A passive-aggressive Anti-Priest topic

When the new forums came into being I promised myself not to be overly negative on them.

Alas, moments such these come and I just wanna go all out…

First of all - I do understand the difficulties in adapting a class whose fantasy is defined by passive approach to issues and preffered m.o. of peaceful conflict resolution with the occasional dip into shadow form for going full “we live in a society” EkhsDee shenanigans.

I appreciate the time the devs put into selling this fantasy really well.

Nonetheless!

Priest has been… so far… for all of my 4 years of playing this game… the most annoying class to play against, regardless of archetype.

Give me a thousand quest shamans. Give me a million grinder mages. Give me undefeatable “I have all the answers” control warriors.

Even with a janky deck I can get out a win…

And then THERE’S THIS PIECE OF KRIPP. I don’t give a murloc’s fin about how “fun it is to play rezz priest”. It’s frustrating to know that my only semblance of success lies in forcing myself to play cards that summon subpar minions for my opponent (For ex. Warrior’s Cornered Sentry) or running transforms (Basically playing Shaman or Mage, because a single copy of Overspark rarely does anything).

Then there’s combo. Combo decks are usually janky, but they appear in a class only for an exansion and rarely more than that. Warrior nowadays can pull off a huge combo with a damaged Leeroy and a Bloodsworn Merc but that’s often a finisher, rather than a “stall until you fall” trick.

On the other hand you have the ever presence of Divine Spirit / Inner Fire which at this point is not simply stale - it’s a lifeline that lets the class have ANY winrate at all. A one trick pony since the dawn of the game.

Then there was Shadowreaper Anduin and all of his shenanigans which… tbh is hard to judge because pretty much all DKs were a frustrate-a-thon in their own right (except Warrior, because Scourgelord Garrosh is bad)

Then Mind Blast gets HoF’ed… when it was way less oppresive than DS/IF.

When you remove cards like Shadow Visions and Shadowreaper that really broke Mind Blast from the equation, you’re left with the finisher combo of Double Mindblast + Archmage Vargoth for… 15 damage. Keyword here - FINISHER combo - they actually had to first GET you to 15 or lower and THEN do this.

Card theft is a whole other can of worms that I’d rather keep sealed like an Old God but since we’re already going… I have one name for you all… Archbishop Benedictus.

tl;dr Please, do something about Priest and don’t just re-release new broken stuff just to have them being viable.

And why this wall of text? Because all I wanted was a Pepsi.

2 Likes

It seems the Priest foundation in the Basic/Classic set has always had problems, meaning the expansions end up with some pretty powerful cards.

Priest doesn’t have a board clear in Classic like Warrior does with Brawl, which means we end up with an overabundance of powerful board clears over the years: Lightbomb, Excavated Evil, Dragonfire Potion, Psychic Scream, Mass Hysteria, Plague of Death. And that’s just one part of Priest.

I don’t know what would be a good AOE clear for Classic set, but Holy Nova is clearly not enough as they keep printing those new cards. A less potent version of Mass Hysteria could be an answer, and put that in the Classic set so that Priest doesn’t feel wholly unreliable in Standard at the start of a rotation - relying on multi-card combos like Auchenai + Circle, or Wild Pyromancer.

Could Priest be in a better spot with Shadow Ascendant in the Classic set? Priest has a heavy reliance on 1-drops like Northshire Cleric, and 5+ cost stuff with 2-3 mana being particularly lacking and instead having SW:Pain and Death. This could encourage more “on-curve” builds with less reliance on Neutrals and DS/Inner Fire.

Similar thing with Paladin’s Basic/Classic set having no 1-drops - they’re all Secrets, so they have to keep printing 1-drops.

Priest classic board clears

A) Divine Judgement. 6 mana epic priest spell. Destroy all full health minions.

B) Black Hole Sun. 4 mana rare priest spell. Deal 2 damage to all minions. Add a random shadow word card to your hand.

“the most annoying class to play against, regardless of archetype.”

Damn truth. I even hate to win against Priests, even if it would be pirate priest.

Just delete this class.

As a player who plays priest aswell, I hate playing against priest even when I’m priest, boring and predictable