For quite some time now, Patron Warrior has been the concensus best deck in Hearthstone. The ability to flood the board with Grim Patrons, create huge Frothing Berserkers, and have them CHARGE FORWARD with Warsong Commander has been extremely powerful in the hands of skilled players. Many have been calling for nerfs to the deck, frustrated with being able to take 30+ damage in one turn from an empty board state. The reasoning behind the nerf to Leeroy Jenkins in the past has been quoted many times, but in case you missed it, here it is: "Fighting for board control and battles between minions make an overall game of Hearthstone more fun and compelling, but taking 20+ damage in one turn is not particularly fun or interactive."

With the Patron Warrior deck able to do even more than that, it's no wonder that players have been dissatisfied for quite some time. Much to their dismay, it was only recently that developer Hamilton Chu stated in an interview that he doesn't believe the deck is as powerful as many people, leading us to believe that nerfs were not in the near future. However, Blizzard community manager Zeriyah made a post today on the official Hearthstone tournaments that the masses have been waiting for. He starts by re-iterating Blizzard's extreme reluctance to ever "nerf" a card, preferring to instead continue to introduce new cards, and allow the players to sort out the metagame themselves. With that said, they have recognized that Patron Warrior may be taking things too far, and they will be changing the effect of Warsong Commander as a result. Behold the upcoming card:

This change will be coming in a future patch, which Zeriyah later clarified should be coming next week. This means that the landscape of the Hearthstone world championship next month could be shaken up dramatically, as players have been favoring two types of decks in tournaments: Patron Warrior, and decks that can beat Patron Warrior. Given that this change will, in all likelihood, make Patron Warrior no longer a solid option, we could be seeing some unexpected things at worlds. I'll leave you with the explanation from Zeriyah about why this change was made, and the company's philosophy moving forward.

"Going forward, we will continue to stand by our stance that we will only make adjustments to cards when we feel it is completely necessary and allow the injection of new cards into the game help our players define what the meta evolves into. In the case of Warsong Commander, we felt this change was necessary to help expand both future design space and to stand by our overarching game philosophy that battles between minions and fighting for board control is what makes Hearthstone fun and compelling."