It would be a pretty strange battle of the bands if no one played any songs, right? As a result, it should be no surprise that Hearthstone’s music-themed expansion, Festival of Legends, came with a song for each class in the form of legendary spells.
And there’s a pretty big range in how good these cards actually are. Some are chart-topping hits, while others you probably want to delete from your playlist. Setting the song metaphors aside (for now, at least), here are all the legendary spells from Festival of Legends, ranked.
11 Blackrock ‘N’ Roll
Did someone say five mana do nothing? No? Well, then Blackrock ‘n’ Roll probably doesn’t interest you. Blackrock ‘n’ Roll's biggest flaw is that it doesn’t affect the cards in your hand. As a result, you can’t wait until you have high mana, then play the spell and some other minions in the same turn.
The only way Blackrock ‘n’ Roll can really be good is if you can draw and play it early, don’t die because you wasted your entire turn, then draw into useful minions. And that’s just far too specific of a scenario to build a deck around.
10 Rhythm And Roots
Rhythm and Roots is really slow. Druid is better at taking advantage of effects like this than other classes; ramp gives them more mana to work with, allowing them to spend four mana without costing themselves too much tempo.
The thing is, once Druid gets to a high mana total, they usually want to enact an explosive power play that wins the game almost immediately. And Rhythm and Roots is the opposite of that. It triggers after a delay, and even if you can afford to wait, just getting a pile of stats often isn’t enough to win games.
9 Going Down Swinging
In theory, Going Down Swinging has great synergy with attack buffs and cards that give your Hero Lifesteal. In a perfect scenario, it becomes a highly effective—if relatively expensive—board clear that also heals you.
Sadly, the card doesn’t seem to have a place at the moment. It isn’t particularly well-suited to Relic Demon Hunter, which doesn’t focus on attack boosts and already has a Lifesteal board clear in Unleash Fel. Meanwhile, Outcast Demon Hunter plays too fast to use a slow board clear like Going Down Swinging.
8 Bounce Around (ft. Garona)
Bounce Around (ft. Garona) is basically just a worse Shadowstep. Reducing the cost of a card to one is better than reducing it by two on big cards, but on cheap cards, Shadowstep can reduce their cost to zero. Plus, Shadowstep costs nothing initially.
Shadowstep has been a staple of broken Rogue decks since Hearthstone’s launch, so in theory, Bounce Around (ft. Garona) could still be good. However, while some decks have found that having another way to utilize that effect is beneficial, most haven’t opted to use it.
7 Infinitize the Maxitude
After a buff, Infinitize the Maxitude now gives a one-mana reduction to the spells it discovers. That doesn’t sound like much on the surface, but the total mana reduction you can get over the course of the game can be extremely impactful.
Even so, Infinitize the Maxitude is both finicky to use, since cleanly ending your turn with two mana left over isn’t always easy, and simply isn’t all that powerful. Getting semi-random spells is nice, especially with a discount, but in today’s Hearthstone, value rarely wins games on its own. The card needs a strong deck around it to find success, and at the moment, such a deck doesn’t really exist.
6 Stranglethorn Heart
Stranglethorn Heart got a massive buff in the form of a two-mana discount, dropping from ten to eight mana. That will absolutely make the card better, but it may not be enough. The trouble is, Stranglethorn Heart feels like a win-more card a lot of the time.
For Stranglethorn Heart to be good, you’ll need to have played big, powerful Beasts, not won the game with their effects, had them die, and still be in a position where re-summoning them will win you the game. That's a lot of conditions to meet. The one saving grace of Stranglethorn Heart is that it has Tradeable. That means you can send it back into your deck until that situation actually arises.
5 Jive, Insect!
Ragnaros is back! Well, technically he was already back with the Year of the Wolf Core Set, but Jive, Insect! lets you summon him at a significant discount. The deck that would be a natural fit for this card, Overload Shaman, wasn’t great to start the, but Jive, Insect! saw early play in Totem Shaman lists as a finisher.
Unfortunately, it was one of the worst-performing cards in the deck, and many newer variants on the archetype have cut the card entirely. Still, the idea of a five-mana Ragnaros (or potentially cheaper, with certain Overload-synergy cards) remains appealing. And significant buffs to certain Overload cards shortly after Festival of Legend's release make Jive, Insect! worth another look.
4 Climactic Necrotic Explosion
Climactic Necrotic Explosion has the sort of high-impact effect you want from a ten-mana card. If you’ve spent enough corpses, the card can provide a massive amount of tempo and value if it doesn’t win the game outright.
The biggest problem with Climactic Necrotic Explosion is that it forces you to play all three runes in a single deck. As a result, you are not only giving up on exceptional triple-rune cards like Soulstealer and Frostwyrm’s Fury, but you also miss out on a lot of powerful double-rune cards. There are many times when you’d rather just play a triple-rune deck instead. That said, triple-rune decks have been nerfed pretty heavily from where they were at Festival of Legends' launch, so Rainbow Death Knight is more appealing than before.
3 Symphony Of Sins
Few cards in Hearthstone’s history have as many unique effects as Symphony of Sins. The cards it shuffles into your deck cost just three mana and have powerful effects ranging from drawing six cards to removing the top six cards from your opponent’s deck. As a result, the card provides significant late-game value.
And the best part is that it comes with a strong immediate effect, unlike some other cards on this list (cough Blackrock ‘n’ Roll cough). Since there are just seven total options, you are likely to discover one that will help you, no matter what danger you happen to be facing.
2 Starlight Groove
Starlight Goove’s effect is one we haven’t seen so far in Hearthstone’s history. Your Hero getting Divine Shield isn’t as good as giving yourself immune, as you might with something like Ice Block, or reducing all damage to one, like with Solid Alibi.
However, the ability to refresh the Divine Shield each turn means the damage blocked by Starlight Groove’s effect will add up over the course of a game. As a result, it is performing well in several decks. Control decks love the defense the card provides, and it also sees play in decks with a lot of synergy based around Divine Shields.
1 Love Everlasting
It turns out that getting a two-mana discount on every spell you play for the rest of the game is, in fact, good. Control Priest already wanted to play a spell on most of their turns, so Love Everlasting was a natural fit for the deck.
Love Everlasting has particular synergy with Sister Svalna, who creates a spell that reappears in your hand every turn, but there are plenty of other powerful spells at Control Priest’s disposal. Just compare Love Everlasting to Infinitize the Maxitude, which forces you to pay for its discount every time, and you’ll see how strong it really is.