Ah Ha Ha! I See You Want 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 Whizbang's Workshop’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 Therazane?
This guide is going to focus exclusively on cards from sets that are rotating out of Standard after the Year of the Hydra comes to a close (Voyage to the Sunken City, Murder at Castle Nathria and March of the Lich King). 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 or Twist. (Note: With the introduction of Twist, the team has started buffing old cards; it’s possible that something that’s unplayable today could be buffed into relevance in the future, but it also could be quite a while before that happens.) 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 Gryphon Dusting Guide
Year of the Phoenix Dusting Guide
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, Energy Shaper might have been listed, because it saw little significant play in the year it was released, but it got buffed a month before rotation and became part of a meta deck; had you dusted your copies last year, you would have missed out on playing Casino Mage, because it wouldn’t make sense to craft two epics that were about to rotate. 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 because you won’t be able to get them from packs.
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 exchange for a common and 20 dust for a rare, so you need to dust a lot of commons and rares to get a useable amount of dust. Even if you think you’ll never play Wild or Twist, 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. 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 Dredge through your collection 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 Twist at some point, but even if they do, they’re likely able to be replaced without hurting the deck’s performance too much.
Voyage to the Sunken City
Hedra the Heretic
Druid does a good enough job of building wide boards that you don’t need to work this hard to do it. Sure, there are big spells like Miracle Growth in Druid, but you also play Innervate and Aquatic Form in nearly every Druid deck, so you’re just as likely to get a board of Snowflipper Penguins as a board of Ragnaroses.
Commander Ulthok
Do you feel lucky? Because you’re as likely to lose the game as win it when you play Ulthok.
Lady Ashvane
We’ve had a number of cards like this before, and the problem with all of them remains the same: You can only run so many weapons in your deck before your hand gets clogged with them, and you need a critical mass of weapons in your deck to make Lady Ashvane worth including.
Murder at Castle Nathria
Stewart, the Steward
We’ve had a number of Silver Hand Recruit (aka “Dude”) Paladins over the past year and a half, and Stewart doesn’t factor into any of them. Turns out you don’t actually need that many buffs to make Dude Paladin work, and if you’re paying three mana for one, you want it to be doing more than just give +3/+3. This card also gets way worse the later you draw it, so it’s ultimately cut for cards that are more consistent throughout the game.
Halkias
This was just never the payoff Secret Rogue wanted. Realistically, it wasn’t even a payoff. Rogue has had better ways to make sticky minions, and even when Halkias worked, it was just a 4 mana 5/4 that didn’t really do anything else. It’s also worth mentioning that Secret Rogue has existed in several forms over the past two years, and Halkias was never featured in any of them.
Baroness Vashj
We’ve had a number of iterations of Evolve Shaman since Baroness Vashj was printed, but Vashj fell out of all of them relatively quickly. Typically, you’re less interested in building a wide board than in cheating out minions with high mana costs and then evolving them all at once; paying four mana for Vashj in those decks might as well be a million.
Murloc Holmes
Murloc Holmes is a fun card, but it’s very hard to get the battlecry to pay off consistently, and even when you can, you need hand space for the three cards, which can be a challenge in and of itself. You have to have a reason to want random copies of your opponent’s cards, like Thief Priest, but those decks typically have better and/or more consistent ways to get those copies.
March of the Lich King
Frost Queen Sindragosa
Origiinally, Sindragosa was too awkward because of the multi-rune requirement. It got buffed to only require a single frost rune, but by then, Frost Death Knight had gotten outclassed by other meta decks, and even had it not, at seven mana, it’s competing with cards like Frostwyrm’s Fury, which is a win condition.
Elder Nadox
In Wild, you could just play Savage Roar to get a similar effect without all the strings attached.
Vexallus
I’ll admit, I was spooked by this card when it was revealed. I shouldn’t have worried, though; it turned out that you don’t actually need to double spells like Arcane Bolt to burn your opponent out of the game. You just play a bunch of Frozen Touches, or play Sif, and then you don’t need Vexallus at all. (Note that Vexallus does see some play in Quest Mage in Wild, so do hold on it it if that's a deck you might want to play.)
Fringe Play
These cards have been in meta decks since being printed, but fell out quickly or were otherwise replaced by better options as decks were refined. They’re a bit riskier to dust because they might find the right conditions to be played again in Wild or Twist, 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.
Voyage to the Sunken City
Colaque
Colaque occasionally sees play in some big or ramp Druids, but it rarely stays in those decks for long because there are often better options available, which will be doubly the case in Wild.
Gaia, the Tectonic
If you’re a Mech Mage enthusiast, you probably want to hold on to Gaia, because it’s very good in that deck. The issue is that deck gets outclassed very quickly outside of four-set Standard metas.
