The second part of our foray into the Initiate Set reveals to us some massive powerhouses. Demon Hunters are certainly prepared to go toe-to-toe with the other classes, at least in Standard.
We're always accurate in our reviews, of course, and if you disagree with us we'll politely debate you in the comments (even though you're absolutely wrong and we've definitely never misread any of the cards in previous reviews, or made wildly inaccurate predictions).
Poor unfortunate souls! So bland! So gluey!
Quote From ShadowsOfSense I smell a nerf target.
Card draw is clearly not something that Demon Hunters are going to struggle with, but even still, Feast of Souls feels overtuned. Coordinated Strike becomes a 5 mana Deal 3 damage, Draw 3 cards; Command the Illidari an 8 mana Deal 6, Draw 6. Not to mention any incidental minions you happen to have out simply become more fuel for the fire. It's entirely possible that some of the skill in playing this card may come from knowing when in your turn to play it, so you don't draw too many cards!
This is… ridiculous card draw. Two mana cheaper than Cult Master and completely unaffected by incidental Deathrattles or other effects which might halt its ability prematurely. The only downside to this card is that you'll often be spending the last mana of the turn on it, so you won't be able to make use of any of the cards you draw until the next turn. A small price to pay for such massive advantage. I predict this is going to get complaints worse than Divine Favor ever did.
Dance Dance Decapitation
Quote From linkblade91 Blade Dance is most comparable to Savagery, another card that wants to use your hero's Attack as a form of additional removal. In that sense, the comparison is very favorable. For one mana more, you can hit three times as many minions, in a class that can quickly escalate their Attack via weapons such as Aldrachi Warblades and the Warglaives of Azzinoth. For 10-mana, an Inner Demon/Blade Dance combo will destroy just about anything…and its buddies. You could also see this spell as a Blade Flurry that doesn't destroy the weapon, which is certainly appreciated. All-in-all, this is a good card that will definitely see play in a deck that wants to control the board even a little.
Phylactery sold separately.
Quote From Demonxz95 Soul Split is a cool card that compares unfavorably to its Mage counterpart, Molten Reflection. That said, it still has some neat tricks up its sleeve. The most obvious one would be to copy a large Demon. The problem with that is that they cost more than 6 mana.
That would be where I introduce you to my good friend, Raging Felscreamer. With Felscreamer, you can reduce the Cost of your Hulking Overfiend down to 6, where you can play it and use Soul Split on it in the same turn. Pretty neat if I say so myself. If you're lucky to get Fel Summoner to die on your turn, you can do this with less mana and on more possible targets. I'd love to see a "Big Demon DH" deck come into fruition and this seems a card that perfectly goes into there. I think it will need more support first before it really takes off, but the groundwork is there. You could also cheat out a Supreme Abyssal… eh, who am I kidding, that'll never see play.
Lead singer of Karazhan Korpse.
Quote From Demonxz95 Raging Felscreamer is reminiscent of Dragon Consort to me. Dragon Consort would be a pretty strong card for Dragon Paladin, but that's never been a hugely popular deck. This card falls into the same use. It is worth noting as of the time of writing this review, that DH has no 2-Cost Demons, meaning the only ones you can use with it are Vilefiend or Imprisoned Vilefiend (lol) to get a 0-Cost Demon that turn. Just like Dragon Consort however, you can also save the Demon for a future turn, perhaps getting out your Hulking Overfiend on turn 6. Unlike Dragon Consort, it also doesn't have the tribe it affects, meaning you can play a second Raging Felscreamer and double the cost reduction effect and the next Demon you play with cost 4 less. If DH gets some more larger Demons, I could see that being a useful strategy. More 2-Cost Demons would also be nice so that you could get maximum efficiency out of a curve play if you want/need to.
It's not her fault people are so clumsy around her weapons.
Quote From Demonxz95 Illidari Felblade paints a picture described elegantly. It's good. 4 mana 5/3 with Rush is fairly vanilla by itself (and is better than Cursed Castaway) and can get the job done although it will die fairly easily to most things.
