Hearthpwn

I guess he's pretty good on turn 3, or two if on the coin. His drawback is pretty significant, especially when you compare this guy to the rogue's ambusher. All in all this is still a playable card and it fits only in the most aggressive decks out there, where you don't expect the one extra draw to come into effect.

I'm not sure I like him in priest actually. Unless you're not in favor or running auchenai's that is. An auchenai is the kryptonite of this self-healing critter.

I'm not really a fan of cards that are unplayable unless combined with another card. As such, I don't like circle of healing and ancient watchers. The chance that your gambit of circle + auchenai works out on turn 4 is 17,5% on the play and 22% on the draw by making some simple geometric calculations. Besides the injured blademaster the card is situationally playable at best, and at that point not really exciting.

That said, I do like the auchenai just as is. She has fine stats for four mana and her ability is very potent. At six mana she can come down and kill a small guy right away. I think it is one of the hardest cards to not play in priest due to how versatile it makes your deck.

About your deck: I think it does have some strong points going for it. I particularly like the stranglethorn tiger. However, I do think it has a lot of room for improvement. Your minion count seems rather low. Without enough creatures, I think you're setting yourself up to be able to clean the board, but not gain advantage on it in the same turn or even the next turn often enough. Likewise, I don't think you are running a shell aggressive enough to warrant mind blast. Mind blast is only good if it deals the last 5-10 damage and it is worthless in every other situation. I think you should cut them for cards that are better at more different situations. Preferably, I'd like you to fill your deck with cards that are almost always live.

I don't think that Shadowform is a win-more card. It is actually a sweet build-around-me-card that is not at all a good turn 3 play. Perhaps something for five mana. The issue that I find though, is that it has to compete with the healing power, which is already a really good ability. Healing keeps minions around and forces your opponent to trade creatures. Because I like healing as well, I think the Auchenai is the best of boths worlds. It is both shadowform plus a 3/5 and a way to go back to healing your guys. I like to combine it with a youthful brewmaster who is there to trade early on, reset a minion's health/battlecry and turn off an auchenai.

That said, I think shadowform could still be worthwhile, but you'll really need to play a very aggressive shell to make it good enough. Which means you'll be dependent on drawing it. But with four copies(the auchenai + shadowform), that shouldn't be too big a deal. At the same time, you can proxy your healing power with PW:Shield, temple enforcers and earthen ring farseers if need be.

A similar thing happens whenever you have a wounded minion and play a stormwind champion that gets killed the very next turn. The silence effect dispels the maximum health bonus, but doesn't alter its hit points if they were below the old maximum.

The thing about priests is that you need to keep killing off their creatures instead of just damaging them. So avoid playing creatures that allow him to devour them and walk away unscathed with his heals. It's been a while since I played the AI, but I think cards that silence his own could be very useful against said berserker.

Also, priests have a distinct weakness against creatures with 4 power, so you might want to build a deck that is just running  a lot of those. The two shadow words can't hit those.

I personally like playing a couple of cards against rush decks like the auchenai soulpriest which handles like a machinegun if left unanswered. Speaking of which, I definitely like taunts in priest decks like the mogushan warden. Did you consider playing this over some other cards?

I imagine the lightwell is why you aren't playing the auchenais. Other than that, is there a specific reason why you aren't running blademasters over say the golem and the imp master? I've personally played the imp master in priests and was underwhelmed. It's a fine card against control decks for sure, but without taunts it just dies too easily. And it's a suicidal card against hunters which were popular at the time.

An aggro priest should not play the same cards as an aggro warlock. The potency of the priest is that they have the healing power, which is really amazing and often forces your opponent to make worse trades because they need to kill your creature rather than hurt it. As such, playing one toughness creatures is not optimal. I think a better strategy is to play 2/3's at 2 mana and play more of a priest focused around the midgame.

But if you do want to play this game, play the 0/4 for one mana guy. In priests this is a much better card than it is in other decks thanks to the healing.

Mind vision is one of the few tools priests have early on. It often trades for a decent creature or a removal spell. Later on you can nab legendaries with it. Getting high value cards with it is obviously pretty amazing and makes the priest one of the better classes to use against decks that run way too many expensive fatties. It also has a very important drawback: this card does nothing when both players are topdecking. I've had that many times. I don't think this card is that busted, especially since you are stealing a card that costs one more for yourself...

Toughtsteal is sweet. It is a slow but incredibly powerful card. The reason why it shines is that it can give access to what the priest doesn't usually have access to, like a polymorph. It's also amazing card advantage that doesn't deplete your deck, the latter part of this being far less important than the first part. But again, this card can get complete duds, like a poison weapon, or a tribal beast card like a 1/1 that boosts beasts. Again, this is probably one of the absolute killer cards against decks that play lots of legendaries, especially since many of those decks play very few duds like a shield slam in warrior. But three mana is actually a fair bit. A priest often takes turn one and two off, and doing nothing on turn three is also pretty risky. You can play it later on when you have the mana, but note that the priest likely had this dead card in his hand for that time.

I agree that both are fun and powerful cards, but I don't think priests are too strong and if they were, I don't think these cards are why. And even if it were these cards, I don't think the mana cost is what would make them too good.

Well, I recently did a priest run that won all of its matches easily and only lost three times in a row against onyxia later on. I hope the number of legendaries are the same as the used to be, because man was that depressing to have happen. All of them topdecked it too. Bad beats.

I will have to disagree. The overload is a known factor and you shouldn't fire these spells off too early if you can't guarantee a nice follow-up. That is true, but I reason that you shouldn't be playing it that soon! The power of these spells is that you can resolve it in one turn AND do something worthwhile too! Early on you should rely on rockbiters and maybe a lightning bolt if you can afford it, and just play good creatures to chip away at the onslaught the warlock will try to drop. I have played this match-up plenty of times to know it is favorable for the shaman, assuming the shaman has a deck that tries to get on the board asap.

