What purpose does Ancient Watcher serve?

Ancient Watcher is a 2 mana 4/5 minion that can't attack.

I recently faced one in an Arena game and just let him sitting there until he randomly died to accumulated AoE damage. He seems to be a totally useless card.
Yet I heard of a deck (Watcher Druid) that actually uses him competitively and have seen him being talked about a lot. That got me wondering how people make use of him.

I could only think of 2 things that might make sense, namely Silencing him (but why would you "waste" a precious and rare silence on him?) and giving him Taunt.

Is there any other use to Ancient Watcher or is he really only useful as a cheap and valuable target for a Taunt buff?

hearthstone

Best Answer

Its mostly for cheap early defense in control/stall decks. Dropping an ancient watcher or two then putting down either a Sunfury Protector or Defender of Argus (or in the case of the druid, Mark of the Wild) gives you a really cheap and effective defense. Because he also has high attack, he will be able to kill many things that tries to take him down.

Because the ancient watcher is so cheap and tough, it will often force the enemy to expend way more mana to remove it if you do manage to put taunt on him.

It also works great againts priests as insurance against mass dispel.