Card reveal season for Forged in the Barrens continues with a card reveal Jinbae!
Don't forget to follow us on Twitter @OutOfCardsHS to get notified of new card reveals! You can also follow along with us on Discord.
Learn more about Forged in the Barrens
Head on over to our dedicated guide for Forged in the Barrens to learn more about the new expansion and to see all the revealed cards!
Support Out of Cards - Get Premium
Love what we're doing? Support the site for $2 a month to remove ads and get some site cosmetics! Discounts are available if you subscribe for multiple months at once!
Get Cheaper Hearthstone Packs with Amazon Coins
Learn more about how you can save money on Hearthstone packs for the new expansion with our guide on Amazon Coins!
Comments
Interesting card but it requires another minion or spell to completely remove whatever minion that was weakened. Just weakening a minion isn't good enough as some opponents can just buff them and make them a threat once more (like Paladin). It's pretty bizarre that they printed this card and still kept Natalie Seline in the core set. Even if this isn't direct removal, the fact that it only costs 2 mana already makes it a lot more flexible and easier to work with than the highly prohibitive 8 mana cost of Natalie. I believe that this pretty much kills any possibilities of Natalie seeing any play for the remainder of this year. Not that it matters much as Natalie probably wasn't going to see any play anyway but it's just baffling that they thought it was a good idea to keep a really bad card like that around. They could have kept Mindflayer Kaahrj around instead as it is good as a Tempo card and still scales well into the late game making it perfect for both fast and slow Priest decks. They did add at least one card from the Year of the Dragon to the core set so there is no excuse for this.
This is like Argent braggart but instead of copying stats you just steal them.
It's by no means a bad card when you're opponent throws down their finisher. If your opponent is going to flood the board you're already playing priest and have some board removal already in your deck.
I like this card because it indicates that Blizzard is moving more towards a board-centric Priest identity, and away from "I will kill every minion you play until you die of boredom". We're seeing a good bit of damage-based removal in this expansion which suggests a more midrange style. It also opens up avenues for Cabal Acolyte or Cabal Shadow Priest shenanigans.
Blizzard has been pushing the two playstiles for years now, but an tempo/board priest just never really worked out. But it was pretty close to when they introduced Rally!, so maybe this expansion will finally make it viable.
That is pretty horrible. If you're under pressure, it's one of two things:
1) your opponent is aggro and flooding the board. Aggro usually doesn't go tall. In that case this does nothing, you need AoE, nibbling away a bit of stats off of an opposing 3/4 isn't gonna do you any favours.
2) your opponent is control and is pressuring you with bigger minions with dangerous abilities. You're Priest. You got a bajillion ways of dealing with big threats, and every single one of them is better than shaving half the stats off of the opposing Rattlegore.
I get the feeling that this is meant to be a proactive card for a board-focused Priest. Such decks generally want to develop their board and buff their minons, and don't want to end up with situational removal stuck in their hand. In that situation, this might look attractive on the surface. Thing is, if you're a proactive Priest focusing on board control, what opponent are you expecting to face where this is good? They drop a 4/7 taunt, let's say. This turns it into a 2/3 and becomes a 3/5 for 2. That's a 5/8 swing in stats. Is that really that good when a lot of the time this just sits in your hand against aggro and looks sad? Maybe...but I don't think so. Especially since this hypothetical proactive Priest deck still runs into the same issue it always has. It's not fast enough and runs out of steam due to a lack of card draw. This is a decent to middling card made specifically for what is likely a pretty bad deck. If Amet couldn't make Board Priest work, what hope does the deck even have?
I actually changed my mind after thinking about it for bit longer.
The card might actually be decent.
It's strength is not raw power but that it is very flexible. It almost feels like a druid card in that sense.
Opponent's boards often have many small and one big minion (think whirlkick rogue)
Serena is best used just before a board clear, use her on an 8/8 she becomes a 5/5 and leaves behind a 4/4 that can easily be cleared by the aoe that you are playing anyways and for example a small 2/1 minion that you trade.
