Demon Hunter - Hearthstone’s 10th Class!
With Hearthstone’s new expansion, Ashes of Outland, we will also see the introduction of the game’s 10th class, the Demon Hunter which will come to Hearthstone, for FREE, through a 4 game introduction experience starting April 2nd 2020.
But what is a Demon Hunter?
They are not Hunters, equipped with Bow and Arrows, the masters of Beasts, nor are they Demons, the foul spawn usually allied with Sargeras and the Burning Legion.
Demon Hunters are Elves that made a vow to fight the forces of the Burning Legion and to use their own terrible powers against them.
They blind themselves in a special ritual to gain spectral sight, to enhance their awareness, and fight with agile ferocity and magic fueled by fel energies and souls. The weapon of choice for a Demon Hunter is the Warglaive, most usually displayed as a double blade with a grip in the middle. They also have the ability to transform, bringing out their inner Demon, and attack with their claws and increased demonic energies.
Demon Hunters do not always fight alone, they have help from others, including Demons that switched allegiance!
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Quick Summary:
- Demon Hunter will be FREE.
- Prologue: April 2nd.
- Release: April 7th
- Get 30 cards and a Standard deck for free after completing intro, that you can play with directly.
- 1 Mana Hero Power, “Add +1 Attack” regardless of Weapon equipped.
- Demon Hunter specific Keyword: Outcast. Which gives you a bonus if the card is played as the left or right most in your hand.
- 3 envisioned archetypes:
- Weapons and Furious attacks.
- Minion swarms with empowerment on death.
- Control archetype with BIG demons.
- Read the full article for more details!
How Do I Get The Demon Hunter Class?
First of all the Demon Hunter class will be totally FREE!
They are unlocked by playing through a prologue of four missions you play as Illidan Stormrage, leading you through his history. At the end of it you will unlock 30 Demon Hunter cards and a Year of the Dragon Demon Hunter deck. Again, totally for free. For information specifically about the Prologue check out our news post!
You will be able to start playing the Demon Hunter class when the Ashes of Outland expansion launches on Tuesday, April 7th.
Quote from HearthPwn"s interview w/ Dean "IksarHS" Ayala -- Check back Wednesday for the full Interview!HearthPwn: Why did you go with Demon Hunters? What made them the right choice?
Dean: Demon Hunters is the one we fully explored first and we felt if we did this we needed to make this class meaningfully different than others. And Demon Hunter felt, with it’s furious attacks and quick playstyle, maybe a little similar to Rogue, but a more aggressive nature and with Demons. We felt that was something that differentiated itself from other classes enough that that was the one we felt the most excited about.
The Demon Hunter in Hearthstone
The Hero Power
One of the things that set the Demon Hunter class apart from the original 9 classes is their Hero Power: Demon Claws. Using it gives the Demon Hunter +1 Attack, regardless of having a weapon equipped, much like the Druid Hero Power. The really special thing however is that it only costs 1 mana, opening up a world of possibilities and making it easier to weave into your turns.
Quote from HearthPwn"s interview w/ Dean "IksarHS" Ayala -- Check back Wednesday for the full Interview!HearthPwn: Demon Hunter Hero Power costs only 1 mana. How will they interact with Genn Greymane and Baku the Mooneater?
Dean: *laughs* Well, not very well.
How Many Cards And Expansions Will Demon Hunter Have?
As you might expect, Blizzard did not go back and create Demon Hunter cards for every expansion and adventure from the past. As mentioned above, you will get 30 Demon Hunter cards just for unlocking the class. Every expansion in Year of the Phoenix will add 15 more cards to that, instead of the 10 cards classes usually get. This will help Demon Hunters be on the same level as other classes in terms of depth.
Quote from HearthPwn"s interview w/ Dean "IksarHS" Ayala -- Check back Wednesday for the full Interview!HearthPwn: So are there plans to introduce more cards for DH as time goes on, or are they just always going to have this problem of a smaller card pool to play with?
