Worked really hard building this tempo priest deck, was actually having a lot of success and fun with it.
...until I queued into like 3 shaman in a row who got nothing but earth shocks and devolving missiles and landed them perfectly. Completely negating all my deathrattles and buffs.
So... that was not fun. Had a lot of success with it in other match ups, though. Probably want to add more minions to keep the tempo going, but the Psychopomp, Rally and Raise Dead are actually all really good value generators that keep my resources going.
There's some cards I'm not sure about. Soul Mirror is powerful, but is so expensive. Nameless One is about as good as it is bad half the time. But generally I like it for busting past taunts or stealing powerful effects. I swapped out the Shadowy Figures for Voracious Readers. The Shadowy Figures can be REALLY good with Grave Rune and the Reliquary/Conscripters, but they're really bad in match ups where the opponent can transform my board. By the same token, Grave Run isn't great and I might wanna swap it out for something a little beefier like Circus Amalgam.
Bonechewer Brawler and Apotheosis help against super aggressive decks like face hunter and aggro demon hunter. Power Word: Feast is honestly great. Temple Enforcer is one of the best cards in the deck, just having generally good stats on it's own
Interesting. I’ve tried a few times with Rally Priest but never really managed to take it off the ground. Infested Goblin is a great card against aggro as it allows for a never ending wall of taunts.
The issue for me was the decks failing to accomplish anything that is consistently ‘broken’ enough to seem powerful. Everything I tried would more often than not be easily managed by control decks, or out tempo’d.
Interesting. I’ve tried a few times with Rally Priest but never really managed to take it off the ground. Infested Goblin is a great card against aggro as it allows for a never ending wall of taunts.
The issue for me was the decks failing to accomplish anything that is consistently ‘broken’ enough to seem powerful. Everything I tried would more often than not be easily managed by control decks, or out tempo’d.
I find it sort of plays like a really fast res priest. Without transform effects a lot of tempo decks can't handle just the constant refills from psycho pomp and rally. Evil converter is probably one of the best cards in the deck and can decide the difference between a winning game and a loss.
...and then sometimes Frazzled Freshman gets buffed to a 9/11 and the opponent just never had anything to deal with it and you win by turn 5.
Infested Goblin is such low tempo. It's good against aggro but I think Bonechewer Brawler with buffs is a lot better. The scarabs also mess up your rally pool. And you want your rallies to be as high impact as possible. I think Frozen Shadoweaver is also a really good card. Premier 3 drop stats, and it can shut down a lot of early game aggro or protect your board. Voracious Reader was completely unnecessary between Raise Dead, Rally, Psycho-pomp and Vectus. Also my curve is too expensive. My hand was just never small enough.
I really dig Tempo Priest in general and this list is pretty great. I've been toying around with a similar list but with Disciplinarian Gandling thrown into the mix, since I've determined to make him work in a Priest deck. I also have similar feelings as you do about Soul Mirror, but honestly, Priest has nothing else that's as powerful as a board clear (besides the even more expensive Plague of Death), so I feel like there isn't a better option at the moment.
I really dig Tempo Priest in general and this list is pretty great. I've been toying around with a similar list but with Disciplinarian Gandling thrown into the mix, since I've determined to make him work in a Priest deck. I also have similar feelings as you do about Soul Mirror, but honestly, Priest has nothing else that's as powerful as a board clear (besides the even more expensive Plague of Death), so I feel like there isn't a better option at the moment.
Yeah, I thought about Shadow Word: Ruin, but I think Soul Mirror also just often generates so much value at times too.
...I am literally having the worst luck today. Frozen Shadowweaver and Initiate have both been great, but I keep queueing into mages and shaman who generate devolving missiles. It's really hard to get a good read on how well the deck is actually performing.
I wonder how good Fairground Fool would be in this deck. At least in theory it'd be a great thing to resummon with Rally! and you have a good number of corrupt activators.
I really dig Tempo Priest in general and this list is pretty great. I've been toying around with a similar list but with Disciplinarian Gandling thrown into the mix, since I've determined to make him work in a Priest deck. I also have similar feelings as you do about Soul Mirror, but honestly, Priest has nothing else that's as powerful as a board clear (besides the even more expensive Plague of Death), so I feel like there isn't a better option at the moment.
Yeah, I thought about Shadow Word: Ruin, but I think Soul Mirror also just often generates so much value at times too.
...I am literally having the worst luck today. Frozen Shadowweaver and Initiate have both been great, but I keep queueing into mages and shaman who generate devolving missiles. It's really hard to get a good read on how well the deck is actually performing.
Shadow Word: Ruin upsets me so much because it's so situational. I feel like against aggro with little threats it's totally useless, which is truly the majority of the meta. Or at least, the meta I face.
