With all of the cards finally being spoiled for us and just 5 days remaining until we get to play with our shiny new legendaries, it’s time to wrap up the spoiler season with a class overview. We’ll take a look at all of the new mechanics and specially the quests for the classes and what they have to bring to the table and how it can shake up the metagame. Let’s get started!
Druid
Time to Ramp Up!: The Druid Quest focuses on players playing high attack minions and if you want to complete the Druid Quest you will need to play 5 minions that have 5 or more attack. Once the quest is complete you get access to Barnabus the Stomper. It’s a 5 mana 8/8 that cuts down the cost of all minions in your deck to ZERO!
The Druid legendary is one of the best in my books but it would definitely require you to build your deck properly with ramp tools, card draw and sufficient cards to fulfill the quest requirements as early as possible to get the most value out of the quest reward. Blizzard has provided quite a few support cards for the class with options like Giant Anaconda, Tortollan Forager, Elder Longneck and Shellshifter to support the archetype. We definitely recommend trying out various ideas with the quest because you can potentially pull off some crazy combos with Barnabus. The only downside of the quest reward is if you end up drawing combo pieces in your hand before you play Barnabus, since you will not get discounts on cards in your hand – making the idea of OTK decks being potentially risky to try.
Beasts everywhere: Aside from the quest we also have a lot of beast synergy thrown into the mix with several cards that support the quest also being beasts. The legendary Tyrantus is also a beast, that’s essentially a giant Faerie Dragon. Blizzard could have done something better with the Legendary in my opinion but if a Ramp Druid deck with the quest becomes viable then you could potentially throw in Tyrantus for a mix of beast and ramp synergy. Another thing that you might want to keep in mind is that Jade Golems can also work very well with the quest and once you start popping out big Jade Golems your quest will be done quite handily.
Hunter
Come Get Your One Drops!: Hunter got access to some pretty good one drops in the new set and even the quest wants you to play as many one drops as possible with explosive returns. The Hunter quest The Marsh Queen is a pretty incredible quest card that gives you access to Queen Carnassa which is a 5 mana 8/8 that shuffles 15 raptors into your deck. These raptors are 1 mana 3/2s that draw a card through the card’s battlecry so you could essentially cycle through your entire mana’s worth of raptors in one turn.
While the quest does have a lot of support cards with new one drops like Jeweled Macaw and Small Raptor, Hunter as a class does not have access to good card draw options in the class card pool as well as in the neutral set. You would need to rely on your draws a lot and finding the right mix of 1 drops and other cards is going to take a bit of fine tuning. Stampede is yet another interesting addition to the card pool and if you are going to be playing a lot of 1 drops you would want card draw and what better way to draw several random beasts in one turn than by just investing 1 mana for it.
Terrorscale Stalker is one of the best additions to the Hunter card pool, and it is essentially a Princess Huhuran but it’s a rare and much cheaper. The only drawbacks the card has it that it is competing with some extremely strong cards that Hunter has access to in the 3 mana slot.
Mage
Time To Warp Time!: If you were thinking combo decks won’t survive too long with Emperor Thaurissan going out of Standard and Freeze Mage being completely nullified with the departure of Ice Lance; the Mage quest is about to bring in some crazy combo potential with the Mage quest. Open the Waygate requires you to play 6 spells that you did not start with at the start of the game, with several ways to draw spells already available and new ones being brought to the table this expansion you can get the quest done quite easily.
While at first sight Time Warp might not seem like a powerful reward, you need to think only a little out of the box to realize what it can do for you. Imagine you play 2X Arcane Giant and play Time Warp right after. Once your turn is refreshed you can follow up with Alexstrasza on your opponent’s health pool and instantly get lethal. In Wild you can do even crazier things with Echo of Medivh and Duplicate being available to you for crazier OTKs.
Mage Elementals?: Mages are getting quite a few elementals thrown their way including the Mage legendary Pyros, while the elemental tag does have a lot of synergies; it seems like Shaman has got the best out of the archetype since they already have a ton of Elementals to play in the Classic set and other sets that are valid in Standard already. Nonetheless, the idea of a new ‘Elemental Mage’ does seem appealing and we could see a Mid-Range Mage decklist being played with pretty much all the Mage archetypes being nullified this rotation.
Paladin
The Last Kaleidosaur: Galvdadon is one of the strongest reward legendaries from class quests and it can potentially win you the game outright if you land stealth. But the minion can potentially be removed through hard removal spells or silence minions. You pretty much have to rely on either getting Stealth or your opponent not being able to deal with the minion on the following turn.
While the quest does seem very difficult to pull off you have access to a bunch of new cards that can help with the quest including Primalfin Champion, Adaptation and a couple of other buff spells. Dinosize is one of the cards I want to keep an eye on as it has the potential to serve as a powerful finisher using charge minions for some insane burst potential.
