The best 5 LoE cards according to Hearthstone pros

It has become tradition that any time an expansion for Hearthstone is released, every other pro player hurries to make videos reviewing all of the cards. This is always a fun time for the community as a lot of discussions pop up on the big forums, arguing about which reviewer is right or wrong with regard to a certain card. However, it's sometimes hard to follow the reviews as there are so many good ones to watch, so I decided to watch them for you and then present you a list of the top rated cards as well as some of the most interesting thoughts I've encountered along the way.

For this list, I've taken into account the reviews of Brian Kibler, Cong "StrifeCro" Shu, Jeffrey "Trump" Shih, James "Firebat" Kostesich as well as Jason "Amaz" Chan and Will "Amnesiac" Barton, who did a collaborative review. I tried to give every card a score ranging from "will never see any play in Constructed" to "new staple in every deck", That sometimes turned out to be quite difficult as, for example, Kibler acknowledges nearly every card to be "interesting" or "cool" while Firebat and Amnesiac are much more direct and tend to quickly rate a card as bad if it appears to be too niche-y. I still think this is a list on which most of the pros would agree upon with thoughts on where and how the respective cards will fit - so read on if you want to save time on watching reviews.

Some sidenotes before we get into it:

Unearthed Raptor in a vacuum is among the strongest cards in Hearthstone and would be an outrage if it would've been added to Warlock, for example. Fortunately, it's a Rogue card - which, as it turns out, makes reviewing it fairly complicated as there are currently no builds which can make good use out of its effect. Firebat was probably spot on with his analysis: This card will either find its place in a deck (and be crazy good in there) or it won't and therefore not see play at all.

The cards literally none of the pros were excited for are Explorer's Hat , Reliquary Seeker and, dubbed the worst card of the set, Fossilized Devilsaur .

Nope. Don't play those.

Arch-Thief Rafaam was almost unanimously described as being bad and way too slow - with one exception: StrifeCro thought it can actually replace cards like Nefarian and Ysera and take their place as a sort of card-drawing value finisher. Now remember, StrifeCro is also one of the only people who told us how good Dr Boom would turn out to be. Maybe Rafaam is going to be the next big surprise?

The most appreciated cards just outside of this top 5 list are Desert Camel and Reno Jackson . If Desert Camel takes off, it has the potential to shape the metagame on a small scale by making decks which normally wouldn't run any 1-drops tech in some of them. As for Reno Jackson, there's probably not too much which has to be said about the guy as he is already all over Reddit as well as Twitch streams.

#5 Brann Bronzebeard



The dwarven explorer is a hard card to evaluate without having the chance to actually play him. Triggering Battlecries twice is certainly a powerful effect when combined with the right cards - Fire Elemental, Antique Healbot, Twilight Drake and Quartermaster immediately come to mind. Kibler compared Brann Bronzebeard to Baron Rivendare and mentioned that Brann is probably more useful: he costs one less mana, which makes setting up certain combos easier; the body itself is better with regard to raw minion combat and lastly you can decide when you want to use Battlecries. On the contrary, the time of your Deathrattles going off is often dictated by the opponent. However, Kibler also mentioned that in Hearthstone it's generally hard to build your deck around Legendaries, because you can only run them in singletons, so this alone might limit the amount of play Brann sees.

Amnesiac was most excited to play him as an addition to classic Handlock. Because the body itself is perfectly fine as a 3-drop, it can help battle aggro decks while you maintain the ability to drop massive Twilight Drakes without using too much of your life total to draw cards. The ability to heal for 16 through Antique Healbot is certainly nothing to laugh off either. Lastly, as a fun interaction: With help from Emperor Thaurissan you can Brann Bronzebeard into Lord Jaraxxus. The first one will never see it coming.



#4 Keeper of Uldaman



Keeper of Uldaman has one word written all over it: Flexibility. It can work in virtually any Paladin deck, either buffing your Silver Hand Recruits or deathrattle minions in aggressive builds or shrinking your opponent's big minions in control-ish decks while also giving you a decently sized body. The worst case scenario is playing this on an empty board on turn six and even then you would get a 3/3 from your Hero Power alongside with it.

So, while we know that this card is a fine choice in any Paladin deck, it might still not make the cut: In Hearthstone these days we're looking for the best option we have and the question remains if the added flexibility will help to choose Keeper of Uldaman over possibly more efficient options such as Piloted Shredder, Blessing of Kings or Truesilver Champion.



#3 Naga Sea Witch



The Naga Sea Witch may very well turn out to be a better overall version of Aviana. If you wait until turn ten, both minions can accomplish the exact same thing: drop them and drop another massive minion besides them. Of course, contrary to the Naga Sea Witch, Aviana would allow you to do crazy things on the following turns, but as it turned out it's very hard to get a 5-health minion to stick on turn ten or later. The upside of the Sea Witch is that you can drop it as early as turn five (where a 5/5 is completely fine) and at least have a decent chance of it to stick around so you can get its benefit on the following turn and drop Ragnaros the Firelord, Ysera or something along those lines. Sometimes you can even manage to stick Emperor Thaurissan on turn six, so the scenario is not completely out of this world and the card's power to gain tempo is undeniable.

The question is, where does the Naga Sea Witch belong? Control Warrior was suggested because of its sheer number of big Legendaries and because Sludge Belcher is replaceable in that deck. However, as was pointed out by Amaz and Amnesiac, in Control Warrior your left-over Mana is very important as you often drop a big minion and then do something else such as using Execute or Shield Slam or even Tank Up. With the Sea Witch in play, this isn't as easy as before. StrifeCro made the suggestion to play the card in the Ramp Druid builds of old, which might be another option.



#2 Mounted Raptor



This new mini-Shredder was considered to be weaker than Shade of Naxxramas in Midrange Druid by all the pros. It also still seems as if Beast Druid isn't completely there yet, even though it remains to be seen if this guy alongside Jungle Moonkin is powerful enough to push it over the top. So why is Mounted Raptor so high on this list and where does it belong? The answer is Aggro Druid. The deck became very competitive with the release of TGT, but so far it was lacking a really appealing 3-drop. This will change once the second wing of League of Explorers comes out and it'll be interesting to see which of the two powerful Druid builds will end up being Malfurion's "main deck".



#1 Tunnel Trogg



The savior of Shaman. The 1-drop Thrall deserves. All will be good from here on out and Shaman will finally leave Shaman tier to make its way back into the metagame. Really? Probably not. While the power of the little Trogg is widely acknowledged, it's also said that he won't be enough to make Shaman more than decent. However, Tunnel Trogg into Totem Golem will certainly be one of the strongest possible openings in Hearthstone and it'll be interesting to see how far it will carry the class.

What remains to be seen his how exactly his ability works. Firebat and Amaz are certain that it's possible for him to double-dip, meaning that when you play him and cast a Lightning Bolt he will get +1 attack, but when you cast a second Bolt on the next turn, he will get +2 attack due to you having two locked Mana crystals, making him a 4/3 overall. I'm fairly certain that I've seen a tweet from either Ben Brode or the official Hearthstone Twitter stating that in fact Tunnel Trogg can not double-dip and only gets attack bonuses with regard to the Overload of the card you cast, but unfortunately I'm unable to find the tweet again. If double-dipping is not possible it would certainly hurt the card a lot, but I guess we have to wait until Thursday to find out.