I feel like getting around evolve mechanics will be really tough for this deck... That's really unfortunate. Frozen Shadoweaver, though, is so nice to pull from Rally. Great pick.
I had a decent (not completely crap) priest deck that only played cards from the last year. It used rally to summon corrupted cards for a lot of value. Fairground Fool and horrendous growth can get massive and stay cheap. Also good targets along with Strongman for Psyche Split. Wouldn't call it a tempo deck though.
I had a decent (not completely crap) priest deck that only played cards from the last year. It used rally to summon corrupted cards for a lot of value. Fairground Fool and horrendous growth can get massive and stay cheap. Also good targets along with Strongman for Psyche Split. Wouldn't call it a tempo deck though.
That sounds like a fun deck, I don't actually have Horrendous Growth unfortunately. I think Rally is actually a super versatile card in general.
Another question - how have Amet and Vectus been performing with this list? I feel like Amet could be nice, but is Vectus doing well for you?
Amet is not bad actually. You can push your board's health up out of range of a lot of stuff, and if you get him late game with Rally or Raise Dead he's very powerful as a combo tool. He's also just so extremely beefy for a 4 drop, he's hard to kill and you can put some buffs on him.
I'm experimenting with Brittlebone Destroyer right now, though.
Vectus wasn't really doing it for me. Often I drew him before I got Conscripter or Reliquary. And when I did play him, he was good refill, but so often he just sat there dead and the deck can't really afford dead cards.
Okay, updated to what will probably be the final list. I dunno if I like initiate, but the brittlebone destroyers have been great.
This deck is pretty good against other tempo decks. It does reasonably well against token druid (unless it's a REALLY greedy build), most demon hunter, druid and rogue decks. It's a pretty even match up against mage.
It struggles against removal heavy or higher tempo decks like shaman, warlock, priest and paladin.
I think I beat a few menagerie warriors with it, but I wouldn't say that's a common build.
So I wouldn't say it's a great deck, but it's unique and a fair bit of fun, and it can win games.
I tried it last night with similar results to what I’d had before, Rally! just isn’t broken enough as a tempo tool in Priest and more often than not Phsychopomp is just a far better play on turn 4. Beyond turn 4 bringing back a 1,2 & 3 drop just gets progressively worse - it’s at this point a Paladin can draw 6 Murlocs and throw them onto the board, a Warlock can pop off with an 8/8 and a gang of demons, or a Shaman starts evolving. For it to work Priest needs to be in a far better place as a Tempo deck, but maybe with the Core set the absurd power level of other decks will come down to the point just trying to play minions on curve is a viable strategy again.
At the minute I find it more useful as a late game tool to bring back key combo pieces (such as Bloodweaver and/or Sethek), or doing janky shit like rezing Loot Hoarders, Infested Goblins, Doomsayers etc
That doesn't really match my experience. Like, yeah, Rally is worse after turn 4. And the deck is really bad against anything that can significantly outvalue it. (Soul Mirror, Illucia and Nameless can only do so much)
Paladin beats it pretty handily if it has any value at all. But Paladin is honestly just broken. Shaman and Warlock definitely don't beat it outright. Most zoolocks are a fairly even match up unless they get a nice bit of card draw. Control Warlock needs Dark Skies or it falls way behind on board. Evolve Shaman needs some sort of transform effect usually, or this deck just out-trades it.
Most of those decks don't typically have ways to keep on board if you're buffing is what I find.
Do you have the win rates and at what ranks? As soon as I hit Diamond the win rates of a lot of the jankier stuff tends to plummet, and decks that worked before hit a wall. I’m not really an aggro/tempo player so maybe I’m just playing it incorrectly.
I find no joy in playing tier1 decks so any off meta stuff that work is welcome. A 45% win rate at Gold can be achieved with most decks that aren’t build poorly.
To be honest, I haven't been playing enough to give you a good win rate. I'm currently ranking up in standard and I'm at silver 1 I think? The winrate is at 45% but I started at like 35%, so either I'm getting better at playing it or the improvements i made were effective. But typically your MMR isn't related to your rank. Your rank is more like an indication for how much you've played/bothered to climb. Which I really haven't much.
I can give you tips on playing it, though.
*You wanna mulligan mostly for a 1 drop, maybe a 2 drop if you can swing it. Against Druid you wanna keep Soul Mirror. Apotheosis is mainly for late game healing, it's not worth committing to it early. Power Word: Feast is also good late game for trading, but is good early game on a Frazzled Freshman or Initiate too. *Your only real strategy is to build up a big board. Try not to play lackeys until the late game if you get them. You wanna keep your Rally & Raise Dead strong. Early-game even if you're only getting a Reliquary and a Freshman or something, Raise Dead is usually worth it because you just wanna keep ahead on board. *The point to cards like rally is to sort of exhaust your opponent's resources and then refill your board. A lot of decks have trouble clearing 3 & 4-health boards early on (and even in the midgame), and your buffs are pretty strong for early-mid game trading. *Temple Enforcer is SUCH a good card in certain match ups. Certain decks like Druid really struggle to remove it, and tempo decks don't have the tools either a lot of the time. *Trade, trade, trade. You can heal your value trades, your opponent can't.
