Plague of Death: 9 Mana Epic; Silence and destroy all minions.
“Plagues are spells of ancient power wielded by the 5 League of E.V.I.L. classes (Priest, Shaman, Warrior, Warlock, and Rogue.) These cards wreak havoc indiscriminately, affecting every Minion on the board, so it’s best to be the one who decides when they’re unleashed.”
So nice of them to print a card they had to print for Priest anyway and lump it in with a fancy class mechanic theme. Really shows creativity.
So yeah, Priest needs an aoe and it’ll probably be run. It’s also extremely slow and it’s probably not going to fix the problems but w/e. It’s also anti-synergy with Deathrattle, which is supposed to be one of Priest’s strengths. Allegedly, going forward. So in all likelihood, if you are ever in a situation where you’re blowing up your own board, it’ll hurt you more than the other guy.
Sounds like how they design Priest cards. I guess the narrow use is overstat’ed minions that have deathrattle drawbacks you can erase, but they’ll have to come up with something better than healing the opponent because Auchenai can turn that into a bonus and there will be a critical mass of those effects if they print too many.
Idk, it could probably be 8 mana like Twisting Nether if they’re going to print some actually good Deathrattles for Priest. There aren’t that many DR minions in play atm I’d want to pay 9 mana to get around. Sadly, the best use would be against a board full of Goblin Bombs, isn’t that depressing? Battlecry minions are just better all around, so in general I don’t think the Silence effect is incredibly powerful at this time.
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Slow, perhaps, but simply having access to a powerful board wipe is a big deal since it enables the control archetype, and allows it to contest other similar control decks. Besides, not every Priest is Deathrattle, not every Deathrattle minion is unable to attack and claim its effect before this goes off, and not every Deathrattle is a good one in the first place, so there’s options in building a deck when deciding to feature this card.
Besides, 9 mana is more or less valid for this kind of effect. Psychic Scream was practically the same, but came at 7 which was obnoxiously early, and Nether is 8 for just kill, so Silence+Kill makes sense at 9.
If anything, it’s a little annoying to see Priest get yet another board wipe as many classes would love this kind of spell, but it’s not like I’m not going to try running it in Spiteful Priest or some sort of Control Priest (N’Zoth maybe).
3 Likes
Feels like a Standard only card.
Well to be fair it does feel like a strong card, but against Mass Hysteria, Dragonfire, Lightbomb and Psychic Scream cant see myself running it.
If Big Priests stopped existing id consider it over Scream though.
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Board clear? effective?
Priest will run it basically no matter the mana cost, priest will run basically anything worth its mana cost actually.
Priest is hungry for good stuff and abuses it easily.
This card will see a lot of play
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I think this card is fine. King Mosh saw some (minor) plays, and that card was harder to pull off.
This card will see play, but it’s not going to be “best board-clear”, obviously.
The sad thing is that this card alone isn’t anywhere near competitive until Priests can do something like cheat this card out on turn 5 - or if they get some fantastic early control cards that can thwart the flood of annoying cheap deathrattle cards.
This meta is so brutal with card generation and board flooding that a single 9 mana wipe doesn’t seem to mean that much when you have to sacrifice tempo to set it off.
2019’s Priest Board Clear.
3 Likes
It’s not like I disagree with your evaluation. I had a lot of similar thoughts.
I’m just drawing attention the times where it’s a drawback. The most viable DRs in Standard are “draw a card”, “deal X damage randomly”, and “destroy random minion.” And Soul of the Forest, I suppose, but I don’t think that’ll be very relevant since you can’t exactly wait for Soul to come out before clearing. While it’ll be nice to be able to destroy a board of boombots or goblin bombs without dying, I just don’t think that the Silence part is a major benefit at this time.
The difference between this and Psychic Scream is basically just the 2 mana; Priest needs so much more value before the drawback of Psychic Scream (fatigue) even becomes relevant. It’s almost impossible to get to fatigue as a Priest in Standard and probably in Wild as well. You have to actually run a way to win the game. In most situations, I believe Plague is much weaker than Scream, to the point where I think it wouldn’t be OP at 8 mana.
I was waiting for this specific card for a looooong time. This and a single target version of that (for warlock or rogue) were anticipated for years by a lot of players.
9 mana is the perfect cost. Better than twisting and psychic scream vs control matchups.
Fatigue is something that you might face vs control decks, since a lot of them have it planned.
Many control decks have (or will have in the future) potent deathrattles as an insurance. If value deathrattle decks will be a thing again, this card will be handy.
In arena, plague is certainly better. I had many times that the reshuffle of the board backfired on me (vs paladins or shamans scream is better though).
However, I can get behind a lot of your points.
I understand that the 2 extra mana might make a difference, but I feel like this card has the appropriate cost and will be strong.
Time will tell
Not a good card, you are spending your entire turn doing this, so your opponent will still be ahead on board, plus it’s worthless until T9, I play plenty of games that never even reach 9 mana.
Priest will run it, because we haven’t got anything better to do, but this isn’t going to improve us from tier 4.
Classic “narrow but powerful” card, the effect seems powerful, but is tremendously easy to play around (put just enough on the board T9 that the Priest has to clear, if they clear repopulate they can’t build any meaningful board presence with 1 mana, if they don’t just keep hitting them).
Man I’m bummed about this Patch, I was actually really enjoying aggro/burn Priest, but with no Mind Blast that decks dead.
If this was meant to be Priests “big card” then we’re in big trouble guys.
2 Likes
Priests typically reach the late stages of a game because of the healing, taunts and deathrattles so cost isn’t that big a factor.
Of course cost is a factor,this card is dead in your hand until T9, and that’s too late to do anything in a lot of games because you’re already dead by then, putting any 9 cost cards in your deck is always a gamble for this very reason.
Then , assumming you manage to survive until T9 a 9 cost clear means you can’t develop anything useful onto the board, so if you’re opponent doesn’t play straight into PoD they will just refill the board with 9-10 mana worth of creatures and you’re back to square one, you don’t even get to squeeze a heal in, oh ! of course I could run Radiance and heal for 5, feel the power!
5 Likes
My point is a high mana card is a larger liability in other classes than it is in priest since they have a lot of stall. Twisting nether has always seen play in control locks because you can continue drawing and lessen the penalty of holding that dead card by picking up other answers. Priest mitigates the penalty by healing and having beefier, stickier boards. Look, in Priests current iteration I agree it doesn’t look very good but I can’t see Blizzard completely neglecting them again this expansion. We’ll see as more cards get revealed, I suspect they’ll get another big heal card or a better taunt deathrattle which will make running this more realistic.
I don’t share your optimism, but I hope you’re right ![:slight_smile:](https://dacy5cilkxabf.cloudfront.net/en/hearthstone/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
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So you’re a Wild player, huh?
I’ll admit I began responding as a wild player but even in standard, the only archtype I see being played often is wall priest or some variation of it which does make it to the late game more often than not.
This card is a 1 of i think, for slower matchups versus a mech board or multiple deathrattle minions it devastates them.
But versus mid-range/aggro its to slow, so just a 1 of.
I like it. It will prevent my opponent from killing me for at least two more turns (if he’s not holding burn). What more can a priest ask for at this point anyway?
More epic priest removal. why are basic cards like this epic? Its a board clear that every control archetype will need.
2 Likes
Priest Quest
1 mana Heal 20 damage this game.
Reward: all spells you own cost (5) less to cast the rest of the game.
Boom, looks much better! (Im not a dev though, rip).