I’ll Show You Who’s 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 Forged in the Barrens’ 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. This post is kind of like Antiques Roadshow for your card collection; some of those dusty old antiques you've been holding on to could be used to buy some shiny new legendaries.
Hey, Where’s Archwitch Willow?
This guide is going to focus exclusively on cards from expansion sets that are rotating out of Standard after the Year of the Phoenix comes to a close (Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum, Descent of Dragons, and Galakrond’s Awakening). Cards that are listed as safe to dust have seen virtually no play in the two years they’ve been in Standard, so it's unlikely 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.
All that said, there are certainly cards that have not seen play in sets from Year of the Phoenix that are remaining in Standard, but I’m not advocating you dust those yet. Cards go in and out of the meta depending on what’s printed. If I wrote a guide for these sets even two months ago, Whirlkick Master and Nozdormu the Timeless might have been on it, because they saw no significant play last year, but were core to top meta decks recently; had you dusted your copies last year, those decks would cost you 800 - 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 Dragon 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. (Note: This year's rotation also involves a major change to the Core set; I’ll cover cards that are rotating from Classic and Basic in a separate post once we know what the new Classic format meta looks like.)
This guide also only lists epic and legendary cards because that’s where your best return from dusting comes from. You get 5 dust for a common and 20 dust for a rare, so you need to dust a lot of commons and rares to get anywhere. 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 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 cards, you won’t have many wild commons and rares left.
Enough talk, though; let’s find you some dust. We’re gonna be rich!
Legendary - Safe Dust
Rise of Shadows
Commander Rhyssa: Paladin secrets just haven’t had enough support since Mysterious Challenger rotated, and Paladin secrets just aren’t impactful enough to run enough of in a deck to justify including a card like Rhyssa. Even when you could get a secret in play and manage to have Rhyssa live long enough for the secret to trigger twice, it usually just didn't matter.
Nozari: Way, way too slow. Even in the decks like Holy Wrath Paladin that wanted to go long and draw their whole deck, taking a whole turn off to heal to full doesn’t do as much as you’d like it to. Without affecting the board, you’re just delaying the inevitable for a turn, and the 4 attack probably isn’t going to help address the board that’s grown stronger on the following turn, either.
Tak Nozwhisker: If you have time to play Tak, and shuffle a bunch of cards into your deck that you need to then draw naturally, you probably didn’t need any of that to actually win the game.
Arch Villain Rafaam: Rafaam had his day in the sun at Worlds 2019, and after that it was clear that it wasn’t a viable game plan. In theory, this could have been good in a control style warlock, except we haven’t really had the tools for that since Defile rotated, and random legendaries are a very mixed bag.
Fel Lord Betrug: I was sure the Betrug/Plot Twist deck would be a thing, but no dice. It’s fun to get off of Galakrond, but you don’t really need it in your deck.
The Boom Reaver: Big Warrior is actually a thing, but the problem is that The Boom Reaver isn’t something you want the other recruit cards in the deck to pull. So it doesn’t make the cut there, and that’s really the only deck that wants an effect like this.
Saviors of Uldum
Raid the Sky Temple: Your reward for playing a bunch of spells that generate more random spells is… Even more random spells? The quests that work give you a game plan to work toward; Raid the Sky Temple just gives you more RNG on top of the RNG you already need to complete the quest.
Hack the System: Completing the quest is awkward, because it requires running a lot of weapons, and at a certain point your hand just gets clogged up with cards you can’t play, because they’ll overwrite the weapon you already have. Once you’re done, you have a bunch of 4/3s that don’t have taunt or rush that your opponent can just clear with AoE or ignore.
Descent of Dragons
Dragonrider Talritha: Paladin does occasionally run a small dragon package now, but you’d have to run a lot more dragons than Paladin tends to want in order to get consistent value from Talritha, and the dragons Paladin has access to just aren’t good enough to justify that.
Waxadred: Why put Waxadred in your deck when you can just get it from Draconic Lackey whenever you want?
Nithogg: The eggs are relatively easy to clear, and they’re actively bad in a deck that runs Bloodlust or Storm's Wrath as a win condition: You can’t buff them the turn you play them ,because they’ll lose the buffs when they transform, and if they do manage to stick, they can’t go face the next turn anyway.
Zzeraku the Warped: If you can play an 8 mana 4/12 and not die immediately, you didn’t need it to win the game in the first place. Also worth noting your opponent doesn’t care how many 6/6s you have on board when they’re rushing past Zzeraku to hit you in the face for lethal.
Galakrond’s Awakening
Grand Lackey Erkh: You’re actually limited by board space as far as the value you can squeeze out of Erkh, and the payoff just ends up not being worth it. Even in Galakrond Rogue, which plays a gazillion lackeys a game, you just didn’t need the value from Erkh to win.
