Has Tourist access to: Priest
Cards can be played by: Shaman
Adrenaline Fiend
This is a snowballing 2-drop that works well with the general theme of Demon Hunter’s set: charging pirates. While this minion is in play, every attacking friendly pirate provides us one free damage through a hero attack. Play Sigil of Skydiving or Dangerous Cliffside, and our Adrenaline Fiend cannot be denied.
This is a strong card if we have a critical mass of pirates that makes it difficult for our opponent to ignore our board every turn. We think its viability is reliant on a dedicated tribal deck to be successful. If Demon Hunter or Shaman do not go all-in on the tribe, then Fiend might be skipped over. But we have strong suspicions that the pirate tribe in the Demon Hunter set can be successful.
Score: 3
Sigil of Skydiving
Three charging 1/1 pirates are worth 2 mana to invest in, even if the summoning is delayed by a turn. In fact, the delayed summoning opens the possibilities for all sorts of shenanigans. For example, a turn 2 Sigil can be followed up by a turn 3 Hozen Roughhouser, without any possible counterplay. Adrenaline Fiend also works well as a follow-up to Sigil.
The Fel spell tag is very relevant for the Shaman class, as it allows it to run a Fel spell in its Spell School decks through Cookie, without relying on generation. Sigil of Skydiving has unique synergy in Shaman through the possibility of a Conductivity/Jive combo, as well as Bloodlust setups.
This is a very versatile card that we expect to see in different types of decks, both aggressive and late game oriented.
Score: 3
All Terrain Voidhound
This card is remarkably bad. A 7 mana 5/8 that has no impact on the board, relying on attacking to provide us with 5 extra damage. There is no chance this minion ever survives the opponent’s next turn, or the game would be over already.
Voidhound is clearly meant to be played with Cliff Dive, which is another unimpressive card due to the restrictive deckbuilding it imposes. We have no confidence in such a deck considering that Voidhound being summoned by Cliff Dive is not even a winning play. We would rather cheat out Illidari Inquisitor. We would rather do anything else other than putting this card in our deck. How did we even get to this point.
Score: 1
Paraglide
This is a very interesting source of card draw that encourages two different playstyles. The most obvious one is an aggressive style with a low curve that makes it easier for us to dump our hand to set up Paraglide on Outcast, which gives us good reload without helping our opponent find more answers to our aggression. Demon Hunter has successfully utilized this playstyle multiple times over the years, but it’ll be interesting to see whether Shaman, which normally doesn’t have access to a card of this nature, can utilize it too.
The other potential playstyle involves fatiguing the opponent. As fantastical as it sounds, Demon Hunter’s Tourist has an ability that allows us to deal an insane amount of damage if we hit fatigue, in which case we don’t care if we give our opponent cards because hitting fatigue is our priority and we might end up milling them anyway. We’re obviously less confident about this path, but we expect players will explore it.
Score: 3
Skirting Death
This spell steals up to 4 attack from a minion. It’s important to note that if the minion has less than 4 attack, Skirting Death will only provide us with the minion’s attack value. While it might even be a little slow for aggressive Demon Hunter decks, we believe Skirting Death will serve an important role in Shaman decks due to its Shadow tag and synergy with Windfury.
This is the only Shadow spell that Spell School Shaman decks can run besides Incredible Value, and it’s clearly far better. At a pinch, it’s a serviceable removal spell that also mitigates damage. In addition, it opens the possibility of a lethal combo with Conductivity, which can deal 30 damage with an equipped Horn of the Windlord. It resembles Hunter’s infamous Hound/ABJ combo, in which the opponent simply couldn’t develop minions or risk dying out of nowhere. We can’t ignore this.
Score: 3
Dangerous Cliffside
While charging pirates is something Demon Hunter is interested in, Dangerous Cliffside may not seem fast enough to put in an aggressive Demon Hunter deck. If we don’t have a pre-equipped weapon, this location is incredibly slow. Summoning two charging pirates for 4 mana is not a play an aggressive deck can often afford to make, even if it’s easy to trigger the location in the following turn with a hero attack.
However, there are ways we can easily set up Cliffside to summon 4 pirates on turn 4, which is an acceptable play. Multiple cheap weapons such as Quick Pick and Umberwing are available, as well as Spirit of the Team. With Adrenaline Fiend and Hozen Roughhouser, we have several ways to turn Cliffside into a very threatening play.
As for Shaman, it once again has an interesting synergy with Demon Hunter. While the class doesn’t have the early game weapons that can easily trigger an on-curve Cliffside, it does have access to Windfury, which allows us to trigger all three charges in one turn at the later stages of the game. Add Bloodlust into the equation, and Shaman can execute a burst combo without counterplay that deals 24 damage from 6 charging pirates, as well as whatever hero-based attacks we get to land (with Horn equipped, it’s a full 30 damage OTK).
An aggressive Shaman deck that can pivot into such a simple to execute burst finisher that doesn’t even rely on us having board is something worth testing.
Score: 3
Cliff Dive
This looks like a “Big” card, which allows you to exploit the size of your minions to temporarily turn them into removal. The issue we have is that the minions go back to the deck, so we don’t develop a board by playing this card, we’re strictly responding to the opponent’s threats.
