Hero Tiers - What do you think?

[plo]

I don't understand why some of you are saying Winterborn is under powered.
I see her as a improved version of Belladonna and Tainted Oracle, you draw a card the turn you summon her, and have the chance to draw again, what happens very often if you play with Zhanna.

[Pat Jay]

Winterborn definately has the potential to be better than belladonna and tainted oracle... in fact she has the potential to be better than all other draw engines in the whole game!!!

i mean.... what else can give you 1 draw at the end of your turn with no SE or CC expenditure apart from the initial 4CC outlay for an indefinite period of time?

Unfortunately, this potential is hardly ever realised due to Winterborn's vulnerability to attack. Often your opponent will attack her once summoned to negate her drawing ability. And often your opponent will attack her for more than 3 hit points knowing that you, Zhanna, have 3 SE in hand to heal her back to full health.

The key to harnessing Winterborn's full potential is to play her in the right situations:

Bad situations to play Winterborn:
1. into board where she can be hit for more than 3 hit points
2. into board where you will eventually tidal wave in the next turn or so

Good situations to play Winterborn:
1. into board where she is hidden behind a protector like aeon
2. into board where she cannot be hit for more than 3 hit points and you have the potential to restore her to full health.
3. into board where there is 1 enemy ally and 1 friendly ally, that way she will draw attention away from your friendly ally and if your opponent casts another ally, winterborn is now ready to help attack
3. into empty board where she is unlikely to be attacked by hero or abilities
4. where tainted oracle is unavailable, into board where the enemy has 2 allies that can't kill winterborn, drawing attention away from your wizent's and forcing your enemy to hit winterborn and receive retaliation damage

Having said this... even though you have the opportunity to play winterborn in a good situations... often there are better options out there than to play her. For example, if you have an empty board, you would probably want to play raven or if you have aeon out, you would want to play jasmine for more board control...

And so, in conclusion… this is the problem with winterborn.... there are many bad situations to play her and not enough compelling good situations to play her.

So she definitely is worth considering, however, she will never, in my books replace tainted oracle nor Wizent's... at most... she should be considered in addition to other draw engines you have in your deck.

If she did get buffed, well then, we would have to reanalyse how she can best to play her.

Hope this helps! Cheers guys!

[cosmo K]

you have to compare the draws to the other options: wizent and TO.

wrt TO, she guarantees a card. TO can be retreated / crippled. TO can also be ignored for a turn or two, depending on the context.
wrt Wizent: Wizent against a non-empty board will never draw more than two cards, and will cost 2SE. It might chip at the hero for 1/2 HP.

so she's just a different compromise, and every Priest relies on at least two card providers. Now
you have TO+WB or TO+Wz (not sure about the Wz/WB combo).
she's probably better with Zhanna (who's not ?).

[ahmet476]

wrt TO, she guarantees a card. TO can be retreated / crippled. TO can also be ignored for a turn or two, depending on the context.
wrt Wizent: Wizent against a non-empty board will never draw more than two cards, and will cost 2SE. It might chip at the hero for 1/2 HP.

I partly disagree. TO is almost always guaranteed draw for Priest because you'll use Tidal Wave at some point. Similar to Nishaven. There might be a delay though depending on your hand.

For playing Wizent's on a crowded board, well, it happens sometimes. You don't get no Tidal Wave and try to draw it with Wizent's.