Looking at hsreplay, Hunter deck winrates based on having a specific card in mulligan, drawing and playing it are at their very lowest for this card wherever it is included. I find this strange, as it actually seems quite powerful to me in theory and based on some gameplay I've seen/encountered. However, the low winrate thing is the case for a lot of catchup cards, even if they are good in their own right, e.g. spreading plague. Deathstalker rexxar does have the 2 damage AOE component which makes it a good play if you've already lost the board. A significant portion of hunter wins are no doubt a result of early aggression and board control combined with damage from the hero power and kill commands, a position where playing the card is detrimental as it replaced the hero power.
Do you guys think the data shows the card is "bad" because it is actually bad, or is it a good card which is often played in bad situations?
The card itself is very powerful, but the concept of control hunter itself isn't developed enough. I currently have quite a succesful list made, but it's always more of a deck to play at rank 20, 15, 10 and 5 for fun.
The only reason why the data would imply that is because the overall support for it is weak. That's it. A control environment is really hard to pull off in Hunter due to no heals, no taunts and no real board clear. On turn 6, you will very rarely get a full board clear by doing 2 damage to all. So, this is why the card, while really good on its own, failed to make Hunter anything more than a tier 3-4 deck.
I tried making it work briefly a while back and while I did have some success at the beginning, it's really tough to be innovative with Hunter due to the lack of the aforementioned tools.
I am still not sure how the nerfs will affect the meta and whether or not Hunter can actually climb up a bit on the tier list, but I would certainly hope so, though, I still do not see this happening very easily.
The truth is that the hunter hero power as standard is already crazy strong, especially when you take into consideration all the other hunter class cards that see play - they all encourage aggression. I own the hunter DK and have played with it quite a bit - so let me give you an example. It's turn 6 - you have the DK in hand, the game is going well, so your opponent is already down to 16hp, does the DK even help you apply pressure to close the game? Maybe not - you might just be better not playing it, going with a mana inefficient 3 drop + hero power. This sort of situation comes up quite a lot - you have to consider whether he's even worth playing at all, some matches it's not - it's not a card you play on curve necessarily, but i'd still run it in every hunter deck for the flex it gives you.
The card is super powerful - in any other class it would be outright broken. Goes to show how strong the hunter hero power still is to this day, even though we're long past the days of face hunter.
It's not great imo. Flexible but quite a few times it can just whiff while others it can get the nuts. Prefer a much more fixed hero power. Jaina and Gul'dan are so good because of what they always do for example.
Im not convinced too many other classes would actually run it. for example life tap is way better and whilst playing hunter, due to the make up of basic cards and whatnot it's automatically aggressive. So many times I've seen Kibler on stream playing hunter an come so close to beating his opponent and then play Rexxar and not have enough reach nor produces the right beasts.
If hunter can ever play the control game then of course this is better than steady shot and the effect is pretty nice against aggressive swarm style decks. But I feel like at the moment people just run it because it's cool and fun, which of course it is.
But the fact that you have to pay 2 mana each turn for the card essentially can clog your hand or be a bit too slow for tempo. The better zombeasts do something when played. Play it if you like, hunter is close to unplayable at the moment anyway but I don't think it'll win too many games unless you just highroll at that point.
It's not great imo. Flexible but quite a few times it can just whiff while others it can get the nuts. Prefer a much more fixed hero power. Jaina and Gul'dan are so good because of what they always do for example.
Im not convinced too many other classes would actually run it. for example life tap is way better and whilst playing hunter, due to the make up of basic cards and whatnot it's automatically aggressive. So many times I've seen Kibler on stream playing hunter an come so close to beating his opponent and then play Rexxar and not have enough reach nor produces the right beasts.
If hunter can ever play the control game then of course this is better than steady shot and the effect is pretty nice against aggressive swarm style decks. But I feel like at the moment people just run it because it's cool and fun, which of course it is.
But the fact that you have to pay 2 mana each turn for the card essentially can clog your hand or be a bit too slow for tempo. The better zombeasts do something when played. Play it if you like, hunter is close to unplayable at the moment anyway but I don't think it'll win too many games unless you just highroll at that point.
The reason it would be better in every other class is they could run the cards to support it, even warlock - the only one that might struggle slightly is rogue. Hunter just doesn't have those options.
Hunter DK is crazy fun, even if not always needed to close out the game...it sometimes whiffs, but sometimes it gives you absolutely broken combinations...I reached rank 5 with Rexxar quite easily (from 10), destroying Exodia Mages (any aggro/tempo deck does, I know, but there were a lot of them so I want to stress that) and Token Druids along the way...Jade Druid and most Priest lists are quite hard to beat tho - Priest is doable if it doesn't get all his removal+heal in time, Jade is just hard unless you have godlike draw and he has abyssmal.
