I often meet many Priest players on the various forums who complain about the lack of proactivity of the cards received and the absence of true winconditions outside the generation of resources…
Here I ask: So why do you like playing Priest?
What I mean is Priest has always been (apart from very rare cases) a reactive class that, thanks to the very strong control tools, historically manages to be the class with the strongest late game of all the others; Priest has always historically won by outvaluing the opponent, bringing him into fatigue or defending himself until resources are exhausted. It is the identity of the class.
This is what I say: if reactivity is the basis of the identity of the class, why complain about it? Why do you love Priest if you don’t even like what makes it "unique”?
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Maybe they love the flavor of a light/shadow-wielding class, but want it to have better proactive options.
There are a fair number of players who pick their preferred Hearthstone class not based on the traditional CCG role(s) it fills, but the fantasy archetype it’s tied to.
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In part it’s because people hate playing against that sort of deck so whenever priest becomes good it quickly ends up on the chopping block for nerfs because of how much people hate that style of deck. So what they want is a good deck that doesn’t just annoy everyone to death. It’s the same reason why our resident mage aficionados are always asking for mage archetypes that don’t rely on complicated RNG nonsense spam, they want a good deck that doesn’t infuriate everyone else.
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The thing I liked about Priest in the past was the value game. It was really interesting to find myself holding unexpected cards and trying to figure out how to use them best, knowing how weird cards interact (Mistress of Pain and Auchenai, lol), that sort of thing. The game has mostly caught up to that at this point, and decks are too specialized to really get anywhere like that.
I like slow games with resources that I have to use carefully. Which the game has also gotten away from, with the amount of card generation in play at this point. The problem in Priest is that the class lags behind in most regards compared to other classes. The games are not slow because I have limited resources to use carefully, they are slow because my minions suck, my buffs are single target and mostly suck, I have no damage from hand to speak of.
It’s a weenie deck with no aoe buffs and no good early plays. You don’t get to run big, cool minions because there are none available to Priest. Compared to the old days of cool but bad minions like Paletress. Old school Control Priest used to run stuff like Cairne and Sylvanas. Lately, it’s not a class that has any cool minions of it’s own, really. Not in terms of competing for board. I think the class feels pretty direction-less when “Highlander Again” is the best performing deck, particularly when it wasn’t even included in the classes that received Highlander support.
I think that old Big Priest’s popularity was based on cheating out a bunch of big minions that do big things. Because, for the most part, big minions have to do things that directly contribute to the end of the game to be worth playing. I don’t think I’m the only person who wishes Gruul was a good card, for example. Big Priest let you play and create a lot of big dudes that do cool things.
Going forward, I think that Corrupt Priest has some potential. They’re obviously not going to print more Corrupt cards, but what the deck really needs imo is some cards to corrupt Clowns. You basically have to discount them in order to corrupt them in Priest. I think a fat spell to work with that new Spiteful-type elemental would be ideal.
As a beginner player, I thought Paladin and Priest were the most “good” classes (think D&D alignments). In time, I realized Priest is a class that likes to steal, silence and use shadow magic. So I now know it’s not such a good class after all.
In fact, I don’t like playing Priest (other than Dragon Priest) but it has some strong decks so I built them to try them out (and to rank up the ladder). At this point, I just play them to complete quests but I may need to play them more if I need to rank up on the servers they are located.
I play all class depending on my collection as F2P. I was surprised that priest was not the least played as it generally relates to higher cost and longer games.
From my perspective, priest class have many interesting tools that makes the other class envy. Priest can perform many tricks from going ‘infinite’ to massive swings/ disruption.
(Other class can perform similar control playstyles, but does not have the powerful tools of priest. Thus, players not tempted to switch to other control class)
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I used to play priest hardcore during few expansions long ago like the old gods expansion or when the death knight cards came out. I actually hate more than priests now honestly because of how insanely pushed towards Luck as a skill to play some classes. Luck I refer to as having so much RNG available in your kit that when overusing you are bound to get something good out of it that just swings tables and if it doesn’t play out in your favour as you hoped, RNG is still decently favourable. That is why I was pushed away from priest sometime ago and eventually got pushed away from paladin and now mage too.
I love Control archetype more than anything else in card games but when playing these kinds of decks I’m practically forced to rely on luck as my source of skill than actually knowing what to play or when to play simply because of how the deck builds for it that are possible to be competitive above at least 40% WR.
