Seriously, I have been up and down priest cards a number of times. Is there anything out there for priest beyond a shadow priest?

I mean, priest have some good cards available to them. But not enough that is controling or fast enough to actually base a win condition on. Tell me if I missed anything.

Dispell magic- A super cheap burn away (I just like that this exist)

The heals- All undercost for huge amounts of gain.

Psychic Scream- Expensive, but it doesn't target, and it bounces.

Resurrection- Asking for a combo... somewhere

Brainwash- I can't tell if this card actually sucks, but having opened 6 of them may have brainwashed me to think otherwise. (*Cry*)

Inner Fire- Nice bubble type effect, useful if the board is being kept low


But even if you brought these cards together, you still don't have a killer priest, or do you? Does anyone out there have any priest ideas that aren't just shadow damage? I would love to know any tricks of the priestly trade that are wandering around (someone has to be playing these things right?)

i don't think they have anything beyond shadow priest/hand destruction in single player. in multi they can stand around and heal the tanks, i guess.

I'd like to point out that the whole game isnt played with just your class abilities. Power word fort + any ally that does more damage with damage on them is great. healing Zy'lah while she wipes the board never hurts. brainwash and mindcontrol are loads of fun.

I can understand using allies that the priest can protect, but how much of a deck can allies really run?

Can priest run themselves on an ally heavy engine of some sort?

I was thinking about using a constructed form of a draft deck I made off of a priest recently. The concept was to have a fairly high number of strong mid-range guys, ideally the trolls that have ATK bumps based on the damage on them, and use Power Word: Fortitude and some other healing and damage prevention tricks to keep them around and swinging while the Priest's self healing keeps most decks from being able to successfully race them down. Blood Guard Mal'wani, Ya'mon, and Warcaller Zin'bawa all seem to get along well for the goal of Fortitude beats.

A Renew on the hero or a Lightwell can help to keep an opponent from finishing you before the allies can do their job, and they could also help enable Clarity of Thought, which is cheap and renewable card advantage if you can slow up the opponent sufficiently. I wonder if this will be effective enough, though... a sufficiently fast or aggressive deck can throw this plan off and make CoT much less useful.

When looking at the Horde side of things I definitly had the same thought.

Especially with Warcaller Zin'bawa, he is not only powerful, but he has protector on top of it all. But the problem is of course that while priest have the highest healing power, and have the most different ways to heal a ally, I don't know if that will mean anything in the long run if they get ran over.

The funniest thing of course being that if you make an all troll deck, trolls are responsible for a lot of the low-end protectors on the horde side of things. It is definitly something worth tweaking with.

Well, it was a draft deck, admittedly, so it doesn't say a ton, but I found that a Greater Heal or two can do wonders for undoing someone's work. I was thinking about going all troll, too. Part of it would be thematic, but the surprisingly efficient self-healers would work as solid walls to keep the priest safe from unrecoverable damage. Perhaps fitting in some CiP allies as well or instead to help control the opponent's powers and running a bit of the more efficient removal to which Priests have access would make it a solid overall deck. It's hard to figure how much one should commit to abusing the Warcaller vs. making the deck more generally efficient.

I was looking towards making a Boris Brightbeard deck myself. The Priest has lots of direct damage abilities that can't be prevented. His healing is also quite insane with Spiritual Healing. I was looking towards getting some Sapphiron Drape's for him. It can increase his damage output, heal's, soke a point, and it can be pumped by Stoneform for the Dwarves as a cleanse and defense boost.

I'm thinking with all the direct damage dealing abilities you can effectively remove the threats while getting through a Paly's or Warrior's armor. Even by playing the Shadow abilities like Shadow Word Death you can still dish out the pain your opponents allies and save your non-reduceable damage to the heroes. Mana Burn seems like its worth trying out. With Power Word Fortitude you should also be able to live through a Heroic Strike or a Mortal Strike. Greater Heal doesn't seem too bad either.

Thoughts?

While it is true that priest have direct damage abilities, they tend to have a very equal cost to damage rate. Which is, not good.

I guess maybe not so much 'not good' as 'less good'. It would make you like a balance druid really, using a mix of burn and heals.

I guess much can be said for having a druid with stone form though.

But to punch through a warrior's armor consistently may be a bit difficult. Even with unpreventable damage, warrior's have a nice chunk of HP.

It may be worth a try, but it still screams "slow druid" to me.

Well, to help punch through a Warriors armor you could use the Crimson Felt Hat. You can exhaust an equipment whenever you play an ability. I guess you could try stalling out to Magni or Ivus. You could defintely keep them alive with the healing.

It kind of is a slow balance druid, but what else can you do that we haven't said yet for the holy priest? Priests can't wield weapons so all you can hope for is to stall or deal direct damage. I'll have to test and see how long I can stall for to get Ivus.

I wouldn't hate on the idea of a 'slow balance druid' at all, I was just playing devil's advocate to keep conversation going. Who knows what other ideas may be lingering around out there.

