I'm playing a control priest for the first time (omg the games are slow!). Messing around with the deck and learning patience, but the one card I know I'm playing very badly is the Shade of Naxxramas. Does anybody have good tips for when to bring it out of stealth? I seem to do it too early.
Any tips on Shrinkmaster and Pyromancer would also be enjoyed.
Also is there a twitch stream showing any control priests in action?
Shrinkmeister should generally not be played for the 3/2, but for his effect. So it's (generally) better to keep him in hand than play him in a vacuum, but this can change based on the current board situation. I will generally only bring Shade of Naxxramas out of Stealth when I have a perfect kill target, or once he gets up to about 6/6 or so. Hope this helps!
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Question: If you're in a canoe, paddling upstream, and all four wheels fall off, how many pancakes does it take to sand the doghouse if there's 28 frogs in the oven?
At first, why are you playing Shade of Naxxramas in Priest? The shade is only good when you have some way to abuse its stealth and grow mechanics, like Druids do stalling until t9 when they can play combo and deal massive damage or Shamans do comboing it with either Bloodlust or Windfury + Rockbiter Weapon. Dark Cultist and Injured Blademaster are incredible minions that fit the 3 drop slot and Thoughtsteal, or even Velen's Chosen, complete it. No space or utility for shade in Priest.
Concerning Wild Pyromancer, there are 3 good ways to use him, that I will list below:
As a 2 drop. Simple as that, you can just use him as a 3/2 for 2 to slow down agressive decks or build your board. Not recommended against classes with weapons or if the 2 options below are likely to happen.
As AoE. The pyromancer is insane against Aggro if comboed with spells like Power Word: Shield, Light of the Naaru, Holy Smite, Shadow Word: Pain, and any other cheap spells you might have, in order to clear the board and give you time to play your minions. Stellar against Aggro but can be good too against Control.
As card draw. Pretty similar to the 2nd option, the difference is that you need this specific combo: Wild Pyromancer + Northshire Cleric + spell + Circle of Healing in order to draw a bunch of cards. The more minions you have, the better. Is better in matchups in which card draw is really important, like against Control Warrior and Handlock, matchups that are generally poor if you don't have enough card draw. Against Aggro, you'd rather use him as the 2nd option and save the circle for Auchenai Soulpriest or even Injured Blademaster.
Concerning Shrinkmeister, there are 4 good ways to use him, that I will list below:
As a 2 drop. Simple as that, you can just use him as a 3/2 for 2 to slow down agressive decks or build your board. Not recommended against classes with weapons or if the 3 options below are likely to happen.
As a way to trade favorably. If you already have one or more minions on the board and you want to trade it with an opponent's minion, you can play Shrinkmeister on the opponent's minion to lower its attack and then trade with it without making your minion(s) dying. Pretty good, as you get board advantage early.
Along with Shadow Word: Pain or Shadow Madness. Recommended if you need to take down minions with 5 attack and you don't happen to have Shadow Word: Death or to take down the problematic 4 attack minions. Just as a note, just use him with Shadow Madness if the minion controled will either kill something big, be killed or both. Otherwise using him with Shadow Word: Pain or as the 4th option is much better. Against Handlock, it's quite good against Twilight Drake.
Along with Cabal Shadow Priest. The greediest one, this will basically mind control any minion with 4 or less attack. Try to use this on powerful minions but don't be too greedy: if you need to use the Shrinkmeister as the 1st or 2nd option(or even the 3rd), don't hesitate.
About the stream, I don't know of any streamers myself but I'm pretty sure there are people that play the deck. However, Trump has videos on Youtube playing Control Priest, so just search for them and be happy. :)
Thanks, everyone, I'll reread that a few times. The shrinkmaster/cabal shadowpriest is a crazy combo.
Below is my current deck, more or less. Right now I'm just trying cards out to see how they work together. I keep changing things around and adding to it as I get dust. The legendaries are the only ones I have that aren't class specific. I'm making a second light of the naru, cabal shadowpriest and pyromancer asap. Cards I've also tried are silence, holy fire, mass dispel, smite, maybe a few others.
Basically, once I decide what works for me I'll double up on some of the cards (reduce or eliminate others) so the deck plays more consistently.
The sheep I'm just trying out to see how it goes. In terms of the Shades. I think they work fairly well. My only fear was they hurt early tempo, but this deck doesn't have much of that. I will keep at least one in the deck when it's done unless things change further into the ladder.
