The Comprehensive Across the Timeways Preview

Time-Lost Glaive

A 2/2 weapon for 1 mana can be considered powerful in Demon Hunter, as it synergizes extremely well with its most important 1-drops, Battlefiend and Sock Puppet Slitherspear. The deathrattle provides unreliable value, but value that should be relevant for the Spell Demon Hunter archetype, which is desperate to generate minions.

Currently, Aggro Demon Hunter runs both Tuskpiercer and Insect Claw, which means its weapon slots are crowded. However, Tuskpiercer is an underwhelming performer in the archetype that we can upgrade on, as it forces us into an awkward deathrattle package. Glaive provides more damage and better board control, though its own deathrattle is likely weak for an aggressive archetype. Might get carried by Demon Hunter’s 1-drops.

Score: 2

Solitude

The first Spell Demon Hunter payoff. Solitude has incredible discount potential if the archetype heavily focuses on minion generation. It is not even a bad card when it discounts its single discovered minion, as it already pays for itself that way. We know from history that discover cards with a banked discount are proven performers, as they allow us to potentially cheat out a card earlier than its intended cost. We can discover a 5-drop with Solitude and drop it on turn 3.

But where things get crazy is if our deck generates a lot of minions, which can all get discounted by Solitude. If we have three generated minions in hand, then this spell can suddenly accelerate us by 4 mana.

This powerful ability is balanced by the difficulty of finding minions when our deck has none. Solitude simply cannot go into any other deck beyond the sketchy proposition of Spell Demon Hunter and leveraging it optimally requires a further deckbuilding investment that we struggle to get behind.

Score: 1

Aeon Rend

If we budget random damage to an enemy character at 2 mana, then Aeon Rend technically makes the cut. The Rewind ability increases the odds of hitting the desired outcome, but the effect itself is not too enticing. Cleave effects tend to be weak because it is difficult to leverage them optimally, as they are less effective against a diverse plethora of early game threats. This spell is weak against deathrattles and divine shields. It is inefficient against small minions. It is not effective against large minions.

Unless the board perfectly lines up for it to kill two moderately-sized minions, then it is unlikely to help us get ahead. Even in Spell Demon Hunter, an archetype heavily limited in its card choices, we do not think it will be played.

Score: 1

Lasting Legacy

The baseline effect of this spell is weak. 4 damage for 3 mana is not good enough for constructed play. This spell will be inferior to Skirting Death in most situations where we do not stockpile minions in hand.

Therefore, we need to get value from the handbuffing part of the card. Lasting Legacy does not make our generated minions more resilient to removal, but it does make them significantly more threatening. A 4-attack buff means that the opponent cannot leave any of our buffed minions on the board without risk of taking a lot of damage in the process. Combine this with Solitude and the pressure could be deceptively high.

Legacy has some implications with Broxigar, as buffing a charge minion gets us more guaranteed damage. A Legacy/Broxigar combo is worth 20 damage for 5 mana, so we can consider this spell to be both a handbuffing tool and a finisher.  Might be essential for Spell Demon Hunter’s ability to close out games but undeniably weak at earlier stages of the game.

Score: 1

Hounds of Fury

Attacking lowest health enemies is the best “random” attack you can ask a minion to do, as it either “gains charge” and goes face when played into an empty board, or it “gains rush” with decent value trades if we need to contest the opponent’s early game. Summoning two 3/3’s with either pseudo rush or charge is a worthwhile deal.

Hounds of Fury’s weakness is that it falls off in the late game. As minions become bigger, its attacks might result in our hounds diving headfirst into a bad trade with a large minion. For it to be powerful, we need to be on the front foot, with our opponent acting as the more passive party. This is not an easy condition to meet when our deck has no minions.

In a subtle fashion, Hounds of Fury demands the same thing that Lasting Legacy and Solitude ask us for: Threat generation and proactivity. Fall behind as a Spell Demon Hunter and there is little comeback potential beyond a miracle Broxigar OTK.

Score: 1

Perennial Serpent

This is a 4 mana 7/9 rush if there is ANY dormant minion in play. It could either be a friendly or enemy minion, so any dormant card works with Serpent.

Demon Hunter already possesses a critical mass of dormant effects that can be sprinkled in widely different decks, thanks to Red Card and the Dreadseed package. It is also gaining Timeway Warden and some dormant neutrals that are ideal in activating Serpent on curve (Paltry Flutterwing, Cyborg Patriarch, Timelord Nozdormu). Red Card/Serpent is a particularly powerful combo.

Our view is that it is completely trivial to have an active Serpent in any Demon Hunter deck. For Aggro Demon Hunter, this is a massive threat piled on top of its early game pressure. For strategies like Starship and Peddler DH, this is a stabilizing swing. Add the fact Serpent is a playable 8 mana card for Elise and it almost seems too perfect to be true.

We suspect we will see this minion everywhere. It represents a massive boost to the class’ mid-game and general ability to deal with large threats, which is usually one of its greatest weaknesses in the late game. Meta-defining game changer.

Score: 4

Timeway Warden

Warden sends a minion to the shadow realm forever, or until the Warden dies. With 6 health on turn 4 and the opponent’s best minion likely trapped in Illidan’s prison, it might be difficult for the opponent to immediately kill the Warden and wake up their minion for their next turn. What is important to note is that unless the dormant minion has rush or charge, its attack is guaranteed cancelled for one turn. This means that Warden always gains value, even if it gets immediately killed, which we have already stated is not easy to do.

