Bane of Doom

Bane of Doom is an epic warlock spell card, inducted into the Legacy set, formerly from the Classic set.

Previous availability

 * Regular Bane of Doom could also be obtained as a first-time reward for first time reaching Platinum 10 and Diamond 10 in Ranked mode from April 1, 2020 to March 25, 2021 (or as a reward of Climbing the Ranks (6/10) and (8/10) achievements).

Strategy
Bane of Doom should only be played when it kills the target. The alternative, dealing only two damage without summoning a Demon, is a very weak play given the five mana cost.

The spell can be very strong or quite weak depending on the Demon it summons, as demons have a huge variance in strength. A weak demon like Blood Imp or Shadowhoof Slayer or a harmful one like Unlicensed Apothecary or Howlfiend can incur a huge tempo loss or put you at a disadvantage, or a temporary one if it summons a Dormant demon like Imprisoned Observer, while a powerful demon like Doomguard, Voidlord, Hulking Overfiend, and Priestess of Fury can give you a strong lead. Of course, if the player is about to lose the game, using Bane of Doom may be the only option, since it has the potential to summon a Demon that can disrupt the opponent's attack, such as Felguard or Wrathspike Brute.

Bane of Doom can be used with Spell Damage minions (like Bloodmage Thalnos) to increase the amount of targets it can kill, thereby increasing the potential to activate its demon-summoning effect.

Possible minions
This table lists all collectible Demons in Standard format, representing the full range of possible summons from Bane of Doom.

History
Prior to Patch 2.4.0.8311, Bane of Doom could summon only Blood Imp, Voidwalker, Flame Imp, Dread Infernal, Succubus or Felguard. No other Demons would be summoned.

This set the card apart from a number of other "random minion" cards such as Webspinner and Piloted Shredder, which (as Bane of Doom does now) pick from among all collectible cards of the stated type. This discrepancy was noted by the developers, especially in response to player requests following the release of Goblins vs Gnomes, but the card was only changed with the patch accompanying the release of Blackrock Mountain.

One reason for the original design may have been the power of Demons such as Lord Jaraxxus and Mal'Ganis, which could have resulted in Bane of Doom being too powerful. The restricted range of minions also limited the amount of RNG involved, decreasing the potential to swing matches based on which minion was summoned. It also gave developers more "design space" by allowing them to add more Demons to the game without worrying about their potentially unbalancing effect if summoned by Bane of Doom.

Following 4 months of requests from players, with Patch 2.4.0.8311 the spell was changed to be able to summon any collectible Demon. The change was highly unusual, given the developers' stance on not buffing cards, since it was considered to make the spell far more powerful, and led to a significant rise in its popularity. The developers categorised the change as a 'bug fix' rather than a card change, later explaining their motivation for the change as "when it didn't do what it said it did, you couldn't trust any other cards with the same text to do what they say. That's it."

Lore
This spell's first incarnation was as 'Doom' in , where it was the ultimate ability of the pit lord neutral hero. It would curse a target to take damage and when it died it would summon a doomguard. It was later reinvented in World of Warcraft as the infamous warlock spell 'Curse of Doom', later renamed 'Bane of Doom'. It applied a damage over time effect to a character, and each time it dealt damage had a chance to summon a Demon Guardian. While Cataclysm saw the spell deal damage every fifteen seconds, with a chance to summon an Ebon Imp who would automatically assist the warlock, the original spell had a duration of 60 seconds and dealt damage only once, at the completion of the effect, with a chance to summon a Doomguard. Unlike the Ebon Imp, the summoned Doomguard was not under the warlock's control, and would immediately attack the warlock upon spawning. The Doomguard was quite capable of killing the warlock and his allies, and had to be enslaved via the warlock's Enslave Demon spell in order to control him, although he could resist enslavement, or break free later on and begin attacking the warlock again. Prior to Patch 2.4.0.8311, this was somewhat ironic, since Doomguard was not one of the demons that could be summoned by the Hearthstone incarnation of Bane of Doom.

Trivia

 * The artwork for this card comes from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game "Scourgewar" series, for the card Detonate Soul.

Patch changes

 * Moved from Classic to Legacy set.
 * Can now summon any collectible demons. Doom . . . DOOM! [Previously limited to Blood Imp, Voidwalker, Flame Imp, Dread Infernal, Succubus and Felguard]