Legend Shadowburst Priest
- Last updated Sep 9, 2021 (Second Warlock Nerfs)
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Wild
- 24 Minions
- 6 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Shadow Priest
- Crafting Cost: 6760
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 9/4/2021 (Second Warlock Nerfs)
- Swizard7
- Registered User
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- 4
- 10
- 22
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
N/A
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Total Deck Rating
160
Introduction
In this warlock dominated meta, this is the deck I have had the greatest success with in terms of climbing. I got to legend with an over 75% winrate against quest warlocks and 60-65% winrate against all other decks, with a 65-70% winrate overall. I faced over 40% warlocks in my climb, only playing on mobile so no exact stats. Overall, it's a fun and fresh way to play priest, with lethals happening as early as turn 3 multiple times and generally winning between turns 3 and 6.
Guide
Table of Contents
1. Deck Overview - The general idea of the deck and its strengths and weaknesses.
2. Win Conditions - General gameplan and win conditions against different deck types.
3. Matchups - Goes over the matchups you face for each class and provides some matchup specific tips.
4. Mulligans - Some tips for the mulligan.
5. General Tips - General tips on playing this deck and card interactions to watch for.
6. Card Choices - Some insight about the cards included in this deck.
1. Deck Overview
Shadowburst Priest uses Darkbishop Benedictus to have the Shadowform hero power, which deals 2 damage to any target including the enemy hero. This in addition to almost every card being able to deal direct face damage creates a critical mass of burst which leads to a hyper aggressive gameplan where the deck can cause the opponent damage every single turn, and where almost any topdeck you get is a great one since they all help this face damage gameplan. The result is you can have lethal as early as turn 3, and often lethal by the end of turn 5, meaning even decks with Reno Jackson won't necessarily be able to win unless they have a good amount of clears and healing early.
Strengths
Due to the deck being so face damage focused, it does really well against all warlock decks including Quest Warlock that damage themselves.
It also does really well against control decks that have a lot of board clears but lack a lot of healing, as you can just burst them down from hand with spells and battlecries and many of your minions have deathrattles that deal damage to the enemy hero.
Any midrange deck that can't close out the game quickly is another good matchup, even though they may gain board control around turn 3 you will have enough burst to get their hp to 0 and win before their minions deal enough damage to lethal you.
Weaknesses
Any deck that has a lot of healing and armor gain such as Odd Warrior and certain druids can outlast your burst.
Certain very aggressive decks that gain board control from turn 1 such as Pirate Warrior or Token Druid can be tough to deal with.
2. Win Conditions
Against aggro: You are going to want to try to get an early Undertaker going to hold off board control loss for a while, and then make it a face race where you generally go face and just burst them down right before they can beat you. It is important to calculate your in hand face damage a couple turns in advance to balance when to try to keep board control for another turn and use your hero power on a minion and when to start ignoring the board and pointing everything face.
Against combo: You should be able to point everything face, generally ignore their minions, and win early before they get their combo off. An exception is combo druids who can highroll really quickly sometimes and gain a ton of armor.
Against control: Just ignore their board and go face with everything you have, sometimes it's better to use your hero power every turn and save a card like Mind Blast for later to maximize your damage value over the next few turns. However, if you think you are against a Reno deck do not overdo this, you want to use your cards more if you have a lot of burst to be able to lethal them on turn 5 at the latest.
Overall, this deck has so much burst that your best strategy to win, even against aggressive decks, is to start and win a face race. Your minions won't be able to hold onto the board against aggro for long, although if you get a good Undertaker going or get an early Frenzied Felwing you will be able to get a ton of face damage in from your minions before they finally get board control and almost guarantee you will be able to burst them down before they can lethal you.
3. Matchups
For this climb, I faced mostly the same couple of classes so I will not be giving a matchup guide for each class.
Quest Warlock - Very favored, you often burst them down and win before they can otk you, the only times I have lost is when they highrolled 2 or 3 giants early. One thing to keep in mind is your deathrattle minions triggering on their turn will help progress their quest and deal damage to you after they have played their quest reward, so it's actually better to mulligan these minions away much of the time and look for other sources of damage.
All other warlocks - Very favored, both evenlocks and a Renolock were burst down easily and quickly.
Quest Druid - Very unfavored, due to the amount of armor gain they have it can be tough to burst them down. Your only chance is to establish a board with Undertakers and Frenzied Felwings.
