Hearthpwn

Nat Pagle

A non-battlecry/deathrattle card draw minion

Shifter Zerus

Legendary with a transform mechanic

Gadgetzan Socialite

A 2/2 minion

Gurubashi Berserker

A troll card

Small-Time Buccaneer

Conditional attack increase

Kor'kron Elite

Warrior basic minion

Moonfire

0 mana card

The Lich King : Great figure from the lore that is a good card without being OP, ie a perfect card for a balanced game. Loves the Dk cards, especially Frostmourne.

Medivh the Guardian : I like the animation of his entry, and Atiesh is a big value generator. I just want to include him in all my spell heavy decks, even though he's not always competitive.

Reno Jackson : Made highlander decks a thing in HS. And although he's no longer required in standard for Highlander Priest, nothing is better than being healed for 29 hp while your opponent insta concedes.

Kazakus : The first "create your own card" card, and what an awesome card ! He keeps non-priest Highlander decks to be fun to play despite Reno's departure from standard. I love trying to get the perfect potion for each matchup.

Shadowreaper Anduin : Some may hate the machine gun, but I love it. I main'ed a Shadow Priest in WoW, and I always wanted to play a good version of it. Death of a thousands cut at its finest.

Fandral Staghelm : Not only is he a must have in any non aggressive Druid deck, but I love playing a deck full of choose one cards just to use them at their full potential with him.

Yogg-Saron, Hope's End : Quite possibly the maddest card of the game, and boy is he fun. Sometimes it just die without doing anything, some times he kills you, sometimes he kills your opponent by himself while you're on the verge of victory. Just love unpredictability.

Rend Blackhand : Your opponent planned everything. He froze your board, played a counterspell and a spellbender to protect his Antonidas, ready to kill you next turn. Suddenly, this big guy comes in and kill his Antonidas, and there's nothing he can do about it. His entry is just awesome, on top of it.

Grommash Hellscream. The greatest finisher in the game (piss off, Leeroy). 

C'Thun. Growing this big eye to disproportionnate size while his cultists benefits from him like a Lovecraftian horrific cult is always a great gameplan.

Divine Favor

Interaction with the opponent's hand 

Quote from Poppelolole >>

I liled the jade druid meta more tbh, at leastvyou can do something about his deck, SKULKING GEIST.

You can do nothing against a 0 cost hero refreshable hero power, he will still play cards.

Quote from s1ayer85 >>

Quote from Lyra_Silvertongue >>

Quote from zzAMBIENzz >>

Oh don't get me wrong meta was diverse. But it was bad. Reno deck's win condition was you either draw Reno by turn 6 or you've lose the game because almost everyone played Aggro decks. 

PW was stupidly overpowered and popular (Pre STB-nerf), almost everyone played. And if Reno was played on turn 6, PW would insta concede. To make things even worse, turn 6 was not always even achieveable. The amount of damage that old PW could produce in first 4 turns was insane. 

Aggro Shaman was similiar to PW, smorc the shit out of your opponent and hope that they don't have Reno.

IMHO, the game can be balanced, at least better than it is, but Team 5 needs to be willing to make adjustments much, much quicker, and they need to be willing to buff as well as nerf. And players, especially if you ever said anything negative about Jade / Aggro Druid, or Quest Rogue, need to re-examine your own comments about those decks, and realize we have a very similar situation now, which is why we are seeing far too many players saying they are going to start sitting out until next expansion.   

 And when everyone moves on to the next top tier deck if Razakus was nerfed & knocked out of the top tier spot? Do we just nerf that deck too once we realize that nerfing one deck does not create 2, 3, or 4 new deck metas, but merely creates a different 1 deck meta? Are good decks meant to stick around for a predetermined amount of time, or are they to be nerfed after one week, or a month?

 Team5 should buff cards, not only nerf. But looks like we'll never 

Quote from s1ayer85 >>

Quote from Lyra_Silvertongue >>

Quote from zzAMBIENzz >>

Oh don't get me wrong meta was diverse. But it was bad. Reno deck's win condition was you either draw Reno by turn 6 or you've lose the game because almost everyone played Aggro decks. 

PW was stupidly overpowered and popular (Pre STB-nerf), almost everyone played. And if Reno was played on turn 6, PW would insta concede. To make things even worse, turn 6 was not always even achieveable. The amount of damage that old PW could produce in first 4 turns was insane. 

Aggro Shaman was similiar to PW, smorc the shit out of your opponent and hope that they don't have Reno.

IMHO, the game can be balanced, at least better than it is, but Team 5 needs to be willing to make adjustments much, much quicker, and they need to be willing to buff as well as nerf. And players, especially if you ever said anything negative about Jade / Aggro Druid, or Quest Rogue, need to re-examine your own comments about those decks, and realize we have a very similar situation now, which is why we are seeing far too many players saying they are going to start sitting out until next expansion.   

 And when everyone moves on to the next top tier deck if Razakus was nerfed & knocked out of the top tier spot? Do we just nerf that deck too once we realize that nerfing one deck does not create 2, 3, or 4 new deck metas, but merely creates a different 1 deck meta? Are good decks meant to stick around for a predetermined amount of time, or are they to be nerfed after one week, or a month?

