The benefit to playing it on turn 2 is nice curve. You get a 3/2 for 2 which is good and then animal companion if u need minion or wild growth if you need to ramp up.
The best situation to play it is when you need it. Have no answer to that minion they just played? See what the suggest can get u to remove it.
The best way to control it is limit the mana it has. If you need mass dispel play it when u will end up with 4 mana. IF you need savage roar make plays till u have 3 mana. IF you need pyroball for lethal next turn get opponent to 10 first.
Top 5 choices I see I think.
Twisting Nether
Savage Roar
Hellfire
Pyroblast
Flare
You cant count on the genie to see interactions. Example I wanted a weapon kill card to kill rogues waggle weapon and return a 10/10 van cleef to his hand. So I got to 4 mana and played it (so now Im at 2) thinking acid ooze would be offered. But he offered healing cause i was kinda low, earthshock, and sap. Genie couldnt see acid ooze was better than sap.
Zephrys is allways a good card, but skill is to know your matchup to use it at the right time. Here are few uses:
Lethal: there are many ways you can get lethal from Zephrys. Burn spells (1 mana soulfire, 4mana fireball). If you have many minions (3 mana savage roar, 5 mana bloodlust). If you have one big minion (2 mana windfury). If opponent has taunt minions (0 mana silence, 4 mana mass dispell). Many times your goal is to setup one of these and hold Zephrys until you got boardstate.
Removal: against threats you have to deal with. Shadow word death, big game hunter, silence and earth shock.
AoE: Against wide boards you have to deal with. 2 mana arcane explosion, 3 mana lightning storm, 8 mana twisting nether.
Techcard: against special threats. 1 mana Hungry crab, 6 mana black knight
Playing on curve: if you play Zephrys last against empty or almost empty board you’ll get great card to play next turn. This can be used to get Wild growth or Animal companion on 3 or lategame threat like Tirion later.
Healing: if you have low hp and board Zephrys usually offers you healing.
There are many more cards, you get best use of Zephrys if you know classic set and what you propably would get in certain situation.
Important thing is mana you have left and boardstate while you play Zephrys. You need to “tell” him what you need by playing other cards first. Easy example if you have 7 mana and Zephrys and fireball in hand against 10hp opponent. You MUST cast fireball first to get offered soulfire for lethal since Zephrys doesn’t look to your hand.
I recomend holding Zephrys in most games so long as you can. Hungry crab on turn 3 sounds amazing against murloc paladin, but if you dont have AoE for PL play on 4 it just might be better to wait if you have some other play.
What I find amazing about the card is how much potential is wasted by players who play poorly.
On the opposite end of that, it also helps bad players.
Let’s say you have 8 mana and that priest player has a huge minion on board. A lot of people will play Zeph leaving 6 mana in the pool for Zeph to work with and people will choose Siphon Soul.
The better play could be using your hero power, then Zeph so he has 4 mana to work with and sort of forcing him to offer Hex, which is a much better spell vs priest.
That is an example of a good player playing Zeph.
Zeph can help bad players as well…many times it will offer a spell or an answer they didn’t even think of. Let’s say they play Zeph hoping for something like silence to get rid of a minion, but instead it offers lethal to the face or flare to get rid of the secret so they can get lethal and they didn’t even think of it. In this case, Zeph gave them a card they weren’t “wishing for” but instead gave them a card that was better than the card they were “wishing for” if that makes sense.
This is an example where I like to hear more sharing.
e.g. where using the above, the available 6mana vs 4mana, which choices offer more options availability and consistency.
It’s mainly a matter of knowing yourself which spell would be better for the situation.
If you have a full board of enemy minions you should know what Zeph will likely offer at 5, 6, 7 and 8 mana. But what’s lesser known are things like Sacrificial pact for zero mana to kill a demon and other stuff.
Zephyr is bad for game overall even though its a cool card and I like it I have to admit its not healthy for game to have a card like it. Think about how it singlehandedly kills every other tech card in the game. Its just too good and decks using it with 2x of everything in their deck prove how powerful it is. They can afford to wait until no cards left like murloc paladin just because its a I win button. I think its getting nerfed eventually.
2M remaining with the opponents board empty has a 100% chance of offering Sorcerers Apprentice. APM Paladin memes in wild are a thing now - 2x SA (thanks to Brann), Boar and Sound the Bells spam.
I feel like Zephrys should be an additional removal/control tools for highlander decks (like the old highlander decks and Kabal classes were control-designed), but instead it became a free lethal for brainless aggro.
I’m cool with it, I don’t complain about any wild deck (except Priests but the problem isn’t that they are OP, but simply fact they are Priests) and I don’t want to see it nerfed, but I can understand you Standard guys, it has to be very annoying to see a guy Turn 7 who already made many mistakes in terms of playing, but he received Bloodlust and you’re done.
In my dream world, Zephrys is limited for non-aggro decks, but it’s just my dream world. We got what we got and you have to improve your deck to counter it, or accept and stop crying