It’s a strong card but it pales in comparison to the other stuff out there right now. 15 damage is easily absorbed.
1 big minion pretty much negates the entire thing.
Meanwhile, insanity warlock will hit your entire board for 10 damage to EACH enemy and lifesteal it all for 4 mana.
It can go “mostly face” relatively early in the game, so it’s not easy to absorb always. It’s not VERY common to happen but when it happens it makes the card more than “legendary” in its value.
The card is specifically designed to give you a leg up on board control but you need to play minions in order to utilize it effectively. It’s not like i can play this in a DK control deck and get any real value from it. Blood DK doesn’t even give it a second look.
I could get on board with you if the card was point on click face damage but that’s not how it works. The only decks that is happening to are ones that keep removing dk minions and opening the location back up and taking 3 damage because they have no minions on the board. Yes it punishes decks that aren’t playing a lot of minions but that’s EXACTLY the deck it was designed to punish. Try the location against a standard Dragon druid and watch the Druid just laugh it off the board because it plays minions and big ones.
Are we really classifying Turn 4 as “early” game?
It depends a lot on what kind of board you try to clear with it. It’s especially devastating against low hp minions.
I guess flood paladins absolutely hate it if the stars align for the death knight.
Yes, because no one was playing Demolition Renovator because usually tech cards are bad: in most of the matchups they do absolutely nothing and in the matchups they might be useful they are not a surefire solution.
Yeah, it only punishes a specific deck type and is ran in a specific deck type. Control decks or big mid range decks likely have zero issue with this card nor do they run the card.
This is an aggro card meant to help punish other aggro decks.
Honestly, it’s not even that worrying. A DH pirate deck is way more frightening early in the game.
It can but it also can’t. Between DS and the ability to repopulate the board again and buff those tokens the Paladin can make a wide enough board at times with 2-3 health on the minions so that the location is stretched to far thin. If they play Tarim or the Titan it’s a really bad day for the location because of the single shot mass buff.
Nah the flood paladin is extremely sensitive to even 1 single board clear if it happens at specific points in time. E.g. do it around ~6 and you usually killed the paladin (do it after 6 or 7 and you almost definitely killed the paladin).
Sure “the paladin is not a slow deck anyway so it lost its chance” but there are specific situations that the stars align for the death knight that just makes it “god tier” if a deck really wants to keep its little low hp minions alive.
Exactly. In many situation it will be sensitive to the location but the Paladin does have ways to play around it so it shouldn’t be considered a sure thing.
It feels like someone was like “making it 5 mana would make it basically the same as 5 arcane missiles! That would be bad! Make it 4 instead!”
While ignoring that even 5 mana card that dealt 15 damage spread over enemies would be kind of broken.
Uh this card exists and was consider too powerful just last year. They called for it’s nerf on multiple occasions. Now it’s considered unplayable. That’s the level of power creep we are working with now.
Last year? Was it mana cheated? Last year might be more powerful than now considering everyone was playing expensive Reno decks.
Mage and even hunter both played this. I know it’s crazy but yes Mage/Hunter had playable meta level decks last year that were played AND complained about.
Yeah, but that card would be insane if it could also go face. It’s still very, VERY good… and the 5 cost of choice for orb. My big spell mage just uses this on 5, sunset volley, and tsunami and nothing in between and it’s destructive.
I’m guessing you replaced Under the Sea with Star Power? How is that working out i am genuinely curious. I thought about it but didn’t try it.
Yeah. Star Power is one of the best cards for mid-game recovery and in orb it makes sure the 22 damage almost always completely goes face and minions don’t just soak most of the sunset volley / tsunami.
I find it waaaay stronger than under the sea, which I dropped so that I could run low cost spells, and I ditched surfolopod for Watercolor artist which has also not been a mistake.
Personally, I’m the type of player that’s in favor of heavy nerfs across the board to bring down the overall power level of HS. I’m also realistic that this isn’t going to happen. Look no further than the latest balance patch. The devs would rather try to buff everything to the moon than try to curb how fast-paced the game currently is. While it’s not to my liking, I’m sure there are plenty of people who are loving it and that’s just the reality of where Standard is at.
The only problem with doing that is that then players fall back onto old decks that were powerful before the new cards you just nerfed. It’s a vicious cycle that has no end as you play whack a mole trying to knock down each deck players think are too powerful.
True, I love this pace, it’s exactly according to my tastes
It still doesn’t change my winrate, just amount of fun I’m having
Lets say you removed the card entirely and dk lost horizon. How would the class fare in their matchups. It is a very bursty meta isn’t it? Without using threads of despair or corpse explosion dk does not have very much in board clears and is reduced to the same level as rogue.
In a meta with a lot of buffing and mana cheating that is a difficult place to be. If the dk location is reduced in power than other class cards will need to buffed to keep class parity.