Darius Crowley Joins Hearthstone Duels - Our Opinion on the New Playable Hero and the New Passive Treasures

As you might know, the very last reveal for the Murder at Castle Nathria expansion was Duels related: Hearthstone Streamer Zeddy showcased Darius Crowley, a new playable Hero for the game mode!

Hailing directly from The Witchwood's Monster Hunt, Crowley joins the Duels Hero Pool starting from July 26th, with the launch of patch 24.0 (check out the entire Duels patch notes); moreover, there's an additional, very relevant novelty: from now on, everyone will get all of the Hero Powers and Signature Treasures unlocked for free in both Casual and Heroic - not only Darius, but even the already existing Heroes will be playable right off the bat, without needless grinding in order to unlock anything! This is a huge step towards the game mode's accessibility to casual players.

In this article, we're going to provide an in-depth analysis of Darius Crowley, its Hero Powers and Signature Treasures, as well as the 4 new Passive Treasures that will be added to the game with Patch 24.0. Here are some quick links to each section:

• Darius Crowley - General Overview
• Darius Crowley's Hero Powers
• Darius Crowley's Signature Treasures
• Commentary of the 4 New Passive Treasures

Darius Crowley - General Overview

Just like any other Duels Hero, Darius Crowley has three Hero Powers and six Signature Treasures you can choose from at the start of your run. However, Crowley differentiates from all the other characters from the past because of one peculiarity: just like in the Monster Hunt PvE content, you'll start each match with a Cannon on your side of the field.

The Cannon will take up a space on your side of the board and neither you nor your opponents will be able to interact with (pretty much like Raid the Docks' The Juggernaut). When triggered by either your Hero Power(s) or some of your Signature Treasures, the Cannon will deal damage to opposite enemies.

A portion of this Hero's power level comes from how well you position your Cannon and plan ahead of time: if you mindlessly drop your units, you may find yourself with the Cannon at the external positions on the board, making it way less powerful than it could be elsewhere.

As a final note, Hearthstone Test Analyst Daniel "Fusrohdaniel" Duffin confirmed that, if you change your Hero Power while playing as Darius Crowley, your Cannon will get destroyed.

Quote From Daniel Duffin

Question for @Tabayrak and @fusrohdaniel regarding the Darius' niche: We know that the Cannon disappears when we play an Hero Card. Does the same happen if we change one of Darius' Signature Hero Powers? (After having played Sir Finley Mrrgglton and Discovered another one, for example).

Yes if your hero power switches the cannon is destroyed.

Darius Crowley's Hero Powers

The "base" Hero Power, which also showcases how you can interact with the Cannon on board:

• you pay 2 mana.
• you get a 1 damage ping to the enemies in front of your Cannon.
  • If there is more than one minion in front of the cannon, it will deal damage to both!
• if you manage to kill something, Fire! will refresh, but in order to use it you'll have to invest another 2 mana.

While Fire! seems like a very expensive Fireblast, some of Darius Crowley's Signature Treasures will grant some serious buff: in particular, we're looking at Deck Swabbie and Tuskarr Raider.

All in all, you'll want to choose Fire! because of its refresh effect, but don't think this upside is worth the pick: if you really want some extra damage, then the next Hero Power seems the superior choice. We question whether Fire! could be buffed to 1 mana in order to match Duels' power level...

With Fire Away!, you trade Fire!'s refresh effect for a Fiendish Rites, which seems like an incredibly more convenient deal to us.

We expect Fire Away! to see plenty of play, especially in aggressive decks that want you to go wide on the board. In this regard, you'll notice that Darius Crowley is a Warrior Hero and that a good portion of his Signature Treasures are Pirates: expect Raid the Docks Pirate Crowley to be a very popular Day 1 build.

1 more mana than the other two Hero Powers in order to get an additional trigger from your Cannon(s). We think Fire at Thee! has more potential than Fire!, as 3 mana deal 2 seems better on paper than 2 mana deal 1, especially if you consider some of the Signature Treasures.

Speaking of Signature Treasures, this Hero Power is particularly good with a number of them: Deck Swabbie (disgustingly powerful), Draconic Munition and Grizzled Reinforcement are all interesting ways to power up Fire at Thee!.

3 mana is a lot for a Hero Power, but there are ways to make it worth the cost, so we're betting on this synergy to make Fire at Thee! relevant.

Darius Crowley's Signature Treasures

Now this is a Signature Treasure. Safe Harbor is Sap and Shadowstep combined in one card, which can target both friendly and enemy units and whose discount is not limited to the turn in which you play the card. While the dream is to "steal" and replay an impactful unit like Questline rewards and such, we find Safe Harbor to be very flexible:

• You can use it to remove an opposing Taunt unit which is blocking you from dealing the lethal blow.
• You can use it to replay a damage-dealing unit (Mr. Smite, Alexstrasza the Life-Binder), just as Rogue used to do in Constructed with Leeroy Jenkins-Shadowstep-Leeroy Jenkins,
• You can replay an average unit just to gain a little more tempo or, let's say, gain an additional Raid the Docks progression point, so that you'll be able to get your hands on Cap'n Rokara (another valuable Safe Harbor target) faster.

