Standard hit and it was still used as a measuring stick when creating Priest cards, especially spells or buffs. This card is so powerful that the community mocked Blizzard when they tried to print its Poor Man's Substitute Power Word: Tentacles, a 5 mana spell that buffs for 2/6.
• The key card of the Secret Paladin deck listed above is Mysterious Challenger, a minion that initially looks rather unassuming, but when you take five seconds to think about what it actually does you realise that it's actually so insanely overpowered that it boggles the mind that Blizzard ever dared release it. A 6/6 minion for 6 mana, it's not too far behind the stat curve (for example Boulderfist Ogre is a 6 mana 6/7 with no abilities) and when it comes into play it searches your deck for 1 copy of every secret you have in there and puts them all into play. If you have 5 different secrets left in your deck, Mysterious Challenger will effectively let you draw 5 free cards (card draw is so powerful in Hearthstone that it's usually priced at 3 mana for 2 cards) and then play all of them for nothing. This 6-mana minion is effectively giving you up to 19-20 mana worth of value (the Challenger's body alone is worth 5-6 mana, drawing 5 cards is worth 8-9 mana and playing the 5 secrets is worth 5 more, since all Paladin secrets cost 1 mana each)! Plus while Paladin secrets were previously usually ignored because they were less impactful than Hunter or Mage secrets (to justify their lower cost) several of them work in combination with each other to create devastating results (Noble Sacrifice into Avenge into Redemption is the common sticking point here, usually boosting the Challenger up to 9/8). The Mysterious Challenger deck is basically the only Paladin deck anyone on the ladder plays any more because this single card is so obscenely broken than playing anything else is effectively a Self-Imposed Challenge.
  • Mysterious Challenger is so overpowered that Blizzard introduced Eater of Secrets in Whisper of the Old Gods, which was pretty much made specifically to hard-counter it. It's a Neutral 4-Mana 2/4 minion that destroys all enemy secrets and gains +1/+1 for each secret destroyed, so destroying only one secret would still make it weak for its cost and realistically there's no way a player can have several secrets on play at once without Mysterious Challenger involved in any way.
• When you first look at it, Anyfin Can Happen doesn't look like anything that special. It’s a spell that costs 10 mana for Paladin that Summons 7 Murlocs that died that game. But when you really think about it and pick the right cards, it’s completely broken. If you put 2 Bluegill Warrior, 1 Old Murk-Eye, 2 Murloc Warleader and 2 Grimscale Oracle in your deck, play them and have them all die over the course of the game, when you play this card you will be able to do 30 points of damage in one turn directly to the face. While the rotation of Old Murk-Eye out of Standard removed its OTK potential, it later became a popular card to abuse with Prismatic Lens alongside Tip the Scales to cheat out a board full of Murlocs up to 3 turns earlier, which turned Anyfin Paladin into a degenerate highroll deck that relied on this one single combo to win.
• The release of Whispers of the Old Gods saw the addition of Flamewreathed Faceless to the Shaman's arsenal. A 7/7 for an insane 4 mana, its only drawback is a measly Overload 2 (in the same set they also received Eternal Sentinel, which helps negate Overload altogether). But it's not that bad, right, because surely the almighty Big Game Hunter will stop Flamewreathed Faceless? Well... no. Right before Whispers's release, Blizzard nerfed BGH to cost 5 mana rather than 3, seeing it not only lose favour in general, but actually cost more than the Faceless, Overload notwithstanding. Combined with the difficulty some classes have with removing single large minions (particularly Druid) Flamewreathed Faceless has made aggro Shaman a living nightmare to deal with. Almost as a cherry on top, Flamewreathed Faceless is a common, giving Shamans a very unfair boost to their already reasonable status in Arena.
• Barnes, a 3/4 for 4 mana introduced in One Night in Karazhan that summons a 1/1 copy of a random minion in your deck, is kind of a weird case, because it's when you play with the card properly that he's less frustrating. Objectively speaking, he's a tutor, capable of searching out your deck and getting what you need, with the downside of having an element of randomness that doesn't matter if the deck is made with him in mind. If he merely pulls a vanilla 1/1, than you basically wasted your turn 4, which mind you is a turn too important to throw away. The issue is that nobody actually plans their deck around all that; Barnes is constantly slapped into decks with high potential to whiff but insane payoffs when he doesn't, turning games into dice rolls instead of actual matches and likely pissing off at least 1 player at all times. Barnes, ultimately, is not a Game-Breaker, and has not seen too much competitive success despite his powerful effect, but he's so annoying despite this that when a fan-tourney was held with the community being given the opportunity to ban cards, Barnes received the 4th most votes.
  • That said, Barnes later became a star in a couple of decks — specifically, Spell Hunter and Big Priest. In the former, he and Y'Shaarj are the only minions in the deck, so Barnes will create a 1/1 copy of Y'Shaarj that summons the original Y'Shaarj, leaving no minions in the deck and enabling the no-minion effects of Rhok'delar. In the latter, Barnes is the only low-cost minion in the deck, and everything else which he can summon is high-cost with massive impact and can be resurrected later, eliminating the chance of whiffing. The lack of low-cost minions is a non-issue for Priest whose healing and control spells let him get to the late game where he can play his expensive minions normally. Between the two, it then becomes a question of "did that player draw Barnes on turn 4?" because cheating out a giant minion or one with a different deadly effect can lead to a steamroll in the midgame.
• Shadowreaper Anduin, an 8 mana Priest Hero card that kill all minions with 5 attack or more and change the Hero Power to Voidform - a Hero Power that deal 2 damage and then refresh itself whenever the Priest player play a card. Sound fair in paper, but the Hero Power has insane synergy with Raza the Chained, a 5 mana Legendary minion which allows the Hero Power to cost 0 for the rest of the game if your deck has no duplicate, suddenly allows the Priest to pump out 6-8 control damage at least every single turn for 0 mana. The fact that this card fills in one of the biggest holes of Priest, namely the ability to end the game through the insane amount of damage every single turn with Raza, led him to cause chaos in both Standard and Wild with his inclusion in Highlander / Reno Priest and Priest - a class has traditionally struggled, suddenly pushed to prominence through this synergy alone. What truly made this card hated isn't only just its power but also because of its high roll nature: Highlander Priest just cannot win without drawing him and starting to chip or burst their opponent with Voidform, so every of their match up turn into complete coin flip on whether or not the Priest player can draw him on time.
• Ultimate Infestation is a 10 mana Druid spell that deals 5 damage, grants 5 armor, draws 5 cards, and summons a 5/5 token. It's nigh-universally despised for packing an absolutely insane amount of value, easily giving benefits worth twice its mana cost even though it takes up an entire turn. And since it's a Druid spell, they can ramp up and drop this card as early as turn 6 or 7, generating a huge advantage that the opponent is most likely not able to deal with for another few turns at least. A number of players are also utterly baffled that Blizzard made the decision to nerf Druid cards like Innervate and Ancient of Lore, only to turn around and give them something even more patently broken.
• Although not as high-impact as the other cards, players note that Branching Paths is pretty strong for a 4-mana spell. It offers the player the ability to pick from three choices two times — gain 6 armor, draw a card, or +1 attack to their minions — and there's nothing stopping a player from picking the same option twice. It can become a pseudo-Shield Block, an Arcane Intellect, a persistent Savage Roar, an armor-based Greater Healing Potion, and so on and so forth, which means there are very few situations where it's bad. It also offers synergy with various other cards at Druid's disposal, which contributes to Druid's infamy as Master of All.
• Kobolds and Catacombs brought in Spiteful Summoner, a 6-mana Neutral 4/4 that reveals a random spell from your deck and then summons a random minion of the same cost. Sounds fine on paper, but in practice, decks with this card will usually only run a couple of high-cost spells and fill the rest with minions, which pretty much turns games into "mindlessly spam out and trade minions, then summon a free Tyrantus/Deathwing/Y'shaarj on turn 6", making life extremely miserable for the opponent. Priest is the most notorious offender as their high-cost spells tend to be Free from Amber and Mind Control, allowing them to follow up with even more gigantic minions or steal those that the opponent plays to try and answer the Priest's board advantage. On top of that, Priest's own healing Hero Power and solid Dragon support allowed them to stay in the game to the point where they can play Spiteful Summoner. In the worst case scenario, Spiteful Summoner will reveal Free from Amber and summon a Grand Archivist, which then proceeds to cast Free from Amber or Mind Control for free. When the card was nerfed, it was to the surprise of no one.
• Shudderwock didn't take long to become the biggest salt-maker in The Witchwood. He's a 9-mana 6/6 Shaman legendary whose Battlecry gains the effects of every Battlecry you've played that game. On its own, the card isn't too hated, but it managed to earn significant ire due to the Shudderwock OTK. By combining cards like Lifedrinker, Nightblade, Saronite Chain Gang, Grumble, Worldshaker, and Murmuring Elemental, Shudderwock straight up wins the game as soon as it hits the board. What happens is that Shudderwock will dupe itself however many times, send the copies back to the hand with their costs set to 1, and deal some damage to the opponent while restoring health to his hero. While the deck that runs this combo isn't very consistent, it earned much hatred due to the absurd amount of time it takes for the animations to finish, and when you're dropping Shudderwock after Shudderwock, it can take several minutes just for the turn to end. Plus, it's a non-interactive OTK - it almost goes without saying there would be outrage. All of these things combine to put losing to a Shudderwock deck pretty high up on the list of infuriating things that can happen to you in Hearthstone. A patch was eventually released that speeds up its Battlecry animations and capping its effect at 20 Battlecries, making it a little less painful to sit through a single Shudderwock without killing off the card completely. That wasn't the end of Shudderwock, though - if Shudderwock Shaman in the Decks section wasn't proof.
  • The deck also has a Wild counterpart based entirely around trolling the enemy, by spamming the Battlecries of Loatheb and Marin the Fox to make their spells too expensive to use and their board to crowded to play any minions. Again, infuriating, non-interactive, and about as consistent as Murloc Priest.
• Following Pogo-Hopper's mana cost reduction from 2 to 1, it's popularity spiked from pure meme to... meme that highrolls really hard. Sure it doesn't have the same self-fueling cycle as Jade Druid, but Rogues have access to cards such as Witchwood Piper, Lab Recruiter, Shadowstep and so on, that the point is practically moot. The scariest part is how the Hopper gets +2/+2 and that it is a Battlecry, meaning it works with Barista Lynchen and Spirit of the Shark. The latter in particular allows you to deploy Hoppers with disgusting amount of stats very early and seal the game. However, if the card doesn't come together, it's left a pile of inefficient, slow minions, and ultimately is simply playing vanilla stats without another win condition.
• The Boomsday Project has Giggling Inventor, a 5-mana Neutral 2/1 who spawns two Annoy-o-Trons when played. These bots themselves are 1/2 Mechs with Taunt and Divine Shield, creating a notoriously sticky wide board and opening up plenty of opportunities for Magnetic buffs. Without any outside assistance, the two Annoy-o-Trons can block a total of 4 attacks between them, making it very easy to stabilize unless you're too far behind on tempo. Giggling Inventor is so ubiquitous that players actually started running Blood Knight specifically to erase the Divine Shields off the bots if they want to efficiently work through the Taunt wall, and it eventually warranted a crippling nerf to seven mana.
• Prince Keleseth from Knights of the Frozen Throne is a 2/2 for 2 mana whose Battlecry gives all minions in your deck +1/+1 if you have no other 2-cost cards. Most of the hate aimed at the card revolves around how a game involving Keleseth basically boils down to whether the player can draw Keleseth in their opening hand, as decks built around his effect can easily snowball to victory if Keleseth is played on turn 2 (or even turn 1 if going second) or end up getting steamrolled if you can't draw him. It doesn't help that many decks are perfectly functional without 2-drops, making Keleseth a no-brainer inclusion for most aggressive decks that don't run Baku the Mooneater. Tempo Rogue was likely the most notorious user, due to the very real danger of the Rogue drawing Keleseth and a Shadowstep or two in their opening hand; a free 2/2 or 3/3 buff to every minion in your deck is enough to make just about any opponent concede on the spot.
• Explosive Runes, from Kobolds and Catacombs, is arguably the most hated Mage Secret in the game. It triggers when the opponent plays a minion, dealing up to 6 damage to that minion and spilling any overkill damage onto the opponent's face. Even setting aside the fact that it's a Fireball for one less mana, it's dreaded for having virtually no safe counterplay, as the damage is enough to kill medium-sized minions and soften up large minions for the Mage to kill next turn, while the spill damage makes it potentially extremely risky to sacrifice a small minion given how much burn damage Mage has. To top it off, you're not safe even if you throw a Divine Shield at it - Explosive Runes will still deal overkill damage if the shielded minion has less than 6 health.