But "it'll die fairly easy to most things" doesn't stop Illidari Felblade, and do you know why? Because it becomes Immune when it Outcasts (is that the proper future perfect tense terminology? Eh, who cares?), and because it becomes Immune, it becomes a fast killer. At 4 mana, it will effectively deal 5 damage and leave a 5/3 on the board. That's pretty good, right? Exactly.
You should see him when he's angry.
Quote From linkblade91 The most obvious comparison one can make here is with Batterhead: they took two off his Health, added it to his Attack, and made him a Demon. So why not just stick with Batterhead, seeing as how it's still in Standard? Well, turns out the differences are pretty significant if you think about them. 5-Attack is likely to kill something, meaning the reload mechanic should be that much more consistent versus 3-Attack. The two Health shouldn't make too much of a dent in its survivability, so the trade-off was perfectly alright. Finally, the Demon tag means you can Discover a copy (Netherwalker), get it out sooner (Raging Felscreamer), and/or perhaps even Recruit it outright (Pit Commander). The tribal synergy is something that can be further explored in the future, as well, making Hulking Overfiend a staple card for Big-Demon Demon Hunter decks.
The wrath scale goes from 'mildly vexed' to 'WHY ARE THEY EVEN RUNNING MCT?!?'.
Quote From linkblade91 Under the right circumstances, Wrathscale Naga is extremely powerful. With only 1 Health it'll be hard to keep alive, but you would never play him before you're ready anyway. Both Coordinated Strike and Command the Illidari are effective combo options, quickly racking up the deaths and thus the effect procs. Keep in mind that the Naga doesn't specify the effect is only for minions, meaning you could seriously damage the opponent's face with this card while still working to control the board. The card is cool, but how effective will it be? That's currently an unknown (although I suppose that's true of the whole class right now).
Every deck needs a good support.
Quote From Demonxz95 Eye Beam is a somewhat hilarious, yet also awesome card at the same time. At its base, dealing 3 damage to a minion with Lifesteal for 3 damage is okay. Not "great", but it's not bad if you need to cast it for its full cost, although that's not a card that you would consciously put into your deck if you could avoid it. At 0 though, it's just awesome. If you top-deck it, you can play it for 0 on the same turn you draw it, and we even have a few Outcast effects that draw.
Depending on how easy you can get its Outcast effect to happen, this card could be mediocre, or very strong.
Et tu?
Quote From linkblade91 I love Taunts. I would go so far as to say it's my favorite Keyword, so it's nice to see that the new class will also be getting them (looking at you, Rogue). That means this card is right up my alley. Wrathspike Brute functions in particular as a strong counter to a token or aggro deck, reciprocating damage with each strike against her. Keep in mind it doesn't specify "enemy minions", meaning it will apply free face damage against your opponent as well. Late in the game, you could box your foe into a corner with this minion, keeping them from attacking because the return damage will kill them.
For the Gryffindor in the family.
Quote From Demonxz95 Team 5, when are you going to make Cleave a keyword?
In all seriousness though, this seems like a very strong card. 7 mana for a Flamestrike is fine, but 7 mana for the potential of three slightly small Flamestrikes in exchange for some face damage is quite good. It's no doubt going to be an extremely strong control card for DH, although Control doesn't appear to be DH's main archetype. Of course, the other problem is that Ooze or Zephrys will simply just get rid of it.
A Control DH deck might take a bit of time to form (if it does), but as soon as it does, then this card is for sure going into that deck.
My blades they don't mess around.
Quote From Demonxz95 Altruis is a really cool card with quite a bit of potential in my opinion. While there are probably quite a few builds that can use him well, I want to use him in an Aggro deck as a board control tool. Yes, I realize "aggro" and "board control" are a bit contradictory, but because Aggro runs a lot of low-cost cards, it will be able to trigger this effect several times a turn with ease. Because it also deals face damage, it does still accomplish some aggressive goal of face damage.
