Obviously this is built to synergize with Frenzy cards, but it's way better than just that. "Attacks and survives" doesn't mean "kills a minion" or even "attacks a minion" - your board can just go face and get buffs out of Rokara while you get extra value from your rush value trades. Seems super powerul.
There's still plenty of time to see more good deathrattles come out for Demon Hunter (or just Neutral cards), so I want to reserve some judgement on the whole Deathrattle package here, but right now it just seems kind of silly.
But what's the best case scenario here so far? Maybe Al'ar or Taelan Fordring or Renowned Performer or Disguised Wanderer or Fishy Flyer? Cheating cards out is pretty valuable, so maybe that gets over the fact that most of these deathrattles they have today are just pretty weak.
With Baron Rivendare in Standard, it's very possible that you only need a couple of good deathrattles to make this package work, but it seems low power.
This seems very obviously powerful. The effect lands at a point on the curve where this ability has been historically relevant as an aggro finisher (I'm thinking Quartermaster and Level Up! as two good examples of this), and there are a lot of good neutral cards to activate this with, many of which have already seen lots of play in powerful decks (e.g. Pen Flinger, Guardian Augmerchant, and Animated Broomstick).
Barrens Blacksmith is definitely a card expect to get very sick of seeing very quickly
Plaguemaw is close enough to vanilla for cost that it should be easy to get enough value to make him worth it. All you need is to be ready to trade one or two decent taunts on your turn and you're getting tons of value here. If he sticks to the board for more than one turn, he's outrageous.
Seems like a super strong sigil for aggro decks, since the silence is relevant for getting through taunts, and the 0-cost is highly valuable for any deck that wants to consistently trigger outcast effects (which is mostly true for aggro DH)
This is low-key one of the best Rogue cards I've ever seen printed in an expansion. Rogue has always had a hard time with using life as a resource because of how little good neutral healing exists, but this goes a long way to making Rogue a really strong weapon class. (Maybe because Blizzard is rotating so many classic and basic Rogue cards with their core set, they're feeling empowered to make good Rogue cards for a change.)
Reasonable body for a 1-drop, and it can pretty easily bet set up to be a real threat on board later in the game. All in all, probably a great warrior card.
The dream is to cascade a bunch of rush minions here and draw your whole deck, but in practice Hunter won't have many rush beasts available after rotation (just Trampling Rhino, Mok'Nathal Lion, Zixor, Apex Predator, and whatever is replacing Stonetusk Boar). Whether or not this sees play probably depends on how many more rush minions or good deathrattle beasts Hunter gets.
Obviously this has some nice synergy with Soul Rend and an uncorrupted Tickatus, but it's also just a decent tempo play in the late game, sort of like a tiny version of Omega Devastator. Seems strong.
This is a great - the Altruis the Outcast ability is super powerful, and summoning a ton of Murlocs should be pretty easy in Shaman, so I'd expect to see a lot of this.
The comparison to Zandalari Templar is a really bad one. Yes, on paper they look very similar - a minion that becomes an 8/8 taunt if its battlecry condition is met - but there's a lot of difference here too.
The first issue is the massive difference between "heal 10 over the course of a game" and "heal 1 this turn." Priest can heal 2 every turn without spending a single card, making this requirement very easy to meet and requiring no need to build around this card. By contrast, to make Zandalari Templar trigger often meant running a lot of healing cards to make sure you'd have access to enough healing effects to meet that 10 health threshold; the minimal reasonable package to support it was 2x Flash of Light and 1 or 2x Truesilver Champion, but to make those add up to 10 you'd have to nearly max the healing of each card, and that was often hard to do. You'd often end up spending 20% or more of your deck building around this effect, which is costly.
The second issue with this comparison is the fail state. Zandalari Templar is just a 4/4 when it misses - that's worse than Chillwind Yeti. But Priest of An'she is a 5/5 taunt if you miss the battlecry. That's at least marginally better than neutral (e.g. Booty Bay Bodyguard), and because it always has taunt it can still be relevant as a way to hold off aggro despite offering subpar tempo.
Getting Priest of An'she to be an 8/8 taunt on turn 5 is pretty easy with Desperate Prayer, making both cards look like serious contenders for a control or midrange priest that needs to survive an aggro-heavy metagame. It also has basically no competition in the 5-mana slot in Priest, which is what I expect will push this up from just playable to a highly relevant Priest card.
Menagerie Warden costs 5, so as early as turn 5 you can use the rank 2 version of this to start drawing your big beast (e.g. 7-drops like Marsh Hydra and Druid of the Plains) to set up some big late game value plays.
In a deck built around taunts, this is functionally Hand of A'dal. Seems like an excellent card. Druid has no shortage of good, natural taunts for this effect, but you can also use it to duplicate any late game minion by pairing it with Ironbark.
Obviously this is built to synergize with Frenzy cards, but it's way better than just that. "Attacks and survives" doesn't mean "kills a minion" or even "attacks a minion" - your board can just go face and get buffs out of Rokara while you get extra value from your rush value trades. Seems super powerul.
There's still plenty of time to see more good deathrattles come out for Demon Hunter (or just Neutral cards), so I want to reserve some judgement on the whole Deathrattle package here, but right now it just seems kind of silly.
