Warcraft Rumble Emperor Thaurissan Guide (New Season 3 Leader)

Emperor Thaurrisan Guide: Warcraft Rumble Season 3’s New Leader

Warcraft Rumble’s Emperor Thaurissan is the newest leader who arrived along with the all-new Season 3 update. He is a unique leader who buffs all non-elemental minis on the map and brings value no matter when he is played. At launch, he’s already one of the stronger leaders as he performs well in both PVE and PVP.

Overview

Rating

• PvE: A Tier
• PVP: A Tier

Traits

• Ranged
• AoE
• Elemental
• Fiery Weapon Enchant
  • Non-Elemental allies apply Burn on hit.

Ability

Fiery Weapon Enchant: While in play, Thaurissan’s ability allows any allied unit on the field that does physical damage to apply burn to an enemy for 8 seconds. This physical damage does not need to come from an attack – any source of physical damage will apply burn to the enemy. For example, Quilboar with his Bristleback talent, does physical damage to melee enemy minis that attack him, which will trigger burning on all enemies hitting him as well. Do note that burning, unlike poison, does not stack on the enemy. Any further instances of burn will only refresh its duration, and not do more damage on the enemy.

A big advantage of Fiery Enchant for physical minis is that it helps add elemental damage to their attacks by burning. This helps physical damage minis take down armored minis much faster by dealing elemental damage. A Huntress used to take forever to defeat a group of Footmen, but with Firey Enchant, the burning damage will allow her to quickly melt through the armored group of enemies.

General Impressions and Comparisons

Thaurissan is one of the stronger leaders due to his map-wide leader ability that buffs all minis on the field. This means that minis that are already strong can deal even more damage by Thaurissan just being present on the field. With his strongest talent, Hubris, he further buffs his minis by giving them extra levels. Thaurissan thus promotes a different type of playstyle, being a mini-centric buffing leader, much like how Jaina is a spell-centric leader by buffing spells.

Thaurissan boasts the highest HP for a ranged mini, having double the HP of an already tanky Ogre Magi. He is difficult to snipe down, and will usually be the last unit standing. However, the tradeoff is that he has the lowest DPS compared to the rest of the ranged units. Even adding the damage from applying burn, he still ranks in second last, only narrowly winning Murloc Tidehunters and Charlga, both 2 cost minis.

Going by his stats alone, Thaurissan is intended to be a bulky ranged bruiser who survives for a long time and deals low damage over a longer period of time, while other buffed minis dish out the damage.

Thaurissan major weakness is his inability to hit air minis even though he is ranged. This inflexibility means that you will always want to bring more minis that also can hit air minis and play them alongside damage.

Synergies with Minis

Running Thaurissan with any physical damage mini would allow that mini to activate his leader’s ability to burn the enemy. However, a few minis deserve special mention due to how well they synergise with Thaurissan.

Quilboar

Already Rumble’s most commonly played mini, Quilboar gets even stronger with the interaction between Thaurissan’s ability and Quilboar’s talent Bristleback. Bristleback allows Quilboar to deal a small amount of physical damage to melee units attacking Bristleback, which will now also burn enemies. He will decimate squad minis faster than ever before and trade with minis like Prowler much better than before.

Defias Bandits

With his Poison talent and Thaurissan, Bandits will now stun, poison, burn, and stun up to 2 enemies for 1 gold.

Harvest Golem

Thaurissan’s weapon enchant works on the chickens summoned by the Golem when it dies. As it dies twice due to its innate respawn, it will summon 2 sets of 4 chickens. The chicken can spread out and deal burn to multiple enemies, causing a lot of extra damage, all for the cost of 3 gold. In PvP, Harvest Golem can be a very strong defensive unit that only gets better with the addition of Thaurissan.

Talents

Moira’s Wit

Moira’s Wit is Thaurissan’s weakest talent and should be bought last. In PvE and PvP matches, this talent will rarely make any difference.

Although a self-heal for a tanky bruiser unit like Thaurissan sounds good on paper, Moira’s Wit heal depends on the number of enemies afflicted by burn, and for each enemy burned, the healing is too little to make any noticeable difference as to whether Thaurissan lives or dies.

Further, Thaurissan is a ranged mini and will seldom take much damage enough to kill him. If Thaurissan is taking damage enough to kill him, it is likely that the frontline is down and Thaurissan will be dead even with the healing.

Hubris (Best PvE and PvP Choice)

Hubris is the best talent Thaurissan in both PvE and PvP modes due to its flexibility. A straightforward talent which increases your next non-elemental Mini by 2 levels, you will want to use your strongest damaging minion after dropping Thaurissan, such as Harpies, Huntress, or other high-cost minis, making the most out of the extra 2 levels.

Most decks revolve around 1 or 2 minis who will be doing most of the damage of your team, so grainting 2 levels can easily turn the tide of battle. Extra 2 levels of course mean extra stats for the affected mini, but it also is useful when up against level-dependent spells like execute and polymorph, where a larger level difference would lead to lower effectiveness of these spells.

