If you like to play control

Multiplayer Discussion
1

You should:

  1. play control lock
  2. play control priest and accept that you will likely lose against a control lock

If you like to play a token based deck, would you play:

  1. druid
  2. shaman

Probably druid, right? Because shaman doesn’t have many tokens interaction right now (blood lust gone).
So, maybe control priest is in a bad spot right now and it’s time for warlock to shine?

If you really want to play control priest but not control lock, you aren’t a control player, you are a ResidentSleeper :sleeping: player.

By the way: since statistics apparently don’t matter, I feel like control priest is a better control deck against aggro/midrange (soul mirror, spell generation, wave of apathy, apotheosis + samuro…).
It has a lot of tools compared to warlock and it should win more easily against aggro/midrange decks.

Lock wins easily against decks that do nothing for several turns, because Jaraxxus is the nightmare of another control player with limited resources, so if you drop it you basically win in the late game.

You play priest, you know what you’ll get: there is a trade off in match ups, which is a good thing.

Before the expansion: at very very high legend (top 3), people used to play Highlander priest to get to top 1 (and they usually succeed, like Leta and Gaby).
Why?
Insta win against combo DH.
Win against weapon rogue.
WIn against evolve shaman (before the nerf).
Not hard to win against warrior.
The only hard match up was the mirror, which was 30 minutes of agony, RNG cards, infinite clears, multiples murozond… a pain.

A meta where Lock doesn’t keep priest in check, is a meta where control priest keeps everyone else in check (or hostage, you choose).

So, if you like to play control right now, consider to try out other control classes: priest isn’t the only one.
And other control classes have actual win conditions too!
It’s fun to win because of Jaraxxus/Rattlegore, rather than “your opponent left”, try it!

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2

Sounds like you dont play the game and get your information from the forum. LOL

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3

what?
a few ppl used priest to climb and that was ppl who play all the time and know all decks.
make a better history in your lock defence

4

My lock defense is: play lock as well if you like to play control. It has a lot of tools that make a control deck good!

Priest also has a lot of tools but doesn’t have enough win conditions, so you can try to play it too but then you will likely lose against lock.

My suggestion is to choose one of the two classes, knowing what are your strenghts and your weeknesses

5

Exactly right. They touched upon this in the last VS podcast, as I remember, they said something like

‘People have this fantasy about a fatigue meta. Trust us, you don’t want that’.

And its exactly right

People who play resident sleeper decks dont want mirrors. They want to win through frustrating the opponent. In a fatigue meta, it will happen to them just as often. No board based aggro to farm and feel superior to.

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i think all priest players knows that.

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Well that’s weird, because statistically Highlander Priest was mid T2 last expansion. It had 14 bad matches, 8 good matches, and 7 50/50s in the last report from VS. Everything Warlock was a bad match, everything Mage or Rogue was a 50/50 or worse, and your idea of insta-win is apparently like a 60/40 match.

And the thing that bugs people about Priest vs Warlock right is that it’s more like 80/20 for the Warlock.

I don’t know where your statistics are coming from, but mine are coming from the site that uses numbers.

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Because at any relevant ranks the bad matchups weren’t present? Because they were bad decks?

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Not anymore, we have some new tricks now, like the 4 manas 5/5 draw a card from opponent deck for both players, draw Jaraxxus or Tickatus and get a fighting chance.

The lagendary who silence and turn a copy can give you the advantage against the deathrattle demon 5/4.

It is a touph match but not impossible anymore.

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10

maybe a litle bit,¨
most wl will kill there own 5/4.
but a good plan and ad the elefant minion that copy spells and suddenly the tables have turned.(if you get a good copy)

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11

I mean, I think the majority of Priest players are kind of upset about the class not getting the kinds of tools it takes to win the game before fatigue. Highlander Priest being the most successful archetype of the class in Standard for the last, like, year and a half is proof that the class doesn’t have it’s own power cards.

