The Comprehensive United in Stormwind Preview

Metamorfin

Metamorfin

This 1-drop is a Goldshire Footman on turn 1. It’s unplayable, so it’s not actually a 1-drop. Realistically, you can play it on turn 3 alongside a Chaos Strike or a Fel Barrage, and then it gives you a big swing. We don’t think this is a surefire winner, but it’s quite a good follow-up to several defensive plays available to the class, such as Eye Beam and Immolation Aura.

Score: 2

Fel Barrage

Fel Barrage

This spell can be nice, mostly because the damage goes face when the board is clear, and it can deal 4 damage to a single minion. It’s a much stronger and more flexible Cleave that can be useful in any DH deck that’s based around damage (and most of them have been that way). The problem is that we’re not seeing how these decks come back. Aggro DH, Inquisitor DH, and Soul DH are all dead archetypes, and they need more than what they’ve been given to make a return.

Score: 2

Irebound Brute

Irebound Brute

We try to not write off cards that carry mana discount potential, but we just can’t get behind this card. It seems impossible to reduce the cost of Brute to the point it becomes a serious mid-game swing such as Bladed Lady. If you’re telling us to play Glide, so we can draw Brute and play it for 0 mana, we’re going to remind you that Glide was one of the worst cards we’ve ever seen played. Anything that requires Glide to be good is a no-no for us.

Score: 1

Sigil of Alacrity

Sigil of Alacrity

A cycling card with a discount sounds attractive, though the delayed draw hurts it a lot. You often want to draw cards so that you can play them on that turn, to respond to pressure from an opponent or to simply be efficient with your mana. Sigil doesn’t help with that, but we can see how Lifesteal DH could possibly be interested. The designed purpose of Sigil seems to be helping us complete Final Showdown more easily. Not an exciting prospect.

Score: 2

Chaos Leech

Chaos Leech

A slightly worse Tidal Surge that becomes a slightly better Tidal Surge on Outcast for 3 mana. Doesn’t blow our minds. It does help that it’s a Fel spell, since it has some synergies with Jace and Felgorger, but the upside doesn’t seem that worthwhile. Eye Beam is considerably stronger and more flexible too.

Score: 1

Persistent Peddler

Persistent Peddler

This is a very good addition to Deathrattle DH. Peddler’s tradeable keyword means it should almost always act as a stronger Piloted Shredder since we can shuffle the 2nd Peddler if we ever draw it, and its synergy with Razorfen Beastmaster is particularly strong. Turns Deathrattle DH into a 29-card deck.

Score: 3

Lion’s Frenzy

Lion's Frenzy

This weapon is unbelievably bad. The hoops you must go through to make it a tolerable weapon are remarkable. Compare this to Felsteel Executioner, Marrowslicer or Aldrachi Warblades, and it’s no contest. If you draw 3 cards on 2 separate turns, it becomes a Hooked Scimitar-level weapon. Atrocious. Talk of big damage in the late game by endlessly chaining draws seems like pure fantasy. We’ll be shocked if it works.

Score: 1

Felgorger

Felgorger

This is an expensive source of card draw in a class blessed with good draw. Yes, it has some Fel synergy, and we don’t hate a 0-mana Chaos Strike or Immolation Aura. When you purely look at the stats and the potential mana discount, Felgorger holds up. But, when you take into consideration the existence of Skull of Gul’dan and cheaper forms of card draw that don’t require you to commit an undersized body at 4, Felgorger looks somewhat tame. It’s okay.

Score: 2

Final Showdown

Final ShowdownGain Momentum Card ImageClose the Portal Card ImageDemonslayer Kurtrus Card Image

There is so much wrong with this quest. First, it is extremely difficult to complete, requiring you to play multiple draw effects in a single turn. Second, it has anti-synergy with its first two rewards. You’re often going to play something like Double Jump into a Spectral Sight, or play Acrobatics, or Skull of Gul’dan. This diminishes the discount award since you’re not going to end up efficiently discounting everything you draw. Third, it works poorly with a mechanic such as Soul Fragments, which also diminishes the first two discount rewards.

