Tomorrow is the day, so I thought we could play a little game and try to predict which card is going to be the one card no one is paying attention to but will actually be very popular/impactful. I’ll go first with a spicy take:
If no OTK combo deck terrorizes the meta, Control Priest is going to have more fun with this than we’re expecting.
It might be the best card for Priest aside from the Overheal minion which will be used a bit, it’s really not anything special.
What Control Priest is really going to hope for is people playing Starship decks so they can copy those and pop off. Other than that, it’s Zarimi and Overheal Aggro for Priest.
I got to legend last month with a Control Priest Renthal deck non-Highlander and basically just used Control tools with Zarimi as win condition. It really eats away at many of the decks out there because everyone is so greedy and Priest can copy it.
But a lot of the stuff out there just hits too hard for Priest to deal with and I don’t know how Priest survives stuff like Asteroid Shaman that’s about to blow the meta up.
Setting your health to 42 isn’t as easy as you might think. Ideally, you want to use this when you are at 20 health or lower. But if you’re at 10 health, you can’t use this. As soon as you dip below 12 health, this is unusable. And, if you are at 12 health, the opponent is at 30, it means you’ve been losing the game badly and this won’t help much either.
Ideally, this card is good if you’re at 20 and your opponent is at 22. That means the game has been sort of even and you take advantage.
Really, this card is a lot harder to play than I think people imagine.
I think a lot of the starship stuff is awesome, but unfortunately, Reno and Yogg and to some extent Griftah will not allow a lot of the starship stuff to be playable.
Back on topic, I think a sleeper card is this one:
Target draw 2 spells is pretty dang good. And it’s bananas in Asteroid Shaman
Priest’s bigger problem is that it’s lacking in late game lethality. Other classes have much better ways to close out games than priest does. Stalling the game doesn’t kill your opponent, and by the time priest gets enough mana to play expensive cards the other classes have done something more impactful. Druids and warriors gonna have 16 mana and do bigger plays, shaman is gonna nuke you dead, librams will scale too fast and leeroy can just OtK you with the package. Etc
Priests strongest direction is an aggressive one that doesn’t plan to extend the game forever. Its window of opportunity to close games severely diminishes after turns 10 and beyond.
I think it’s the opposite, it’s gonna be easier than people imagine. Control priest can have a variety of healing tools AND self damaging tools to combine with its own damage to the opponent here and there to make the math work out. And figuring out the play to pop this off (and do it twice over a game) also sounds like a ton of fun. I love this card and I think it’s much better than people think it is.
The problem, as you and Melphina point out, is how viable a control priest deck can ever be. I think it has tools to have amazing stall and comeback potential. And it does have some options for a win condition. Things like asteroid shaman and Rogue shenanigans will be a problem tho, 100%
While I definitely agree, I don’t think it’s a sleeper. I think most people agree this card is awesome.
I suppose we will see. There’s really not much self damage Priest has that is good outside of aggro decks. And those are extremely limited and currently see no play in most Control Priest decks.
While Priest has healing to counteract to get to 42, that healing is counterintuitive at the same time. If you’re at 23 and the opponent is at 12 and you heal yourself to 30 so you can meet the 42, all you really did was what? Go to 42 health for 4+ mana and your opponent is still low on health. You didn’t really turn the tide of the battle. You just did a win more.
If you’re at 6 health and opponent is at 30 and you heal for 6 to get to 42 then play this…what did you really do? You were already losing the game pretty bad…unless you were facing an aggro deck, but then congrats, Control Priests already beat aggro decks pretty easily. So really, the only situation that is good is against other longer decks, but if those longer decks had you had 6 health they likely have some massive board you also have to deal with and you can’t because you just spent 4+ mana…now you only have 6 left.
The problem is that those other late game decks are all massively mana cheating, something Priest isn’t doing.
This Priest card is just going to help Priest to continue doing what it’s doing: Being bad at late game but now instead of dying on turn 20 you die on turn 24 or something.
The card is decent, don’t get me wrong, but it really does nothing net positive for Priest in the end other than maybe beating decks it was already favored to beat.
I wasn’t aware others knew about it.
In that case, if I have to pick a card I think people aren’t aware of, I’m picking:
I’m really liking this card in brawls. You can put it on your Starship or on some crazy DR minion for cheap.
Giving a minion taunt AND lifesteal for 1 mana is really, really good and I think people are overlooking it. It’s an aggro killer, and it also combos really well in late game when you drop a big deathrattle minion or even something as simple as Gnomelia…1 mana she can have reborn and lifesteal. Pretty nuts in control.
You do have a point that it won’t help beating things it can’t already beat. I think it does improve control priest potential but it won’t cover any of its weaknesses.