A good point of reference for Warden is Red Card. Is it realistic that Warden matches the effect of Red Card, keeping an enemy minion dormant for two turns? We know that Red Card is a class staple, so is a 4 mana 2/6 that casts Red Card good enough? We believe it is substantially worse and less flexible than Red Card, but the importance of Perennial Serpent in future Demon Hunter decks should push it to playability.

Score: 2

Doomsday Prepper

‘Time Out!’ has proven to be a powerful effect in Hearthstone, but Prepper is just about the weakest way it can be executed.

A minion casting ‘Time Out!’ is far weaker than the baseline effect on its own, as part of the reason immunity is strong is that it allows us to spend mana on things that are not related to survival on the same turn, progressing our ability to turn around the game. Prepper takes a larger chunk of our turn and will be the opponent’s easy target to remove as they cannot hit us in the face anyway.

But what is worse about Prepper is that the ‘Time Out!’ ability is banked into an Outcast condition. Throughout Hearthstone’s history, very few Outcast cards that cost 4 or more have made it to competitive play. You are looking at Skull of Gul’dan and Glide finding success in decks with extremely cheap curves that could accommodate their condition.

Any prospect of Prepper being reliable in a late-game-oriented Demon Hunter deck is fantasy. It will most likely get stuck in our hand and be useless. It is relevant as a Hail Mary finding from Illidari Studies and nothing else.

Score: 1

Broxigar

This fabled package has one minion, Broxigar, that disappears at the start of the game. This means that our deck will have 29 cards and Broxigar will not count as a minion in our deck (Spell Demon Hunter can play it).

The two cards that do remain in our deck are First Portal to Argus and Axe of Cenarius. First Portal to Argus essentially acts as a quest. It summons a small demon for the opponent, which draws a card and shuffles the next portal to Argus into our deck once it dies.

This process involves 4 portals, with demons of 1 health and increasing attack. Once the 4th demon dies, Broxigar reappears in our hand. There are a couple of important things to note about the portals.

We have full control over when we summon the enemy demons. The portals cost no mana, so we can summon the demons when we can immediately kill them. The opponent has no counterplay beyond having a full board with no space to summon the demon, an unrealistic scenario.

The portals do not slow down our drawing power, as we draw a card whenever we shuffle the next portal. We also start with 29 cards and have Broxigar appear at the end of the “quest”, which is another ‘draw’ effect.

To make things even better in terms of drawing power, the Axe of Cenarius can draw us two portals. This weapon is fantastic on its own, as it is a 3 mana 3/2 weapon with lifesteal, making it drastically better than Aldrachi Warblades.

Broxigar is a completely nutty ‘quest reward’. A 2 mana 12/12 with charge is a serious win condition that can be leveraged with Youthful Brewmaster or Dissolving Ooze, the latter the class has already been playing in Starship Demon Hunter, which looks like a natural fit.

This is a “quest” with no real deckbuilding requirement, which completes itself given enough time. The only limiter is time, so any late-game-oriented deck can seriously consider it as a complementary win condition to what it already has.

Add the very crucial fact we can now run a 0-cost card in Demon Hunter, which means Elise is easier to activate, and Broxigar looks like a no-brainer inclusion in every Demon Hunter deck that looks to play the game past turn 7.

Score: 4

The Eternal Hold

The first thing we need to do is evaluate the random Demon pool for minions that cost 5 mana or more. We can say this pool is of high quality. Late game demons are generally good. Even though this location does not give us the option to discover them, we should still get impactful demons here.

The discount ability makes sure that The Eternal Hold will provide us with a significant mana advantage over time. It also affects any demon we might play, not necessarily the one we just generated with the location. So even if we whiff on the generated demon, we can still reward ourselves with a big discount on a big demon we generated from another source.

The Eternal hold is ultimately a cheat card that costs 6 mana. Its three charges mean it can apply persistent pressure over the course of a game, but what is most important is how impactful its first charge is. 6 mana is the highest point in which these cheat cards can be competitively viable. 5 mana and this would have been strong. At 6 mana, we do not believe it is good enough to put Spell Demon Hunter over the top.

Score: 1

Final Thoughts

Across the Timeways Set Rank: 8th

Overall Power Ranking: 4th

Demon Hunter is a class that we do not expect to see drastically change its composition of strategies. Spell Demon Hunter is the new archetype that has been supported in this set, but we find its competitive prospects to be questionable, as it does not have a reliable way to pressure opponents while its late game is not particularly threatening.

The difference perhaps, from Death Knight’s situation, is that Demon Hunter’s established strategies received very meaningful upgrades that should boost their current power.

Aggro Demon Hunter with Perennial Serpent and Devious Coyote is a scary proposition. We have a deck that is already elite by mostly playing small minions, receiving options to cheat out larger threats. We expect the archetype to heavily lean into dormancy to activate Serpent on 4 every game, while Sigil of Cinder becomes a serious consideration thanks to Coyote.

Both Starship and Peddler Demon Hunter can run Broxigar and Serpent, making Elise extremely easy to fit into their decks now. Broxigar will either be an amazing card in these slower decks, or a decent Elise activator that provides a secondary win condition to their primary game plans.

Perhaps, Demon Hunter’s main issue will be the one it faced during Un’Goro: attractiveness. Several aggressive decks will be competing with Aggro DH for early game supremacy this expansion. Demon Hunter’s late game might be weaker than these alternatives, so if it does not outclass them early, it may find itself out of favor, regardless of its overall performance.

The same goes to Starship and Peddler DH. These decks do not have a massive audience, and shinier things could be emerging. Should they not perform to an exceptional standard, it will be difficult for the class to capture an audience.

This is why we believe it is mostly a losing set for Demon Hunter, dependent on other classes flopping to maintain or improve its current standing.