Pirate Admiral Hooktusk
Hooktusk is gross when the battlecry goes off. Unfortunately, eight seven pirates is a lot of setup, and since there aren’t too many ways to generate pirates, you need to build your deck with mostly pirates, which means you’re probably not living to turn eight seven where you can play an active Hooktusk very often.
Ozumat
There have been decks that used cards like Masked Reveler to try to cheat out Ozumat, or had ways to trigger the deathrattle on the turn it comes out, but that makes for an incredibly slow board clear. And even if you’re successful, your board is clogged with 1/3 tentacles that do nothing afterward.
Murder at Castle Nathria
Defense Attorney Nathanos
Nathanos has seen a bit of play in deathrattle focused Hunter decks, but even after being buffed to work better with cards like Bovine Skeleton, it’s still pretty frequently cut from those decks, since it’s inherently a slow card; you need to play a deathrattle minion, have it die, then pay 6 mana for a 4/4 that hopefully generates enough value from the deathrattle immediately to compensate for the premium in terms of stats.
Nerfed into the Ground
These cards were nerfed out of existence sometime between when they were printed and today. While they aren’t being reverted before they rotate to wild, they could be buffed back to their former glory in the future.
Voyage to the Sunken City
Lady S’theno
At 2 attack, S’theno was a regular terror of the Standard meta. At 1 attack, she’s more like your little sibling poking you repeatedly to annoy you.
Priestess Valishj
Valishj started life as an answer to the question, “What would a zero mana legendary look like?” It looked like it needed to be nerfed to one mana, apparently.
Murder at Castle Nathria
Kael’thas Sinstrider
Kael’thas at 6 mana made Kael’thas into Brann into Denathrius a combo that any class could do. Kael’thas at 8 mana made Kael’thas 400 easy dust for your wallet.
Sire Denathrius
Given that Denathrius is going to the afterlife of Wild, where he’ll live forever with his BFF Brann Bronzebeard, it’s unlikely that he’s going to go back to his former self of infuse (1) any time soon.
The Jailer
Ironically, the Jailer did crimes, repeatedly, and destroying your deck wasn’t enough of a downside to balance out your board getting immune for the rest of the game. Blowing up your own deck just to get a single 10/10 immune, though, that’s truly an offense.
March of the Lich King
Epic
Safe Dusts
Voyage to the Sunken City
Coilskar Commander
Coilskar Commander was buffed from a 2/6 to a 3/7, and that still wasn’t good enough for it to be played in a deck on purpose.
Bottomfeeder
This seems like a card that could slide into an aggressive token druid, and it was tried fairly early, but it has two problems. One is that it’s a slow card in a fast deck, and the first body doesn’t do much for you. The second is that those decks often wanted to use Aquatic Form to find key pieces like Herald of Nature from the bottom of the deck, and a dead Bottomfeeder meant one less card that Aquatic Form could see to find lethal.
Seaweed Strike
Druid never got enough Nagas to justify running this card, and it consistently had better ways to both damage minions and gain attack.
Bootstrap Sunkeneer
When I first saw this card, I started calling it Vilespine Sailor, because it seemed almost identical to Vilespine Slayer, which was a card that saw a lot of play in Rogue when it was printed in Journey to Un’goro. It turns out that Hearthstone changed a lot in the intervening five years, and paying 5 mana as a combo activation for single target removal isn’t good enough for Rogue anymore, especially once the Concoctions were printed in March of the Lich King, which gave Rogue much easier (and cheaper) access to single target removal.
Wrathspine Enchanter
You could just cast the spells in your hand at the targets that you want them to hit, and probably pay less than seven mana for the privilege.
Chum Bucket
You need to go all in on Murloc Warlock for Chum Bucket to work, and that was never a deck that could find its footing even in a four set Standard meta; moving to Wild, there’s potentially a world in which Murloc Warlock could work, but that’s in a distant parallel universe.
The Fires of Zin-Azshari
Some people just want to watch the world burn. You likely already know if you’re one of those people, and if you’re not, you can burn your copies of this card.
Slithering Deathscale
So if you’ve held on to this card long enough for it to have seen you play three spells, for the low, low cost of 7 mana you can, er, do the same thing that Prison Breaker did for considerably less. Sure, it’s a neutral, but nearly every class has access to something like a 3 damage AoE that’s less work than this.
Murder at Castle Nathria
Vengeful Visage
Every so often, there are bad secrets printed that you’d never want to put into a deck on purpose, but need to exist to give the opponent more things to play around. This is one of those secrets.