I like demon hunter a lot more now for a control based deck that holds out for late game to shine because it actually makes me feel like im thinking thoroughly with what I do like how I play cards to ensure I get the key cards for __ turn response to my leftmost or rightmost spot to outcast for best value. That in my personal opinion is what a card game control deck should feel like. rewarding your ability to manage what to play, when to play and how you play that differs from various opposing deck types. playing RNG heavy cards that reward you with more RNG that just gives even more RNG that the RNG just overwhelms and you win because you just RNG so much, this is a concept that pushed me away from mage recently. priest I was pushed away because the need to heavily rely on certain RNG cards they have force your deck building to a practical minimum freedom of choice simply because of how you need the RNG to play out without ruining you on value. both ideas of implementing luck on randomness for deck ideas is what pushed me away from those classes. paladin I won’t get into the heavy push to aggro and how their control style became closer to some idling simulator like warrior but that’s a different concept.
This is MY opinion. Though I do feel some people share some of my feelings or understand where I’m coming from. This of course is directed more to standard mode.
Sometimes, evil priest speaks to me. I’m not entirely a fan of taking cards from an opponent’s deck or hand, but taking a minion or a few on the board can be fun. Priest is also good at just deleting one or more minions.
It used to have draw options like Acolyte of Pain and Northshire Cleric, which were fun when I started out. It still has the night elf hottie Tyrande as a hero. Xyrella is kinda hot too, on the next tavern pass.
I became a Priest main shortly after installing the game and getting through the Mage intro quests, when I noticed Divine Spirit and Inner Fire. Other factors included having a decently attractive guy as the mascot and ‘Priest’ being a more attractive title to me than, for example, ‘Hunter;’ but there was definitely a sense that this was a nice combo with a nice effect.
Back then there were intro ranks up to rank 50. I don’t know if they still exist, but Lightwell + DS + IF was generally a winning play for me in them. I was warned at the time that Priest was one of the most expensive classes, and poured all of my resources into it for a couple years. I also dabbled with clone priest and mind blast priest. My favorite was Dragon Soul in Standard.
I would also like to point out that there was a time, when Resurrect Priest was called Wall Priest, that if you failed to clear the board in a couple turns you were almost certainly going to die. That set of minions wasn’t instant pressure, but it was a threat that was about to deliver. It wasn’t about boring the opponent with 2-attack minions. I’m sure many opponents of Rez Priest would rather be executed by a 24 attack Convincing Infiltrator than tortured by it. That kind of thing (not the same minion) used to happen. This is not to say I don’t appreciate attrition – the above-mentioned Dragon Soul deck gave me glorious 50 minute matches.
The whole ‘priest is reactive’ thing is something that was kinda forced on me, with the two Priest overhauls, and is why I stopped playing the game, and when I came back I took the Paladin returner deck and played Priest mainly in Wild. I don’t dust my other classes anymore, as I’m not F2P, but I definitely play the game less.
I love playing priest because I love building decks that slowly squeeze the life out of your opponent and win via fatigue. It’s the only class that feels like an anaconda killing its prey. I understand it’s frustrating to play against because you feel that slow squeeze and you reach a point where you know it’s over but it’s a slow, painful death.
I like knowing that I’ve beaten everything your deck has to offer and that you’ve thrown out everything you can muster and still lost. It’s the ultimate “I win” feeling. You don’t just win, you dominate the entire game. This is why Hakkar is one of my favorite cards.
That being said, you can’t play that sort of game at all if you aren’t given the proper tools to do so. It’s not about being reactive, although that’s the identity of priest, it would be more about wanting to be proactive in that approach. Besides, all the reactive tools aren’t as powerful as the proactive stuff that’s being spit out. Your cheezy 2 mana deal 1 damage to enemy minions means exactly squat as a reactive measure if the enemy is putting down 3 health minions on turn 1 more and more.
Since the powercreep has gone well beyond the reactive force of stopping said powercreep, it would make sense if they just allow priest to have more board presence since the reactive tools are subpar. I’d rather play a game where I’m fighting for board control with minions and healing rather than playing a game where I’m just constantly playing removal after removal after removal.
Unfortunately, Priest really doesn’t have that board control with healing at the moment that can compete. Maybe the new minions change that? And it’s extremely weird that Priest doesn’t have more minion healing going on…you’re playing Priest for crying out loud. It should be THE healing class focused on healing minions, and instead it’s more of a reactive class with the focus on healing yourself to stay alive.
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Most priest players(or at least me, i don’t really know for sure for others) actually like the reactive part of the class. It’s actually why I play the class.
But I don’t want to go to fatigue, I want to see that, for example at turn 15(or earlier or later), I won through something. I want to see the golden point in the game that tells me that I survived enough so I won.
In wild you can still see some cool combos that gives you that point. But in standard is all about surviving until fatigue. And this is why priest in standard has a low winrate while in wild is pretty decent.
I think that is the reason why it was purposely designed so. If not, Priest could dominate other classes, where it’s worse matchup is itself?
Nah, that would just be a balance issue, same as any other deck getting out of line. The basic existence of cards that do stuff in Priest wouldn’t inherently make the class OP.