Blizzard released the full core set and we're in for a very different new year of Hearthstone! Today we're going to be taking a look at the Druid class in the Year of the Gryphon by looking at their new set of core cards and giving the new ones a full review.
- If you want to see the full core set, you can check out our Core 2021 Guide.
- Want to see only the new cards? We have a dedicated article for that.
- You can build decks with all these cards in our deckbuilder - just select Year of the Gryphon as the format!
Let's get to it!
Nordrassil Druid
Nordrassil Druid has decent stats for the cost and a Battlecry that discounts your next spell. If you cast a spell that uses up the rest of your Mana after playing her, then she's basically a 1 Mana 3/5 (which is good). However, there don't appear to be a lot of spells that want to be played alongside her (i.e. - spells that cost 4 or more and care about having a minion on board). She also doesn't "cheat" Mana, she just gives a small refund for what you spent to play her. Compared to Anubisath Defender, she has the same amount of stats but lacks Taunt and also cannot be played for free.
We'll have to see if the next few sets give Druid an incentive to play Nordrassil Druid, but right now I can't see any Druid list that would use a deck slot on her and feel good about it.
Old Cards with New Looks
Reducing the cost by 1 is a big deal. Not only can he come down one turn earlier, but there's also an increased number of spells and minions that can be played alongside him at 10 Mana. It's possible that Cenarius will see more play now, mostly because (as the Mad Hatter once observed) you can always have more than nothing.
It passes the vanilla test while trading Charge for +1 Attack and Rush. Druid of the Claw has always been a decent card. We'll have to see if decent is good enough.
Like Cenarius, Menagerie Warden is gaining more playability by having its cost reduced. Now it's possible to play in combo with a 5-Drop Beast on Turn 10, but there's also just more flexibility overall with the reduced cost. As a fan of the original Menagerie Warden, I'm excited to see if this can find a home in a Druid archetype.
The extra Health added is nothing to sneeze at, but if it can't be free in the late game then it will never outshine Ironbark.
Druid in the Year of the Gryphon
The cards Druid is getting in the Core set (and the ones sticking around from the Year of the Phoenix) look like they're pushing Druid into spell-centric Token decks like Oops, All Spells! and Gibberling Tokens.
The backbone of an All Spells deck is still there: Glowfly Swarm is still a great card for filling the board, and Fungal Fortunes remains an incredibly powerful card draw. Arbor Up and Power of the Wild are good ways to buff your board, and Soul of the Forest can make any board of tokens stand up to enemy AoE. The Core set also gave Druid Landscaping, a decent turn 3 play. The biggest loss for Token Druid in the Year of the Gryphon is our old friend Savage Roar, taking away one of the best ways for the archetype to finish games.
Guardian Animals is another deck that we're likely to see in the Year of the Gryphon since this spell is going to be one of Druid's few ways to fight back from an empty board. Menagerie Warden could give the deck an added boost, or we could see a deck very similar to the current Guardian Druids that have been kicking around for a while.
At least Druid still has its old standard: Ramp. Wild Growth and Overgrowth will be that deck's main source of power, but they'll also have Innervate and Lightning Bloom if you were worried about Druid's ability to play a 5-Drop on turn 2. The big loss for slower Druid decks (even if they haven't recently made the cut) are Druid's staple AoE: Swipe and Starfall have both been left out of the Core set. Instead, Druid's removal identity is tied to damage based spot removal: Bogbeam, Feral Rage, and Lunar Eclipse. We'll have to see if Forged in the Barrens will give Druid anything new to play with, but my guess is that Blizzard likes the idea that Druid's best way of dealing with an opponent's minions is by playing bigger minions earlier.
In short, it looks like Druid's identity in the Year of the Gryphon will be about summoning minions and buffing them, ramping Mana, and lacking hard removal or AoE (so...Druid, basically). It will be even more dangerous for Druid to fall behind on board now with fewer comeback mechanics in the class. We should be in for a very interesting ride.
How do you feel about Druid's Core set, and the class' prospects in the Year of the Gryphon? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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We're putting together reviews for all the classes and their core set cards. Here's everything up so far!
Comments
druid will get extinct in the year of gryphon with this trash core set, if they dont get good cards from the new expansions
Of all the core changes, druid's is probably a mixed bag. They lost all their AoE and spell damage cards like Swipe and Wrath, and instead reverted to the face method of removing board. A few buffs here and there (because who'd want to play a 4/6 taunt for 5 these days) but crucially druid has lost one of its greatest cards in Savage Roar. And I shall be singing praises about this move until the following year because that is one card that seriously needs a break.
So where does druid go from here? Unlike the other classes, druid actually has an identity beyond the generic title 'midrange'. Ramp menagerie druid might actually just be good enough to see play now that most of the other classes got neutered in terms of removal options. Guardian druid is still up since the vast majority of its cards is still intact, with Twilight Runner neatly substituting the loss of Overflow and Rising Winds, but its likely to be too weak to make an impact on the meta. Clown druid is still viable despite the loss of overflow, on the back of Guess the Weight and maybe even Nourish as its draw engine. And finally token spell druid which, despite losing savage roar, still retains a majority of its early game and can still be a force to reckon with, given that most other classes had their AoE either rotated or taken away from them (Rogue in particular has none) and they still have Solar Eclipse into Power of the Wild and Arbor Up.