• Duskbreaker, a 4 mana 3/3 Priest Dragon from K&C that deals 3 damage to all minions if you're holding a Dragon. It's hands down one of the most powerful anti-aggro tools available to Priest, and an absolute godsend to a class that's inherently weak to early-game pressure, letting you crush entire boards of weenies while leaving a 3/3 ready to trade with whatever the opponent plays next. Furthermore, as a Dragon, it can be Discovered from the effect of Netherspite Historian. This allows the Priest to have Duskbreaker handy more consistently at the right time, on top of serving as extra copies of its board clear. After the Raza nerf, this card, combined with other powerful dragons like Drakonid Operative and Cobalt Scalebane, is what kept Priest relevant, as Duskbreaker was extremely handy in crushing the Zerg Rush tactics of Aggro Paladin. Even after the Year of the Raven rotation, which took out a lot of Dragon Priest cards, many Priest decks still run a handful of Dragons just so they can use Duskbreaker.
• Master's Call is an incredible refueling card for Hunter. For 3 mana it lets you Discover and draw a minion in your deck - but if all three choices were Beasts, you instead draw all three. While that sounds like an RNG-heavy effect, you can negate it completely by building a deck that's all Beasts and spells. Hunters have access to the best Beasts in the game as well as high Beast synergy, so the downside is hardly a downside at all. What's more, the card has synergy with Dire Frenzy, drawing the copies created more reliably, as well as Zul'jin, who recasts your spells for even more value. It gives Hunter an insane aggressive backbone that can push into the late game, even without Deathstalker Rexxar.
• The Forest's Aid is an 8-mana Druid Twinspell that summons five Treants, and the new finisher for Token Druid. If not cleared right the hell away, the opponent can look forward to a near-death experience from Savage Roar if they're lucky. If you do clear it right away, it's not too big a deal, since the Druid has another one in hand and two more ready to go; very few decks have that much board clear, especially since the Druid will likely already have forced out a board clear or two earlier in the game with cards like Wispering Woods + Soul of the Forest.
• Omega Devastator is a 4-mana 4/5 Warrior Mech that deals 10 damage to a minion if played at 10 mana. This card singlehandedly invalidates any sort of late-game powerhouse played against a Warrior, since it's far easier to count the high-cost minions it doesn't instantly delete than the stuff it does. The Mech tag and solid body also give it a huge pile of boons: it probably has Rush from Dr. Boom, Mad Genius, letting it immediately finish off a wounded target or take a second minion down with it; it can be Discovered off Dr. Boom's Hero Power and Omega Assembly, letting the Warrior not worry about big minions ever again; and its cost is low enough that you can attach Zilliax to it for a big swing and heal that also leaves a huge Taunt behind or put up to two SN1P-SN4P on it for a big threat that's very hard to completely remove. This card contributed heavily to the dominance of Control Warrior and the eventual nerf to Dr. Boom.
• Corrupt the Waters single-handedly catapulted Shaman to the top of the meta on release. It only requires playing 6 Battlecry minions to complete, and the Hero Power it gives you lets you double every Battlecry effect played on that turn. You now have a Shaman that deals consistent direct face damage, make very efficient board wipes, summons a myriad of minions, and generates an overwhelming amount of cards and won't run out of steam for a very long time. In other words, the Shaman is now a true Jack of All Stats.
• Shaman's dominance was greatly helped by the other boogeyman in Uldum, Mogu Fleshshaper. It's a 3/4 Rush for 7 that reduces its cost by 1 for each minion in play on either side of the field, which more often than not allowed it to be cheated out for 0-2 mana given all of Quest Shaman's token-spamming capabilities for crazy early-game board control. What really drove the Fleshshaper over the top, though, was the Doom in the Tomb event, which brought Evolve back into Standard. Suddenly, Shamans everywhere were able to spontaneously generate multiple 4-drops backed by an 8-mana minion or two. On turn 4. That was when people started running Mutate to turn that 3/4 into an 8-drop. It got hit with a Blizzard style nerf by increasing its mana cost to 9, which while it makes it harder to play, also means it can evolve into better things. And when it is thought that the other classes can finally catch up, Boggspine Knuckles arrived and completely crushed any opposing resistance to the Evolve Shaman deck, allowing it to take over the meta before it was nerfed.
• Faceless Corruptor was a 5-mana 5/4 with Rush that transforms another friendly minion into a copy of itself. Just one 5/4 with Rush is already pretty good, but now imagine having two. What this card does is turn any kind of token minion into a sizable removal or threat and practically guarantees gaining board control when you play it, and to put icing on the cake, any hand buff effect will carry over to it, so that Embiggen or Galakrond, the Unbreakable is gonna make your tempo play even stronger. There was pretty much never a bad time to play this card, period. It got nerfed in barely over a week to have slightly less Attack to make trades a little less effective.
• Mana Cyclone is a 2-mana 2/2 Mage Elemental with a Battlecry that generates a random Mage spell for each spell you played this turn. As if being a 2-mana pseudo-Lyra isn't enough, this card not only allows the Mage to keep their hand count for cards like Mountain Giant and Twilight Drake as well as allowing them to use their spells without worrying about running out of resources, it can be combo'd with Elemental Evocation for a disgusting 0-mana and a free extra spell, basically making it Babbling Book on steroids. And that's before mentioning the possibility of high-rolling from this card, allowing the Mage to potentially generate extra Flamestrikes and Blizzards to nuke the board, more Freeze effects to further stall out the game, or another copy of Conjurer's Calling to make the opponent cry. Even worse, Cyclone has insane synergy with Quest Mage in Wild. Through a combination of Open the Waygate, Sorcerer's Apprentice, Flamewaker, Elemental Evocation, and a bunch of cheap spells, Mages can effectively clear out the board, deal a good chunk of face damage, and get enough resources to complete their quest, all in one fell swoop.
• Darkest Hour is a card that's hated in both Standard and Wild, but for entirely opposite reasons. In the Year of the Dragon Standard format, Darkest Hour is unplayable, as its mana cost of 6 makes it glacially slow when used for what is ostensibly its intended purpose (destroying mass-summoned Imp tokens to cheat out big minions), as it requires you to either hold onto it until turn 9 or 10 to play it with the Imp generators, at which point the opponent will have either beaten you into the dirt or gotten their own heavy-hitters ready, or hope that your opponent somehow leaves your board full of 1/1s alive, which requires your opponent to be either stupid or grossly incompetent. Furthermore, Warlock's Standard card set in that particular year doesn't have many good powerhouses to begin with. But in Wild, it's borderline overpowered due to the existence of Bloodbloom, which effectively cuts its mana cost down by 4 and allows the Warlock to threaten a flood of Doomguards, Voidlords, Jumbo Imps, and the occasional Mal'Ganis starting from turn 5. Very few decks are equipped to deal with such an overwhelming early-game advantage, and even if they do weather the onslaught, the Warlock usually has Bloodreaver Gul'dan in reserve to resurrect at least some of those minions.
• When people think unfun Darkmoon Faire cards, their first thought is usually Tickatus. He's a 6 mana 8/8 Demon for Warlock, with the downside of burning five cards from the top of your deck. However, if you Corrupt him, he instead burns five cards from the opponent's deck. Not only is he a 6 mana 8/8 with an upside, he propels the opponent towards fatigue and forces them to watch all their value cards disappear one after another. Plus, you can play the new Y'Shaarj for another copy, or even Felosophy if you want for even more copies. Tickatus is actually balanced - it's surprisingly hard to Corrupt a 6-cost card (and decks that manipulate his cost are gimmicky at best), and it does nothing against aggro. Control Warlock wasn't even a good deck in both that set and the set after it, Forged in the Barrens. It's just that when he does get played either a in Control mirror or against a player that's either inexperienced or playing unoptimally, he really makes an impact.
• Bladed Lady is a 6 mana 6/6 Demon Hunter minion with Rush. Not horrendous as just that, it also has the upside where it costs 1 mana if your hero has 6 or more attack. This condition is comically easy for Demon Hunters, especially when you factor in weapons. A Marrowslicer by itself is 2/3s of the way there. If combined with Soulshard Lapidary, all it takes is a hero power. This gives Demon Hunters yet another way to clear away a minion on the board while also putting an assload of stats in play and delivering a big burst of damage to the face, all on a mana curve aggresive Soul Fragment decks can afford.
• Il'gynoth is a DH legendary that converts all of their Lifesteal into damage to the enemy hero. This is a card that gives a class with massive burn a way to turn their useless healing into even more burn. Il'gynoth has Lifesteal naturally, meaning you take damage just trying to trade with it - which is icing since you should be celebrating if this thing hits the board and you're still alive. It's grossest with Aldrachi Warblades, which lets the Demon Hunter literally double their hero's damage (which can easily be over 15 with a good draw), and that's not even getting into Mo'arg Artificer shenanigans, allowing OTKs with two spells. A game-ending combo card is just another in a list of this class' bloated toolbox. It got so bad that, by the time of United in Stormwind expansion, it received a brutal nerf by bumping its mana cost by 2, making it much harder to combo for a OTK.
• Hey, remember Mysterious Challenger? Why not do that again, except this time make it a 2-mana weapon? That's Sword of the Fallen in a nutshell, and just like Mysterious Challenger, it's mind-boggling that this card got printed, especially since Blizzard had hindsight this time. Sure, it's not a body on the board and the weapon only has one attack, but those mean little when you can "draw" up to four mana's worth of secrets^note Originally six before the nerf to its durability; this led to situations where you somehow had to act into four or five Paladin secrets by turn four from your deck and still have mana handy to play other cards. And boy, oh boy, those secrets- there may be a smaller pool thanks to the rotation and the new Core set, but the selection on offer's pretty strong: there's the returning Avenge and Noble Sacrifice, as well as Reckoning, added via the Core set, but the real kickers are Oh My Yogg! from Madness at the Darkmoon Faire, which most of the time is akin to a 1-mana Counterspell, and Galloping Savior from Forged in the Barrens, which functions like the Hunter secret Rat Trap... except it's better, because it costs less, the minion it summons has taunt, making it almost impossible to ignore, and it synergizes very well with Paladin's other secrets. As if all that wasn't enough, Barrens also added more cards that synergized with either having secrets active or having your secrets triggered, with turn 2 Sword into turn 3 Northwatch Commander being a very common sight. Put simply, this is the card that put Secret Paladin back on the map, and is so good other Paladins restructured their decks to include some kind of secret package. Not even nerfing its durability made a serious dent in its play rate- every Standard Paladin deck worth its salt ran this card for a good while, even if the deck itself wasn't centered around secrets at all. History Repeats, it seems.
• The Deadmines miniset added a lot of pirates to the game, but quite possibly the most powerful- and most salt-inducing- is Mr. Smite. He's a 6/5 Legendary neutral Pirate for 6 that gives all of your pirates Charge... and they do mean ALL of your pirates, which means that Mr. Smite can essentially act as a beefier Leeroy Jenkins with no downside attached. While Leeroy does still cost 1 mana less, Smite's beefier health total makes him way more flexible in case he can't kill you the turn he's played. He's also a really good card in Questline Warrior decks (see Raid the Docks below), whether he's played after The Juggernaut's summoned a board full of pirates, allowing the Warrior to play Smite and push for lethal, or if the Warrior highrolls and The Juggernaut summons him for free.
• When it was announced that United in Stormwind would be bringing Quests back in the form of Questlines- essentially three Quests in one- people were excited! Then the expansion actually released, and that opinion quickly turned around once it was discovered that they made even the Un'Goro Quests look like child's play by comparison. While not all of the Questlines proved to be problematic, all of them share a common issue- the final reward is a deliberately over-statted 5-mana 7/7 minion with a (debatably, in some cases) powerful Battlecry effect and, in the case of the Druid and Priest Questlines, Taunt. While both Standard and Wild have ways to cause someone to lose the final Questline reward, most players are keen enough to simply wait until they can finish the Questline and play the reward on the same turn, assuming they haven't already finished the Questline by turn 5 or otherwise outraced the opponent. Outside of that, though, a select few Questlines are deliverers of ridiculous amounts of salt, sometimes depending on the format:
  • The Demon Seed/Blightborn Tamsin. See Questline Warlock in the decks section above.
  • The Shaman Questline, Command the Elements, and its reward, Stormcaller Bru'kan, whose Battlecry causes all of your spells to cast twice for the rest of the game. Stormcaller's effect is powerful as it is, but it's the Questline itself that really takes the cake- completing Command the Elements requires you to deliberately Overload, which should mean that players wouldn't have a problem fighting back, but there's a couple snags. First, Shaman's selection of Overload cards have tools for just about any situation you get in, including control tools (like Perpetual Flame) and cards that generate value (like Guidance). Second, completing the first two steps of the Questline reward you by unlocking your Overloaded crystals and putting a 3/3 Taunt on the board, helping the Shaman stall. Finally, Stormwind introduced the spell Charged Call, which summons a random minion with a cost equivalent to how many Overload cards you've played, which is great for stalling while you're completing the Questline and works really well as a finisher of sorts after you've played Stormcaller. All this combined causes Command the Elements to do something that probably shouldn't have been done- take something that's supposed to be a class' weakness, and instead make it a powerful tool that can be used to dominate the game. Blizzard eventually realized this too, and took action by nerfing both the Questline itself and Perpetual Flame, the archetype's most efficient board control tool.