You can easily combine it with something like Twin Slice to get to free triggers of this for 0 mana (as the Second Slice will always go to the right-most part of your hand). Cheap Outcast effects which cantrip themselves (such as Consume Magic or Crimson Sigil Runner) will also be quite effective with this, being able to draw a second card and get a second trigger off.
I'm half-expecting a bug upon launch where playing the only card in your hand will trigger its effect twice (as the game will detect that it's technically the left and the right-most card in your hand), but even without such a bug, it's still a card I'll be excited to try out. It's in the Initiate set too, so everyone will be able to do so.
Greater Obsidian Spellstone
Quote From linkblade91 The effect is pretty cool, and it's nice to see the Upgrade mechanic from Kobolds & Catacombs make a return; on a minion, no less! However, with its return comes similar baggage: you need Nethrandamus in your hand to upgrade the Battlecry. Up to 10 minions need to die while the dragon is in your hand to fully maximize the effect; doable with cards like Coordinated Strike and Command the Illidari, but it's still a gamble as-to whether or not Nethrandamus will be available when you're ready/in need of the mass die-off. This is a far cry from Dragonqueen Alexstrasza, who requires nothing beyond being Highlander (not a small thing, either, but she's still more reliable). I hope people will experiment with him, because he seems like a fun card and powerful in the right situations. I'm just concerned that the restriction on him might be too much effort for what will amount to a giant ball of stats.
Comments
So regarding Raging Felscreamer and DH not having a 2 cost demon. They do, actually. Their new 2 mana 3/2 discover a top deck is a demon.
Anyways, it is great anlysis, as were the previous parts. Thank you guys for providing fresh content for us to read these days :)
I feel like Nethrandamus's upgrade effect is less like the Spellstones from Kobolds and more like a reverse of the effect seen on Arcane Giant and other cards that reduce in cost depending on X. In this case the number of friendly minions that died increases the cost of the two random cards generated by this minion's battlecry. And really the stats for this guy aren't that bad when compared to other big 9 drop dragons, but of course those usually come with a strong effect. Send enough 1/1 rushing Illidari to their deaths and this is DEFINITELY a card worth including in your deck.
The only thing that intrigues me is how drawing cards is so easy for DH it can also feels like a trap. You see, with a bunch of cards in your hand, it may disrupt DH plays, because Outcast is limited only to the left or right-most card. Therefore make the middle card not activating it's Outcasts ability.
Feel free to add to my opinion.
Feast of Souls, while very good, is not in the same tier as Skull of Gul'dan and therefore I predict that its either going to be nerf contender no. 2, or just plain never seen. There's already plenty of cards that allows dhunter to draw and I don't think, outside of combo decks, they would need something close to Divine Favor just yet.
Eye Beam on the other hand, is my personal nerf contender no. 1. I'm somewhat surprised that the statement from this article merely concludes that it is "very strong". This card swings tempo, and swings tempo as early as turn 1-2 with your opponent effectively locked out by dhunter's own powerful turn 1s and 2. Effectively speaking, if you get this from your mulligan along with a 1-2 drop curve, I'm convinced that you can never lose that game outside of facing control decks. At its best, it clears your opponent's 1-2 drop while ensuring you would be able to establish your own board completely unhindered. Even OP cards like Backstab still only dealt 2 damage and can be skirted by playing a 3 health minion (not exactly rare considering that 2/3s are a staple for turn 2), forcing a hero power from rogue. Eye Beam deals 3 damage, will often be played for no mana, swings tempo, and bizarrely, is capable of healing as well. Even at 3 mana, its essentially a Bash, and is decent. This will likely be in all dhunter decks bar none.
Raging Felscreamer will likely get a small but significant nerf by being turned into a demon. Being a able to stack discounts, and on top of that, discounts that persists between turns is always dangerous. Dhunters are not exactly lacking in very strong demons, so this one will see play in almost all midrange dhunter lists. Dropping a Priestess of Fury turn 5 is a game winning play, very much akin to dropping Ragnaros the Firelord on turn 6.
I am very excited to play with these. A new class dropped at a great time and I think its just what constructed needed. The future of Hearthstone is really looking good and I am glad the devs are not afraid to try new things these days!