Expect druid to be the new snowball class. You either ramp and snowball from there, or you lose board from turn 1 and never get it back. Those druid mirrors, I predict, will be one of the most one sided match you'll ever see, because ironically with the loss of Swipe, Moonfire, Crystal Power, BEEEES!!! and Starfall, combined with a propensity to play no early game, druid simply can't deal with druid things.
Nordrassil Druid is great, IDK what the author is smoking. Play it on turn 4 and Wild Growth the same turn, you basically played a 1 mana 3/5. Play Wild Growth on 3 and then Druid + Overgrowth on 5, you get a 1 mana 3/5. Since you probably weren't going to do much on turn 5 with your Overgrowth anyways it's almost like a free 3/5.
Its reasonable to expect Nordrassil Druid to not be as impactful as it seems. It doesn't have taunt, needs to be played first (and therefore you actually need to have that card in hand prior to playing your spell) unlike Anubisath Defender, and crucially still costs mana. So while we can stare with bloodshot eyes over that 1 mana 3/5 aspect of that card, drawing it and then playing it with a spell that cost 3 or more is quite another thing entirely.
This is something that will be good depending on the cards we see in Barrens and beyond. If there's something that draws cards absurdly for druid in the early game, it might make the cut because at the end its still a 1 mana 3/5 most of the time. But without taunt or rush, its always going to be an uphill climb for any druid card.
Agree. The ability to ramp without skipping your turn is a very big deal.
Note, however, that you're going to rely on card draw more than ever when using a tactic like this. There is precious little draw in the Core set, and Overflow is leaving us, so here's hoping something turns up in Barrens.
I think this is why people still have their eyes set on spell-focused Druid decks-- because Fungal Fortunes is easily the strongest draw available to Druid so long as your deckbuilding supports it.
Nourish exists, though, and is likely to be mandatory-ish for ramp decks-- either for more ramp or to recover the resources used to ramp.
At the moment, the only viable all-spell strategy for Druid is tokens. It's very strong right now, but it's losing Treenforcements, Dreamway Guardians, Rising Winds, BEEEES!!!, Blessing of the Ancients, and Savage Roar -- in other words, half the deck, including an important finisher.
I'm sure a spell-heavy deck will eventually be possible, but I'm not expecting tokens to have a strong start in the Year of the Gryphon, and there's no other spell-heavy archetype jumping out at me with all of Druid's burn going away as well.
Prediction: Barrens will have a Druid card that damages the enemy board based on the Hero's Attack. They can't just delete Swipe and Starfall and expect Druid to survive without any board clear whatsoever. They have hinted that most Druid damage spells will be coming from the face now (like Pounce), and this is the most straightforward way to accomplish that.
Probably not. Druid's identity is ramp and playing big minions, not board clears or removal. Most druids don't even play board clears, because why play removal when you can just play big things 4 turns earlier than its possible?
Swipe has practically been an auto-include in Druid decks in nearly every meta. The only time it's not is when Token Druid is strong (like now), because that archetype wins the wide-board contest by default.
Board clears may not be Druid's strongest suit, but every class needs some way to handle swarms of small stuff. Your "big thing" isn't going to do you any good if your opponent already has a wide board and some kind of hard removal in hand.
Aside from maly and highlander druid, I don't remember seeing Swipe being placed into a druid deck for the last 1 year. I think the exact timing was when Overgrowth was released in AoO that swipe quietly got shelved.
Druid always had problems coming from behind, which is why its also the first class I can remember that successfully played Animated Broomstick when it released (If memory serves, both spell druid and guardian druid iterations didn't start with broom in it). Most druid tech for early game removal to prevent an early game snowball and that's about it.
Eh, Nourish hasn't even seen play since Overgrowth was released. It's just way too slow for ramping up to what you want to play.
I was referring mainly to its utility for draw.
The comparison of Nordrassil Druid to Anubisath Defender is instructive because, as the devs have pointed out, Year of the Dragon was a very powerful year. When the druid isn't competing with the Defender and is instead a tempo-gaining option for a class that will need to rely on minions to control the board because it doesn't have AoE to recover, I think it'll look like a better option.
I wonder if an increased beast focus might cause people to reconsider Shan'do Wildclaw. Hm.
Nordrasill Druid's pretty good if you wanna play spells that cost like, 3 or less. Like, play her and then Mark of the Wild and you have a 5/8 with taunt.
There's also Wild Growth, Landscaping, Feral Rage, Moontouched Amulet, Lunar and Solar Eclipse, Guess the Weight and fungal fortunes for great tempo plays.
Anything 4 mana and up you'll need at least 5 mana to play this minion and the spell, which is still good tempo, but you'll probably want to play Overgrowth on turn 4 instead of waiting for turn 5