Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
And yet it's been totally fine for years now, and wasn't nerfed during periods when aggressive mages were much more prevalent than they are today. Yeah, not buying it. Mana Wyrm's fine, just like Firey War Axe was - all this does is make Mage that much more dependent on cards from new sets by denying them one of their good classic cards.
Mana Wyrm and Fiery War Axe were "fine" for years because they were basically the only good early game plays in those classes' basic/classic sets (Mage also has Frostbolt, but Warrior doesn't have a single good early game card left). This is a "design space" nerf in that Blizzard wants to be able to push new, different early-game options without letting the class explode into an all-powerful aggro deck (like what happened with Pirate Warrior and Aggro Shaman in the past), but cripples the classes' early games into relying on whatever new cards are in Standard the way Paladin is.