Everyone agrees, DoD cards look pretty powerful. Priest doesn’t have the strongest looking cards out there, but I don’t see anything “Purify” tier. So let’s get on with it.
I figure there are about 4 potential archetypes out there for Priest. Galakrond Priest (not optimistic), Res Priest (semi-optimistic), Combo Priest (optimistic isn’t the right word, but it’ll probably be strong), and Mecha’thun/Nomi Priest (unlikely).
Whispers of EVIL: 0 mana, Add a lackey to your hand. It’s a 0 mana spell, it doesn’t matter what it does, it exists to be used with Gadgetzan Auctioneer. Allow me a mini-rant about Lackeys; Priest does NOT have synergy with Lackeys. At all. With all the cards revealed, it’s clear that there was never any intention to give Priest any Lackey synergy. Sure, it can make Lackeys, but it can’t do anything to generate additional utility from them. Additionally, the power cards for the class (Mass Res, Psychopomp) have anti-synergy with Lackeys. The cards that generate Lackeys aren’t good by themselves, either. I think Blizzard really dropped the ball by lumping Priest in with EVIL for flavor reasons, despite having no plans to actually make Lackeys viable in the class.
Disciple of Galakrond: 1 mana 1/2 Battlecry: Invoke. It’s a 1 mana 1/2 that adds a Priest minion to your hand and levels up Galakrond. I’m honestly skeptical about a 1/2 doing enough, but it does cycle itself for something random so it doesn’t cost you much and you were just floating that mana anyway, I guess.
Grave Rune: 4 mana spell, Give a minion Deathrattle: Summon 2 copies of this. So, I heard you like Khartut Defenders. Convincing Infiltrators. This is so good, it might finally be worth running Shadowy Figure. Seems like a solid boost to a Res Priest archetype.
Breath of the Infinite: 3 mana spell, Deal 2 damage to all minions. If you’re holding a Dragon, only damage enemies. Potentially asymmetrical clear, that’s an odd one for Priest. The immediate trend is toward Galakrond/Dragons, but more aoe makes those Auctioneer decks more appealing as well. Hurting your own guys is actually a bonus to Quest Priest, potentially. If 2 damage is enough to kill stuff, it’ll see play. Priest does have less synergy with cards that have damage numbers on them compared to other classes, since most of it’s removal doesn’t care about health.
Chronobreaker: 5 mana Dragon 4/5 Deathrattle: If you’re holding a Dragon, deal 3 damage to all enemy minions. More asymmetrical clear. I do like this card, but it really needs taunt if it’s going to be a deathrattle. Pretty expensive for Reckless Experimenter shenanigans. But at the same time, I can see a meta where opponents will go out of their way to kill it on curve, if Grave Runes has a significant presence. You ignore it a turn, it becomes a slow 9 mana aoe? That’s rough. Shame you can’t play Reckless, Chronobreaker, and Grave Runes in a single turn. Or can you, Fate Weaver? There’s also the ability to play Reckless, this card, and Shadowy Figure for 9 mana and 6 damage aoe. It’s not like minions will be in short supply in a Galakrond Priest deck.
Time Rip: 5 mana spell, Destroy a minion and Invoke. 4 attack minions are no longer safe from us. Memes aside, seems good.
Envoy of Lazul: 2 mana 2/2 Battlecry: Look at 3 cards. Guess which one is in your opponent’s hand to get a copy of it. Oof. You know, it was actually possible to guess wrong with Curious Glimmerroot, though rare. This one? Picking from three cards that are definitely in your opponent’s deck, and trying to figure out which one is in their hand? That’s going to be much harder, it’s going to fail more often. I’m skeptical that it’ll be any good, and that’s before we get into how this card doesn’t fit into the currently more competitive archetypes. You don’t want it with Mass Res, you don’t want it with Psychopomp. It’s Galakrond or bust.
Fate Weaver: 4 mana 3/6 Dragon Battlecry: If you’ve Invoked twice, reduce the cost of cards in your hand by (1). Really good, even if you’re just trying to make the random Priest minions from Galakrond’s hero power into something playable. You might think Nomi/Mecha’thun, but you’re going to fill your hand quickly if you’re invoking and your goal is to draw the combo and a full hand gets in the way. Priest Invoke is bad with Mass Res/Psychopomp, because Blizzard hates giving Priest a thing and then building on it in future expansions. OTKs potentially exist because of this, there’s one with Velen and Smites and Vivid Nightmares. And there is that new Armor Hate card. Not amazing, but not impossible.
Mindflayer Kaahrj: 3 mana 3/3 Battlecry: Choose an enemy minion, Deathrattle: Summon a new copy of it. Potentially really good, but likely to suffer the same problem and Madam Lazul last expansion. Will there be a deck that wants to run it? Once again, no real synergy with Psychopomp or Mass Res. And remember that Combo Priest also runs those. So it’s up to Galakrond.
Murozand the Infinite: 8 mana 8/8 Battlecry: Replay all the cards your opponent played last turn. Khaarj’s bigger, angrier brother, Murozand has similar problems of not having an existing archetype it belongs in. You’re spending 8 mana to do whatever your opponent did last turn, so if it’s great you’re probably already dead. Not like Murozand has taunt. You also don’t get Battlecries. Overall, he’s a bad Tess Greymane for a +2/+2 larger body.
Galakrond the Unspeakable: 7 mana Hero Card Battlecry destory 1/2/4 minions, 5/2 weapon on max upgrade Hero Power/Invoke: Add a random Priest minion to your hand. That’s a lot of text, and a lot of value. But it probably doesn’t compare to actual game winning effects, even if the pool of Priest minions were great (spoilers: it’s not). I don’t think Hearthstone games last long enough for unlimited Priest minions to be a viable win condition. Talanji’s problem was never that she lacked things to summon onto the board, but the massive depletion of resources after that board got inevitably wiped. Plus, Psychopomp/Mass Res complaints.
I think Galakrond Priest has some potential, but it’s post-rotation potential. A lot of bad minions are rotating, minions that depend on synergies you won’t have if you’re poofing these cards into existence. I’d love to be wrong, Galakrond Priest is the kind of random fun I’d love to play, but I do like to win at least roughly as much as I lose.
It all circles back around to the “design philosophy” of Priest from months ago. “Narrow but powerful” with a side of “weak card draw” to make it hard to put your narrow but powerful strategy together. But the real problem is that, in this context, “powerful” tends to equate to effects the same or weaker to what other classes can do in fewer cards and fewer sacrifices. The result is that most of the time, Priest cards don’t play well together.
I’m also disappointed by the lack of cool new dragon synergy among the class that has, up until now, been the one most predominantly aligned with dragons as it’s tribe.