Blizzard has released the full core set and we're in for a very different new year of Hearthstone! Today we're going to be taking a look at the Demon Hunter class in the Year of the Gryphon by looking at their new set of core cards and giving the new ones a full review.
- If you want to see the full core set, you can check out our Core 2021 Guide.
- Want to see only the new cards? We have a dedicated article for that.
- You can build decks with all these cards in our deckbuilder - just select Year of the Gryphon as the format!
Let's get to it!
Kor'vas Bloodthorn
The first new card we're looking at is the new Legendary for Demon Hunter, Kor'vas Bloodthorn. Neither Altruis the Outcast nor Nethrandamus made the cut for the Core set, so here we have Kor'vas stepping in. Altruis in particular were pretty good cards, so it is going to be difficult to fill that spot. Kor'vas has a really interesting ability. It has Charge (yep, it's Charge!) and Lifesteal and will return to your hand when you play an Outcast card. Note that you don't have to actually trigger the Outcast effect - merely playing the card is enough regardless of where it is in your hand. This is a pretty neat card. A 2/2 with Charge and Lifesteal by itself is already not too bad. It can be used as simply a method of dealing 2 damage and restoring 2 Health, can take out a 2-Health minion and survive if it has less than 2 Attack and still maintain some threatening presence, or even just attack the enemy hero on turn 2. All of these are pretty serviceable options for you.
The self-bouncing ability however is a little bit awkward. Not because it's difficult to use, but because it will end up costing a lot of mana for an amount of value that isn't that useful especially for the amount spent. Assuming you attack face every time (which you will likely be doing), then you will end up repeatedly spending 2 mana to deal 2 damage to the enemy hero and restore 2 Health to your own. This strategy is fairly reminiscent of Headcrack, which ever since its change to 3 mana has never seen play and is also in Rogue which is a class that doesn't really use strategies of stalling the game which is where Headcrack would shine better. Kor'vas can be activated multiple times per turn, although this ultimately amounts to spending a lot of mana to do nothing to impact the state of the game other than just dealing damage to their hero and gaining some life. DH is also another class that doesn't really employ tactics of stalling the game, although its ability to do this is still better than Rogue. One other advantage is the ability to attack minions, so it can potentially trade into 1/1s or 1/2s and still use the effect, although this is again, an impractical and expensive way to clear a board of small minions.
All-in-all, I feel like the self-bouncing effect will be too impractical and expensive to make as the win condition of a deck, although it might come in handy once in a while to finish off the opponent. What I think this card will be good as though is just as a 2/2 with Charge and Lifesteal which is itself not bad for 2 mana. This card isn't scary, but it is neat.
Gan'arg Glaivesmith
After the new Legendary, here we have a pretty simple Common card that hopefully shouldn't take 3 paragraphs to talk about it. It's a card that gives the hero Attack, and as we've learned over the course of Demon Hunter's existence, those tend to be pretty decent. While this isn't the most exciting or strongest card in the world, I wouldn't be too surprised if it sees play because these simple cards tend to be playable. Demon Hunter is also losing Twin Slice, so methods of gaining Attack will be appreciated.
Illidari Inquisitor
If you guys wanted some Big DH support, then here it is. This card is definitely made as a replacement for Hulking Overfiend. This seems to be an extremely strong card, not just for Big DH but realistically just about any DH that is capable of using any type of late-game fuel. Using it on turn 9 and using your Hero Power can make it attack face on the turn you summon it. Doing this literally makes it better King Krush, in that it not only deals 1 extra damage but can also be used to kill one minion and then strike face with another attack effectively giving it Windfury on top of effectively having Charge.
The effect can also be used on minions, although the practicality of this is debatable seeing as how to get full value of out the damage, you'll likely have to attack something really big with your face which in many cases will amount to taking about 8 damage to your hero just to deal 1 additional damage to it. Too bad Blur is also leaving. Either way though, this is certainly a strong card that I imagine any DH with the ability to get to turn 9 will run. Big DH is also of course a no-brainer. It just manages to do so much!
Demon Hunter in Year of the Gryphon
From what I gather out of these three cards, Team 5 seems to be supporting two main archetypes for Demon Hunter in the form of a typical Aggro DH and Big DH. Illidari Inquisitor is an extremely strong Big DH card and a strong finisher for realistically just about any DH deck, so I expect a lot of play out of it. Big DH is also not losing that much out of rotations. Out of every archetype that DH has, the one that takes the biggest hit would probably be Soul DH (maybe not in terms of performance, but in terms of the number of staple cards lost).
DH isn't losing very many cards upon rotating, but some of the cards they are losing are pretty big losses. Notably, Twin Slice, Mana Burn, Umberwing, Blade Dance, and Altruis the Outcast. With these losses, it does lose some of its strongest forms of Attack generation and board clears. Twin Slice in particular is also very strong with Altruis and Bladed Lady. These losses are not insurmountable though. DH does still have some board clears in the form of Immolation Aura, Chaos Nova, Cycle of Hatred, Shardshatter Mystic (although Soul DH will likely need some support to be good after rotation), and Throw Glaive. Warglaives of Azzinoth is also a bit weaker now as a 3/3 for 5, which might kill the card although I wouldn't be surprised if it still sees at least a little bit of use. The loss of Attack generation can also be countered with a few good cards that do this. Gan'arg Glaivesmith is already one such card.