  • In Wild, there's the Warrior Questline, Raid the Docks, and its reward, Cap'n Rokara, whose Battlecry summons The Juggernaut, a permanent minion that acts as a perpetual value engine, summoning a random pirate, equipping a random Warrior weapon, and hitting two random enemies for two damage, all at the start of your turn. While this pirate-reliant Questline was too slow for Standard upon release, in Wild, where Pirate Warrior is a staple archetype, Raid the Docks found a perfect home, turning what was originally a meta-reliant aggressive deck that had problems with running out of resources into a powerful midrange deck with weapon draw and never-ending late-game pressure. Even before the nerfs to Questline Warlock, the Raid the Docks-powered Pirate Warrior was considered very strong against non-Warlock decks, and the banning of The Demon Seed merely confirmed those suspicions. Once Standard had more Pirates added to it, in particular Mr. Smite, Questline Warrior became powerful in that format as well, and continues to perform well in the Year of the Hydra.
  • The same largely holds true for the Hunter Questline, Defend the Dwarven District. While generally seen as only "okay" in Standard, in Wild, an Odd deck running the Questline proved to be powerful, and was even able to kind of hold its own against the onslaught of Warlocks. This Questline's rewards, gained by dealing damage with spells, all center on Hunter's Hero Power: the first allows it to target minions, the second makes it free to use, and the Battlecry of the final reward, Tavish, Master Marksman, makes it refresh after you cast a spell for the rest of the game, like if Auctionmaster Beardo's effect was permanently active. Comparisons to the infamous Raza/Shadowreaper Anduin combo popped up not long after the Questline was revealed, and when it saw play, Odd Questline Hunter is indeed similar, centering on using spells to control the board, hit the enemy face, and quickly complete the Questline so Tavish's effect can be used to close out the game. These comparisons to Razakus Priest did prove to be at least somewhat warranted post-Demon Seed ban, and one of the deck's key spells, the Twinspell Rapid Fire, eventually had its mana cost bumped so it couldn't be played in Odd decks, killing this version of Questline Hunter. The Questline does continue to see a lot of play in Wild, though, as a non-Odd Questline Hunter deck eventually rose to prominence, proving that the Questline doesn't need the Odd Hunter hero power to be strong.
• Remember Call to Arms? You know, quite possibly the most overpowered board flooding tool in the game? Why don't we make a card like that again? Drek'Thar, initially only given out to players who chose the Horde side of the Fractured in Alterac Valley faction war, is essentially a slightly-weaker Call to Arms with a 4/4 body attached, even having the exact same mana cost as Call to Arms. He only summons two minions, and even then he can only do so if every other minion in your deck costs 3 or less (which is an improvement over Call to Arms, which was limited to minions costing 2 or less), but if you've built a deck around his effect it doesn't matter, and there's also the other big thing setting Drek'Thar apart from Call to Arms- he's a neutral card, meaning every class has access to him, leading to a lot of experimentation, especially in Wild. What resulted was that a couple OTK decks suddenly got way more consistent, namely Flamewaker/Sorcerer's Apprentice combos in Mage and Spirit of the Frog-powered spell chains in Shaman, leading to an alarming increase in incredibly short, uninteractive games that usually ended by turn 5 or 6. Drek'Thar's effect alone was upsetting enough, but the fact that not everyone had access to him like other free expansion Legendaries- especially when the alternative option, Vanndar Stormpike, wound up being fairly underwhelming by comparison- only served to make players hate him even more. And then after the Year of the Hydra rotation occurred and the year's first balance patch hit, Drek'Thar unexpectedly became the lynchpin card for the Standard versions of Aggro Demon Hunter and, most surprisingly, Questline Hunter. His power level in these decks is incredibly noticeable, with him almost always summoning minions that your opponent has to deal with to prevent you from snowballing, and after Kazakusan's nerf caused Ramp Druid to sink in power, the Drek'Thar variants of these decks took its place as the most powerful, despised decks on ladder. What's worse, at least for Blizzard, is that a Diamond version of Drek'Thar had been made available for real money in the shop around when Voyage to the Sunken City launched, making nerfing him and then refunding people a very, very dicey decision. Despite that, Drek'Thar eventually got nerfed in a later update, by changing his battlecry to only summon one minion as opposed to two.
• Out of all of the Freeze Shaman support that was released in Fractured in Alterac Valley, none gained as much infamy as Snowfall Guardian. It's a 5-mana (later nerfed to 6) 3/3 Elemental that freezes all minions on the field and gives it +1/+1 for each minion frozen. While this is a very powerful effect on its own, able to put any Zerg Rush on ice while giving you a massive body on board, the main problem is when it was printed, as it was created directly after two cards that completely broke it: Bolner Hammerbeak and Brilliant Macaw, allowing you to reuse the Battlecry to not only freeze the entire board again, but it allows you to create even more powerful bodies on field, free to ram directly into your enemies' face with nothing short of a board clear (which are rather rare in the Year of the Gryphon and Hydra). Once it was announced that it would be nerfed to remove the stat buff (while gaining +2/+2 in base stats) no one was sad to let it go.
• When it was first released, Stealer of Souls was generally a unremarkable card on its own right, and not particularly good in Standard, being more of a Awesome, but Impractical card that required a setup that's not really feasible. Unfortunately, the card wound up being absolutely broken in Wild. Its effect to make each card you draw cost HP can be negated and abused with a deck that summons the mighty Mal'ganis to be immune to damage or a Violet Illusionist for same effect, several draws like Plot Twist, a bunch of high damage cards, and the result is a extremely overpowered deck that can kill your opponent in one turn by turn 3-5. The deck proved to be so dominant and frustrating to play against in Wild, that Blizzard, who otherwise allows any card to exist in wild unchanged in 99% of cases, strictly forbid the card from being used in any wild decks starting the week of June 14 2021.
  • Remember how Stealer was generally unremarkable in Standard? Well, utilizing the Warlock Questline The Demon Seed (see the entry for Questline Warlock above, under decks), the weapon Runed Mythril Rod, and Standard Warlock's card draw tools (Hero Power, Backfire, and Hand of Gul'dan), Stealer of Souls proved to be just as irritating there as it was in Wild. Long story short, using Stealer in tandem with these tools would allow Warlock to draw lots of cards, which would then cost health instead of mana, while at the same time triggering Rod's discount effect to make playing these cards less painful. Playing the converted cards with the Questline up allows you to quickly finish it and add Blightborn Tamsin to your hand, then use her effect to play more converted cards to directly deal damage to your opponent's face. The only major weakness someone playing this deck competently would have is the amount of time lost to the animations of Stealer and Rod's effects triggering, so Stealer was directly nerfed this time, and thus this particular version of Questline Warlock died. It's worth noting that, even with this nerf, the card was not unbanned in Wild... not that the Warlocks of that format really needed Stealer at that time, anyway.
• Theotar, the Mad Duke just might be the most hated disruption card ever printed. He was originally a 4-mana 3/3 neutral Legendary from Murder at Castle Nathria that lets his owner Discover a card from both player's hands, then swaps them. Theotar obviously won't always hit, but when he does, it's basically guaranteed to be big. Hero Cards, Legendaries, combo pieces — you name it, he can steal it and give you a card of their choosing, which'll almost always be something that you can't really use. Sure, cards like Dirty Rat and Mutanus do more-or-less the same thing, but the difference with Theotar is that not only is the card he swipes not dragged into or removed from play, meaning that your opponent is capable of using your own win condition against you, but they get to pick what card to take, nearly guaranteeing they'll take a card that's at least good. And keep in mind, he can come down as early as turn 3 with the coin handy, meaning that unless you don't have a secondary win condition and/or your key piece(s) are still in your deck, an early Theotar might just decide the game then and there. Finally, if just one stolen card wasn't enough, Brann was also returned to Standard the same year, meaning double the thievery if him and Theotar come down on the same turn. All this has meant that Theotar has been a staple card in nearly every deck since the launch of Castle Nathria, which only serves to not only make the odds of Theotar stealing himself, then that Theotar dropping later and stealing another card more common, but just makes him even more despised than he already would've been. He was eventually nerfed to 5 mana, but Blizzard has already noted that, should this bump not be enough to significantly lower his playrate, they will be looking at making more changes as soon as possible, a clear sign of just how much they don't want his effect to be meta-defining. And "soon as possible" they did, as only a few weeks later, he was further nerfed into a 6-mana 4/4.

Other

• For Arena, there's Vicious Fledgling, a 3 mana 3/3 from Journey to Un'Goro that Adapts whenever it hits the enemy hero. One of the Adapt options happens to be Windfury, meaning it can attack again in the same turn to get another Adaption. What should have been a sluggish snowball card ended up being a "remove or die" ultimatum, and the fact that it comes out on turn 3 means that there are less removal options to deal with it in the already removal starved Arena format. To top it off, it's Neutral, meaning any class can use it if they get lucky in their drafts. Many players are actually demanding that this card be removed from Arena because of how good it is. Blizzard responded with a patch that didn't remove Fledgling from Arena, but at least made the chance of the player getting it much lower, making Fledgling much less ubiquitous in the format. However, it still proved so problematic when it DID show up that they eventually just caved in and banned it from Arena altogether.
• Most of the Treasure cards for the Duels format has been rebalanced to not make them completely game-breaking (although they're still very strong), but one card that completely flew off the radar was Robes of Gaudiness. Having the penalty of being only able to play two cards per turn wasn't much of a downside when you can tempo out high-cost cards several turns earlier than your opponents. High wins in Duels was pretty much dominated by control Priest and Warrior, where the Robes basically nullify their weakness, and especially Paladins where Turalyon's Hero Power and signature Treasure card turns him into a nightmarish combination of Resurrect Priest and Recruit Warrior. Its brokenness was discovered extremely early, and Robes of Gaudiness lasted two entire days in the format before becoming undraftable.
• Remember Robes of Gaudiness in duels and how much it broke the duels meta? Well, it seems Blizzard cleary didn't, because say hello to Vanndar Stormpike, one of the two new neutral heroes in Duels. One of his hero powers ( Battle Tactics) was essentially Robes of Gaudiness but ON CRACK and no drawbacks, as it essentially reduced the cost of neutral minions in your hand by 2 if they costed 4 or more. To add insult to the injury, he is a neutral hero, meaning you can literally combine the card pools of the absolutely unholy trinity of Resurrect Priest, Recruit Warrior and big Paladin to make a Hero who could easly throw 2 mana Lich King, Ysera, Alextrasza and Ragnaros as early as turn 5^note In reality, assuming the Vann player starts second, they can get the first two big minions on turn 4 and it just snowballs from there. and resurrecting them if your opponent somehow got rid of them. It was so overpowered that people in the 8-11 wins range consisted almost exclusively of Vann players, and it was eventually given a brutal nerf by changing the hero power to only decrease the cost of 2 random neutral minions in your hand instead of every single one of them.
• Within hours of its release, Groovy Cat completely shattered the duels metagame. The cat is a 2 mana 2/1 Druid minion with Battlecry and Deathrattle to give your Hero Power an extra +1 Attack. Sound innocent enough on the regular Druid Hero Power, but became extremely broken when combined with Drek'Thar newly buffed Hero Power Warmaster's Frenzy that deal 1 damage to all minions and gain +1 Attack for each minion that the Hero Power Honorable Killed. Suddenly, with just 1 Groovy Cat, the Hero Power can wipe out a full board of 1 Health minion and +18 burst damage. And that is not mentioning the shenanigans that can caused with multiple copies of Groovy Cats that can be obtained. And unlike Elwynn Boar Brann, this strategy is extremely fast and consistent because Groovy Cat has ways be tutored from the expansion pool with Flower Child - a 1 mana 1/1 that allow the player to draw a Beast as well not having to pay too much mana to play weak Tempo-losing Discover effects. All of this extreme consistency and aggression allow Groovy Cat Drek'Thar to dominate the higher win bracket in Duels. Groovy Cat was soon banned from Duels right after.
• Exclusively for Twist's New Age, there's Drakefire Amulet, which exploits the somewhat limited card pool to its fullest. It's a 10-mana Fire spell with Tradeable that Discovers two Dragons to summon… but since Neutral cards are banned, this leads to the amulet exclusively summoning Haleh, Matron Protectorate, a 9-mana 4/12 that deals 4 damage randomly split across all enemies every time you cast a spell, and since you summon two of them, that's 8 damage for every spell cast, which adds up insanely quickly thanks to Mage's quick and cheap spell slinging. This resulted in Refreshing Spring Water getting banned to hopefully curb the deck's power level.

Battlegrounds

Heroes

• Brann Bronzebeard was an extremely problematic hero for Blizzard to balance, as evidenced by his 3 different incarnation. His first Hero Power was a passive that gave +1/+1 to a random minion whenever you played a Battlecry minion. Considering the game mode involves using a bunch of Battlecry minions to buff up and stack stats, Brann is basically rewarding you for playing the game. The worst that can happen is the buff hits the minion you just played that you intend to sell. It's useful in the early game, useful in the mid game, and useful in the late game, and picking him was practically a guaranteed top 4 finish, especially considering he was around when Murloc builds were the most popular build, which make more use out of Battlecry minions than other builds. He got the axe eventually, becoming the first hero booted from Battlegrounds for being too good. He'd make a return months later, but now his new Hero Power refreshes the Tavern with Battlecry minions instead, making him a much worse hero, going from one of the most reliable heroes to one of the least since you are absolutely not guaranteed to get anything you would want after the removal of Nightmare Amalgam from the game to absorb early game buffs. This incarnation was quickly shelved and he return with a new Hero Power: After playing 5 Battlecry minion, he will now give you the minion version of himself. This allowed him to be decent, if niche and tribe dependent hero that finally saw balanced and healthy play and win rate.
