Who’s Ready For a Little Dust?
Having a collection that allows you to build competitive Hearthstone decks is hard. Even if you spend money on the game, if your luck is poor, or you haven’t been min-maxing quests, you might find yourself two epics or one legendary short of any given deck. Luckily for you, though, the set rotation is coming with Voyage to the Sunken City’s release! Not only does that mean you have three fewer sets to craft for Standard, you also may have some cards in the proverbial attic that you can trade for dust without affecting your future competitive prospects.
Hey, Where’s Auctioneer Jaxon?
This guide is going to focus exclusively on cards from sets that are rotating out of Standard after the Year of the Phoenix comes to a close (Ashes of Outland, Scholomance Academy, and Madness at the Darkmoon Faire). Cards that are listed as safe to dust have seen virtually no play in the two years they’ve been in Standard, so there should be no need to worry that they’re suddenly going to be meta relevant in Wild. (Note: This isn’t a guarantee, and depends on how much you like to experiment.) Cards that are listed as having seen fringe play are just that; they were in decks that turned out to not be good enough to be meta relevant, or got swapped out for more powerful cards as decks got refined. They may see play again, but unless you’re a huge fan of that specific deck archetype, you can probably part with the card.
If you’re looking for guides for what to dust from older sets, you can find them here:
Year of the Dragon Dusting Guide
Year of the Raven Dusting Guide
Year of the Mammoth Dusting Guide
Year of the Kraken Dusting Guide
All that said, there are certainly cards that have not seen play in the more recent sets, but I’m not advocating you dust those yet. Cards go in and out of the meta depending on what’s printed. Had I written a guide for these sets a year ago, Professor Slate and Greybough might have been on it, because they saw little significant play in the year they were released, but were core to top meta decks recently; had you dusted your copies last year, those decks would cost you 1600 more dust to build. That doesn’t mean you should never dust any cards that are currently in the Standard rotation, but they’re not as cut and dry as cards that have not seen any play for two years. Duplicate protection does make dusting cards safer, because you won’t open them again until you’ve opened all the other cards in the set, but that comes with a downside: If those cards later see play, you’ll be forced to craft them with dust. The good news is that there are a lot of cards printed in Year of the Phoenix that weren’t played, so you may be able to build up a pretty good pile of dust without even looking at cards that are staying in Standard.
This guide also only lists epic and legendary cards because that’s where your best return from dusting comes from. You get 5 dust in return for a common and 20 dust for a rare, so you need to dust a lot of commons and rares to get a significant amount of dust. Even if you think you’ll never play Wild, you may get nostalgic for some of the decks you’ve played after key cards rotate, and dusting all your Wild cards indiscriminately will lock you out of that. Sets eligible for building starter decks in Duels also rotate in and out, and often include Wild sets. I’m not your dad, but you’d be better off leaving most of those cards alone, because by the time you’ve dusted enough cards to craft a few new cards, you won’t have many wild commons and rares left.
Enough talk, though; let’s Outcast some cards and find you some dust!
Legendary
Safe Dusts
These cards have seen virtually no play since they were introduced. They may find a place in Wild or Duels at some point, but even if they do, they’re likely able to be replaced without hurting the deck’s performance too much.
Ashes of Outland
Archspore Msshi’fn:
When you think about the kinds of things Druid can do with 10 mana, a pair of 9/9s seems pretty tame.
Ysiel Windsinger:
Ysiel was spooky when she was released, because we'd all seen what Aviana could do with the correct support cards. Either the correct support cards never came, or 1 mana spells aren't as powerful as 1 mana minions, because Ysiel was never broken, even in Wild. With a card like this, if the effect isn't broken, it's unplayable, especially now that the Guff hero exists.
Reliquary of Souls:
Reliquary Prime is just too slow and not enough by the time it comes out, and the opponent often has silences or other AoE removal to deal with it when it does.
