Hearthpwn

I'm fairly new to hearthstone. So i'm curious if he's good for just an endcap to the match or you're supposed to do something with him? HALP?!

Deathwing is in very few decks. He is meant as an end and "pray" He is played in very few decks because he can be so easily removed or hamstrung..plus he makes you ditch all your cards. I have never lost to a Deathwing..and I have probably seen him played against me 10 times in 4 months...half of that being in arena..where I still didn't lose to him.

He's pretty good in a deck stacked with legendaries.  If you force your opponent to use up all their removal on your stuff, and at this point you are in top deck mode, why not play deathwing?

I've seen Deathwing twice.

The first time, my opponent handed me the win. I'd used Mind Vision earlier in the game and knew to expect it. It was so tempting to play right away - but instead I used the copied Deathwing to kill the original Deathwing as soon as it came out.

The second time I was out of removal, and it did me in.

As brjuntinaar has said, it can work in a top heavy deck that has already pulled out a lot of removal.

deathwing is just simply too hard to play because of it's negative aspects. first it cost 10 mana, so you cant combo it with anything including your hero ability in the same turn (unless you have a summoner's apprentice or summoning portals) and that also means you cant combo it with anything the next turn since you'll be top decking afterwards since you lost your entire hand. 

in order to counter his effects you'll want 2 things in your deck, death rattles that gives major benefits on an empty board, and some major card drawing ability. not to mention you want some sort of defensive early game since deathwing is a 10 mana card so you'll have to survive those 10 rounds before you can even play it

currently there just isnt enough of these types of cards to warrent deathwing as a decent card and as such its just a pray/fun card at the moment. though in future expansions we might see more cards that will make a deathwing deck a possible thing.

Deathwing got me out of a few sticky situations, and I ended up winning because of it. But it's not a card I'd like to rely on, way too situational. Ideal situation - you have nothing but DW in hand, with either none, or nothing but worthless, about-to-be-slaughtered minions on board, facing a very strong, taunted up to the max opponent board. Your opponent has minimal health also. Drop in DW, whoosh away the on-board threats, and now your opponent has a big problem. 

I got rid of it because there are better legends to craft. 

I would honestly never play Deathwing unless my opponent just forced his whole hand on the board (which is never done by good players) or if my hand is almost empty and my opponent is controlling the board.

Both cases aren't really popular scenarios and thus making deathwing a very vulnerable and risky legend that I would never use in any deck of mine

Here's your answer.

Deathwing

Look at the card.  It's a 10-drop, so uses all your crystal for the turn unless you RNG'd it with Far Sight with Shaman.  It destroys all minions on the field.  You discard your hand.  It doesn't have Charge, or anything else nice.

So you discard your hand, but your opponent doesn't have to discard.  So if your opponent has cards in hand and a counter like Big Game Hunter, it looks really bad for you, yeah?  So now, look for cards that make your opponent discard.  No such card in Hearthstone right now.  I'm sure there will be, but there isn't right now.

Next you look to destroying all minions on the field.  You look for good Deathrattle effects.  Cairne Bloodhoof, Sylvanas Windrunner, Harvest Golem are the ones you see most, but there's a few others like Loot Hoarder, etc. etc.  But add them all up and try to figure out an aggregate.  Is there a way to consistently ensure you have board control for when you do drop Deathwing, so you can have the appropriate minions on the field?  Or will the Deathrattle benefits probably inevitably swing a game in your favor once they trigger?  My limited experience says "no" to both questions.

Next you look to immediate game changing effects.  Like Twisting Nether, Deathwing destroys all minions on the field (except Deathwing doesn't destroy itself).  Is destroying all minions going to be enough, knowing your opponent still has cards in hand?  Remember Deathwing doesn't have Taunt either.  If you're low on life, a simple Leeroy Jenkins Windfury combination could end the game for you on your opponent's turn.  Contrast with a card like Ragnaros the Firelord, which *immediately* punches for 8; that's part of why it's so popular; it has an immediate effect.

The way I read it, Deathwing isn't much good in the current format.  It's a final answer to Mind Control; if a priest just controlled your good stuff and you need a final comeback, Deathwing can be nasty.  But the fact that it forces you to discard your hand and not your opponent, plus no change in game state other than clearing the field of minions, plus no Taunt, plus no Charge, means it's *slow*.  It needs more interesting stuff, like more minions with Deathrattle, maybe in a deck with Twisting Nether or resurrection from graveyard effects (which doesn't exist now) or something.  That's my opinion.

