Hearthstone nerfs to Corridor Creeper, Patches, Bonemare, and Raza now live

Update: These changes are now live on desktop (and should be live on mobile soon), so go forth and dust your nerfed cards and craft yourself some replacements. (Or don’t, and save that dust for the next expansion, which will probably be out this spring.) The Year of the Mammoth card bundle — featuring 10 packs each of Journey to Un’goro, Knights of the Frozen Throne, and Kobolds & Catacombs — is also live, and for $19.99, it’s a bargain for anyone who’s interested in buying cards. See the original details of the card nerfs below

In the next Hearthstone update, some much-needed balance changes are arriving, cutting some powerful cards down to size. This is good news for players struggling against these monster cards, but bad news for anyone with decks built around them. These nerfs are expected to go live next month, and when they do these cards can be disenchanted for their full Arcane Dust value for two weeks. If you have these cards and won’t use them, disenchanting them is a good idea — if you decide you need them later, you’ll have the full dust cost to craft them, and if you don’t you’ll have more dust to craft replacements with.

Now let’s look at the changes.

Bonemare now costs 8 mana (Up from 7)

This won’t affect Bonemare too much. It continues to be a card that’ll be included in many decks as well as an arena staple. I’ve consistently advised newer players who don’t have large collections to get Bonemare crafted if they haven’t gotten one yet especially since the card is a common rarity. It’ll still make a powerful impact on the board, but it will do so one turn later.

Corridor Creeper now has 2 attack (Down from 5)

Yeesh, Corridor Creeper won’t be creeping any corridors for a while. They not only nerfed it, they took it out into a field and completely stomped on it. I can foresee it being of some limited use in Hunter or Druid beast synergy decks because a 2/5 can still be a cheap presence on the board. Aggro decks just took a huge hit though.

Patches the Pirate no longer has Charge

The card that everyone wanted to see nerfed since the day it came out has finally gotten nerfed. Patches the Pirate is no longer in charge because it loses Charge. Many decks used to include Patches plus Southsea Captains to help get him drawn out. He’ll still see play in decks that use Prince Keleseth or Rogue’s Swashbuckler and can thin out decks.

Raza the Chained changes hero power to (1) instead of (0)

Razakus Priest gets a bit of a hit here. Combined with Shadowreaper Anduin, Raza the Chained was one of the few victory conditions necessary to whittle opponents down. The thought process here is that it would be too strong in Wild after rotation and this change will keep it at a manageable power level.

Oddly enough, Warlocks survive this round of nerfs unscathed. I look forward to our new Cubelock overlords. I suppose I can dust my gold Patches now. What are your thoughts on these nerfs?