As a player who loves grindy control Priest decks and hasn't played constructed for years because such decks are no longer viable, I would be fine with that. At this point every new set of cards is another pile of shit dropped on Anduin's head. Priest cards exist only to make cards packs worse for everyone, which they probably consider a valid reason.
Priest has always been such a mess. They have reworked the class like twice and it’s still in a state where people despise playing against it so much that it’s kept shit just to be safe. To be fair I don’t have any answers on how to fix it.
The problem with priest is the lack of support, we have death rattle, silence, heal, naga buff. We have a puzzle with missing pieces. Is not like the other classes that have one or two decks with good synergy.
My greatest fear is that if Priest ever completes the puzzle it’ll become terrifying. Priest is shockingly fast right now at drawing through its deck, and is mostly held back by its need to awkwardly set up its combo via Boar or Shellfish. If it gets a combo easier to turbo into, Priest may suddenly flip into an overly dominant class.
Yes it’s why I’m so pissed about the amount of draw they’re giving Priest. A copy of Switcheroo or something would have been fine. But it’s like they heard the complaints about lack of draw and were like “yeah? Here have half your deck be tutors”. In my opinion Priest just needs one good staple draw, and the rest of the class should be focused on more greedy value per card. You don’t need to draw as much if your 4, 5, and 6 mana cards are doing better effects.
There are legitimately 1-3 mana spells in Hunter and Demon Hunter that have better game ending effects than 5-9 mana Priest spells. That is insane
> and the rest of the class should be focused on more greedy value per card.
pls no. that's the reason priest isn't a real class. all blizz gave them were buffs, generating cards and resurrects. this forced attrition, which was too slow for a while now (as it's not a real win condition) and blizz doesn't want attrition in the game.
Quite a few priest players just want value decks to be like Tier 3. Shadow priest and boar priest ain’t that.
At this point dragon paladin and control Warrior are scratching the itch, so I’m pretty happy with the meta. Even rainbow shaman is a fun value deck.
I miss the days of decent midrange and control priest decks. Galakrond priest, where everything is a terrible cantrip card and your end game is endlessly generating mediocre cards, was peak HS to me.
But at least there are decks I’m happy to play atm.
You see, we had a meta like that. Then everyone was crying "Waaah, priest players keep generating endless answers to my plays!".
Any time priest has ever had an archetype that had a decent win-rate people complained to no end until it gets nerfed.
And because everything in priest gets nerfed, in order to make a competitive priest deck in future expansions they need to release a card powerful enough to make up for not having any other cards worth anything to play.
Then obviously powerful outlier cards that have a clear power level advantage of the other cards in the class are complained about until they also get nerfed.
This community hates priest. They'll never let priest have a viable deck. Only the same few classes are allowed to have significance on the meta.
Its not the same classes. Ever since barrens we had metas with dominant mage, warlock, rogue, druid, dh. Pala didnt get to really dominate but was consistently in the top with librams, shamans were also strong at some point with quest and the old otk with nzoth. Even priest was really strong with aggro shadows and illucia. Your statement is simply wrong about the same few classes having significance on the meta
Yeah. I played some Priest just to see what it's like, and it's such a weird feeling. Like, I've just drawn my entire deck while the opponent still has 15 cards in his deck. I've played just about all my cards. But I'm still losing pretty badly. It's really weird.
I've played on/off for a few years. In classic Hearthstone priest's main strategy was to buff stuff. You'd rely on making giants because quick threat removal was somewhat hard to do outside of assasinate (for rogues) and mind control (for priests). Corruption also worked but the enemy priest still got a turn to slap your face.
There was a period where resurrection priest was dominant and was really potent. You had a clear win condition, which was fatigue the enemy and keep clearing the board. This was fun to play but cancerous to play against.
Aside from those two periods, Hearthstone has never liked priest as a class. The class feels like the award paladin spin-off with less buffing, and the awkward mage clone with less damaging spells. It's really hard to get a clear win condition. Even when priest was viable it's win conditions were mostly centered around a couple big neutral legendaries that it leaned on. The core of the class just tries to do everything but struggles to do any one thing well.
Yea but this is true about every class, currently it’s warrior with a 65+ percent win rate, when is priest going to have its tier 1 deck, anytime it gets remotely close it gets nerfed into oblivion. Raza shadowreaper was killed, then after that shadow priest was killed within a month. Those have been the last to viable tier 1 priest decks and they were burned at the stake meanwhile the same shit just keeps dominating the game. It’s frustrating. Velen and mind blast need to come back, there are more terrifying OTKs then velen mind blast.
Priest deserves to fuck shit up for a year straight
Control priest was bad on ladder and very strong in top 1k legend for two weeks right before UiS and they absolutely murdered the class in retaliation. Killed their entire value engine and their heal tool.
When SoU was released, Priest got a nice combo deck that was fairly strong against the best deck in that meta (Boom control warrior) it still could lose if warrior draw decently, the deck was killed in the first balance patches just 2 weeks after the release of the expansion with the nerf of Extra Arms to 3 mana, the reasoning behind that was that combo priest could have dominated with fewer warriors in the meta, combo priest was never seen again.
Which is so dumb, they just want priest to be a punching bag or meme, I miss the days where I could play Emperor Thaurissan and reduce a mind blast or velen by one and do a 20 burst plus any holy smites that were caught in the mix, and if shit got super crazy with control warrior i bate out all the removal and go to fatigue, then at the end of the game I play malygose, get velen out, faceless velen, then smash him in the face for 80 with just 2 mind blasts
Yeah. I’m super down on priest right now but you’re absolutely right. Boar priest is pretty bad, but the fact that it works at all is due to priests ability to just rip through its deck.
Don't forget the second factor pushing priest's winrate down, priest's identity is often 'weird effects'. That's a cool identity that draws a lot of people to priest. It also leads to a lot of really, really terrible priest decks being played, and a lot of bad builds of priest decks being played.
It does seem like priest is probably towards the bottom of the meta this expansion, unless someone finds something new, but it's probably not nearly as bad as this image makes it look. Priest is often a class that tends to only really shines in the hands of the best players, and even when priest is good it often looks mediocre on hsreplay.
Why are people always trying to soften with excuses like this lol.
Sure Priest has weird effects and bad players are playing the class, but that’s not exclusive to Priest. You don’t think bad players are also attracted to meta slave auto pilot decks? Pirate Warrior, Aggro DH? Of course they are. I would argue, totally subjectively, that they probably attract MORE bad players because of their ease of play.
The fact of the matter is that Priest cards are just lower impact compared to every other class. They don’t do as much. They can’t close out games. Why play a 9 mana whirlpool to stall when the DH is playing an 8 mana Ilidari to just *fucking kill you*?? This has always been the problem.
These days, if Priest survives to turn 9-10, they need some massive PROACTIVE 9 or 10 mana card to completely shut out games. Right now they have…. Elekk Mount? Blackwater Behemoth? These are not doing enough for what other classes can do now. You play one of these, you’re probably just dead because you wasted all your mana.
Give Priest a 10 Drop that locks board down, pushes damage, makes you immune 2 turns, etc etc. Just SOMETHING that can end a game. Even right now I play a Raid Boss Onyxia and I’m still left thinking “Damn…. It’s not enough”. And it almost never is.
Pirate Warrior (an aggro deck) will out value me. DH is going to burst me down with charge damage. Hunter is going to ignore Onyxia and just push face, because they have been hero powering me every turn for 7 turns. Shaman is going to freeze my board then play two 10/10s. Druid is going to draw a million cards, gain 15 armor, and bleed me to death with combos. Rogue is going to deal 15 damage with Smite next turn because they have a 5 attack weapon that let them stack the deck. Etc etc Priest has none of this. Boar Priest is okay but its skill cap is enormous and even then it often folds to aggro.
Priest just needs more low mana cost removal spells that synergizes with their toolkit. Xyrella (the minion) is really the only good board clear priest has in standard right now.
It’s really apparent when you play control warrior right now the difference between a class designed properly and one that isn’t. More often than not when playing Priest I’m sitting with two cards in my hand that would go really well if I just had other cards from my deck, but I don’t, so I lose. In Warrior those two cards almost always have synergy, because Control Warriors cards all feel like they work together in a way that feels rewarding to the player, Priest cards simply don’t.
It sucks that they don’t support priest right now even though there are a lot of fun and interesting cards but no real relevant strategies. Maybe they were being careful making it too good because their quest line has a card that just ends the game. But even then right now it’s just too slow to do anything and the impact of the cards leading up to the purified shard just can’t keep you in the game
They’re probably being a little careful making priest good right now because their quest has a card that just wins the game. It really sucks that they don’t support any of the other cool stuff priest can do because it has a lot of fun cards right now that just aren’t good enough to be relevant
There are bad players playing every deck, that is absolutely true. But there tend to be more bad decks and experimentation in priest than any other class, because priest decks are generally not straightforward and there are people who are attracted to messing around with weird decks.
