Blizzard nerfs Hearthstone's most overpowered card

The Undertaker, one of Hearthstone's most popular and powerful cards, is to be nerfed in an upcoming patch.

Considered overpowered by many in the community, the Undertaker starts off as a relatively weak minion when put into play, but becomes increasingly more powerful as each creature with the Deathrattle mechanic is played alongside it. For each one of these creatures, the Undertaker gains one additional Attack point, and one additional Health point.

So what's the problem? The Undertaker only costs a single resource point, which means it can be played on the first turn, and then quickly beefed up with equally cheap Deathrattle minions on subsequent turns. Before the game has barely begun, one player will often find themselves in possession of a monstrous creation that can dominate much of the match, and leave the opponent with few options to catch up.

Blizzard's plan is simple: instead of increasing both the Attack and Health points of the Undertaker, Deathrattle minions will soon only boost the Attack stat. This should make the character considerably easier to remove from the board, using common removal methods.

Blizzard community manager Zeriyah explained the thought process behind the upcoming changes in a post on the game's official forum yesterday.

"Undertaker was frustrating to play against. It often gained both Attack and Health stats significantly above those of other inexpensive minions very early in the game.

"With this change, we expect Undertaker will still be better than other 1-Mana minions when played in a deck with a Deathrattle theme, but more likely to die in combat against other minions."

The patch has yet to be dated, but it seems likely to come into effect during the next maintenance period on Wednesday, 4th February.

Those who crafted the expensive golden version of the card will be able to disenchant it for the full crafting dust value for a limited period of time after the patch goes live.

To stay on top of all the latest Hearthstone developments, take a look through our dedicated Hearthstone site MetaBomb.