Btw, I played my own fun list with Medivh and Call of the Wilds (didn't quite work, had maybe a 45-50% wr, but it was fun), and a regular Midrange Hunter teched with crabs, that was much more succesful.
It's not great imo. Flexible but quite a few times it can just whiff while others it can get the nuts. Prefer a much more fixed hero power. Jaina and Gul'dan are so good because of what they always do for example.
Im not convinced too many other classes would actually run it. for example life tap is way better and whilst playing hunter, due to the make up of basic cards and whatnot it's automatically aggressive. So many times I've seen Kibler on stream playing hunter an come so close to beating his opponent and then play Rexxar and not have enough reach nor produces the right beasts.
If hunter can ever play the control game then of course this is better than steady shot and the effect is pretty nice against aggressive swarm style decks. But I feel like at the moment people just run it because it's cool and fun, which of course it is.
But the fact that you have to pay 2 mana each turn for the card essentially can clog your hand or be a bit too slow for tempo. The better zombeasts do something when played. Play it if you like, hunter is close to unplayable at the moment anyway but I don't think it'll win too many games unless you just highroll at that point.
The reason it would be better in every other class is they could run the cards to support it, even warlock - the only one that might struggle slightly is rogue. Hunter just doesn't have those options.
Imo most classes have better tools and better DKs!
It's not that simple. It is the lowest win rate for that card cos the only Hunter played lately is "Face" (well more of a tempo/midrange) Hunter that is fast and aggressive deck, if the game lasts too long you will likely lose it, and that's where DK is played - in longer matches that are not favorable for Hunter anyways. Nothing to do directly with Rexxar, if anything he is making you lose much less than you would without him.
Yeah this very similar to my own suspicions. As a Hunter it is painfully obvious that you are going to lose when you have a bad mulligan or get everything answered perfectly turn after turn. By the time you reach high mana turns, the opponent may as well be 30 health if they're above something like 15, and your topdecked fiery bat is really just not that great compared to what they start drawing. The deathknight, with a few lucky beast discovers, is by far the best card available to hunter in such a scenario and can completely flip the script while only taking up one deckslot.
It's turn 6 - you have the DK in hand, the game is going well, so your opponent is already down to 16hp, does the DK even help you apply pressure to close the game? Maybe not - you might just be better not playing it, going with a mana inefficient 3 drop + hero power. This sort of situation comes up quite a lot - you have to consider whether he's even worth playing at all, some matches it's not - it's not a card you play on curve necessarily, but i'd still run it in every hunter deck for the flex it gives you.
I can imagine this scenario would be quite common, and this is one of the reasons I find it hard to decide if the card is good enough to run. There are a lot of cards I could put in its place in a deck instead, spellbreaker, second deadly shot, even a one drop, that may be the difference between winning and losing in a game which I have successfully applied pressure thanks to my (and/or opponent's) hand. Its hard for me to think if a hunter deck would overall win more because of having something like a spellbreaker and successfully face-ing the opponent down in those close-call faster games or whether it would win more from being able to pull out a miraculous victory because of the deathknight (in a situation such as going into turn 10 with no board and the opponent on 20 health or something).
But the fact that you have to pay 2 mana each turn for the card essentially can clog your hand or be a bit too slow for tempo. The better zombeasts do something when played. Play it if you like, hunter is close to unplayable at the moment anyway but I don't think it'll win too many games unless you just highroll at that point.
I'm not too sure if paying the "extra" 2 mana is much of a concern (especially not for clogging up your hand) in most hunter decks as by the time you reach turn 6 onwards a lot of the time much of your mana goes unspent due to lack of card draw and usually lack of big drops. I definitely agree that the immediate impact zombeast highrolls are the best, e.g. charge combos, dispatch kodo, and this is a big part of why the hero power is so good (as well as the "draw" and card advantage provided). I actually think Hunter is not as bad as most think, I went from rank 15 to 7 (I know its not necessarily a good representation of the meta but its all I've got) in relatively few games with a pretty normal midrange list. The games I lost (apart from the few against pirate warrior) were due to running out of cards to play, in such a situation drawing or tracking into the deathknight may have scraped me out a win, which is what made me make this thread in the first place.
Anyways, thanks for the responses everyone I appreciate it.
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Looking at hsreplay, Hunter deck winrates based on having a specific card in mulligan, drawing and playing it are at their very lowest for this card wherever it is included. I find this strange, as it actually seems quite powerful to me in theory and based on some gameplay I've seen/encountered.