Combo Druid - Even, depends on how fast they get Celestial Alignment. Your best strategy is to go face other than killing Archmage Vargoth.
Odd Hunter - Slightly favored, I was usually able to burst them down before they completed their quest.
Combo Mage - Favored, just burst them quickly.
Aggro Pirate Priest - Slightly favored, while they have an aggressive pirate start highroll potential you can use your hero power to control board for a bit and later your topdecks become a lot better and damage focused while they have stuff like 1/2 pirates.
Quest Shaman - Favored, just burst them down before they can complete their quest.
Pirate Warrior - Unfavored, they have a ton of board pressure and Ship's Cannon especially lets them outrace you most of the time. You do have a chance to win if they don't get a cannon by racing face.
4. Mulligans
Voidtouched Attendant is always good.
Shadowbomber is great if you have Voidtouched Attendant and good without it.
Raise Dead is a good keep if you have Voidtouched Attendant and or a Shadowbomber for more burst.
Frenzied Felwing is great if you have 1 mana minions in hand.
If you have Undertaker and a 1 or 2 cost mana deathrattle minion, keep Undertaker and all 1 and 2 cost deathrattle minions as well as Shadowed Spirit.
Twilight Deceptor can be a good keep if you have a 1 mana minion in hand already.
5. General Tips
The main key to playing this deck well is being able to know when to go all in into a face race and when to keep trying to have board control. Try to calculate how many turns it will take you to lethal the opponent if you have all minions and hero power go face on any given turn instead of trading and using your hero power on a minion, and estimate how many turns it would take the opponent to lethal you from there -- often they would need to trade on their turn to prevent you from winning very early. This can be done by knowing the matchup and deck, and seeing how much progress an opponent has made towards a quest as an example. If you think you will win a face race, then you need to just forget about board control and try to maximize your face damage output over the next few turns to lethal as fast as you can.
From any game state when making decisions, it is important to keep in mind that most of your cards can do direct face damage, and whatever topdecks you get over the next few turns will usually be able to provide you with more burst.
Tour Guide can set up using Spawn of Shadows on turn 4.
Mind Blast or other direct face damage into Frenzied Felwings is great for keeping board tempo while doing face damage. This can be done turn 1 with the coin to get one or two Frenzied Felwings for free.
Another great combo if you have the coin is using a Shadowbomber and then coining out a Frenzied Felwing or using Voidtouched Attendant into Shadowbomber and then playing Frenzied Felwings for free. You can also do these combos turn 2 without the coin.
Sometimes it's better to drop Leeroy Jenkins turn 5 even if he will be killed easily next turn and use more direct face damage next turn. This prevents losses where your opponent plays a taunt next turn and you have already used the other burst damage in your hand.
Playing Voidtouched Attendant at a key time to maximize the damage you can do with it is important, and you can even use Tour Guide to set up a free hero power for a Voidtouched Attendant turn. In general you can play it on turn 1 on an empty board against most decks safely, but if you have other turn 1 plays it's better to do those and then play Voidtouched Attendant later so that each of your minions going face that turn will deal more damage. It's also great to combo with Shadowbomber and Mind Blast on something like turn 5 for lethal. Don't save it early game if you don't have any other cards to play though, it's better to just play it and get a few points of damage out of it than skipping an early turn.
The best targets for Raise Dead are usually Shadowbomber and Voidtouched Attendant. If you are winning on board then an extra Frenzied Felwing can be great too. If you have Raise Dead in hand, you can play your Voidtouched Attendant early even if you think it's going to be destroyed to maximize the chance of getting another one from Raise Dead.
You almost never want to play Darkbishop Benedictus on turn 5 even if you're against control and they have nothing on board, since control will generally just remove it. Instead keep pushing face damage even if just with your hero power and rely on your high consistency of direct damage in your topdecks to provide the critical mass of burst over the next few turns.
6. Card Choices
Deathrattle Package
Undertaker is used as a snowballing 1 drop that can help prevent board control loss against aggro decks for a few crucial turns as well as deal face damage against control decks. The other cards all are bodies that snowball Undertaker and deal direct face damage even if removed.
Burst Package
All these cards create burst to the opponent's face from hand without needing to have any minion presence beforehand.
Support Package
Darkbishop Benedictus gives you an aggressive hero power which is key for always having burst potential face. Frenzied Felwing goes great with burst to be a 0 mana 3/3 to help tempo on board. The other cards help create more burst potential by getting more minions and spells for you. Shadow Visions is especially notable since it can get extra copies of Mind Blast, your best burst damage card.
