First let me start off by saying that the current state of Priest is my favorite of any other Class/Decks. I almost exclusively play Control Priest. I have been playing hearthstone for just over 4 months now and have my golden portrait and Legend Rank. The diversity of spells and minions, combined with the numerous options, Priest has the ability to have a high skill cap.
By looking at the soon to be released cards for GvG, its starting to become a little more clear what we can expect from the upcoming changes to the meta. Overall, I see many new solid mid-game options, along with some very strong early game minions (I'm looking at you Mechwarper), and not as many slower cards aside from some Hunter releases.
I see the game shifting away from the heavy split between Control vs Aggro and settling somewhere in the mid-range. Which, for me... I like the slower chess like matches so I am a bit worried. On the upside, if that does end up happening, I see the priest actually becoming much stronger as a class. Especially due to the Shrinkmeister, with more midrange targets I can see running a much lower mana curve with combinations of 2x Shadow Madness, 2x Cabal, 2x Smite, 2x SW:P, and even probably Recombobulator.
This is just my thoughts on one of numerous possibilities, we are going to see a meta shift 3x more violent than Naxx provided. At this early stage its impossible to say.
TL:DR
What are your opinions on what to expect in regards to how the Priest will fit into the new scheme of things?
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All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
Shrinkmeister will probably become the bane of my existence. It is such a powerful card since it makes all of the Priests situational removal less… well, situational.
The fact that the game is being pushed into less of a dichotomy is great. Having the meta split right in the middle isn't exactly healthy. In this sort of meta, Priest would remain a decent contender but probably not top of the ladder. Shaman is a pretty easy matchup, but Druid Midrange seems to be a strong contender and Priests struggle against it.
i just lost 3 games in a row against aggro, where my deck is supposed to shine. Then i got so salty that i switched to zoo.. The next thing that happens is that i run into a priest. a priest who gets the perfect auchenai circle, nova and shadowmadness draws =z
the morale of the story is that: even if you purposely build your deck to be anti aggro, you still need luck to win against it. Aggro on the other hand is super consistent. It seems lame to me that the more succesful way to play this game is also the most brainless one.
Yeah it's tough when you lose to a deck you're supposed to counter, but it happens to everyone, with that being said the 3 lost games is little in the grand scheme of things(unless those 3 were the last 3 you needed to win to get to legend, then it hurts alot :/ ). Pick your hopes up, who knows, maybe you'll beat aggro 3 times in a row tomorrow.
The expansion can't come any sooner though, this meta definitely needs a shakeup.
Priest really got to shine in Naxx with more defensive options to help them stabilize and it was welcome. I play them second only to my demonlock and it is primarily control. Double Shadow madness has never been so useful and i am betting in the new meta i am going to wish i had 4 shadow madness! Silence is going to become even more premium and priest is in a really good spot on that front as well. Buff priests may become pretty viable since no one is going to be able to run the amount of silences needed to quell a priests onslaught. Im looking forward to that as its always something i thought priests main role should have been and very surprised that paladins got more raw healing options to boot.
The biggest change for the Priest will be that if the meta does shy away from control that the Priest hero power will not have the same effect on smaller lower health minions and the effective trades you can make. High health minions like the Spider Tank could become very important for the class. We might even see Shadow Form become usable in some way, with possible less reliance on Thoughtsteal.
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
I was never a huge fan of thoughtsteal and currently use Mind Vision as a later play. If you track your opponents hand you can really figure out what been held for a long time. These are the possible big drops or AOEs/combo cards you want to grab (hilarious vs Warrior/Mage). If the game goes midrange-fest, it is possible priest may have to become much more aggressive like you say. In that sense its probably going to hurt them unless they make excellent trades which doesn't always pan out well due to possible tempo loss. As you said though any change is welcome because priest is only going to get more utility and its probably going to make people forum rage.
With the 2 new minions Shrinkmeister and Recombobulator, Shadow Madness and Cabal Shadow Priest will become more than just situational. It will give you the option to take any 4-5 health minion and not just trade it, but make it your own/heal it. I think that's what he was talking about. Currently its nice, but running 2 Cabal's are generally better because you get a strong body with it.
I'm just really surprised since we have only seen 2 regulars and 1 rare, we still have (possibly) 1 more rare, 2 epics, and 1 legendary to see (If the leak turns out to be true/false.) Though the mech minion is nice, its essentially like Dark Cultist... Which you can try to setup to get effect from his deathrattle, but it doesn't happen consistently enough.
