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.

Today the subject of our discussion is an entity that became “neither Night Elf or Demon, but something more.” Yet, Hearthstone is happy to roll with the Demon denomination, which I guess in this context is a plus. Still, it is not enough to make one of Warcraft’s most iconic characters see much play. Join me as I break down the self-proclaimed lord of Outland and find one exactly why this Warglaive wielding phenom does not dominate the Hearthstone tavern.

Why is it so bad?

Illidan suffers mostly from the disconnect bewteen its statline and effect, the special power on Illidan dictates that you want to keep him alive as long as possible. Yet, having 7 attack makes him vulnerable to BGH, and 5 Health is rather easy to deal with. In fact if Illidan was a 5/7 instead, he’d probably be a very interesting alternative for some decks.

The closest card we have to compare Illidan with is the Violet Teacher. Illidan costs two extra mana and poses a couple of improvements over the teacher: he gains +4 attack, works with any card rather than just spells, and the tokens are 2/1 instead.

But why doesn’t Illidan see play while Violet Teacher is pretty popular in Rogue and Token Druid?

You would think that both minions being at 5 HP are just as easy to remove from the board, but not only is Illidan vulnerable to Big Game Hunter, he’s also a 6-drop which means that your opponent will have 6 or 7 mana to deal with it. At that point he will also have drawn more cards, increasing the chance that he’s got an answer. In addition, he’s more likely to have an answer already down on the board. But what if you didn’t draw Violet Teacher at 4? Surely it would be just as easy to remove if you had to drop it turn 6, right? Sure, but at 6 you have two extra mana to make immediate use of its power and summon a few apprentices before your opponent can do anything about it.

Just like Gruul last week, Illidan is a rather greedy and inconsistent card. He has no immediate impact on the board unless he’s played deep into the late game and in combination with other cards. Sure, he can do wonders if he manages to stick around on the board for a few turns, but he’s ill-prepared to do so.

When you consider that you have neutral cards like Sylvanas, Piloted Sky Golem, and The Black Knight to consider on that same mana cost. There’s no surprise that Illidan has become but an afterthought in the current meta. But when you consider that there’s also very powerful 6-mana class cards as well then there’s just no chance in hell that our Demon friend here sees much play, in fact he might as well be imprisoned for 10.000 more years.

To summarize:

• Too Greedy.
• No Immediate Effect on the Board.
• Way better options at its Mana cost.

What’s the Design Intent?

Of course we could just turn Illidan into a second Dr.Boom and then it would become really playable, but that’s not the point of this article. We want to tweak the card slightly so we can make it usable without straying too much from the spirit of the card.

Azzinoth was a powerful Doomguard Commander of the Burning Legion, just not as powerful as Illidan who basically rekt him and took his weapons during the War of the Ancients. Illidan has wielded the demonic weapons since and has literally made them the stuff of legends.

If you played WoW during the Burning Crusade and made it all the way into the depths of the Black Temple then you probably faced Illidan and his mighty Warglaives of Azzinoth. In fact, you might still be returning weekly to Outland in hopes to notch the legendary weapons for yourself. In any scenario, the Flames of Azzinoth are an important part of the WoW Illidan boss encounter.

Illidan’s Hearthstone power is rather interesting, since it would work better when you are playing multiple cards each turn, yet having an aggresive deck consisting of low cost minions would probably result on your hand being empty by the time you play Illidan. Perhaps then he should be played in a deck with lot of cheap situational spells, making in a fit for something like Rogue. Then of course, it is Druid who has the best ability to buff up the tokens so maybe the devs intended on a little family reunion. Shaman also has an interesting potential with Bloodlust and a myriad of low mana cost spells. And finally how can we forget about the Demon synergy, currently it appears that Illidan sees its biggest representation on demon-themed Warlock decks, just not on the ones that are actually effective. Finally, any spare parts decks could maybe find a use for Illidan, sure he’s no Archmage Antonidas, but some is better than none.

Possible Improvements

As I mentioned during the very start of this analysis, shifting Illidan’s stats around would probably enough to make it a good fit in decks that would synergize with his ability. Still Illidan doesn’t strike me as the guy that would have a defensive stat spread so maybe we should search elsewhere. Can we tweak his ability so it becomes more effective? Summoning multiple flames or increasing the stats on them would just turn the greed up to 11, but we need something that makes Illidan more reliable. Making the tokens Demons would offer interesting synergy but would probably limit Illidan to Warlock Decks. Perhaps only triggering the power at the end of your turn would help as you’d get a free Flame and the recently summoned tokens wouldn’t get in the way of a Tinker’s Oil and neither would they clog your board, preventing you to play a more interesting minion.

The Results

This is the Vanilla version, a Violet Teacher on steroids. It still doesn’t feel right to me to have this guy as a 5/7 but at least it goes well with his token summoning purpose. This version of Illidan is a bit weak to Sylvanas but otherwise he’s a rather solid body. This guy and Toshley would be quite the pair of 5/7 creatures. To be honest I’m not a big fan of this version, but still I’d prefer it over the original.

I know we all want to dodge Big Game Hunter, but we cannot keep all the beasts from his sight. This version of Illidan is blessed with an extra vitality point to help him survive a turn, but even if he doesn’t make it past the first fight he at least guarantees that a single token will spawn. This version of Illidan isn’t at Boom’s level of power where you should include him in most decks, but its likely powerful enough to warrant inclusion in token dedicated decks. In my opinion, that’s exactly what you want to do, create cards that are powerful on different contexts to promote deck diversity. Now he is complete!

Do you think some of the versions above are still too weak? Maybe absurdly overpowered? Messing with cards without the ability to test them is actually pretty challenging, but I try to do my best.

Be sure to check out past editions of Mending Mondays, and if you have any suggestions, be sure to leave them on the comments or hit me up on Twitter.

See you next Monday!