I
t’s hard to overstate
what a big, risky
decision it was to add
a tenth class to
Hearthstone. In the
six years since the game launched,
the developer had consistently
played down the idea that adding
another hero was a serious
possibility, citing obvious problems
with how to design a unique
identity and balance it around and
against the existing classes. But a
lot has changed about Hearthstone
in the last year or so. Since the
arrival of a new leadership team led
by game director Ben Lee, who
joined from CD Projekt Red, the
cadence of nerfs—and buffs!—has
increased, the cost of collecting
cards has come down thanks to the
duplicate protection across all
rarities, and a new mode was finally
added in the form of the brilliant
Battlegrounds auto-battler. But for
me the biggest bombshell has been
Demon Hunter, which launched
alongside the Ashes of Outland
expansion on April 7.
It’s also hard to overstate just how
broken Demon Hunter was on day
one. In the Standard mode, according
to third party data tracking site HS
Replay, the class had a 56.2 percent
win rate. Which sounds fine until you
consider that every other class had a
sub 50 percent win rate. Demon
Hunter was the only class going
positive, and that win rate would
have been much higher but for the
fact all the Demon Hunters were
playing each other. “It was the most
powerful deck I’ve ever seen since
starting the Data Reaper Project,”
Vicious Syndicate founder Ohad
Zach told me. “It made Galakrond
Shaman in the first week of Descent
of Dragons look like an arena deck.
It’s very possible that a refined aggro
Demon Hunter would have exhibited
a win rate in the 60s.”STONE COLD
Amongst the many things that were
overtuned about Demon Hunter was
Skull of Guldan: It draws three cards
and then discounts them by three
mana each when ‘Outcast’, a unique
Demon Hunter mechanic that
confers an additional benefit when
the card is played from the left or
rightmost position in your hand.
Outcast is cool because it makes the
order in which you play your cards
crucial, enabling for comparatively
high skill turns. The notion that
Demon Hunter is a class that requires
skill will no doubt lead to some
laughter at the back, as any
oppressive class which doles out vast
amounts of damage invariably gets
accused of being braindead, but
combined with its uniquely cheap(one mana for one damage) hero
power, there’s no arguing that the
class feels dynamic and is actually
unusually fluid to play.
Skull was far from the only
problem. Aldrachi Warblades and
Eye Beam enabled vast amounts of
life gain, while Imprisoned Antaen
delivered ten random damage
without any real counter. To the
surprise of pretty much anyone,
Blizzard intervened almost
immediately, making nerfs a day after
launch. A second wave followed not
long after that hit Altruis the Outcast,
an initially innocuous-looking
legendary card that, with the correct
use of resources, can clear the
opponent’s board and bring them
within lethal change, all in one
disgusting, blowout turn. Honestly,
Altruis is probably still busted—it
really shouldn’t do face damage—and,
as with whatever’s currently most
popular in Hearthstone, you’ll findplenty of players lining up to hate on
Demon Hunter as the pantomime
villain du jour.ON THE HUNT
Not me though. As someone who’s
been playing since the day the game
came out of alpha, I recognize that a
shakeup of this size was never going
to come without early wrinkles. The
flavor of Demon Hunter (Illidan is, of
course, the hero), and the design
space it uses, both feel unique enough
to justify its creation. There’s also
plenty of scope for exploring less
aggressive deck archetypes, like
ramping into some of the card
collection’s big idiot demons.
What matters to me far more than
the fact the class was unbalanced at
launch is that the designers are
taking bold risks, with talk of more to
come in the form of another mode
later this year, and further classes not
ruled out for the more distant future.
It feels like an exciting time to play,
even if losing remains as enraging as
ever. Plus, let’s be real—for
Hearthstone hipsters, the chance to
look cool by not playing the hot new
thing is its own reward.NEED TO KNOW
RELEASE
Out now
PUBLISHER
BlizzardDEVELOPER
Blizzard (Team 5)
LINK
bit.ly/35jitPtHEARTHSTONE:
ASHES OF OUTLAND
The latest update is dragons all the way down. By Tim Clark
THE EXORCIST
Don’t get mad, get even
Ladder is still
lousy with Demon
Hunters, so you’re
going to need a
strong deck that
plays to their
weaknesses.
Statistically, the
only hard counter
currently agreed
on is ‘Enrage
Warrior’, which
uses a card called
Risky Skipper toclear Demon
Hunter boards
while stacking
tons of armor in
conjunction with
old favorite
Armorsmith. It
can be a bit tricky
to play, due to
having multiple
combos based on
having damaged
minions, but it’s a
ton of fun.HONESTLY,
ALTRUIS IS
PROBABLY
STILL BUSTEDWHAT’S NEW IN THE BIGGEST GAMES
UPDATE
10