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
Well 2 shadow madness is pretty amazing vs any aggro deck. Its also amazing vs the Belcher meta thats been around since Naxx. Its always a two for 1 and i don't run 2 Cabals as they are a dead early draw and not aggressive enough for me. Double cabals only been popular recently and people have seem to pick up on it in the aggro meta which is good too.
After seeing these new Priest cards, I am so excited... Lightbomb, what a game changer for Priest, probably the best Counter Rush card in the game.
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All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
After all of the card reveals did anyone feel that a lot of the new cards are purely situational? I would have preferred to have at least 1 strong card that can be used at any time, i.e Dark Cultist
Spider Tank This is pretty great at any time, very similar to the dark cultist. The entire set seemed to be all about scratching itches that needed to be scratched.. Or filling in gaps that were getting pretty deep. Overall im pleased, but as a warlock player we deserved better spells than what we got. Cant complain since Shaman got hit pretty bad.
IMO priest received a fairly diverse tool kit with GvG. Its going to open up a number of new deck archetypes that will have varying levels of viability.
Time for me to make predictions that might prove to be embarrassingly wrong
Viable- IMO these deck types will be improved and will turn out to be consistent meta decks
Control- Control decks can seamlessly integrate Shrinkmiester, Light of Naru and Voljin into their works to get more value out of staple cards like cabal shadow priest, Aechania Soul Priestess and Injured Blade master. Will be better at Anti Control than a deck like Combo Priest
Combo Priest- In an aggro or tempo heavy meta, Wild Pyro anti aggro versions of control priest will be able to clean up. They will trade in heavier control cards like SWD or Sylvanas for more early game options or board clears.
Semi Viable- These are decks that I am not sure will be viable when the meta settles but are interesting now
Spare Parts Priest- A combo priest variant that relies on spare parts minions instead of normal cheap spells. Blizzard only introduced 3 cards that provide spare parts and a legendary that probably doesn't fit into a priest deck because of the competition at the 6 slot. Spare parts priest may just become a quirky, less viable option of stronger combo priest deck lists
Deathrattle Priest- IMO GvG introduced more cards that will hurt this deck style than help it. The current version is about half deathrattle and half tempo plays. GvG adds in strong deathrattle options at the 4 slot that did not exist now but added exactly 0 priest cards to bolster this play style. More aggressive deathrattle builds might be possible but I expect this deck will just be worse than Mechrattle Zoo and Deathrattle hunter, both of which may be popular right at launch leaving this deck to be swept up in the Anti Deathrattle Tech likely to come with the beginning of GvG
Mech Priest- This deck suffers from a lack of good early game options. There is NO good one drop mechs that fits into a priest game plan. Mechwarpers provide tempo boosts early and may help bolster a more mid ranged or late game mech deck. Shadowboxer is little more than a river croc with a small upside. Cards like Exploding sheep will be ackward and Annoyatron will be a throw away stall card. Tinkertown is going to be tough to play on curve, spider tank fights for slots with Dark Cultist and Injured Blade master which are both better tempo plays. I don't see Mech priest having good enough early game or strong enough late game to be worth running over other decks. Warrior, Warlock and (to a lesser extent) rogue seem like better mech choices.
Shadow Priest- Probably the most interesting and different deck coming out of GvG. This deck will be a more aggressive version of the control deck. Cards like Blessing of Naru, Shadowbomber, and velens chosen will bolster Soulpreistess plays, Velen Mind Blast combos and the current pantheon of priest direct damage and AOE spells. Shadowform has good synergy with Vol'Jin. The main issue comes from trade offs. Shadow form is still going to suffer from terrible tempo. This deck will probably be the hardest to predict but my initial reservations are that its going to have awkward tempo and a poor early game
IMO priest received a fairly diverse tool kit with GvG. Its going to open up a number of new deck archetypes that will have varying levels of viability.
Time for me to make predictions that might prove to be embarrassingly wrong
Viable- IMO these deck types will be improved and will turn out to be consistent meta decks
Control- Control decks can seamlessly integrate Shrinkmiester, Light of Naru and Voljin into their works to get more value out of staple cards like cabal shadow priest, Aechania Soul Priestess and Injured Blade master. Will be better at Anti Control than a deck like Combo Priest
Combo Priest- In an aggro or tempo heavy meta, Wild Pyro anti aggro versions of control priest will be able to clean up. They will trade in heavier control cards like SWD or Sylvanas for more early game options or board clears.