Overall Paladin got some pretty interesting cards and most of it has to do with buffs and the quest.
Priest
Deathrattle Priest Incoming? With Reno Priest being hyped last expansion, it’s time for good old Control Priest to shine with powerful deathrattle minions and an insane legendary from the Quest. Awaken the Makers is pretty much a direct replacement for Reno Jackson for Priest, with Reno moving out in just a few days from Standard. You can burst heal all the way up to 40 while developing a 8/8 taunt for just 5 mana.
With powerful and cheap deathrattle minions in form of Crystalline Oracle and Tortollan Shellraiser, you can the quest done fairly quickly and have Amara, Warden of Hope to make a comeback whenever you need to. Overall Priest got some fairly decent cards
Rogue
Enter the Caverns: With most of the quests focusing on playing a specific number of spells or minions, the Rogue quest is quite different and the out-of-the-box requirement means you’ll have to think about how you want to build you deck and what cards you want to include to replay or copy your cards.
While Blizzard did try to make things easier with the Razorpetal cards, you can also include options like Shadowstep, Shadowcaster or the brewmaster cards for putting back cards to your hand. There are plenty more options you can try out that are available.
Other than the quest-centric cards you also have access to various interesting options like Hallucination and Vilespin Slayer to play with, that opens up possibilities for Tempo Rogue playstyles.
Shaman
The Murloc Tide: While Elementals take all the focus in the expansion, the quest for the class is all about Murlocs and it’s nice to see the Murloc tribe being pushed. Shaman did have its stints here and there with Murlocs but Murloc Shaman didn’t really take off at any point of time. With the new quest, things might shake up and Murlocs might finally see frequent play in the class.
Murloc decks often run out of steam and the quest reward Giantfin seeks to address the problem by completely refilling your hand with Murlocs to play. A Murloc Shaman deck can potentially be more viable in Wild than Standard with several powerful options being available in the format.
Elemental Overload: With several cards being given the Elemental tag from the existing sets and the new elemental tag being introduced to new cards, it’s no surprise that Shaman benefits from the change the most. With several powerhouse elemental cards being brought to the meta and Kalimos, Primal Lord leading charge – there is definitely a lot to look forward to!
Warlock
The Return of DiscardLock? With Renolock departing Standard, it’s time to bring in DiscardLock back into the meta. There have been several Discard themed cards released over the past year to support the archetype but most of them were focused on a Zoo-like build. With the new set a Mid-Range style Discard deck just might be possible with cards like Lakkari Felhound and Clutchmother Zavas. Lakkari Sacrifice is a very powerful portal if you manage to consistently pull off the quest. With options like Soulfire and Doomguard already being run in pretty much all aggressive Warlock decks, you only need to fit in a little more synergy to get the quest reward to activate.
Other than the discard theme, there hasn’t been much to support a Control style Warlock deck in this expansion and if anything goes in the way of Warlock – it’s going to be Zoolock with discard synergy. A decent number of beasts have also been added to the class – could there be a beast themed Warlock deck in the coming expansions? We sure can hope!
Warrior
Return of Ragnaros: While Majordomo Executus and Ragnaros The Firelord are moving out of Standard, it doesn’t mean the Firelord is done with us yet. The Warrior legendary spell is one of the most fun quests in the expansion and while we are not going to see Ragnaros make a re-appearance we are going to be able to wield his weapon Sulfuras if we complete the quest.
Sulfuras is essentially a hero power replacement that allows you to deal 8 random damage for 2 mana every turn until the end of the game. You would need to run a lot of taunts to activate the quest and Blizzard have been trying to push the archetype for quite a while now. But is Taunt Warrior worth playing? With so many powerful taunts in the new set, Taunt Warrior might finally be a thing, at least to make the quest worth it.
Neutrals
We got only 5 neutral legendaries this time since the class legendary count has been upped to 18 for the entire set. Spiritsinger Umbra and The Voraxx are definitely the most appealing legendaries among the neutral options and they can open up some interesting decks.
When it comes to the epics Gluttonous Ooze can be a very powerful anti-weapon tech, and probably better than Acidic Swamp Ooze. Blazecaller and Primordial Drake can potentially see play if their respective archetypes are strong enough to accommodate them.
The Rares and Commons are standard fare, with plenty of elemental synergy and taunts thrown in. There are quite a few Adapt cards and it’s too early to talk about how strong Adapt can be. With several new mechanics and cards to try out, these 130+ cards will surely open up a lot of room for experimentation.
We’re all patiently waiting for the new cards to come out and with less than a week to go, it’s time to get our twitchy fingers ready to open up some packs and unpack out favorite legendaries from the set. What cards are you hyped for the most?
Published: Apr 1, 2017 08:03 pm