May 06, 2015

Hunter Trap Cards - How Good are Hunter Secrets?

I have compiled a list of hunter traps in Hearthstone while discussing their positive and negative points. Hunter class has a total of 5 Secrets. Here is the list of type of Hunter traps/secrets and analysis on how good these cards are?

Hunter Trap Cards in Hearthstone

Explosive Trap

This is the most commonly used hunter trap and probably the most powerful one. This trap deals 2 damage to all enemies (enemy minions and hero) when your hero is attacked. Because of its aggressive nature, this card is normally found in the Face Hunter deck. But this Hunter secret is so good as it clears minions on board and deals damage to the face, that it can be used in any hunter deck. One of the reasons for the popularity of the Kezan Mystic minion (steals a random enemy secret) is because of Explosive Trap. All in all, Explosive trap is the signature trap of hunters and is a must have in Face Hunter deck.


Freezing Trap

Freezing Trap is the second most commonly used Hunter trap in Hearthstone. Just like Explosive Trap is the signature secret of Face Hunter deck, Freezing Trap is the signature trap of Mid-range or Control Hunter deck. This is a very powerful secret but needs to be used more cautiously than the other traps. This trap sends the minion that attacks you or your minion back to your opponents hand and it costs 2 more. Now, it is perfectly fine to use this trap on early game minions to gain tempo and finish the game faster but it is always a good idea to use this trap on mid game or late game minions. Minions like Ysera that cost 9 mana can become unplayable because of this trap. So, this is the second most used Hunter trap at the time of writing this post and one of these two traps will definitely be a part of any Hunter's deck in the current meta.


Snake Trap

Apart form the above two traps, the third popular Hunter trap is the Snake Trap. This trap summons 3 1/1 Snakes when any of your minions is attacked. This trap has great synergy with Knife Juggler. A minion who attacks Knife Juggler may not be able to kill it because of the 3 juggles generated from the activation of the Snake Trap. I personally find this trap to be really good and it has some great synergies in Hunter class because the snakes are of Beast tribe. You can use Hound master or Kill Command in synergy with these snakes. This trap however, is not as good in Face Hunter deck as in Control or Mid range deck. I always play this trap in my mid range hunter deck and it has always produced good results for me.


Snipe

Snipe deals 4 damage to the minion summoned by the enemy. This is probably the weakest of all Hunter traps in Hearthstone. First of all, Hunter is an aggressive class and having traps that deal damage to the face or help in dealing damage to the face are more suitable in this class' decks. Secondly, this trap might kill a very weak minion or may not be able to kill a strong minion, making this secret terrible. Also, most of the minions have Battlecry element associated with them. This effect happens before a minion is summoned. As, the trap activates after a minion is summoned, even if this trap kills the minion, the Battlecry effect may be the only reason to summon that minion and it has successfully done that already. So, this is not a great Hunter secret, you can play this secret to surprise you opponent as they may not expect it but it is not very viable and I will advise you against it.


Misdirection

Misdirection is very interesting secret. It is very uncommon like snipe but is fun to play. So, you might make some crazy plays using this secret but it is not good in any standard decks. This secret reads as 'When a character attacks your hero, it instead attacks another random character'. This means it can trigger on both enemy heroes with weapons or hero powers and their minions when they attack you face. When, the secret activates, the character attacking will attack any random target including your minions instead of your face. One of the best interactions can be, an opponent minion with high attack damage attacking opponents face or two big minions attacking each other. This trap can win you games but most of the times, it is not effective as it ends up doing small damage to enemy characters or killing your minions.


Hope you enjoyed reading this insight into the Hunter secrets in Hearthstone. You can view all the secrets and secret related cards here: http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Secret

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