Dean: After the first year we are going to retroactively give Demon Hunter a “Classic Set”. That might be from new cards that we create when we see there’s cards that they need or cards that would have rotated that we decide aren’t going to rotate after all.
Outcast: A Demon Hunter Specific Keyword
Much like Shaman with Overload and Rogue with Combo, Demon Hunters will have a class specific keyword: Outcast.
So what does it do? It gives you a bonus if the card is played as the left or right most in your hand.
This creates a unique type of gameplay, where you always have to pay attention to where cards are in your hand, and think of the play order of your cards to maximize their potential. It makes you think about ALL your cards and how to play them, not just the Outcast ones.
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Quote from HearthPwn"s interview w/ Dean "IksarHS" Ayala -- Check back Wednesday for the full Interview!HearthPwn: What was the inspiration behind the new Outcast keyword?
Dean: Illidan and his Demon Hunters are outcasts themselves and it’s a little funky how you get there, but if you look at your hand as a group of friends, the left and right most are kind of the outcasts. Mechanically it was just really interesting and causes you to play Hearthstone very differently than you had done before.
Demon Hunter Card Sets
The Basic Set
The Basic set of cards that every class has. They will be FREE. You will get golden versions of these by leveling up your Demon Hunter!
10 of the 10 Basic cards have been revealed.
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Initiate Set
The set you receive for completing the 4 Demon Hunter introduction game missions. They will be FREE.
20 of the 20 Initiate cards have been revealed.
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Ashes of Outland Set
The cards in this set are part of the Ashes of Outland expansion and as such will come from card packs you will need to buy with gold or money.
15 of the 15 Ashes of Outland cards have been revealed.
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Demon Hunter Deck Archetypes
At the Summit where the Demon Hunter was first introduced, Blizzard proposed 3 different and unique archetypes for the Demon Hunter class. We will present you with decks here that fit each archetype as well as an "Other" category where you will find decks that may not adhere to what Blizzard envisioned, as well as things like Combo decks and Highlander decks (should those appear!).
Fel & Fury
Represents the Demon Hunter class as furious attackers, with their Hero Power or weapons or cards that grant temporary attack. There will be synergies with the Demon Hunter attacking, both from abilities and minions.
Decks coming soon!
Empowered By Souls
Demon Hunters have a special affinity for using Soul Magic, using the souls of the fallen to boost their own proficiencies.
The way they use this is by employing swarms of small minions. Other classes that use minion swarms typically buff their minions, but that’s not typical for Demon Hunters. They let their minions die and gain power that way through trigger effects.
Decks coming soon!
Demon Crushers
Demon Hunters instill fear into their Demonic adversaries and many of them choose to switch allegiance to them and this is fine with the Demon Hunters, because to them it's all a means to an end.
With Demons, it’s typically “the bigger, the better” and this archetype tries to control the board and push out the biggest, baddest demons it can.
Decks coming soon!
Conclusion
We hope you learned what you wanted to know from this article. Since there was so much info, allow us to recap:
- Demon Hunter will be FREE.
- Unlocks April 2nd.
- Get 30 cards and a Standard deck for free after completing intro, that you can play with directly.
- 1 Mana Hero Power, “Add +1 Attack” regardless of Weapon equipped.
- Demon Hunter specific Keyword: Outcast. Which gives you a bonus when you play the card as the left or right most card in your hand.
- 3 envisioned archetypes:
- Weapons and Furious attacks.
- Minion swarms with empowerment on death.
- Control archetype with BIG demons.
We leave you with one final quote from Dean “IksarHS” Ayala.
Quote from HearthPwn"s interview w/ Dean "IksarHS" Ayala -- Check back Wednesday for the full Interview!Dean: It’s a completely new Class and I think we would be doing it incorrectly if we are not open to a little more change than players are used to.
We have been playtesting it for a long time, so hopefully we will have got a lot right and we won’t have to step in and make too many sweeping changes. But of course it’s a difficult task to get all of this exactly right, so I’m sure there will be things we didn’t think of or missed on a little bit but our technology makes it easy for us to step in and make a change.
