Un’Goro Epics Crafting Guide

by OtakuMZ - 7 years ago     show comments

Introduction

This article is a follow-up on the Un’Goro Legendaries Guide which was released a few days ago. Today, I will focus on Epics. Although crafting an Epic costs only a fourth the Arcane Dust (AC) of a Legendary, you often need two copies for your decks. This drags the cost for a playset up to 800 AC, half the cost of a Legendary. There are some Epics that are commonly played as a single copy, which will be marked with a (1). Cards that are usually one-ofs, but sometimes played with a full set, are marked with a (1*).

As with the Legendaries article before, I will rate each and every card’s viability in the actual meta (late Season 37; April 2017) based on what is seen at high ranks. The evaluation may change with the inventions of new decks or when existing decks get refined, but we have to work with what we know now, right? Again, cards are divided into three categories:

• Essentials: The best Epics that are either usable in a wide variety of decks (for neutral cards) or top tier lists.
• Nice to Have/Tech: The cards you might want to look at after you’ve crafted the Excellent tier. The category includes tech cards that might rotate in and out of competitive lists, as well as cards for more fun oriented decks.
• Trash: All of those cards which have not yet found a good home… or are just bad.

The cards in the last category may be safe to disenchant, but it’s always risky to disenchant something this early in the meta. Personally, I am not a fan of disenchanting any non-duplicates at all, but if you have limited resources, this may be the way for you to go. The ordering is alphabetical within each category as “the best” Epic might come down to deck prefernece. As always, when categorizing cards, there will be disagreements. If you feel a card is rated incorrectly, let us know in the comments below or @OtakuMZ and @BlizzPro.

There are some admittedly debatable cases. For example, I rated Gluttonous Ooze and Meteor “O.K.,” because both are good cards, played in highly competitive decks (e.g. PsyGünther’s Mage), but bear in mind for crafting purposes that those are rather easily replaceable by cards like Acidic Swamp Ooze and Cone of Cold/Forbidden Flame. By making these calls, I want to guide players with fewer cards to what is most important, so I tried not to overstack the “excellent” category.

Essentials (8)

Primordial Glyph is very versatile to fish for answers or find same additional burn. It also creates a spell from outside your deck for the quest, buffs Mana Wyrm, ramps you up into bigger spells, and fuels Archmage Antonidas. Do you need more?
Shadow Visions is a combo enabler, an answer finder, and Lyra fuel. You get it all!
Curious Glimmerroot is a solid body combined with an almost certain card draw for Priest, which is not OP but very good.
Gentle Megasaur is a must in any Murloc-based deck, no questions asked. Its potential to swing boards in your favor is amazing. It even has solid vanilla stats. Great!
Vilespine Slayer is a staple in Miracle Rogue and, finally, solid removal for Rogue.
Living Mana is a staple in Aggro Druid which is presently a top Tier 2 deck, threatening to push into Tier 1.
Blazecaller (1*) is your guy if you like Elemental decks. This bigger brother of Shaman’s Fire Elemental is usually played in pairs, but is sometimes just a one-of.
Primordial Drake (1*) might be one of the first neutral Epic you want to craft, perhaps right after Gentle Megasaur. It finds application in a large variety of decks, but, outside of Quest Warrior, it is mostly played as a one-of (often as a Curator target).

Nice to Have/Tech (8)

Stampede (1*) was hyped before release, but has not found a comfortable home in any actual Hunter list. It has potential, but doesn’t see much play at the moment.
Bloodbloom had some appearance early on in Stancifca’s DOOM! Warlock but has not seen a lot of play after week two of the expansion.
Gluttonous Oooze (1) is a phenomenal tech card that rotates in and out depending of the prevalence of weapon heavy aggro decks.
Spirit Echo (1) is a good card that sees more frequent play in Jade Shaman lists lately, e.g. Weghuz’ Jade Shaman.
Bittertide Hydra (1) is a top end card for aggro decks that saw a lot of play early in the expansion, but its appearance is decreasing.
Meteor (1) is good, hard removal for mage and a staple in PsyGünther’s Discover Mage (as a one-of), however, it is interchangeable with a variety other Mage spells, like Blizzard and Polymorph.
Giant Anaconda only sees play in Ramp Druid lists, but is staple in them. While Aggro Druid is the dominant deck archetype right now, this interesting card only makes it to the middle tier.
Stone Sentinel (1) did not perform as expected due to its high cost and comparably low impact. Other cards like Hot Spring Guardian are more flexible and cheaper, and can fill a similar role.

Bottom Tier (11)

Emerald Hive Queen was tested in control decks early on as a replacement for Zombie Chow, but underperformed heavily.
Biteweed is just too weak compared to Edwin and Questing Adventurer.
Dinomancy is too slow for Hunter in this meta, despite being a cool card. This card might have worked in another class, but it appears too much against Hunter’s nature. I hope someone discovers a good list for this.
Explore Un’Goro was intended to be a fun card and not competitive. It’s good it turned out to be exactly that.
Primalfin Champion was another hyped card because it went nuts in the card reveal stream. As it turns out, the card is too weak and the Paladin Quest isn’t good either.
Chittering Tunneler – meh.
Bright-Eyed Scout (1*) sees some play in Ramp Druid but is not a staple. It is also a little too hit or miss – 5-mana Innervate?!
Sudden Genesis is a worse Blood Warrior because its cost is just too high.
Charged Devilsaur is worse than King Crush, who sees no play, so why should this one?
Dinosize is clunky. If it works it can win games, but it is just too easily disrupted.
Tortollan Primalist is Yogg Saron in chains, which is just garbage.

Last Thoughts

I had some hard calls to make. Elemental decks aren’t the primal force in the meta right now. Therefore Blazecaller might fall to the middle tier. The same could be true for Curious Glimmerroot as Priest is fun to play, but the lists out feel like they are either fringe viable or just not refined. The hardest decision was to downgrade Bittertide Hydra to the middle tier. Anyway, I feel the decision is justified. The card is strong, right, but equal to Fel Reaver it only fits in a small number of decks and the number of inclusions in those lists dropped with every week since release. The last difficult one was Spirit Echoes. This card can carry some decks on its own and may turn out to be top tier. Nevertheless, it is very situational which drove me to place it in the middle tier.

That’s it for today, friends. For any discussion, please comment below and/or tweet @OtakuMZ and @BlizzPro.