I just wanted to say that, yeah, I’m pretty unhappy that Deathrattle Priest never managed to be a thing despite it being Priest’s quest out of the blue two years ago. The archetype just never saw the missing pieces, even when Reckless Experimenter was printed it wound up being “Bad Deathrattle Hunter.”
Of course, Warlock was the strong DR deck at the launch of Witchwood with Cubelock. And then DR Hunter started to take over with Boomsday and then took over everything for a while in the Rumble. Rogue got some sweet DR synergy as well, and a deck that at least manages to be worth tracking right now.
It really sucked, being a fan of DR Priest, to see other classes get a procession of powerful DR cards and to go empty-handed time and again. Even when Reckless Experimenter was printed, it was somewhat weak compared to existing synergies and the Rogue cards just completely blew it out of the water. The Rotation of Cube really just crushes any ambitions of Reckless being a thing for the moment, and halfway into the Priest cards for the next expansion I don’t see anything to make me believe otherwise.
You could maybe see something come together with Spirits and Reckless, but right now there’s not much you can get out that you’d want to cycle that way. Plus, with the rotation of the quest, it’s hard to imagine living long enough for Spirits to be meaningful even with Bwonsamdi.
Now, I loved this archetype when it was briefly a thing with N’zoth back in Old Gods (before the Shamans took over), I was playing Weasel Priest when other people were playing Razakus. Cloning Gallery is only good for two things; OTKs, and DR minion value. You can guess which one I want going forward. So, before all the cards are revealed and my hopes are sunk, I wanted to voice my thoughts.
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Deathrattle Rogue remembers… how many expcs did they try to make the deck a thing only to keep failing to print the 1-2 control cards that thte deck needed to actually work…
it finally had it’s short time, but you have to remember that they started on it on LoE.
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Never managed to be a thing? What? It’s had several different incarnations, going back to N’zoth.
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Only reason why dr priest was way weaker than other deathrattle decks is because of cube.
Hunter could activate the cube easily from hand, rogue can also with a prep and activate it twice or with the weapon, and warlock had the spell that destroys a minion and heals them.
For priest being able to do that Reckless Experimenter had to remain on the board for a turn what is more unlikely.
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Well, no. At 10 mana, you can play Reckless, Cube, and Cairne/Mech Whelp. On 7, you can play Reckless, Cube, and Egg. The options exist, it’s just that Reckless is slower, does less, and destroy the original body meaning that there are far fewer DR minions that it has synergy with.
For about a month, until N’zoth Paladin was choked off the ladder and the Shamans emerged and Priest spent 7 months at a global 40%-42% winrate. To say it existed is somewhat generous. If there was an incarnation beyond this meme and Weasel Priest in Standard, I don’t remember it. A month of Undertaker Priest before Undertaker Hunter emerged?
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Well a turn 10 cube from priest or a turn 6 cube from hunter what is more threatening?
If your combo can only be pulled of way later while it sort of has the same effect. (even though hunters variation is way stronger because the cube remains alive allowing the player to activate it more times.
Thats why i said priest was way weaker to be able to do it on the same turns around 6 or 7 priest already has to have the reckless experimenter on board.
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No more quest, oracle, twilights call, eternal servitude, tortollan shellraiser, shadow essence, diamond spellstone, or obsidian statue. That’s just preist specific cards that rotate out. Unless all the new priest cards this expansion support a deathrattle archetype you can probably just say goodbye to deathrattle priest for a couple of expansions.
Deathrattle priest is dead in the water come rotation…not that it was very strong this expansion anyway.
The reason Deathrattle priest was never really a meta thing is because it required getting value out of cards 1+ turns after you play them as is the case with all deathrattle cards…except for those that can trigger those deathrattles immediately…which is why cubelock and hunter did so amazing…they had ways of getting benefit from the deathrattles immediately.
All priest ever really needed was a “Play Dead” type of card or minion…but alas, those were given to other classes.
Deathrattle priest will now be much like Dragon priest was this expac…a shadow of its former self. Oh well, at least we have wild.
I can safely say I have done absolutely everything you can possibly do with deathrattle priest this expansion. I spent nearly the entire last 2 expansions playing with deathrattle priest using every combo imaginable to build the best quest priest deck I could build. Alas, it’s just no where near as strong as DR hunter.
DR priest couldn’t put decent threats on the board until way later in the game whereas warlock and hunters could do it on turn 6 (5 with coin).
DR priest is much like Copy priest. They are core designs in the class that just aren’t strong enough to become meta. Both of these designs require you play a card for low value and curve in order to hopefully gain value later. This just doesn’t work really well in Hearthstone because curving is extremely important. You can’t curve and play DR or Copy priest at the same time.
It’s a strong deck. My theory is that the problem is most people don’t want fatigue as a win condition. The games take too long and are boring.
It’s only a strong LATE game deck. I absolutely love fatigue as a win condition. The deck simply does not have the tools to compete competitively in the meta very well.
In fact, I would argue that even though it can be a strong and greedy deck, spirit rogue can still be more greedy in the end.
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It isn’t a strong deck though, lol
Between OTK that can negate fatigue, and Midrange decks that can outvalue your midgame, not to mention DK Rexxar recently, the deck just isn’t good enough to be meta impactful. Schyla and I play A LOT of Quest Priest and I’ve run it with Mind Blast, Hakkar, and DS/IF win conditions the fact is you give up a lot of good cards to put in what are, honestly, more or less suboptimal DR minions for the mana slot.
I am glad though that Quest Priest never became meta because do we want to bash through 120 life per game?
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Deathrattle has its moments in wild, and Priest can definitely hold its own with Deathrattle as it is. The real issue with priest is not the deathrattle, but the core design of it being a reactive playstyle with no good iteration of it being aggressive or midrange. Much of priest cards are too reactive and high cost, sacrificing any form of tempo against hyper aggressive decks and also no way of going offensively against combo or time dependent decks.
I wouldn’t say Deathrattle priest never took off, but it has since fallen off from synergy creep. If priest could make power plays like Hunter or Warlock, it could work, but as it is it’s lagging behind in viability.