Again, this deck is primarily VERY good against other tempo and aggro decks, and extremely poor against high value or control decks. So if you wanna play something like this, you more or less just have to keep that in mind. Some control decks, if you get a good curve you can outrace. (Warlock can't play their removal on curve for example) but you have to get kinda lucky.
Worked really hard building this tempo priest deck, was actually having a lot of success and fun with it.
...until I queued into like 3 shaman in a row who got nothing but earth shocks and devolving missiles and landed them perfectly. Completely negating all my deathrattles and buffs.
So... that was not fun. Had a lot of success with it in other match ups, though. Probably want to add more minions to keep the tempo going, but the Psychopomp, Rally and Raise Dead are actually all really good value generators that keep my resources going.
There's some cards I'm not sure about. Soul Mirror is powerful, but is so expensive. Nameless One is about as good as it is bad half the time. But generally I like it for busting past taunts or stealing powerful effects. I swapped out the Shadowy Figures for Voracious Readers. The Shadowy Figures can be REALLY good with Grave Rune and the Reliquary/Conscripters, but they're really bad in match ups where the opponent can transform my board. By the same token, Grave Run isn't great and I might wanna swap it out for something a little beefier like Circus Amalgam.
Bonechewer Brawler and Apotheosis help against super aggressive decks like face hunter and aggro demon hunter. Power Word: Feast is honestly great. Temple Enforcer is one of the best cards in the deck, just having generally good stats on it's own
Interesting. I’ve tried a few times with Rally Priest but never really managed to take it off the ground. Infested Goblin is a great card against aggro as it allows for a never ending wall of taunts.
The issue for me was the decks failing to accomplish anything that is consistently ‘broken’ enough to seem powerful. Everything I tried would more often than not be easily managed by control decks, or out tempo’d.
I find it sort of plays like a really fast res priest. Without transform effects a lot of tempo decks can't handle just the constant refills from psycho pomp and rally. Evil converter is probably one of the best cards in the deck and can decide the difference between a winning game and a loss.
...and then sometimes Frazzled Freshman gets buffed to a 9/11 and the opponent just never had anything to deal with it and you win by turn 5.
Infested Goblin is such low tempo. It's good against aggro but I think Bonechewer Brawler with buffs is a lot better. The scarabs also mess up your rally pool. And you want your rallies to be as high impact as possible. I think Frozen Shadoweaver is also a really good card. Premier 3 drop stats, and it can shut down a lot of early game aggro or protect your board. Voracious Reader was completely unnecessary between Raise Dead, Rally, Psycho-pomp and Vectus. Also my curve is too expensive. My hand was just never small enough.
What’s the win rate and at what rank?
I might give the list a go but don’t have shadowy figures I don’t believe so would only craft them if the stats are positive.
What targets are you usually looking for with The Nameless One?
Not very high rank rn because the season just started.
I wouldn't use the Shadowy Figueres, let me update the deck list.
I really dig Tempo Priest in general and this list is pretty great. I've been toying around with a similar list but with Disciplinarian Gandling thrown into the mix, since I've determined to make him work in a Priest deck. I also have similar feelings as you do about Soul Mirror, but honestly, Priest has nothing else that's as powerful as a board clear (besides the even more expensive Plague of Death), so I feel like there isn't a better option at the moment.
I haven't used it recently, but usually it's mostly just a pseudo-Spellbreaker to get past taunts. Obviously it's amazing against Khartut Defender.
Yeah, I thought about Shadow Word: Ruin, but I think Soul Mirror also just often generates so much value at times too.
...I am literally having the worst luck today. Frozen Shadowweaver and Initiate have both been great, but I keep queueing into mages and shaman who generate devolving missiles. It's really hard to get a good read on how well the deck is actually performing.
I wonder how good Fairground Fool would be in this deck. At least in theory it'd be a great thing to resummon with Rally! and you have a good number of corrupt activators.
Tempo and Priest are in the name, it has to be Bronze 10.
Another question - how have Amet and Vectus been performing with this list? I feel like Amet could be nice, but is Vectus doing well for you?
I had a decent (not completely crap) priest deck that only played cards from the last year. It used rally to summon corrupted cards for a lot of value. Fairground Fool and horrendous growth can get massive and stay cheap. Also good targets along with Strongman for Psyche Split. Wouldn't call it a tempo deck though.
