The Comprehensive March of the Lich King Preview

Fierce Outsider

Fierce Outsider

A 1 mana 2/1 rush is nothing special. You can compare it to Pelican Diver and not come out that great, but it does have an effect attached to it, discounting the next outcast card by 1 mana. It pays for itself. However, Outsider requires you to invest a considerable number of deck slots into the Outcast package to properly leverage, and we’re not convinced by this package’s ability to support a solid win condition in the class. As a standalone card, this has minimal impact.

Score: 2

Mark of Scorn

Mark of Scorn

Mark of Scorn is the first of the Spell DH, or No-Minion DH, payoffs. A damage card that cycles itself is something we value very highly: the ability to take something off the board and dig into more resources. You can compare this to Fel Barrage. It’s less efficient since it only hits once for 3 damage, but if we value cycle at 1 mana then this card comes out well. It goes face too. Good enough for us.

Score: 3

Fel’dorei Warband

Fel'dorei Warband

This spell looks insane by any objective metric. It’s 4 damage that can go face on top of a bigger Coordinated Strike. This card is easily worth 5-6 mana without the no-minion restriction. What’s crazy about this card is that it can kill a giant by itself, but it can also full clear a turn 2 Vile Library into turn 3 Fiendish Circle. It can trade so efficiently with the board, provide damage that can go face and infuse an Artificer Xy’mox nearly by itself. Just an amazing card.

Score: 4

Unleash Fel

Unleash Fel

We’re truly confused about how good this card is. This is objectively stronger than Felscream Blast in almost every way. Felscream Blast is better only if we’re specifically facing an empty opponent board, in which case we might like the option to hit our own minions (Il’gynoth in Wild). Besides that, Unleash Fel is a 1 mana City Tax that hits face. Unreal.

Forget about the Manathirst requirement. It is so laughably low that it’s completely irrelevant. Turns 4-5 are pretty much when you want to play Unleash Fel in combination with either Talented or Silvermoon Arcanist to destroy an aggressive deck’s board while negating all the damage they’ve previously dealt. The Demon Hunter matchup against Imp Warlock looks a lot better, as this is another card that just destroys Fiendish Circle.

Whether you look at this card at its baseline or in combination with spell damage, it’s extremely powerful and guaranteed to change the class’ standing against aggressive decks.

Score: 4

Deal with a Devil

Deal with a DevilFelfiend Card

Another cracked Spell DH payoff. 9/9 stats in lifesteal on turn 5 is ridiculous. If you’re playing in a slow matchup, this can put a lot of pressure on the opponent, and since it’s a Fel spell, it gets replayed by Jace and produces a big board on top of the damage the card can already produce (we’ll talk about why Spell DH can run Jace a little later).

In faster matchups, this is just a single card win condition. If an aggressive deck hasn’t killed you by turn 5, they better have some amazing removal to circumvent the healing these bodies offer or any attempt to kill you will come to a screeching halt. This is a complete nightmare to trade into.

All in all, this card is amazing and makes us want to play Spell DH. Spell Hunter had Emerald Spellstone. This might be better.

Score: 4

Vengeful Walloper

Vengeful Walloper

This is the big payoff card for the outcast package, and this fact is a little concerning. Don’t get us wrong, Walloper might be a good card. The question is can it carry a package that makes up nearly half a deck, with cards that aren’t too good by themselves? The outcast package doesn’t have good threats. It also doesn’t deal damage in a meaningful way. Walloper doesn’t strike us as a card that can be drastically discounted fast enough. If we play an outcast card every turn, it can offer a decent mid-game swing. Is this a good enough reason to run Wayward Sage and Crimson Sigil Runner? We’re unconvinced.

Score: 2

Wretched Exile

Wretched Exile

Whirlkick Master for outcast cards, with better baseline stats. This is a decent value generator but only as good as the package itself because it requires a lot of support. It can theoretically chain itself, and outcast cards you generate will also be active on the right side of your hand. The problem is that out of 9 outcast cards, only 5 cost 2 mana or below, which means you can’t realistically chain it in the mid-game without having resources in hand (such as Sigil Runner or Outsider). A couple of outcast cards also require minion targets to play (Eye Beam, Chaos Leech).

It’s a 2 mana 2/3, so you can play it on curve and force the opponent to deal with it, but it doesn’t excite us. Certainly, has the potential to improve with Walloper post-rotation, especially with fodder like Vengeful Spirit going out. Outcast cards just need to be better.