Finally, after all this hard work, the quest doesn’t even pose an immediate threat to end the game, and you’ve already drawn so many cards that there’s barely anything left in the deck that’s worth discounting. Are we just stacking tradeable cards, so we don’t hit fatigue? How do we even win in a way that’s more effective than simply cutting the quest, not gimping our early game or survivability, and still possess the consistency to deal a billion damage with Skull of Gul’dan enabling Il’gynoth OTK’s? We just don’t see how the quest can do any better. Have we mentioned that Glide is one of the worst Hearthstone cards of all-time? We can’t get behind running Glide in our decks to utilize it.

Score: 1

Jace Darkweaver

Jace Darkweaver

This card is as good as the Fel package that supports it, which means it’s not very good. Fel spells are mostly removal spells and damage spells. They can gain you a bunch of health while clearing boards, they can add a bit of damage, but they don’t make a board themselves. This means that if you play Jace on an empty board, it’s going to kill itself (Chaos Leech) and do nothing. Are we really paying 8 mana to play Chaos Strike, Fel Barrage, and Fury?

This isn’t Blackthorn, and Blackthorn needed buffs and further significant support through a mini-set to make an impact. We can see Jace getting stronger down the road, but right now it seems like a very expensive jewel in the crown of a Fel spell package that just doesn’t do enough to justify seeing play.

Score: 1

Final Thoughts

United in Stormwind Set Rank: 10th

Overall Power Ranking: 9th

First, we want to clarify something about rankings. They’re partly for entertainment and partly to provide a relative comparison across classes. Furthermore, the first set of balance changes immediately throws things off to the point where that kind of prediction becomes obsolete very quickly.

So, we’re gearing their purpose not to predict the Tier List of the first Data Reaper Report of United in Stormwind. It’s more about evaluating how many options are open for a class to compete. It could have one potentially strong deck, and nothing else. But that deck could still end up at Tier 1. This is what happened to Mage at Barrens. It didn’t look good on paper, and it ended up only boasting one viable deck that ended up far stronger than anyone predicted. Everything else within the class was unplayable for 4 months.

With Demon Hunter, we see a set that doesn’t increase its options at all. Final Showdown might be obsolete upon arrival. Why would we make a sacrifice in survivability and consistency, just to get a reward that’s worse than a Skull on the left side of our hand? What are we working so hard for? We struggle to envision a way in which Quest DH does a better job than other DH decks in basically any aspect of Hearthstone.

Aggro DH is showing no signs of revival, with the archetype receiving no noteworthy additions. Soul or Inquisitor DH haven’t received the kind of upgrades that would put them back in the picture either. The Fel spell package’s promise is lukewarm, and Jace is no win condition. This leaves us with Deathrattle DH, which may have received the best card in the class’ set, and it’s the deck that needed the least amount of help to keep things up.

So, we don’t expect Demon Hunter to be a dead class or one that is not going to compete. It will just do very similar things to what it’s doing now. If it’s somehow not good enough anymore, that’s where Illidan starts getting into trouble.

 

 

9 Comments

  1. I really see the shaman quest slotting into mostly the current doomhammer shaman list. The deck already runs notetaker to get a similar effect and the double cast on stormstrike or rockbiter is a massive finisher.

  2. I feel like you could add the Priest Quest into any existing Priest deck and it would complete it. It usually generates a bunch of cards and lasts many turns anyway, so what’s playing a diverse cost of cards for a direct win condition really hurt anyway? Definitely better than a 1, at least

  3. @Frozad : The problem with celestial alignement is usually not to win once you get there, it’s to get there in the first place.

  4. After all you guys said about Bolner, I even expected a 6/5, but it ended up a 4/5. Am I missing something?

  5. I feel that you are not considering the interactions with celestial alignment (1 cost all) and the new cards, like oracle (!) and sheldras, maybe they could be better in that archtype.

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