Hubris is especially useful when you are underlevelled and attempting to take down a higher difficulty heroic or dungeon and you buff your damage dealers. It is also strong in PvP where your mini will now win in equally matched trades, and to cheat out units beyond your mini level caps, enabling unique strategies by hyper-buffing a single mini.

Incinerate (Good PvP Talent)

Incerate allows Thaurissan attack to permanently burn normal minis. However, do note that the burning duration is only increased from 8 seconds to 16 seconds for towers and bosses. While this talent sounds good on paper, it is usually not very effective in most battles.

It only gains value when Thaurisan dies without being able to kill the last mini, which incinerates and will then finish off. Otherwise, Thaurisan with his ranged attacks and high HP, will usually be the last mini-standing and will normally be able to refresh his burn duration on enemies.

Incerate can however be valuable in PvP, where getting a single hit off on the enemy’s base can deal a lot of damage with the 2x burn duration. Due to Thaurissan’s high HP, it is not difficult to keep him alive as he will generally not die to AoE damage and spells.

If the opponent wants to deal with Thaurissan, he will have to drop a mini which is strong enough to outlast Thaurissan before his bulkiness and burn wears him down, and any hits by Thaurissan on it or any other units means a death sentence as they will eventually burn to death without commiting any more resource to deal with them. Thaurissan with Incinerate thus presents the defending player with a difficult situation of needing to commit resources defending against him that will not survive the engagement.

The Best Thaurissan PvE Deck

Possible replacements:

• Defias Bandits
• Pyromancer
• Batrider
• Fire Elemental

This deck aims to make use of either buffed Harpies or Huntress with the level buff from Thaurissan to carry the team through the stage, whilst sniping off threats with your 2 unbound minis and tanking them with both unbound tanks.

Thaurissan will allow 4 of the 6 minis in his deck to burn enemies, which is more than enough to ensure that most enemies summoned will be burning.

Thaurissan should always be played defensively to ensure he can survive as long as possible and provide his leader ability to all minis and enabling them to burn. He can be used to soak some damage from pushes while under your tower as he does have a lot of health.

Huntress is added for her potent single-target damage with her talent, which enhances the damage output of her primary glaive. Huntress will be the star of this deck, and should be constantly be buffed by Thaurissan’s Hubris to give her +2 levels. Huntress not only gains more stats from the higher level, but her glaive bounces will inflict burn on all enemies, killing any backline units faster than ever before. Huntress, being a fast mini, can also be placed behind Thaurissan, pushing him forward faster as Thaurissan has much more health can provide additional tanking for Huntress.

Harpies provide much-needed flying minis to pick off minis that cannot hit flying minis. Harpies is a good alternative for the Hubris buff, allowing you to shred through any unit with both their poison and burn.

Quilboar is now even more powerful with his ability to burn all melee attackers by having the Bristleback talent, allowing him to solo kill many minis which he was once unable to. Earth Elemental with Quilboar is included as always to ensure that your damaging units are able to attack safely without any retaliation by distracting minis towers and bosses.

Both SAFE Pilot and Whelps are elemental minis who are not able to benefit from Thaurisan’s burning damage, but are included as they are very strong minis that can be used to snipe priority targets like enemy Pyromancer and Banshees.

Possible replacements include Defias Bandits over Whelp Eggs if unbound damage dealers is not as required. Bandits provide a cheap way to apply poison, burn and stun for the cost of only 1 gold, and can be used to cycle your deck as the the current Thaurissan has a high average cost. Pyromancer can be included if there are a lot of flying minis or many squad minis.
Batrider, when there are many enemy ground units spams like Footmen and Raptors.

The Best Thaurissan PvP Deck

This Thaurissan deck abuses Hubris and Griffon Rider’s level-up potions to create the ultimate buffed Gargoyle which is at least 3 levels higher, allowing him to do significant damage to the enemy’s tower in just a single hit. The deck relies solely upon an expensive 4-cost gargoyle which does not do any damage to minis, so it is very important to play this deck defensively and to accumulate resources until it is able to make a counterpush with a buffed Gargoyle.

Gryphon Rider with the Air Drop talent doubles down on the hyper-Gargoyle strategy, allowing Gargyole to pass over the potion to gain an additional level. Gryphon is also a strong mini to run in a Thaurissan deck, as she has a hidden ability to retarget and hit minis with lower HP, spreading Thaurissan’s burn to multiple targets while Gargyole acts as a tank for her. If you play Gryphon Rider directly behind Gargyole, her potions will still reach the Gargyole in front of her, allowing her to be safer behind a tank that’s 3 levels higher.

SAFE and Whelps are included as minis to clear the path for your Gargoyle.

Pyromancer is included to fill in the Blackrock trait slot but can also be replaced by Dark Iron Miner to compete for gold mines. Alternatively, if you are having trouble getting Gargoyle to finish off the base, you can consider running spells such as Bloodlust, Execute, Deep Breath, Polymorph, or Blizzard to kill or crowd control the enemies summoned when Gargoyle is under the enemy base.