In that scenario Serena was basically a Penance but you got a 5/5 for free!
Now if you are against zoo you can play her as a 2drop, let's say vs a flame imp she becomes a 3/2 and leaves behind a 1/1.
Which might not be game winning but it's damn good start and light years better than healing your face on 2
It would be good if she was an epic
I think you nailed it.
Kind of my own thoughts but you summed it up very clearly and to the point.
Tier 1 artwork though - what a shame...
Fairly underwhelming, compared to other Priest legendries that traded stats like Vol'jin or Natalie Seline
It's very interesting design. The point is to combo it with other card and steal the minion + got some stats. Not to destroy it like Natalie Seline. 2 mana is very low for this effect which makes it quite versatile. I can imagine some experimentation.
So if played on a 4/4 this becomes a 3/3 and the enemy minion a 2/2.
If played on a 5/5 this becomes a 4/4 and the enemy a 2/2, right?
The idea is intriguing and when you can trade with other minions well it will feel great, but in the legendary spot this is not better than an Argent Braggart .
this is pretty bad in a lot of situations
So it can only kills 1 health minions. Seems pretty useless. If only had taunt, but as it is doesn't seem its good enough for modern Hearthstone
So, this is just always good right?
only if you have something to kill the target with afterwards. Otherwise you're just trading stats and achieving nothing.
As always, the preview art detail totally mislead us - on Discord, we were making LotR jokes and then we got bamboozled pretty hard.
For what regards the card itself, it's quite the innovative effect: we've seen something very similar with Slate's Syringe, but now we have this effect on a minion.
I'd say it's the opposite of Argent Braggart, because Braggart copies stats from other minions to equal them and become stronger, while Serena Bloodfeather becomes bigger by stealing numbers from a single target.
Also, it kind of reminds me the move Pain Split from the Pokemon games. All in all, a cool and (probably) very annoying card. Thumbs up.
A fairly underwhelming priest legendary to be honest.
The problem is that this card doesn't remove the target, but rather soften it, at roughly half its stats and building up a decent minion for you, depending on the target. So you spend 2 mana to reduce a target's stats and then...I guess you play broom and remove it? Or you play the deluge of tempo spells priest has now and build a very big minion which will subsequently be removed by a better reactive option from your opponent. Both scenarios admitably suck.
Its not entirely trash. There are stuff you can do with it like using it to reduce the target's attack so you can get it with Cabal Acolyte, or just kill it with Initiation and get your own copy.
Kinda makes us wonder why Argent Braggart isn't a legendary himself. Is this card really the nuts that team5 couldn't make it an epic card instead?
Well, they're trying to push a more board-centric Priest rather than just a "removal until you run out of resources" one, and this card really fits that design concept.
Both Paladin and Priest should be about board - now Anduin got his own Argent Braggart, which you are definitely right about.
I still think that this card is quite good as a general tempo/tech card, especially in a board-centric meta. Obviously, if Priest will be trash then Serena Bloodfeather won't see play, but the same reasoning can be applied to any other card.
It is a more complex effect than the Braggart has, so a higher rarity fits (though that doesn't mean epic and legendary makes more sense than rare and epic would). I think in practice though they are very different cards used for completely different things, and their comparison is only skin deep.
Serena probably makes more sense from a slow midrange point of view than the usual control mindset of "I must kill everything all the time". If you shrink something until it's not a significant threat anymore then you don't need to deal with it immediately, while Serena also sits on the board as something that will quite often be able to value trade into whatever it stole stats from. Perhaps that mindset doesn't have much of a place outside of Arena...
Also, that damn broom. It shows how overtuned a 1-mana neutral is when people's first thoughts are "maybe it works well with broom?"
Honestly, now that you mention it, I do find myself coming back to this failsafe 'this would still be viable with broom' excuse quite often.
Maybe team5 should have a look at it either nerfing it or changing its effects. Because it seems like Animated Broomstick papers over nearly every card that should otherwise be too slow, or too weak.