Legendary - Marginal Play
Rise of Shadows
Oblivitron: I’m mainly listing this in fringe play because my friend Sidisi has managed to build successful Deathrattle decks with Oblivitron. He’s also way better at playing Hunter than I am, and likely way better than you as well, so your mileage may vary.
Vereesa Windrunner: See Oblivitron (with burn spells instead of deathrattle minions).
Keeper Stalladris: Soon after Stalladris got printed, the Druid quest came along, and once you were getting both effects at once, you didn’t really need the halves back in your hand anymore.
Lucentbark: Lucentbark has been a high roll off of evolve or random minion effects, but it’s extremely hard to take advantage of, even in a class that ramps mana. 5 healing is actually quite a lot, because you need to either have a minion or your face with that much damage on it. Not to mention that Druid’s healing effects that were printed since Lucentbark are kind of underwhelming. But the nail in the coffin for Lucentbark was Zephrys; once any deck had access to silence and polymorph effects in the late game, relying on a single copy of a deathrattle minion wasn’t feasible.
Chef Nomi: Chef Nomi requires two things to function - Tons of card draw and some way to get multiple copies of him. Nomi Priest had both those things last year, but losing Seance and Northshire Cleric made that game plan much more difficult. Nomi Priest might yet be viable in Wild, but there are many more ways in that format to deal with a couple of boards of 6/6 minions.
Swampqueen Hagatha: Hagatha saw some play in four set metas, but she’s incredibly slow. You pay 7 mana for effectively a vanilla 5/5, and then the following turn (or later) you get to get the payoff, and the payoff is two spells on a stick, which sometimes run at cross purposes or else just don’t make an impact.
Saviors of Uldum
Making Mummies: Quest Paladin was always a low-tier deck, but Zilliax rotating really took the wind out of its sails. Being able to magnetize Zilliax onto another mech to make recurring lifesteal divine shield minions was the win condition last year; without that, none of the reborn minions are really good enough on their own, nor are there enough deathrattle minions good enough to copy repeatedly. In Wild, you just won’t have time to play reborn minions fast enough before you’re outclassed by most decks in the format.
Anka, the Buried: Anka had its moment in the sun for the brief moment before Necrium Apothecary was nerfed, and then the deathrattles in standard got significantly worse after the subsequent rotation. Deathrattle Rogue is occasionally a thing in Wild, so Anka could eventually have some value there.
Dark Pharaoh Tekahn: Every so often, someone builds a midrange Warlock that revolves around lackey synergy, people try it for a day, and then bail on it. Tekahn is like getting the key to Value Town when the stars align, but that usually happens when it’s generated by Rogue cards and not when put in Warlock decks on purpose.
Octosari: Whenever a deck doesn’t have much card draw, Octosari inevitably comes up as a less than serious suggestion. It’s been tried in some extremely aggressive decks for one final push, but with only one copy, it’s inconsistent at best, and likely to just end the game in your opponent’s favor if it comes too late.
Colossus of the Moon: Any deck that has “Big” in the name has probably made use of Colossus of the Moon at one point or another, but those decks typically haven’t performed well, and when they have, Colossus of the Moon usually wasn’t in the list. If you enjoy playing Big decks in wild, you don't need Colossus of the Moon, but it does show up on Big Shaman lists in particular, from time to time.
Descent of Dragons
Bandersmosh: Simply put, there are a lot of legendaries that are just bad, or at least are bad for the deck you’re playing. Bandersmosh can be game breaking when it works out, but it needs to decide that it wants to be the legendary that you need at that moment, and it needs to actually be playable at that moment (you have enough mana available, you won’t die if you play it, etc.). That just doesn’t happen often enough in practice. In Wild, the random legendary pool is way bigger, so it's even more of a crap shoot there.
Valdris Felgorge: The only time Valdris saw play in Standard was when Mountain Giant was still in the format; since Mountain Giant rotated to the Hall of Fame, hand size really hasn’t mattered enough to want to expand your mind. That said, if you’re a fan of Handlock in Wild, you could still make use of Valdris, since the Mountain Giants still roam free there.
Frizz Kindleroost: In a theoretical pre-release meta, Frizz was terrifying, especially given the number of dragons that were printed alongside it. In practice, even when you draw Frizz in time to play it on curve for maximum value, the discount on cards that were already expensive didn’t make enough of an impact unless you were playing something like Malygos that really cared about having extra mana to play alongside it.
Shu’ma: Shu’ma might as well be a Hunter legendary, because it’s only ever been used in Quest Hunter, and even then not consistently. If you absolutely love Quest Hunter, you may want to hold on to it, otherwise feel free to wave goodbye to it (seven times, once for each tentacle).
