Primordial Grazer is a card you pretty much never see at higher levels. It’s one of those cards that are deemed “good enough” for new players but falls by the wayside as other cards become available. Why is this? Well let’s break down the value. For 3 mana you get a 2/2 minion and can buff a nearby minion +2/+2. This is bad value. Why? Well let’s look at some similar cards. For 1 mana you can use greater fortitude to give +2/+2 to any minion on the board. So let’s say that 1 of the 3 mana for Primordial Grazer (PG) is for his +2/+2 buff. What type of minion are we getting for 2 mana? Well we are getting a 2/2 with no utility. Quite possibly one of the worst 2 mana minions going. Any general and almost all 2 drops can take it out in one hit and since most 2’s have 3 hp the PG likely won’t even kill anything. This is atrociously bad. An argument could be made that the PG gives you a minion and +2/+2 buff in one card while greater fortitude and a 2 drop would cost 2 cards but 1: the pg can only buff nearby units while greater fortitude can reach any minion and 2: any 2 mana drop you use is going to be much stronger than the 2/2 PG as they are often 2/3’s with some kind of utility.
The neutral version of PG is songweaver. This is a 3 mana 3/3 minion that can give a +1/+1 to nearby minions. This is a better card than PG in most respects. Why? Because while a PG is likely to get one shot leaving it’s damage potential at 2 a Songweaver can likely take 2 hits from generals and 2 attack minions (which there are a lot of). This gives the Songweaver a likely damage potential of 6. 3 times as much as the PG. Granted you only get a +1/+1 buff to your minion but that is often all you need to take out a stronger minion or to make sure the buffed minion isn’t 1 shotted. Also the 3/3 songweaver means that if you draw a bad hand and are forced to play songweaver without a minon to buff, at least you are getting a 3/3. Not to mention dispelling is back in the meta in a huge way so that +2/+2 buff you just used is likely going to be gone next round anyway.
This seems wrong to me as faction specific cards are supposed to be a little better than their natural counterpoints (think of the 3 mana silverguard knight at 3/5 vs the 4 mana primus shieldmaster at 3/6 or the songhai 3 mana Ki beholder, a ranged 3/2 that freezes the movement of an enemy minion as his opening gambit vs the 4 mana ranged 3/2 firespitter that does… well nothing when it’s summoned.)
I’ve always liked the idea behind primordial grazer but in practice it just isn’t worth taking over other cards. With that said here are a couple ideas I had to bring this card to where it should be in the meta.
The simplest way to balance it, I think, would be to make primordial grazer a 2/3 minion. I think this is fair as playing greater fortitude and another actual 2 mana minion is still going to give you more value then playing a PG as 2 drop minions usually have 2/3 anyway but also have some extra utility (that extra utility being the bonus to playing 2 cards instead of one pg). With 3 hp though the PG can at least have an even fight with 2 drops and has the potential to do 4 damage instead of just 2. This would also make it slightly more powerful than the songweaver, as it should be, but not much more powerful (again, as it should be).
Another idea would be to make pg synergize with Kujata’s and flash, making the pg more situational but also more powerful in said situation. The idea is basically to change PG’s buff from a greater fortitude buff to an amplification type one. That is to say make it so the PG can only buff damaged minions but when it does buff them it gives them the +2/+4 buff. This wouldn’t make the pg stronger in general but I think it would allow the pg to be used in higher level decks that use Kajuta’s and/or flash. This way you can use songweavers if you want a straight buff but it gives Magmar a more unique faction card that synergizes with their kit.
The third idea, and this may be my favourite, is related to growing. We all grow decks are underpowered. Why? It takes too long to reap the benefits of grow and also now that dispel is back in such a big way even if you do get a huge minion it’s likely it will never have a chance to get utilized. The only time grow decks are scary is when a meloki huntress is played which allows minions to grow on the enemy’s turn and yours. This let’s your minion become immediately more threatening instead of being weak for a turn and only reaping value if the minion lives. When a meloki huntress is on the field grow actually becomes viable but she is the only card that can do this and basing the success of your deck on 3 out of 40 cards is not a ticket to success. One way I think primordial grazer AND grow decks could be more balanced is to make PG a fast grow card. There are multiple ways this could be done but my idea would be to keep PG a 2/2 minion, lower the buff to +1/+1 but then also add an effect that “immediately grows nearby minion”. This means a minion would at least need +1/+1 grow for the PG to even get it’s old pre-buff value but anything higher than that would give the PG increased value, which I think is fair because this would once again make the PG much more situational and it needs to be stronger anyway.
This change would also allow grow decks to be a bit more viable as you’d now have 6 out of 40 cards that can immediately grow minions, with meloki huntress still being the key to victory but allowing the primordial grazer to greatly help in between having meloki’s on the field by giving one shot immediate growths to your grow minions making grow decks faster and more proactive in general.
Sorry this is so long, I don’t know how to break it down any shorter. What do you guys think about this idea? Do you have any others? Or do you think primordial grazer is fine as it is?