He really is the all or nothing play. Useful in a few scenarios, but not in the general play. You could build decks around him, involving deathrattles, taunts, heals, and etc, but it may not be very effective in the current meta. Top heavy decks he is just another really high stat card to play after you empty your hand and the board has had all the removal played. Deathwing is decent enough, but not that instant 8 damage or finisher charge that people love. He is "too slow", simply because of a few simple facts. The main one is that he cannot in any normal summoning circumstance ever charge right away. ( you could technically get it to work before with loot hoarder deathrattle pulling the previously 0 cost charge, but that would never happen anyway.) He is susceptible to removal, including but not limited to Big Game hunter, Shadow Word death, Tinkmaster Overspark, naturalize, Mind control ( that is the worst case scenario, never play it against a priest with the possibility of a MC still there), deadly shot, and poly / hex. He can be killed with simple removal. What then, are the upsides?

Well, since you will have to play him so late game, that means with a well built deck around him, most removal is gone. In addition, if you play him from your hand late game with an alarm-o-bot, he does not discard hand ( nor wipe the board unfortunately) and can be combo'd with things such as charge, defender of argus, sunfury protector, and ( if you are a warrior this can techinically work but takes a ton of cards) 2x inner rage, 2x cruel taskmaster, and enrage, for a 25/11 dragon that can hit you. This also takes all your mana. But that combo is so uber ridiculous it will never happen in normal ranked play or arena, unless you play against a friend who lets you.

Dammit lost my first game to Deathwing last night.  That makes it 12-1 ish against the Dragon. It was my Shammy Control vs War Control. He coined turn 1 Armorsmith, turn 2 Armorsmith and proceeded to gain about 50 armor over the whole list...We were both nearing Fatigue him at 30+7 and me at 25. None of our creatures did must damage until I bloodlusted a bunch of small minions to to get him to 22. I had no more gas...and he dropped the bomb as his last card...and I just couldn't handle it as my last 3 cards were Rockbiter Weapon, Lava Burst and finally Nat Pagle. I did have back to back Stoneclaws..but yeah...Dead to Deathwing.

I got Deathwing in an arena draw, I liked the 'hail mary' aspect so I crafted one.  Later on I went with the conventional wisdom and replaced him in all decks with Rag.  Tonight I play and my opponent had blown his entire hand, but had six minions and a clear advantage to my 4.  It was late in the game and the only card I had was Rag.  I was thinking DW would have converted the loss into a vic and I was right since he played his next draw and it wasn't removal or taunt.  I will be keeping track of these occasions in both directions and will report to this thread later.

I happened to get Deathwing in an Arena Draft, picked it up early and proceeded to build a control heavy Warrior deck. I went with 8 wins in that run and 5 of them were won by Deathwing in a topdecking stage of the game where my opponent had more minions than I had removals.

He is VERY powerful in a situation like this, especially when your opponent has no more than 1-2 cards on his own hand. The chances of it being a removal are very low at a late stage of the game and if you continuously dropped creatures at 4-5-6 cost etc.

Other than that, you rarely ever run into top decking situations in constructed because card draw is an important aspect of deck building. The only place where I can imagine a good Deathwing play in constructed is in heavy control mage decks where you might have 2-3 secrets up before you drop him.

Quote from Triskaidekaphilia »

I've seen Deathwing twice.

The first time, my opponent handed me the win. I'd used Mind Vision earlier in the game and knew to expect it. It was so tempting to play right away - but instead I used the copied Deathwing to kill the original Deathwing as soon as it came out.

The second time I was out of removal, and it did me in.

As brjuntinaar has said, it can work in a top heavy deck that has already pulled out a lot of removal.

 

 

Were you playing against trump?

Ok, first of all, I think that people who think Deathwing synergizes with deathrattle are wrong. Sure, deathwing with a loot hoarder in play is cute, but besides that you don't want to kill your own minions. You can't play cairne and somehow expect him to survive until turn 10. And even then, why would you want to kill your own Cairne? The way this works is you play your cairne, make your opponent deal with him, then make him deal with the baine, then wait for him to commit some more minions and then wipe the board.

That only works if you have baited all your opponents hard removal first, but in a deck such a warrior control where you play a bunch of late-game fatties that are all prime targets for BGH/hex/polymorph etc. The way I see it, he competes with Ysera for the same slot - a late game win condition. The difference is, Ysera is unplayable when you are behind, Deathwing is unplayble when you are ahead (but if you are ahead you probably also don't need to win right now since you have the best late game). A big plus of deathwing is that you can actually play it against druid without just being dead to their FoN/Savage Roar combo. I haven't made the switch yet because I haven't figured what the meta is post-patch (I haven't played too much tbh), but I know there are some players I respect that forgo Ysera and play DW or Onyxia instead.

Quote from JuveriTori »

Quote from Triskaidekaphilia »

I've seen Deathwing twice.

The first time, my opponent handed me the win. I'd used Mind Vision earlier in the game and knew to expect it. It was so tempting to play right away - but instead I used the copied Deathwing to kill the original Deathwing as soon as it came out.

 

 

Were you playing against trump?

Nope - haven't yet made it to Rank 6.

Just another card to pick when you expect to be in a losing position.

Deathwing is good in arena, nothing else.