Blizzard Nerfs Hearthstone's Post-expansion Dominant Shaman Meta

It's no surprise to hear that a CCG has a balance issue. From the first days of Magic: The Gathering to the current crop of electronic games, something has always slipped through playtesting -- if proper playtesting was done at all. The difference these days is that, in the case of the most egregious errors in designer judgment, it's relatively easy to fix things.

What happened to the shaman class in Hearthstone's Descent of Dragons expansion might properly be classified as one of those "egregious errors." The new legendary Galakrond cards all required two Invocations to upgrade their abilities and, lo and behold, shaman was the only class granted single card that would apply both of those Invocations, the Corrupt Elementalist. That's helped shaman dominate the constructed scene over the past couple of weeks, maybe alongside hunter decks.

Today's balance update seeks to trim things back a little bit. Corrupt Elementalist still has his double-Invoke power, but his cost has been raised from 5 mana to 6. Two other shaman cards, Sludge Slurper and Mogu Fleshshaper, also went under the knife, as did the neutral card Faceless Corruptor. Now, thankfully, everything in Hearthstone is perfectly balanced, unless today happens to end with a "y."

The patch also changes a few Hearthstone Battlegrounds cards, mostly swapping their tiers around while also removing two cards and adding another. You can read about all the changes on the Hearthstone site.