I don't mind Shade of Naxxramas in the more aggro versions of Deathrattle Priest, but true, I don't see many Classic Control Priests playing that card. Your deck seems more midrange, so I'm not sure how well it would work out for you. I agree that you first need to decide which 3 drops you are going to run.
First off, Deathrattle Priest will definitely run Cultists for the Undertaker synergy, but after that it's a question of Blademaster, Shade, or possibly Golems or some other 3 drop. Lots and lots of players swear by Blademaster. I personally feel that he's in a little bit of a tough spot where he's somewhat bad against Control as another Axe/Hellfire target, he's somewhat bad against mech aggro for being too small on development, and he's only overselling his price tag when used with Circle or Gift of the Naaru. But he happens to be very generalist in both matchups and never terrible.
Still, there's an argument to be made that somewhere exists a metagame that is so inundated with Control that Shade is always better than Blademaster. If it does exist on Ladder, it's around Ranks 1-5 on the North American server. The main advantage I see is that it can almost always be counted on to attack once, at variable degrees of damage. So if you're in a Control meta where you don't need your 3 drop to secure board control, and you can count on getting your 3 drop killed a majority of the time, attacking no more than once most of the rest of the time, then your average damage output from Blademaster is less than 2. Shade is an upgrade there because its average is going to be over 3 before it gets killed. Also, Blademaster seems to go hand in hand with Circle, and if you're really not using Auchenai + Circle that much due to never being matched against Aggro, then you can probably cut one or both Circles and save deck space.
So, I find Shade playable over Blademaster in certain situations. It also happens to make Velen's Chosen somewhat better because you don't lack for a target, although you certainly need to bait out single target removal before that point so you don't get blown out. If you do stick it and the opponent doesn't have a kill spell quickly, it's extremely effective in Priest because Priest does what Priest does and keeps the thing alive to grow big and munch faces.
That's basically the answer when it comes to how it should be used. Keep in mind what removal each class has, specifically on the point of the 3-damage removals because it's basically never correct to grow it out of Fireball range, for example. Ignore Warrior because it can kill basically anything single target, but obviously keep wary of Fiery Win Axe. Same thing Mage with Poly's and Shamans with Hexes. So I guess bottom line is sometimes grow it to 4 before removal stealth, other times deal with an enemy minion on board beforehand or have a plan to heal it, and in all other cases just pop it immediately because if they have Execute/Hex, they have it.
Thanks Justice, that was an interesting analysis. My deck is playing pretty funky right now. It seems to be trying to do everything and does nothing particularly well. It definitely needs better focus, but I'm still messing up playing the cards I'm dealt. So conclusion are hard to come by especially since games are so slow and I make mistakes. I'm at rank 12 and I have no idea what the meta is: the people I play and the decks are variable enough to seem random (old decks, new decks, good players, bad players). I'm growing suspicious of blademaster, circle of healing and Auchenai synergies for some reason. My deck seems to have 100 back-up plans, but no true plan. Which is challenging to play, at least, as teh decisions in every game still seems different to me. :)
Keeping in mind opponent removals is something I'm learning to do. I'll focus harder on forcing mistakes from my opponent.
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I'm playing a control priest for the first time (omg the games are slow!). Messing around with the deck and learning patience, but the one card I know I'm playing very badly is the Shade of Naxxramas. Does anybody have good tips for when to bring it out of stealth? I seem to do it too early.
Any tips on Shrinkmaster and Pyromancer would also be enjoyed.
Also is there a twitch stream showing any control priests in action?
Many thanks.
Shrinkmeister should generally not be played for the 3/2, but for his effect. So it's (generally) better to keep him in hand than play him in a vacuum, but this can change based on the current board situation. I will generally only bring Shade of Naxxramas out of Stealth when I have a perfect kill target, or once he gets up to about 6/6 or so. Hope this helps!
Question: If you're in a canoe, paddling upstream, and all four wheels fall off, how many pancakes does it take to sand the doghouse if there's 28 frogs in the oven?
Answer: I have no time for games!
At first, why are you playing Shade of Naxxramas in Priest? The shade is only good when you have some way to abuse its stealth and grow mechanics, like Druids do stalling until t9 when they can play combo and deal massive damage or Shamans do comboing it with either Bloodlust or Windfury + Rockbiter Weapon. Dark Cultist and Injured Blademaster are incredible minions that fit the 3 drop slot and Thoughtsteal, or even Velen's Chosen, complete it. No space or utility for shade in Priest.
