Should priest really be nerfed?

exactly - Priest can be beaten by so many - hence why its like Tier 4

I guess it depends what skill level/rank is being considered when deciding if a class is too strong. I, for instance, beat priest a few times as hunter in silver rank. I didn’t even net-deck, I used a premade deck from the client and altered it a little. I did also lose about the same amount of times. But it seems to me the way I lost was like how there is a window of opportunity to win early, but as the game gets later and later the window narrows. There was always a point in the match where I knew I lost and had no chance once the priest played a specific minion and I had exhausted my removal cards or if my card draw was not good enough. It’s just sad to play against priest because you can know you’ve lost even if you’re still at 30 health. I think it’s more of the way the matches against priest are decided which makes them look very strong, because it’s like having an open field of opportunities to win, then all of a sudden in 1 turn you’re behind a solid wall that cannot be broken down and it turns out those opportunities were just an illusion. It feels very unfair, even though the win/lose % may be 50/50 or near.

Pure Paladin has an OK match-up with Priest, and Aggro Paladin should absolutely dunk on it (particularly Murlocs).

Murlocs can get out of the 2 damage AoE ranges way too quickly for Priest, and Priest doesn’t run enough spot removal to stop you from building a board in the early game, usually, which is GG for a synergy deck like that.

Other aggro Paladin decks similarly build too many stats that are often too big to sweep with Nova/Breath. Never Surrender in particular just ruins Priest’s day in these decks, and once again Priest board clears aren’t particularly great right now.

Pure Paladin does OK. You really shouldn’t care about Breath or Holy Nova, or even Penance. Your early game is just there to keep them from having a superior board to snowball, and pressure them into burning removal. In particular I’ve found the Angling Rod to be incredibly useful. It’s 2 murlocs they have to kill, and it bails you out against them rushing out a Sethek, plus one swing plus a trade clears even their turn 4-5 plays. Just don’t play too hard into Shadow Madness and prioritize buffing deathrattles into 4 attack where you can. Midgame just don’t leave anything beefy for Apotheosis or Grave Rune to punish, and if you can deploy some 4/6’s. Lightforged Crusader by itself can keep you afloat in terms of resources; really you’re not going to get fatigued by Priest without some god-tier invokes as you’ve got too many big threats to lay out before the game ends. Lategame their mega-bs cards like Soul Mirror and Murozond can be a problem, but since they only have a couple big swings like that you can often cover it with Libram of Justice and Subdue or trades. Ultimately they should fall behind one turn or fail to clear a decent board, and if you run Blessed Champion (and you should run it, as it’s a necessary finisher) then you can just blow them up at that point. For non-pure Libram Paladin; with Mountsellers and such you should have no trouble blowing them up as long as you reach your lategame.

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I’ll second that as well, priest was always my worst match up as paladin player, whatever deck I tried against it (outside of murloc deck).

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Too much theorising. It never works out that way in practice.

Uh, that’s based on all the games I played against Priest? The only games I really lose are when they get ahead on board and blow me out with high tempo plays that Paladin just can’t keep up with; I don’t think I’ve ever been fatigued or otherwise exhausted of resources by priest.

Agree. Priests should not be nerfed. But I would like their mechanics to be changed to be less annoying.

Convincing infiltrator should belong to the rogue class, not priest. Or spy or assassin if there are such classes. Priests are holy people.

Playing priest, rez is the most boring deck to play with or against, but if meta calls, there it is. DoD meta left almost no choice.
But priest being most unfun? DH and hunters barely care if you’re there, spell druid just ramps into whatever combo, rogue adding 15 cards and mana cheating another 7+ is not fun to play against, mages play casino deck…
What’s unfun with priest, that you have to be thinking 2 turns ahead? Atrocious! Holy hell, you actually gotta have some skillz!

OK, it’s all in the name, then? I dub thee holy bartender d:

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For sure. It’s fine for Priest to be the “heavy control” class, just give them a somewhat proactive win con.

As I said in another thread, we probably won’t see the impact of the Priest redesign until YotD rotates, it’s heavily reliant on it for now, but here’s hoping to less “degenerate” mechanics for the class.

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Original priest was heavy control. Why it was bad? Not because of it’s control tools but any class that played more minions than priest had pretty good chance to win.

It was almost fine but then following expansions begun to give rather short hand to priest.

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Original Priest also sucked, performance wise. It wasn’t until Meme Streets introduced Drak OP, that the class had a tier worthy deck, and it was midrange, not control.

Yet it has always been one of the most complained about classes, despite a fairly meh performance over the history of the game.

So, yeah, keep those control roots, just make them a bit less degenerate for the opponent going forward… Or not, degenerates need decks to play as well.

(Priest is one of my most played classes so no intended offence to priest players, just stating the facts as i see them :grinning: )

Some priest runs Imprisoned Homonculus into Imprisoned Vilefiend into apotheosis turn 3/4 into psyche split. It can be good against aggro.

Priests secretly being agents of evil is a pretty common trope

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Personally, why I hate playing priest more than even my worst match up is because, even by control deck standards, it plays slow. Majority of control decks try and minimize damage in the early game in order to reach high Mana to push for a win. Priest plays to out fuel their opponent because of how much card generation they have, they don’t push for wins they just starve the opponent. They play for fatigue majority of the time and I don’t particularly find that fun.

I guess you have never seen the Reckless Rocketeer buff Priest in action xD

that is a meme at best, and even then its an inconsistent one

Ofc, but it popped off one month ago. IF it works, the otk is funny though xD

And it says something about Priest aoe when running a bunch of dormants is better than just aoe’ing the board down against Aggro.

That deck exists because of how bad Priest was vs Aggro DH, basically. Because sitting back and using removing almost always ended in bleeding out over 10-15 turns. You had to stick a big minion and put Apotheosis on it to win, basically. So, of course, a Vilefiend with Apotheosis and Split was pretty strong, and you could do it reasonably early.

In typical Priest fashion, though, this deck flounders against Control decks. Priest can only ever build to beat one thing, it seems. I’d imagine that Dormant Priest dropped off sharply with the nerfs to DH.

I actually built that deck because it was the first priest deck recently that looked fun to me. Although its not the best, its pretty fun to play.

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You can’t push for wins! No weapons. No direct spell damage. RNG cards result in the typical low attack inconsistent minions. And if you push with low mana minions early you run out of cards and cannot draw.

Personally, the entire reason I play galak priest is because it actually gives me a chance to play the game in the early rounds compared to Res priest where pass/pass/pass/pass to start the game is/was annoying. But early galak priest play depends on a good mulligan and getting the right RNG cards. Often you sit there with a hand full of cards you cannot play because the mana cost is too high or you have spells with nothing to target.

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