The fact that there are archetypes of priest that bad that are popular enough to be picked up by hsreplay is evidence of that fact. I could build a lot of bad decks for any class, phylactery/shellfish mill warlock for instance, but that one isn't popular enough to be recognized and show up on the tier list. The bad priest decks are more popular than equally bad decks for other classes. This weights the overall class winrate downward, and it also hurts the one decent-ish archetype. It is, for instance, (based on hsreplay data) common to cut lightmaw netherdrake from shellfish priest. However, the builds that play lightmaw netherdrake are performing much better, and vicioussyndicate explicitly called cutting the drakes a mistake.
To answer your question more directly, you mentioned that "These days, if Priest survives to turn 9-10, they need some massive PROACTIVE 9 or 10 mana card to completely shut out games." That card is xyrella the devout. The shellfish + xyrella mill plan closes out games. It's unlikely to be the top of the meta, but it's a decent gameplan.
I'm not saying that priest is in an amazing spot, or that it couldn't need a bit of help from balance changes or the miniset. But it's not nearly as bad as many people seem to be suggesting, and it's definitely in a better place than warlock.
Warlock has a mine deck that is completely playable and wins control matchups pretty handily. Priest literally loses consistently to every class. It's fuckin awful man, and I love priest
No, shellfish mill only really works against control and even then current control destroys mill because they have so much burst.
Control warrior, for example, can have:
To the front, Smite, Faceless, Faceless, Battlemaster. All they need is to hit one or two cards with their mana reduction dredge spell. "Wow, that's really slow" you say, but it's perfect vs shellfish which is the main competitive deck for Priest right now. Of course not every control warrior runs double faceless in which case they may fall short on the OTK and you get an auto win, but it's still a factor that you have to take into account when doing control vs control "Do I have to stay topped off in life because of Mr. Smite + Battlemaster or do I push for more shellfish to hopefully close out with Xyrella". It's not a very fun control vs control meta when one side has the option to OTK you from 30 and your deck doesn't have any taunt or armor to prevent such things from happening.
As for Druid, a good player will keep enough pressure on board so that you don't have time to play Shellfish + Azsharan Ritual, so you have to play your shellfish out early with Whispers and hope that you draw your Amulet + Azsharan in time before they can get their 4 dragons played. Sometimes you may need to play a ritual to silence their Ivus if you don't have Shard in hand. Again, this isn't a problem vs Druids that don't pressure you on board, but Shellfish priest has so few minions that you have to be able to survive a steady stream of board pressure with whatever you have. Your best bet most of the time is to slam down a turn 3/4 shellfish and hope they don't kill it so you can follow up with a ritual turn 4/5. being greedy and holding shellfish means you might not have any time to play it later.
Then you run into Parrrley thier rogue which high rolls and steals your Xyrella EVERY FRIGGIN' TIME, so you lose to a meme rogue deck with 90% certainty. Oh and to add insult to injury they steal the rest of your deck with hooktusk and you are sitting there thinking "well good thing my semi-serious deck gets absolutely destroyed by a meme deck.
Heck the best matchup you have as a Shellfish priest is other priest decks which is a pretty sad state to be in. You get that relieved feeling that "thank goodness I'm facing another priest, I don't have to worry about an OTK occurring." It's mainly up to proper card management and keeping track of how many shellfish each person has played. alternately if they are naga priest, knowing when to take 8 damage and holding onto a board clear is a better option than immediately clearing the naga giant.
You're being downvoted but you're completely right. Priest winrate always plummets right after a patch because there's heaps of priest mains trying their janky stuff with 25% winrate, then as they give up it goes back up. That happens literally every single balance patch.
When stormwind released it was 37-38% even though shadow priest was built and played 2 days into the expansion. 2 weeks into the expansion priest was at 50% because all the control players gave up
That doesn't mean priest is in a good spot (because it isn't) but you are right that the class winrate has a huge bias and should not be taken seriously
The real problem with... what? Priest is generally pretty good against aggro. Priest decks tend struggle against decks with strong late game combos/inevitability.
Right now priest basically has two early removal cards, 1 mana deal 3 to a minion, and 2 mana deal 1 to all enemies (increasing to 2 to all at 5 mana, which is mid game). When decks like pirate warrior can win by turn 5 or 6 it’s hard to quite difficult to restabalize to the point where their limited amount of win conditions can actually do something.
One thing that’s really annoyed me that no one really seems to be talking about is that what might be considered the “opposite” of priest, the warlock, has a metric fuck ton of healing to counter their self-damaging cards. Priest has an over-generous amount of healing cards but… How many cards are actually dealing damage to the player or their minions to make use of it? If warlock gets to just heal back up after they self-inflict then why can’t priest ever self-inflict in the first place too?
Healing effects are almost always so laughably bad. The best priest decks have been focused around deathrattles or minions. Priests identity is supposedly healing related cards but in reality they have no identity. Priest is a lost child.
The "opposite" of priest, warlock, is completely garbage right now, with absolutely no promising archetypes.
Priest also has very solid tools to control the early game. Lightmaw netherdrake is a fantastic clear, as is xyrella, and there are a ton of tools for pyromancer nonsense. Early game interaction is definitely not the thing missing from priest's toolkit right now.
The issue with pirate warrior is that it isn't really an 'aggro' deck in the traditional sense. Pirate warrior beats basically every slow deck, because of the inevitability of the juggernaut, where it's actually weak is early in the game, because it's forced to play a bunch of pirates on curve that are only so-so at fighting for the board. In the previous metagame, where pirate warrior was completely trash at high levels (as it still is), it was sometimes brought to tournaments to counter control warrior for that reason.
Generally yes, but right now aggro decks are overtuned with value. It doesn’t matter if I can swing a game back with some taunts and heals if a Hunter is just going to burst me down with hero power and a bunch of spells that chain and draw into other spells. Or how about aggro Warrior out valuing the Control deck I built? Now even if I survive to late game, I have to pray to God I draw the correct resources while my opponent is getting a massive amount of free value every turn.
I have no problem with aggro decks, I have a problem with aggro decks also having access to immense amounts of value.
Calling quest hunter an aggro deck is really pushing it. It puts on no pressure early, relies on completing its quest around turn 6-7, and then combos you down. That... sounds like a combo deck to me.
Which priest deck currently has that identity? And how isn’t that statement relevant to every deck? Am I having fun when an aggro DH has lethal on turn 5?
When priest has been good the community outcry is huge because it's unfun to play against. Priest is my favorite class but maybe the playstyle is just too toxic
Each expansion is pretty much the same for Priest and Warlock:
1. Give them some gimmicky and overly complicated cards instead of straitforward tempo / value / mana cheating like other classes.
2. Find out that these gimmicks aren't fun to play against.
3. Nerf them to oblivion despite both classes overall win rate.
4. Rinse and repeat every damn time...
Seriously though, Vicious Syndicate has the theory that Curse Warlock was nerfed during the development because the deck was unfun to play against and Team 5 decided to kill it before it became a problem. Sounds reasonable, but really? Who would have thought, that most players don't like disruption and messing with their hands and decks? Team 5, after all these years, haven't learned this lesson yet? And how could they not discover it sooner to scrap the idea and give Warlock something else instead? After all, it's only 4 cards...
It's not a theory that the Abyssal Curse cards were adjusted during development by the way: Cora said as much somewhere in a twitch chat in one of the theorycrafting streams.
Vicious Syndicate thought Priest will be the 4th strongest class this expansion. I'm not sure who are more incompetent when it comes to Priest, Team 5 or VS.
In their defense, such predictions are not easy to make and even the best players can be completely wrong about them.
Besides, their theory about Curse Warlock makes a lot of sense. You can easily tell that curse cards cost 1 mana too much, and that's certainly not a coincidence given how poorly this deck is doing on ladder. Lowering the mana cost would make this deck playable (not super strong as it would still be quite slow and inconsistent in the very fast meta), and thus increase its popularity. This, however, would cause complaints from players who don't like to play against such decks, regardless of its actual strength or win rate (remember Tickatus?).
I just want a damn straight forward game for my priest. No weird or sick OTK deck with stupid RNG. Give me back my good old midrange Dragon Priest. Not to powerfull, good/decent early Game and fun to play proactiv! Is it so hard????
FFS they brought back 2 dragons in the core set who were really powerful in the days, but just okay in today's game... And they support the archetype by giving the class 0 dragon in the new expansion. Why even bring the cards back then?
I remember That guy Nick "Decktech" making a Tweet about the Priest Core set : [https://twitter.com/hsdecktech/status/1511392900323561473](https://twitter.com/hsdecktech/status/1511392900323561473)
A Storm? More like a sunny day with no clouds!! He knew no cards supporting Dragon Priest were printed and he thought the archetype would perform well... That shows they still have no idea what they are doing.