Concerning Wild Pyromancer, there are 3 good ways to use him, that I will list below:
Concerning Shrinkmeister, there are 4 good ways to use him, that I will list below:
About the stream, I don't know of any streamers myself but I'm pretty sure there are people that play the deck. However, Trump has videos on Youtube playing Control Priest, so just search for them and be happy. :)
Thanks, everyone, I'll reread that a few times. The shrinkmaster/cabal shadowpriest is a crazy combo.
Below is my current deck, more or less. Right now I'm just trying cards out to see how they work together. I keep changing things around and adding to it as I get dust. The legendaries are the only ones I have that aren't class specific. I'm making a second light of the naru, cabal shadowpriest and pyromancer asap. Cards I've also tried are silence, holy fire, mass dispel, smite, maybe a few others.
Basically, once I decide what works for me I'll double up on some of the cards (reduce or eliminate others) so the deck plays more consistently.
The sheep I'm just trying out to see how it goes. In terms of the Shades. I think they work fairly well. My only fear was they hurt early tempo, but this deck doesn't have much of that. I will keep at least one in the deck when it's done unless things change further into the ladder.
I don't mind Shade of Naxxramas in the more aggro versions of Deathrattle Priest, but true, I don't see many Classic Control Priests playing that card. Your deck seems more midrange, so I'm not sure how well it would work out for you. I agree that you first need to decide which 3 drops you are going to run.
First off, Deathrattle Priest will definitely run Cultists for the Undertaker synergy, but after that it's a question of Blademaster, Shade, or possibly Golems or some other 3 drop. Lots and lots of players swear by Blademaster. I personally feel that he's in a little bit of a tough spot where he's somewhat bad against Control as another Axe/Hellfire target, he's somewhat bad against mech aggro for being too small on development, and he's only overselling his price tag when used with Circle or Gift of the Naaru. But he happens to be very generalist in both matchups and never terrible.
Still, there's an argument to be made that somewhere exists a metagame that is so inundated with Control that Shade is always better than Blademaster. If it does exist on Ladder, it's around Ranks 1-5 on the North American server. The main advantage I see is that it can almost always be counted on to attack once, at variable degrees of damage. So if you're in a Control meta where you don't need your 3 drop to secure board control, and you can count on getting your 3 drop killed a majority of the time, attacking no more than once most of the rest of the time, then your average damage output from Blademaster is less than 2. Shade is an upgrade there because its average is going to be over 3 before it gets killed. Also, Blademaster seems to go hand in hand with Circle, and if you're really not using Auchenai + Circle that much due to never being matched against Aggro, then you can probably cut one or both Circles and save deck space.
So, I find Shade playable over Blademaster in certain situations. It also happens to make Velen's Chosen somewhat better because you don't lack for a target, although you certainly need to bait out single target removal before that point so you don't get blown out. If you do stick it and the opponent doesn't have a kill spell quickly, it's extremely effective in Priest because Priest does what Priest does and keeps the thing alive to grow big and munch faces.
That's basically the answer when it comes to how it should be used. Keep in mind what removal each class has, specifically on the point of the 3-damage removals because it's basically never correct to grow it out of Fireball range, for example. Ignore Warrior because it can kill basically anything single target, but obviously keep wary of Fiery Win Axe. Same thing Mage with Poly's and Shamans with Hexes. So I guess bottom line is sometimes grow it to 4 before removal stealth, other times deal with an enemy minion on board beforehand or have a plan to heal it, and in all other cases just pop it immediately because if they have Execute/Hex, they have it.
Thanks Justice, that was an interesting analysis. My deck is playing pretty funky right now. It seems to be trying to do everything and does nothing particularly well. It definitely needs better focus, but I'm still messing up playing the cards I'm dealt. So conclusion are hard to come by especially since games are so slow and I make mistakes. I'm at rank 12 and I have no idea what the meta is: the people I play and the decks are variable enough to seem random (old decks, new decks, good players, bad players). I'm growing suspicious of blademaster, circle of healing and Auchenai synergies for some reason. My deck seems to have 100 back-up plans, but no true plan. Which is challenging to play, at least, as teh decisions in every game still seems different to me. :)
Keeping in mind opponent removals is something I'm learning to do. I'll focus harder on forcing mistakes from my opponent.