• After Brann's domination of Battlegrounds, Arch-Villain Rafaam took his place as the top-tier hero. His Hero Power cost 1 Gold and allow him to obtain a plain (non-Golden, no buff) copy of the first enemy minion that die in combat. Not only is it basically a complete Power Creep of Gallywix Hero Power (since you can just sell the undesirable minion), you can obtain very powerful build defining minions in the mid game as well as helping significantly with getting copies for triples. And that not mention the mind game it forced your opponent to play if they don't want their best minions to be copied. Rafaam's Hero Power combines early-game power, economy advantage, card generation, and late-game utility into one button for 1 Gold, setting the gold standard for top-tier heroes.
• Tirion Fordring has a pretty unique Hero Power, which gives all his tribeless minions +1/+1 for 1 Gold. Given how useless tribeless minions have historically been, many people didn't realize just how powerful he was on release. Lower tier cards like Selfless Hero and Righteous Defender, which are solid minions held back by their lack of opportunities to buff, were made very powerful in the early game while also being able to scale well with Tirion's very cost-effective buff, making Tirion one of the best early to mid-game heroes in Battlegrounds. Most tribeless minions are also hardly favored by other heroes, which meant Tirion has a better chance of rolling for minions that he wants. Even outside of purely tribeless builds, his Hero Power buffs core tribeless minions like Soul Juggler and Baron Rivendare to make them much harder to snipe and let them pull some weight of their own in combat. It only took a few days to figure out that Tirion's unique features and very cost-efficient Hero Power make him one of the best heroes in the game, capable of reliably finishing in the top 4. His viability took a big hit in the Dragon patch that removed bunch of Tier 3 and 4 tribeless minions and addition of Unstable Ghoul that counter his Divine Shield-reliant strategy, making him significantly weaker in the midgame if he didn't manage to roll into Bolvar. Despite his lowered consistency, he was removed from the game shortly after.
• Deathwing's Hero Power may not seem all that great considering it's double-edged, but it's what makes him ridiculously powerful in the early game. Giving +3 Attack to everything, including tokens, lets him trade evenly with most minions in the first few of the game, allowing him to save Health and tier up early safely. All he needs is some token-spawning or sticky minions and his early game is pretty much set, and is pretty much undefeatable when he gets a Rat Pack or two. Sure, you could try to play around him by doing the same, but that only accounts for one of seven other heroes to counter. Other players have to scramble to get an early Rat Pack just to counter Deathwing, and if he faces anyone that doesn't have it, it's an easy rank up to 6 for him. Deathwing rose up in ranks very quickly just for how powerful this strategy is, and it was no surprise his Hero Power was nerfed from +3 Attack to +2 Attack. Over time, however, power creep has been particulary unkind to deathwing, and he has been a hero with a weak performance as a result of other tribes and heroes getting stronger and easly working around the increased attack and token spawns. As a result, the nerf was reverted in the 24.0.3 update and his hero power is now, once again, increasing all minion's attack by +3.
• Jandice Barov's Hero Power swaps a non-Golden minion with a random minion in the Tavern. This can be used to replace token minions with something stronger early game, or reuse a minion's Battlecry by buying it again. When first revealed, Jandice was speculated to be underpowered. Once people started playing her, they realized how insanely powerful she was with Pogo-Hoppers. She didn't have to worry about being unable to roll Pogo-Hoppers since she's guaranteed to trigger its Battlecry at least once per turn by swapping it, making her far more reliable than other heroes good with Pogo-Hopper. Not only that, she can also use it to stack its own Battlecry on itself continously, which lets her have massive Pogo-Hopper really early in the game. Her synergy with Pogo-Hoppers are so strong that she climbed to the top of the tier list solely from this reason. Any game where Mechs aren't banned, she's guaranteed to dominate. Jandice escaped the nerf bat, but only because Pogo-Hoppers were removed solely because of her.
• Ragnaros after his months of absence may be the most overpowered Battlegrounds hero ever to exist. His new Hero Power is a passive that requires him to kill 20 minions, but once he does that he gives the left and right-most minion +4/+4 every turn for free. Even though it's a "slow" Hero Power, the amount of stats it gives is so huge that on average it's enough to make him come back from even a crappy build and catch up. In fact, 20 kills isn't even that much to begin with, and on average it takes about 7-8 turns for him to activate it, a turn or two faster if he's facing any token-spamming builds. Unless Ragnaros had a horribly unlucky start, finishing on Top 4 was a breeze, and the stats don't lie. His highest average ranking is a record-breaking 2.9. To put that into perspective, Jandice Barov, the second strongest hero by a wide margin, had an average of 3.5 at her peak. Even after getting significant nerfed, Ragnaros still managed to stay in the top tiers.
• Before the mode was refreshed and pushed out of "Early Access" in August of 2021, Ysera was considered a consistent, but only decently strong hero, due in large part to the Dragon tribe being a tad on the weak side. Then that refresh happened, and suddenly Ysera could very consistently acquire possibly the most overpowered scaling combo in Battlegrounds: Tarecgosa+Prized Promo-Drake. They have their own section below, but to summarize: even if neither are Golden, a board full of Dragons still means that Promo-Drake will give a +7/+7 buff, which thanks to Tarecgosa's effect, is permanent. It only gets crazier if you have multiples and/or Golden copies, which can lead to you having to deal with one or more nigh-unbeatable Tarecgosas, typically also with Divine Shield thanks to Selfless Hero or, more consistently, Nadina the Red. Now, any Ysera worth their salt will be looking to fast-track to Tiers 3 and 4 to get Tarecgosa and Promo-Drake online as fast as humanly possible, and if they do? Good luck trying to counter them, since that refresh also made countering high-statted minions with Poison way less consistent. Because of this combo, she was slapped with several nerfs: First the direct nerf that her Hero Power itself that does not allow her to get another Dragon if she doesn't buy at least 2 minions before freezing, making her hunt for triples much less consistent. Second is the indirect nerf by making both Dragon tier 4, return Ysera to underwhelming again. However, the underwhelming performance of Dragon as a whole has led to several buffs and minion adjustment that has indirectly led to Ysera becoming extremely powerful again: The return of Tarecgosa to Tier 3, the addition of the Tier 2 Nether Drake allow it to combo with Whelp Smuggler if Ysera stay at Tier 2 and the addition of the Tier 3 Amber Guardian allow Tarecgosa to have Divine Shield early if she high-rolled.
• Diablo was introduced as a limited-time "for fun" hero to shake up the meta, but in practice he ended up being the single most universally despised hero in Battlegrounds. The gimmick is that Diablo is a "raid boss" of sorts - every four turns, every person in the lobby fought Diablo. If they killed Diablo's special minion during the boss phase, they would get a loot card that would give them a bonus in the next combat. The problem is what happens when the minion survives: Diablo himself would get two loot cards, and he could do this for each person in the lobby. Essentially, if Diablo highrolled, he highrolled hard, gaining an overwhelming advantage over everybody else in an extremely short time, and because of how the boss phase works, he could easily deal massive damage to every person in the lobby in one fell swoop, speeding up games dramatically. Not only that, but Diablo received many complaints of being terribly boring to actually play, since you can't see or interact with six of the seven players you are supposedly fighting in the boss phase, and the fact that he was guaranteed to appear as a choice for at least one person in the lobby meant that he made most games feel the same. The hate against Diablo was so intense that people would consciously choose not to pick him despite his high winrate, and his eventual removal was met with much rejoicing. He would, however, make a comeback for a week in June 2022 to promote the open beta for Diablo Immortal- albeit with nerfs to his treasures- indicating that he'll be sticking around as an annoyance that rears its ugly head every now and then.
• Ini Stormcoil was introduced with the Voyage to the Sunken City expansion, and took the Battlegrounds meta by storm. Her hero power, Mechgiver, added a random mech to your hand for every 9 minions that died during combat, along Sub Scrubber, a tier 2 buddy that was originally a 4/4 that gained +2/+2 whenever you played a mech. Ini gaining free mechas would be good enough for a early-to-mid-game hero to shine, but her buddy was a power creeped version of the removed minion Junkbot^note whose scaling being very limited due to only happening in combats and being obtained way late in the game drastically reduced its usefulness, which she obtained fairly early and could easly carry her to the top 4 spots due to its strong synergy with mechs and her hero power.As a result, her buddy got a emergency nerf a mere three days after her debut, bumping her buddy to tier 4 and thus drastically increasing the amount of turns needed to obtain it. Even that wasn't enough to curb Stormcoil's power, as she remained a consistent top tier hero despite the first nerf, so another nerf arrived soon after, which increased the amount of minions needed to trigger Mechgiver(12 deaths, up from 9).
• For some heroes, a single balance change has had such a huge impact on a hero that their placement in the tier list did a complete 180:
  • When first released, Millificent Manastorm had a Hero Power that gave all Mechs in Bob's Tavern +1/+1. What started as simple Character Select Forcing ended up working a little too well, since her Hero Power was extremely powerful in the early game, buffing the Glass Cannon Mechs with just enough Health for them to survive and win most battles (most notably preventing an un-buffed Cobalt Guardian from being sniped in one shot by Soul Juggler). And that's before getting into triples means that she essentially gave the Mech +3/+3 for free. This has shot her into undoubtedly the best forced tribal synergy hero. She was taken out of rotation and then given a massive nerf to only give the Mechs +1 Attack, essentially killing her pick rate. When it got buffed to +2 Attack, she performed a little better, but was about only a little better than the other tribe based heroes (read: not much). Her Hero Power was reverted to +1/+1 to catch up with the times, and she went back to being a decently strong hero.
  • Millhouse Manastorm was scrutinized immediately when he was first released. Sure, his hero power lets you buy minions for only 2 coins, but he also only started with 2 gold (meaning he needs to sell a minion to upgrade on turn 2) and he also needs 2 coins to refresh, making him way more reliant on RNG to actually get a lineup that lets him tackle the late game. His biggest problem was his incredibly awkward curve from starting with 1 less gold, which made it hard for him to keep up in tavern tiers. He had one of the lowest average placement across all regions, so he was buffed to start with 3 gold like others. This change single-handedly shot him up from one of the worst hero in the game to one of the best, suddenly giving him an overwhelming powerful early game that lets him rank up to higher tiers safely to fully abuse his hero power. He got nerfed, but instead of reverting the buff he got changed to increase the cost of tiering up by 1, which preserved his early game power but made him more difficult to scale.
  • Maiev Shadowsong has a Hero Power that's comparable to Yogg-Saron's, one of the best early game hero powers in the game. For 1 gold, she makes a minion dormant, and 2 turns later she buys that minion and gives it a +1/+1. While the effect is delayed, for 1 gold it sounds like a steal. There's just one major problem: the dormant minions take up a slot in the tavern. Each turn while you keep a minion dormant, you're rerolling one or even two minions less, which hurts even more in the early game because there's less minions in the tavern in the lower tiers, giving Maiev a weakness awfully similar as Millhouse but without his aggressive buying power. Maiev was imprisoned to the lowest points of the tier list because of this, and as soon as her Hero Power got changed to not take up a tavern slot, she immediately catapulted up to the upper side of tier list, at a rate second to Millhouse when he was buffed. She was given a slap on the wrist nerf to only give +1 Attack, which made her early game a little bit weaker but still a top tier hero. Blizzard seems to agree. They first remove her from the game at the start of the Forged in the Barrens launch patch and then return her back to the hero pool with an absolutely brutal nerf that force her to wait for 3 turns instead of 2. This plummeted her win rate to a bottom tier hero overnight, so much so that she has to be buffed to be given +2/+2 later on and she still never got back to her former glory. Indeed, as better heroes and faster games arrived to Battlegrounds, her winrate kept plummeting until the devs finally decided to change her hero power in early December 2023 back to her initial version: now the minion is added to her hand in a locked state then unlocks it 2 turns later to freely use, but doesn't get any stat buff anymore.
  • The Lich King's Hero Power gives a minion Reborn for one turn, and although this doesn't sound like a bad Hero Power, he has had one of the lowest average rating in the game for a very long time. Spending 1 Gold per turn to make a minion last one or two extra hits for a single battle wasn't as good as pure permanent stat buffs, and while it's quite strong with a good Deathrattle minion, having to choose between losing 1 Gold per turn for a temporary power boost or saving 1 Gold and have no hero power meant he struggled to reach the late game. It's usage was even more limited when it originally only targeted your right-most minion, but even when his Hero Power was buffed to be targetable his slightly better winrate didn't last. Then his Hero Power was buffed to cost 0 Gold, and this made his Hero Power not only absurdly strong in the early game, but pretty much in every phase, and he became one of the strongest heroes in the game, having almost a cinematic parallel as Maiev. This change conveniently also came with Beast tribe buffs, where the Lich King took great advantage of their new power.