All in all, we think Safe Harbor will see plenty of experimentation, especially for its highroll potential.

An extra Cannon seems very good to us, but not when you have to pay 6 mana for it, it comes with an underwhelming body and it doesn't even make your next Hero Power cost 0: cool if you're agains the AI, but not in PvP. We expect Grizzled Reinforcement to be a valuable pick in case of Control Warrior starting decks, but we fear you'd get totally demolished in the first few matches of your run. Quite difficult to balance without breaking the Cannon mechanic.

Another interesting Signature Treasure. Being a Rush minion, Tuskarr Raider is obviously dependent on opposing units being on the board in order to run into them and trigger the Cannon, but at the same time you can just drop it on curve and expect it to stick, given that it's a tricking 4 mana 9-Health minion.

Being a Pirate, it can be tutored by Harbor Scamp and works towards Raid the Docks, a synergy we expect to see explored as soon as Darius Crowley becomes available for everyone.

A 15/15 meat wall that requires you to invest at least 10 mana in your Hero Power for it to be remotely playable; however, even if you manage to drop it, stats alone may not be enough for you.

Seabreaker Goliath shines in long and grindy matchups, but even there the lack of keywords makes a very situational pick during your draft phase - Rush or Taunt are mandatory to our eyes. Moreover, if your goal is going to the distance, then Grizzled Reinforcement is probably a superior Signature Treasure.

Deck Swabbie is a Pirate: the tribal tag will eventually be added (Source).

In our opinion, one of the best (if not the best) Signature Treasures for Darius Crowley: a 2 mana 4-Health minion is very resilient, allowing you to safely cheat out your Hero Powers at the end of each of your turns. Even just getting one HP proc is going to be nutty, especially considering the tempo swing you'll create by removing your opponent's threats or pushing some damage. Deck Swabbie is a must kill unit for your opponent: if they can't get rid of it on the spot (which again, is not that easy), then they will be in serious trouble.

The Coin into Deck Swabbie is going to be so gross that we expect it to be eventually addressed.

We're kind of conflicted on this Signature Treasure: while Draconic Munition is very good with Fire at Thee!, the same cannot be said about the other two Hero Powers: sacrificing your Signature Treasure spot for something like this may not be optimal.

If this had "Start of Game: draw this", maybe we could've been more optimistic about it, but the fact that you're not even guaranteed to hit the buff seems too much of a gamble. 

Commentary of the 4 New Passive Treasures

But that's not all: together with Darius, we'll receive 4 new Passive Treasures. As you already know, Passive Treasures should not be considered by themselves: their power level has to be evaluated based on the pool they belong to - the later they come in play, the stronger they'll have to be in order to be viable. On that note, Tabayrak confirmed each Passive's pool.

New Tier 1 Passive Treasure. See all the Location cards here.

Not a bad Passive at all. Location, Location, Location!'s power level varies on the Hero you're playing with: some Locations (like Warlock's Vile Library or Demon Hunter's Relic Vault) are extremely specific, so you may not gain any advantage from this Passive Treasure; however, many other are generally good and you'll love to have them available right off the bat, regardless of what you're playing: take Mage's Nightcloak Sanctum, Priest's Cathedral of Atonement or Shaman's Muck Pools.

If you're not playing a Dual-class Hero, you'll always know what Location you'll get at the start of the game (at least until new ones will be added to the game), so this will help you to evaluate Location, Location, Location! every time it is offered to you. In the end, we think that Team 5 came up with a very interesting and viable tier 1 Passive - looking forward to try it out.

New Tier 1 Passive Treasure.

Unholy Gift but better. Although the Invitations cost 3 mana, getting a free Legendary unit of your choice is a very good deal, almost always worth more than the mana you spent.

Considering that you'll be able to choose from class Legendaries, you'll avoid the Neutral pool, which contains a lot of sad rolls that would hurt your Discoveries, making Be Our Guest significantly worse.

We think Location, Location, Location! is better, but at the same time we wholeheartedly welcome Be Our Guest to Duels.

New Tier 2 Passive Treasure.

The fact that Brittle Bones is not capped to trigger just once per turn scares us: this Passive seems to be very powerful, while also promoting off-the-board spell-heavy strategies, a problem the game mode had to deal with multiple times in the past.

Volatile Skeletons provide damage through attacks and their Deathrattle, meaning that those spell-heavy decks that pick Brittle Bones will gain a form of lethality by just keeping the board clear.

New Tier 2 Ultra Rare Passive Treasure.

Pretty much Kael'thas Sinstrider as a Passive. The fact that Ring of Haste has already been restricted to the Tier 2 Ultra Rare pool is indicative of the fact that this is a very powerful Passive Treasure. As you know, mana-cheat is really good and Ring of Haste provides it from the very start of the game: combining two low-cost units will allow you to drop heavy hitters way ahead of time, generating swing turns that may win you matches on the spot.

Moreover, we appreciate Team 5 setting the third minion's cost to 1 mana instead of 0 mana, since this way we've already avoided a rather awful week of gameplay madness.

What do you think about these newest additions? Are you excited to try out this new hero? Let us know in the comments below!