Can Warrior and Demon Hunter Become Playable in Castle Nathria?

With a stunning 47.6% win rate, this marvel of deck-building prowess dominates the Warrior ladder. Unfortunately, it is not quite good enough to climb the real one.

What Can Be Done to Help Demon Hunter and Warrior?

First of all, can we nerf the top decks to make Demon Hunter and Warrior playable? That seems unlikely. They are so far behind everything else that it seems impossible to bring them back by making others weaker. The classes desperately need some buffs.

Nowadays, Hearthstone design is based around packages. Classes get some packages of synergistic cards in one expansion and others in the next. Much of the time, these packages do not interact with each other. For example, Demon Hunter did not receive any new Fel spells in Castle Nathria, thereby denying any support for the main theme of the class from Sunken City. Yet, the most fruitful approach to making Demon Hunter playable in this expansion seems to be to encourage cooperation between the Relic package and the Fel package. The Fel package is the most powerful asset of the class at the moment, and the Relic package is the more promising of the two Castle Nathria packages.

To improve the Relic package, the location, Relic Vault is the main candidate. It is the weakest card in the package at the moment, as you need mana to play the location and mana to cast a Relic before you get any benefits. Reducing the cost of Relic Vault from 3 to 2 may help alleviate these issues. Relic of Dimensions is the clear best performer in the package and improving it could be a little too scary. It is hard to judge just how much Demon Hunter would need to shine. The full buff package could consists of the Relic Vault buff combined with Relic of Extinction and Relic of Phantasms cost decreases, from 2 to 1 and from 3 to 2, respectively. You could even throw in a reduced Infuse requirement for Artificer Xy'mox from 5 to 4.

For Demon Hunter, the Relic package can be tuned to become playable. It is just a matter of finding the right numbers. This is even the favorite style of changes Blizzard likes to do, just changing the mana cost. There is no need to change the mechanics. Just find the right mana costs and the cards will become playable. Make them too cheap, and they become too strong. But in general, this is the type of balancing that takes place in the game all the time, so I’m not too worried about Demon Hunter. It can be fixed.

But what about Warrior? Enrage Warrior is not working. Quest Warrior has been around for almost a year now, and it is incredibly dull. What can be done to fix Warrior?

Enrage Warrior is hard to fix. All the new cards are already cheap! You cannot easily improve them by reducing their mana cost. Maybe Burden of Pride could cost only 3 mana, which would help both Enrage Warrior and Control Warrior. Imbued Axe is really weak, and maybe it could also benefit from a cost decrease to 2 mana. Then we just accept that it will hardly ever be Infused. Those are the only low-hanging fruit available to Blizzard and I’m not sure they help enough.

Another option would be to un-nerf Warrior. In Sunken City, From the Depths, Nellie, the Great Thresher, Tidal Revenant, and Shield Shatter were all hit with nerfs. But do we really want to return to the days of 1-cost Mr. Smite from Nellie, the Great Thresher? Do we want to return to the days of From the Depths and Sir Finley, Sea Guide giving the Warrior a handful of almost free cards early in the game? Those were the tricks Warrior had to use to be competitive in Sunken City, but they were taken away. Castle Nathria gave nothing in return. Instead, Castle Nathria made end-game inevitabilities even harder to dodge. If you do not have a proactive win condition, you will not be able to compete. But the fact is, Warrior has nothing better. I would just consider un-nerfing it all. With the additional power from Castle Nathria, it might not be that big of a deal. If there is one card that could be left in its nerfed state, it would be From the Depths. That swing turn might hit a bit too early. Nellie, the Great Thresher on turn seven is not as threatening as the same card on turn four.

Warrior got one of the most thematic cards in Castle Nathria in Remornia, Living Blade. Alas, the card is too weak. A cost decrease could make it a serviceable weapon. It will not be the main win condition of a deck, but it could potentially help both Enrage Warrior and Control Warrior, if it was cheaper. Add that to the mix, and we have a possible saving package for Warrior. Warrior is in the gutter, so it will take a lot to save it. Buffing three new cards and reverting the Sunken City nerfs to at least three cards just might be enough to get the job done.

There is, of course, one other way to save Demon Hunter and Warrior: the mini-set. A couple of great cards for each from the mini-set could definitely save them. But that is a couple of months away and does not address the current weakness of their new sets.

We know that no balance patch will come this week. The Masters Tour is on the weekend. But next week, anything can happen.