by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

While a lot of people scream for nerfs when cards feel overpowered, I don’t see many people calling for buffs to long forgotten cards. In my mind, every non-joke card should at least be a decent fit in a viable deck. Also, the meta would grow a lot more interesting if a wider array of cards suddenly started seeing play. So without further ado…

Welcome back to Mending Mondays, a weekly feature where I, Dannie “IAmDiR23” Ray will take a look at some of the worst cards in the Hearthstone Classic Set and evaluate why they are deemed to be horrible, and what could be done to fix them.

When you look through the list of Warrior cards from the basic set, they all seem to have a place somewhere. Sure, some of them are featured more prominently than others but you can do a lot worse than Arathi Weaponsmith. It was really a challenge to find a card that really deserves to be put to mend, and even after I’ve made my choice, I’m not that confident about it.

Why is it so bad?

At first Heroic Strike doesn’t look that bad, 4 damage for 2 mana is kinda ok even if you have to take damage. It is almost guaranteed to go 1 for 1 early, but the main problem with it is that Warrior has too many cards that do this job better. For a 2nd turn drop, the Fiery War Axe is likely killing anything that Heroic Strike would’ve kill and you get to keep the second charge. On later turns where that extra damage would really make a difference the Death Bite weapon is probably a better investment.

Cleave provides a much better option for clearing early minions against an aggresive deck, Cruel Taskmaster’s flexibility really makes it an overall better 2 drop. Now if you compare with other classes, Rockbiter weapon is a much stronger version of this.

The thing is, Heroic Strike is a basic card, a F2p card, and while I would personally love that every card had a competitive edge or at least a role in a fun deck, I understand that sometimes basic cards can be something that you have to upgrade out of. So in all, Heroic Strike might very well serve it’s purpose in Hearthstone.

To summarize:

• Way better options for the mana cost.
• Way better cards do the same and more.
• If you have this and a weapon, you can only kill one minion.

What’s the Design Intent?

Nowadays in WoW Heroic Strike is an instant strike off the Global CD, a way to dump your excess rage. But way back then, Heroic Strike used to buff your next auto-attack, and it looks like that is where the Hearthstone version gets its inspiration from. Besides the lore reasons, inside hearthstone this stands as a flexible card that can either used to go face or clear a mid-sized minion so we will try and stay true to that.

Possible Improvements

Instead of losing the +4 Attack bonus at the end of the turn, what about losing it when you next attack? It would be like a weapon that can’t be removed and stacks with legit weapons, the problem would be coming up with the text to explain that cleanly and fit it in the box.

Even if you are not going to drop this on turn 2 most of the time, it might be better served as 3 drop. At 3 mana, whatever you do with Heroic Strike, at least it cannot end up worse than Ogre Warmaul. If we insist on preserving the Mana Cost, then maybe we just have to inflate the numbers.

Also, just like when we went over Prophet Velen, Heroic Strike might benefit from having new cards that offer synergies with it. Maybe an effect that gives your hero’s attack to a minion for a turn, perhaps a minion with a Savagery-like effect as a battlecry.

The Results

Yes, I know what you are going to say..

This is the most boring edition of Mending Mondays yet, but don’t blame me, blame warriors for having a huge array of solid cards on the base set. But just wait until we start covering GvG, there we will find our sweet revenge.

But back to Heroic Strike, there’s not much more to be said about this. The card seems plain and kinda boring, but I believe that’s the intention of the card, it is a basic starter card so I decided against giving it a more complex mechanic. Maybe it is a card that you have to upgrade out of, but the small damage boost might find it a home somewhere.

Be sure to check out past editions of Mending Mondays, I promise that they are more interesting than this one.

If you have any suggestions, leave them on the comments or hit me up on Twitter.

See you next Monday!