I guess it’s all in on the Shadow Priest/Undead Priest archetype which totally needed more support…
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Overheal? Generating-extra-copies-of-minions-to-replay-and-resummon? What are those?
At least the above two are evergreen archetypes.
Shadowtouched Kvaldir: Assuming that you’re running an aggressive Shadow deck with no non-Shadow spells, what healing is there for Kvaldir? Seems very tame and unnecessary there. But for normal priest, honestly it seems like it could be a good finisher. Grace of the Highfather becomes a nuke, and even Flash Heal is efficient. You can also kill some weak minions with Funnel Cake. And of course if you ever wanted to nuke your own face and board for some reason, there’s things like Cannibalize, Fan Club and the new Twilight Torrent. But mostly it just seems like it’ll be used in an OTK after generating multiple copies with Creation Protocol.
Twilight Torrent seems fine. Not fantastic, though. 2 mana to only heal is historically pretty bad, and 2 mana to deal 3 damage is super Vanilla and historically pretty bad. But, it can go face. Maybe it works in an OTK together with Shadowtouched Kvaldir. Also technically useful in Overheal.
Soulburner Varia seems like it would go straight into Shadow Undead Priest, but control decks will just target this first. You’d have to value trade your minions into the enemy board, unless you used Shadowtouched Kvaldir to nuke your own board with stuff like Funnel Cake or Cannibalize.
These are all “for” Undead Shadow Priest but I’m not sure any of them will actually get used there. Then again I don’t play Undead Shadow Priest and likely never will.
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If you used Grace of the Highfather to deal damage, would you Discover a 0-cost card, because there was no overhealing done, it an 8-cost card, because no healing was done and all 8 healing “remains?”
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Soulburner Varia is really cool
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You don’t get to discover a 0-cost card and you don’t get to discover an 8-cost card in either scenario. It has to be actual healing.
So if you play it on a full health target and use Grace on it for healing, you discover an 8-cost, but you never get to discover a 0-cost.
The Kvaldir is a nice 8 damage nuke for 4…but let’s be honest…that’s really bad right now. You can’t run it in a pure Shadow Priest deck so that nuke is gone. Control Priest isn’t going to run it because it’s a 2 card combo. If you’re doing it to remove a minion, may as well just use Cannabilize instead - same mana and only need 1 card. If you are using it to nuke face, you’re only doing 8 damage to face. Control Priest isn’t going to win a game with this combo.
The last 2 cards are mainly going to see use in Shadow Priest, except for the spell. Control priest will discover that so now Control Priest does have another heal option late game…which was never really an issue.
I think the only card here that sees play that actually starts in the deck is the legendary and it only goes in Undead Priest.
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I was really hoping control priest was going to get any kind of finisher here, even a bad one.
At the moment, despite feeling super strong in experienced hands, Priest feels absolutely awful to play in its control variant.
30 minute games on Ladder that drag on and drag on with no win condition outside of winning via removing your opponents win condition and outliving them.
It’s the most controlly control deck ever made, I almost fall asleep during my games as priest and I love the class.
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Yes, exactly. And the mirror matches are the worst because there is virtually no skillful play that determines the winner aside from who can stop fatigue faster or who can get a good 10 mana weapon from Ignis. It’s the most boring thing ever and all you want is some sort of Class win con. We got nothing in the regards from these cards so it looks like Undead Priest is going to be the only real competitive deck and I think everyone is tired of playing and seeing that deck.
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I’ve never even considered playing Undead Priest. Just doesn’t do it for me. As someone who enjoys control, we’re pretty limited at times with what classes we can play and Priest to me was always a solid choice over the years. Same as Warrior, I never played Pirate, just didn’t do it for me despite having ridiculously high win rates since Pirates existed in the game.
Remember when Mage used to be an awesome control class?
I don’t mind spending 15 minutes in a game to win, but this iteration of control priest is so just so dull despite doing “control” almost too well.
