I’ve been seeing many forum posts and comments popping up on a daily basis about how Priest is too strong, not fun to play against, and has no counter. At the risk of falling on deaf ears, I’m going to make this post anyway. Right now Priest is around the middle in terms of class ranking, so I can’t help but feel these opinions are from newer players who simply need some tips. As someone who has played hundreds of games of Legend Priest this year, I think I’m a little qualified in giving some tips on how to ruin a Priest’s day.
To start, some of the strongest decks in the meta do very well against Priest:
-Bomb/Galakrond Warrior (wins 70%+ of the time)
-Aggro/Weapon/Stealth Rogue
-Face Hunter
(-Highlander Mage + Turtle Mage, while currently not relevant in the meta, I win most games vs Priest with it)
All of these decks have 1 thing in common: burst down the opponent faster than they can heal. Priest, ironically, doesn’t have access to lots of burst healing like Paladin. They rely on three ways of healing:
- Renew
- Apotheosis
- Random generation
Renew doesn’t heal much on its own, and is much weaker now that Renew chaining is gone.
Apotheosis can certainly be powerful, but if you’re smart enough to deny Priest from having board presence, it’s a dead card. When facing an aggro deck, Priest will scramble to put this on any of their early minions to get some healing, but they give up huge, late-game burst healing by doing this.
There isn’t much you can do about random generation, but random generation is much worse than card draw.
General Priest Weaknesses
-4 Attack minions
-3 or less Attack minions (Typically can’t afford to run Shadow Word Pain)
-Divine Shield minions (Survives Penance, AOEs)
-Minions with 2+ Health (Survives Breath of the Infinite, Holy Nova, try Beaming Sidekick)
-Minions with more Health than Attack (Survives Soul Mirror)
-Stealth minions (forces Breath of the Infinite, Holy Nova)
-Minions that can’t be targeted by Spells or Hero Powers (self explanatory)
-Weapons (Priest has no draw, so even if they run tech, it’s pretty unlikely they’ll draw it)
-Combo decks (Even with Mindrender Illucia, it’s not often they’ll draw it before the opponent executes their combo)
-Early board presence (take advantage of this by playing minions in their blind spot)
What about Plague of Death? It clears everything!
A: PoD costs 9 mana and is generally far too heavy to run in this aggro meta. If you’re playing Rogue, PoD won’t bother you because you should’ve killed Priest by turn 6 or 7. This does nothing against Bomb Warrior. PoD also prevents Priest from developing the board after clearing, which still leaves you ahead in tempo if you kept some cards in hand.
I’m playing an aggro deck, but Priest always clears my board and I lose!
A: Just because you have the mana, doesn’t mean you have to play your minions. Priest only has so many clears, so they’ll try to save them to get the most value out of them. If you control the board with your minions and you’re dealing enough damage each turn, wait for Priest to use a clear before putting more minions down.
I’m trying to make Purity Paladin work, but I can’t beat Priest.
A: Paladin has access to many Divine Shield and 4 Attack minions which makes Priest very sad. Goody Two-Shields, Lightforged Zealot, Aldor Truthseeker, Devout Pupil, and Lady Liadrin are all phenomenal cards against Priest. If you have a 4-attack minions on the board, for the love of Brode, do NOT use Libram of Wisdom on it, you’re just asking for it to get SW:Death’d or SW:Ruin. If you have a 3-attack minion, DO use Libram of Wisdom on it.
Cabal Acolyte is so overpowered, there is no way to beat it.
A: Cabal Acolyte is certainly strong, especially when used with Wave of Apathy, but it’s pretty terrible against wide boards (lots of minions on your board).
Raise Dead is too strong
A: Raise Dead can certainly be powerful, but it’s also extremely “delicate”. It shares the same weakness that rez Priest does - having bad minions in the rez pool. If you have a vendetta against Priest, you can run Terrorguard Escapee or Zul’Drak Ritualist to clog their rez pool. Some classes can use Polymorph, Hex, or Devolving Missles (Rogue, Mage, Shaman). Additionally, Priest has anti-synergies with this card in their own deck!. Shadow Madness, Cabal Acolyte, Soul Mirror, and minions obtained off of Galakrond, ALL put garbage in Priest’s rez pool and make Raise Dead worse. Lastly, this card is often bad when used late vs aggro decks, since Priests wants to avoid getting their health too low.
Hopefully this has been educational to people struggling against Priest.
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