Semi Viable- These are decks that I am not sure will be viable when the meta settles but are interesting now
Spare Parts Priest- A combo priest variant that relies on spare parts minions instead of normal cheap spells. Blizzard only introduced 3 cards that provide spare parts and a legendary that probably doesn't fit into a priest deck because of the competition at the 6 slot. Spare parts priest may just become a quirky, less viable option of stronger combo priest deck lists
Deathrattle Priest- IMO GvG introduced more cards that will hurt this deck style than help it. The current version is about half deathrattle and half tempo plays. GvG adds in strong deathrattle options at the 4 slot that did not exist now but added exactly 0 priest cards to bolster this play style. More aggressive deathrattle builds might be possible but I expect this deck will just be worse than Mechrattle Zoo and Deathrattle hunter, both of which may be popular right at launch leaving this deck to be swept up in the Anti Deathrattle Tech likely to come with the beginning of GvG
Mech Priest- This deck suffers from a lack of good early game options. There is NO good one drop mechs that fits into a priest game plan. Mechwarpers provide tempo boosts early and may help bolster a more mid ranged or late game mech deck. Shadowboxer is little more than a river croc with a small upside. Cards like Exploding sheep will be ackward and Annoyatron will be a throw away stall card. Tinkertown is going to be tough to play on curve, spider tank fights for slots with Dark Cultist and Injured Blade master which are both better tempo plays. I don't see Mech priest having good enough early game or strong enough late game to be worth running over other decks. Warrior, Warlock and (to a lesser extent) rogue seem like better mech choices.
Shadow Priest- Probably the most interesting and different deck coming out of GvG. This deck will be a more aggressive version of the control deck. Cards like Blessing of Naru, Shadowbomber, and velens chosen will bolster Soulpreistess plays, Velen Mind Blast combos and the current pantheon of priest direct damage and AOE spells. Shadowform has good synergy with Vol'Jin. The main issue comes from trade offs. Shadow form is still going to suffer from terrible tempo. This deck will probably be the hardest to predict but my initial reservations are that its going to have awkward tempo and a poor early game
I agree with most of what you said, but spare part priest seems senseless to me. DR priest is awesome to play and because it isn't full deathrattle like hunter, it won't suffer that much from cards like Scarlet Purifier. Mech priest has some decent cards, the best of them is Shadowboxer IMO, because it is an early tempo play + Knife Juggler like abilities + it's a mech. Pretty decent and it has some viability for sure! Not the best class for it (see tempo warrior mech), but not totally lost. Shadow Priest: They got with Vol'jin a good card to use their turned hero power. Aggro Priest could have some viability, but I don't know about that one, especially of the tempo loss through Shadowform.
Spare parts was the thing that captured my imagination the most from the initial reveal. Unfortunately they never followed through with the promise they showed in the initial reveal
Before the GvG release Priest was one of the top 3 classes in terms of overall strength and consistency. To me it looks like very few of the new GvG cards will be too hard for the class to deal with. Since Priest was already so stable, the cards we received were not even really needed. In that lies the true blessing, the few weaknesses we did have, are now perfectly filled.
Most our most notable problems were A) No early game class minions besides Northshire. B) Our early game was a bit too slow vs aggro/rush decks. C) CoH was the most pivitol card in our deck, either have to save it for Auchenai or blow it on Injured Blademaster and if you didnt end up drawing it in time, you were pretty much dead.
All these hole have now been filled, and not by some half decent card we run by necessity. The Light of Naruu now gives us a better options to heal Injured Blademaster without having to blow a CoH. So indirectly it's a large buff to AoE (which was already amazing), plus gives another minion (that could potentially get crazy big) So our real weakness, early game... is completely covered. Then there is Lightbomb, which is really just too good to put into words. Priest doesn't really flood the board with minions, so it should have little impact on our minions, and can wipe the board of Flame Imps, Auctioneer, Giants, just so many good targets.
And finally a great class Legendary that really should never be removed from the deck. Plus the combinations you could play with him, smite is going to become premium removal. Only downside is it might be difficult to find a good minion to switch with.
Priest came out very well in all. No disappointments, I'm sure as soon as GvG goes live, people are going to complain about priest like they do hunters now =) (maybe not that bad...) Oh and someone else said it, Mass Dispell might become very popular with minions like Malorne out there. I'm just happy priest should have more options now than just 'Control'
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
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First let me start off by saying that the current state of Priest is my favorite of any other Class/Decks. I almost exclusively play Control Priest. I have been playing hearthstone for just over 4 months now and have my golden portrait and Legend Rank. The diversity of spells and minions, combined with the numerous options, Priest has the ability to have a high skill cap.