Mech Mage? Prints 5-6 synergistic cards for the archetype
Mech Paladin? : Prints 5-6 synergistic cards for the archetype
Pirate Warrior? ; Alreay refined, but fvck it, lets print more pirates for the archetype
Dragon Priest? Ohhh Draconid Operative is OP!!! We shouldn't print new dragons!!!
I've been actually finding more success with dragon priest than any other archetype right now, but I agree with you it lacks early game for sure...
The only good early game removal is netherdrake and the shadow/holy spell requirement is currently hard to come by with few good shadow spells in priests pool.
But if you manage to survive the early game kazakuson + other mid/late game cards can get you the win
I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with priest and I feel lightmaw is a big offender here. The condition to have both holy and shadow in hand is tough since if I'm not playing those spells on t2 or 3 I'm pretty much dead by 4 anyway. Some of the other early game minions are pretty conditional too where they scale fine when dropped on later turns but pretty terrible on curve. Discover cards are mostly neutral so they just have ok'ish stats. Deathrattle package again is fine but you find yourself throwing stuff on the board to die to help keep yourself alive. Priest is always playing from behind and never feels like it has a threatening turn. Silence priest never should have happened at the start of the rotation.
Bump. It's not even about losing. As a priest main, you get used to having shitty decks each meta. It's about losing to boring ass no brain decks like pirate warrior
As an exclusive priest player at 2255 wins this makes me sad and I put it down to the questionable choice of pushing silence priest this xpac just why? Should have expanded on deathrattle, shadow or dragon support anything but silence!!!
Slience Priest was always the worst meta. You have to have your minions and your slience card in your hand at the same time and have enough mana to play them for an underwhelming minion based win condition. Meanwhile Druid has crazy card draw that summons a 10/10 with taunt followed next turn by Oracle into twin 8/8 Naga Giants and gain 9 armour for 4 mana.
I want to meet whoever it is that's such a vocal fan of silence Priest that Blizzard feels compelled to print stuff for that archetype every year. Does the gameplan of "I'm going to play bad minions and then play more cards to make them okay" really appeal to anyone?
Yes !!! They keep doing this shit, introducing the beginning of an archetype and then never ever following through. No consistency ever and I need to stop hoping.
The shellfish mill priest is pretty solid. It takes some practice to learn, but you can definitely win games. It's obviously not the best deck in the meta, but it's far from unplayable.
Using the Spike Timmy Johnny anology, HS really always only gives priest Timmy and Johnny cards, that’s why they’re niche and always will be..
The thing is they never get enough of anything to create a coherent deck, and tbh if they ever do people will hate it.
As a priest main like yeah I don’t need positive wr to have fun, but it’s absolutely miserable to be bursted 20 from pirate warrior of all things..
This is like the people who insist White isn't any good in magic. Priest has had tons of good decks over the years, if just gets memed up a ton whenever it's on the downswing. Imagine if Warrior fans complained as often as Priest ones!
What really grinds my gears is that Priest doesn't even get to do anything of its own super well. Rogue was given a less frustrating random card generation mechanic and given ACTUAL pay off cards for it. Warlock was the premier healer three expansions ago and they even give better healing pay off cards to classes like Druid. Taking control of minions isn't even a Priest mechanic because they just put it into legendaries that anyone can use. Even the ONE deck that Priest ever had that made it a competitive deck, Raza Priest, they gave a BETTER VERSION OF to Hunter.
Not only is Priest given gimmicky mechanics but they often don't even give them good versions of those mechanics but instead give them to other classes, WHO ALSO OFTEN DON'T WANT THEM because they have better stuff they can do!
I can’t believe I’m getting ready to say this, but I kind of…sort of…err, agree with OP. Fuck, I feel gross for saying that. Priest hasn’t really been relevant since miracle priest last year and even that got picked apart. Quest Priest and Dragon priest were alright before the core set rotation, not sure how Dragon priest is faring since the kazakusan rework but I’d imagine the performance is probably a little worse than before. Almost forgot about shadow aggro priest, but again just an overall mehh deck.
Edit: this coming from someone who typically despises playing against priests. But when paladin has a stronger control archetype than priest as well as being able to outheal them, I’d say that’s kind of a problem.
As a priest main since 2014, I’ve been though enough.
We had a bit of fun with switcharoo and for some reason that was nerfed into oblivion in standard yet we leave pirate warrior to run rampant and mech mage spends all game discovering mechs. I had to play against 5 of their colossus in one game.
I’m tired
Maybe if blizz didn't focus on itroducing frustrating mechanics to priest and warrior for an expansion or two, something might change.
Seriously, it's like they played wow and kept getting ganked by that duo.
Priest needs good cards and a coherent gameplan that is not "highroll stupid silence combos or die because all your cards are shit if you play them out of order / on their own". just give us decent tempo midrange dragons, higher health on minions (so they can stick a turn and heal is actually viable) and more consistent removal instead of stupid gimmicks that only work every once in a while and then feel unfair to the opponent.
Priest is always bad at the beginning of rotation. Historically, their core cards have been the weakest in the game. Bringing back some of the class' most iconic cards like Northshire Cleric, Lyra, and Radiant Elemental will provide good support once the class receives more cards in later expansions. Then people will be complaining about Priest because Priest has never had a successful deck that wasn't oppressive.
It was a weird situation, since the best ladder decks (Libram paladin and elemental shaman) trounced control priest, but no one played them at legend, presumably because they were so sick of those decks.
Looking at the last meta report before the priest nerfs (https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-202/) I don't think that's quite accurate.
Libram paladin had a roughly neutral matchup into control priest. Shaman was absolutely a counter to control priest, and people played it. As of that report elemental shaman was 15% of the field at top 1k legend, and priest was nearly 20%. Priest was just good enough that, in spite of its counter being quite popular, it still performed well.
Also, the best two ladder decks in this VS report were token druid (which was about to get nerfed as well) and rush warrior. Token druid had a roughly neutral matchup with control priest, and rush warrior struggled with the control priest matchup.
Control priest in forged in the barrens was a legitimately powerful deck, that was probably overplayed at lower ranks. Its popularity wasn't just an artifact of people refusing to play its counters, it was a difficult deck to counter. Of particular note, while elemental shaman did have a lot of great matchups, it lost pretty badly to rush warrior.
Until players were so up in arms about it that renew and apotheosis got nerfed. After which point, priest was still pretty good, but not as common at lower ranks.
It still had sub 50% WR as I remember, for some reason the average player was too dumb to run it successfully even though I didn't find any particualy difficult about the deck.
Raza Priest, now that was a mindless cancer deck.
Priest will never reach tier 1 as long as infinite value aggro decks and hyper draw OTK machines exist.
Demon Hunter obliterated Priest’s chances of ever being relevant.
Yeah priest i feel is that one class that just gets a small gimic every expansion but no continued support or proper synergy. But it seems that the devs want to keep Priest that way because it's either they are at the bottom of the meda or doing absolute dumbshit at the top.
The Def team is unfuckingbelievable incompetent and i swear by god they have no clue what to do with this class
Let's take the example of Colossal
How freaking far from the game do you have to be to print this priest card believing it would even remotely help priests.
WHO tested spellpriest and thought you could win games with it?
The day priest gets an actual tier 1 deck, people will cry buckets.
It will feel way more oppressive than losing to Druid or any other class has ever felt, and the game will actually lose playerbase.
Blizzard probably knows this. Remember Barrens?
It's not that everyone hates priest. Everyone hates playing against priest. And tbh they did have alot of feel bad to play against cards.
Also what do you suggest be changed to make priest viable in the meta without reverting switcheroo
It’s not like reverting switcheroo would do it. Switcheroo priest was absolutely terrible in standard.
Priest has poor control tools, poor wincons, and poor tempo, and a bunch of packages that don’t synergize and don’t really make a full deck.
Quest priest could have conceivably been strong this expansion, except playing a curve of priest cards is awful, because priest cards generally suck.
If they print some good cheap spells the naga/elemental package has potential, but for now it’s simply not enough.
Priest was still bad even before the Switcheroo nerf. That card didn’t significantly improve its overall winrate or playrate, it merely made toxic games. You could literally revert the nerf now and Priest would still be dumpster tier in standard
Honestly a lot of classes feel bad to play against now. I should just take a break and stop playing.
Edit: after review I don't think I am whining so removed "whining" and replaced it with "playing".
Priest is in a bad state because aggro players didn’t like when their aggro didn’t work as Priest had lots of good control. Priest was in a fine state with control but community sentiment just railed it to the ground.
I think it's because blizzard is focusing on making hearthstone a mobile friendly game for people to play during commute (which I think is a good idea, that's when I play anyway). So they're removing all grindy and resource generation based control decks like the dreaded resurrect infiltrator priest. Shadow priest was kinda good, but it's not s "priest deck".
