Harrison Jones and its usage

Question

I recently acquired Harrison Jones, the legendary card.

I thought it would serve as a great substitute for Acidic Swamp Ooze, but I haven't had the success in regards to destroying a weapon with Harrison Jones and getting a decent amount of cards. Usually I destroy the weapon, and get 1 card - since those I have faced use a weapon with 2 durability.

My real issue is that I don't have a clue in which deck / hero I should combine it into. HearthPwn has a long list of decks where Harrison Jones pops up now and then, but I cant seem to find a suitable combo and usage of Harrison Jones.

What are some great ways to use Harrison Jones and in which Hero combo?

Answer 1

There are no particular combinations, it depends entirely on whether your opponents play enough weapons for him to be worth it.

Harrison Jones is a 5/4 minion for 5 mana. You can get a 4/5 Chillwind Yeti for 4 mana, which is probably one of the best plain minions. Compared to that Harrison Jones is not a very good minion if you don't get to trigger his special ability. But a 5/4 for 5 mana is also not terrible.

But I think you're underestimating the value you got in the situations where you played him. Even one card drawn and 1 durability destroyed is a pretty good outcome. You denied your opponent card advantage they might have gotten from using their weapon a second time, and you gained 1 card advantage yourself from drawing a card. That is pretty good already.

The situations where Harrison Jones would be devastating would be enemies that use the following weapons:

• Paladin: Sword of Justice 1/5
• Shaman: Doomhammer 2/8
• Warlock: Lord Jaraxxus 3/8
• Rogue: Assassins Blade 3/4
• Paladin: Light's Justice 1/4

Harrison Jones is a very situational card. It depends entirely on the current meta and the opponents you face whether it makes sense to use him in your deck. In a very weapon-heavy meta he can be very useful, against a weaponless opponents he's a rather expensive and mediocre 5 drop.

Answer 2

So, when determining the value of a card in Hearthstone, you have to start by looking at the value of the card's abilities. Let's look at Harrison Jones' abilities seperately, and determine whether the card is worth it or not.

So let's start off with it's base stats. A 5/4, with no other abilities would be considered pretty decent at about 4 mana. This assumption is made due to the closest two minions in stats with a lack of or neutral beneficialness abilities are the Chillwind Yeti, at a 4/5 for 4, and the Ancient Brewmaster, a 5/4 with a sometimes beneficial, sometimes negative effect.

Next, let's look at it's abilities. This part is typically difficult to value concerning legendaries, since their abilities are often quite unique. Harrison Jones is a bit easier than most, due to his abilities being very straightforward as well as being on a couple other cards in a way, but still requiring speculation. The ability to destory an opponent's weapon on battlecry is a very powerful ability at times, but is definitely a situational ability. Acidic Swamp Ooze, the other card with this part of the ability is a 3/2 for 2, a fairly decently costed creature on it's own. This implies that the ability to destroy an opponent's weapon is valued low, perhaps not even enough to take into account for it's value. However, for now, let's simply say it's worth a half a mana, because of how game changing it can be from time to time.

It's final ability, the card draw for destroying an opponent's weapon is very situational, primarily due to the fact that most weapons tend to have 2 charges on them, so more often than not, when you destroy an opponent's weapon, it will only have 1 charge left, netting you only a single card. However, as seen on cards like Novice Engineer and Gnomish Inventor, 'Battlecry: Draw a Card' is worth about 1 mana when stapled to a creature. Again though, Harrison Jones only on occasion draws you a card, but at least it has a chance of drawing you multiple cards. So we'll give it the benefit of the doubt, considering how strong weapons tend to be, and put this part of the ability at 1/2 mana as well.

So let's look at what we've got for Harrison Jones. We have:

• 5/4 - 4 mana
• Battlecry: Destroy opponent's weapon - 1/2 mana
• Conditional 'Battlecry: Draw a card' - 1/2 mana
• Total: A bit generous of 5 mana

So While Harrison Jones isn't necessarily one of the most 'efficient' minions, he is definitely a viable option for decks for the same reason the Acidic Swamp Ooze is, for those edge cases where his Battlecry ability saves your behind. The difference in mana cost isn't a huge deal, considering most troublesome weapons cost 3 or more anyways. So if you have a spot in a deck with a generally low mana curve, I would definitely consider running him in the deck.

Answer 3

Harrison and the quickly changing meta

He is situational and moves along the current meta. There was a period I didn't see him, then there was a day I could see at least 1 per day, then it declined a lot probably after hunters changed from weapon+secret deck to a totally secretless and weaponless deck (I think Kolento made this deck) or when today's rogues only play miracle and usually don't run the 3/4 weapon.

Paladin is getting popular now. I have seen very strong paladins that run x2 Sword of Justice and small minions with charge; then when they run out of cards they use Divine Favor to get the cards back. Also Reynad made a midrange deck that is most likely to get popular in the following days. Maybe they will nerf miracle rogue as well and start using the 3/4 weapons, who knows? The future meta is impossible to predict.

With which classes will he be good?

We need to first think which class is most affected negatively by weapons. Obviously they don't usually hit with their weapons to your face, they try to control the board (except Sword of Justice), so you need to think "oh, I would totally hate that he plays X weapon and kills my Y"

You don't care about protecting a mid-to-strong minion (3-4 hp minion) as the following, therefore it is not very advisable to run Harrison in these:

• Warlock (handlock or zoo)
• Mage
• Hunter

From the non-listed above, I think he could fit most on Paladin and Druid.

Conclusion

If you simply put him in every deck without paying attention to the meta, it can cost you games. With everything we have said, I think you should know by now when he will be superior to a Swamp Ooze or Yeti and when he will not.

Answer 4

Hmm. Interesting. I am a big fan of the Acidic Swamp Ooze, because not only does it destroy weapons (usually before their second use of two, as you noted) but it's also good value without that ability - 3/2 for 2 mana seems to be similar to or slightly better than most alternatives. This means that when playing against a warrior, rogue or Paladin I like to try to keep it for its special ability, but against other classes it's still useful.

This legendary would seem to be a straight upgrade against classes that use lots of weapons (since you get a card back - more than one will be rather rare, but nice when it happens), but is probably less desirable as a plain minion - since by the time you're spending 5 mana, there are other more interesting thing available.

So as the other answer said, very situational. Maybe worth a try, but given that one doesn't normally know who one will be playing against, I'm skeptical.