Score: 2

Brutal Annihilan

Brutal Annihilan

Another Big DH card that’s unlikely to move the needle for this archetype to see competitive play. It’s a decent attempt, having both Rush and Taunt on top of some damage to the enemy hero that makes it a must-kill threat. It’s just that the deck is currently so bad that we doubt it makes any difference.

Score: 1

Felerin the Forgotten

Felerin, the Forgotten

We’ll reiterate what we’ve said about Exile and Walloper: this card is only as good as the outcast package is. Felerin provides you with 2 cards to potentially play in outcast form the moment they’re generated. However, only 4 out of the 9 outcast cards that can be generated would cost no mana, meaning you’re unlikely to be able to play both for free if you play Felerin on curve.

This might be asking for too much. After all, a 4 mana 3/3 that generates 2 cards is a decent deal. It’s just that the card quality of the pool is low. If the average outcome of Felerin on 4 is that we’ve fallen behind, then we’re not eager to play it.

Just make good outcast cards that cost 2 or less.

Score: 2

Soulstealer’s Scythe

Souleater's Scythe

This is the card that truly makes Spell DH work. We can run 3 key minions in the deck without disrupting the activation of Deal with a Devil or Fel’dorei Warband. Xy’mox, Jace and S’theno immediately come to mind, allowing Felic DH to boost its defensive tools against aggressive decks and not give up its late game.

Another major upside of Scythe is that Souls can discover any of the minions, meaning that you always draw the minion that’s most suited for the situation. For example, if you’ve managed to play a few relics and are about to play Warband, it’s a great time to discover Xy’mox to infuse him. Another important advantage is that it becomes much harder to disrupt your game plan. Effects like Patchwerk and Mutanus can be avoided, while Theotar stealing one Soul means you’re giving up the worse of your 3 minions in a certain matchup.

Of course, there are two big disadvantages. You must spend 1 mana to discover the minion before playing it (unless Dimensions takes care of that), and you can’t discount your Xy’mox or Jace with Relic of Dimensions. Brann combos become impossible, though we will say they’re not as common or crucial as one might think.

We think there’s a very good chance that Felic DH cleans up its early game weaknesses, at the cost of some late game explosiveness, and becomes a much more well-rounded performer.

Score: 4

 

Final Thoughts

March of the Lich King Set Rank: 5th

Overall Power Ranking: 4th

It’s a new era for Demon Hunter. We’ve had Spell Hunter, Spell Mage and now we’re about to enter the realm of Spell Demon Hunter, and we cannot wait for it to unleash its potential.

Here’s the thing you need to remember about Relic Demon Hunter. It’s a late game powerhouse. If the game goes late, there is no current strategy in the format that is favored against it. The powerful scaling of Relics in combination with Jace provide incredible late game inevitability that is difficult to outlast.

Relic Demon Hunter’s weakness is in aggressive matchups, as it doesn’t have great tools to combat an opponent’s early game development. Enter Unleash Fel, Fel’dorei Warband, and Deal with a Devil and these matchups could drastically change. This is what the spell package provides.

There is a caveat. Embracing Soulstealer’s Scythe could result in a late game that’s not as powerful. We can’t discover more relics with School Teacher and Venomous Scorpid, we can’t Brann/Jace or Brann/Xy’mox, and we can’t discount our late game bombs with Relic of Dimensions either, since they’re trapped inside the soul cards. There is a compelling case that the spell package might be a trap and we should just focus on Silvermoon Arcanist and Unleash Fel to win aggressive matchups.

But from our experience, a deck that becomes more well-rounded and less polarizing usually becomes better… and feels better. If Relic DH spikes in faster matchups and drops off a bit in slower matchups, we take the trade every day.

In comparison, the Outcast package doesn’t excite us. We don’t think these cards are bad, but the outcast pool is currently very weak and needs cards to rotate out for us to be confident in the consistency of Wretched Exile and Felerin. Another major issue of the outcast package is that it has no win condition. It’s forced to run Jace if it wants to scale into the late game, but then you might as well play Relics. If you want to play aggressively, Aggro DH is not interested in value cards since its draw engine is based on its ability to dump cards actively and intentionally from its hand. It’s a bad fit.

Demon Hunter should be fine though. If Spell Hunter and Spell Mage taught us anything, it’s that players adore “spell” decks. They are extremely attractive for both casuals and high-level players, and they will be popular even if they’re not the best decks.

Illidan might be looking to steal some of the spotlight from Arthas.