Remember that Priest wasn’t meant to be a Highlander class, it was on the Lackey side of the design space. The Lackey generators given to the class were garbage, and the Invoke cards ended up being pretty bad as well. Inherently behind in Tempo, because it gave random Priest minions instead of anything that immediately affects the board, and on top of that the minions themselves were predominantly bad Tempo in a vacuum. But more importantly, it was just more of Priest doing what it could already do, it didn’t need that. It needed ways to win the game, because running people out of resources isn’t a viable option in the era of random generation.

Unless you have a buffed Jaraxxus with no drawback and a way to recycle your best removal and burn 10 cards from your opponent’s deck. That’s a way to run your opponent out of resources. Not that the buff matters in this specific match; the only part that matters is Jaraxxus being buffed enough to be included in the list. Jaraxxus was always the Priest-slayer, because putting together even 15 damage from hand was always a challenge for the class. 35? Forget about it. And Warlock has some fantastic passive healing in Soul Shards, so you’re inevitably out of the game if you ever lose the board. Then 2 mana 6/6s start coming out and you inevitably lose the board. And their removal is better than Priest, too. Like, they have Priest’s best removal card in Hysteria.

But the thing is… Warlock is allowed to do things other than Control. Priest really isn’t. You’d think they would at least give Priest the tools to be good vs Control, if that’s the only type of deck it’s going to be allowed to make.

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12

You’re correct. Just like before rotation, Priest is the better control class.

It also has the best tech against combo in Illucia, which does a number on OTK DH, the new spell damage Mage and any kind of tempo deck Rogue could hope to assemble now lmao.

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It can only do control because Blizzard doesn’t know how to design other archetypes for it. Anything else they’ve tried has been dead on arrival. They need card draw or it’s always going to be the same story

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I think a control priest deck can be made to battle warlock. Runaway blackwing is good in priest vs control warlock. At end game he negates jaraxxus because by then warlock has used up their removals and he kills the 6/6 infernal every turn.

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15

wl ctrl is a tirer 2 deck with 53% winnrate and it looks like its raising.
priest ctrl is tirer 4 with 44% winrate.
so maybe statistick means more than feel facts.

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A lot of people did that yestarday night on EU servers, it was fun because I was like “let’s play warlock as well” and I farmed the mirrors because they are god awful control players.

So for the people that want to know how to play Control Warlock mirror :

  • Mulligan exclusively for tickatus and Yshaarj, if you have both, mulligan for ways to corrupt the tickatus.
  • If you have coin, don"t use it except to corrupt Tickatus.
  • Don’t play your soul fragment cards until they corrupted tickatus (or you really have to dump cards from hand)
  • Once you got the key cards : Tickatus Yshaarj and Jaraxxus, stop drawing.
  • Don’t Tickatus your opponent if he has more than 50% soul fragments in his decks.

Do that and easy win. Don’t worry about getting punched in the early game, control warlock doesn’t have burst, so your fragments will bring you to full life soon enough.

(Yeah I had to say that because god, I won 8 mirrors yesterday because people are too bad to figure how to play control correctly, no wonder people hate Tickatus, they just suck)

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17

Right, statistics in decent MMR mean something, not the average where people can’t actually play Control Priest optimally and queue into meme Warlocks every other game.

Priest is the better control class in high legend because it actually has a 60%-something chance against Face Hunter and OTK DH. Control Warlock gets giga farmed by both.

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cant check those stats.
but ppl dont start in legend,so you cant just say its bad players and the mmr is average.
so the first part of you post is speculation and not facts.

19

Of course people don’t start in legend. Not with this attitude they don’t lmao.

Stats wise Warlock isn’t bricking any class from reaching legend except for Priest. Once you get to high enough MMR you’ll face Warlocks way less frequently and can make perfect use of Ctrl Priest in a meta where Face Hunter is the most popular deck.

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yes look like there are some changes on ladder even warrior is rising.
priest is stil down in the dirt on ladder.
hunter probally gonna c more play on ladder as well and maybe help priest that way acording to your stats.