Am I late to the party? Yes. Do I care? Yes.
All things being equal, I think there’s still enough of an appetite within the hearthstone community to have a discussion around the Cataclysm cards, so I’ll being ranking each classes additions in a tier list, starting with Rogue’s.
The rankings are numbered, and their meanings are listed here;
- 5 – Absolutely broken card with little to no counterplay. Can be thrown into any deck and immediately makes that deck better.
- 4 – Great card that should be auto-included into most decks. Omitting this card from a decklist should only be considered if that deck is a niche experiment.
- 3 – Good filler card. These cards are included to round a deck out after the main stars of the show have been added.
- 2 – Playable filler card. These cards are included in decks only because there is nothing else to take their place.
- 1 – Weak filler card. Competitive decks do not run these cards, and decks that do run these cards often lose because of it.
- 0 – Trash. Blizzard likes to create cards that exist only to be terrible. No, that isn’t hyperbole.
- Tech – Tech cards are included in decks only under certain conditions. If those conditions are met, the card is good. If those conditions aren’t met, the card is often useless.
Let’s dig in.
Agent of the Old Ones
1.0 – The issue with Agent of the Old Ones is that sacrificing a card in hand is equivalent to your opponent dealing with that card, except they do it for free.
In this instance, your opponent will have dealt with one of your cards in exchange for you getting a 2/1 demon and a coin. In situations where the coin is used to pop out an early Dethrone, for example, you might run away with the game off of a nice 8-drop. But more than likely, Agent of the Old Ones will have done nothing but weaken your starting hand in exchange for an early 4 or 5 drop that can be easily dealt with by your opponent.
Garona’s Last Stand
Tech – In the hands of a highly ranked Rogue player, Garona’s Last Stand functions as a strong swing card that can snipe cards with comparatively higher mana values. An opponent popping out an Egg of Khelos for the fifth time can be sent packing with Garona’s Last Stand in hand.
Thanks to it’s combination value with Preparation and the inclusion of the trade mechanic, Garona’s last stand is a valuable card for experienced players who need a reliable tech against specific decks.
In situations where your opponent isn’t playing any legendaries worth 2 mana to pop, Garona’s last stand is a 1-mana “do nothing” spell.
Rite of Twilight
3.0 – Rite of Twilight replaced Eviscerate in the standard format, and where the original “2 mana damage spell” card for rogue dealt 4 on combo activation, Rite of Twilight deals 3.
In exchange, Rite of Twilight offers the player a summoned 1/1 dragon (at its worst) and a free random spell through the Herald mechanic, which becomes more powerful the more times it’s activated.
By virture of Blizzard deciding arbitrarily that the Herald Mechanic was going to be the main way to play competitively for the set, this card is strong. In a meta where Heralding Sinestra wasn’t the play, Rite of Twilight would probably be good enough to find a home in other decks regardless. Good card.
Daze
1.5 – Replacing it’s 2 mana counterpart, Daze is a troublesome card to gauge in terms of power level. Against aggro decks, your opponent shan’t mind you paying 3 mana to temporarily disable one of their tools. Against control decks, your opponents are very often going to playing battlecries to accrue value, which means dazing their minions is really only going to be useful if you’re trying to get past a taunt to finish someone off, which is possible, but given the playstyle of Rogue turning into an RNG-infested spell-centric pray-em-up, is less likely.
Additionally, Daze’s mana cost means that functionality with preparation is much worse than sap’s.
Maniacal Follower
3.0 – This card was originally a 3 mana 3/1, and even then, it was run simply because Heralding Sinestra is the way to win games. Now, after a buff, it’s a 4/1 with all of it’s other goodies. Heralding good, therefor Maniacal Follower good.
Stolen Power
1.0 – Stolen power has an incredibly high value ceiling and can single-handedly win games for Rogues who hit Flight Maneuvers. It also has a lot of variance, and more often than not will give rogues a board filled with 1/1s or a hand with highly buffed minions at the cost of playing so slow that the game is lost.
Combined with preparation and fast forward, Stolen Power has a lot of potential for shenanigans, but is ultimately too inconsistent to be competitively viable.
Chaos Supplicant
1.0 – It pains me to give any four drop a 1.0 for Rogue, but alas, Chaos Supplicant is more fun than it is good. Often times, this is a four mana 3/5, gain a mana or deal one damage to itself.
Envoy of the End
2.0 – A five mana 5/4 taunt would be pretty much game loosing even if it summoned a 3/3 alongside it 100% of the time. But because it Heralds Sinestra, it sees play.
Iso’rath
0 – Five mana do nothing card. Even when played against control decks, even when played with Web of Deception, even when you hit ideal cards against combo decks, your opponents will shrug it off because they can just win the game (because you just played a 5 mana do nothing card.)
Unfun to play with, unfun to play against. Awful card in every single way, and believe me I’ve tried to make it work.
Sinestra
4.0 – Sinestra summons two dragons that will probably be either 2/2s or 4/4s while giving you two random spells which cast twice while she’s on the board, leading to potential board swings and value generation that’s hard for other classes to match.
You probably want to play rogue while Heralding, and so you probably just want to play Sinestra.
Ultraxion
3.5 – Ultraxion is a bit of a weird one, because the card he interacts with, Deathwing, is an absurdly strong auto-include in any Herald deck, but Ultraxion himself is very slow and, therefor, very weak in a vacuum.
Combined with Deathwing value, he’s a must-have. Excluding Deathwing, he’s quite poor. Therefor, 3.5.
Twilight Mistress
3.5 – Twilight Mistress is another card where one wonders what might have been if they had just run a card that didn’t take the entire game to play. Combined with Naralex, the ability to remove your opponent’s board while developing your own high health, high damage minions is very, very strong.
Like, bordering on OP strong. The problem is that to get to that point you need to run a card that you can do nothing with until you’re ready to swing the game. Again, one has to wonder if it is indeed better to have a card that’s great at recovery than it is to have a card that’s good at just winning in the first place.
In slow metas, this card becomes better than it is in faster ones.
Deathwing, Wordbreaker
5.0 – By the time you play this card, it should be able to choose from four different cataclysms, and for less than 10 mana. In fact, it’s totally possible to cast this thing for 6 mana, and fairly reliably.
Rogues need sustain, which Deathwing provides. Rogues need board clear, which Deathwing provides. Rogues need a way to close out games, which Deathwing’s hero power provides. A super strong card for a meta that’s unfortunately all going to revolve around Deathwing and the Heralding mechanic.