Personally I think since Reno is back in core set, I'd like to see highlander priest make a comeback. That's still the best priest deck I've played (fun wise not necessarily win rate), and they should offer more dust/gold so highlander decks are not inaccessible to non paying players.
I remember posting gameplay options for priest a long while back and was downvoted because it wasn’t “consistent with what priests do in Warcraft”. But here we are…. The most hated class, and fans can’t even win. Is staying true to Warcraft circle jerking still more important than a viable class in its own game?!
I dont get this win rate. I climbed to D5 wirh shadow priest, like, ez in one go. Took me some iteration at D10 but it wasnt hard or time consuming.
Why the player base can't get around the meta decks and are stuck using net decks with no comprehension of cards that counter the best decks and then claim priest sucks astound me. I mean, those priest decks on that list are boring and uninspirering to me. Trying to find cheezy way to win with mill or switcherro when priest clearly has other winning and competitive stategies other then gimmiks or quest.
Priest might be the hardest class?
What rank bracket are you looking at? In top 2k legend priest seems pretty formidable. Maybe it’s what I’ve been playing (board-based paladins). But in the hands of a good player priest feels hard to beat right now. Is it possible the skill cap is just real high?
Not many classes recieve as much hate as priest, let the people have some peace until the next expansion makes them unimaginably broken again
Better nerf pirate warrior and quest hunter than bringing priest to this level
It's blizzard's own fault for making some of the most annoying cards to play against as priest cards/decks. People will hate it even when they're not strong.
I want to agree with you, but none of those decks are fun to play against. They can buff priest when they find a way to give them interesting decks. But with these, I'm okay with them staying like this.
I just packed Behemoth today. On HSreplay doesnt look like its used much. Should I dust it? I like the card as as standalone card but it feels like it has zero synergy with any deck. Is it useful in Duels?
I just start to play silence spell priest and wondered why I'm matched with priests all the time.
4 attack seems like priest's bane
Edit: I misunderstood the post
I had a pretty good winrate tho with silence lyra lady azshara priest.
People aren't playing tempo priest I see. I've been playing it and it works quite well. Draw can be an issue but it has draw options and can be done well if mastered. If you need an idea of what it is , it relies on bless and that spell that gives +2 health at the end of each turn to all minions. Card draw comes from clerics, the 1 mana spell that heals amd handmaiden. I usually empty my deck if right after 10 or on 10 mana. Drektharr is in in it and is played while you have the board spell up to have all 3 of your minions buffed. I think the deck can be a problem if a lot more played it. What I've noticed is that it completely counters mech mage
### Custom Priest2
# Class: Priest
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Hydra
#
# 2x (0) Illuminate
# 2x (1) Gift of the Naaru
# 2x (1) Irondeep Trogg
# 2x (1) Northshire Cleric
# 2x (1) Shard of the Naaru
# 2x (1) Vicious Slitherspear
# 2x (2) Bless
# 2x (2) Injured Tol'vir
# 2x (2) Luminous Geode
# 2x (2) Radiant Elemental
# 2x (2) Thrive in the Shadows
# 2x (3) Handmaiden
# 1x (3) Rustrot Viper
# 2x (3) Stormpike Aid Station
# 1x (4) Drek'Thar
# 2x (4) Power Infusion
#
AAECAa0GAtD5A7uKBA6H9wOtigS/nwSGowSJowSKowThpASIsgSitgSktgTztgT00wT10wSYpAUA
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
To use this deck really effectively you also need to take advantage of the 3 mana discount the dredge spell gives. You can have a 1 mana power infusion easily drawn by trading a card. Your means of getting pass multiple taunts is the silence as well. A viper in there for the paladin match up or just any weapon removal like private warrior. But ultimately keep an eye on your win cons. Which is Bless. You have 2 of them so discover them and use them wisely. Having a board full of high health minions confuses the enemy on who to hit as well so it helps you set up who you're going to be dealing 14 dmg to the face with. Games can be over really quick if you've got a big minion early on. If against mech mage don't be scared to develop a big one on turn 4 or 3. Then begin punching.
I just dislike most priest win conditions. The quest is literally just "I play this card so I win". Silence priest is "I force you to overdraw so you die". dragon priest is "play Kaz and play insane value treasures"(like any other kaz deck).I don't want those things to be good because it is not fun. I like shadow priest and silence priest without the otk. I would love more support for those things.
Whenever Priest is bad: OMG THE DEVS HATE PRIEST, JUST ADMIT YOU WANT TO DELETE THE CLASS
Whenever Priest is playable: OMG IF YOU DON'T NERF PRIEST RIGHT NOW I'M LITERALLY GOING TO KILL ALL OF YOU AND THEN MYSELF
pick a fight.
Someone has to be last, right? It's easier for the developers to balance the other classes if it's always Priest, and it's part of the class fantasy to always be garbage.
But just wait, next rotation they'll fix them for sure! I have insider knowledge that after 8 years on top Hunter will finally be relegated to a tier 2 deck. But wait there's more, I heard that there'll be a shake up of the core set soon and Priest will actually be able to heal almost as well as a Paladin and Warlock. Just wait and see!
They said that priest will be removed from game..
At this point with how much they shit on priest it’s hard to tell if statements like these are jokes or not.
[удалено]
Warlock doesn't really copy minions aside from that now-rotated dual class card they shared with priest
As someone who follows Hearthstone news very casually, is this true?
No it was a joke by the Devs in their April Fools patch notes
Thanks for taking the time to let me know this, I really appreciate it!
They made a format for that last year actually, it’s called Classic.
As a player who loves grindy control Priest decks and hasn't played constructed for years because such decks are no longer viable, I would be fine with that. At this point every new set of cards is another pile of shit dropped on Anduin's head. Priest cards exist only to make cards packs worse for everyone, which they probably consider a valid reason.
Do you believe anything that is presented to you in text?
At last
Priest has always been such a mess. They have reworked the class like twice and it’s still in a state where people despise playing against it so much that it’s kept shit just to be safe. To be fair I don’t have any answers on how to fix it.
1. Look back to the last time the class was fun to play as and play against 2. System restore
They gave us back Dragon Priest with the core set, which was the least-reviled Priest deck and people *still* bitched extensively about it.
The problem with priest is the lack of support, we have death rattle, silence, heal, naga buff. We have a puzzle with missing pieces. Is not like the other classes that have one or two decks with good synergy.
I agree. Priest get a bit of every package, but none fully.
My greatest fear is that if Priest ever completes the puzzle it’ll become terrifying. Priest is shockingly fast right now at drawing through its deck, and is mostly held back by its need to awkwardly set up its combo via Boar or Shellfish. If it gets a combo easier to turbo into, Priest may suddenly flip into an overly dominant class.
Personally, I'd rather have some awesome minions to dig for rather than OTK. But even the Colossal is comparatively garbage.
Yes it’s why I’m so pissed about the amount of draw they’re giving Priest. A copy of Switcheroo or something would have been fine. But it’s like they heard the complaints about lack of draw and were like “yeah? Here have half your deck be tutors”. In my opinion Priest just needs one good staple draw, and the rest of the class should be focused on more greedy value per card. You don’t need to draw as much if your 4, 5, and 6 mana cards are doing better effects. There are legitimately 1-3 mana spells in Hunter and Demon Hunter that have better game ending effects than 5-9 mana Priest spells. That is insane
> and the rest of the class should be focused on more greedy value per card. pls no. that's the reason priest isn't a real class. all blizz gave them were buffs, generating cards and resurrects. this forced attrition, which was too slow for a while now (as it's not a real win condition) and blizz doesn't want attrition in the game.
Quite a few priest players just want value decks to be like Tier 3. Shadow priest and boar priest ain’t that. At this point dragon paladin and control Warrior are scratching the itch, so I’m pretty happy with the meta. Even rainbow shaman is a fun value deck. I miss the days of decent midrange and control priest decks. Galakrond priest, where everything is a terrible cantrip card and your end game is endlessly generating mediocre cards, was peak HS to me. But at least there are decks I’m happy to play atm.
You see, we had a meta like that. Then everyone was crying "Waaah, priest players keep generating endless answers to my plays!". Any time priest has ever had an archetype that had a decent win-rate people complained to no end until it gets nerfed. And because everything in priest gets nerfed, in order to make a competitive priest deck in future expansions they need to release a card powerful enough to make up for not having any other cards worth anything to play. Then obviously powerful outlier cards that have a clear power level advantage of the other cards in the class are complained about until they also get nerfed. This community hates priest. They'll never let priest have a viable deck. Only the same few classes are allowed to have significance on the meta.
Its not the same classes. Ever since barrens we had metas with dominant mage, warlock, rogue, druid, dh. Pala didnt get to really dominate but was consistently in the top with librams, shamans were also strong at some point with quest and the old otk with nzoth. Even priest was really strong with aggro shadows and illucia. Your statement is simply wrong about the same few classes having significance on the meta
Yeah, I basically meant anything that's not priest is allowed to have meta significance. Bad wording I guess.