By looking at the soon to be released cards for GvG, its starting to become a little more clear what we can expect from the upcoming changes to the meta. Overall, I see many new solid mid-game options, along with some very strong early game minions (I'm looking at you Mechwarper), and not as many slower cards aside from some Hunter releases.
I see the game shifting away from the heavy split between Control vs Aggro and settling somewhere in the mid-range. Which, for me... I like the slower chess like matches so I am a bit worried. On the upside, if that does end up happening, I see the priest actually becoming much stronger as a class. Especially due to the Shrinkmeister, with more midrange targets I can see running a much lower mana curve with combinations of 2x Shadow Madness, 2x Cabal, 2x Smite, 2x SW:P, and even probably Recombobulator.
This is just my thoughts on one of numerous possibilities, we are going to see a meta shift 3x more violent than Naxx provided. At this early stage its impossible to say.
TL:DR
What are your opinions on what to expect in regards to how the Priest will fit into the new scheme of things?
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
Shrinkmeister will probably become the bane of my existence. It is such a powerful card since it makes all of the Priests situational removal less… well, situational.
The fact that the game is being pushed into less of a dichotomy is great. Having the meta split right in the middle isn't exactly healthy. In this sort of meta, Priest would remain a decent contender but probably not top of the ladder. Shaman is a pretty easy matchup, but Druid Midrange seems to be a strong contender and Priests struggle against it.
Yeah it's tough when you lose to a deck you're supposed to counter, but it happens to everyone, with that being said the 3 lost games is little in the grand scheme of things(unless those 3 were the last 3 you needed to win to get to legend, then it hurts alot :/ ). Pick your hopes up, who knows, maybe you'll beat aggro 3 times in a row tomorrow.
The expansion can't come any sooner though, this meta definitely needs a shakeup.
Priest really got to shine in Naxx with more defensive options to help them stabilize and it was welcome. I play them second only to my demonlock and it is primarily control. Double Shadow madness has never been so useful and i am betting in the new meta i am going to wish i had 4 shadow madness! Silence is going to become even more premium and priest is in a really good spot on that front as well. Buff priests may become pretty viable since no one is going to be able to run the amount of silences needed to quell a priests onslaught. Im looking forward to that as its always something i thought priests main role should have been and very surprised that paladins got more raw healing options to boot.
The biggest change for the Priest will be that if the meta does shy away from control that the Priest hero power will not have the same effect on smaller lower health minions and the effective trades you can make. High health minions like the Spider Tank could become very important for the class. We might even see Shadow Form become usable in some way, with possible less reliance on Thoughtsteal.
Regardless, any change will be welcome.
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
I was never a huge fan of thoughtsteal and currently use Mind Vision as a later play. If you track your opponents hand you can really figure out what been held for a long time. These are the possible big drops or AOEs/combo cards you want to grab (hilarious vs Warrior/Mage). If the game goes midrange-fest, it is possible priest may have to become much more aggressive like you say. In that sense its probably going to hurt them unless they make excellent trades which doesn't always pan out well due to possible tempo loss. As you said though any change is welcome because priest is only going to get more utility and its probably going to make people forum rage.
With the 2 new minions Shrinkmeister and Recombobulator, Shadow Madness and Cabal Shadow Priest will become more than just situational. It will give you the option to take any 4-5 health minion and not just trade it, but make it your own/heal it. I think that's what he was talking about. Currently its nice, but running 2 Cabal's are generally better because you get a strong body with it.
I'm just really surprised since we have only seen 2 regulars and 1 rare, we still have (possibly) 1 more rare, 2 epics, and 1 legendary to see (If the leak turns out to be true/false.) Though the mech minion is nice, its essentially like Dark Cultist... Which you can try to setup to get effect from his deathrattle, but it doesn't happen consistently enough.
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
Well 2 shadow madness is pretty amazing vs any aggro deck. Its also amazing vs the Belcher meta thats been around since Naxx. Its always a two for 1 and i don't run 2 Cabals as they are a dead early draw and not aggressive enough for me. Double cabals only been popular recently and people have seem to pick up on it in the aggro meta which is good too.
After seeing these new Priest cards, I am so excited... Lightbomb, what a game changer for Priest, probably the best Counter Rush card in the game.
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
After all of the card reveals did anyone feel that a lot of the new cards are purely situational? I would have preferred to have at least 1 strong card that can be used at any time, i.e Dark Cultist
SUP!
Spider Tank
This is pretty great at any time, very similar to the dark cultist. The entire set seemed to be all about scratching itches that needed to be scratched.. Or filling in gaps that were getting pretty deep. Overall im pleased, but as a warlock player we deserved better spells than what we got. Cant complain since Shaman got hit pretty bad.