Lady Vashj:
Vashj Prime getting shuffled into the deck is the problematic part, because you're reasonably likely to draw her after you've already gotten all the spells you care about from your deck. She’s great to find from Primordial Studies, but that means you don’t need to own the actual card.
Al’ar:
Al'ar is great if you get it from a discover effect, but a vanilla 7/3 doesn't affect the board, so your opponent can just choose to ignore it. If they do decide to remove it, it's generally not that difficult to remove the 0/3 as well.
Scholomance Academy
Star Student Stelina: Stelina's not useful often enough as a tech card to be hard run in decks, especially since she needs to be kept in outcast position until she's ready to be used, which locks out the left side of your had from playing other outcast cards. Once Illidari Studies was printed, it became much more convenient to just discover her when you needed her (and ensure the outcast effect always went off).
Infiltrator Lilian:
4 is a lot of mana for most Rogue decks to spend. Lilian wants to be in an aggressive deck, but most aggressive rogues don't want to spend an entire turn developing a 4/2, when most of their other stealth minions are nearly as aggressively statted for less mana.
Madness at the Darkmoon Faire
Kiri, Chosen of Elune:
Solar and Lunar Eclipse are both good enough to just go in your deck, but they’re not cards you typically need three copies of in every game, which would be the reason you’d play Kiri on top of the natural copies of those cards.
Keywarden Ivory:
Dual class cards are generally pretty good, but at 5 mana, Ivory is just too expensive to not immediately affect the board, and typically dies before the spellburst takes effect.
G’huun the Blood God:
G'huun is often just too little, too late. An 8/8 without taunt isn't going to save you, so you're relying on the cards it draws; if you're in desperate enough of a situation, you may not have enough health left to play the cards that could otherwise save you. Also, Priest spent most of the time that G’huun was legal not wanting to draw cards from the deck at all, preferring to generate them instead, to prevent going into fatigue before the opponent.
Grand Empress Shek’zara:
If Garrote Rogue can't make use of a card like this, nothing can.
Grand Totem Eys’or:
Much like Lothraxion, Totem Shaman is an archetype that never got support while Eys'or has been in Standard, but could otherwise be relevant at some point in Wild or Duels.
Deck of Chaos:
In two years, no one has cracked the code in Standard or Wild to make Deck of Chaos suddenly broken. That's not to say it couldn't eventually happen in Wild, but if you want to make your cards suddenly and significantly cheaper, Runed Mythril Rod seems like the way to do that, not Deck of Chaos.
Fringe Play
These cards have either been in meta decks since being printed, but were replaced by better options as decks were refined, or were featured only in decks that never rose to meta relevance. They’re a bit riskier to dust because they might find the right conditions to be played again in Wild or Duels, but as long as you’re making an informed decision based on the kinds of decks you like to play, you should be fine to dust these cards.
Ashes of Outland
Maiev Shadowsong:
Maiev was supposed to be the new Spellbreaker as that card rotated out of Standard. The difference between them is that Spellbreaker actually solved a problem, while Maiev is only good if there's one taunt minion standing between you and lethal the turn you play her; otherwise, you're just kicking the can down the road.
Akama:
Akama is a generically fine card that just doesn't really fit anywhere; it was tried in several Rogues decks that focused on stealth synergy, but was typically cut quickly as those decks were refined. The 3/4 stealth body is ok, but it doesn't really do anything special, and in an aggressive deck, the Prime usually either never gets drawn or isn't impactful enough to make a difference that late.
Scholomance Academy
Shan’do Wildclaw:
Most of the beasts just haven't been worth copying, and the ones that are usually don't stick to the board for you to be able to copy.
Turalyon, the Tenured:
Turalyon suffered from being printed at the same time as Lord Barov; 8 mana to remove one minion is way too much to pay, when Barov along with one of any number of AoE effects clears the entire board for significantly cheaper. It did see play in Big Paladin, so if you love that deck enough to play it in Wild, Turalyon may be worth keeping on the payroll.