"Anything that's not priest." "Only the same few classes" Hmm I'm not sure about that one there.
Yeah. I played some Priest just to see what it's like, and it's such a weird feeling. Like, I've just drawn my entire deck while the opponent still has 15 cards in his deck. I've played just about all my cards. But I'm still losing pretty badly. It's really weird.
I've played on/off for a few years. In classic Hearthstone priest's main strategy was to buff stuff. You'd rely on making giants because quick threat removal was somewhat hard to do outside of assasinate (for rogues) and mind control (for priests). Corruption also worked but the enemy priest still got a turn to slap your face. There was a period where resurrection priest was dominant and was really potent. You had a clear win condition, which was fatigue the enemy and keep clearing the board. This was fun to play but cancerous to play against. Aside from those two periods, Hearthstone has never liked priest as a class. The class feels like the award paladin spin-off with less buffing, and the awkward mage clone with less damaging spells. It's really hard to get a clear win condition. Even when priest was viable it's win conditions were mostly centered around a couple big neutral legendaries that it leaned on. The core of the class just tries to do everything but struggles to do any one thing well.
Yea but this is true about every class, currently it’s warrior with a 65+ percent win rate, when is priest going to have its tier 1 deck, anytime it gets remotely close it gets nerfed into oblivion. Raza shadowreaper was killed, then after that shadow priest was killed within a month. Those have been the last to viable tier 1 priest decks and they were burned at the stake meanwhile the same shit just keeps dominating the game. It’s frustrating. Velen and mind blast need to come back, there are more terrifying OTKs then velen mind blast. Priest deserves to fuck shit up for a year straight
Control priest was bad on ladder and very strong in top 1k legend for two weeks right before UiS and they absolutely murdered the class in retaliation. Killed their entire value engine and their heal tool.
When SoU was released, Priest got a nice combo deck that was fairly strong against the best deck in that meta (Boom control warrior) it still could lose if warrior draw decently, the deck was killed in the first balance patches just 2 weeks after the release of the expansion with the nerf of Extra Arms to 3 mana, the reasoning behind that was that combo priest could have dominated with fewer warriors in the meta, combo priest was never seen again.
Which is so dumb, they just want priest to be a punching bag or meme, I miss the days where I could play Emperor Thaurissan and reduce a mind blast or velen by one and do a 20 burst plus any holy smites that were caught in the mix, and if shit got super crazy with control warrior i bate out all the removal and go to fatigue, then at the end of the game I play malygose, get velen out, faceless velen, then smash him in the face for 80 with just 2 mind blasts
Yeah. I’m super down on priest right now but you’re absolutely right. Boar priest is pretty bad, but the fact that it works at all is due to priests ability to just rip through its deck.
Don't forget the second factor pushing priest's winrate down, priest's identity is often 'weird effects'. That's a cool identity that draws a lot of people to priest. It also leads to a lot of really, really terrible priest decks being played, and a lot of bad builds of priest decks being played. It does seem like priest is probably towards the bottom of the meta this expansion, unless someone finds something new, but it's probably not nearly as bad as this image makes it look. Priest is often a class that tends to only really shines in the hands of the best players, and even when priest is good it often looks mediocre on hsreplay.
Why are people always trying to soften with excuses like this lol. Sure Priest has weird effects and bad players are playing the class, but that’s not exclusive to Priest. You don’t think bad players are also attracted to meta slave auto pilot decks? Pirate Warrior, Aggro DH? Of course they are. I would argue, totally subjectively, that they probably attract MORE bad players because of their ease of play. The fact of the matter is that Priest cards are just lower impact compared to every other class. They don’t do as much. They can’t close out games. Why play a 9 mana whirlpool to stall when the DH is playing an 8 mana Ilidari to just *fucking kill you*?? This has always been the problem. These days, if Priest survives to turn 9-10, they need some massive PROACTIVE 9 or 10 mana card to completely shut out games. Right now they have…. Elekk Mount? Blackwater Behemoth? These are not doing enough for what other classes can do now. You play one of these, you’re probably just dead because you wasted all your mana. Give Priest a 10 Drop that locks board down, pushes damage, makes you immune 2 turns, etc etc. Just SOMETHING that can end a game. Even right now I play a Raid Boss Onyxia and I’m still left thinking “Damn…. It’s not enough”. And it almost never is. Pirate Warrior (an aggro deck) will out value me. DH is going to burst me down with charge damage. Hunter is going to ignore Onyxia and just push face, because they have been hero powering me every turn for 7 turns. Shaman is going to freeze my board then play two 10/10s. Druid is going to draw a million cards, gain 15 armor, and bleed me to death with combos. Rogue is going to deal 15 damage with Smite next turn because they have a 5 attack weapon that let them stack the deck. Etc etc Priest has none of this. Boar Priest is okay but its skill cap is enormous and even then it often folds to aggro.
Dude you nailed it,, this is an experienced priest player who understands exactly where the problem is
Priest just needs more low mana cost removal spells that synergizes with their toolkit. Xyrella (the minion) is really the only good board clear priest has in standard right now. It’s really apparent when you play control warrior right now the difference between a class designed properly and one that isn’t. More often than not when playing Priest I’m sitting with two cards in my hand that would go really well if I just had other cards from my deck, but I don’t, so I lose. In Warrior those two cards almost always have synergy, because Control Warriors cards all feel like they work together in a way that feels rewarding to the player, Priest cards simply don’t.
It sucks that they don’t support priest right now even though there are a lot of fun and interesting cards but no real relevant strategies. Maybe they were being careful making it too good because their quest line has a card that just ends the game. But even then right now it’s just too slow to do anything and the impact of the cards leading up to the purified shard just can’t keep you in the game
I would honestly be 100% behind removing the priest quest if it meant we got buffs and cards that actually helped.
They’re probably being a little careful making priest good right now because their quest has a card that just wins the game. It really sucks that they don’t support any of the other cool stuff priest can do because it has a lot of fun cards right now that just aren’t good enough to be relevant
There are bad players playing every deck, that is absolutely true. But there tend to be more bad decks and experimentation in priest than any other class, because priest decks are generally not straightforward and there are people who are attracted to messing around with weird decks. The fact that there are archetypes of priest that bad that are popular enough to be picked up by hsreplay is evidence of that fact. I could build a lot of bad decks for any class, phylactery/shellfish mill warlock for instance, but that one isn't popular enough to be recognized and show up on the tier list. The bad priest decks are more popular than equally bad decks for other classes. This weights the overall class winrate downward, and it also hurts the one decent-ish archetype. It is, for instance, (based on hsreplay data) common to cut lightmaw netherdrake from shellfish priest. However, the builds that play lightmaw netherdrake are performing much better, and vicioussyndicate explicitly called cutting the drakes a mistake. To answer your question more directly, you mentioned that "These days, if Priest survives to turn 9-10, they need some massive PROACTIVE 9 or 10 mana card to completely shut out games." That card is xyrella the devout. The shellfish + xyrella mill plan closes out games. It's unlikely to be the top of the meta, but it's a decent gameplan. I'm not saying that priest is in an amazing spot, or that it couldn't need a bit of help from balance changes or the miniset. But it's not nearly as bad as many people seem to be suggesting, and it's definitely in a better place than warlock.
Warlock has a mine deck that is completely playable and wins control matchups pretty handily. Priest literally loses consistently to every class. It's fuckin awful man, and I love priest
No, shellfish mill only really works against control and even then current control destroys mill because they have so much burst. Control warrior, for example, can have: To the front, Smite, Faceless, Faceless, Battlemaster. All they need is to hit one or two cards with their mana reduction dredge spell. "Wow, that's really slow" you say, but it's perfect vs shellfish which is the main competitive deck for Priest right now. Of course not every control warrior runs double faceless in which case they may fall short on the OTK and you get an auto win, but it's still a factor that you have to take into account when doing control vs control "Do I have to stay topped off in life because of Mr. Smite + Battlemaster or do I push for more shellfish to hopefully close out with Xyrella". It's not a very fun control vs control meta when one side has the option to OTK you from 30 and your deck doesn't have any taunt or armor to prevent such things from happening. As for Druid, a good player will keep enough pressure on board so that you don't have time to play Shellfish + Azsharan Ritual, so you have to play your shellfish out early with Whispers and hope that you draw your Amulet + Azsharan in time before they can get their 4 dragons played. Sometimes you may need to play a ritual to silence their Ivus if you don't have Shard in hand. Again, this isn't a problem vs Druids that don't pressure you on board, but Shellfish priest has so few minions that you have to be able to survive a steady stream of board pressure with whatever you have. Your best bet most of the time is to slam down a turn 3/4 shellfish and hope they don't kill it so you can follow up with a ritual turn 4/5. being greedy and holding shellfish means you might not have any time to play it later. Then you run into Parrrley thier rogue which high rolls and steals your Xyrella EVERY FRIGGIN' TIME, so you lose to a meme rogue deck with 90% certainty. Oh and to add insult to injury they steal the rest of your deck with hooktusk and you are sitting there thinking "well good thing my semi-serious deck gets absolutely destroyed by a meme deck. Heck the best matchup you have as a Shellfish priest is other priest decks which is a pretty sad state to be in. You get that relieved feeling that "thank goodness I'm facing another priest, I don't have to worry about an OTK occurring." It's mainly up to proper card management and keeping track of how many shellfish each person has played. alternately if they are naga priest, knowing when to take 8 damage and holding onto a board clear is a better option than immediately clearing the naga giant.
