That’s not really a replacement. Being able to use Svalna’s spell once a turn for 1 mana is very different than being able to use it an arbitrary amount of times.
What’s more, the shadow spell pool is worse now. There’s very little in it that’s proactive.
its only one discount per turn though. Svana radiant priest was a tier 4 deck this expansion even with three radiant, you weren’t sure of discovering the card you needed to do anything meaningful or start the combo again next turn. It wont carry the deck, if radiant rotate this deck dies.
It is not sure, but it makes it a bit better and don’t you think that radiant elemental + legendary spell looks kinda too strong? Well we will see how it is in wild tho.
Maybe and still I think the legendary spell was printed for sister to support it, even if its not enough yet. I doubt that this legendary spell is printed for shadowpriest/ETC shenanigans, even tho it could work if there is a possiblity make an midrange-ish shadow priest deck.
I personally don’t play wild, so I don’t have much of an opinion there. My concern isn’t that the new spell + radiant elemental would be too strong. My concern is that priest, as it stands in standard right now, has no real way to win games aside from shadow/aggro.
They needed to print something that gave priests a real late game.
What about their pushed archtype for midrange priest with dragon? I mean they introduced overheal, changed drak op. I would try a midrange deck with thief package, one as shadow and one as heal.
What do you mean by late game? Win condition? What about Astalor, Rivendare, Sir D? Even Lorethemar can be considererd lategame, if you have a good amount of minions like a midrange deck with dragons.
I don’t believe that the overheal package is good enough to be competitive. It might be at some point in the future, but it isn’t now. If it does work, I don’t see it including dragons.
By late game I mean some form of win condition or inevitability. Priest has good survival tools to get you past the early turns, but it’s not clear what they’re supposed to do once they get there. You need a way to close out games.
The cards you mentioned are certainly late game cards, but they don’t work well in priest and won’t make the deck competitive.
Rivendare is bad card in almost every deck, and priest does it worst than many others. Warlock can sometimes win games that way right now, but I don’t think priest can. At least not reliably, or when facing competent players piloting good decks.
Astalor can be a source of game ending damage if you cast him manage to get his effect off multiple times. Current druid manages that very well. Post expansion, rogue will have an easy time carrying out that game plan. Priest won’t.
I would be careful with such a judgement before seeing it in action. I personally like the changed cards the 1 drop and holy champion, the last one has potencial be Priest’s mana wyrm. Why do I say this? I played dragon priest in Gadgetzan meta where operative was known as op and I know it was carried by Dusk Breaker, but still midrange priest with thief wouldn’t be too bad, even tho not a top deck.
Lorethemar would work in a midrange version though and Astalor works everywhere so you have at least two powerful lategame and also sister. Tho sister is more like an win more card.
I don’t see any of this working. I think it’s all subpar, and noncompetitive.
There aren’t enough healing cards and the payoffs are too mediocre to make overheal priest good. Lorethemar doesn’t currently work in decks that are much better suited to it than priest. Astalor is not really a finisher card unless you can cast it multiple times. Drakonid operative was considered OP in Gadgetzan, but is not good enough to make it in modern Hearthstone - we’ve had it for a year and it hasn’t really seen play (even in thief priest decks). Svalna is good at reacting to threats, but with the current pool she generates no threats of her own.
I’m going to try to make priest work though, and I’ll be happy to be wrong.
So we are at the first expansion of a new year reset cycle with all classes at the lowest power level, and the priests want not only the game best removal, endless value generators but also an evitable win condition. Sounds balanced.
Svalna needs to be change to a start of game effect, and the new priest legendary spell needs to start in hand. Lorthemar needs to be changed to a “for the rest of game effect” so that all generated cards also benefit from the stat boost. With these changes I will play priest.
I have changed my avatar to celebrate this new change and every post will now be focused on improving the MORE factor of priest that I will be pushing in posts from now on.
Fight Over Me is probably fun to play as a way to generate resources.
5/5 Star Power as a Standalone card. I think Priests might skip this card though because they might be more focused on progressing towards their wincondition, even if that wincondition is 2xDirtyRat+2xPlagueSpreader/40Cards.
Shadow Chord: Distort looks reasonably interesting.
I think it should have been <-6 / >+2, so you can do stuff like “jail” minions for Board Blocking or Mind Control.
or a it could have been a Discordant Spell so it can be alternate to a buff spell.
or make it attack a random target or something.
The “destroy” clause takes away from the cool part of the -x/-x for me.
3/5 Star Power. Even after Rotation the Priest card pool is just so flooded with Single Target Removal like Cannibalize/The Light it Burns!.
Love Everlasting looks really hecking stupid.
Hope it gets nerfed first week. 
8/5 Star Power.
Rip my golden Priest collection unless the last Rare card is something amazing. Looks like every Priest deck is going to be a Renathal Deck and I’m not playing low synergy Renathal trash piles.
Why not? Rogues get it so why shouldn’t all the other classes as well?
Unholy DK is clearly going to be the preeminent aggro deck. It’ll shred every current deck.
No.
Svalna and Benedictus can partner with ETC and get the best of both worlds.
I really hope this isnt the Big Priest support I see it as in wild
Indeed, it most certainly is. Illuminate this on 1, it’s free on 2… all your spells are now 2 less… it’s gonna strengthen the deck for certain.
I kind of hope it is the Big Priest support and that it breaks the deck enough for that deck to be nerfed away from wild forever.
Nah, it will just get banned from wild to be “adjusted” when it rotates.
I do agree though. Shadow Essence is the card to hit IMO.