In card games, new players often put too much value on cards that can heal.
They can save you in certain cases, but a healing card that does nothing else is useless if you’re winning, and they won’t save you from dying if your opponent has full control of the board. Damage and healing at the same time is the most satisfying thing that can happen.
Lifesteal is a feature in Hearthstone that lets you heal while doing damage, either to your opponent’s minions or to their life total. With the Death Knight class, a lot of new cards with the term “Lifesteal” were added. Now is a good time to look at the best ways to use “Lifesteal” to heal in Hearthstone.
Blackwater Behemoth
Control Priest decks that use Blackwater Behemoth as a defence are very strong. The Behemoth’s Lure forces your opponent to use your Lifesteal, which should kill their monster, heal you, and leave you with a threat that is big enough to be a threat.
The problem is that it costs a lot to buy the Behemoth. In Standard Hearthstone as it is now, an anti-aggro card that costs eight mana will be too slow to save you from dying. The Behemoth should be played just when you need it to help you get back on your feet, but sometimes your opponent will kill you while it is still in your hand.
Death Strike
Death Strike might be the easiest Lifesteal card you could ever think of. It does a lot of damage and also heals you at the same time. But simple can be good sometimes. Six damage won’t kill everything, but it will kill almost anything you need it to.
And having six health is more than enough to win or lose games against aggressive or even midrange teams. Death Strike isn’t a hard card to understand, but it can still be a useful part of any Blood Death Knight deck.
Void Shard
Four mana for four damage isn’t great, but Void Shard is better than it looks, especially in offensive decks, because of a few things. First of all, the card can hit both minions and the enemy hero, which goes against the current trend of damage spells that can only hit minions.
Also, Lifesteal won’t help you much when you’re trying to beat control decks, but it’s great when you’re up against other offensive decks. Most of the time, these battles come down to a race to see who can kill the other faster, and the eight-health swing that Void Shard gives you can give you the edge.
Murlocula
You don’t have to pay to play Murlocula. The card doesn’t need anything else to be said about it. When it costs zero mana, anything better than a 1/1 card with no benefits looks like a good deal. Even a 3/4 with Lifesteal, which isn’t that good on its own, is very good for that price.
But to get that deal, you need to use Murlocula in a deck that can quickly use its “Infuse” effect. You’ll need a lot of low-cost minions so that Murlocula can be played quickly enough for a 3/4 with Lifesteal to be useful on the board.
Aldrachi Warblades
Demon Hunters have a lot of ways to gain attack, and Aldrachi Warblades lets you turn that attack into healing. With the right setup, you can get well over ten strikes and then turn it into pure healing if you hit your opponent in the face.
On the other hand, the Warblades let you fight and kill big minions without getting your life total too low. When you play the Warblades and then a bunch of spells after them, it’s often game over for your opponent.
Gnome Muncher
Gnome Muncher does a lot for six mana. The card will heal you the turn you play it (as long as it doesn’t attack a minion with Divine Shield), either by hitting one of your opponent’s minions or by dealing damage to their life total if played on an empty board. And if Gnome Muncher makes it to your next turn, it will heal you for ten health, since it gets both its normal attack and the extra attack from its ability.
The card also has Taunt, so even if your opponent wanted to, they couldn’t just ignore it and turn face. All of these affects make Gnome Muncher the perfect threat to stop aggro. And unlike a lot of defensive cards, it is useful against control and combo decks as well because the extra attacks help you do steady damage on empty boards.
Sire Denathrius
Even though Sire Denathrius was severely nerfed, he is still used as an end in some decks. If you double his Infuse cost, he needs a lot more minions to die before he can be useful, and he needs to be pulled early even more.
Denathrius, on the other hand, was probably the best card in Tunnel Rush game before he was nerfed, so even with a big drop in power, he’s still a good choice. He can do a lot of damage to decks with a lot of small monsters, like the Imp Warlock.
Unleash Fel
Unleash Fel doesn’t get Lifesteal until you have six mana, but once you do, it becomes a real monster. Even one point of Spell Damage makes Unleash Fel a board-clearing heal that heals you for a lot.
This is a very strong card because it can do both of those things and only costs one mana. It makes Unleash Fel an important part of control and combo Demon Hunter decks, especially since combo decks often run Spell Damage anyway.
Za’qul
Za’qul doesn’t have Lifesteal, and the keyword isn’t mentioned in its text. But what the card does is make your Curses “heal you for the damage they do,” which is basically the same as giving them Lifesteal. Za’qul doesn’t have the keyword written on it because the Curse is technically your opponent’s card, so Lifesteal would actually heal them.
Since Curses happen at the beginning of your opponent’s turn, they can’t avoid healing you. Even if they play the Curse, it will always go off at least once. And since Curses build up quickly, Za’qul will heal you a lot, assuming the Curses don’t kill your opponent outright, in which case healing doesn’t matter.