That sounds like a fun deck, I don't actually have Horrendous Growth unfortunately. I think Rally is actually a super versatile card in general.
Amet is not bad actually. You can push your board's health up out of range of a lot of stuff, and if you get him late game with Rally or Raise Dead he's very powerful as a combo tool. He's also just so extremely beefy for a 4 drop, he's hard to kill and you can put some buffs on him.
I'm experimenting with Brittlebone Destroyer right now, though.
Vectus wasn't really doing it for me. Often I drew him before I got Conscripter or Reliquary. And when I did play him, he was good refill, but so often he just sat there dead and the deck can't really afford dead cards.
Okay, updated to what will probably be the final list. I dunno if I like initiate, but the brittlebone destroyers have been great.
This deck is pretty good against other tempo decks. It does reasonably well against token druid (unless it's a REALLY greedy build), most demon hunter, druid and rogue decks. It's a pretty even match up against mage.
It struggles against removal heavy or higher tempo decks like shaman, warlock, priest and paladin.
I think I beat a few menagerie warriors with it, but I wouldn't say that's a common build.
So I wouldn't say it's a great deck, but it's unique and a fair bit of fun, and it can win games.
I tried it last night with similar results to what I’d had before, Rally! just isn’t broken enough as a tempo tool in Priest and more often than not Phsychopomp is just a far better play on turn 4. Beyond turn 4 bringing back a 1,2 & 3 drop just gets progressively worse - it’s at this point a Paladin can draw 6 Murlocs and throw them onto the board, a Warlock can pop off with an 8/8 and a gang of demons, or a Shaman starts evolving.
For it to work Priest needs to be in a far better place as a Tempo deck, but maybe with the Core set the absurd power level of other decks will come down to the point just trying to play minions on curve is a viable strategy again.
At the minute I find it more useful as a late game tool to bring back key combo pieces (such as Bloodweaver and/or Sethek), or doing janky shit like rezing Loot Hoarders, Infested Goblins, Doomsayers etc
That doesn't really match my experience. Like, yeah, Rally is worse after turn 4. And the deck is really bad against anything that can significantly outvalue it. (Soul Mirror, Illucia and Nameless can only do so much)
Paladin beats it pretty handily if it has any value at all. But Paladin is honestly just broken. Shaman and Warlock definitely don't beat it outright. Most zoolocks are a fairly even match up unless they get a nice bit of card draw. Control Warlock needs Dark Skies or it falls way behind on board. Evolve Shaman needs some sort of transform effect usually, or this deck just out-trades it.
Most of those decks don't typically have ways to keep on board if you're buffing is what I find.
Do you have the win rates and at what ranks? As soon as I hit Diamond the win rates of a lot of the jankier stuff tends to plummet, and decks that worked before hit a wall. I’m not really an aggro/tempo player so maybe I’m just playing it incorrectly.
I find no joy in playing tier1 decks so any off meta stuff that work is welcome. A 45% win rate at Gold can be achieved with most decks that aren’t build poorly.
To be honest, I haven't been playing enough to give you a good win rate. I'm currently ranking up in standard and I'm at silver 1 I think? The winrate is at 45% but I started at like 35%, so either I'm getting better at playing it or the improvements i made were effective. But typically your MMR isn't related to your rank. Your rank is more like an indication for how much you've played/bothered to climb. Which I really haven't much.
I can give you tips on playing it, though.
*You wanna mulligan mostly for a 1 drop, maybe a 2 drop if you can swing it. Against Druid you wanna keep Soul Mirror. Apotheosis is mainly for late game healing, it's not worth committing to it early. Power Word: Feast is also good late game for trading, but is good early game on a Frazzled Freshman or Initiate too.
*Your only real strategy is to build up a big board. Try not to play lackeys until the late game if you get them. You wanna keep your Rally & Raise Dead strong. Early-game even if you're only getting a Reliquary and a Freshman or something, Raise Dead is usually worth it because you just wanna keep ahead on board.
*The point to cards like rally is to sort of exhaust your opponent's resources and then refill your board. A lot of decks have trouble clearing 3 & 4-health boards early on (and even in the midgame), and your buffs are pretty strong for early-mid game trading.
*Temple Enforcer is SUCH a good card in certain match ups. Certain decks like Druid really struggle to remove it, and tempo decks don't have the tools either a lot of the time.
*Trade, trade, trade. You can heal your value trades, your opponent can't.
Again, this deck is primarily VERY good against other tempo and aggro decks, and extremely poor against high value or control decks. So if you wanna play something like this, you more or less just have to keep that in mind. Some control decks, if you get a good curve you can outrace. (Warlock can't play their removal on curve for example) but you have to get kinda lucky.