Hearthpwn

maybe I missed something because up until recently nobody seemed to care about divine spirit, but it seems to have gotten a lot of hate recently. I don’t understand why, it seems like a fairly balanced combo card that only works well when you have your minions at full health. I personally had been playing the divine spirit combo deck since priest was absolutely aweful and I still think it’s fun. I haven’t even seen it on ladder in a long time. Most of the priests I see (if I see any, it’s mostly warlock or mage) are just run of the mill spiteful decks. So honest question, what’s with all the hate?

I think it's bc sometimes you just can't deal with a high health minion and you get steamrolled the next turn. I've learned that vs dragon priests it's best to damage their high health minions even if you don't kill them, it's saved me a lot of games to just deny the combo.

It's because people are netdecking cubelock and then it gets wrecked by this combo.

I prefer play 20 times vs priest combo deck than one time vs any warlock.

When I lose to priest don't feels like I don't have any chance to win, warlock is so freaking powerful nothing you do matters, he always wins.

I don't "hate" Divine Spirit, per se, but being in constant threat of a Divine Spirit + Inner Fire combo because I happened to leave a single enemy minion on the board once is bothersome. You can't always be expected to fully clear the board every turn, and being "punished" for it with a 20/20 to the face can be really frustrating.

I have been playing purify priest since purify came out. I prefer this version to the dragon version. I get why people have it because you can be pretty helpless when I drop the 4/8 on turn three then circle of healing it to full health and combo out. If things go perfectly with this deck you can have a 20/20 attacking on your second turn if you had coin. Not much they can do about it either haha I love those games.

It was fine until Shadow Visions. The consistency that card gives the deck, not to mention the possibility of having to play around three of them, is what frustrates me.

It's because people are netdecking Control Warlock and Murloc Paladin and are getting dicked by Combo Priests - Which ofc makes them go ''omg this card is unfair bc I lost to it nerf it plz''  :) 

Quote from Velerios >>

It's because people are netdecking cubelock and then it gets wrecked by this combo.

Maybe it can be that powerful, however it is no where near as prevalent in my experience 

It is the best deck right now. Most of pro's top 100 tweets are made with that list.

Quote from OverholtNA >>

It was fine until Shadow Visions. The consistency that card gives the deck, not to mention the possibility of having to play around three of them, is what frustrates me.

People don't like getting OTK'd

Well potion of madness into divine spirit + inner fire otk with your own minion is pretty damn tilting, and the consistency that the deck gains with shadow visions makes it fairly viable, so it's no wonder that some people are bothered by the combo.

Besides that, it has been around since forever and in my opinion, consistency or no, it has never been any fun to play or play against.

Imo, basic and classic need to leave standard so we can see some new play instead of things like this combo.

Quote from Razershard >>

People don't like getting OTK'd

Divine Spirit is a card that can easily OTK anyone. With tools like Shadow Visions, Inner Fire,  or any other Stat-Swapping Minions,

And with some card draw, it gets really out of control as early as turn 3/4 and any turn later.

There is almost no card combination, that, together, can do as much damage out of nowhere like Divine Spirit.

Going against a priest that has this, you pretty much can never let any kind of minion on the priest side of the board to survive, otherwise, you'll receive 20+ damage to the face or something like this, and let's face it, no matter how much removal you have, eventually, at some point of the game, you will not be able to kill all enemy minions on the priest side of board, removal it's limited. So, when one  priest minion survive, they can already have the combo in hand (as i said, very early on the game, i've seen a turn 3 otk with divine spirit, inner fire).  making the stupid OTK combo eventually possible to happen.

And this is one of the critical parts, a lot of times, you can't even have a very healthy minion on your own side of the board, thanks to Twilight Acolyte + Potion of Madness or Pint-Size Potion + Potion of Madness combo, the priest will take your minion (give it charge, because of potion of madness, and otk you), meaning you can't even play minions like Ysera, for example, because your own minion will kill you,    there's no way to defend yourself on that case/no counterplay.

I'll not lie, i really hate divine spirit, because i do not think this is an interactive card at all. In fact, usually is really easy to enable otk with divine spirit. OTK's should be at least hard to enable, but with divine spirit, and the cards that priest has, it's ridiculous.

It is however losing a lot of cards at rotation. Drakonid Operative is gone, Kabal talonpriest, potion of madness, pint sized potion. 

They can no longer buff small health minions to divine spirit levels and lose a lot of defense vs wide aggro boards. 

How about instead of blaming Divine Spirit we admit that Shadow Visions is the real problem here. It makes it so the Inner Fire combo actually sees semi-consistent competitive play (which before it did not in any serious deck), and it makes it much harder for Big Priest to run out of steam due to multiple early rez spells.

This seems like a a logical decision really. Nerf a buff spell that is a fringe otk deck or do something about a very cheap 'spell tutor' that you can run two of and fits into 2 or more different decks of the same class.

I think OTK tools feel more powerful than they actually are when you're playing against them, because you notice them when they kill you. Divine Spirit/Inner fire is usually saved for a game ending combo, so when you lose against priest, you know they're running it. Leeroy and charge minions feel similarly overpowered while playing against them, because you notice when they come out for lethal. You don't really notice as much when they're in your opponents hand all game taking up space and not doing anything.

I don't know whether this deck is actually overpowered or not, but I understand the knee jerk reaction to hate it when its used against you.