What I will agree to is that the mage also has the right tools to deal with zoo. Their hero power alone is rather troublesome for warlocks to fight through.

Every metagame will have the dedicated aggro deck, conrtol deck and combo deck. In other card games the rule of thumb is that aggro is favored against control, control has decent matchups against combo, and a combo deck usually outpaces aggrodecks. Right now I think most combo decks are either too slow or too fragile, which is necessary since we don't have the kind of disruption necessary to beat it otherwise. There are still several of them that are viable, like a hybrid of aggro and combo found in the hunter decks.

I think it is a matter of time before people just start playing maindeck hate against zoo decks like a mana wraith in priests, mogu'shan wardens and shadow madness. Similarly, current decks should just get an early game package that deals much more effectively with the warlock. Like shamans with lightning storms, feral spirits, rockbiter weapons and lightning bolts. All of these cards are amazing against a zoo deck, so it's a matter of time before there should be a resurgence of shamans that play a deck that hoses zoo heavily and has a fair game against other aggro decks.

I've also played the mogu'shan warden in my priest decks and he's great. I like him over the shieldmasta, because he dodges more removal with his seven toughness. The 1 damage is actually a proxy for spell power often. And he's great to pop shields with. Plus, he is a premium minion to play besides a northshire cleric. And against rush decks he'll often block more creatures than the shieldmasta.

I'm not a fan of the cabal shadow priest. I've played her very often, but it seems to me that she is too slow. When I play her it is often too late, or not necessary. Rare are the games where she tilts the game in my favor. As I'm playing mogu'shans, if I am to play something at six mana, I'd rather play the temple enforcer. He's better for closing out games, and my deck plays both the mogu'shan and shieldbearers to protect some of my more fragile creatures. Either are great targets for the +3 health. Even a northshire cleric becomes a lot better when it has 6 health.

On this very forum I have my own version to stop rushers. I'm playing the taunts to keep my auchenai alive, and also my demolisher, which are auchenai copies three and four. None of those creatures are things the warlock can let live. The demolisher is the most fragile of the bunch, but he often also requires two creatures to kill him off. He soaks damage, and the 1 damage of him and that of my mogu'shan really adds up. I've also seen the same need for spell power, so I play two azure drakes, which smooth out my draws. The best thing about that deck is that they need to keep killing your creatures, so they're open to a holy nova. This slows them down so heavily, that I've managed to let a warlock draw his entire deck with his hero power yesterday, and he still didn't manage to kill me.

Also, I think the way to go about this is to add meaningful creatures to the board in one or both of the first two turns. I'm a big fan of the mana wraith, because it really messes up the curve of warlocks.

I've made some revisions to the deck.

I dropped the cabal shadow priest because she just comes too late too often for it to matter. I think the new holy fires shore up the strategy against rush decks. As Marcotomb mentioned, I also got rid off the archmage. We've had good times together, but I don't need the body that much either. The second azure drake smooths my draws and powers my spells just as easily. The deck now sports a second blademaster as either something to get killed and drag a minion with him against rush decks, or as a finisher. The defender of argus ended up being too situational. I imagine a creature that is just solid on its own would be a good replacement.

The deck now really plays a game of attrition. Between the demolishers, the warden and the soulpriest I'm dealing a steady stream of damage to my opponent and his creatures. Thanks to my taunts, these creatures often stick around, and I'm playing several other cards to buff their toughness while also either drawing a card or playing a 6/6 fatty. As a feat of strength against rush: I've managed to let a warlock draw his entire deck and being unable to kill me. All the guys I play are things he must deal with or be undone by them. The deck also does well against control decks. I can put the pressure on them with my small but resilient force and his big threats run into a shadow word or a holy fire. The only card I'm really having trouble against occasionally is Ysera, because it has the perfect stats against a priest. I'm down to either running 2 creatures in it and burning a holy fire, or crazed alchemist Ysera and suicide a guy in it. Both require me to be ahead, so if it is played in an empty board I'm in a lot of trouble.

I'm considering finding room to play the thoughtsteal again for this reason. Or a mind control. The violet teacher plan still seems to have some merit, but I've noticed that it's just not worth it with hunters being a thing.

EDIT: Currently I've been testing cutting one demolisher for a mind control, so I have an additional piece of disruption against control decks. It even doubles as a win condition. The lack of one demolisher hurts. The chance of drawing one of the auchenais or a demolisher drops from 67% to 56%, and this is on the play and without mulliganing for one. I think this is still good enough though.

I try to solve the early game inconsistency with some early creatures, and they're split between utility and taunt. My shell usually has a Crazed Alchemist, Mana Wraiths, Northshire clerics, shieldbearers and a pile or removal(2x holy smite, 2x shadow word: pain) for the early turns in addition to the power word:shields which can turn these creatures into quite a big problem. You don't have to play these at all, but I think the idea has merit. Especially right now, you just can't play a deck where you are not contributing to the board in one of the first two turns of the game. I think you're at a disadvantage if you start doing things on three mana, or 2 if you get that precious coin.

My shell has something for every deck out there. The mana wraiths really mess up zoo warlocks and any other rush deck reliant on creatures. The alchemist is there to bring a creature in my removal range, or pop a shieldbearer or enable a trade of some kind. The clerics are in it because with its stats, it can at least fight some of the cheap creatures played in hearthstone, and it's not the kind of guy most decks can leave around. I'll gladly play this creature as a spell that does one or two damage and heals me for three against rush. The only way I can play this shell is by relying heavily on taunt creatures like the shieldbearer and occasionally some other massive taunt like a mogu'shan warden.