Overall, all cards chosen for this deck are to maximize the ability to deal a lot of damage early. There is a lot of consistency in being able to do this which makes your topdecks later game better and help you win face races more easily, with a lot of burst from hand that works even if you have lost the board by midgame.
Conclusion
This deck uses a critical mass of burst and direct face damage to win games quickly against most decks. It is quite enjoyable to play and is the most successful deck I have played in this expansion so far. Let me know of any questions or comments about it below, and hopefully it is either enjoyable or helps you climb in this warlock meta.
Hey Swizard7 just created this account to thank you for this sweet Deck! I had so much fun with it!
I switched to MTG Arena about 2 years ago and play Hearthstone very rarely. I had no clue of the current Meta of even the Cards, bought some Packs, got the Bishop, found your list and pulled the Trigger to blast off into a 27 game-long winning streak!!
It ended due to a miscalculation against a reno Priest on Diamond 4 at 3 am in the morning :)
Couple days later i went for the third session with this Deck and hit Legend for the first time ever and a total Record of 39-3 from Silver to Legend !!!
Lost only against the reno Priest, one odd Quest Hunter and a Pirate Warrior but so many of them were wrecked.
I wasn't planning to go anywhere with this Deck or even the Game but when u can't lose u can't quit xD
Thanks again for the nice writeup and the list! Never played smth like this haha i made so many missplays but still won...
Here are some pics, I did not record any only took screens.
https://imgur.com/a/0CMBVk4
PS: Do I have to change my nickname now? :P
Congrats! I myself like MTGA more than HS too recently, but play both. I’m glad the deck worked for you! 27 game winning streak is incredible. Yeah with that record I would change the nickname for sure!
Absolutely fantastic deck, I haven't played this game in a couple years yet after just a few hours I'm already at platinum rank and still haven't lost a single game after around 40 matches. This is despite the fact I've been making all sorts of mistakes since there's plenty of cards that I should probably be playing around but haven't been because I didn't even know they exist. And even better than the 100% win rate is how fast this deck let's you crank out matches (at around 3 or 4 minutes per match) which will be important when I hit diamond at which point I'll probably start losing matches (and see my win rate drop to something more reasonable around 60%) due to going up against people with try-hard decks serious about getting to Legend (which is when having a fast deck really makes a noticeable difference in climbing speed).
Only complaint I have is that the Spawn Of Shadows has been absolutely useless like I don't think it's been the difference between a win and a loss in even a single match, meanwhile it has definitely almost cost me a few matches due to being a dead card in my hand. I saw a guy in the comments mention Knife Vendor which I definitely think has the potential to be better due to the fact I haven't had Spawn Of Shadows stay on the board long enough to ever get its ability off twice making Knife Vendor's ability to do the damage immediately without the need for hero power just flat out better; however losing that extra two attack does worry me as I think that could end up being the difference between winning and losing a match when going up against a taunt minion. Is there really no better replacement that would just do face damage to the opponent like perhaps another deathrattle minion? Regardless, once again this was an awesome deck so thank you for posting it.
Try Knife Vendor, but are you using Tour Guide to set up Spawn? If you play Tour Guide turn 3 into hero power for free and Spawn on 4 that’s when it’s clearly better than Knife Vendor with 2 extra attack. To be honest both of these are kind of slow and I’m hoping to cut them either in the miniset or next expansion.
One other thing about Spawn of Shadows is that your opponent is forced to remove it as it's a major threat to deal another 9 damage next turn if it's left alive, 5 from attacking and 4 from its inspire effect. It can win some games indirectly by forcing them to use removal on it instead of proactive board plays, while they have less of a need to remove a Knife Vendor the turn after it's played as it can only threaten 3 damage on the following turn.
Fair enough, for what it's worth it had a bit more significant of an impact at the higher ranks although it still feels not as good as the rest of the cards in the deck. I wonder if some sort of removal would be worth it at all as a replacement despite this being an aggro deck, as the few losses I've had so far at the higher ranks have exclusively been due to running into the occasional big minion that singlehandedly counters the deck that I have no way of getting off the board (of course you can't win EVERY match and I could see why this wouldn't be worth swapping in if it was at the detriment of this decks efficiency against most other archetypes).
