Dropping two secrets at once can be very paralyzing, and the improved versions all seem really sweet. The hero power is great for any midrange or slower Hunter deck, but since Hunter tends to skew aggressive it's a little hard to judge how broadly applicable it will be.
Feral Rage - 6 mana to get a 3/4, +4 attack to your hero, and 8 armor
Nourish - 7 mana to get a 3/4 and draw 3 cards (because you'd play the gain 2 first)
Runic Carvings - 9 mana for a 3/4, four 2/2s and 8 damage to enemy minions.
Neither Power of the Wild or Sow the Soil seem worth it in a format with Arbor Up and Composting - you'd have to make some hard replacements in existing Aggro Druid lists for those combos, and I'm not convinced the redundancy helps when you have so much draw potential. The Capture Coldtooth Mine one is good value, particularly in Wild for some Maly Druid that wants to pull Moonfire and Malygos, but I'm not convinced tutoring both ends of your deck will be anything beyond a solid value play in Standard. The Runic Carvings looks to me like a complicated way to get something only slightly better than Goliath, Sneed's Masterpiece.
So that really just leaves Feral Rage and Nourish. Right now Anacondra Druid is the only deck using either of those spells, and it's not super competitive. It also includes Jerry Rig Carpenter, which has some anti-synergy with this*. All in all, it's a cool effect, but I'm not convinced it has a home.
*I'm assuming that this only triggers off of the actual choose one spells, but if you could play one of the "half spells" from Jerry Rig Carpenter and then pick up a copy of the other half from Pathmaker that would radically change my view on the value of this card in Standard. That behavior seems unlikely.
EDIT: I think I slightly misjudged this card. The text just says "...last Choose One spell you've cast" which implies that this can cross between turns. That does change the calculus a bit on this, and makes its applications in Token decks a lot more interesting. Curving Power of the Wild into this is no joke (so long as your opponent can't kill your 3/2 before this triggers), and curving Nourish on 6 into a 3-mana 3/4 that draws 3 leaves you with 5 mana for any number of good 5-drops (Arbor Up, Wildheart Guff, Teacher's Pet). I'm still not sure it will displace some of the key cards from existing Archetypes that might benefit from the extra value, but it's certainly stronger than I gave it credit for.
This can help a lot with controlling an early board in a Token Beast deck, and it helps push for lethal in the mid to late game. All in all, solid card. Nothing to write home about, but it has a lot of utility.
Skull of the Man'ari this is not, but this is guaranteed (whereas Skull could be removed before doing anything), and there are a ton of incredibly powerful demons in Demon Hunter that have immediate impacts on the board. I'm very excited to see Big Demon Hunter in the coming meta.
The hero power is a surprisingly minor upgrade on the standard Mage hero power, and the battlecry probably only fits some Big Spell type deck where you're sure to recast things like Deep Freeze (Frost), Flamestrike (Fire), Mask of C'Thun (Shadow) and maybe Arcane Overflow (Arcane). The potential value here is pretty high - this effectively serves as a third copy of a lot of big, impactful spells and you only really need to trigger two spells before you're getting a lot of value for the price. But it's really unclear that any Mage deck needs that much value to win games - it would have to be a very slow meta to really care much about having this in your deck.
Ultimately I'm a little shocked at how bad this hero is compared to the rest of the new hero cards. Shocked, but not particularly upset since Questline Mage is already so powerful.
The Unstoppable Force seems solid as a way to get some burst damage in, and the hero power is nice enough. Probably one of the weaker hero cards in the expansion, but it seems good.
Great flavor, and Mage has enough cheap fire spells that this could actually be viable. In part, viability depends on how being unfrozen works - if Frozen Mammoth can be played on turn 4 then attack on turn 5 when you play a fire spell, then I think it could very easily see play. If it's still treated as having summoning sickness until it's been unfrozen for a turn, then it's junk.
If you can reasonably build a Mage deck that only has 7+ cost spells, this is insane. I'm lukewarm on the archetype for this expansion, but hoping to be surprised.
This seems to be intended for some kind of Big Spell mage that uses spells like Deep Freeze, Mask of C'Thun, Flamestrike, and maybe even Grand Finale to make sure this consistently hits good, impactful spells. Maybe that's a real deck with Celestial Ink Set and Balinda Stonehearth helping to cheat out big spells. I'm not sold on it - the whole thing looks a bit too slow right now, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
The Lobotomizer is probably not good enough to see much play. Standard Rogue just has too many much more relevant weapons, and hand/deck spying is often a bait (just look at Chameleos). Not saying this card will never find a home, I just think there isn't enough support to merit playing it over other weapons.
Is the joke here just that lots of other Draenei characters and art tend to have "wavy" horns (e.g. High Exarch Yrel, Draenei Totemcarver, Libram of Wisdom, etc.), but Xyrella has a crescent shaped horn? I think WoW offers a lot of different horn styles.
This card is incredible. The hero power adds a lot of late game value in a control mirror, and with the right minions you could easily make a Vanndar Priest deck that leverages this for AOE, healing, armor gain, and tempo.
If you treat drawing a card as worth 1 mana, drawing two cards as worth 3 mana, and dealing 3 damage as worth about 2 mana, then Spring the Trap is a very solid card. At worst, it's a 1-mana discount on its bundle effects (deal 3, draw a card, and play a secret). At best, though, it's a 5-mana discount (deal 3, draw 2, and play two secrets). That's pretty huge so long as you can find enough secrets you're excited to play.
Probably doesn't fit into every Demon Hunter, but it's a solid card for token decks.
Very cool hero card with a ton of finisher potential in Token Demon Hunter, and solid late game value for any slower Demon Hunter deck.
Incredibly powerful way to avoid running cheap minions, thereby making sure you can include Vanndar Stormpike in your deck.