Though I really wonder what more priest are supposed to be capable of. Shadow priest seems to be the only real option, and even that is kind of meh. That is sad considering only 3-4 cards truly support shadow priest strategy. With the discipline cards being available to intermingle.

So, i'm just looking out there to see if there is something different. I especially want to try to flesh out the idea Canamrock was talking about, with the big-butted trolls deck. We'll see what happens (have way too much to do.)

Devils Advocate is fine, discussion is best.

My Omedus deck seems to work out pretty well. I just play pretty much every card that makes your opponent discard cards and lock them out of playing anything for 2-3 turns, that usually gives me the advantage on them and then you can finish with Varick Proudhoofs and beefy 4's.

Regarding my idea, I've got a deck list I put together a while ago and tested briefly against an admittedly less-than-optimal solo rogue deck. The idea was to grab the health-efficient allies I could find and use them along with Ja'nah's healing and protection to build up a decently strong offense while using their protector abilities and her own healing to keep an opponent from being able to race successfully.

Hero: [card="TDP-015"]Mojo Mender Ja'nah[/card]

Abilities (21):
[card="TDP-069"]Convalescence[/card] x3
[card="HOA-077"]Dispel Magic[/card] x4
[card="TDP-070"]Greater Heal[/card] x2
[card="TDP-073"]Lightwell[/card] x3
[card="HOA-083"]Power Word: Fortitude[/card] x3
[card="TDP-076"]Power Word: Shield[/card] x4
[card="HOA-085"]Psychic Scream[/card] x2

Allies (17):
[card="HOA-230"]Blood Guard Mal'wani[/card] x4
[card="HOA-249"]Kulan Earthguard[/card] x3
[card="TDP-240"]Warcaller Zin'bawa[/card] x4
[card="HOA-270"]Wazulli Wildmender[/card] x3
[card="HOA-273"]Ya'mon[/card]x3

Equipment (3):
[card="ONY-020"]Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire[/card] x1
[card="HOA-303"]Whitemane's Chapeau[/card] x2

Quests (17):
[card="HOA-349"]Blueleaf Tubers[/card] x2
[card="HOA-350"]Chasing A-Me 01[/card] x3
[card="TDP-302"]Hidden Enemies[/card] x4
[card="HOA-355"]Kibler's Exotic Pets[/card] x4
[card="HOA-361"]Zapped Giants[/card] x4

The main goal of the deck is to set up in the early turns, using the allies to set up a light flow of damage, and ideally getting a bit of non-lethal damage on them. One of the biggest weaknesses I've noticed so far is that it's easier to leave open a single RP than 2, and so [card="HOA-078"]Flash Heal[/card] or something else to help protect allies would be great. I'm tempted to run Resurrection if there's not a lot of graveyard hate, or something else to be more useful in general than the Psychic Screams, which are decent sideboard cards, but dead against solo decks.

Looks like a pretty solid base. I'm surprised no Spiritual Healing for the insta-heal it provides. Also, I'm a fan of non-preventive damage abilities the priest has.

I personally don't like Lightwells, maybe give me an instance that its good, but I just don't see the light*rimshot* on that card as you want your protectors to be ready to protect. The healing abilities coupled with (again) Spiritual Healing should allow you to keep your wall up.

I think those could be better than Psychic Scream, where Scream is a great sideboard card. Prayer of Healing could be good as well.


Rebuttle?

The Lightwell is mainly there as a 'free' version of The Hammer of Grace. While not amazing by itself, it's essentially equivalent in this deck to running several copies of Renew, and it can also happen to work well with the non-Protectors and Kulan in particular when keeping them alive is more important than attacking or blocking in a given turn. Spiritual Healing would be interesting... I thought of it, but the main problem is that the build would really need to be changed to make it worthwhile, rolling with a much Holy-heavier build. Right now, I can always get the -2 damage from Ja'nah via the Lightwell unless an opponent interferes, but it'd be a lot harder, and resource intensive, to get close to that with the SH.

The Psychic Scream is not impressive, as I'd mentioned. Flash Heal would greatly help with protecting the allies and Resurrection would be a cheaper alternative to using the Chasing replay tactic. I'm very tempted to try using Clarity of Thought, though... my gut tells me it's something of a win more card, but I seem to be pretty able to reheal pretty successfully, though with my hand being pretty empty in the process. Prayer of Healing and the holy burn I've considered, too. The PoH is an interesting ability, and very efficient for healing. The main problem here is that I don't necessarily want to remove damage from all the allies, and while one could point to Wazulli, there's a difference between the slow patch and an all-at-once bubbling. If I wasn't trying to abuse the trolls, I'd definitely run a few copies. And on the burn, if I was going for a SH-abusing build (like when they eventually make the BE Holy Priest), I'd be much more tempted to run them. In this deck, though, I generally care more about keeping my allies alive than removing an opponent's. I'd certainly consider keeping a few of each in the SB for tournaments.