Hearthpwn

Of course I'm not talking about removing it completely that would be unfair for Priest players, just some of the current key cards that for me are really unhealthy for the game even now. Just like back in the days where one player just plays alone with the excuse is ''skilled''. I mean, it's unlikely to seriously pretend that stealing the enemy's most powerful minion with 1 card is skill, even if you waited or you decided to play it one turn later. ''Wow such skill'' , and is IMPOSIBLE to pretend that will be fun for both players. I rather prefer a completely aggro meta, and I would't like a completely aggro meta.

Cards like Entomb, Cabal Shadow Priest, Mind Control, Thoughtsteal, Shifting Shade are broken as fuck in control matchups. However, absolutely NOBODY wants to talk about it just because Priest right in this moment SUCKS, the issue is that, this might not be forever.

First of all, let's take a look to the Standard meta. Is full of warriors (an exageration ofc), no one can deny that, in terms of class balance is one of the most optimal due to an also undeniable factor that is its large variety of archetypes. But why is that? why exactly now is the true master class if most of the core cards of this decks were there before the old gods? There are 3 main reasons:

• The rotation of sticky and powerful deathrattle minions like Piloted Shredder, Haunted Creeper, Nerubian Egg, etc. Brawl is the only good mass removal of Warrior and sometimes not very good one. 
• The new cards of course, the Ravaging Ghoul being one of the most notables.
• And the deafening fall of Priest to the ground in today's meta (Tommen-style), this one being the most important, Before Standard, Priest was actually ''oppresing'' Warrior (no pun intended). In every control game (what naturally happens when you're facing  Priest and you are not playing Aggro or Combo), Priest had the main advantage.

So in my opinion, the existence of this class, and essentially the cards I talked about, were not allowing the existence of more warrior archetypes and this also happens with other classes, and this might happen in a close future. Take look to this comic. for example.

The image explains itself. If we take a look to the future (that might be a close one because of the next adventure). what would happen if once the meta settles down it gets naturally slower? What would happen if also Priest gets the buffs everybody is asking for? Well, it will be a true hell playing against Priest. In fact, it would be THE cancer of the history of Hearthstone. Removing your early game, stealing your minions, stealing your cards, taking less fatigue damage and making you play against your own cards spending even more resources! 

This in fact, limits the design space (in tems of deck building), because in my experience, most of these ''anti-meta'' but non aggro decks, loses horribly against Priest, same thing that happens when for example, N'zoth Paladin plays against Priest. (SW:D for both Rags, Entomb for Sylvanas and Tirion, mass removals for the rest, end of Paladin). Even if winrate of N'zoth Pal is not that bad agaisnt Priest and has ways to play around certain cards, is definitely something that ruins the game experience, and is completely unhealthy for the game.

If we let or Blizz lets Anduin the Thief leave the dumpster where he is now, we can say goodbye to any other fun, interactive and unique decks out there that want to be tried and played. And the miracle that happened with Warrior in this format, might never happen with any other class again, ever.

So, do you agree or disagree with me? I want to make this discussion great so please share your opinion explaining why in the comments ;)

edit: Side note. Is really like this Priest class in world of warcraft? Does it steal spells, abilities or gear from other players? As far as I know, Mind Control is the only equivalent ability. What do you know about it?

don't you feel sorry about priest?

am I really reading this? 

Priest has like 3 cards that are actually good if we made some "card tier list" - Entomb, Auchenai Soulpriest and Shadow Word: Death. Every other card priest has isn't staple or has some monstruous drawback (such as Excavated Evil). What you are suggesting is just "empower the classes I like because I like them, and as I really like them it should have no good cards against it, because I like them very much".

Though Warrior is the most favored class again, Control Warrior doesn't really shines in this meta. The utterly fatigue-control decks such as CW, Freeze Mage and priest itself are kinda of blown off (but Warrior is the only one still playable). Playing priest with Thoughtsteal is suicide - the card is far too slow. It's not op (far from it!), it's a tech card in certain matchups, which is absolutely fine. 