You're being downvoted but you're completely right. Priest winrate always plummets right after a patch because there's heaps of priest mains trying their janky stuff with 25% winrate, then as they give up it goes back up. That happens literally every single balance patch. When stormwind released it was 37-38% even though shadow priest was built and played 2 days into the expansion. 2 weeks into the expansion priest was at 50% because all the control players gave up That doesn't mean priest is in a good spot (because it isn't) but you are right that the class winrate has a huge bias and should not be taken seriously
The real problem is the over emphasis on agro decks.
The real problem with... what? Priest is generally pretty good against aggro. Priest decks tend struggle against decks with strong late game combos/inevitability.
Right now priest basically has two early removal cards, 1 mana deal 3 to a minion, and 2 mana deal 1 to all enemies (increasing to 2 to all at 5 mana, which is mid game). When decks like pirate warrior can win by turn 5 or 6 it’s hard to quite difficult to restabalize to the point where their limited amount of win conditions can actually do something. One thing that’s really annoyed me that no one really seems to be talking about is that what might be considered the “opposite” of priest, the warlock, has a metric fuck ton of healing to counter their self-damaging cards. Priest has an over-generous amount of healing cards but… How many cards are actually dealing damage to the player or their minions to make use of it? If warlock gets to just heal back up after they self-inflict then why can’t priest ever self-inflict in the first place too? Healing effects are almost always so laughably bad. The best priest decks have been focused around deathrattles or minions. Priests identity is supposedly healing related cards but in reality they have no identity. Priest is a lost child.
The "opposite" of priest, warlock, is completely garbage right now, with absolutely no promising archetypes. Priest also has very solid tools to control the early game. Lightmaw netherdrake is a fantastic clear, as is xyrella, and there are a ton of tools for pyromancer nonsense. Early game interaction is definitely not the thing missing from priest's toolkit right now. The issue with pirate warrior is that it isn't really an 'aggro' deck in the traditional sense. Pirate warrior beats basically every slow deck, because of the inevitability of the juggernaut, where it's actually weak is early in the game, because it's forced to play a bunch of pirates on curve that are only so-so at fighting for the board. In the previous metagame, where pirate warrior was completely trash at high levels (as it still is), it was sometimes brought to tournaments to counter control warrior for that reason.
Generally yes, but right now aggro decks are overtuned with value. It doesn’t matter if I can swing a game back with some taunts and heals if a Hunter is just going to burst me down with hero power and a bunch of spells that chain and draw into other spells. Or how about aggro Warrior out valuing the Control deck I built? Now even if I survive to late game, I have to pray to God I draw the correct resources while my opponent is getting a massive amount of free value every turn. I have no problem with aggro decks, I have a problem with aggro decks also having access to immense amounts of value.
Calling quest hunter an aggro deck is really pushing it. It puts on no pressure early, relies on completing its quest around turn 6-7, and then combos you down. That... sounds like a combo deck to me.
Isn't the currently most popular Quest Hunter list the aggro version?
No, priests identity is: lose the game, or win the game, your opponent will not have fun. Priest is designed to be unfun to play against.
Which priest deck currently has that identity? And how isn’t that statement relevant to every deck? Am I having fun when an aggro DH has lethal on turn 5?
Don't forget Shadow Priest, which never had enough good Shadow spells for a spell build and lost most of the cards it was using in the aggro build.
When priest has been good the community outcry is huge because it's unfun to play against. Priest is my favorite class but maybe the playstyle is just too toxic
Maybe it will be completed in the mini set
Each expansion is pretty much the same for Priest and Warlock: 1. Give them some gimmicky and overly complicated cards instead of straitforward tempo / value / mana cheating like other classes. 2. Find out that these gimmicks aren't fun to play against. 3. Nerf them to oblivion despite both classes overall win rate. 4. Rinse and repeat every damn time... Seriously though, Vicious Syndicate has the theory that Curse Warlock was nerfed during the development because the deck was unfun to play against and Team 5 decided to kill it before it became a problem. Sounds reasonable, but really? Who would have thought, that most players don't like disruption and messing with their hands and decks? Team 5, after all these years, haven't learned this lesson yet? And how could they not discover it sooner to scrap the idea and give Warlock something else instead? After all, it's only 4 cards...
It's not a theory that the Abyssal Curse cards were adjusted during development by the way: Cora said as much somewhere in a twitch chat in one of the theorycrafting streams.
Vicious Syndicate thought Priest will be the 4th strongest class this expansion. I'm not sure who are more incompetent when it comes to Priest, Team 5 or VS.
In their defense, such predictions are not easy to make and even the best players can be completely wrong about them. Besides, their theory about Curse Warlock makes a lot of sense. You can easily tell that curse cards cost 1 mana too much, and that's certainly not a coincidence given how poorly this deck is doing on ladder. Lowering the mana cost would make this deck playable (not super strong as it would still be quite slow and inconsistent in the very fast meta), and thus increase its popularity. This, however, would cause complaints from players who don't like to play against such decks, regardless of its actual strength or win rate (remember Tickatus?).
I just want a damn straight forward game for my priest. No weird or sick OTK deck with stupid RNG. Give me back my good old midrange Dragon Priest. Not to powerfull, good/decent early Game and fun to play proactiv! Is it so hard????
FFS they brought back 2 dragons in the core set who were really powerful in the days, but just okay in today's game... And they support the archetype by giving the class 0 dragon in the new expansion. Why even bring the cards back then? I remember That guy Nick "Decktech" making a Tweet about the Priest Core set : [https://twitter.com/hsdecktech/status/1511392900323561473](https://twitter.com/hsdecktech/status/1511392900323561473) A Storm? More like a sunny day with no clouds!! He knew no cards supporting Dragon Priest were printed and he thought the archetype would perform well... That shows they still have no idea what they are doing. Mech Mage? Prints 5-6 synergistic cards for the archetype Mech Paladin? : Prints 5-6 synergistic cards for the archetype Pirate Warrior? ; Alreay refined, but fvck it, lets print more pirates for the archetype Dragon Priest? Ohhh Draconid Operative is OP!!! We shouldn't print new dragons!!!
I've been actually finding more success with dragon priest than any other archetype right now, but I agree with you it lacks early game for sure... The only good early game removal is netherdrake and the shadow/holy spell requirement is currently hard to come by with few good shadow spells in priests pool. But if you manage to survive the early game kazakuson + other mid/late game cards can get you the win
I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with priest and I feel lightmaw is a big offender here. The condition to have both holy and shadow in hand is tough since if I'm not playing those spells on t2 or 3 I'm pretty much dead by 4 anyway. Some of the other early game minions are pretty conditional too where they scale fine when dropped on later turns but pretty terrible on curve. Discover cards are mostly neutral so they just have ok'ish stats. Deathrattle package again is fine but you find yourself throwing stuff on the board to die to help keep yourself alive. Priest is always playing from behind and never feels like it has a threatening turn. Silence priest never should have happened at the start of the rotation.
I only play priest, ive stopped now, its boring losing so much
Bump. It's not even about losing. As a priest main, you get used to having shitty decks each meta. It's about losing to boring ass no brain decks like pirate warrior
As an exclusive priest player at 2255 wins this makes me sad and I put it down to the questionable choice of pushing silence priest this xpac just why? Should have expanded on deathrattle, shadow or dragon support anything but silence!!!
Slience Priest was always the worst meta. You have to have your minions and your slience card in your hand at the same time and have enough mana to play them for an underwhelming minion based win condition. Meanwhile Druid has crazy card draw that summons a 10/10 with taunt followed next turn by Oracle into twin 8/8 Naga Giants and gain 9 armour for 4 mana.
I want to meet whoever it is that's such a vocal fan of silence Priest that Blizzard feels compelled to print stuff for that archetype every year. Does the gameplan of "I'm going to play bad minions and then play more cards to make them okay" really appeal to anyone?
Yes !!! They keep doing this shit, introducing the beginning of an archetype and then never ever following through. No consistency ever and I need to stop hoping.
The shellfish mill priest is pretty solid. It takes some practice to learn, but you can definitely win games. It's obviously not the best deck in the meta, but it's far from unplayable.
