Uh, it can be upgraded by turn 2, especially with the two new zoo cards. Having a card stronger than fireball available on turn 4 or 5 is hardly "barely playable"
Fireball can go face, this only kills minions.
Also Tempo Mages do not keep Fireball in their mulligans, this card not only requires you do so but you have to have the activators for it to not be effectively dead. Even then fast lists would always prefer a higher Tempo play than just removing a minion.
Could you elaborate on why you think it's barely playable, though?
Assuming you've upgraded this by turn 7, it still too slow to really matter against fast decks and too specific to be better than Siphon Soul against control.
The problem of course is that this card requires activating, which means that most likely this card won't be upgraded in the moments its capable to really shine, which are already limited due to is fixed damage, costing and target limitation. Even the comparison to Shadow Bolt suffers the same, Shadow Bolt itself is barely playable, often the first card to be cut from decks and that requires no activation.
More over the cards released to "support" this spell do more to support a fast list than a slow one and those list will never play a card with such limited use.
The fact is this card is overrated for the exact reason Blood-Queen was, the card has the word Lifesteal, which seems to make people blind to the massive downsides these cards have, such as this card being able to only target minions for example.
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Only bad thing about this card is a the 8 mana.
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This card is awesome for Hunter and Aggro/Beast Druid.
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This is actually pretty nice for a slow Hunter list.
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Pre-nerf Winaxe was better.
This competes pretty well against Gorehowl though.
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Pretty nice card but it still doesn't make that other new card less garbage.
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Cool but its 9 mana, so yeah, probably not quite broken enough.
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I wouldn't dust your extra copies of this card.
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Pretty good if control warrior is a thing AND can build armor like the old days.
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This card is barely playable when its fully upgraded, garbage in every other situation.
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Paladins can now play a third spikeridged steed.
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Pretty good I suppose . .
Still worse than Thing from Below though.
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One of the better cards for sure, effect is continuous and its an elemental too.