I love the artwork of Reliquary of Souls. I also love the idea of a more zoo-based Priest build. That being said, I’m not entirely sold on it working. This is a solid minion for Rez Priest and the latest attempt of creating a faster style of play for Priest.
Soul Mirror is a solid removal card but you can only run one copy as it’s a legendary. You also probably don’t want to run this in Rez Priest as it might dirty your rez pool. I like the fact that it’s not another board clear to slot into a deck that has plenty of board clears.
Dragonmaw Sentinel is decent in a more Mid-Range Dragon Priest or perhaps a Highlander Dragon Priest. Not sure how viable that will be though.
Imprisoned Homunculus is a great 1-drop minion for the Zoo Priest archetype. The dormant might hinder this guy a bit, but I like the stat-line enough where he’ll see some experimentation at least.
Skeletal Dragon is just a big value bomb with Taunt. I wouldn’t normally be sold on the value effect of this card, but the fact that it has Taunt gives me some hope for Dragon Priest.
I really like Renew, it’s a matter of figuring out what deck will want to run it. Perhaps another card that will slot into a Highlander Priest build.
Psyche Split looks pretty busted. Basically any Priest deck will want to run this card. Another reason why I don’t see Rez Priest going away in the coming meta.
Apotheosis looks good on first glance, but Priest has a ton of healing options making the Lifesteal almost a non-factor. So is 3-mana for 2/3 in stats really worth slotting into your deck? I’m not sold on this card.
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The cards aren’t individually terrible, but this slow grindy buff and trade archetype is just never going to happen.
Buffs in general are just awful, look at the new Rogue 1-drop that’s freezing trap on a stick, that absolutely destroys any deck that’s relying on buffing minions.
Pretty much all our minions are low threat big butt things that sit on the board and hope to survive the turn so they can actually do something, and that just doesn’t wash against decks that can draw zero mana cards or draw +4/+4 buffed cards, or make all their cards cost 1 mana.
To be viable in Hs you need to be able to generate big swing turns, that’s why Rez Priest is viable, because Mass Rez and Cloning Gallery can provide huge swing turns.
Plus Priest is now completely one dimensional, there’s no damage from hand(no burn cards at all), there’s no surprise lethal from board (no DS/IF), we can’t even draw lots of cards from a board advantage anymore (no Northshire), in many cases our opponents will be able to effectively ignore our board until they get to their power turn.
Just alright minions do not cut it in current Hs, look at the new Rogue or Demon Hunter cards, they are clearly a step above the Priest cards in power level.
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I think Demon Hunter is the biggest slap in the face. Super proactive, tons of card draw and direct damage, has zoo minions for a strategy of going face but also has a lot of high stat minions for some ungodly reason.
We get told that Priest was going to be taken in a new direction that’s more cohesive to the theme of Priest and again we have to work twice as hard to do half as much as the other classes.
I don’t think any of this is trash in a vacuum but you look at what all the other classes are getting and nothing that they gave Priest answers any of it. Why the hell is the video they showed for the Priest cards that of someone getting rolled over?! My Auchenai got removed for this?!
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So the video showing priest cards is a priest player getting destroyed? Seems about right.
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I like the prime card. Some of the early game is nice but it certainly screws up galakrond late game.
Mish mash of random stuff. Collectively my thought is nothing is going to change. Completely non existent card draw, no win condition, more of the same flailing around trying to make something work.
I hope I’m wrong but when you look at what some of the other classes can do including the new one, it’s pretty hard to get excited with the “rework”
Priest will be galakrond in standard.
I don’t see any direction or game plan at all. It’s a mish-mash of cards that aren’t particularly bad, but have little synergy, no win condition and no draw. The “theme” seems to be a splash of dragons, some buffs and some generic reasonable midrange cards. Even the Prime is just a big stat stick. A great one, but it doesn’t further any gameplan goal.
Decks today either go heavy aggro, which this “theme” gets wrecked by, or control with a late gameplan to cheat tons of stats or go near-infinite, which this “theme” gets wrecked by, or OTK, which this “theme” gets wrecked by. It can’t excel over or counter anything.
Priest will rely heavily on their Classic/Basic and Neutral options, because there’s no winning deck to be built from these cards.
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They may as well keep all the cards they were going to rotate aside from Divine Spirit. If removing those cards hasn’t enabled them to do interesting things with Priest then they shouldn’t bother removing them until they do.
Res Galakrond is a thing, it’s better than the Quest version. But why make a full Galakrond deck when the Invokes are pretty actively bad for the class. Is the plan to make us run Invokes because we can’t draw cards? What are the odds of that working out? So we’re behind and then we play a 2/2 with Rush so we’re more behind? That’s some terrible Tempo.