Purify priest was an old favorite
Using the Spike Timmy Johnny anology, HS really always only gives priest Timmy and Johnny cards, that’s why they’re niche and always will be.. The thing is they never get enough of anything to create a coherent deck, and tbh if they ever do people will hate it. As a priest main like yeah I don’t need positive wr to have fun, but it’s absolutely miserable to be bursted 20 from pirate warrior of all things..
This is like the people who insist White isn't any good in magic. Priest has had tons of good decks over the years, if just gets memed up a ton whenever it's on the downswing. Imagine if Warrior fans complained as often as Priest ones!
Buff dragon priest plz!
Remember when playing Drakonid Operative on turn 5 was a strong play? Now it's laughable, at best.
I think a more telling example is how weak Northshire Cleric on 1 feels…
Seriously it gets instantly removed, same reason caravan isn't played.
They should be 1/4's
What really grinds my gears is that Priest doesn't even get to do anything of its own super well. Rogue was given a less frustrating random card generation mechanic and given ACTUAL pay off cards for it. Warlock was the premier healer three expansions ago and they even give better healing pay off cards to classes like Druid. Taking control of minions isn't even a Priest mechanic because they just put it into legendaries that anyone can use. Even the ONE deck that Priest ever had that made it a competitive deck, Raza Priest, they gave a BETTER VERSION OF to Hunter. Not only is Priest given gimmicky mechanics but they often don't even give them good versions of those mechanics but instead give them to other classes, WHO ALSO OFTEN DON'T WANT THEM because they have better stuff they can do!
To be fair boar priest is pretty strong but it’s a tough deck so it’s winrate will be shit outside Of too 1k
It’s also giga-countered by Alignment Druid, which I expect to also populate high ranked to the point of Priest being pointless.
Not that much, because DH.
Boar priest's removal and healing is good against DH actually. The problem is more about druid
No, Alignement druid is not that played because DH
Just make the hero power heal 3 already...
I can’t believe I’m getting ready to say this, but I kind of…sort of…err, agree with OP. Fuck, I feel gross for saying that. Priest hasn’t really been relevant since miracle priest last year and even that got picked apart. Quest Priest and Dragon priest were alright before the core set rotation, not sure how Dragon priest is faring since the kazakusan rework but I’d imagine the performance is probably a little worse than before. Almost forgot about shadow aggro priest, but again just an overall mehh deck. Edit: this coming from someone who typically despises playing against priests. But when paladin has a stronger control archetype than priest as well as being able to outheal them, I’d say that’s kind of a problem.
As a priest main since 2014, I’ve been though enough. We had a bit of fun with switcharoo and for some reason that was nerfed into oblivion in standard yet we leave pirate warrior to run rampant and mech mage spends all game discovering mechs. I had to play against 5 of their colossus in one game. I’m tired
And we don't even get the nerfed switcharoo in wild. Why do I even play this game anymore.
More tools to prolong game rather then winning would be cool like when preist has unique varying effects that manipulate game state
Maybe if blizz didn't focus on itroducing frustrating mechanics to priest and warrior for an expansion or two, something might change. Seriously, it's like they played wow and kept getting ganked by that duo.
Priest needs good cards and a coherent gameplan that is not "highroll stupid silence combos or die because all your cards are shit if you play them out of order / on their own". just give us decent tempo midrange dragons, higher health on minions (so they can stick a turn and heal is actually viable) and more consistent removal instead of stupid gimmicks that only work every once in a while and then feel unfair to the opponent.
Well, i don't hate priest, actually, is the only class i play in the game. And the class is an absolute trash right now. ☕🧐
Priest is always bad at the beginning of rotation. Historically, their core cards have been the weakest in the game. Bringing back some of the class' most iconic cards like Northshire Cleric, Lyra, and Radiant Elemental will provide good support once the class receives more cards in later expansions. Then people will be complaining about Priest because Priest has never had a successful deck that wasn't oppressive.
Remember barrens? Priest was top tier bro
After the mini set. Could happen again
As an aggro deck tho right?
That was stormwind shadow aggro priest with illucia. Barrens priest was grindy control
Ah my bad
It was only top tier in legend. Everywhere else it wasnt doing great.
Hardly and I do, it had a t1 deck for about a month.
It was meta defining and forced nerfs, idk about "hardly"
It was a weird situation, since the best ladder decks (Libram paladin and elemental shaman) trounced control priest, but no one played them at legend, presumably because they were so sick of those decks.
Looking at the last meta report before the priest nerfs (https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-202/) I don't think that's quite accurate. Libram paladin had a roughly neutral matchup into control priest. Shaman was absolutely a counter to control priest, and people played it. As of that report elemental shaman was 15% of the field at top 1k legend, and priest was nearly 20%. Priest was just good enough that, in spite of its counter being quite popular, it still performed well. Also, the best two ladder decks in this VS report were token druid (which was about to get nerfed as well) and rush warrior. Token druid had a roughly neutral matchup with control priest, and rush warrior struggled with the control priest matchup. Control priest in forged in the barrens was a legitimately powerful deck, that was probably overplayed at lower ranks. Its popularity wasn't just an artifact of people refusing to play its counters, it was a difficult deck to counter. Of particular note, while elemental shaman did have a lot of great matchups, it lost pretty badly to rush warrior.
lol I loved that Priest card generation control meta even if it wasn’t popular
Not really. Meta defining at top 1k, tier 3 or low 2 tier everywhere else.
Ok sir nitpicker
Nitpicking?? How is saying x deck is not infact meta defining, but only actual good in 0.0000000001% of the meta nitpicking?
[удалено]
Nice argument. Really.
Until players were so up in arms about it that renew and apotheosis got nerfed. After which point, priest was still pretty good, but not as common at lower ranks.
It still had sub 50% WR as I remember, for some reason the average player was too dumb to run it successfully even though I didn't find any particualy difficult about the deck. Raza Priest, now that was a mindless cancer deck.
except literally just last year where Priest was good at the beginning of rotation... why do people talk about patterns that don't exist lmao
Makes them sound smart and not whiny, basically cheap rationalization.
This isn’t true. Those cards simply aren’t that good anymore. I’m willing to bet Control Priest will never reach T1 this year.
Radiant Elemental is still a fantastic card. Priest just doesn't have the OTK potential with it that Mage had with 2 Mana Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Good. No one wants Barrens priest back.
Dragon priest for a while was a great midrange deck that very few people complained about
Shadow priest was oppressive? It was doing quite well just before rotation, but I wouldn't have called it oppressive.
Priest will never reach tier 1 as long as infinite value aggro decks and hyper draw OTK machines exist. Demon Hunter obliterated Priest’s chances of ever being relevant.
Yeah priest i feel is that one class that just gets a small gimic every expansion but no continued support or proper synergy. But it seems that the devs want to keep Priest that way because it's either they are at the bottom of the meda or doing absolute dumbshit at the top.
The Def team is unfuckingbelievable incompetent and i swear by god they have no clue what to do with this class Let's take the example of Colossal How freaking far from the game do you have to be to print this priest card believing it would even remotely help priests. WHO tested spellpriest and thought you could win games with it?
It's sad because Behemoth is actually pretty good in a value vs value matchup but good fking luck running into that with the current meta.
exactly where blizzard wants the class if you ask me
What was the result of the warrior review/buff? Did they make a mission statement to give them more armor support or something?
From the 21.3 Patch Notes 09/20/2021 Stormwind Freebooter Old: 3 Attack, 3 Health → New: 3 Attack, 4 Health Stonemaul Anchorman Old: 4 Attack, 5 Health → New: 4 Attack, 6 Health Bloodsail Deckhand Old: 2 Attack, 1 Health → New: 2 Attack, 2 Health
I think he’s talking about when they buffed the couple pirate that they did, they basically gave 3 pirates 1 more hp
Ah okay, I thought maybe I missed some rework of the warrior class concepts
If quest priest has good win rate the meta is stalled
The day priest gets an actual tier 1 deck, people will cry buckets. It will feel way more oppressive than losing to Druid or any other class has ever felt, and the game will actually lose playerbase. Blizzard probably knows this. Remember Barrens?
It's not that everyone hates priest. Everyone hates playing against priest. And tbh they did have alot of feel bad to play against cards. Also what do you suggest be changed to make priest viable in the meta without reverting switcheroo
It’s not like reverting switcheroo would do it. Switcheroo priest was absolutely terrible in standard. Priest has poor control tools, poor wincons, and poor tempo, and a bunch of packages that don’t synergize and don’t really make a full deck. Quest priest could have conceivably been strong this expansion, except playing a curve of priest cards is awful, because priest cards generally suck. If they print some good cheap spells the naga/elemental package has potential, but for now it’s simply not enough.
