The Comprehensive Fractured in Alterac Valley Preview

 

Glory Chaser

Warrior gets its own Field Contact for taunts. Obviously, this is much more difficult to go off with since cheap taunts aren’t exactly easy to find and utilize, but the drawing power and potential synergy with Scrapsmith and To the Front is worth experimenting with. We wouldn’t write this off.

Score: 2

Scrapsmith

This is a great enabler for Glory Chaser and Conditioning. The initial body is a little underwhelming but passes the vanilla test. It’s basically a stronger and more flexible Phantom Militia. Should treat this card as a package alongside Glory Chaser, and while we don’t expect it to set ladder on fire, it does have a decent supporting shell.

Score: 2

Axe Berserker

If Warrior is desperate for a weapon tutor, Corsair Cache is a much more reliable option. This feels very situational and heavy. Without landing an honorable kill, Axe Berserker is never worth it. Militia Commander was better and had one of the best 1-drops in the history of the Warrior class to support it in Town Crier. Hard pass.

Score: 1

Iceblood Garrison

This card feels very redundant in the face of Warrior’s plethora of options to deal whirlwind damage whenever it wants to. In theory, this card is quite strong on turn 2 to deny development from an aggressive deck, but we’re concerned about its potential liability at later stages in the game, where it becomes very weak.

Score: 1

To the Front!

This is our little maverick call. To the Front is inevitable. At some point, someone will figure out something very powerful and silly with it, and it will become a meta defining component of a win condition. This is simply the kind of card that breaks the rules of Hearthstone. The discount limitation to 1 mana is a big reason why some players are writing it off, and yes, it’s not obviously broken because of it, but this is still a very powerful mana cheating enabler. Watch out for Captain Galvanger and Glory Chaser as the most obvious synergies from the set.

Score: 4

Shield Shatter

This card would be extremely powerful if it cost no mana, which we can do with Frozen Buckler. Buckler/Shatter is a 2 mana 5 damage AOE. Heavy Plate brings that up to 5 mana, which is still well above the curve for a 5 damage AOE. Of course, if you happen to play a defensive Warrior deck, Shield Shatter becomes easier to activate since gaining armor is kind of your thing.

To conclude, Warrior gets a board wipe that’s easy to cast for little mana and should pretty much obliterate any early game development from the opponent. We always take those.

Score: 4

Frozen Buckler

Buckler is a decent armor gain card by itself. Played at the right moment, you can gain more than 5 net armor from it if you expect to take more than 5 damage the next turn, unless you already have a lot of armor, in which case you’re not desperate to cast it. You can also use it to stall an incoming OTK, if its damage is finite.

But what sells the card is the presence of Shield Shatter and Galvangar in the same set. It’s an amazing enabler for both, making Shield Shatter cost no mana and activating Galvangar almost by itself. Will become mandatory in decks that run these cards.

Score: 3

Snowed In

Execute became unplayable when it was nerfed to 2 mana and Coerce doesn’t see play anymore even in Big Warrior. This is a 3 mana Execute with the upside of freezing other minions on the board. This ability just doesn’t seem worth it. An execute effect is usually spent when the opponent has developed a singular big minion, rather than a wide board. You could cast it on a wide board and treat it as a Frost Nova, the problem is that you need to spend more resources to activate it. Therefore, Execute was only good at 1 mana, because it allowed the Warrior to spend mana to activate it. Here, you’re expected to spend mana/resources, and then another 3 mana to cast Snowed In. I guess we should run Iceblood Garrison and predict future developments from the opponent. We’re going to pass on that and just play Shield Slam.

Score: 1

Captain Galvangar

A late game finisher for a Control Warrior deck that does what it normally does, which is gain armor. A 9/9 charge minion for 6 is very strong, and thanks to ‘To the Front’, a combo has emerged with Faceless Manipulator and Battleground Battlemaster that could either deal 18 (half a combo) or 36 damage (full combo). Those same combo pieces are also a pretty good fit for Rattlegore, so there’s some redundancy in their usefulness. The only question mark is whether Warrior has the appropriate card draw to support it.

Score: 3

Rokara, the Valorous

We think people are misunderstanding this hero card, which is easy to do because when you read what it says, you miss the most powerful thing about it, which is the button! We’ll clarify.

Rokara is a stronger Justicar Trueheart. Instead of a 6/3 body for 6 mana, she costs 7 mana while giving you an immediate 5 armor and a 5/2 weapon that helps with board control and deals some damage to the opponent’s face.

What’s important is to imagine yourself playing any deck that relies on developing a board and witnessing Rokara come down on turn 7. No build up or set up required from the Warrior. She just comes down. And then you realize that Warrior has a versatile removal kit that can set up any minion you develop into a free Tank Up for them. This sounds downright oppressive.

Next scenario, you’re playing a defensive deck and the Warrior needs to pressure you in the matchup. They now get an Arcanite Reaper and the Hunter hero power. If you taunt up, your minion is being sent to your face. The bigger the taunt, the more dangerous and counter-productive your ‘defensive’ play becomes.

The only way Rokara does not see play is if the only viable Warrior deck in Alterac Valley is Quest Warrior, because any other Warrior deck will play Rokara. It’s possible, but we’ll still give this card the statement score.

Score: 4

Final Thoughts

Fractured in Alterac Valley Set Rank: 6^th

Overall Power Ranking: 8^th

We think the Warrior set is a bit underrated. The most prominent aspect that we can notice from the set is that the class got some tools to help with closing games, which is very important. Obviously, Quest Warrior doesn’t have that issue, but every other Warrior deck does, which is why Quest Warrior is pretty much the only deck you see on ladder these days. The Alterac Valley set does nothing to support Quest Warrior and is fully dedicated to try and pull other Warrior decks out of the dumpster.

The issue we still see is that Warrior may not have the drawing power to support those finishers, which means it will have to spend more time surviving and grinding. That puts us in a similar position to Priest where we see all this potential late game lethality and massive value engines everywhere and just wonder whether Warrior will be able to outlast all of this. You can think of Warrior as more ‘lethal’ than Priest but more likely to run out of grinding power.

Of course, this all changes if the meta becomes more board-centric, which would help Warrior’s removal toolkit shine, and it’s more likely to shine with a card like Shield Shatter or Rokara. We think Rokara is almost criminally underrated. She’s a little meta-dependent but seems incredibly powerful against any deck that plays for board, and she’s not even that bad against off-board decks.

Then you’ve got the Glory Chaser/Scrapsmith combo, which can support a neat deck, but once again, the closing potential and drawing power is a little shaky.

You might be surprised to see us rank Warrior so low when Quest Warrior is so powerful and prevalent these days. Quest Warrior is getting nothing while this set is certain to inject a lot of power everywhere else. There are new defensive tools that could be very effective against this deck, and it might also fall behind in the battle for early game board control. The point is, if we’re assuming that this set is as powerful as it seems to be, a deck that stands in place is not that likely to continue dominating. Freeze Shaman appears like a nightmare matchup for example.

So, Warrior will probably be fine, it’s just a matter of whether Rokara and the class’ superb removal package will get enough work done to matter.