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As much as i know players of priest want that control style to dominate again i think it was easier for them to just print some powerful SP cards and bring that deck back into the meta.
You should go watch last years World Championships finals. Talk about dull it was down right dumb. Hint: Infinite value from both players.
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I don’t think most Control Priest players want it to dominate. I think the ideal situation is that Control Priest overall sits at around Tier 2 or 3, but that it has a high skill ceiling so that if a really skillful player pilots it, it can be a Tier 1 deck. Currently, that’s not the case because there are really no way to close out games. Instead, the way you beat another opponent is by stealing their win condition or getting your health/armor so high that they can’t beat you with theirs. It’s not really fun for anyone.
For example, back in any meta where previous Control Priest decks were fairly decent, my win rate against other Priest players would be something crazy like 80% win rate. This is because the decks had a higher ceiling and you could really mess up your opponent’s win con if you played right. Now, since Control Priest doesn’t really have a win con, I sit right around 50% win rate in the mirror. This is because there isn’t anything to disrupt. It’s a terrible match of who draws the fewest amount of cards or who gets a lucky Dirty Rat to disrupt your opponent’s disruption and hope they don’t get copies.
The end game mirror is terrible. Hoard cards, never play a minion, Drown minions and don’t draw cards. It’s not fun at all because there’s really no strategy to aim for to win other than fatigue. Takes little to no skill at all. Even if you DO have skill enter the strategy (like saving Finley for late game so you anti-fatigue), they will copy it and do the same…so your skillful play is negated because copy copy copy copy exists.
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That’s my ideal situation for any deck.
I remember when ETC Warrior first launched as a deck. Pretty sure it was T3. WR was absolutely abysmal from data gathered at almost every rank but after 20/30 games, it really started to click and you had a good shot against any deck.
I love decks like that.
Boar Priest was funny too and was hugely effective even though I’m pretty sure it had a WR of under 30% overall.
Tickatus Warlock was a T3 deck that sent these forums into a meltdown because of the card burn, despite getting smashed by almost every deck in the current meta. (Loved Tick).
The problem with control decks is they will always be hated because most people play aggro to climb and it feels really really bad to run out of cards when your opponent is at full health with 9 cards in their hand and knows you’re done. Same with combo or OTK decks, no matter how high the skill ceiling is or how badly you have to high roll to win.
I don’t get it. Maybe it’s an age thing. I occasionally feel bad about losing but I don’t blame the game, the deck or the player, it’s a 1v1 game, it is what it is.
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I totally hate playing against Priest as a Blood DK too 
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Have you been playing HS since Stormwind? Combo decks used to be low tier meme decks like Malygos Rogue and Malygos Druid. Nowadays they are decks like Kaelthas Druid, Big Beast Hunter, Burn Shaman(both Standard and Wild), Tony Druid (Wild) or Odyn Warrior.
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I started with Goblins and Gnomes. Malygos Druid wasn’t a meme deck. I know that because I played it the season it launched for the whole season and loved it.
It was different back then though. “Big Priest” was a high t2 deck with a win condition that you pulled Y’Shaarj from a 4 cost card yet had to not draw it or you auto lost.
This might sounds crazy but switch to Plague DK with Ignis. It’s a really good deck that is flying WAY under the radar right now. You can just keep building boards one after another till they run out of sweepers.
If that deck had Corpse Explosion it would easily be tier 2. Maybe Tier 1. But being completely unable to deal with “sudden” big boards from discount Sargeras, Thaddius, Drum Circle, Countess, Marrowgar, Evolve Shaman, even Molten Maker and Storm Giant is why the deck sucks right now…
Druid did it better imo. Coin innervate barnes concede games were the fastest games I’ve ever seen.
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Huge disappointment.
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Ummm, there are already iterations of that kvaldir in previous sets. Like quite a few.
Bleh
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Seems like cards that will get use in Wild more than they ever will in Standard. As a priest player, these are very disappointing. Kind of the theme of Priest cards for the past year tbh.
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