IMO priest received a fairly diverse tool kit with GvG. Its going to open up a number of new deck archetypes that will have varying levels of viability.
Time for me to make predictions that might prove to be embarrassingly wrong
Viable- IMO these deck types will be improved and will turn out to be consistent meta decks
Control- Control decks can seamlessly integrate Shrinkmiester, Light of Naru and Voljin into their works to get more value out of staple cards like cabal shadow priest, Aechania Soul Priestess and Injured Blade master. Will be better at Anti Control than a deck like Combo Priest
Combo Priest- In an aggro or tempo heavy meta, Wild Pyro anti aggro versions of control priest will be able to clean up. They will trade in heavier control cards like SWD or Sylvanas for more early game options or board clears.
Semi Viable- These are decks that I am not sure will be viable when the meta settles but are interesting now
Spare Parts Priest- A combo priest variant that relies on spare parts minions instead of normal cheap spells. Blizzard only introduced 3 cards that provide spare parts and a legendary that probably doesn't fit into a priest deck because of the competition at the 6 slot. Spare parts priest may just become a quirky, less viable option of stronger combo priest deck lists
Deathrattle Priest- IMO GvG introduced more cards that will hurt this deck style than help it. The current version is about half deathrattle and half tempo plays. GvG adds in strong deathrattle options at the 4 slot that did not exist now but added exactly 0 priest cards to bolster this play style. More aggressive deathrattle builds might be possible but I expect this deck will just be worse than Mechrattle Zoo and Deathrattle hunter, both of which may be popular right at launch leaving this deck to be swept up in the Anti Deathrattle Tech likely to come with the beginning of GvG
Mech Priest- This deck suffers from a lack of good early game options. There is NO good one drop mechs that fits into a priest game plan. Mechwarpers provide tempo boosts early and may help bolster a more mid ranged or late game mech deck. Shadowboxer is little more than a river croc with a small upside. Cards like Exploding sheep will be ackward and Annoyatron will be a throw away stall card. Tinkertown is going to be tough to play on curve, spider tank fights for slots with Dark Cultist and Injured Blade master which are both better tempo plays. I don't see Mech priest having good enough early game or strong enough late game to be worth running over other decks. Warrior, Warlock and (to a lesser extent) rogue seem like better mech choices.
Shadow Priest- Probably the most interesting and different deck coming out of GvG. This deck will be a more aggressive version of the control deck. Cards like Blessing of Naru, Shadowbomber, and velens chosen will bolster Soulpreistess plays, Velen Mind Blast combos and the current pantheon of priest direct damage and AOE spells. Shadowform has good synergy with Vol'Jin. The main issue comes from trade offs. Shadow form is still going to suffer from terrible tempo. This deck will probably be the hardest to predict but my initial reservations are that its going to have awkward tempo and a poor early game
Spare parts was the thing that captured my imagination the most from the initial reveal. Unfortunately they never followed through with the promise they showed in the initial reveal
Before the GvG release Priest was one of the top 3 classes in terms of overall strength and consistency. To me it looks like very few of the new GvG cards will be too hard for the class to deal with. Since Priest was already so stable, the cards we received were not even really needed. In that lies the true blessing, the few weaknesses we did have, are now perfectly filled.
Most our most notable problems were A) No early game class minions besides Northshire. B) Our early game was a bit too slow vs aggro/rush decks. C) CoH was the most pivitol card in our deck, either have to save it for Auchenai or blow it on Injured Blademaster and if you didnt end up drawing it in time, you were pretty much dead.
All these hole have now been filled, and not by some half decent card we run by necessity. The Light of Naruu now gives us a better options to heal Injured Blademaster without having to blow a CoH. So indirectly it's a large buff to AoE (which was already amazing), plus gives another minion (that could potentially get crazy big) So our real weakness, early game... is completely covered. Then there is Lightbomb, which is really just too good to put into words. Priest doesn't really flood the board with minions, so it should have little impact on our minions, and can wipe the board of Flame Imps, Auctioneer, Giants, just so many good targets.
And finally a great class Legendary that really should never be removed from the deck. Plus the combinations you could play with him, smite is going to become premium removal. Only downside is it might be difficult to find a good minion to switch with.
Priest came out very well in all. No disappointments, I'm sure as soon as GvG goes live, people are going to complain about priest like they do hunters now =) (maybe not that bad...) Oh and someone else said it, Mass Dispell might become very popular with minions like Malorne out there. I'm just happy priest should have more options now than just 'Control'
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence