Well good evening!
I haven't been a fan of Priest since the early beginnings of Hearthstone, but your deck has caught my attention. I'm a patient person, but seeing so many Raza Reno Velen Combo Priests shenanigans on ladder made me dust 90 % of my Priest collection. Never dusted a single card besides gold ones! Was quite relieving. Only kept a very small selection of cards and luckily all on your list are still safely guarded from my "rage". I'm not planning on crafting Shadowreaper Anduin just to save myself from dusting it when I get irritated by Priests ever again *lol*. And I would like to know if Alexstrasza is a suitable substitute or if there are any other cards you considered besides the ones posted in your guide above. I'm quite a fan of Dragon Hunter ie. Dragonz'rilla which has been my favourite deck ever since I set my goals to craft it all in gold one day. So having another interesting Dragon deck to play would be a very refreshing.
1
Razakus priest is a slow combo deck which (unfortunately) isn't beaten by control decks due to the inability of control to stop combo in HS. As a priest deck it's also pretty good against highly aggressive decks. Priest normally loses to strong midrange decks like midrange hunter, but between reno, raza, and shadowreaper, the faster midrange decks are mostly covered.
What beats razakus is either a faster combo deck (as priest is naturally weak to combo decks), or a tempo deck against which the priest can never recover. The only tempo decks in standard are jade druid, pirate warrior, and kelly rogue, all of which can do pretty well against priest. Kelly rogue is the worst of those because it suffers most from draw variance. As far as faster combo decks go, you have exodia mage and (surprisingly) quest rogue, although quest rogue loses most other match-ups.
Switching to wild gives you secret mage, tempo mage, miracle rogue, malygos shaman, reno-lock, freeze mage, and dragon priest, all of which don't have enough support to really break out in standard, or at least don't have enough support to face-roll all over Razakus Priest.
Personally, I just switched to wild because there is a far wider pool of archetypes to play, which helps make the meta feel less stagnant.
Edit: standard miracle rogue isn't on that list because it relies too heavily on questing adventurer, and cant 30-to-0 an opponent
2
First off, I've been playing since beta (10 days before public release) , produced card review content for YouTube (which I've since stopped doing for lack of time due to college), and landed four consecutive legend finishes from BRM's release onward (s16-20). S20 was done with Aggro shaman.
Flame juggler saw fringe play in that deck because at the time, shaman's list of good 2 drops was totem golem, whirling zapomatic, flametongue, and (if you're feeling generous) knife juggler. Flame juggler came along as a solid body which could ping off a fair number of 1 & 2 drops. In a class with limited 2 drop options (whirling and knife both died to a lot of 1 drops and were therefore the best of a bad pick), flame juggler could have immediate impact on the board and survived most 1 drops. All this said, only about half of the aggro shaman decks at the time opted to run it. Why? It was rng heavy, and inconsistent.
By your own comparison to flame juggler, a card which had a chance to immediately impact the board in a class which wanted better 2 drops, this new warlock minion is inferior because it will never immediately impact the board, and it's still inconsistent and rng heavy.
Warlock, zoo specifically, is in the market for 2 drops, but this is not setting a high bar, and thus I'm not convinced a card which is marginally better than river crocolisk is going to make the cut.
Also "a card is a card, no matter where it is" is objectively wrong. Try playing against a face hunter/pirate warrior who has all 30 cards from his deck in hand on turn 1. He will faceroll you. Those aggro decks lose by running out of cards in hand. Only control decks care about the net sum of cards in hand + in deck, and even then they only care when playing against other control decks. By virtue of tap, warlock always runs out of cards faster, so this little mill 1 dink isn't swinging control games just by milling one.
1
No good deck relies on one card to win. This is coming from a guy who has been using dragon mind blast priest to ladder since black rock. Losing velen in such a deck is hard, but isn't concede worthy. That's in a fragile combo deck. Refined T1 decks can lose any card and keep going, be it tirion or ice block or whatever. Redundancy and consistency are built in. If decks simply collapsed like a house of cards for losing one powerhouse, mill rogue would crush the meta with coldlights and vanish.
1
It's fun seeing who has never played MTG based on their reactions to this card. In CCG's and TCG's like HS, it's a well known fact that the only point of life that matters is the last one. Similarly, against mill decks, the only card in your deck that matters is the last one. This minion does 1 damage to your 30 card deck, or in life total terms, does the equivalent of ~ 2 damage to face as a battle cry. (Assuming the average game goes to turn 10 and you draw 1 card per turn). A 2/3 deal 2 isn't great. Not bad, but not great. Certainly not worth more than 2 mana, and possibly not even constructed playable.
Thats why comments crying "op blizzard nerf" are getting downvoted. They reflect a lack of understanding of the value of the average card in your deck. Unfortunately, it seems the community is too lazy to explain why that mentality is wrong and instead likes to just settle for downvotes.
2
It has 4 attack. It was already untargetable for priest :P
1
Sure, malorne could be silenced, hex'd, etc, but that's not why malorne isn't played.
In constructed, a late game plan of "topdeck one big minion per turn" isn't good enough. Jade idol doesn't draw cards; just generates growing minions. Meanwhile, most constructed decks will draw 2-3 smaller minions per turn and face rush you down.
It doesn't matter that you can't fatigue if you die before our opponent to his superior board. Even fandral doesn't fix that in Druid; only gadgetzan does.
A warlock still loses to shaman, hunter, warrior, and rogue even after playing jaraxxus. It is still capable of losing to mage. Why? Superior face damage and/or a more efficient combination of big minions and removal (Druid lacks efficient removal, so does warlock). What's the point here? Playing one big minion per turn doesn't mean you win. It just means you man-handle priest and paladin in the late game.
Ergo: not busted as a standalone card; just decent. Crazy with gadgetzan though. 6.67 growing jade golems every turn is nuts.
-3
For those of you saying "Jade Idol is op because druids can never fatigue again!" I have just one word: Malorne.
If jade idol is op, it'll be for no reason other than it's combo potential with Gadgetzan Auctioneer.
13
I'm actually really proud of Blizzard here. For the first time, they have implemented actual card nerfs that do not completely destroy the targeted cards. Don't get me wrong Yogg-Saron, Hope's End is now dead, but the nature of that card meant that any nerf to him would likely be a death sentence. The rest of the nerfed cards really have been handled professionally. Color me impressed, Blizzard are learning from their mistakes.
2
acolyte works better vs aggro decks which are full of small dinks he can clean up. Northshire is better vs control where they don't want to bother wasting resources on her and she draws a ton. Since aggro is way more common on the ladder, acolyte is preferred. They are of similar power level though.
1
My experience with Malchezaar is that he's good vs control and combo (there are a lot of niche-counter legendaries), but you have to have an extremely consistent deck if you want to run him. A deck whose consistency isn't rock solid gets blown apart when it adds him in, as instead of drawing synergistic cards to keep your head above water, you randomly draw a Deathwing that you know you aren't ready to all-in on.
The only deck that's both slower in nature and extremely consistent is (non-C'thun) Control Warrior, and it's getting aced out by two superior warrior decks (Dragon and C'thun) already.
Much as I love the idea of the card, I don't think it's actual constructed material.