So if Trials are to Genn what Quests are to Baku, why not design a card that further supports the classes that would rather have a (1) cost Hero Power rather than an Upgraded one? Evenlock was the easy pick. And what support does Evenlock need? Well, all its super star cards are on the higher end, and without cards like Voidlord , their survivability relies on cards like Sunfury Protector or Vulgar Homunculus . By bargaining with the Burning Legion, you cut the middle man, and you start with Taunt already on your Mountain Giant s and your 6+ Health Twilight Drake s.
Of course, in Warlock more than anything, power comes at a price: Soul Tap now deals 5 damage to your Hero on use (in two separate increments), and the downside lasts even with you play Bloodreaver Gul'dan . And since the Burden acts as a separate source of damage, it won't trigger Siphon Life's Lifedrinker effect, so your Hero Power becomes just straight "Deal 3 damage." Still good, but you loose that late game survivability and certainty of victory.
3
Let’s go through some of the “counters” and “tech cards” for Big Priest, shall we?
1. Hard removal. The only class with enough hard removal to comfortably deal with every single one of Big Priest’s major threats is Rogue, and that’s provided the Rogue specs every Assassinate, Walk the Plank, Vilespine Slayer, and Spellstone available to them, as well as draws them all in time. Other than that, most other classes have mostly soft removal, and good luck trying to find, and draw, enough soft removal to deal with 4 Y’Shaarj in a row.
2. Gravelsnout Knight/Saronite Taskmaster/Hungry Dragon/ any minion that summons another minion for your opponent. Nullified by Eternal Servitude’s Discover mechanic, unless you run as many as possible and hope to god they fill that Discover panel.
3. Polymorph/Devolve/Hex/Potion of Polymorph/ any transform effect. Nullified by Eternal Servitude’s Discover mechanic.
4. Potion of Madness/ Cabal Shadow Priest/ any minion steal effect. This is literally the only viable counter, and even then, they have more big wincon minions in their deck unless you stuff yours with answers. Noticing a pattern here?
Alright, so one class has an effective/viable answer, and it’s the problem class in the first place. A single class in the entire roster can viably deal with Big Priest’s game plan. You don’t consider that a problem?
3
I included the fact that just because a deck is or is not meta, and is or is not the top-winrate deck, does NOT implicate it as healthy/unhealthy to the game state. Jade Druid, as a deck, was only Tier 1 for a very short time, and yet Jade Idol as a card is completely unhealthy for the game and will remain that way. The winrate of Jade Druid in Wild continues to drop, but this does not change the fact that Jade Idol is an effect that thins the design space. This is an argument that I will always hold to, as cards that have polarizing and egregiously strong effects will remain that way, regardless of the deck winrates that include them.
Regardless, your counterpoint that “nobody complains about Even Shaman/Odd Rogue/insert deck here” is flawed, since I happen to have seen PLENTY of discussion surrounding the Even/Odd mechanics as a whole and how they harm competitive diversity. Even Shaman is insanely strong, but no one card in its list (besides Genn and the Even mechanic in general) cramps the design space. This is completely different in regards to cards like Eternal Servitude, or Barnes, or Jade Idol, or Kingsbane, or any other card you could argue has a game-limiting effect.
5
Barnes is a problem, sure, but I think the main problem is Eternal Servitude. The effect is overtuned.
Barnes is completely based on RNG, whereas Eternal Servitude can guarantee a 10-Mana wincon minion for 4 Mana, after you already had to remove it. That’s disgusting levels of value. Eternal Servitude is a cool card, but has way too many problem spots in its current form to stay how it is.
If they want to keep it at 4 mana, they need to change the effect in some way, or they need to up the Mana cost for the effect it has. At least 7 Mana, in my opinion.
3
I must be doing something wrong, because every Jade Druid deck I play can’t hope to outvalue Big Priest if they can get their Eternal Servitude shenanigans rolling. How can Jade Druid hope to beat 3 Lich King/Y’Shaarj/Obsidian Statue/Velen in a row? There aren’t enough solid removal options available to Druid if Big Priest gets what they want off of Barnes, and even if they don’t you need to at least tech in both Naturalize and Mulch to even hope to keep up, and that’s if you even draw them.
15
In Wild normal Play mode, depending on the day, about 1/3 to 1/4 of my games are against some form of Big Priest. It peaked yesterday when about 10/13 of my games were against Big Priest. This is a real glaring issue with Wild right now.
I’d like to clarify that I have nothing against (most) meta decks and the people that play them. However, I hold a definite grudge against people who play the Solitaire archetypes: Mill Rogue, Freezemage, Big Priest, Mecha’Thun Warlock, etc. These decks usually have sufficient counters to keep their winrates and playrates down. Big Priest really does not. It shits on everything: control, aggro, midrange. There is no definable counter to the archetype, in fact, it’s completely down to their Barnes rolls, or their opening hand if they get enough early removal versus aggro. There is no counterplay to it and no viable tech for it.
In my opinion, the main problem is *not* the Resurrect mechanic in itself, or Priest’s ability to stall to drop a shit ton of large minions. Resurrect, as a card and as an effect, used to be for the most part random. Then Eternal Servitude came out. The glaring issue with Eternal Servitude is that you can *pick* what to bring back. So even if you manage to hold on to both of your Hexes as Shaman, for example, and you Hex their biggest targets, if they can stick at least one of their big minions to the board, you’re still skewered by the ability for them to decide what to bring back. The Hexes mean nothing, whereas, Hex was extremely strong against earlier forms of the Res Priest. Eternal Servitude is *too* consistent, and with the rest of the tools offered to the archetype, allows way too much of a suffocating force for Priest to use in an archetype that should be fully about late game. Big Priest no longer needs to stall out as long, and they no longer need to rely on complete RNG.
I know that Blizzard cares little for the sanctity of the Wild format, but this archetype is a serious, serious problem. It’s unhealthy, it’s stale, and it’s just plain unfun to play and to face. Especially when so much of the recent Wild format is *just* Big Priest. I’m extremely sick of it.