Promotion
When you can choose between a buff that can target any of your minions or a buff that can only target Silver Hand Recruits, the more flexible buff is going to make it into decks more often than the limited one.
Kidnap
Remember when I said Vengeful Visage was a bad secret to make the pool more diverse? That goes double for Kidnap. If your opponent plays a battlecry minion into this, you actually did them a favor by letting them play it a second time.
Tome Tampering
For one brief, shining moment, it seemed like this might be useful to get a bunch of Barrels of Sludge into your deck so you could blow them up with Steamcleaner. Then Chaos Creation was printed, and you could burn six Barrels off the bottom of your deck, and that was the end of Tome Tampering’s one shot at relevance. (Note: This has since been nerfed to 6 mana to prevent it from breaking Wild, so absolutely get your dust from it.)
Riot!
Riot! is a masterclass in evaluating cards based on what they ask of you. In this case, it asks you to have a wide board that will kill your opponent’s minions if they were to attack in randomly, and ideally they’d care about being damaged. That happens so infrequently when you actually need to clear a board that Riot! would just sit in your hand, waiting for a perfect opportunity that would never come.
Burden of Pride
This might have been better if they didn’t print Embers of Strength in the next set, and then also give Warrior synergies that cared about fire spells.
March of the Lich King
Meat Grinder
Turns out that people really don’t like burning cards from their deck unless they’re Barrels of Sludge, and Death Knights with access to Unholy runes typically don’t have issues with corpse generation. If this card had said “lowest cost” instead of “random”, it could have been a staple of Unholy Death Knights, but alas.
Wither
This card asks a lot more from the player than it appears on the surface: You need to have enough Undead on board for Wither to kill the targeted minion, and the targeted minion has to be big enough to buff the player’s board. Those things line up a lot less often than one would expect.
Scourge Tamer
People hyped this card up when it was revealed, because old-timers like me remembered how good Deathstalker Rexxar was back when it was in Standard. The reason that was so good, however, was that it generated a Zombeast every turn, which both made consistent value and mitigated the negative impact of rolling a bad Zombeast. When you just get one Zombeast, the result is often much less impactful.
Vile Apothecary
Concoctions have been a staple for Rogue since March of the Lich King released, and most of the Concoction related cards have seen a lot of play. This is the outlier, because you only need so many Concoction generators, and having to play a 3 mana 2/4 to wait a turn to get the payoff just isn’t good enough.
Scourge Troll
Shaman never really got enough support for a card that exploits spells or effects that grant deathrattles. If a few more get printed, then maybe Scourge Troll could see some play in wild, but Wild also has much easier access to mass silence effects.
Blightblood Berserker
Blightblood Berserker really only sees play in decks built around From De Other Side, and despite both of those cards getting buffed a month before rotation, that deck still wasn’t good enough to see significant play.
Crystal Broker
There are some cards that you read, and it’s reasonable to say, “Why would I ever want to do this?” Sometimes the answer is immediately obvious. Sometimes a card needs support in a later set. But when you get to rotation and you never get an answer, you can go ahead and dust that card.
Sanctum Spellbender
This is an incredibly narrow tech card that never really saw a use case. Theoretically, this would have been a reasonable counter to Shroomscavate Paladin, but if anyone hated that deck enough to put this card in their deck, I never saw it.
Fringe Play
Voyage to the Sunken City
Front Lines
Front Lines would typically see play in some sort of a Big Paladin deck, often to summon all the deathrattles created by Rivendare, Warrider to end the game. If nothing else, it’s often hilarious, but that deck has consistently been Tier Fun at best.
Trenchstalker
The dream is Blackrock ’n’ Roll into Lor’themar Theron into Trenchstalker for 36 damage straight to the face. And then you wake up.
Murder at Castle Nathria
Convoke the Spirits
A lot of druid spells either build a board or buff it, so Convoke the Spirits can do some work as the top end of a Ramp Druid deck. It just turns out there are more consistent ways to end the game, especially as it transitions to Wild with a much larger (read: more random) pool of spells to draw from.
March of the Lich King
Disruptive Spellbreaker
This seemed like it would be a really strong tech card against spell-reliant decks, but it turns out that the tempo loss of playing a 5 mana 4/6 that doesn’t affect the board directly isn’t compensated for by discarding a spell, especially if your opponent either doesn’t run many spells (in order to draw with Magatha, Bane of Music, for instance) or just has spells in hand that they don’t care about losing.
Nerfed into the Ground
Murder at Castle Nathria
Sinful Brand
Sinful Brand used to cost 1 mana and deal 2 damage per shot, and when it did that it was broken, especially given the number of token generating cards Demon Hunter has access to. When you flip those numbers, it doesn’t do enough damage to justify including in a deck.
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