R.I.P., Grim Patron: Blizzard pushes out Hearthstone’s Warsong Commander nerf

It finally happened. One of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft’s biggest nerfs ever just went live.

Publisher Blizzard updated Hearthstone today to reduce the power of one of the collectible card battler’s most dominant decks. The studio announced this change was coming earlier this month, but now it’s finally live. This means we will see how the competitive Hearthstone community will respond to this tectonic shift a little more than three weeks before the World Championship semifinals kick off Friday, November 6, at BlizzCon.

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Previously, Warsong Commander enabled the any minion with an attack of three or less to instantly attack. With the Warrior class and when combined with the Grim Patron, a card that summons an exact copy of itself when it takes non-fatal damage, the deck could be unstoppable and kill the opponent in one turn.

Now, Warsong Commander is a completely different kind of card. Instead of empowering all low-attack cards with Charge, it buffs up any card that already has charge with a +1 attack. This means those Patron Warrior decks will no longer work as they have for months.

Here are the full patch notes:

The timing of this change means it will have an even greater impact than normal. Nearly every top player who has qualified for the World Championship so far uses some variation of the Patron Warrior deck, and they will almost certainly have to go back to cooking up something different to have a chance to win the finals.

While that might frustrate some pros, it should make for an interesting event with some dramatic storylines.