For the record I do believe that Molten Giant should've been nerfed... but I also think that they over nerfed it.
It should've been nerfed because with the change to Standard they wanted to move away from decks that were omnipresent. People didn't want to play the same decks they have been playing for 3 years so it made sense to nerf it. Plus they had to nerf BGH so those two went hand in hand.
Except that they specifically targeted a few of the classic decks and not really all of them... it was selective nerfing. They didn't target Zoolock when it has always been present in the game. They didn't target Control Warrior or Freeze Mage. So that just tells us that they were ok with some decks always being present in the meta game and others not so much.
There's a lot of misinformation being thrown around here. Molten Giants being usable against non aggressive decks on turn 6? In what universe is this possible? You would have to be at 16 HP for that to happen on turn 6... how is a non aggressive deck taking half the HP of a Handlock on turn 6? If you tapped for 6 turns in a row from turn 1 (which is not actually feasible because you would over draw) you would STILL not have lost enough life to play a Molten Giant on turn 6. Maybe people are confusing it with Mountain Giant which is the preferred giant to play early and can be played as early as turn 4 but again... you are tapping twice for it (if going first) and essentially skipping your first three turns to have the privilege to play it quickly. I would much rather play 3 minions before turn 4 and then drop down a 4 mana 7/7 rather than skip 3 turns and play a 8/8... like it's not even close son.
Handlock is good against slow control decks not because of Molten Giants but because of Jaraxxus (and Drakes and Mountain Giants). Paladin, Priest and CW have enough removals to deal with the entire suite of threats in Handlock... Handlock wins control match ups by using Jaraxxus as a finisher. I can still beat Control Paladin, Control Warriors and Control Priest with slow Lock decks because of Jaraxxus... those match ups actually have not changed much. In fact... Mountain Giants are more potent in the control match up because at turn 4 a control deck might actually not have an answer to it (sort of like Faceless) but Molten Giants come later.
I also contest that OG Handlock would be good in the current meta. No it would be tier 3 just like current Renolock is. First of all... if you want to use the Renolock variant with a single Molten Giant... that isn't much better than current lists. Molten Giant was at its prime with double Healbots and Belchers in deck, you don't have that anymore. You have way more aggressive decks to deal with, a single Molten Giant isn't going to turn the tide and without Reno no one is going to really respect you anyway.
You will still lose to Aggro Shaman, Miracolis, Freeze Mage, Anyfin Paladin, Beast Druid, Yogg Druid, every single Hunter deck, Tempo Mage, Cthun decks, Dragon Warrior, Pirate Warrior etc.