However, the low winrate thing is the case for a lot of catchup cards, even if they are good in their own right, e.g. spreading plague. Deathstalker rexxar does have the 2 damage AOE component which makes it a good play if you've already lost the board. A significant portion of hunter wins are no doubt a result of early aggression and board control combined with damage from the hero power and kill commands, a position where playing the card is detrimental as it replaced the hero power.
Do you guys think the data shows the card is "bad" because it is actually bad, or is it a good card which is often played in bad situations?
The card itself is very powerful, but the concept of control hunter itself isn't developed enough. I currently have quite a succesful list made, but it's always more of a deck to play at rank 20, 15, 10 and 5 for fun.
The only reason why the data would imply that is because the overall support for it is weak. That's it. A control environment is really hard to pull off in Hunter due to no heals, no taunts and no real board clear. On turn 6, you will very rarely get a full board clear by doing 2 damage to all. So, this is why the card, while really good on its own, failed to make Hunter anything more than a tier 3-4 deck.
I tried making it work briefly a while back and while I did have some success at the beginning, it's really tough to be innovative with Hunter due to the lack of the aforementioned tools.
I am still not sure how the nerfs will affect the meta and whether or not Hunter can actually climb up a bit on the tier list, but I would certainly hope so, though, I still do not see this happening very easily.
The truth is that the hunter hero power as standard is already crazy strong, especially when you take into consideration all the other hunter class cards that see play - they all encourage aggression. I own the hunter DK and have played with it quite a bit - so let me give you an example. It's turn 6 - you have the DK in hand, the game is going well, so your opponent is already down to 16hp, does the DK even help you apply pressure to close the game? Maybe not - you might just be better not playing it, going with a mana inefficient 3 drop + hero power. This sort of situation comes up quite a lot - you have to consider whether he's even worth playing at all, some matches it's not - it's not a card you play on curve necessarily, but i'd still run it in every hunter deck for the flex it gives you.
The card is super powerful - in any other class it would be outright broken. Goes to show how strong the hunter hero power still is to this day, even though we're long past the days of face hunter.
It's not great imo. Flexible but quite a few times it can just whiff while others it can get the nuts. Prefer a much more fixed hero power. Jaina and Gul'dan are so good because of what they always do for example.
Im not convinced too many other classes would actually run it. for example life tap is way better and whilst playing hunter, due to the make up of basic cards and whatnot it's automatically aggressive. So many times I've seen Kibler on stream playing hunter an come so close to beating his opponent and then play Rexxar and not have enough reach nor produces the right beasts.
If hunter can ever play the control game then of course this is better than steady shot and the effect is pretty nice against aggressive swarm style decks. But I feel like at the moment people just run it because it's cool and fun, which of course it is.
But the fact that you have to pay 2 mana each turn for the card essentially can clog your hand or be a bit too slow for tempo. The better zombeasts do something when played. Play it if you like, hunter is close to unplayable at the moment anyway but I don't think it'll win too many games unless you just highroll at that point.
Hunter DK is crazy fun, even if not always needed to close out the game...it sometimes whiffs, but sometimes it gives you absolutely broken combinations...I reached rank 5 with Rexxar quite easily (from 10), destroying Exodia Mages (any aggro/tempo deck does, I know, but there were a lot of them so I want to stress that) and Token Druids along the way...Jade Druid and most Priest lists are quite hard to beat tho - Priest is doable if it doesn't get all his removal+heal in time, Jade is just hard unless you have godlike draw and he has abyssmal.
Btw, I played my own fun list with Medivh and Call of the Wilds (didn't quite work, had maybe a 45-50% wr, but it was fun), and a regular Midrange Hunter teched with crabs, that was much more succesful.
You can't stop the signal.
Its hard for me to think if a hunter deck would overall win more because of having something like a spellbreaker and successfully face-ing the opponent down in those close-call faster games or whether it would win more from being able to pull out a miraculous victory because of the deathknight (in a situation such as going into turn 10 with no board and the opponent on 20 health or something).
I definitely agree that the immediate impact zombeast highrolls are the best, e.g. charge combos, dispatch kodo, and this is a big part of why the hero power is so good (as well as the "draw" and card advantage provided).
I actually think Hunter is not as bad as most think, I went from rank 15 to 7 (I know its not necessarily a good representation of the meta but its all I've got) in relatively few games with a pretty normal midrange list. The games I lost (apart from the few against pirate warrior) were due to running out of cards to play, in such a situation drawing or tracking into the deathknight may have scraped me out a win, which is what made me make this thread in the first place.
Anyways, thanks for the responses everyone I appreciate it.