I think I would have tried to come up with another idea. Maybe a 4 mana 2/2 and it only summons 1 annoy-o-tron.

In general, I think that they may have missed this card in the initial balance evaluation because maybe they thought the meta would look a lot different, or during playtesting they expected a much different deck to define things. It feels similar to the problem with Corridor Creeper. I doubt they expected the meta to get to the point where the best version of any archetype, was to take that deck and put in Patches, Southsea Captain, and Corridor Creeper. That's a very weird deck choice but it just happened. I think Giggling Inventor would have been easier to predict as a problem card than Corridor Creeper, though.

The reason they missed it is this, imo:

On the surface, from a raw value perspective, it does not look broken. 9 stats + 2 divine shields/taunts for 5 mana is kind of in line with the current powercreep. If they had a 5 mana 4/5 with taunt it would probably not be an issue. They probably looked at it like - "Well, annoy-o-tron was 2 mana, so a 2/1 for 1 mana isn't that bad."

The problem is it is 3 bodies in a meta that rewards flooding the board (fungalmancer, etc.). Another related issue is that there isn't really a reliable way to deal with it or clear it. It kind of completely shuts down the board for a few turns.

Combine that with the power of magnetic and the strength of odd aggro decks and boom, broken as **** card. It's just a classic case of them underestimating the impact of things on the meta, while also encouraging certain complementary playstyles that will for sure dominate that meta. I think multiple people must work on the balance team and it seems like they are very much not in sync. I think their playtesting probably sucks a lot too, because it was pretty obvious even on day 1 that giggling was broken.

All of the above posts I think are accurate, and on top of that I wonder how deep their playtesting really is. I agree that I think they simply overlook and don't understand how powerful some of these cards can become. The community is built to find and exploit the best decks and strategies... If a card is good, the players will eventually realize so.

How about a total brute-force algorithm aspect of playtesting? Test every possible combination of deck against every other possible combination of decks 10,000 times each and see what kind of outliers you find. This would take some massive computing power but I'll be the results would be interesting. We would run in to some AI-limitations, but who knows, maybe event the Innkeeper could figure out that Giggling Inventor is a winning play...

Back in the day I donated some of my computer's idle cycles to the Folding @ Home project. It would be cool if we could integrate something like that in to the Battle.net app. Instead of sitting idly waiting for me to re-up my WoW subscription or buy blops4, how about you simulate a few thousand games of Goldshire Footman vs. Magma Rager?

They didn't nerf giggling to 7 because even warlock. They did it to make 100% sure quest rogue can't spam two of them in one turn. 6 would've allowed it still. Also, your man Mossy Horror deals with a non-buffed GI.

mage SUCKS now, mana wyrm is RUINED now.

the nerfs are so confusing to me i dont even know what the dev team is doing

Mana Wyrm nerf was needed about 2 years ago

rest seems meh, feels like they are just gonna let all rotation **** just live it's course sadly

druid is just too versatile. some of their chose one cards need to have worse options like branching is just too flexible--12 armor for 4 mana is good value.

druid also shouldn't have real viable one card removal.

not sure if there has ever been a time where a class had so many viable decks:

token
taunt
big EZ
maly
togwoggle

plague is in all but 1, same thing with malfurion and ultimate infestation. nourish is in all of them, swipe in all of them, branching in all of them, WG is all of them. it's base cards and classic are so strong and versatile.

am confident WG will be HoF'd at rotation

I really really do try not to be the reddit doomsayer but no nerfs to druid in standard is so dissapointing. I just lost to a druid where i hexed twice, mct his cube with hadronox inside and still was able to lose on the power of branching paths and UI.

It's just really unfun.

I've known that wild will always be a ****show but I'm really in love with being able to build decks with all cards available, there's so much you can do. I knew that at some point I'd have to transfer to standard because wild will become such a ****show of 3 or 4 decks that just win against every other deck and blizzard will never put the effort in to make it a balanced format. It's a shame.

I hate taunt/cube druid more than any deck that’s ever been made in this game.

Speaking of which how has cube evaded a nerf?

Going to guess silences is the reason they won't nerf cube.

Dual arena is always fun if you guys want to come back.

I'm somehow 3-1 with a Keleseth hunter mage deck. The reckoning will soon be upon me.

dual arena is so good yeah

Dual arena does make me lol. Ate a double nightmared Ysera and a Bulldozer and the opponent left the room.

I'm not sure how you even draft for it. Playing aggressive tempo doesn't seem good, nor does drafting value decks. It somewhere in between and I have no clue what curves should look like.

i think aggro druid hunter hero power with living mana is very scary to play against

nerfs in effect. my arena got ****ed bc of it.

Yeah i had an arena with 3 gigglings going lol

So now that they got rid of a middling tier 2 deck and one other card, is everyone enjoying the brand new completely fresh meta?

vicious syndicate hasn't been loading for me, keeps getting cloud errors. website dying?

I just can not bring myself to enjoy arena as a format.

I played one game of this format and it felt like I was up against a constructed deck. Triggering deathrattles that put multiple minions on the board straight in to having them all add random mechs to the hand. Bone Drake in to Ysera to wipe my board with awakens. Wipe the board again with Mossy Horror just as BM before Nightmare for lethal.

Let's all go play Artifact in a few weeks.

I'll definitely be giving Artifact a shot. As is, I've found myself playing a lot more MTGA than HS recently. Was a MTG virgin (a phrase that's certainly never been uttered before) prior to playing MTGA and I'm really enjoying it.