But what's the best case scenario here so far? Maybe Al'ar or Taelan Fordring or Renowned Performer or Disguised Wanderer or Fishy Flyer? Cheating cards out is pretty valuable, so maybe that gets over the fact that most of these deathrattles they have today are just pretty weak.
With Baron Rivendare in Standard, it's very possible that you only need a couple of good deathrattles to make this package work, but it seems low power.
This seems very obviously powerful. The effect lands at a point on the curve where this ability has been historically relevant as an aggro finisher (I'm thinking Quartermaster and Level Up! as two good examples of this), and there are a lot of good neutral cards to activate this with, many of which have already seen lots of play in powerful decks (e.g. Pen Flinger, Guardian Augmerchant, and Animated Broomstick).
Barrens Blacksmith is definitely a card expect to get very sick of seeing very quickly
This is amazing conditional on having enough good deathrattles in standard.
This seems pretty easy to do, since you can play Razormane Battleguard into Annoy-o-Tron on turn 2. That will make it hard to remove the Battleguard, so it would be easy to play Teacher's Pet or Greybough afterwards.
Functionally a 0 mana 2/3 in a deck that wants to play taunts....seems great.
Plaguemaw is close enough to vanilla for cost that it should be easy to get enough value to make him worth it. All you need is to be ready to trade one or two decent taunts on your turn and you're getting tons of value here. If he sticks to the board for more than one turn, he's outrageous.
All you need to do is proc this once to get pretty decent value. Worse case scenario, you get a minion that's nearly vanilla and has a soft taunt.
Seems like a super strong sigil for aggro decks, since the silence is relevant for getting through taunts, and the 0-cost is highly valuable for any deck that wants to consistently trigger outcast effects (which is mostly true for aggro DH)
This is low-key one of the best Rogue cards I've ever seen printed in an expansion. Rogue has always had a hard time with using life as a resource because of how little good neutral healing exists, but this goes a long way to making Rogue a really strong weapon class. (Maybe because Blizzard is rotating so many classic and basic Rogue cards with their core set, they're feeling empowered to make good Rogue cards for a change.)
Reasonable body for a 1-drop, and it can pretty easily bet set up to be a real threat on board later in the game. All in all, probably a great warrior card.
The dream is to cascade a bunch of rush minions here and draw your whole deck, but in practice Hunter won't have many rush beasts available after rotation (just Trampling Rhino, Mok'Nathal Lion, Zixor, Apex Predator, and whatever is replacing Stonetusk Boar). Whether or not this sees play probably depends on how many more rush minions or good deathrattle beasts Hunter gets.
Obviously this has some nice synergy with Soul Rend and an uncorrupted Tickatus, but it's also just a decent tempo play in the late game, sort of like a tiny version of Omega Devastator. Seems strong.
Remarkably playable with that battlecry - it's a huge upgrade over Emperor Cobra - but probably still not good enough to go into most decks.
Frost Nova on a stick, with a great upside if you're playing other freeze effects. Seems like a staple for any controlling mage deck
This is a great - the Altruis the Outcast ability is super powerful, and summoning a ton of Murlocs should be pretty easy in Shaman, so I'd expect to see a lot of this.
The comparison to Zandalari Templar is a really bad one. Yes, on paper they look very similar - a minion that becomes an 8/8 taunt if its battlecry condition is met - but there's a lot of difference here too.
The first issue is the massive difference between "heal 10 over the course of a game" and "heal 1 this turn." Priest can heal 2 every turn without spending a single card, making this requirement very easy to meet and requiring no need to build around this card. By contrast, to make Zandalari Templar trigger often meant running a lot of healing cards to make sure you'd have access to enough healing effects to meet that 10 health threshold; the minimal reasonable package to support it was 2x Flash of Light and 1 or 2x Truesilver Champion, but to make those add up to 10 you'd have to nearly max the healing of each card, and that was often hard to do. You'd often end up spending 20% or more of your deck building around this effect, which is costly.
The second issue with this comparison is the fail state. Zandalari Templar is just a 4/4 when it misses - that's worse than Chillwind Yeti. But Priest of An'she is a 5/5 taunt if you miss the battlecry. That's at least marginally better than neutral (e.g. Booty Bay Bodyguard), and because it always has taunt it can still be relevant as a way to hold off aggro despite offering subpar tempo.
Getting Priest of An'she to be an 8/8 taunt on turn 5 is pretty easy with Desperate Prayer, making both cards look like serious contenders for a control or midrange priest that needs to survive an aggro-heavy metagame. It also has basically no competition in the 5-mana slot in Priest, which is what I expect will push this up from just playable to a highly relevant Priest card.
Menagerie Warden costs 5, so as early as turn 5 you can use the rank 2 version of this to start drawing your big beast (e.g. 7-drops like Marsh Hydra and Druid of the Plains) to set up some big late game value plays.
In a deck built around taunts, this is functionally Hand of A'dal. Seems like an excellent card. Druid has no shortage of good, natural taunts for this effect, but you can also use it to duplicate any late game minion by pairing it with Ironbark.