Galakrond’s Awakening
Fist of Ra-Den: The only reason Fist of Ra-Den has seen play in Standard is because the only 1-cost legendary minion in the format is Reliquary of Souls, and if you can get four Reliquary Primes shuffled into your deck, then you have a pretty good late game setup. In Wild, Sir Finley exists, so you’re much more likely to go through all that work for some British murlocs.
Sky General Kragg: The power level is so high in Standard that a 2/3 taunt that summons a 4/2 rush just isn’t good enough as a payoff for hurting your mulligan with a quest. Outside of maybe quest highlander decks, that goes double in Wild.
Epic - Safe Dust
Rise of Shadows
Crystal Stag: See Lucentbark.
Arcane Fletcher: The problem with trying to make Fletch happen is that if you have enough 1 cost minions to get value from this, you probably don’t have a ton of spells, and vice versa. Theoretically, Quest Hunter should have been the place for this card to see play, especially before Halazza, the Lynx and Springpaw rotated, but even then it was just better to put more minions who made minions in your deck than to use this to dig for Unleash the Hounds or Swarm of Locusts.
Dragon Speaker: You need to run a ton of dragons to get value from a card like this; at minimum, you want to hit at least two dragons in your hand in order to justify the cost of putting the card in your deck. What that means is that you probably have to hold the dragons in your hand until turn 5 and then play them buffed, which means you're actively holding back on tempo to gain value later, which Paladin just doesn't have the additional support to get away with.
Unidentified Contract: Rogues are the extreme couponers of Hearthstone; they don’t like paying full price for anything. And even discounted, this contract is just way too expensive to remove a single minion. It doesn't help that Flik Skyshiv was printed two sets later, whose bonus effect of "summon a 4/4 and destroy all other copies of the target" is way better than any of Unidentified Contract's bonuses.
Jumbo Imp: Flesh Giant is a better Jumbo Imp.
Hench Clan Hag: 4 mana is just too expensive for a token generator, and very few decks have enough cards that care about what type a minion is on the board (dragons care about in hand, elementals care about played last turn, etc.).
Azerite Elemental: We only recently got reasons to actually care about having spell damage in Scholomance Academy, and that set also gave us much better ways to acquire said spell damage. Not to mention Imprisoned Phoenix, which was printed in Darkmoon Races, is this card but significantly cheaper, as well as more likely to live long enough to see the spell damage actually take effect.
Portal Overfiend: The body is underwhelming, and 2/2 rush minions that you can’t control when you get them aren’t what any deck needs.
Whirlwind Tempest: If you can get a windfury minion to stick long enough to get an 8 mana 6/6 on board and have its card text actually make a difference, you probably already won that game without needing Whirlwind Tempest.
Saviors of Uldum
Scarlet Webweaver: Some people lived the discount King Krush dream, but most of the time, that kind of a setup is much, much slower than Hunter wants to play.
Wild Bloodstinger: Even in a world where OTK Demon Hunter and ETC Warrior exist, a gigantic Dirty Rat isn’t good enough to be run in meta decks.
Shadow of Death: Sure, getting extra Questing Adventurers or whatever is cool when you discover this, but building your deck entirely around getting effects like this to happen isn’t what Rogue wants to do. Most of the minions it runs are small utility minions, and the big bombs it does have, like Edwin, get that way via combo or battlecry effects.
Riftcleaver: Warlock already has a hard removal option at 6 mana in Siphon Soul, and that didn’t see a whole lot of play. The 7/5 body is nice, but there are better removal options that don’t involve hitting yourself in the face for a lot, and 6 mana is extremely slow to begin with.
Dwarven Archaeologist: The cost reduction on the discovered cards is outweighed by the cost of using a card slot in your deck for an effect like this.
Mischief Maker: This is the worst kind of combo disruption, because the odds of it hitting are extremely low given the number of cards in the opponent’s deck (on average, the odds of pulling what you want are somewhere between 1/8 and 1/16 if you get this early).
Body Wrapper: The problem with Body Wrapper is that it’s extremely slow; you need the minion you want to die, and then you shuffle it into your deck and you need to draw it again and pay full mana for it. Generally, when you’re playing a deck that keeps bringing minions back, you want it immediately in your hand (like Raise Dead) or back onto the board (Psychopomp, Mass Resurrection, etc.).
Desert Obelisk: Maybe you’re the savant who can build a deck consistent enough to trigger Obelisk’s card text consistently. But we’ve had two years and no one’s managed so far.
Mortuary Machine: 5 mana 8/8s with a big downside have typically been good enough to play, but apparently doubling up all your opponent’s minions is a bridge too far.
Descent of Dragons
Secure the Deck: In order for Secure the Deck to be good, Druid would need a lot of cards like Demon Hunter has to boost its attack consistently over the course of the game, and it just doesn’t have enough tools like that.
Envoy of Lazul: Envoy actually gets better as the game proceeds, because you can target known generated cards as being in the opponent’s hand (the other two cards shown are from the opponent’s deck). But that makes Envoy much better generated and much worse included in your deck as a tempo play.