 Team5 should buff cards, not only nerf. But looks like we'll never see that.

I think that was only a decision made to cover the fact that they didn't wanted Old Murk Eyes in Standard anymore due to the popular Anyfin OTK deck back in Explorers and the possible synergies with future murloc cards (just imagine how busted murloc pally would have been nowadays if he was present.). In a way, it was a proto-Hall of Fame kind of move.

I haven't thought about the Tirion anti-synergy. I'm not sure how many games you'd have Tirion on T8 and the Dk on T9, but yeah, too much overlap for sure. Although it wouldn't be so useless if Tirion got a silence or your Ashbringer got oozed. 

I also haven't thought about the Stewart synergy. That'd be the only anti-synergy worth noting in Standard (I know it is different in wild) because I haven't seen the silver hand adapt beast yet.

That makes me sad, because Dk Uther was the Dk I got out of the prologue, and I was excited to use him along with the Arthas skin, not to mention that he can summon real Dk (lorewise). But he fell short, so I switched to Razakus (don't shoot me) and evolve Shaman, while receiving a Scourgelord Garrosh recently that I don't know what to do about. I may only hope he becomes good with enough support for a control deck to be viable.

@everyone 

Thanks for your answers. 

I'm perfectly aware that the OTK is way too meme and slow to be reliable. But it's not what makes me wonder about the card being unpopular. What bugs me is that even if the instawin condition wasn't there, the Dk is still improving the Paladin's game in every way. It's arguably better than the Justicar's HP, since it's harder to ping a 2/2 than 2 1/1. And when compared to other Dk, I can only think of 4 Dk having bigger value on the HP alone : 

-Hunter, because on average the zombeast will be better than a 2/2

-Mage, thanks to the water elemental generation.

-Priest.

-Warlock, which heals him as it damages your side of the board.

-Rogue I think is equal to the Paladin, since it generates additional values out of cards, even tho it is useless on a 6+ topdeck or some cards like Shadowblade.

Otherwise, I think it's better than :

-Druid. Sure, he can kill your 2/2 easily, but he'll take some damage in the process, since he can't armor himself at the same time without Fandral.

Shaman, who needs a minion to use it, and even then the results are dependant on what he topdecks and the rng in the evolve.

Warrior, who has to HP twice to kill one of your token, leaving him vulnerable to them hitting face, which is important since he can't armor up anymore.

So overall I think the HP in value alone is in the middle for all DK. The instawin condition only  makes them better since they're more likely to eat removal. Yes, it is very slow, but in later turns where you're the most likely to HP every time, wouldn't a 2/2 be better than a plain 1/1 ? As for the battlecry, it is certainly slow and pales in front of Gul'dan, but if you compare it to the other 9 mana Dk :

Jaina's battlecry doesn't do anything at first on the board unless you have elementals on the board, which is not necessarily the case even in decks running Dk Jaina. The Paladin's one heals for 5 and deal 5 on the same turn.

Dk Valeera is most likely to save you, but the board is unimpacted, and worse, it gives your opponent one turn to develop his side of the board.

So is the popularity of Control Paladin only the reason for its small use ? It doesn't help, but since there is nothing detrimental about the card in my opinion, wouldn't it be a good addition even in a midrange deck ?

Hello everyone,

I'm currently looking at the 6 decks in the frontpage for each class, and there is something I noticed regarding the use of the Dk cards for each class :

Druid : 5 decks out of 6 use Malfurion the pestilent, only an aggro deck doesn't use it, which makes sense.

Hunter : 4/6, only a Face Hunter and a budget deck doesn't use Dk Rexxar

Mage : 4/6, only an aggro deck and an Exodia mage have no use for Frost Lich Jaina

Paladin : 0/6

Priest : 5/6, both Razalus (obviously) and Big Priest, only an aggro deck does not use it.

 Rogue : 3/6. Despite tempo rogue being the best rogue deck nowadays, Valeera the Hollow finds a place in miracle and mill decks.

Shaman : 2/6.  Only 2 evolve decks uses it, one being a tournament deck. Still better than Uther.

Warlock : 4/6. Only 2 zoo decks, one being f2p, have no use for the powerful Gul'dan.

Warrior : 3/6. Kind of a mixed bag, not all control decks uses it, but it also fits nicely a grim Patron Deck.

Now, those decks may not be the most powerful, but it reflects popularity on the Hearthpwn website. Which makes me wonder : why is Uther so unpopular ? Sure, he may not fit the current Paladin decks (midrange murloc), but I've seen Zoolocks running Bloodreaver Gul'dan, so it's not just a question of what the meta is now and the weakness of control Paladin.

It baffles me even more when you see that Uther doesn't really change your gameplan. Hunters have to sacrifice their 2 face damage which can be problematic to close a game, Shamans have to sacrifice their totem generation, which can make a difference on a bloodlust. Warriors lose their armor generation, meaning that they have to rely on other means to heal themselves. Paladins however don't lose anything, aside of maybe the silver hand synergy, which is mostly a factor in wild nowadays. They generate more powerful token every turn, even without the instawin condition. And the battlecry is an Ashbringer that heal.

Any thoughts on it ?