Taste of Chaos
The baseline effect of Taste of Chaos is weak, as it is worse than Smite, but if you land Finale then the spell becomes quite good. Fel spells are quite a narrow pool of cards so you’re likely to find something you’re looking for. Demon Hunter is a class that is likely to have the easiest time triggering Finale thanks to its 1-mana hero power filling the curve when necessary. Discover cards with Finale have a hidden penalty, since you can’t use the discovered cards on the same turn. This is okay but not great.
Score: 2
SECURITY!!
The baseline effect for this card is serviceable but probably not good enough for constructed play, as it is comparable to Coordinated Strike. On Outcast, Security becomes quite strong. The Outcast card pool quality has held back an archetype focused on the mechanic from being successful in March of the Lich King, so having another good outcast card helps. Security also has specific synergies with several cards in the set, so we give it a good chance of seeing play.
Score: 3
Guitar Soloist
A 5 mana 4/3 that draws 3 cards reminds us of Gorloc Ravager. Soloist is a soft tutor, as it draws cards of specific types. This card would be okay if the restriction wasn’t horrific. Aggressive Demon Hunter decks have better ways to reload and can’t make use of Soloist since they fight for board proactively. Demon Hunters utilizing relics have no need for this either. Even Spell Demon Hunters develop boards, so it’s hard for us to imagine a deck that cares about Soloist. Big Demon Hunter? Enough said.
Score: 1
Snakebite
This card can offer an early game swing of the board. It gets buffed by both friendly and enemy minions that died, so a single trade can make Snakebite a 3/3 with Rush. Add some tokens into the equation (Security) and Snakebite can flip the board at an early stage of the game. Rush the Stage can specifically draw and discount it to 1 mana, though we might have a bigger priority on other tutor targets in our deck. We’re not going to completely sleep on this one. Snakebite is a consideration for any deck that cares about having the initiative.
Score: 2
Rush the Stage
This card is a huge consistency boost for the class in general but is specifically a game changer in Outcast DH. Finding Vengeful Walloper and Fierce Outsider more often is going to be a critical boost to the archetype’s success. What’s more is that Outsider is going to cost 0 mana and can be played immediately, while Walloper gets accelerated, as if Rush the Stage was an outcast card itself.
Essentially, we’re paying a net of 1 mana to draw 2, since we get 2 mana back in discounts. This card makes us believe Outcast DH is nearing competitive play. Shambling Chow and Halveria Darkraven are other interesting targets for this.
Score: 4
Glaivetar
This is the best card in the Demon Hunter set and the strongest enabler of Outcast DH we’ve seen. A 4 mana 4/2 weapon is already a good stat line. These weapons have historically been played even with modest upsides, but Glaivetar’s upside is anything but modest.
A guaranteed draw that gets further upgraded by playing Outcast cards? This weapon can easily draw us 4-5 cards in a dedicated Outcast deck, which would instantly make it one of the strongest draw engines in the format. It’s so good that other decks might consider running an outcast package as a draw engine, but there’s no need to go that far. You’ll just play Outcast DH, and you will like it.
Score: 4
Eye of Shadow
Very underwhelming and highly situational card. Eye of Shadow is a River Crocolisk that does nothing by itself. It’s entirely reliant on having a large weapon equipped or sizeable attack modifiers, or it’s completely useless. The minion doesn’t have lifesteal itself, so your opponent can easily clear it. If you can’t swing an attack on the turn it is played, you’re not doing anything with it. We can’t see a minion that niche as a good choice in any deck.
Score: 1
Instrument Smasher
This is another highly situational minion that requires you to have a weapon equipped and then use the final durability charge when you play Smasher. It seems very awkward to play, even in an aggressive deck since Demon Hunter is highly incentivized to run cheap cards it can easily dump from hand. Smasher is nothing like that. The other bad news is that even if you connect Smasher and get a new weapon, you can’t utilize its effect on the same turn since you’ve already spent your hero attack.