If you’re facing a lot of decks with giants try Big Game Hunter? Overall both this and Undertaker and Lifedrinker are the 3 weakest cards in the deck, this one might be the weakest for sure. I just haven’t found anything better so far, but as soon as a new card fitting this deck is released in a new expansion he will definitely be swapped out.
Out of curiosity what made you go for a Deathrattle variant of Aggro Priest as opposed to the Pirate variant that's currently popular?
I made this deck before the expansion launched before any deck actually got popular based on the idea of critical mass of burst.
Pirates are good for board presence but if removed by control, they don’t give you burst. As top decks pirates are weak, and they are weak to get from Raise Dead. This deck is all around burst, and the deathrattle minions even if removed give face damage. Same with all the battlecry and inspire damage minions, even if they have removal for every single one of them they’ve done their purpose and dealt face damage, over time you get a critical mass of face damage and just win unless they have quite a lot of healing or manage to beat you before that time.
In the quest warlock and odd hunter meta before the last ban, this deck was working really well because quest warlocks and odd hunters could often use their removal to stabilize against pirate priest if the initial wave was cleared, while this deck had a consistency of burst from top decks, Raise Dead, and did damage even if all the minions were cleared and never got to attack.
After the ban this deck lost its best matchup in quest warlock, but apparently it’s still good as someone just got to legend with it with very high winrate just a few days ago. I personally haven’t played it after the warlock quest got banned from wild, I used it to get legend this month and last month but after that I experiment with new decks.
Started playing again after a while, tackled wild for the first time with this deck. 45/4 so far with multiple 10+ winstreaks. Only losses vs Pirate Warrior (almost unbeatable for me) and stupid loss vs Murloc Shaman. Great deck, would hate to play against it.
EDIT: 72-13 so far (85% winrate). Got Diamond in 2 days (Also my first time Diamond)
Also: Pirate Warrior actually seems next to unbeatable. What to do?
Try replacing Undertaker with Golakka Crawler.
Try this deck, it works well for me against pirates and druids but it’s not so easy to play it correctly in the matchup so let me know how it goes.
### Divine Handbuff Paladin
# Class: Paladin
# Format: Wild
#
# 2x (1) Crystology
# 2x (1) Prismatic Jewel Kit
# 2x (1) Righteous Protector
# 1x (2) Crystalsmith Kangor
# 2x (2) Grimestreet Outfitter
# 1x (2) Murgur Murgurgle
# 2x (3) Alliance Bannerman
# 2x (3) Argent Horserider
# 2x (3) Catacomb Guard
# 2x (3) Salhet's Pride
# 1x (3) Wickerflame Burnbristle
# 1x (4) Blademaster Samuro
# 2x (4) Corpsetaker
# 2x (4) First Blade of Wrynn
# 1x (4) The Glass Knight
# 2x (5) Glowstone Technician
# 1x (5) Overlord Runthak
# 1x (6) Cornelius Roame
# 1x (6) Highlord Fordragon
#
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#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone
You can also try using Golakka crawlers instead of Glass Knight and another legendary if you don’t have it. If you do have all those legends then you can remove overlord runthak for the other crawler.
I never played ranked actively, the highest I got was R5 in K&C with coaching.
I started playing from B10 to LEGEND (First time, YAY!) in roughly 3-4 days. This deck is amazing.
I went 107-31 with this deck (~77% winrate) CRAZY GOOD! Thanks!!!
Congrats! Just to confirm did you get legend with the priest or paladin deck?
With the Shadow Priest
I’m getting on quite well with this deck - makes a change from playing Big Priest!
One adjustment I made was not crafting 2 x Shadowbomber. Instead, I am using 2 x Shadowcloth Needle.
With two Shadow Visions in your deck - and only one in hand - you can keep discovering it three times. Works well as a board clear, and coupled with Voidtouched Attendant, you can deal 6 damage to the face!
Just wanted to say this deck is really good in current meta. I started today and hit legend in 4 hours, I'd say around 80% win rate but I played casually on my mobile and it was still a breeze. Spawn of shadows definitely felt redundant as ladder Eu at least was all hunter and warrior so SOS was too slow. Anyway, great guide and great deck kudos.
That's really cool, thanks for letting me know! I've hit legend with it a second time too since this deck guide. For me on NA warlocks are by far my most common matchup and Spawn feels good for those, but I definitely have seen how it can be slow against warriors.
Maybe teching Golakka Crawler would improve the warrior matchup if the deck is facing a ton of them.