Along with its next expansion and the controversial addition of the new standard format, Hearthstone is set to receive some major downgrades — colloquially referred to as nerfs by the gaming community — to cards from its Classic and Basic sets. These are the first nerfs the game has seen since October of last year, but they're far from the only nerfs it's ever received.
In his most recent video, popular Hearthstone streamer and video creator Kripparrian runs down a history of every card update the game has received, starting from early beta. If you weren't playing back then, the biggest surprise might just be how terribly overpowered the rogue class was in general.
Kripp also runs down a few notable buffs that some classes or cards received during those early days to help raise their power level and make them competitive. For example, did you know that at one point, priests didn't even have the Shadow Word: Death spell available to them? Instead, they had a card called Fade that would give all minions taunt and draw a card for two mana. It wasn't very good in the game's meta at the time, though Kripp notes that it would probably be a great card these days.
Kripp misses a few nerfs from Hearthstone's history — most notably an increase in the cost of the Leeroy Jenkins legendary to stop a combo rogue deck that had absolutely dominated the game for months — but he hits many of the most important and interesting developments.
Watch the full video above for yourself to hear about all the biggest changes Hearthstone has gone through so far as we wait to see what's coming next. And for more Hearthstone shenanigans, consider checking out Polygon's full playlist of videos on YouTube.