While this does make the card more “forgiving” in terms of deckbuilding, as we’re not completely forced into a deck that curates its minion pool to an extreme degree, we struggle to figure out why we would ever consider this card in our decks. A 6-mana spell that is purely reactive sounds like hot garbage. It’s not even guaranteed to remove 6 mana worth of minions. We don’t need a crapshoot to play the removal game. Walking Mountain is the only appealing option for this card.
Score: 1
Climbing Hook
Another card added to the short list of Demon Hunter cards that we don’t understand how they got here. We’ve just seen Foamrender, a 5-mana/5-attack weapon that’s easier to extend the durability of, fail to make its mark in Death Knight. Why would Climbing Hook, a 5-attack weapon that costs 6 mana, be remotely playable?
The only thing Hook has on Foamrender is that it starts with two durability, so you can attack on the turn you play the weapon without breaking it. However, Foamrender’s durability requirement is trivial by the time we get to turn 5 in Death Knight, while coming down a turn earlier.
We can’t see how this weapon is remotely playable considering how hard it is to consistently develop 5-attack minions to extend it. This ain’t it.
Score: 1
Patches the Pilot
Patches is back in a new form, one that you’ll be hoping to find in the mulligan every game. It’s the Bizarro Patches.
Patches is a 1 mana 1/1 that shuffles 6 charging pirates into your deck, which are summoned when drawn. Those are the same pirates summoned by Dangerous Cliffside and Sigil of Skydiving.
While Patches’ initial body is unimpressive, it is very likely to make up for it in the average game through those charging pirates. A simple math estimation suggests that if we play him on turn 1, we will find a charging pirate on every 5th drawn card. This means that in the average game of an aggressive deck, where we reach 6-7 turns and play a single Paraglide or another form of card draw, we should summon an average of two charging pirates from Patches. That can be considered a reasonable deal.
What’s great about Patches is even if we draw it later in the game, the wait time for charging pirates becomes smaller, as we’ve drawn more cards. It’s a 1-drop that doesn’t diminish in power as much as other 1-drops in the late game, making it a reasonable choice even for slower decks that can appreciate a few pings to control the board.
It’ll have a fight on its hands to become the consensus choice in aggressive DH decks over Window Shopper, as the two don’t work well together due to conflicts with Umpire’s Grasp and Patches’ demon tag. In Shaman, it might be a ubiquitous low hanging fruit, as access to the Demon Hunter set is expected to be critical.
Score: 4
Aranna, Thrill Seeker
Aranna grants access to the Priest set, which is filled with a surprising number of aggressive tools that Demon Hunter may choose to incorporate into its toolkit. It might bring us back to the days of the classic Aggro DH with early minion pressure into burst damage, rather than the mid-game dice roll of Window Shopper we’ve become accustomed to.
Aranna’s ability is quite relevant for aggressive decks, even though the minion itself seems slow. A pre-equipped weapon can allow us to run our face into an enemy minion with reckless abandon and see the damage redirected to the opponent. Aranna also works extremely well with Acupuncture to potentially deal 8 damage fully directed to the opponent.
But what’s truly intriguing about Aranna is her OTK potential in a fatigue deck. If we hit fatigue, then develop Aranna along with multiple sources of card draw, we could hit our opponent with insane fatigue damage. This is likely to be a complete meme, but we’ll die trying.
Score: 3
Final Thoughts
Perils in Paradise Set Rank: 6th
Tourist Synergy Score: B
Overall Power Ranking: 4th
How surprising is it that thanks to its access to the Priest set, Demon Hunter may become increasingly aggressive and ferocious. Anduin, teaching Illidan how to kill? Well, that’s what we’re getting in this expansion.
Make no mistake, Demon Hunter’s set is already filled to the brim with highly aggressive options that could help it re-establish its Aggro DH archetype, with a pirate spin. But, if Demon Hunter finds it necessary, it can tap into the Priest set and get some extra burst damage and swing potential.
We have confidence that this versatility will help Demon Hunter adapt, depending on the emerging format. Should high lethality combo-centric strategies thrive, Demon Hunter possesses the potential to rush them down. But if the format is more aggressive or more defensive, the class can change its approach in kind. Window Shopping is still on the menu.
We do suspect that Demon Hunter will be very tilted towards the aggressive, fast end of the spectrum. But Aranna’s existence does open the possibility to develop a fatigue-based strategy where we direct our fatigue damage to our opponent’s face. However, this strategy lacks the life gain that might be needed to support it. We’re missing a Silvermoon Arcanist/Unleash Fel combo.
But our high rating of Demon Hunter is not necessarily because we think new strategies are going to be very powerful in the class. What we’re suspecting is that we might be sleepwalking into a revival of one of the most notorious decks in recent memory. One that could not show up in the theorycrafting streams because of its deckbuilding rules.
You see, Tidepool Pupil and Adaptive Amalgam are 1-cost Naga minions. Pupil is particularly amazing in Naga Demon Hunter, while Amalgam can be considered a weaker Mistake that can be discounted to 0-mana with Frequency Oscillator.
With extra 1-drops, the archetype can become increasingly lethal and efficient, capable of unleashing its famous blowout at an early stage in the game. In a high-powered format, in which decks attempt to burst each other as soon as possible, Naga DH feels at home.
Blindeye Sharpshooter has not yet thrown away her shot.