I'm not sure which warrior you ever saw to be "oppressed" since it was always dominant in the meta.

And about Brawl being "isn't that good" - rofl. 

Seems like you lose a lot to priests - which is an actual achievement in the moment of the game - but nothing more than that.

So, your saying that because priest beats nearly all other control decks it should be nerfed? I see your point, but I feel you are forgetting that that is the way priest is made to be. To stop those control decks. Priest is made to be reactive. It is very hard (nigh impossible) to plan 2 or 3 turns ahead because all of your cards are reactive. Entomb is one of the only quote unquote "non reactive" cards there is for priest because you get what you remove. And priest has always been limiting design space. But again, priest is only favoured in control metas. That is why is sucks now, because it is very hard for priest to compete with tempo. i speak of course of totem golems, things from below, alexstrazas champion. Yes yes SWP exists but you can only play 2. And mind control. Again only good i control metas. Play it on turn 10. steal one thing. Chances are that by then you die on board, unless you are ahead, in which case why mind control? All priest cards have limited design space from the very beginning. This is not a new occurence. The only they remain balanced is a) because of standard ( R.I.P. Lightbomb) and b) because tempo just murders them. Repeatedly. With a rusty knife. For entomb, the worry was always there. I would point you to this Video by Noxious from when entomb was released https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhmwGLJJ80Q . So yeah in short, Priest needed to keep control down. Preist cards bad cause too reactive. 

Quote from Pinchus >>

Yes!!!! Remove priest and put death knigth in his place!!!!

Really? Woudnt it be better to delete Heartshtone Heroes of War Craft and call it Wurstcraft Kindergarten Warfares instead? Litterly any class and Card gets called to be nerfed. I have no idea what the probem of the community is. 

e.g. Fiery Waraxe

seems like everyone forgots abut Dr.Boom. And even Shaman has thei own Dr. Boom atm. So please can we focus on the real problems of Hearthstone or atleast just have fun instead of wasting so much tears?

AND: u even blame cards or mechanics which are not even the best! Their not even close to OP. 

Lets be honest here I think your view point has scewed a little too much against priest. Priest won't become meta defining in the way shaman recently has unless Blizzard do the worst idea by power creeping cards in the same way. So far we've seen nothing but heavy handed 'safety' moves when it comes to priest by Blizzard because they are scared of such an outcome. Power word tentacles being 5 mana is a clear example because even if velen's chosen wasn't completely over powered it was strong enough to be mildly oppressive to classes without high damage spells. If priest end up with their own 3 mana 6/6 or similar I will eat my words but I feel if they at-least give us more 5/5's for 4 priests will have a better chance of not being run over by other decks currently in the meta. I want priests to at-least have an above 45% win rate, I have no perfect ideas how but we can hope blizzard has the right idea. Bemoaning with overwhelming dread and doom for the future of the game is counter intuitive to the system of a healthy, changing and adaptive meta that blizzard & community should be trying to do. If priest gets some lime light it'll only last until a new standard rolls round I expect.

Or the OP could learn how to play the game and win against priest... Isn't this an really insane solution? Ok, this might be too excentric and futuristic...

The meta is never gonna accommodate a slow priest deck, not until there is a bigger gap in value between early game and late game minions. The way Hearthstone is right now, 1 drops have the highest stat distribution per mana and 2 and 3s are close in that regard, whereas 5 mana minions and up are just too garbage in comparison. 

The latest expansion gave us only one good late game card that everyone calls broken, Call of the Wild. Whilst it is being used in every hunter deck now, it actually reignited a previously slow and inconsistent Lock and Load hunter deck, making it a viable choice for laddering and tourneys alike. This is how late game cards should've been from the start of Hearthstone and not like Gruul or Boogeymonster.

Until Priest get their own Call of the Wild and honestly they'll probably need more than that, it should be the worst class in the game and I doubt that is changing any time soon. Next year when everything rotates out and Blizzard introduces a new expansion with a bigger gap between early and late game cards in terms of value and tempo, maybe we will see that slow nuisance of a Priest deck to play against that goes to fatigue every single game, but that likely won't happen and it will probably devolve into a simple tempo / midrange deck since those are easier to make for the Blizzard devs.