Ashes of Outland Card List & Expansion Details
Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated Card List.
Yup they do. Its called Demonic Illadin.
Well DH is gonna be broken as shit for a month or so... the power level of some of these cards is just insane, and the synergy is much stronger than most other classes' basic and classic sets.
That will lead us to Death Knight and Monk Class in future expansions ???
You guys think Demon Hunter get his Death Knight hero card and/or Galakrond hero card ?? :D i guess its not very likely but it would be cool.. :/
They might get a hero card at some time in the future, or perhaps even later on in this expansion. Getting an upgrade to their weak hero power would be interesting, something like "give all friendly characters +1 attack this turn"
Watch this whole thing be an elaborate April Fools joke by the devs. I mean, the timing almost fits perfectly.
totally not needed :( this is not WoW. If you want you can change any existing character to a different playstyle (more control or more aggro or whatever) and the flood of new expansions secure lots of new cards, most of them nobody ever uses unless a pro discovers it.
So whats left is 2 things.
Demonhuntercards: Look like a weird mix of already existing cards.
HeroPower: uninspiring as well. And that also already existed with Heros ingame. So no need for a new character at all...
The classic card Illidan Stormrage is a demon. Does that mean hero Illidan can also be killed by Sacrificial Pact?
Also, I bet Illidan's threatening emote will be "You are not prepared!".
It would mean that hero skins would be pay to win as they don't make you weak to sacrifical pact.
I play hearthstone since LoE adventure. A lot of my firends stopped playing the game since it was impossible as casual players to keep up with new expansions. Now, with extension of no duplicates in packs, it will be easier to enjoy this game socially. This changes and the new hero is the best thing that has happened to the game since. Current dev team and management made me hyped again! Bravo!
It's also a great time to get back in for them this expansion because of the rotation if they dont plan on playing wild since they dont have to get all those old expansion cards that were necessary in so many decks like zilliax. This is around the time I usually try ti get my friends who fell off due to this to get back into the game
Basic set is op. cost 4 summon a 6/4 and gain +1 attack (combined satyr oversees and hero power)
its times like these i look to the hearthstone community and ask myself " is the community really gonna cry every expansion?" then i look at posts like this. yes. yes it is.
Personally, this is the most excited I've been for an expansion. More so than KotFT or WotOG, and I was really excited about KotFT. I bought 400 packs for old gods, and 400 packs for the frozen throne. They're the expansions I have the most foiled cards in. Demon Hunters were my favorite class in WoW. (Even though they're relatively new, they're still my favorite.) I will definitely be one of the first few to get a golden border and classic set.
I disagree with you respectfully. After reading all the changes that are coming and on Blizzards site last night I thought that this is one of the biggest announcements in years. We all knew that a new release was coming, that the 3 sets from the prior years would become wild, and Hall of Fame cards would be coming, but did you honestly expect a whole new class, 2 new keyword/abilities, a re-working of the priest class, a FREE adventure mode, 3 days of challenges w 2 free decks each day, battleground changes, and a still unannounced new game mode? I’m sure I missed a thing or two as well.
Sure, we all would probably like to see one thing or another introduced, but overall you have to give Blizzard credit where credit is due IMO. I’m not a competitive player in the sense of playing everyday and never have reached higher thank rank 10, but I have been a steady player since almost the very beginning after the official launch and I consistently am impressed with the game and enjoy it.
You misunderstand OP, he agrees with you.
Nice! I believe they'll also release Monk (Chen Stormstout) and Death Knight (Arthas) in the future, sure will be nice to play Arthas DK vs Arthas Pally
Why are warglaives epic. They should be legendary.
wtf.
Lore wise it would make sense, but it would need to do something different than it's current text. IMO it's great as an epic, as a Legendary, it would need something like "Windfurry Deal double damage to demons."
Miracle Demon Hunter, anyone?