Dark Bribe
Drawing 2 cards for 2 mana is a good deal. While giving a card to the opponent is not great, this card likely has no synergy with their deck, and we get to choose what to give them. In some circumstances, this could even prove to be a benefit, as drawing 3 cards means we are digging harder into our deck to find our most desirable cards.
For a deck like Spell Demon Hunter, which doesn’t have a lot of card draw and wants to get to Broxigar as soon as possible, this is a good option. Other decks that have a singular late-game focus are potential candidates. Aggressive decks may also consider it, as the card they give up is likely to be of low value for their opponent.
This should find a home.
Score: 3
Stardust Scythe
Void Souls work a bit like Jade Golems, but instead of directly rising in stats, the cost of the Demon summoned rises by 1. This is a parasitic package that wants to maximize the generation of Void Souls. Scythe produces two Void Souls for a single card, which means it is mandatory for the archetype.
A 4-mana 3/2 weapon is not great but is it serviceable enough to deal with most early game minions, while being able to push some damage if necessary. Void Soul’s late-game scaling is appealing. It is slow to build up and may have issues dealing with aggression, but it provides Demon Hunter with a clear win condition it can build around without sacrificing the rest of its build for survival.
Score: 3
Captive Nathrezim
A massive taunt that makes it difficult for anyone to play minions. If it ever drops to the board, it represents a massive roadblock for aggressive opponents. Not only does it have 12 health in taunt, but opponents must immediately kill it if they want to spend mana on minions.
The issue is that it is extremely expensive. We could Prepare Nathrezim on 4 to play it on 5, which does not sound bad on paper, but it gives the opponent a free turn to develop, push damage and set up a way for them to deal with Nathrezim. If the card is known to be used in the format, they will know it is coming.
We are no longer incentivized to go out of our way to fit in Elise, so rather than being released for the purpose of being included in decks, this feels like a card meant to serve as a late-game buff to Void Souls. It is an incredible random 10-drop to summon.
Score: 1
Void Soul
The basic Void Soul card. The first one summons a random 1-mana demon. The second summons a 2-mana demon and so on.
It is hard to judge Void Souls without looking into the random pool of demons we can summon, so we did. While there is some element of variance at most mana costs, it is clear Void Souls become incredibly strong at 8 mana and above. A faster deck that has failed to kill the Demon Hunter before they scaled to this point will lose the game instantly. Slower decks may have an easier time dealing with it, but they can also be overwhelmed if we can generate more Void Souls.
This is the tricky part. The package in our deck only generates 10 Void Souls. There is little chance we get to where we want against aggressive decks in time. The path to significantly increase the production is through Ravenous Felhunter resurrecting Vicious Voidscale. The issue is that we have a 20% chance of summoning a Fiendish Servant with the first Void Soul and a 25% chance of summoning Imp Gang Stooge with the third. This could mess up the pool for Felhunter.
This archetype’s consistency issues and necessary greedy choices make us temper our expectations about its standing as an elite deck. But it is an easily scaling late-game-oriented deck, so if it proves to be competitive, it should have an audience.
Score: 3
Void Blast
A standard 3 damage for a 2-mana spell, though it is tacked with two painful conditions. The first is that it can only target minions, so we cannot generate a Void Soul when facing an empty board. The second is that Void Blast needs to kill the target to generate a Void Soul.
This makes Void Blast a mediocre Void Soul generator. There is no real choice here though. We likely must run it in the deck, as we do with other generators. Otherwise, we cannot scale fast enough to where we want to be, which is hitting the 8-10 mana cost demons.
But this card’s underwhelming effect is considered when we judge the whole package.
Score: 2
Vicious Voidscale
This is probably the most important generator in the package, as Vicious Voidscale can be resurrected by Ravenous Felhunter and opens a path to generate significantly more Void Souls than the package can generate at its baseline.
However, it does have a fail rate, as mentioned earlier. If we randomly summon demons with a deathrattle, they damage Felhunter’s consistency at resurrecting Voidscale. This awkward anti-synergy does not just lower the effectiveness of the package, it will likely become a frustrating aspect of the deck, one that may turn some players off.
If we judge Voidcale as a standalone card, it is better than Void Blast. A 3-mana 3/4 taunt with an unconditional Void Soul generation. The taunt makes it significantly more appealing as a Felhunter target.
Score: 3
Cosmic Manifestations
There seems to be a regular, increasing occurrence where spells shuffle random garbage into our deck, and this effect is not treated enough as a drawback.
A 2-mana spell that deals 2 damage is terrible and not worth shuffling a random spell into our deck. The primary effect is weaker than the going rate for 2-mana damage spells. On Outcast, it deals 4 damage, which makes it more reasonable if we are planning to end the game quickly or we have already played Irida, which allows us to shuffle two spells into our empty deck and delay fatigue.