Here’s the kind of control deck I was imagining for it (I put this together very quickly just to have an idea so this is not a real deck, but I do see an interesting control priest deck in there that can be built around this card. Again, tho, no real wincon here other than the usual hope I can steal lethal from you. There’s obviously the classic highlander path which might still be the best one.
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I think draenei warrior looks interesting. Between combining it with handbuff stuff and being able to give the exarch rush as a finisher it might not end up being the most powerful deck in the game but at least theres some interesting mechanics to use.
Given how much people seem to hate tribal decks I imagine hardly anyone will be trying it.
But isn’t stalling the game forever what control players want? These players are allergic to doing anything that progresses the game in any way as doing anything besides infinite stall is aggro to them.
I understand it feels that way, especially in the last few years where Priest hasn’t been given a win condition. So players who like to play Control Priest aren’t starting with a deck with a win condition, they have to find one during play. This is Blizzard’s fault, not the player’s fault.
But with Zarimi in, most Control Players are using that + Gorgonzormu Cheese as a win condition. It just takes awhile to get to it, so it might not be obvious.
This is why I now play Control DK Rainbow. It has a win condition, several in fact, and it basically does the same thing Priests do. If Priest had a win condition other than Zarimi, I would play that.
But notice that they didn’t give Priest one this expansion. Priest didn’t get Starships. Priest didn’t get Asteroids, Replicating Spores, Crewmen or any of the new stuff that other classes can use as win conditions.
Instead, they gave Priest a win condition built around a Neutral Legendary (Velen) which doesn’t look promising at all. Or, someone could say they gave Priest more stall win condition with this new 42 health minion. Again, Blizzard’s fault.
It’s Blizzard’s fault that Control Priest players have nothing but stall outside of Zarimi.
Eredar Skulker is a great card for any aggressive rogue archetype and I’m surprised it’s being slept on.
Doommaiden is an auto-include in any ramp druid/control warrior deck since it’s strictly just a better Hecklebot.
Space Pirate adds another strong 1-drop for Pirate Decks, something lists have been lacking immensely (and will lack more without Miracle Salesman)
Add The Ceaseless Expanse and that’s ALOT of damage, they just need to reduce its cost fast enough
When did Fireseal get a new account?
Little update, I have been playing VS’s version of 42 Control Priest and I had a ton of fun. It’s like a puzzle every turn this might be my favorite card in a very very long time. Also feels very good as long as you don’t face a combo deck (which is how a control deck should work anyway).
Then you’d like a heavily Discovery-oriented rogue (or that new Hunter).
I find those decks taxing myself. Fun but they need too much thinking.
I like them when I do achievements and quests,
no so much for ranking.
Are you having any luck with this card personally?
The stats for win rate look terrible so far with this card. 40% win rate and bad stats all the way around.
What’s your experience? So far, all the things I thought about it seem to be pretty accurate. Difficult to play and even when you play it, it’s not really that impactful. 42 health is practically nothing nowadays.
With the card yes, with any deck that has it, not at all. It’s a hard to evaluate card, it requires a ton of buildaround for it to actually be easy to use, and when you are there Priest doesn’t even have a viable win condition anyway so you just stall your own demise unless you get lucky and steal something good.
I stand by the fact the card is good and easier to use than it seems, but there’s nothing remotely competitve in here with how bad priest cards are generally. So definitely not a sleeper lol. Give priest some inevitable wincon and you’d see the stats on this card take a big turn tho. It could just be waiting for its time to shine (or so I hope).
Is there a reason you can’t use Zarimi + Cheese as the win con? You only need 4 cards - Matriarch x 2, Gorgonzormu and Zarimi. That’s your win con. You can build the other 26 cards around whatever you want. I’ve won tons of games with different archetypes with that as the base. Control Priest, Zarimi Priest, Overheal Priest, etc. That’s the win con.
I haven’t tried and I doubt many have; since almost all the stats on the card would come from that VS deck, which was only relying on KJ (very bad wincon).
I’d imagine matriarch is hard to drop in the current meta and that a deck like that would still fold very fast to stuff like Elemental mage, quasar etc tho; but it might be the only viable wincon priest has, that’s for sure. Maybe I give that a try next time.
It does fine against Elemental Mage but Rogue is basically instant concede, there is no point trying to deal with Quasar if you’re playing Matriachs.
I wanted to revisit this 2 months down the road now. I have never seen this card played a single time.
The stats on this on HSReplay are so strange.
Terrible everything win rate except play win rate is like 60%.
All signs point to this just being a “win more” card.
Have you had ANY luck with this thing? And is there any hope after rotation or are we dead set now that this card is pretty trash no matter what?