Is Priest really supposed to be able to contend with decks that can draw cards and reduce their cost by generating random Priest minions? Minions that are, in general behind the curve in terms of stats and effects? With no win condition beyond somehow overtaking the board? Tell me what cards make that work.
So we’re back around to Res Priest, Galakrond or Quest. Doesn’t matter, neither one has any synergy to work with.
The cost reductions to many basic and classic priest cards are meant to help with tempo.
Shadowmadness is particularly intriguing as you can steal Primes that also increases your own deck size making fatigue a very real win condition. Lifesteal is also a particularly powerful anti-fatigue mechanic.
The direction for priest is clearly value-generation and out lasting the opponent.
No one can tell if that will work out against power plays from other classes, DH and rogue in particular.
Classic control priest, since beta, was my number two most played deck so I might be just blinded by nostalgia. But reliving the glory days of generating value out of thin air and stealing my opponent’s stuff is something I look forward to doing.
Oh I’d be happy if I thought it was a reasonable thing to happen, but I don’t. Fatigue isn’t a win condition, half the classes can blow you up before you get there. You don’t need to add cards to your deck because Priest is the only class that can’t draw cards. You’ll be ahead in fatigue anyway. Rogue will go through it’s deck before you get halfway through.
I’d be more than happy if old Thief Priest could get the job done, but I just don’t see it. Too much card generation out there. Find yourself in a game against a Rogue playing 5 cards a turn and the hand never shrinks. 2 damage aoe isn’t a big deal when Blizzard is printing 3 mana 3/4s with upsides. I just don’t see it, I don’t see how the class survives to do anything meaningful.
No class can beat every other class.
Rogue has always been the thorn on priest’s side due to their incredible tempo.
It is ok to be week against rogue as long as priest is not weak to DH who will be 50% of the meta.
Obviously there is not way to tell who is going to be weak against DH. Maybe everyone is weak to DH based on the cards they get. Who knows?
But based on DH’s class identity, priest may have a chance.
I don’t know why people keep thinking this. They’ve already planned out what the upcoming expansions are going to be. They already have cards planned out to fix Priest if it happens to be on the list of which classes they want to be on top.
Just look at Purify and how that was planned for “Silence Priest”. Look at the strength of Galakrond Shaman even though we had months of Evolve Shaman.
They already determined Rogue, Hunter and Demon Hunter are going to be the top classes this expansion. If the others can string together meta competitive decks? Good for them.
But anyone else just doesn’t belong. It’s how Hearthstone has been run for the past several years.
They don’t have the time for balance because they have to be working on the next year’s worth of expansions or they’ll fall behind on the production pipeline. Balance of the current meta will only be done with patches, not with card design.
TL:DR It’s not Priests time to be worth while.
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Are you high? Demon Hunter’s identity is all about huge tempo plays and card draw, just like Rogue, how does Priest have a chance against them?
“[Demon Hunters] don’t have much in the way of card generation, but you can run them out of resources,” says Chadd Nervig, game designer on Hearthstone . “They have card draw, but not generation, so you can fatigue them. They’re susceptible to hard removal. They also just don’t have much in the way of hard removal themselves; if they want to clear a big minion of yours, they have to use their face to do it. They don’t have any assassinate or polymorph cards.”
- You can fatigue them - priest is good at healing
- They’re susceptible to hard removal - priest is good at hard removal
- They also just don’t have much in the way of hard removal - priest can make some silly huge lifesteal minions and DH have no SAP
So ya, Chadd Nervig basically told us straight up which class would be suited to fight the DH menace.
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I can, Priest will be terrible in Standard, it will lose vs DH and Rogue and Hunter and probably Mage,Warlock, Shaman, Paladin , Warrior and Druid as well, honestly the new cards are abysmally awful.
My prediction is Priest is dead bottom of all the classes without a single playable deck, there you go, you can laugh at me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I will be.
EVERY other class has a way of cheating tempo, everyone except for Priest who gets some ok cards, but nothing getting even close to the power of the other classes power plays.
Trying to grind people down with value just doesn’t work in the current Hs meta, name me the last deck that worked by grinding people into fatigue, it hasn’t been a wincon for quite a while because just about every class can generate cards for fun.
Well that’s easy. Control Warrior which was last year. I think it was the start of the year that we had a tournament based on it with Boom and Elysiana before the nerfs.
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As midrange dragon, all of those in deck are the win con.
And Priest has nothing like Dr Boom hero card that gives all your mechs rush and thus is a tempo monster and a really good cheap boardclear in Brawl, also it could actually draw some cards.
I’m not moaning about the direction they want to take Priest (well, maybe a little!) , but they have to give us a way of actually winning games, and none of our cards, new or old, do that. We need something that makes a Priest having a board threatening.
Oh they will. Some time down the line. It’s all planned out. Rotate which classes are on top.