However, even in a deck that runs Irida, this spell is quite dependent on finding Irida before its effect is useful. A card that is weak until we draw one specific card from our deck does not sound great.
We believe this card is not meant to be included in decks. Rather, it is useful when discovered by Illidari Studies after we have played Irida, as it is both guaranteed to deal 4 damage and guaranteed to be an advantageous shuffle effect.
Score: 1
Hellraiser
This card is clearly meant to be played in a deck with Irida, since a 3-mana 2/2 that discovers a card from our deck is a weak effect that we should have no interest in playing. We are essentially paying 2 extra mana for a 2/2 just to have Tracking. While Tracking is a great card, the tax turns Hellraiser into an unplayable one.
But even if we manage to draw Irida, a single card in our deck, Hellraiser does not suddenly become some exceptional threat. It is a 3-mana 6/6. The earliest it can come down is turn 5, which is decent but not particularly game-winning.
Considering how awful the card is pre-Irida, and what an Irida deck likely needs to be (aggressive), we cannot get behind this.
Score: 1
Irida Sinseeker
Irida sends our cards away to the Void, which is an abstract location that we cannot interact with. This means that our deck becomes empty. At the start of our turns, we get two cards from what used to be our deck, but we also draw from our now empty deck, leading to fatigue damage.
Essentially, we draw two cards from our deck every turn, but at the cost of putting ourselves on a fatigue clock. Our opponent can win by simply outlasting us, though our advantage is a stronger flow of resources.
We could delay the fatigue clock by shuffling cards into our empty deck, which draws us 3 cards every turn, but it is unrealistic to extend this clock to the point we are not heavily pressured to end the game as soon as possible.
Irida’s effect does come with a sizeable body, but a 4-mana 7/5 is not too difficult to deal with. We have seen 4-mana 7/7’s with a drawback that did not see any competitive play.
The all-in nature of Irida, which accelerates the game significantly and encourages us to play aggressively, makes card draw awkward to run in an Irida deck. That is because card draw is a liability after we play Irida, as we have an empty deck. However, if we do not run card draw, finding Irida becomes more difficult.
So, there is a bit of a contradiction. On one hand, we want to find Irida as soon as possible, yet the tools to find her are terrible once we play her. And if we choose to delay playing Irida to draw more cards, we are giving our opponent more time.
Irida’s aggressive nature is one that we think many players will not like. All-in decks tend to be frowned upon, so this legendary may struggle on the two most important aspects: competitive viability and appeal.
Score: 1
Tras’tath, Soul Parasite
This legendary seems to represent an indirect payoff for Void Souls. While it is possible to Prepare this card and play it alongside demons of a normal cost, it is unrealistic to expect this kind of demon density from a Demon Hunter deck. Void Souls are perfect as they can produce a lot of stats for a cheap cost once they scale. We can drop Tras’tath and then cast multiple Void Souls for a huge swing.
What is nice about this is that Tras’tath guarantees some level of immediate impact even if our summoned demons do not, as it is potentially a giant rush minion.
Of course, this legendary is expensive and requires us to pass a full turn to maximize its setup with Void Souls. Its success is dependent on whether the archetype can accelerate Void Souls at a consistency that turns Tras’tath into a 10/10 or bigger in a high percentage of games as early as turn 6. This would establish it as an impactful enough card in faster matchups. In slower matchups, it could scale to the point of absurdity, but it remains vulnerable to single target removal.
Sees play in a Void Soul deck, not anywhere else.
Score: 2
Final Thoughts
Violet Hold Set Rank: 6th
Overall Power Ranking: 7th
Demon Hunter was desperate for a new win condition to build around, and we think it got a solid one that can work well. Void Souls provide a clear and easy to execute path to victory. Some players will compare them to Jade Golems, and it is not too far off the mark.
The difference is that random demons are of high quality, especially the expensive ones. They have keywords and strong abilities. Many of them will help the Demon Hunter stabilize and shut off aggression, while others are threatening in slower matchups.
If Demon Hunter can generate more of them through Ravenous Felhunter, then multiple 10-drop demons for 1 mana are game-ending. There are consistency issues due to some deathrattle demons that can be randomly summoned and interfere with Felhunter, but it is likely not a dealbreaker.
Irida is the other major win condition, but it is less impressive. It forces some awkward deckbuilding where we want to draw her, but we do not want card draw in the deck because it is a liability after playing her. It is not possible to tutor her, so we end up with an aggressive DH deck without reload.
Spell Demon Hunter did not get much, so we suspect the class’ visibility will depend on how Void Demon Hunter works out. It is a deck that should translate well into the current format, but if the new format poses new challenges, Demon Hunter might get relegated to a fringe position.
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