The Imbued Hero Powers introduced in Hearthstone’s Into the Emerald Dream have once again reshaped competitive viability across all classes that have access to them. These Hero Powers evolve through class-specific Imbue triggers and deliver enhanced effects, with some classes gaining immediate tempo or board pressure while others receive long-term scaling or burst damage potential.
Each Hero Power brings a distinct style to the game, which varies depending on whether the player is in Standard, Arena, or Wild mode. Archetypes that reliably activate Imbue effects tend to outperform others, especially those tied to explosive combos or sustainable value engines, and the classes with poor synergy or low-impact upgrades often fall behind. However, that doesn’t mean that skilled players can’t get some use out of them, even at the highest level.
Priest’s Imbued Hero Power offers a random playable Priest card when the Imbue condition is met. While the buffs make it so the card is playable, it is often too inconsistent to be truly useful and often lacks synergy with current meta decks.
Even control builds struggle to make meaningful use of the generated spells due to their unreliability, and despite some decent scaling, the power rarely influences the outcome of a game. It’s especially weak when compared to the permanent board or damage effects seen in other classes. While there’s experimental potential in spell-heavy or Menagerie decks, the lack of consistent payoff makes it the weakest Imbued Hero Power in competitive play.
Hunter’s Imbued Hero Power plays into the aggressive Hunter playstyle pretty well, granting handbuffs that build over time and can be slammed in a single turn for a decent swing play. It works best with tempo Beast decks, and although key cards like King Plush can offer insane value, they still require precise sequencing.
The power lacks burst, board clear, or sustained advantages, making it underwhelming against high-value or wide-board opponents. It performs moderately well in slower metas or when snowballing from early tempo, but falls short against disruption or control strategies.
Shaman’s Imbued Hero Power plays into a classic Shaman trope of transforming minions, only in this case, the buffs are a whole lot stronger. The power can generate huge swing turns with cards like Muck Pools or by using tokens from Schooling, but it relies on drawing and timing synergy pieces to achieve meaningful results.
Its strength lies in volatility, with powerful evolve chains that can win games, but weak or mistimed rolls often leave boards vulnerable. It performs best in decks built around swarm tactics, deathrattles, and transformation synergy, but suffers in faster metas where setup turns are punished.
Mage’s Imbued Hero Power builds towards dealing damage randomly to enemies and summoning a wide board of Wisps, with the power’s damage scaling from each activation. In Wild, it becomes game-ending when paired with Reckless Apprentice and Wildfire, allowing multiple activations in a single turn for overwhelming burst damage.
The power fits best with tempo and burn archetypes, offering flexible play patterns that reward board control and spell chaining. Even in Standard, it enables mid-game board swings and high-lethality turns, and its synergy with cheap spells makes it a high-ceiling power that punishes unprepared opponents.
Druid’s Imbued Hero Power calls back to a classic strategy from Gadgetzan with Jade Golems, only this time the summons look a lot more alive. The power functions similarly and synergizes perfectly with spell-heavy decks and cards like Hamuul Runetotem, who automatically triggers the Imbue at game start and again after every two spells.
The result is a board presence that grows passively, that can either serve as a primary win condition or a stall mechanic for the main event. The power supports both tempo and control playstyles, making it versatile and difficult to counter. It doesn’t rely on drawing specific combos and rewards natural gameplay progression, which lends it considerable power at all stages of the game.
Paladin’s Imbued Hero Power doesn’t sound all that strong, but with the right aggro deck and some handy draw mechanics, it suddenly snowballs into an unstoppable wave of giant dragons and fearsome summons. The effect might be delayed, but cards like Aegis of Light can activate the effect as early as turn two, allowing the shuffling to commence and the rest of the deck to take over.
The randomness of the Dragons adds variance, but the minion type does have a good degree of powerful cards towards both in the early game, like Astral Serpent, and the higher values like the Briarspawn Drake that can quickly turn the tide of even the trickiest situations. It functions both as an early-game snowballer and a late-game powerhouse, and there are few decks that can compete with it once the power gets going.
March 11, 2014
T for Teen: Alcohol Reference, Blood, Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes
Unity
