The Comprehensive Fall of Ulduar Preview

 

Data Reaper Report - Hunter

Celestial Shot

This is an incredible card for Arcane Hunter. A 3-mana spell that deals 3 damage and boosts your next spell by +2 spell damage. A 3-damage spell is worth around 2 mana, so the extra effect added for 1 more mana seems very tempting.

This effect can be banked for a following turn, which means you can use Celestial Shot to set up a turn 4 Eversong Portal or a turn 5 Star Power to completely obliterate an opponent’s board. On turn 6, you can draw a ton of cards with Conjured Arrow. Its simplest use with Arcane Shot is still quite good, as Celestial Shot is essentially worth 5 damage for 3 mana, which is comparable to Aimed Shot.

Since it’s an Arcane spell, it gets buffed by Halduron Brightwing and Silvermoon Farstrider. Celestial Shot is guaranteed to become a staple in Arcane Hunter, offering a glue card that boosts the deck’s consistency quite a bit.

Score: 4

Bestial Madness

This spell works like Hope of Quel’Thalas, giving a permanent buff to all your minions, wherever they are. Its immediate impact on the board is quite weak for a 2-mana spell, considering that it is weaker than Power of the Wild and doesn’t buff your minion’s health, so it doesn’t affect their resistance to AOE effects.

Our thoughts go into a potential swarming Hunter deck that runs eggs and Observer of Myths. This archetype hasn’t panned out with the launch of TITANS, but Bestial Madness could provide it with some extra consistency. We doubt this spell goes into Hound Hunter, since you need quite a bit more minion density to take advantage of it. It’s not as good of a standalone card as Hope of Quel’Thalas.

Score: 2

Twisted Frostwing

At its baseline, Frostwing is a 3/3 rush that summons a 3/3 when it dies. For 4 mana, that’s comparable to Flanking Strike. However, if we buff Frostwing’s attack, the Chimaera summoned from its deathrattle gets bigger. For example, if we buff Frostwing’s attack by 1, the Chimaera will be a 4/4.

Hunter has access to many, many ways to buff this minion and boost its potential. The obvious card from this mini-set is Bestial Madness, but Bunch of Bananas, Always a Bigger Jormungar, Observer of Myths and Hope of Quel’Thalas are other good enablers. Frostwing’s best fit is in a Swarming Hunter that likes to run these buffs regardless. Are these two cards enough to make this archetype competitive? We’re not too optimistic about the immediate future, but it might happen eventually.

Score: 2

Final Thoughts: Celestial Shot goes straight into Arcane Hunter and keeps that deck ticking. The other two cards seem to fit an Egg/Swarm Hunter best. May not have enough support. Hound Hunter stays dead.

1 Comment

  1. On the Mindbender on a outcast DH with a glaivetar can do a lot of dmg and inst to hard to buff the glaivetar and set up a turn lethal since sigil draw 4 cards.
    On Mage, im using Tainted and Meddlesome(since few draw spells) on elemental mage and yap is agro.
    On Rogue i just played on Tendrils since looks like the most fun and random noosenses.
    On Warlock Encroaching Insanity was great on fatigue imp ,really fun doing 7-8 dmg with crescendo,the only problem is if you dont win at turn 7-8 you will die because the amount of self fatigue you did to yourself and Harp cant save you.
    And yap Yogg is good for remove and more random tendrils

Comments are closed.