Dropping two secrets at once can be very paralyzing, and the improved versions all seem really sweet. The hero power is great for any midrange or slower Hunter deck, but since Hunter tends to skew aggressive it's a little hard to judge how broadly applicable it will be.
It's a lot of stats on a Deathrattle Beast. Revive Pet, Monstrous Parrot, and Jewel of N'Zoth, so maybe there's something there, but I'm not bullish on this.
Great way to screw of Questline Mage. I like it.
Pathmaker only triggers the other side of spells, leaving you with pretty limited options today in Standard:
Neither Power of the Wild or Sow the Soil seem worth it in a format with Arbor Up and Composting - you'd have to make some hard replacements in existing Aggro Druid lists for those combos, and I'm not convinced the redundancy helps when you have so much draw potential. The Capture Coldtooth Mine one is good value, particularly in Wild for some Maly Druid that wants to pull Moonfire and Malygos, but I'm not convinced tutoring both ends of your deck will be anything beyond a solid value play in Standard. The Runic Carvings looks to me like a complicated way to get something only slightly better than Goliath, Sneed's Masterpiece.
So that really just leaves Feral Rage and Nourish. Right now Anacondra Druid is the only deck using either of those spells, and it's not super competitive. It also includes Jerry Rig Carpenter, which has some anti-synergy with this*. All in all, it's a cool effect, but I'm not convinced it has a home.
*I'm assuming that this only triggers off of the actual choose one spells, but if you could play one of the "half spells" from Jerry Rig Carpenter and then pick up a copy of the other half from Pathmaker that would radically change my view on the value of this card in Standard. That behavior seems unlikely.
EDIT: I think I slightly misjudged this card. The text just says "...last Choose One spell you've cast" which implies that this can cross between turns. That does change the calculus a bit on this, and makes its applications in Token decks a lot more interesting. Curving Power of the Wild into this is no joke (so long as your opponent can't kill your 3/2 before this triggers), and curving Nourish on 6 into a 3-mana 3/4 that draws 3 leaves you with 5 mana for any number of good 5-drops (Arbor Up, Wildheart Guff, Teacher's Pet). I'm still not sure it will displace some of the key cards from existing Archetypes that might benefit from the extra value, but it's certainly stronger than I gave it credit for.
This can help a lot with controlling an early board in a Token Beast deck, and it helps push for lethal in the mid to late game. All in all, solid card. Nothing to write home about, but it has a lot of utility.
Skull of the Man'ari this is not, but this is guaranteed (whereas Skull could be removed before doing anything), and there are a ton of incredibly powerful demons in Demon Hunter that have immediate impacts on the board. I'm very excited to see Big Demon Hunter in the coming meta.
The hero power is a surprisingly minor upgrade on the standard Mage hero power, and the battlecry probably only fits some Big Spell type deck where you're sure to recast things like Deep Freeze (Frost), Flamestrike (Fire), Mask of C'Thun (Shadow) and maybe Arcane Overflow (Arcane). The potential value here is pretty high - this effectively serves as a third copy of a lot of big, impactful spells and you only really need to trigger two spells before you're getting a lot of value for the price. But it's really unclear that any Mage deck needs that much value to win games - it would have to be a very slow meta to really care much about having this in your deck.
Ultimately I'm a little shocked at how bad this hero is compared to the rest of the new hero cards. Shocked, but not particularly upset since Questline Mage is already so powerful.
The Unstoppable Force seems solid as a way to get some burst damage in, and the hero power is nice enough. Probably one of the weaker hero cards in the expansion, but it seems good.
This radically improves Iceblood Tower, and makes the Big Spell Mage look like a serious deck.
Great flavor, and Mage has enough cheap fire spells that this could actually be viable. In part, viability depends on how being unfrozen works - if Frozen Mammoth can be played on turn 4 then attack on turn 5 when you play a fire spell, then I think it could very easily see play. If it's still treated as having summoning sickness until it's been unfrozen for a turn, then it's junk.
6 mana for a slightly bigger King Krush seems really powerful, and getting up to 15 armor in a single game isn't that hard (even in Standard).
If you can reasonably build a Mage deck that only has 7+ cost spells, this is insane. I'm lukewarm on the archetype for this expansion, but hoping to be surprised.
This seems to be intended for some kind of Big Spell mage that uses spells like Deep Freeze, Mask of C'Thun, Flamestrike, and maybe even Grand Finale to make sure this consistently hits good, impactful spells. Maybe that's a real deck with Celestial Ink Set and Balinda Stonehearth helping to cheat out big spells. I'm not sold on it - the whole thing looks a bit too slow right now, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
The Lobotomizer is probably not good enough to see much play. Standard Rogue just has too many much more relevant weapons, and hand/deck spying is often a bait (just look at Chameleos). Not saying this card will never find a home, I just think there isn't enough support to merit playing it over other weapons.
Is the joke here just that lots of other Draenei characters and art tend to have "wavy" horns (e.g. High Exarch Yrel, Draenei Totemcarver, Libram of Wisdom, etc.), but Xyrella has a crescent shaped horn? I think WoW offers a lot of different horn styles.
This card is incredible. The hero power adds a lot of late game value in a control mirror, and with the right minions you could easily make a Vanndar Priest deck that leverages this for AOE, healing, armor gain, and tempo.
If you treat drawing a card as worth 1 mana, drawing two cards as worth 3 mana, and dealing 3 damage as worth about 2 mana, then Spring the Trap is a very solid card. At worst, it's a 1-mana discount on its bundle effects (deal 3, draw a card, and play a secret). At best, though, it's a 5-mana discount (deal 3, draw 2, and play two secrets). That's pretty huge so long as you can find enough secrets you're excited to play.