Scalding Geyser
Arcane Shot with dredge and a spell school that Shaman often finds a little awkward to trigger Multicaster with. Utilizing all spell schools is going to be a crucial deck building staple for the class going forward, so being able to ding a fire spell for 1-mana is going to be valuable. It has good synergy with Azsharan Scroll too.
Score: 3
Schooling
Piranhas become stronger together. Summoning 3 Piranhas on turn 3 provides you with 6 attack damage in rush, enough to clear most early boards efficiently. But the reason we like Schooling so much is how good it is with Anchored Totem. It provides so much fuel and consistency for a Token Shaman deck potentially utilizing Bloodlust as finisher.
Score: 2
Anchored Totem
2-mana Hobgoblin for 1-drops, Anchored Totem is an interesting build-around card for an aggressive Token Shaman deck. You can use Piranhas and other minions such as Beaming Sidekick to protect it and snowball games completely out of control very early on. It also buffs totems you summon from your hero power! It might be difficult to take advantage of Anchored Totem early in the year, but we can see a new deck emerging with it. It’s the kind of the card that can change the way Shaman plays.
Score: 3
Azsharan Scroll
Scroll seems intended to help us fill our Coral Keeper/Multicaster spell school quota, but do we really want to spend a deck slot and 1 mana to do that? Well, the devil’s in the details here. The post-rotation spell pool is very narrow. So narrow in fact, that Shaman only has 3 Fire spells and one of them is Scalding Geyser, the very spell you can use to dredge Sunken Scroll. The quality of the spell pool from the other schools is also very high, with excellent removal and AOE options, so we’re leaning towards this card being good.
Score: 3
Piranha Poacher
This card has Cutlass Courier stats but a far, far worse effect. Generating one Piranha isn’t a particularly good outcome as we could invest deck slots into other 1-drops that would immediately fuel Anchored Totem without us needing to play a 3-drop before that point. We don’t think the murloc tag here matters much as we don’t even like this card in the murloc archetype. Poacher could be good enough for Token Shaman if we have slots to spare, but it’s a little sketchy.
Score: 2
Coral Keeper
Remember Emerald Spellstone, that meta defining Hunter 5-mana spell from Kobolds & Catacombs? What if you didn’t need to have it in hand to upgrade it? What if you didn’t need to play bad secrets to upgrade it, but just needed to play constructed worthy spells at any point in time? What if we had ways to repeat it the next turn, or double it up with a 3-drop (Brilliant Macaw, Brann Bronzebeard)? What if we could tutor it? What if it also had an extra health on one of the bodies? What if it could have a higher ceiling in the future if Shaman is given an Arcane spell again?
Just your average, meta-defining card.
Score: 4
Bioluminescence
This card seems exciting on the surface but once it gets to the deck-building phase, you start to realize that it’s hard to make it a more efficient burst enabler than Guild Trader. A Token Shaman deck would rather run Bloodlust to leverage its board development, while Burn Shaman doesn’t seem to have the means to set up Bioluminescence as a realistic finisher. We will still respect the card for its combolicious potential, as we might have missed on something, but in the expected format, this spell feels a bit like bait. Could get better in the future.
Score: 2
Wrathspine Enchanter
Clumsy Courier for multiple spells. This card might have been nuts in Mage, but the Shaman class doesn’t have the spell pool to make it work. You’re required to run a bunch of expensive spells that aren’t targeted, and the best things we can think are Glaciate and Don’t Stand in the Fire, which we can play earlier than turn 7. This is a hard pass. Strange card that doesn’t seem to have a place or support in this format whatsoever.
Score: 1
Radiance of Azshara
This card seems very flashy, but after looking into the cards at a deeper level, it isn’t as mind blowing as it looks. For Fire spells this might be a little better than Guild Trader, but there’s nothing we’re desperate to play alongside it unless we’re running Perpetual Flame. For Nature spells, there’s nothing noteworthy to benefit from a 1-mana discount. The Frost spell ability could be nice thanks to Windchills, but Snowblind Harpy gives us more armor for one spell that we don’t even have to cast, and it works better with Brilliant Macaw and Brann Bronzebeard. The supposed versatility is misleading, as it’s difficult for decks to make use of all the card’s abilities, so there’s quite a bit of diminishing returns. Could end up surprisingly fringe.
Score: 2
Glugg the Gulper
Glugg is a strong pile of stats. Three 2/2 taunts on top of a 3/5 for 7 mana is well above the curve, especially when the stats for the taunt don’t go away when they’re killed: they’re transferred to the main body. It’s very awkward to deal with Glugg without direct spell removal, and there’s also the potential upside of playing it and immediately running minions you already have on the board into the opponent, sacrificing them and feeding Glugg. The question is whether Shaman decks are interested in what is strictly a pile of stats. When you compare the card to Leviathan, for example, it’s clearly inferior. Pretty good in Bloodlust decks. Not much otherwise.
Score: 2
Final Thoughts
Voyage to the Sunken City Set Rank: 7th
Overall Power Ranking: 7th
Shaman’s set is best described as middling. Some powerful cards and some stinkers. We suspect that Shaman’s power in the format will mostly come from its Alterac set carrying it through. The main issue that emerges from rotation is Shaman’s ability to close games. The Bolner/Y’Shaarj combo is gone, and so is the amount of burst that was available to Burn Shaman. Quest Shaman is likely dead too.
What does Shaman do? Probably play Coral Keeper. The class already wants to diversify its spell schools thanks to Multicaster, so having an Emerald Spellstone that benefits from this deck building direction is probably the best addition it got. Shaman’s ability to load the board constantly thanks to Coral Keeper/Brilliant Macaw, but also through a card like Glugg or Bearon, could encourage it to investigate the possibility of the returning Bloodlust as its closer.
Bloodlust is kind of a big deal because aggressive Shaman decks suddenly have a reason to exist as well. Anchored Totem and Schooling is a juicy combo for a faster deck. The problem might be card draw, which is why we like Murloc Shaman’s chances to compete thanks to the impactful neutral addition of Gorloc Ravager.
There’s also another option, which is not to have a specific closer at all. If late game lethality disappears, then perhaps the best thing to do is generate value forever, and Shaman has that ability in spades thanks to Brann and Bolner existing in the same format. The battlecry value could become ridiculous and rival the value generation from Control Priest in Barrens.
If Rogue is the new Warrior and Priest is the new Rogue, then maybe Shaman is the new Priest.