**Archwitch Willow**:
Even after being buffed, Willow has just always been too slow and awkward to be of use in Warlock. That said, she has started to creep into some Reno Warlock lists in Wild recently.
Keymaster Alabaster:
Keymaster is an incredibly fun card when you get to play it, and can high roll some games. However, it's very expensive for a card that doesn't affect the board directly (even if it does have soft taunt), and since there's no deck that's reliant on it, Keymaster often gets cut as decks get refined.
Madness at the Darkmoon Faire
Zai, the Incredible:
Zai was tried for a while in Fel Demon Hunter as a way to get an extra Jace or Il'gynoth combo. It quickly became apparent that the deck typically didn't need or have time for that, especially when it ended up blocking a critical outcast card like Skull of Gul'dan.
Maxima Blastenheimer:
Maxima is the ultimate high roll card; it forces you into building a deck specifically to taking advantage of her card text, and if you don't draw the right cards in the right order, good luck to you. But hey, sometimes you get King Krush to go face, and who doesn't love that?
**Lothraxion, the Redeemed**:
The problem with Lothraxion isn't the card itself, but mainly that Dude Paladin never got enough support in Standard (though not through lack of trying). If you play Wild or Duels regularly, it may be worth holding on to, as Dude Paladin has been a viable strategy from time to time in other formats/metas.
High Exarch Yrel:
Yrel was fine until all the Pure Paladin cards rotated out at the end of last year, and since then, it's been sitting in dry dock. In Wild, Pure Paladin gets heavily outclassed by other aggressive decks.
Dark Inquisitor Xanesh:
The problem with a card like Xanesh that requires you to build the rest of the deck around it is that, when you don't get to play it on curve, the deck falls on its face. With no consistent way to ensure that Xanesh gets drawn on time, Corrupt Priest was effectively a high roll deck, and even the high roll wasn't super impressive when it did work.
Nerfed into the Ground
These cards were nerfed out of existence sometime between when they were printed and today. Most cards that get nerfed for Standard balance reasons get reverted shortly before they rotate out of Standard, so it may be worth holding on to these cards for playing in Wild or Duels to see if they’re useful in their pre-nerf forms.
Ashes of Outland
Metamorphosis:
Going from 5 damage to 4 brought Metamorphosis under a pretty significant break point, and stopped it from seeing play in Standard from that point on. If it goes back to its pre-nerf state, it could see play in Odd Demon Hunter at some point, but if that's not a deck you're in love with, you could probably metamorphosize this into something else.
Kayn Sunfury:
At 3/5, Kayn was much harder to kill and create a persistent threat when not used for lethal, but at 3/4, it's much easier to keep from sticking to the board. As more cards got added to the format, the bigger issue became that taunts in the way often weren't the problem keeping aggressive Demon Hunters from connecting for lethal.
Scholomance Academy
Evocation:
It turns out that Evocation isn't quite as good when you can't generate it from Wandmaker, because it doesn’t cost 1 mana anymore.
Kael’thas Sunstrider:
Kael'thas mostly got used in Druid to cheat a ton of mana in a turn. Post-Guff, that's not really something that Druid needs to run a legendary minion to enable anymore.
High Abess Alura:
Alura had to be nerfed to 5 mana to prevent Tip the Scales from coming out much too early in Standard. Aside from that, it saw very little play, and even at 4 mana, that might not be good enough in Wild.
Mindrender Illucia:
The reason Illucia was played most of the time was to lock out an opponent's turn and/or to rip cards out of their hand to disrupt a combo. The rework does none of that, and you're better off running a good card of your own rather than hoping your opponent has something worth playing a copy of in their hand.
Madness at the Darkmoon Faire
Deck of Lunacy:
It's a lot easier and safer to spend 2 mana to do nothing than to spend 4 mana to do nothing.
