New Warlock Epic Card Revealed - Felfire in the Hole!
驴鸽LvGe just revealed a new Fractured in Alterac Valley card: Felfire in the Hole!
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They literally just added support for imp lock in this set and in the last one.
And to say the deck won't exist is just nonsense. It exists, I theorycrafted it. Will it be good? Who knows.
https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-podcast-episode-69/
Listen to this, VS guys said exactly what I said about Warlock.
I don't care. I'm not talking about top tier legend for one thing.
Also I can't... figure how you think they didn't support any of those archetypes. They added cards to all of them at one point or another. Either new big demons, or whatever.
Felfire in the Hole after KFC Chiken !
I'm calling it now, it won't see much play after initial tests. To make it consistent, you would have to play Fel spells only, but that's not very good idea, since best Warlock spells are from Shadow school (especially heals and removals). And 5 mana deal 2, draw spell doesn't seem to be good enough these days. Warlock simply has better options for both AoE removal and draw.
Rather than looking at what's good from Shadow, it seems useful to me to look at what's in Fel. There's... not too many great-looking options, so I'm kinda coming to the same conclusion from the other direction.
The only removal options are Demonic Assault and Unstable Felbolt. Nothing wicked impressive. Fiendish Circle and Imp Swarm (Rank 1) are OK options for creating minions, but minion cards can also do that. Felosophy, The Dark Portal, and Shadow Council seem kinda niche.
Maybe if there's more ways to get Fel Rift than just Dreadlich Tamsin (there are a lot of commons and rares unrevealed, and a minion that shuffled Fel Rifts as a battlecry or deathrattle could make sense), but overall, it does seem pretty thin if running mostly Fel spells.
Actually, that's my point :). I believe that Zoo deck could possibly omit all spells other than Fel, but the thing is, it clearly wasn't designed for Zoo. It looks more like a control asset, but how would you build control deck without heals and removals (which are mostly from Shadow school)? And even if you could, 5 mana deal 3 dmg to all enemies and draw a spell still doesn't look very good in Warlock. If you want to squeeze 4-5 mana removal into your deck these days, it has to be really good, like Brawl or Soul Rend. Even Hellfire wasn't played for years and not because it also damages you, but because 3 dmg AoE for 4 mana is just too slow most of the time.
So there's a lot more Fel spell support added since this announcement. Full-Blown Evil is an OK removal tool, doing 5/10/15 damage to enemy minions, so it potentially scales up well enough later in the game to not be dead, but it doesn't really win directly. Seeds of Destruction is Fel Rift support, but maybe slow. Draw with just Fel spells isn't astonishingly good. FFitH into a Rift is essentially a 5-mana 3/3 with battlecry "draw a card and deal 3 damage to each enemy", which doesn't seem too bad, although I don't know that it's enough of a payoff to support an archetype. Grave Defiler duplicates a spell in hand, which is good for value, but grind-for-value probably doesn't cut it. Using Felwalker to cast Felfire in the Hole! seems like a really potent 6-mana turn, as far as it goes, but doesn't really scream "win condition."
It seems like an... interesting... deck to play around with. Cast early Seeds of Destruction to set up the imps. Grab a spare Felfire in the Hole with Grave Defiler. Turns 5 and 6 are FFitH and Felwalker casting FFitH. Probably build various demon-synergies around it in the minions. but typing it out... just doesn't seem worthwhile. Maybe could have been good in some other era of Hearthstone, but setting up average-sized minions not exceptionally fast mixed with modest board control spells seems more like something that used to work.
A for effort to the Devs for setting up a Fel Spell deck with theoretically a lot of options, but it doesn't look super promising to me.
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Overall, I wasn't disagreeing, just taking the direction of "what can this do?" rather than "what can't it do?"
The deck is definitely about board control and a big bartender turn. You're not winning the game with because of a 3 damage board clear.
Also this spell clearly *WAS* designed for zoo. Draws a card, only hits the enemy board, it's a zoo card 100%.
2-3 AoE damage on turn 5 for Zoo... Why? On turn 5 most enemy minions usually have 4+ HP, so you would have to trade your board into them anyway. There's simply no point in playing such spell in Zoo, it has much better and more efficient ways to spend 5 mana.
Take the board from other tempo decks obviously. While keeping your hand size up. Also, by turn 5 most minions are at 3-4 health. You trade an imp or two off and you've just taken the board from a pirate warrior or a taunt druid. While still leading.
We're not talking about traditional zoo lock, which tries to just keep building a board. We're talking about more like spell druid. Where you make bigger tempo mid-game plays and then finish them with a bartender/Phylactery play.
Spell / Token Druid works only because he has access to crazy strong board buffs and refills, on top of heavy mana cheating. At the moment, it's impossible to build similar deck for Warlock... or any other class.
Warlock will have refills and has board buffs. And Spell druid does not typically run mana cheat.
I dunno why you're arguing the merits of a deck that doesn't exist yet. Shit.
Because I'm 100% sure such deck won't exist. Blizzard has no clue how to handle Zoo Lock these days, so my hopes for it are very low. I think Fel Lock will be a huge failure in this expansion (won't see much play after first week) and Blizzard will eventually drop the entire idea, like they did many times in the past, leaving some useless cards to rot... ate.
That's just... ridiculously fatalistic based on nothing. And the deck will absolutely exist. Both as zoolock, and with handlock variants. Giving your whole board a strong deathrattle is just such a powerful play no matter what.
Do you want to bet? I play almost exclusively Warlock since beta, and at this point I can tell good Warlock deck from a bad one. Fel Lock looks very poor and knowing Blizzard ways, it will remain that way until rotation. Warlock archetypes almost never get any further support beyond initial prints. Big Demon Lock with Archwitch Willow, Deck of Chaos Lock, Tickatus Control Lock, Soul Fragment Control Lock, Imp Token Lock, Hir'eek, the Bat Lock and so on... Most of them were dead just after the release and Blizzard did nothing to improve them. There's no reason to believe this time will be different.
I always hate when I get felfire in the hole.
For 1 mana more than a consecrate, you draw a card and possibly deal another 1 damage.
Which is saying pretty damn little in a world where this card is:
-Being released 7 years after concentration was
-Powercreep has been a very real thing and this actually can be worse than conc situationally
-A 1/5 as conc has not seen play in years
Uh, I mean AoE has not really had much power creep. The only real big "power creep" is... Fire Sale. But that's pretty much a one off. 1 damage for 1-2 mana AoEs, 2 damage for 3-4s, 3 damage for 5-6s is still mostly true.
Paladin doesn't play tempo or for board, which is mostly where Consecration WOULD shine (historically it's mostly been used as a board clear with equality until that got nerfed), so it's not really an accurate comparison.