  • Captain Hooktusk was added in the Pirate patch and instantly took over the game. Her Hero Power is a 0-cost Hero Power that removed a friendly minion and Discover one from the lower tier. This is not only a blatant Power Creep over Sylvanas Hero Power since a minion of your choice (even if weaker) is way more impactful than a +2/+2, but the true hatred of the player for Hooktusk comes from the abuse of her repeatedly buying and removing Tier 1 minions in order to fish for very cheap Golden minions, allowing her to secure a very strong early game. And that also not mentioning the fact that she is one of the best heroes in the game for triple up and buffing Rabid Saurolisk, one of the best builds in the game at the time, due to the nature of her Hero Power allow her to cycle low tier Deathrattle minions like Selfless Hero and Mecharoo for free and because Saurolisk was a tier 1 minion and thus allowing her to stabilize her endgame strategy much more early than the other heroes. The nerf of Saurolisk to tier 2 has taken her down a notch compared to the other heroes, but she can still just easily taken over the game if Demon is in the tribe rotation as Wrath Weaver is another excellent target for her to cycle into. Adding all of that combine with insane high roll potential into a Goldgrubber that can grow out of control due to how easy for her to get Golden minion, Hooktusk has the highest win rate in the game. Her Hero Power got nerfed to give a random minion instead of Discovering one, which kicked her far down the tier list and plummeting into low-bottom tier territory. Blizzard tried partially reverting her back to her original incarnation in November 5th 2020 by letting her Discover minions again but raising the cost to 1 Gold, and it actually made her worse. She was eventually reverted back to her former glory by the Forged in the Barrens, with a slap in the wrist nerf that only allow her to choose between 2 minions.
  • Captain Eudora was the other hero who anchored herself to the top of the tier list. Her Hero Power lets you dig for 1 Gold each turn, and after the 4th dig, you get a random Golden minion. Despite being slow, the investment and risk was not very high compared to other high roll heroes, and unlike Reno, this was a minion you get in your hand, which means you also get a Triple Reward spell after playing it, giving you a nice tempo boost along with the reward. This lets her get core high tier minions fairly quickly, high roll potential with little downsides if the Golden minion is decent, and at the very least lets her scale a Goldgrubber quicker. Eudora overtook Rafaam, Kael'thas, and Nozdormu as the #1 generic high-tier, low-risk hero very quickly and stood as the undesputed #1 hero post-Hooktusk nerf until she received the eventual nerf. Once her Hero Power took one more turn to get a Golden minion however, her average rating plummeted, even further than Hooktusk ever did.
  • Queen Wagtoggle was another hero that had an absolutely terrible hero power: for 1 coin, she gave a beast, mech, demon, and murloc a measly +1 Health. She was only just slightly better than Pyramad by the virtue of having better gold-to-stats ratio, and it was back when Menagerie builds were popular (even if there were better hero options for it). After some balance changes that nerfed Menagerie builds significantly, she fell down a few stories high from the tier list into the bottom. Her Hero Power got buffed from +1 Health to +2 Attack, which made her less terrible but not by much, and only continued to perform worse as newer and way stronger heroes rise to the top. One day, Blizzard decided to add a +1 Health buff on top of her Hero Power, which was enough to instantly shoot her up into top tier category by turning her into basically a menagerie Tirion Fordring... at which point Blizzard eventually booted her from Battlegrounds for pretty much the same reason as Tirion. The Forged in the Barrens patch has returned her to the game with the nerf to only give minions +1/+1, allowing her to finally become balance since she can't scale her early as efficiently like before.
  • Galakrond's Hero Power transformed a minion in Bob's Tavern into a random minion a tier higher for 1 gold. While this just makes him sounds like a worse version of Infinite Toki, if you freeze the minion, you can transform it again next turn to something beyond your tavern tier. Unfortunately, you are extremely dependent on what you even get out your Hero Power, and if you get some generic non-synergistic minion out of it, your efforts are wasted. Even if you're only upgrading something right before the end of turn and the beginning of your next turn, you're still sacrificing Gold and a reroll to do so. His Hero Power got a tiny buff where it froze the transformed minion, but letting him roll 2-4 extra minions per turn hardly made a difference. While most low tier heroes had their ups and downs, Galakrond was sitting firmly in the bottom for about his entire career. Once his Hero Power was finally buffed to cost 0 gold, it predictably turned him into a top tier hero, so powerful that he was removed until Blizzard could figure out how to balance him better. The Forged in the Barrens launch patch return him to the hero pool and reverting his Hero Power back to its original state but now let him Discover which minion he will roll into, return him to a below average performing hero.
  • Elise Starseeker was one of the heroes hit hard by Power Creep. Her Hero Power give the player a 3 Gold Explorer Map when they Upgrade their Tavern that allow them to Discover a minion with that Tavern Tier. There isn't anything particularly wrong with her, it just that the metagame shift from Discovering crucial minions to mass buying and selling that brought on by Pirates and Elementals, and her slow midrange playstyle is just not equipped to deal with if she didn't high-roll a minion that fit in exactly with her composition. The November 5th 2020 patch reduced the cost of the map to 2 Gold along with nerfing Elemental hard, instantly shot her up into a top tier hero since she can now aggressively upgrade her Tavern without instantly fold to insane power turns. After a few patch of total dominance, she was nerfed back into her old low performing state in the February 19th Patch. The 24.0.3 addressed Elise's performance by completely overhauling her hero power: Now you pay 1 gold to discover a minion of your tavern tier whenever you want, with the drawback that each future use will cost 1 more gold than the last one.
  • Fungalmancer Flurgl is a hero that took highrolling up to eleven. On release, he had the highest first place placement in the game, but he also has highest eighth place placement in the game. His hero power put a Murloc in the Tavern every time you sell a Murloc, which sounds like a good way to fish for internal synergies and triples on paper and can be strong when it works. But not only does it force you into a tribe, which Jaraxxus and Millificent show is generally asking for trouble, but you're also forced into the least consistent tribe in the game. If you don't get early Murlocs and/or go with a different strategy, you're basically playing without a hero power. Even if you do play Murlocs, Flurgl doesn't do enough to help them reach critical mass and his hero power can't even give you two of their key cards (Brann and Gentle Megasaur), and heroes like Edwin VanCleef, Infinite Toki, or Shudderwock can help a Murloc board reach their late game more easily. He destroys everyone if you're lucky enough, but is absolutely terrible if you're not, and the latter is much more likely. The United in Stormwind restructuring of minion pools has brought him a huge buff: Now every minions that he sell will have a Murloc show up, essentially removing the RNG required to play him. He shot up the tier list to become the best performing force tribal hero, along with his fellow force synergy hero Ysera. In fact, he became too good at forcing murlocs, to the point he could easly rival most late-game comps with the sheer consistency of his murloc builds, and was given a large nerf on late May 2022, by increasing the amount of minions needed to sell in order to put a murloc in the Tavern (2 minions, up from 1), plummeting his win rate. He was then adjusted to add a Murloc to hand after selling 4 minions. Even this version wasn't safe from being abused, particularly if Flurgl adquired a quest that rewards Another Hidden Body^note  The quest can be repeated and each succesful completion lets the player discover a minion of their current tavern tier or with APM pirates, resulting in yet another nerf that makes his hero power require selling 5 minions to add a murloc (up from 4).
  • Varden Dawngrasp gained notoriety on its original, release version, and for all the wrong reasons. Originally, the hero power was a passive that adds a random frozen copy of a minion in the tavern when you refresh. On paper, it was supposed to help you secure triples much more easly. In practice, it was much worse than Zephrys in every imaginable way. You could get 2 copies of a given minion and never actually find a 3rd one, while , if you played Zephrys and got his buddy, it could guarantee the discover of a 2nd copy of a unique minion you own while his hero power combines 2 copies into a triple. Varden doesn't guarantee you will get a 3rd copy, and there aren't many minions where you will benefit from having a 2nd copy, not helped by the way the hero power originally worked. You still needed to purchase the copy AND you had no way to control which minion gets copied with Varden's hero power. Varden's buddy didn't help matters, since all it does is give stats to the copy based on your tavern tier. The combination of an absolutely unreliable and weak hero power along a buddy only giving a minor stat boost to the copied minion essentially made Varden one of the worst heroes you could realistically pick (Only Tamsin Roame was comparable in its badness).That is, until early April 2022 where Varden got a significant rework: now the hero power was guaranteed to only copy the highest tier minion in the Tavern. This change single-handedly made Varden one of the strongest heroes in the Battlegrounds rotation, much like Millhouse, Maiev and the Lich King did when they first got reworked. With their new hero power, you were now capable of freezing a minion selection with a desirable high tier minion (and purchase the other undesirable choices of same tier to secure the hero power copies what you want), and easly secure buffed up copies of minions like Amalgadons, Brann Bronzebeard, Nomi and Baron Rivendare, which also allows them to push their own wheight during late-game matches as well.
  • Guff Runetotem has a Hero Power that cost 1 Gold and allow him to give all minions with different Tavern Tier +1/+1. He somehow managed to be a worse Cariel (who wasn't a very good Hero herself) since his buff is extremely unreliable in the mid and late game due to the lack of viable target outside of Mechs. His Buddy has helped him immensely after the buff of his Buddy to Tavern tier 3 allow him to achieve his power spike much earlier because the Buddy spit out higher tier minions for him to buff, which mean his win rate became awful again when the Buddy system is removed. The pre-Murder at Castle Nathria made a major adjustment to him: His Hero Power now cost 2 Gold, but allow for a +3/+2 buff, allowing him to secure the early board to snowball into a decent high tier composition, along with the buff to Mech allowing them to be one of the best comp. This resulted in him being one of the highest win rate heroes. This resulted in Guff getting nerfed in a later patch, by reducing his buff sighly. Now he gives all minions with different tavern tiers +2/+2.

Tribes & Minions

• Of all the minions in Battlegrounds, none were as hated as Nightmare Amalgam. This simple 3/4 had the effect of being every minion tribe. This meant it was a no-brainer pickup in every single build, since it was a decent statline and very easy to buff. The insane thing though is how it let tribes splash - Magnetize an Annoy-o-Module, and suddenly your Murloc build has a gigantic Divine Shield + Taunt. Pick up a Toxfin, and your Mechs have a Poisonous assassin. Just to put the cherry on top, it was technically the only Dragon in the game, so it could get buffed by Zoobot and Menagerie Magician. Its ubiquitous play forced Demons, the premier "big stats" tribe, to be completely unplayable since everyone had access to at least one humongous Poisonous Taunt. The card was universally despised, and unsurprisingly was removed from the game.Unfortunately, Nightmare Amalgam is returned to the minion pool of battlegrounds in the May 2022 rotation, taking the similarly-despised Tier 6 minion Amalgadon's place as the "synergizes with every tribe" minion(More info below on Amalgadon). And if that wasn't bad enough, Toxfin also returned to the pool a few months later, resulting in yet another Poisonous shielded Amalgam with taunt ordeal in almost all lobbies that had Murlocs and Mechs up, culminating in the Amalgam being removed yet again during early november of same year, and replaced with Ball of Minions, who is identical to Amalgam as a "all tribes" minion card that also gives its stats to one of your minions when sold, but being T4 instead of tier 2-3, which balances it out by making it harder to obtain and magnetize/give poisonous compared to Amalgam.
• Cobalt Guardian was once one of the single most hated minion in the entire game mode, and for a good reason. Its ability to consistently gain Divine Shield means with a few Mech-summoning minions, it can get to attack more times than other minions, and Health is a non-issue for it. What's more, it appears at Tier 3, and a 6/3 is an excellent base statline, especially when you can give it Divine Shield right after. Other Mech comps don't even compare, since Junkbot comes in way too late and Mechano-Egg builds need it to be Golden and also have Baron Rivendare and maybe Kangor's Apprentice to really get going. You can focus solely on buffing two Cobalt Guardians and bet on decent attack order to have it carry you to Top 4, as long as you don't get horribly unlucky or have its Divine Shield get popped early by a Soul Juggler. Even when the community demand it to be nerfed or removed, Cobalt Guardian has somehow managed to avoid them every time. Late March, Cobalt Guardian finally got removed from the game... Only to be immediately replaced with Deflect-o-Bot, which has the same tavern tier and the same Divine Shield refresh but also gains +1 Attack each time, with the only nerf being it has about half its base stats, which made it slightly worse in non-pure Mech builds but remains just as obnoxious in every other case. Having half its base stats was actually a nerf that worked, however, and giving the build a worse early game but better late game balanced it out.
• The combination of Lightfang Enforcer and Brann Bronzebeard alongside Nightmare Amalgam was the reason Menagerie builds were extremely powerful during beta. Her effect give a minion of each tribe +2/+2 (+4/+4 if Golden) every single turn. This was more than enough for Menagerie builds to make up for the lost efficiency of AOE buffs that results from running multiple tribes. Adding that with the fact that Nightmare Amalgam allows Menagerie build to not give up that much when buying the minion (which at that time, because it counted as all tribes was the only minion other than the Curator's Amalgam that could receive the Dragon buffs from Zoobot and Menagerie Magician), this give Menagerie incredible flexibility and utility (since it can access all keywords and mechanics in Battlegrounds). Lightfang was promptly nerfed to +2/+1, which made her much worse than Brann, and the removal of Nightmare Amalgam promptly killed her usage. She rose in viability again in the Dragon patch since it is another additional tribe for her effect as well as the addition of an excellent stand alone late-game Murloc in Holy Mackerel. She was reverted to her original form in the November 5th 2020 patch to keep up with the other insane tribal synergy added.