Speaking of Gan'arg Glaivesmith, they do also seem to be supporting the general Aggro archetype DH is already most competent with. Kor'vas Bloodthorn also supports either of these game plans to some degree. While DH is indeed losing quite a few good cards, I still anticipate that DH will be a generally strong class. Cards to replace the cards they lose are not that difficult to come by, and we will very likely get quite a few of them in Forged in the Barrens.
Those are just my thoughts, but I want to know what do you think of the new cards Demon Hunter is getting and their outlook in the Year of the Gryphon. Let me know in the comments below!
View More Out of Cards Core Set Reviews
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Comments
Well, looks like the character for one of my favorite custom cards has been taken. :(
That said, Blizzard's Kor'vas looks interesting. I like the flavor of the class but it looks like much depends on a good set from Barrens.
I love that Altruis and Twin Slice are leaving but losing Nethrandamus is something that pushes me even farther away from this class. I have absolutely no reason to play it anymore as the dragon was the only card that i liked. I don't dislike Zai but without cool things to copy it isn't all that interesting.
Is it safe to assume that Illidari Inquisitor will attack each minion attacked by Warglaives of Azzinoth too? I mean, it's a good finisher, if 3 damage from the weapon can't clear everything.
So can someone clear something up for me -
The new core set for Demon Hunter has a few cards from Ashes of Outland - Warglaives of Azzinoth, Crimson Sigil Runner, Spectral Sight and Ashtongue Battlelord - are they being removed from the AoO set and moving into this one?
Do we know how this works?
No cards are being removed. The Core set is kind of like the Wild Event set we had back in October of 2019. It's extra copies of the cards. So, you can have Core or the original cards in your deck.
I feel like probably so.
In the long run, since those cards are in Standard anyway, it shouldn't really affect anything outside of the fact that you (presumably) won't be able to open them in packs anymore.
I'm disappointed that DH will go into the next expansion with a 11* cards (more than an entire expansion's worth!) more than the other classes, and there's still very little in DH that interests me. In fact the one thing I did find cool, namely Token DH, is having its main win conditions taken away without any replacement. Meanwhile, thanks to Illidari Inquisitor, the Big Demon archetype is now being encouraged to copy the more aggressive decks and punch the face.
* due to getting 5 extra in each of the the Year of the Phoenix sets, and 4 of those from AoO are in the Core set, so 15-4=11.
On the bright side, I think I've finally worked out why I just don't care about DH: the class doesn't encourage shenanigans in any form. Everything is very practical because everything revolves around drawing cards, surviving, building a board, and damaging the opponent. Even when individual cards are interesting, there's nothing creative to do with them.
I guess it's fitting really. I can't imagine Illidan would be very impressed if his Illidari spent ages building an army of Greyboughs instead of getting on with killing their foe.
Exactly this. The class is just somehow not interesting. I'm still only level 30ish with DH and I don't see this changing anytime soon. The new cards from the expansion could have an impact on this tho.
Isn't that basically the idea for most if not all decks in the meta?
There's one meme dream you can pull with dhunters, of which Ive only managed a few times, Keymaster Alabaster + Glide, now made easier to pull off with voljin. I might be interested to go back to that at some point before barrens release.
To an extent, yes, but there's still normally something central in them that feels like a reason to want to play them. The heart and soul of the deck, if you like. Take the current aggro rogue as an example: the deck as a whole is a boring smorc-fest, but at least it has Self-Sharpening Sword growing over a few turns while nefarious laughter builds up inside you. The sword would be worth playing just for that feeling alone.
Meanwhile, DH just lacks the feeling. It's like OG zoo-lock just with different mechanics: you play all the cards because they are good, not because they are exciting. Perhaps it's because the attack buffs only last 1 turn so there's no sustained emotion attached to them. Similarly, the complete absence of minion buffs leads me to have less interest in my own minions than I would in other classes.
Having just looked back through all of DH's cards, the 5 I care most about by far are:
Sadly, that's pretty much all token DH, which is getting gutted on rotation.
It'll be interesting to see where they'll be pushing dhunters towards, since they would be losing a good deal of their usual cards. Token dhunter, while being somewhat unamazing, has now lost some of its best cards (Nethrandamus, Wrathscale Naga, and Command the Illidari) and it remains to be seen how they intend to work better without it.
Going big might be good enough now, mostly because the other classes have had most of their best removal options taken away from them. I look forward to this taking the meta by storm and then the inevitable nerf.
But ultimately, given that dhunters is likely to be pushed as the new aggro class along with rogue, ever since hunters lost some of their best cards like Eaglehorn Bow and Kill Command, I wouldn't be surprised if we'll be seeing the usual tempo dhunter from AoO again, subject to the reveals in Barrens. Getting warglaives back at 5 is the right choice even without the slight nerf to its durability, but only time will tell if this card will still be good enough without the usual staples like Glaivebound Adept.
I hate Twin Slice and Altruis so much. So happy they're leaving. Umberwing is one of those cards that never felt oppressive to play against, but probably accounted for a huge boost in DH winrate in the decks it was part of.
Yeah, no one's ever said "Darn, he played Umberwing on curve, I'm toast," but then you look back and it was worth five face damage and two good trades. It just does work.
Yeah, Twin Slice has been a massive pain in the ass all year and I'm glad to see it shelved. It sucks because its a really sweet idea and the thematics were incredible, but there is such a fine line between god and unplayable with that card it feels like.
Kayn is Ashes of Outland.
He is not leaving!!!!
Indeed. Nothing even seemed wrong to me. I was thinking he might end up making the Core set though.
But at least none of the rest of the review is affected by this.
I should have caught this when editing. I removed the mention of it to prevent any confusion.