Epic
Safe Dusts
Marsh Hydra:
Marsh Hydra is just too fair. 7 mana for a 7/7 rush that gives you a random 8-cost minion that you then need to pay for when you play it from hand sounds a lot better than it actually is in practice.
Shattered Rumbler:
This is another card that got buffed and still didn’t see any play afterward. Shaman has better ways to do 2 damage AoE without the conditionality of having played a spell the prior turn, which can be extremely hard to set up.
Shadow Council:
Random demons aren’t good enough to justify spending a deck slot on a card that effectively tosses your hand in the air and hopes it comes back down better than it started.
Replicat-o-tron:
We’ve had a number of decks in Standard that relied on buffing minions (which is presumably the kind of deck that would want this card) and Replicat-o-tron hasn’t been good enough for any of them. If the deck that plays Blessing of Authority can’t find room for this card in Standard, its prospects in Wild are dire.
Krolusk Barkstripper:
When Hunter wants to play minions, it’s typically not interested in a 4 mana 3/5 that kills a minion if it sticks. That went double once Warsong Wrangler motivated Hunter decks that ran beasts to cut all of them but Wolpertinger and Trampling Rhino to ensure the discover hit an impactful minion.
Ceremonial Maul:
We haven't had a deck that runs a lot of big spells in Paladin since Shirvallah rotated out of Standard, and even then, it probably wouldn't have room for this card.
Educated Elekk:
Studious Stampy may be smarter than most other elephants, but unfortunately, it's just as slow as they are.
Enchanted Cauldron:
Cauldron is one of those cards that's printed more for flavor reasons than to be included in a deck. There are many more efficient ways to get a randomly generated spell than this.
Don’t Feed the Animals:
This is one of the best examples of how the corrupt mechanic can be awkward in practice. Ideally, Hunter wants to get on board quickly, but this incentivizes it to hold back to get maximum value from the buff, but if it does that, then it's fallen behind on board, at which point the buff is less valuable.
Idol of Y’shaarj:
The whole point of Big Priest is to get the big minions down before you could play them normally. Which means paying less than 8 mana for the privilege.
Ringmaster’s Baton:
A +1/+1 buff is not enough of a payoff for building your deck in such a way that you manage to take advantage of swinging an underpowered weapon multiple times, preferably without dying in the process.
Horrendous Growth:
As much as corrupt has seen play, even decks running Xanesh and Y'shaarj weren't all in enough on the corrupt mechanic to really make Growth big enough.
Darkmoon Rabbit:
Our rabbit friend is amazing if it gets generated from Resizing Pouch or Charged Call, but even the most all-in Ramp Druids don't have room for a 10 mana card to remove three minions.
Fringe Play
Augmented Porcupine:
Porcupine got experimented with in some Dire Frenzy decks and some deathrattle decks, but neither really took off. Duels has enough deathrattle support that this might be worth keeping if you like that play style, though.
Nagrand Slam:
Nagrand Slam was a lot better when it was a 7 mana card in Mage (because Dire Frenzy transformed one of the spells into this); when played as printed, most hunter decks would rather have the game end before turn 10, and it can be underwhelming when played that late in the game.
Skeletal Dragon:
Imagine putting Skeletal Dragon in your deck when you could just get it from Draconic Studies.
Waste Warden:
Had we had more tribal synergy decks in Standard, Waste Warden likely would have seen more play; it's still sometimes seen as a single copy in some Wild decks from time to time, as murlocs or beasts start to rise up in power again.
Ancient Void Hound:
Big Demon Hunter just never took off as an archetype, and outside of specifically that deck, Ancient Void Hound really doesn’t have a home, because Demon Hunter isn’t paying 9 mana for something that doesn’t immediately end the game.
Magicfin:
Murloc Shaman never really got enough support for Magicfin to see play; it ended up getting generated from Mugurgle Prime much more than being played from a deck.
Deathwarden:
A deathrattle deck would need to be a significant force in the meta to justify spending a deck slot on something like Deathwarden.
Thanks for reading!
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