• How good is Holy Mackerel? Enough to literally carry the entire game. It's card effect is like Deflect-o-Bot but even better and more consistent, and with a few other Divine Shield minions in play, it's extremely annoying to kill. Even though it's a Tier 6 minion, because it's a Murloc, all it needs is Poisonous and it's set for the entire game. What really takes it over the top though is when you have two Holy Mackerels. Whenever one loses Divine Shield, the other gets it back, and the game turns into a coin flip of whether the opponent's minion can hit and kill the unshielded Holy Mackerel or not. The worst part is that Unstable Ghoul and Nefarian can't counter two Holy Mackerels because both of them get Divine Shield back after the damage is resolved. If you have no build but are lucky enough to find two Holy Mackerels, use them to carry you to Top 4. After one patch cycle of utter dominance, Holy Mackerel was removed from the game. Though its spiritual successor, Holy Mecherel, being a Mech, therefore having no access to Poisonous, ended up being balanced.
• Arcane Cannon was what Holy Mackerel was to the early game, a minion that will completely carry your early game with only a bit of setup. This Tier 2 2/2 doesn't do anything on its own, but made everything else more powerful by firing a shot for 2 damage whenever any minion next to it attacked. Like Soul Juggler, this meant it added 2 damage to anything, and in the early game where most minions will often never survive more than one hit, you can order low health minions to attack back to back and the Cannon will fire every time you attack. This made it especially effective with token minions like Rat Pack that can just spam token minions and get the most value out of the Cannons, while also adding more hero damage from any remaining token minions. The only downside is that you were extremely dependent on your Cannon not getting sniped, so an early Cannon snipe can destroy your chance of winning. Matches became a battle of who can snipe the other player's Cannon first and the token minion abuse that went along with it sped up the game a few turns faster, enough to make late game builds like Dragons far less viable. Just like Holy Mackerel, it was removed after one major patch cycle of utter dominance.
• Elementals in general conquered the meta immediately after they were introduced. Elementals encourage players to buy and sell as many as possible, which means that even if they are highly contested, as long as the player had either Lil' Rag or Nomi, Kitchen Nightmare, they could find enough Elementals and boost their warband with stats, which became even easier if coupled with Gentle Djinnis and Deathrattle synergy powers (with The Lich King's Hero Power or Monstrous Macaw and Baron Rivendare), or Brann Bronzebeard with Elemental-spawning Battlecry minions (Tavern Tempest and Stasis Elemental). Elementals also had easy access to Windfury and Mega-Windfury through Crackling Cyclone and Whirlwind Tempest (which, combined with Al'Akir's Hero Power, made cleaving minions like Cave Hydra or Foe Reaper 4000 end the battle on the first attack). Blizzard decided to rectify this by removing Whirlwind Tempest and switching tiers for Lil' Rag and Gentle Djinni. However, this arguably made it worse, as Gentle Djinni still unintentionally could spawn Tier 6 Elementals like Lil' Rag, Lieutenant Garr and Amalgadon. Combined with the buff to Majordomo Executus, players could already gain a full late-game build by getting triples on Tavern Tier 4. The fact that golden Elementals easily outscale Dragons with Kalecgos, full Deathrattle Beasts, and Demons in general means that - other than also playing Elementals - the only realistic way to beat them is to create a warband that mixes Divine Shield with Poisonous minions.
• During the early Battleground Metas, Murlocs had one of the worst early game among all tribes, but were the undesputed best last game tribe in the game. Early-game Murlocs are Glass Cannons that have very little utility, but they have a lot of board-wide AoE Battlecry buffs late game, can use Primalfin Navigator to help find buffing minions and triples, and they have easy access to Poisonous, making their Attack values irrelevant since they can one-shot everything. The cornerstone of Murlocs is the Gentle Megasaur, which Adapated all Murlocs to give them very powerful effects like Divine Shield, Poisonous, spawn two 1/1 plants on death, or at least decent stats. No other late-game tribe could compete once they had their Divine Shield/Poisonous Murlocs set up, and even builds that didn't even go Murlocs could transistion into 1st place if they had a Khadgar, Brann, and Murloc Tidehunter and roll a few Gentle Megasaurs. Blizzard tried nerfing their late-game by removing Gentle Megasaur from the game, with the only compensation being Primalfin Lookout moving down a tavern tier (except make them only be able to Discover minions within your tavern tier), and this successfully made Murlocs a worse late game tribe than Dragons and turned them into the worst overall tribe in the game, with their only hope of victory being you draw the nuts and get a Brann early and a bunch of King Bagurgles and Coldlight Seers after. It seems Blizzard realized this, and with the increasingly Power Creep of Battlegrounds, they eventually re-added Nightmare Amalgam in the May 2022 update and introduced Young Murk-Eye, a Tier 6 Murloc who repeated battlecry of adjacent Murlocs during each end of turn, to give murlocs a much needed shot in the arm to compete with other tribes during the mid and late-game. In fact, Murk-Eye did its job a bit too well, as the fact he repeated those buffs another time when Brann was up meant very fat Murlocs and other tribes not called Nagas being unable to match their giant stats, along Poisonous. As a result, he was nerfed 10 days later to only repeat the battlecry of a murloc to his left (while his golden version repeats adjacent battlecries, same as pre-nerf non-golden versions). This nerf, however, was fully reverted by 2023 as a way to help murlocs after they lost poisonous. Unfortunately, it also saw the introduction of Murky, a tier 6 murloc whose battlecry increases a murlocs stat by a certain amount(starts at +1/+1 and it grows an extra +1/+1 each time the player plays a battlecry minion). While the synergy with Murk-eye already turns Murky into a strong late-game buffer for murlocs warbands, it also has synergy with both Brann Bronzebeard and Drakkari Enchanter (end-of-turn effects triggers an extra time). When all of this minions are in the board at once, the sheer amount of stats buff to murlocs is insane: it wasn't uncommon to see Murk-eyes and Murkys with stats in the thousands by the end of the game. The sheer brokeness of this combo led to Blizzard nerfing it, by removing the original effect of Murky and replacing it with a flat "Give a murloc +10/+10" in the late 2023 November update.
• In the May 2022 update, the new tribe added to the pool, Naga, instantly shot to the top of the meta right away. Between a strong early-game, good mid-game and insane scaling in late-game comps, they were very difficult to defeat in combat unless you rolled a golden Nomi early enough or ran poisonous murlocs, and even then neither alternative was very consistent to begin. In early-to-late game, Nagas used Stormscale Siren, Lava Lurker and Shoal Commander to boost their board stats, while in the late-game all they needed was Tidemistress Athissa and Orgozoa, the Tender to give permanent high scaling and find nagas for more buffs, respectively. And as the icying in the cake, Nagas were pretty much the Master of All: They had access to glowscale that gave a minion a free divine shield for next combat (to keep some key minions from dying to poisonous right away) and Windfury from Waverider to wreck non-poison boards. Unsurprisingly, almost every lobby had most players run Nagas or murlocs, and since Nagas were literally on every single lobby (for the first 2 weeks of their debut, anyway) , it made most games feel the same, and 10 days after their debut, they got multiple nerfs rolling across the tribe: Athissa's scaling was slightly reduced along her stats, the stats of the other Naga playmakers were nerfed, and Stormscale Siren, a staple on every Naga build, was kicked to Tier 5 (up from Tier 3) to hopefully keep them from making every other Tribe (except murlocs) useless by comparison.
  • Speaking of Stormscale Siren, she was a key reason that Nagas were easly outscaling other tribes. Her effect to cast the Spellcrafts on the respective minions at the end of the turn proved to be insanely powerful, especially so when combined with Eventide Brutes (Gain +1/+1 each time a spell is used) and Tidemisstress Athissa (give +1/+1 to 4 random nagas every time a spell is cast) or Critter Wrangler (give +2/+2 to a minion whenever you cast a spellcraft spell on it). As a result, she ended up removed from the pool a week later after the first nerf wave and was replaced by the far less useful Warden of Old. The majority of nerfs done to other naga minions were progressively reverted over 2022, however.
• In the August 2021 update, several warbands got rebalanced all around,with minions removed, several new additions and nerfs/buffs to existing ones. One in particular, however, immediately became a game shatterer. Leapfrogger was basically to the Beasts build what Holy Mackerel was to Murlocs, but even more broken. This bastard would, on death, give +2/2 and a copy of that Deathrattle to a fellow Beast. Add in a Monstrous Macaw (trigger a friendly minion's deathrattle whenever it attacks), Baron Riverdare (your Deathrattles trigger twice), several token generation Beasts, and Reborn (thanks to another new Beast, Reanimating Rattler) and you had one of the most consistent builds ever created that would nearly always secure top 4 and get you to first place, more often than not. Indeed, its effect would keep leaping to any Beast token and it stacked, which almost always resulted in some pretty ridiculous situations like a massive +30/30 at MINIMUM leaping between otherwise-weak Beast tokens in later turns. Its brokeness instantly made any other tribe in the game look like a joke by comparison. In fact, Leapfrogger had the potential, if the board was sticky enough, to skip turns due to the sheer length of the combat phases and animations. Less than a month later, Leapfrogger's reign of terror was finally put to rest with a crippling nerf that reduced its effect to a +1/1.^note It wasn't the only nerf that put him in his place. Macaw was changed so it cannot trigger Leapfrogger's Deathrattle if it lands in the Macaw itself, and Reanimating Rattler was moved to tier 5, making it much harder to create a entire board of token-generating, Reborn-filled Beasts that got near-endless Leapfrogger buffs.
• In the same update, the addition of Impatient Doomsayer gave a gigantic buff to Demon builds. Her ability to add a random Demon to hand every 3 deaths in combat, alongside the fact that she was obtainable as early as Tier 3, made one wonder how this slipped past testing. Her effect only requires a single combat to essentially pay herself back 2 times over, basically cheating out 9 gold in minions every turn, given the right composition. On top of that, it's a extremely powerful addition to Soul Juggler builds^note Generate Demon tokens from Deathrattle Demons to trigger Soul Juggler's damage, while also triggering the Doomsayer's effect after 3 deaths, and it's practically guaranteed you'll get at least 3 demons each round this way. In addition to getting some insane value, it allowed you to also get Demon minions of your own Tavern Tier, allowing shenanigans like Ur'zuls and Big Infernals for some pretty gigantic boards late in the game if you got to upgrade while still using her. The only reason she didn't became as notorious is because of Leapfrogger, but in a game where Beasts were absent and Demons were up, she was guaranteed to give some truly insane and disgusting value play. She got a slap in the wrist nerf in the same patch that nerfed Leapfrogger, moving her to tier 4 and changing her effect so that it needs 4 minion deaths to trigger.
  • It wasn't just busted in Demon builds, but pretty much any build could abuse her effect. Sacrificing a board slot for the high chance of getting 3-4 gold by selling the Demons was still a pretty strong strategy, since Doomsayer's effect didn't need specific minions' deaths to trigger. You could easily secure extra minions or just upgrade the tavern earlier and grab higher tier minions to buff your own board, and deprive others of those minions^note Higher tier minions are far scarcer, so getting them before anyone else is a huge advantage, particularly tier 6 ones because once 7 copies are purchased, that minion is gone from the pool for everyone.
• Before the August 2021 refresh, anyone looking to play Dragons was essentially reliant on reaching Tavern Tiers 5 and 6, since they essentially had the only Dragon and Dragon-adjacent minions worth their salt in a pure Dragons build: Razorgore had great scaling, Kalecgos was basically the only reliable form of buffs, and Nadina's Divine Shields effectively force an opponent to add a Ravaging Ghoul to their warband to try and counter her. After that refresh, though, the Dragons tribe recieved a major boost in the form of two minions that, while strong on their own, wound up being quite overpowered when paired together: Tarecgosa and Prized Promo-Drake. The former is a tier 3 that permanently acquires any buffs recieved in combat (and also doubles the value of those buffs if she's Golden), and the latter is a tier 4 that temporarily gives +1/+1 (+2/+2 if Golden) to adjacent minions at the start of combat for each Dragon you have. Alone, these effects have loads of potential (especially Tarecgosa's), but combined they lead to quite possibly the most broken scaling combo Battlegrounds has ever seen. Unless your opponents are able to build up their boards faster than you're able to get the combo online, a fully-loaded Dragons board with multiple copies of Tarecgosa and Promo-Drake will easily out-scale other compositions, especially if any of your Tarecgosas and/or Promo-Drakes are Golden. Pair that with Nadina and other strong Dragons and, in a meta where countering high-statted minions with Poison is far less consistent than it was before the refresh, you're practically guaranteed a top spot. The only thing consistently holding this combo back is that, assuming you're not playing Ysera, finding either Tarecgosa or Promo-Drake isn't easy given their tiers.