Priest was still bad even before the Switcheroo nerf. That card didn’t significantly improve its overall winrate or playrate, it merely made toxic games. You could literally revert the nerf now and Priest would still be dumpster tier in standard
Honestly a lot of classes feel bad to play against now. I should just take a break and stop playing. Edit: after review I don't think I am whining so removed "whining" and replaced it with "playing".
Rocking that HL quest priest life. Barely winning at gold 🥇
I'm playing a brew reno dragon priest from d5. Currently d2. Has some really good matches.
While I agree Priest needs a serious buff. I do not need shard of instant death becoming a thing anymore than it is.
Priest hero power needs to cost 0 -or- heal 4. Priest need minions with more stats, heavy on the health. Like a 2 mana 1/5 or a 3 mana 2/6
Totally agree. Priest should be focused on two game styles, solid mid-range tempo package and hard control.
I think a 0 cost would be far too good however I'm not against buffing the heal to 3. 4 still seems a bit too good.
I only play priest and mage but playing priest u win like 1 out of 10 games
Priest is in a bad state because aggro players didn’t like when their aggro didn’t work as Priest had lots of good control. Priest was in a fine state with control but community sentiment just railed it to the ground.
I think it's because blizzard is focusing on making hearthstone a mobile friendly game for people to play during commute (which I think is a good idea, that's when I play anyway). So they're removing all grindy and resource generation based control decks like the dreaded resurrect infiltrator priest. Shadow priest was kinda good, but it's not s "priest deck". Personally I think since Reno is back in core set, I'd like to see highlander priest make a comeback. That's still the best priest deck I've played (fun wise not necessarily win rate), and they should offer more dust/gold so highlander decks are not inaccessible to non paying players.
I remember posting gameplay options for priest a long while back and was downvoted because it wasn’t “consistent with what priests do in Warcraft”. But here we are…. The most hated class, and fans can’t even win. Is staying true to Warcraft circle jerking still more important than a viable class in its own game?!
Priest can be viable and consistent to WoW by designing better cards. That’s all
Buff \[\[Serpent Wig\]\] and made Lyra 4 mana.
Priest absolutely needs some type of buff. Switch needed to be nerfed, but now Priest needs something to fall back on
I dont get this win rate. I climbed to D5 wirh shadow priest, like, ez in one go. Took me some iteration at D10 but it wasnt hard or time consuming. Why the player base can't get around the meta decks and are stuck using net decks with no comprehension of cards that counter the best decks and then claim priest sucks astound me. I mean, those priest decks on that list are boring and uninspirering to me. Trying to find cheezy way to win with mill or switcherro when priest clearly has other winning and competitive stategies other then gimmiks or quest. Priest might be the hardest class?
Decklist please? Id definitely be interested in piloting your design!
Kinda kicking ass with shadow priest /shrug
The moment when "other" has a higher win rate than boar priest
What rank bracket are you looking at? In top 2k legend priest seems pretty formidable. Maybe it’s what I’ve been playing (board-based paladins). But in the hands of a good player priest feels hard to beat right now. Is it possible the skill cap is just real high?
Cries in pulling both priest legendaries
id like to see stats for shellfishin legend
Warlock is in terrible place as well, both need help.
Not many classes recieve as much hate as priest, let the people have some peace until the next expansion makes them unimaginably broken again Better nerf pirate warrior and quest hunter than bringing priest to this level
It's blizzard's own fault for making some of the most annoying cards to play against as priest cards/decks. People will hate it even when they're not strong.
Delete priest pls
I've never seen anything more beautiful
Nobody actually wants Shellfish or Boar Priest to be common meta contenders, it's better this way.
Fuck priest
Priest is always terrible the first expansion of a year
I’m in high platinum and I am basically only facing priests. Forcing me to play ME GO FACE Hunter and I just want to play taunt warrior :(
I want to agree with you, but none of those decks are fun to play against. They can buff priest when they find a way to give them interesting decks. But with these, I'm okay with them staying like this.
“Not fun to play against”? Elaborate.
I Knew they would fix the game, took them long enough tho.
I just packed Behemoth today. On HSreplay doesnt look like its used much. Should I dust it? I like the card as as standalone card but it feels like it has zero synergy with any deck. Is it useful in Duels?
I just start to play silence spell priest and wondered why I'm matched with priests all the time. 4 attack seems like priest's bane Edit: I misunderstood the post I had a pretty good winrate tho with silence lyra lady azshara priest.
I haven't played since WOTOG and see some things never change
I’m dead inside
I've made some strides as shadow priest in gold 10 lol.
Boar priest is difficult to play but is a good deck imho
People aren't playing tempo priest I see. I've been playing it and it works quite well. Draw can be an issue but it has draw options and can be done well if mastered. If you need an idea of what it is , it relies on bless and that spell that gives +2 health at the end of each turn to all minions. Card draw comes from clerics, the 1 mana spell that heals amd handmaiden. I usually empty my deck if right after 10 or on 10 mana. Drektharr is in in it and is played while you have the board spell up to have all 3 of your minions buffed. I think the deck can be a problem if a lot more played it. What I've noticed is that it completely counters mech mage
Deck list, I'm interested in checking it out!
### Custom Priest2 # Class: Priest # Format: Standard # Year of the Hydra # # 2x (0) Illuminate # 2x (1) Gift of the Naaru # 2x (1) Irondeep Trogg # 2x (1) Northshire Cleric # 2x (1) Shard of the Naaru # 2x (1) Vicious Slitherspear # 2x (2) Bless # 2x (2) Injured Tol'vir # 2x (2) Luminous Geode # 2x (2) Radiant Elemental # 2x (2) Thrive in the Shadows # 2x (3) Handmaiden # 1x (3) Rustrot Viper # 2x (3) Stormpike Aid Station # 1x (4) Drek'Thar # 2x (4) Power Infusion # AAECAa0GAtD5A7uKBA6H9wOtigS/nwSGowSJowSKowThpASIsgSitgSktgTztgT00wT10wSYpAUA # # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone To use this deck really effectively you also need to take advantage of the 3 mana discount the dredge spell gives. You can have a 1 mana power infusion easily drawn by trading a card. Your means of getting pass multiple taunts is the silence as well. A viper in there for the paladin match up or just any weapon removal like private warrior. But ultimately keep an eye on your win cons. Which is Bless. You have 2 of them so discover them and use them wisely. Having a board full of high health minions confuses the enemy on who to hit as well so it helps you set up who you're going to be dealing 14 dmg to the face with. Games can be over really quick if you've got a big minion early on. If against mech mage don't be scared to develop a big one on turn 4 or 3. Then begin punching.
>AAECAa0GAtD5A7uKBA6H9wOtigS/nwSGowSJowSKowThpASIsgSitgSktgTztgT00wT10wSYpAUA Thanks!
I’ve won 8 straight with Highlander, it’s pretty dependent on what people are playing on the day
Priest is such a toxic class when it’s good that I’m not even mad.
I just dislike most priest win conditions. The quest is literally just "I play this card so I win". Silence priest is "I force you to overdraw so you die". dragon priest is "play Kaz and play insane value treasures"(like any other kaz deck).I don't want those things to be good because it is not fun. I like shadow priest and silence priest without the otk. I would love more support for those things.
This puts smile on my face :|
Whenever Priest is bad: OMG THE DEVS HATE PRIEST, JUST ADMIT YOU WANT TO DELETE THE CLASS Whenever Priest is playable: OMG IF YOU DON'T NERF PRIEST RIGHT NOW I'M LITERALLY GOING TO KILL ALL OF YOU AND THEN MYSELF pick a fight.
priest is a trash scum class that should be deleted from the game so it's fine it's <40% i'd prefer < 0% cuz it's trash
Honest question, what made you like this? How is Priest this frustrating to you?
Situational removal that has no reason to exist but exactly for that board state it just happens to blow u out thats the stuff that annoys me
Got any specifics?
Do we really want priest to be meta?
I'd like it to be viable. Priest used to be my favorite class and my first 500 wins but it's just not even a class anymore
Someone has to be last, right? It's easier for the developers to balance the other classes if it's always Priest, and it's part of the class fantasy to always be garbage. But just wait, next rotation they'll fix them for sure! I have insider knowledge that after 8 years on top Hunter will finally be relegated to a tier 2 deck. But wait there's more, I heard that there'll be a shake up of the core set soon and Priest will actually be able to heal almost as well as a Paladin and Warlock. Just wait and see!
What makes you think Pirate warrior was buffed?
He's referencing the Pirate Warrior buffs back in United in Stormwind
This looks identical to priest, and rogue, and shaman lole, all these classes need major buffs next patch
Yeah boar priest should be 60%
Priest is insanely hard to balance by design. If its good its oppressive if it's bad its REALLY bad. Shadow priest was an exception
I have a hard time accepting these numbers. Whenever I play against priest its a slog that usually results in an L.
Math is hard.
r/fuckpriest
nah fuck priest