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 and evaluate why they are deemed to be horrible, and what could be done to fix them.

BRM isn’t out on its entirety yet, but if there is a card out there that deserves the Mending Mondays treatment, it is definitely this one. If you’ve read anything about this card, you know that  Majordomo Executus has been deemed the worst legendary in the game. Not only is his statline poor for its cost, but its Deathrattle has a significant chance of directly leading to a horrible defeat. Due to the 8 HP total of your new Ragnaros Transformation, you can easily destroyed just after Majordomo’s Deathrattle triggers. This is a card that has been considered so bad that a lot of players claim that he best use of it is too give it to your opponent via Sylvanas or Mirror Image so you can burst him down.

Why is it so bad?

First we need to look at the strength of this card, when is this card good?

Since Majordomo is a 9 mana card, most of the times it will use your entire turn. This means that to make the most out of him you need to have the initiative. To get full value out of Majordomo you need to be able to decide when to trigger his Deathrattle, this means you likely want to hide Majordomo behind a taunt. Ideally you want Majordomo to live one turn, trade against a huge threat next turn and then immediately use the new Hero Power to deal 8 damage for 2 mana. Then you need to make sure you taunt up to avoid chargers, and Loatheb to avoid spells burning you down.

There are a lot of problem with that scenario. First of all, where do you want the 8 damage to go? Ideally you want to kill a big threat to get a huge tempo advantage and a free card, but if your opponent had multiple big threats then playing Majordomo would have likely costed you the game. If you play a Majordomo, it is unlikely that your opponent will disregard it and give you a board where you can get value out of it. Also you don’t want to lose health to the transformation, so you don’t only need an empty board, you need to have very low HP.

Majordomo is extremely slow, and super easy to play around. The best that Majordomo can do is force your opponent to play around it, and that’s only if you manage to drop it in an empty board. The catch is that even then, that “playing around it” might result on you outright losing the game. Majordomo is vulnerable to Big Game Hunter. If your opponent has BGH, all that he needs is 8 damage and you are finished.

I guess Majordomo is alright if it is threatening Lethal. If your opponent is at less than 8 HP and has no minions on the board, playing Majordomo will force him to deal with him or face death. Even if he kills it, your hero power will continue to threaten lethal. But if your opponent is at 8 HP with an empty board, most decks have some kind of burst that would allow them to win anyway.

Summary of Badness:

• Way too slow.
• Easy to play around.
• Bad Stats.
• Extremely Inconsistent.
• Deathrattle is neutral at best, but most likely negative.

Finding this Card’s Heart

An obvious buff to this card would be to turn it into Dr. Boom or Emperor T. But that’s not what we are interested on, we want to stay true to the heart of the card and thus we need ask ourselves what is what really defines this card.

In World of Warcraft, Majordomo Executus is the penultimate boss of Molten Core. He will only spawn after all other bosses have been defeated, and upon death he will summon Ragnaros the Firelord. The Hearthstone counterpart is obviously based on this interaction, and perhaps its high mana cost is somehow tied to that. Still, I find it a little off that Executus has a higher mana cost and attack that Ragnaros himself. But unlike his World of Warcraft counterpart, Executus doesn’t summon Ragnaros, instead he makes you transform into the firelord. This is clearly closer to the Hearthstone Adventure Mode Ragnaros encounter.

Once transformed into Ragnaros, you have 8 Health, and your Hero Power is almost identical to the Hearthstone Ragnaros Legendary Card.

Majordomo Executus wouldn’t be himself if he doesn’t retain some of these properties, you need to either summon Ragnaros on death or transform into him. If you are going to transform to Ragnaros, then your transformed form needs to reference either the Ragnaros card or the Adventure Mode Encounter.

Possible Improvements

One of the biggest problems with this card is the vulnerability of the Transformation. Not having 8 HP would feel wrong as Ragnaros, but what if we reference the Adventure Mode Encounter and give him 8 armor aswell? If he ends up too strong, you can always reduce the stats on Executus to compensate.

But maybe we are married to the very vulnerable 8 hp transformation. The greedier version would see an improvement to your Firelord Hero Power, perhaps being able to direct where the 8 damage go would make this card a little more consistent or if we want to stay true to the Adventure Mode encounter you could use the Heroic Version of the Hero Power and do eight damage twice.

Now if you are a regular reader, you should know I’m not a big fun of the super greedy cards. Instead I’d prefer to add consistency by taking a page out of the Kel’Thuzad encounter and immediately ending your opponent turn. By ending your opponent’s turn when you transform, you prevent the OTK and ensure that you will at least get one shot of your cool new hero power. It also means that you have a chance drop a layer of defense and protect your vulnerable firelord body. Hiding your Ragnarosed self behind big taunts or armoring up as a Warrior could make this more viable.

Or you could go for the sticky minion that the meta loves so much, instead of transforming into Ragnaros you could just summon the old Ragnaros card on death. I know that losing the cool transformation animation and the dialogs would be a bummer, but how many people are going to transform into Ragnaros if the cards remains as is?

The Results

Hearthstone needs more quality 7-drops to contest Dr.Boom. Majordomo at 7 mana means that you can have up to 3 extra mana to try and defend him. 6 attack protects him from Big Game Hunter and 9 Health means that he can take a few hits before going down. This version of Executus gives you a lot more flexibility and increases the odds that you can transform into Ragnaros in your own terms.

But if you are set in maintaining the statline, then you need to add something extra to make sure you don’t instantly die after transforming.

Or you could try and give some extra value to the new Hero Power. I always thought that it was cool that Ragnaros attacked randomly, because it felt like you couldn’t control Ragnaros. But if you manage to transform into Ragnaros himself, it makes sense that you are able to dictate where your attacks go.

And if the Problem is dying, maybe we could just fix the problem numerically. 16 total HP is very comparable to Jaraxxus, which might just be enough to allow you to take advantage of your new elemental form.

There are three main things that you could change: Majordomo’s statline, Ragnaros Effective Health, and Ragnaros Hero Power. Which one do you like better? It might take combination of the three to Majordomo a viable card, or perhaps the key is hijacking your opponent’s turn.

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 @DannieRay23.

See you next Monday!