• Friend of a Friend was possibly the single most meta-warping minion to arrive in the Battlegrounds, being just as overpowered and universally despised as the infamous Nightmare Amalgam. His battlecry allowed you to discover a buddy. Due to his pool of buddies excluding ones that do nothing outside their own heroes, Friend of a Friend was pretty much almost guaranteed to roll nothing except good minions. With Brann in the board, he could generate so much value from buddies that, especially in high MMR, he was basically everywhere: everyone picked him, he was almost always guaranteed to generate massive power spikes and he often degenerated the late-game matches into Amalgadon mirror matches. His brokeness resulted in his removal a mere six days after being introduced, having the dishonor of being the Battleground minion with the shortest tenure, to the complain of nobody. He returned when Buddies did in mid Season 3, with an important distinction of his effect triggering when he was sold, which dramatically reduced his power level thanks to Brann not being able to effect him any more.
• Speaking of Amalgadon, he's a Tier 6 minion that was designed to take Nightmare Amalgam's place, being a 6/6 that belonged to all tribes and had a Battlecry that caused him to Adapt^note Gained Divine Shield, Poisonous, a Deathrattle that summons two 1/1s, Windfury, Taunt, +1/+1, and/or +3 health for every minion tribe you had on your board, with the number of adaptations doubling if the Amalgadon is Golden. This obviously made him the king of menagerie builds, especially if you had Brann handy to double Amalgadon's Battlecry, but eventually he became just as much of a problem as Nightmare Amalgam, if not more so. With the number of minions that either had Poisonous or could consistently grant Poisonous notably decreasing after the mode left "Early Access" in August 2021, Amalgadon eventually became most players' go-to Poisonous minion, usually also with Divine Shield, Windfury, and/or Taunt on top of that. Soon enough, a lot of endgame boards wound up having at least one, if not two Amalgadons, leading to mostly samey matches, and plenty of players were fed up with him as a result. Blizzard eventually took action with the first Battlegrounds "Season" in May 2022, removing Amalgadon from the game and splitting his functions up across multiple minions: Nightmare Amalgam was re-added to Tier 3 so Battlegrounds still had a flexible multi-tribe minion, and two new minions were added in the form of Mantid Queen^note Tier 6; Poisonous and gains +5/+5, Windfury, Divine Shield, and/or Taunt at Start of Combat for each of your minion tribes and Leeroy the Reckless^note Tier 5; has a Deathrattle that destroys the minion that killed him, replacing Amalgadon's roles as a menagerie driver and a counter to boards with lots of scaling, respectively.
• Grease Bot has been a minion that Blizzard struggled to balance, and its not hard to see why. He started off as a tier 4 mech that gave other minions a permanent +2/1 if they lost divine shield in combat. He was pretty strong, and potentially a Disc-One Nuke for mech builds. He was nerfed to be a +1/+1, which completely killed off his pick rate. He was removed and returned later as a Tier 6 Mech with divine shield that gave other minions who lost divine shield in combat a permanent +3/+2 buff. This change made him completely broken, allowing mech lobbies to dominate with just Grease Bot and a few Mecherals. He ended up removed yet again, and returned later with another nerf: now his buff is a +2/+2 and lost the Divine Shield on itself. The nerf ended up making him too weak, along with the later Power Creep of additional tribes like Naga and Undead, has caused him to be buffed several times, first by recerting the buff to +3/+2 in the Murder at Castle Nathria patch, then later drop him to Tier 4 but decrease the buff to +2/+1 in the Return to Naxxramas patch. He was removed once again in the May 2023 update and replaced with a bunch of mechs with effects that buff or synergize with magnetized minions instead.
• In the May 2023 update, any player on a lobby with beasts that played something else dreaded at the sight of Banana Slamma ,a tier 3 addition with the effect of double the stats of beasts summoned in combat.Banana Slamma has exponential scaling with its own effect as soon as you own multiple copies or a golden one, which easly guarantees a solid top 4 finisher build or even first place as soon as beast players get their hands on the offending monkey (to say nothing of how easy it is for some heroes to obtain other copies or even golden ones). A beasts board using it abuses beast-spawning minions like Sly Raptor, Sewer rat, Manasaber or any beast with reborn and taunt on them, and as soon as those minios die, they vomit beasts with stats going from +70/+70 to over +300/+300 per beasts if enough Slammas are in the board. Not even Zippy can snipe them because this monkeys tends to have more attack than your beast-spawning minions, and outside a warband using Tunnel Blaster+Rivendare combo, there is zero counterplay whatsoever outside running Leapfrogger. The monkey's Tier 3 status means its easy to find in a lobby with Beasts and is heavily abused as a result. The devs bumped the monkey to tier 4 a week after release to hopefully slow it down. Even this didn't truly stop the frustrating situations where a player got multiple Slammas and proceeds to stomp anyone else in the lobby, so the monkey got further nerfed in another update by bumping it to tier 5.
• The January 2022 update brought a new Battleground system where heroes eventually get a new minion to aid them with their game plan as well as helping with hero power synergy: Buddies. These (well, a decent amount of them, anyway) eventually proved to be powerful enough that their inclusion, alongside Blizzard bumping up the cost to upgrade to Tavern Tier 4 to 11 Gold, wound up notably changing the way Battlegrounds matches played out, to the confusion and dismay of a number of players. Regardless of if community opinions on the system were taken into account or not, with the first Battlegrounds "Season" in May 2022, the Buddies system was completely removed, though whether this is a temporary change remains to be seen. With all of that said, a few of the Buddies were noteworthy for being blatantly overpowered:
  • Barov's Apprentice basically allows Lord Barov to gain a extra gold whenever he uses a coin obtained from his hero power or Briny Bootleggers. The former interaction is particulary broken because Barov doing 2 correct guesses (which can be accomplished with mostly careful observations on the other players) means he gets 12 gold from those, meaning Barov can easly skip from tier 3 to 5 or even 6 before everyone even has a chance to upgrade to tier 4 and putting the opponents in a Morton's Fork situation: Either they focus on upgrading to keep up with Barov and lose tempo, weakening their boards and slowing them down which gives the Barov player more time to get what he needs for his comp, or they stay in pre-tier 5 tavern and Barov can soon beat everyone without effort. After spending nearly 2 months dodging nerf waves, his buddy was ultimately given a nerf on early march 2022 by increasing the turns and time needed to obtain the buddy in order to remove the massive powerspikes upgrades and lose-lose outcomes on early turns.
  • Snow Elemental gives a frozen elemental on each tavern refresh, while also being a elemental itself. Chenvaala has been either terrible or mediocre hero due to requiring elementals to use her hero power and discount tavern upgrades, making her a very inconsistent hero. This elemental not only fixed Chenvaala's problem by securing elementals for her, but essentially skyrocketed her into a S Tier hero who can now ramp Tavern upgrades without losing tempo even faster than Warden Omu, who was supposed to be the hero focused in faster Taverns upgrades and curbing tempo lost. This means Chenvaala can potentially reach tavern 5-6 much faster than any other hero not called Finley or Lord Barov.
  • Sir Finley's buddy, Maxwell, Mighty Steed, gives him the minion buddy belonging to his selected hero power. The problem? Its a battlecry, meaning Brann Bronzebeard can make him get multiple copies of him and potentially goldens. To make matters worse, this can make for some rather obscene value plays with certain hero powers. For example: As noted above, Chenvaala is actually really good due to her buddy securing 1(2 if golden) frozen elementals per turn, so imagine Finley can now potentially spamm elementals with nomi non-stop or skip straight to tier six before everyone else and curb-stop others. Also, if Finley rolls Zephrys' hero power, you can sell everyone but maxwell and produce a literal infinite Loop of gold to roll over everyone else in the game.
  • Exclipsion Illidari, Illidan's buddy, gives minions under the effect of his hero power (most-left and most-right minions attack first and have +2 attack) inmune on their first attacks(first two attacks if golden). While Illidan has been awful or decent (if Beasts are in the game) at best, this buddy essentially pushed him straight into brokeness when paired with poisonous minions, as inmune makes even something like a poisonous spore utterly destroy anything without divine shield and survive against any minion while being ready to swing again. This brokeness goes straight to absurdity when wingmen affects poisonous divine shield Amalgadons or Tarecgosa. In the former, it makes the Amalgadon even harder to kill while also decimating the opponent's board with little effort, while the latter retains combat buffs, meaning a Tarecgosa with wingmen buff can essentially survive multiple combats after attacking and the scaling with prized promo-drakes makes it a nightmare to defeat without losing most of your board. Tellingly, his buddy was so overpowered that it eventually got a nerf, making it so only the first minion with wingmen has inmune on first attack.
  • Crabby, the buddy of the new hero Tavish, basically pushed his partner right into high tier since the day they were released. While Tavish's hero power (deal 1 damage to either a low hp, high hp, left or right most minion of enemy board) that increases by 1 damage each turn doesn't seems like a big deal, his buddy effect also increases the stat of minions next to the buddy by the amount of damage the hero power deals. Crabby alone could very easly push Tarecgosa scaling to the stratosphere to a even faster pace than prized promo-drakes, which guaranteed top 4 with little effort. It got so bad that Tarecgosa got moved to tier 4 in an attempt to indirectly nerf Tavish, which did essentially nothing and ultimately, Tavish's buddy got nerfed by increasing the tier (or more correctly, the turns and time) needed to obtain him while also reducing his base stats.
  • Elder Taggawag, Queen Wagtoggle’s Buddy, wasn't particulary strong when it came off at first, but her versatility was overlooked by a lot of people. By simply playing a minion type you didn't control, you could trigger her hero power again. While not the most overpowered buddy in the patch( for her, anyway), her buddy was still strong enough to essentially secure a top 4 spot with very little skill or meaningful play required other than staying in tavern 1 and cycling minions of a specific tribe(the best tribe for this purpose were elementals) for the hero power, meaning you were literally better off just never upgrading tavern if all you wanted was just a top 4 spot. And that's not even getting into the shenanigans that ensued when a different hero got his hands on Elder, like Scabbs, Shudderwock or Tess Greymane,as it secured easy triples and insane value for those heroes. She was ultimately given a harsh nerf on early march by capping her buddy to a maximum of 2 hero power triggers per turn.
  • Lich Baz’hial’s Buddy, Unearthed Underling, had the Boring, but Practical ability of absorbing any damage the hero received and gaining +2/+2(+4/+4 if golden) each time. What was meant to counter the high risk of Lich's hero power was instead abused in Wrath Weaver builds to create gigantic boards by staying on tavern 1, grabbing Weavers and just cycling through demons. Much like Wagtoggle, it was a very effective strat if you just wanted to secure top 4 without much skill or effort required. Her buddy got nerfed twice since its inception, first by increasing turns needed to obtain it, which didn't really stop players from still doing the same strat anyway, so the 1st nerf was reverted and her buddy was instead given a cap where it only soaks damage taken by Lich a maximum of 2 times per turn to put down the "tier 1" strats for good.
  • Vol'jin's buddy, Master Gadrin, originally allowed adjacent minions to copy his Attack during the end of the turn, which if paired with cleave or divine shield minions, it created very hard-hitting boards that gave a lot of headaches to other players. While not as easy to pilot and having clear weakness (for example, any souljuggler build, high scaling elementals or other divine shield builds like mechs), it was still powerful enough to get a major nerf in march, by changing Gadrin so only the minion to his left copy his attack now.
• The return of Buddies in March 2023 along with adjustment to old ones has brought in new Buddies for new heroes. And some of them completely dominated the initial metagames:
  • Tess Greymane and Mr. Bigglesworth's Buddy Hunter of Old and Lil' KT got downgrade to a Tier 2 minions and thus shortened up the two heroes early and midgame by generating tons of values while their Hero Power let them dominating the late game. The same story happened with Scabb Cutterbutter's Buddy Warden Thelwater. All of these were nerfed to be one Tavern Tier higher in the first initial patch.
    • Speaking of Tess and Scabbs, they deserve special mention when a certain other hero was in the lobby: Elise Starseeker. Her buddy, Jr. Navigator, gave a permanent 2 gold discount to the hero power of whoever uses it. As a result, any time Elise, Scabbs or E.T.C. Band manager got their hands on it, it allowed their hero powers to be free. Thats right, you were discovering a free buddy, a free minion or getting a free refresh with a copy of last opponent's warband. This interaction alone was deemed extreme, as it discouraged Elise to be played at all if any of the above heroes were on the lobby. The devs tried to simply bump it off to a higher tier and remove it from the list of minions E.T.C could get off his hero power, but this didn't stop the game from becoming an almost auto-win for Tess or Scabs whenever Elise was being played. As a result, the devs cracked down hard on this interaction by outright removing it from the game, by changing navigator to only work with Elise Starseeker's(or alternatively, Finley if he selects Elise's hero power at the start of a game) hero power and do nothing for any other hero that gets this particular buddy.
  • On the opposite side, Sylvanas Windrunner's Buddy Nathalnos Brightcaller allow her to convert her early game buff to land on late game minions. And if Mech and / or Beast is in the lobby she can grab a Hydra or Foe Reaver to slam multiple enemy minions and doubly so if she got lucky with her early game and got the Golden Buddy reasonably early, which allow her to double the buff of the eaten minion. He was nerfed to Tavern Tier 6 - the highest possible tier, shortly soon after.