The point still seems a lot of crying and, worse, without a good reason. The OP never spoke about "future", he said about now - and ranting about what the future might be seems a little to overpresuming to me. And no, priest does not have good vanilla cards.  

It seems like there is nothing else to understand except what I said: You are weeping for a future thats incertain with the incorrect approach. Priest has 3-4 cards that are good, warrior had at least 8. This comparation is totally senseless and you're just ranting. Accept it, hurts less.

Also, "read better, please":

ranting about what the future might be seems a little to overpresuming to me.

Another one Priest thread. Nothing to discuss actually. If Priest will get buffed we will play it, that's all. Why you ever care about it?

Entomb - agree (but it is slow).
Cabal Shadow Priest - 6 mana for 4 mana creature + small removal+ (mostly) 2mana minion. Not even OP. +Too situational.
Mind Control - super late. Hardly imagine such meta.
Thoughtsteal - random, mostly no synergy with your deck.
Shifting Shade - 4 mana minion that can be traded with 2 drop. Random.
I would gladly change this useless mechanik "copying opponents card" for simple draw!
Copy = random (not OP). Draw = synergy. 
P.S. if you dislike control punishers - take a look at Sap and Freezing Trap

Priest will be buffed. And I will enjoy playing Priest even more.
GL HF

Or you know, you could play around these cards. Priest actually sucks now that Lightbomb is gone, and until Brode explains his Unicorn Priest, the class will continue to suck.

Priest just needs some proactive plays.  The biggest reason for the the psychological response that caused people to hate playing the class in the past is that it would shut down all threats, then win by playing them back on the other player - eliciting the feeling that they won by not actually doing anything on their own, which is inevitably going to piss people off.  Instead of innovating by giving the class other things to do on its own, they just created more under-statted and over-costed cards that steal stuff, creating the feeling that it has to be one or the other: the dumpster or the most infuriating to play against.  If the class were able to make proactive plays, there wouldn't be the card slots for a fully loaded package of "steal" cards.  Dragon Priest is a step in the right direction, and is only a couple of solid cards away from being decent.

I disagree with you.  The cards you listed are conditional and/or slow.  "Broken vs XYZ matchups" isn't something unique to Priest vs Control.  Every class/archetype will have other classes/archetypes which their cards seem utterly broken beyond belief (Justicar in Warrior vs Freeze Mage is "broken" but that doesn't mean Warrior/Justicar is broken as a whole).  

Quote from blackfyre14 >>

Priest just needs some proactive plays.  The biggest reason for the the psychological response that caused people to hate playing the class in the past is that it would shut down all threats, then win by playing them back on the other player - eliciting the feeling that they won by not actually doing anything on their own, which is inevitably going to piss people off.  Instead of innovating by giving the class other things to do on its own, they just created more under-statted and over-costed cards that steal stuff, creating the feeling that it has to be one or the other: the dumpster or the most infuriating to play against.  If the class were able to make proactive plays, there wouldn't be the card slots for a fully loaded package of "steal" cards.  Dragon Priest is a step in the right direction, and is only a couple of solid cards away from being decent.

If priest becomes dominant the meta will shift, and it has some huge holes in it's design that can be exploited.

I, for one, welcome our new four damage overlords. 

People say removing aggro decks would be unhealthy for the game. Im pretty sure that removing Priest as one of the main control class in HS history would dramatically change the meta even worse and ppl will end up complaining.. 

Look if you remove Priest: other control decks will rise, more control match-ups, typically Warrior and maybe Paladin everyday, following by the rise of more aggro-cancer feast decks, etc...

Priest is the class that could keep Warrior and Paladin in check. 

All priest needs is a good taunt again or a zombie chow like early drop.  It already has the tools to beat decks like Zoo which is a big deal, but it's way too passive atm.