We will note that Demon Hunter weapons can be quite juicy. There will be five strong weapons in the random pool plus one low roll (Calamity’s Grasp) in Standard. We don’t completely hate this, but it’s sketchy.
Score: 1
Halveria Darkraven
Halveria can act as a dangerous win condition for a board flooding deck. Since she is also a rush minion, she triggers herself, so if you have a board in play and you attack with Halveria, your board gets buffed. This reminds us of Rokara, but Halveria allows you to buff your minions before attacking and her aura stacks with other rush minions. You can play Halveria in combination with Security or Coordinated Strike and give your existing board a total of +4 attack. That’s stronger than any other comparable board finisher.
Halveria’s quite expensive at 4 mana but you can soft tutor and discount her with Rush the Stage. A dedicated token deck doesn’t have much support in the new Standard year, but she’s very likely to be utilized as a finisher in Outcast DH due to the archetype’s affinity with rush minions and loading the board. With Halveria at your side, your opponent cannot afford to ever ignore your board. Gameplay changing card.
Score: 4
Going Down Swinging
As a standalone card, Going Down Swinging is not exciting. It is essentially a 2 damage AOE for 5 mana, which is a terrible deal. The card becomes better once you combine it with attack buffs. It works poorly with weapons since it wastes their charges.
Fury is rotating out while Twin Slice is not coming back, leaving Chaos Strike, Dispose of Evidence, and the hero power as the best options to scale up the effect. That’s not great, especially when Demon Hunter now has access to Silvermoon Arcanist and Unleash Fel/Immolation Aura. There are just better AOE effects available in the class. The combination with Dispose of Evidence is quite strong, but DoE is a card mostly utilized in aggressive decks while Going Down Swinging is a purely defensive card.
We’re also completely uninterested in Eye of Shadow. 7 mana for a worse effect than Arcanist/Unleash is a non-starter. This card seems bad but could get stronger once Demon Hunter gets some more attack modifiers, like Twin Slice, back in its toolkit. For this expansion, it’s probably going to be passed over, but we can see it being played eventually.
Score: 2
Final Thoughts
Festival of Legends Set Rank: 3rd
Overall Power Ranking: 2nd
Demon Hunter is looking very good, with one specific archetype that is expected to explode, while several supporting shells could birth other successful decks.
Outcast DH looks like the real deal. Glaivetar is one of the best cards in the set and allows it to churn through its deck very quickly. The ability to draw an obscene number of cards means that Outcast DH can pivot to different kinds of win conditions, depending on what the format demands. Halveria looks like an extremely powerful enabler of a board-centric win condition alongside Security, while S’theno/Rowdy Fan can take care of defensive decks that pack removal to deny your ability to leverage boards. The point is that once you have an insane draw engine, finding and successfully utilizing finishers becomes a much easier task.
Another subtle but big buff to Outcast DH is the pool of outcast cards that survive rotation. It became massively better, making Felerin the Forgotten and Wretched Exile significantly more powerful and consistent. A better Outcast pool also means it is easier to discount Walloper, which can now be tutored alongside Fierce Outsider by Rush the Stage, another standout card in the set.
But that’s not all for Demon Hunter. It might be losing Jace, but we can tell you that Jace was hardly the most important finisher for Demon Hunter decks utilizing the Relic package. The loss of Fel Barrage and Guild Trader is the bigger deal. Relics are still with us though, potentially enabling another win condition thanks to Relic of Dimensions’ discounting power. The Spell package is also intact. We are curious to see where it goes next. A token package with Security and Feast of Souls is possible.
We would generally watch out for a Lady S’theno/Rowdy Fan combo to be included in several Demon Hunter decks. It deals 50% more damage per spell than Abusive Sergeant, giving it a much greater chance to be viable. One Predation, one Dispose of Evidence and a couple of other filler spells and you’re looking at 30 damage already.
We’ll see what Illidan ends up cooking.
thank you for the information