• The pre-Castle of Nathria patch has a huge adjustment to the Tribeless minions pool and added Kooky Chemist meant to syngergize with minions with unbalanced stats... and is immediately discovered to be broken when combined with Evolving Chromawing, a tier 1 1/3 Dragon that double its Attack whenever you upgrade your Tavern tier, which built up to be over 1000 health minions with very little effort from the players since Chromawing is a Tier 1 minion and Kooky Chemist is a tier 2. Endgame very easily devolve into 2 Golden Chromawing slug away at each other after devouring every other minions on the board with their gigantic Health. Chromawing was deemed the problematic elements since it also synergize amazingly with Naga and was removed from the minion pool in an emergency patch and was rework into only fitting Dragon warbands, but this new version of Chromawing was deemed overpower soon after (see below).
• Evolving Chromawing was returned soon after with a new effect: It gains +1/+1 whenever you Tarver up for each Dragons in your warband. This has led to insane synergy with Ysera, whose Hero Power can guarantee you both the Chromawings and the other tier 1 Dragon, leading to her warband easily having Chromawing with over 60/60 stats easily, allowing her to essentially skip the midgame - one of Dragon's biggest weakness, to hunt for late game scaler like Malygos and Nadina. This synergy led her to become the hero with the average placement of 2.38, the highest in Battlegrounds history. Chromawing was quickly nerfed into only increase its Attacks.
• Chronormu was added into the mid-expansion update and completely took over the the game. He is a Tavern tier 4 minion that gain the stats of all minions that was sold. Basically, he allows for mid-range composition to convert their puny statted minions into a gigantic Dragon that can be granted Divine Shield by Nadina. And if the Lobby also has Murloc and Elemental he can get truly ridiculous stats. He was nerfed to Tavern Tier 5 in the Buddy patch but he was still deemed too problematic and was removed soon after.
• Land Lubber was a new addition to the late 2023 battlegrounds refresh, where a new mechanic was introduced in the way of tavern spells ^explanationA new mechanic that adds spells to the battleground tavern: they can range from discovering cards(like a minion of your most common type in your warband, a battlecry minion, a buddy) to some advantage like increasing your gold next turn, giving a minion more attack, etc . Land Lubber is a tier 2 hybrid pirate/elemental minion whose effect makes it so you get a extra tavern spell on each fresh, and what looked like a fairly mudane effect at first glance ended up turning it into one of the most overpowered and despised minions in the entire game mode. Lubber's effect basically encouraged players to stay in tavern 2-3 in order to fish specific tavern spells(Careful investment^explanationCosts 1 gold and makes you gain 2 gold on your next turn , Leaf Through the Pages^explanationCosts 2 gold and makes you next 3 refreshes free, Overconfidence^explanationCosts 1 gold:If you win your next combat, you gain 3 gold. If you tie, you get 1 gold, Hasty Excavation^explanationCosts 3 health to buy and gives you 1 gold to name a few) in order to consistently gain over 30-40 gold each turn after spending only a few turns in tavern 2. The result was even more absurd when Bejeweled Duelist^explanationTier 2 3/4 elemental that gains 1 health each time you refresh the tavern was in play, since it means each free refresh also buffed your board's duelists. The effect was too excessive, and Blizzard decided to take action less than a month later and banned Land Lubber from Battlegrounds until the next update. Said update brought back Land Lubber as a tier 3 minion as well as removing the cards it had excellent synergy with(Bejeweled Duelist and Leaf through the Pages) from the game mode and increasing the tier of the cards that weren't removed in order to discourage the strategy staying in lower tiers.

Others

• The second half of 2022 saw the release of a new Battleground season, along a new replacement for Buddies: Quests. Unfortunately, while quests are a lot more variated in the progression(unlike buddies, you aren't pigeoned in winning as often as possible to progress the quest) and rewards, consensus is: they are unfortunately the face of everything wrong with Battlegrounds game mode right now, as many of them are infamous for creating insane boards and extreme power swings the second the player completes the quest. Several of them are especially infamous for how broken their are:
  • Mirror Shield gives a random minion on each tavern refresh divine shield and +4/+4. Pretty unremarkable, until you realize how busted this reward is when murlocs are in the tavern. A divine-shielded murloc can be easly poisoned with toxifin and the player can repeat it to create a full board of poison divine-shield murlocs that easly secures top 4 and often score 1st place against most other end-game comps in the same fashion the infamous Brann+Gentle Megasaur did during the early battleground metas. Even in non-murloc builds, this reward can give divine shield to minions who aren't supposed to have it normally(Quillboars, Dragons without Nadina), creating extremely oppresive boards as a result. After a month of dominance, Blizzard addressed the interaction of poisonous murlocs with Mirror Shield by preventing the quest from being offered on any lobby with murlocs in it.
  • Pilfered Lamps warps the entire game for its user, by making it so the player only needs 2 copies of a given minion to make it golden. This reward makes it extremely easy for the player to secure golden minions, which is a huge deal given how difficult it can be to obtain some golden minions, and how game-warping and game-winning they can be if golden(Brann, Baron Rivendare,Nomi,Ragnaros, to name a few)and that's not even getting into the insane synergy this evil thing has with Varden Dawngrasp and Ysera, both heroes who can easly obtain second copies of a lot of staple minions(Razorgore,Kalecgos,Tarecgosa, Any high tavern minions with Varden and more).
  • Ritual Dagger gives any deathrattle minion who dies in combat a permanent +4/+4. This reward needs no introduction, and its often secured fairly early in the game. Deathrattle minions are traditionally balanced around having lower stats to compensate for their deathrattles. This reward throws that out of the window, and not only that, but its user can easly abuse the reward by filling the board with any deathrattles then tavern level up to tier 6, as the buff allows its user to keep their minions scaling with each combat and skip the mid-game, allowing the player to hunt for late-game comps without worries of lost tempo.
  • Secret Sinstone gives the player another copy of any discovered card. This reward not only provides triples a obscene amount of extra-value, but its especially broken with Nagas, Lady Vashj, Tickatus, Scabbs or Elise Starseeker. With nagas and Orgozoa, the player can obtain a lot of spellcrafts or minions that can secure the board and endgame for its user, and for the heroes in question, it gives them a massive advantage that lets them get ahead of everyone else in the lobby or even recover easly if the player is losing with the sheer amount of extra minions,spellcrafts or Darkmoon tickets obtained from this reward.
  • Wondrous Wisdomball was pretty broken as a treasure in the solo modes, and as a quest reward its just as broken, if not more so. The wisdomball gives ocasionally helpful refreshes, and by that it means that whenever you refresh, it can give you: a random golden minion in the tavern for you to buy, fills the tavern with copies of minions you already have (sometimes, you get NOTHING except a tavern full of copies of a specific minion you own), allowing the user to easly secure triples of what they have, given a random minion divine shield and Minions of a higher tier even, among many other things. While the variety is huge, the refreshes will almost always give you a huge amount of value, which will easly lead to crazy boards.
• The key word Poisonous in general has been one of the most problematic to exist since the early days of battlegrounds and a balancing nightmare. Any minion with it will immediately destroy anything without divine shield, and any poisonous minion gaining divine shield could at very least kill anything in any combat round several times over, resulting in a lot of frustrating and one-sided matchups against stats-based warbands (Quillboars,Pirates, Demons, pretty much anything thats not Leapfrogger OR Big cleaves). Even builds that relied on divine shield or cleaves like Elementals or Dragons are still a gamble when fighting full poisonous boards. Murlocs were often subject of nerfs and buffs due to this, and were top-tier on seasons with easy poison access due to Toxfin, and on the seasons without him they were one of the worst tribes there. Blizzard struggled with balacing this keyword in battlegrounds and went to great lenghts in their attempts, first by removing problematic enablers of divine shield poison murlocs, like Gentle Megasaur, Nightmare Amalgam and Holy Mackarel, and then just booting Toxfin and replacing it with SI:7 sefin, then just re-adding Toxfin back. As a result, in May 2023 season, Blizzard retired Poisonous keyword along Toxfin for good, and replaced it with Venomous, a new keyword thats pretty much a nerfed poisonous only accesible by two minion that only works the first time said minion deals damage in combat(meaning that as soon as the venomous minion kills anything, the keyword stops working for the rest of the combat), finally balancing the keyboard by making it near impossible to create a full poison board, and giving stat-based warbands a chance to fight against murlocs.
• The late 2023 refresh for Battlegrounds introduced a new mechanic thats always active in all lobbies: Anomalies. All of them are meant to give a unique experience as you play, but many of them ended up being quite unbalanced and creating numerous frustrating and one-sided matches as a result, even more when accounting the synergy some of this had with specific heroes, leading to Blizzard nerfing many of the anomalies or banning heroes or even tribes from lobbies with the synergic ones, as well as reducing the chance for some of the most game-warping ones from appearing in higher-rated lobbies. To list the most noticeable offenders:
  • Golganneth's Tempest turns every player in the lobby into a pseudo-Millhouse, on top of whatever hero power they have, by removing the manual refresh mechanic and instead making it so any time someone buys a minion, the tavern refresh itself, as well as making all minion purchases cost only 2 gold. The number of heroes who would kill to have the perks of millhouse with reduced minion discount are too many to count, with Dinotamer Brann having an easier time finding and using Battlecries, Fungalmancer Flurgl obtaining murlocs almost effortlessly because of the reduced purchase price of the minions, Kurtrus Ashfallen activating his new hero power much earlier than normal and gainin a crapton of tempo, etc. The sheer amount of broken interaction led to no less than seventeen heroes being banned from lobbies with this anomaly as a result of the insane synergy in a later patch: A.F.Kay, Captain Eudora, Dinotamer Brann, Elise Starseeker, Forest Warden Omu, Fungalmancer Flurgl, Galakrond, Kurtrus Ashfallen, Ozumat, Scabbs Cutterbutter, Silas Darkmoon, Overlord Saurfang, Professor Putricide, Xyrella, Yogg-Saron, and Y’Shaarj.
  • A Faire Reward has been one of the single most despised anomalies in the entire update, and its not hard to see why: Whenever you tripled a minion, you'd get a Darkmoon Ticket instead of a proper minion discovery(with the Darkmoon Tickets rewards upgrading themselves every 3 turns). Meant to shake up by bringing back a well-liked mechanic, the mechanic soon degenerated into numerous players just staying on Tier 1 and getting as many golden minion rewards as possible to stockpile darkmoon tickets and use them on a later turn. Because of this, the late game matches often degenerated into players wailing at each other's boards with fat Argent Braggarts. This led to no less than three nerf waves applied to this anomaly: First off, the Friends and Family Discount ticket, which formely reduced the price of minion purchases by 1 gold, was reduced to only decrease minion purchase to 2 gold instead to prevent situations where players with enough darkmoon tickets could buy for free. This one didn't stop the strategy from still being used, so a second nerf was applied that made it so that darkmoon tickets only upgrade every 4 turns, up from 3. Even this didn't fix the issue, so a final fix was applied that makes it so Darkmoon Prizes are now locked based on the Tier you were at when you tripled, finally puting a kibosh to this degenerate strategy for good.
  • Bring in the Buddies adds every buddy in the game to the minion pool in the tavern. Because many of this buddies were never meant to interact with other heroes, the number of obscene synergies created with this anomaly needs to be seen to be believed. Dinotamer Brann and Shudderwock in particular could abuse Denathrius' Buddy(Shady Aristocrat) to potentially get dozens, if not near infinite quests and infinite gold in the span of a few turns, as well as Piloted Whirl-o-Tron, Sneed's buddy, to duplicate repeatedly the same deathrattles over and over, creating a nigh-unbeatable board with just a few generic deathrattles to copy. This led to Aristocrat getting its tier bumped to 3 and Whirl-o-Tron getting bumped to tier 5, one of the highest for a buddy, as well as changing its functionality to only trigger on start of combat and copy deathrattles from other friendly minions not called Piloted Whirl-o-Tron, permanently removing the obscene synergy it had with Brann and Shudderwock.

Mercenary

• If you are in PvP team that rely on Protector or Fighter, you will very likely tear your hair out at the presence of Xyrella. She is a Caster whose Hero Power Blinding Luminance is a Speed 3 no Cooldown ability that let her deal 10 damage and have the target -8 Attack for one turn. This mean she can completely neuter one hero of the enemy choosing (likely before they can act since Speed 3 is extremely fast) and deal a decent chunk of damage to them. Worse, most Protectors and Fighters require their Attack to function, which Xyrella completely stuffed. And that not getting to her Equipment Radiant Wand which let her to enhance Blinding Luminance to 14 damage and -12 Attack, as well as the fact that she is one of the most potent healing Caster in the roster rivaling Anduin. All this combined mean that she can heal up her own team Protector and Fighters who are already difficult to take down when she neuter the other enemy Fighter and Protector. This result to her having the highest pick rate in the entire game. she is so good that Orc team use her as their primary support due to her synergy with Samuros despite not being an Orc.