Transmogrifier: Random legendary minions are a pretty mixed bag, and it’s very unlikely that those random legendaries are going to be better than cards you chose to put in your deck.
Wyrmrest Purifier: Purifier has only ever been used to clean Hakkar blood out of your deck, and even then only rarely.
Blowtorch Saboteur: With the possible exception of when Metamorphosis dealt 5 damage before it was nerfed, things have to be extremely dire to want to run a minion just to make your opponent’s hero power cost more for one activation.
Dread Raven: You need to be going all in on copying beasts to get value out of Dread Raven, and that plan just isn’t worth the payoff.
Chromatic Egg: Chromatic Egg is a card with a very powerful deathrattle; the problem is that usually expensive deathrattles go in decks that want to resummon them, and because the deathrattle is applied via the battlecry, resurrecting this card gives you a vanilla 0/3.
Tentacled Menace: If your deck has enough super expensive cards to abuse Tentacled Menace, you probably don’t have time to play a vanilla 6/5 for 5 mana without being at risk of dying.
Galakrond’s Awakening
Shadow Sculptor: 5 mana may as well be a million as far as Rogue is concerned, and you have much better ways to draw a bunch of cards than this. Heck, Sprint only costs 2 more mana.
Chaos Gazer: This was intended to replace Dirty Rat like effects in Standard, except it was never really good enough. In Wild, if you want an effect like this, you can just play Dirty Rat or Demonic Project for better results.
Epic - Marginal Play
Rise of Shadows
Crystalsong Portal: Spell Druid ran Crystalsong Portal at one point to get more minion density, until we figured out that just drawing a ton with Exotic Mountseller was way better.
Nine Lives: With better deathrattles than we’ve had available in Standard, Nine Lives could be better; Deathrattle Hunter hasn’t historically been great in Wild, but if it is, Nine Lives could find its way into a list.
Shadowy Figure: Psychopomp power crept this card an expansion later, not that it was ever good enough to see play in the first place. The idea of a resurrect deck is you expect the minions to die; if one of the deathrattles stays on board you probably are already well on your way to winning.
Unseen Saboteur: If you need to disrupt a spell based combo, then Unseen Saboteur could come in handy. Just because we haven’t seen many of those in Standard doesn’t mean there won’t be some in Wild. Maybe Freeze Mage makes a comeback or something.
Big Bad Archmage: Big Shaman would run Archmage as a way to build board off of a Eureka; it’s fine, but in Wild you have better options.
Saviors of Uldum
Tortollan Pilgrim: This card got nerfed to pull the card out of your deck instead of a copy. The end.
Note: The change to this card may be reverted when it rotates to Wild; it may be worth waiting a week or two to see if reverting the nerf affects its value before dusting it.
Mogu Cultist: There was an OTK deck at the end of Year of the Dragon that used Supreme Archaology along with a ton of draw to be able to live the dream. If you want to play a version of that deck in Wild, you can hold on to Mogu Cultist, but the odds of having enough time to pull that off (or be able to chew through all the armor from the decks that do give you that kind of time) in Wild are pretty slim.
History Buff: Some aggro decks tried to use History Buff, especially if they ran a lot of cheap minions, but it never really hit where you wanted it to, and it turns out you’re better off just working with the natural synergies of your minions rather than trying to buff their stats in hand, especially since History Buff encourages you to hold your powerful aggro minions instead of committing them to the board.
Blatant Decoy: There was a very brief period of time when Blatant Decoy saw play in Resurrect Priest, mainly to pull Shirvallah out of a Holy Wrath Paladin’s hand prematurely. In a format where Dirty Rat exists, we probably don’t need Blatant Decoy, though.
Descent of Dragons
Sanctuary: Sanctuary sometimes saw play in Duel Paladin to have early minions without running small minions that could get pulled out with Duel or Commencement. Outside of that deck specifically, though, a 3/6 taunt for 2 mana that comes out when your opponent chooses isn’t as good as it sounds.
Umbral Skulker: Turns out, you don’t really need coins when you could just generate more and more lackeys, unless you’re going for some sort of a Malygos finisher.
Necrium Apothecary: Necrium Apothecary was great at 4 mana, but the problem with nerfing to 5 is that it gives you more chances to draw the cards that you ideally want to pull out of the deck with it, especially given you need to combo it. Even if you do pull it off, the impact that much later is less and your opponent is more likely to have answers for your bomb deathrattle.
Note: The change to this card may be reverted when it rotates to Wild; it may be worth waiting a week or two to see if reverting the nerf affects its value before dusting it.
Skyfin: Generally, you only run two copies of Scalelord in Murloc Paladin to turn on Skyfin’s battlecry. That’s generally too variant to run a 5 mana 3/3 in an aggressive deck.
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