Ideas for new priest cards

[Thraun 1]

People probably make these posts all the time but with the new expansion coming out i was thinking about the types of cards i'd like to see added to priest. So far there hasn't been too much that i'm excited about from the priest point of view so i came up with a couple of ideas for new cards i thought i'd share.

 

First, i'll go into what i see as the priest's weaknessess as a class. If i had to itemise these they would be something like:

 

1) Too reliant on drawing the right combos at the right time (particularly cleric+circle for draw or auchenai+circle for board clear)

2) When you lose the board at the start, hard to come back into the game (which is related to point 1)

3) Lack of a specific win condition. Standard control priest mostly wins games by dominating the board and chipping opponents health down until he explodes.

4) Lack of pro-active threats that can be played without conditions

 

So my first card suggestion focussed on point 2 (and 1 a little bit). The card would be as follows:

 

4 mana, 3/5 (attack/health), battlecry: gain 3 health - this effect expires at the start of your turn.

 

The health buff would work like other temporary health buffs (stormwind champion) - the minion would lose the 3 bonus health at the start of your turn but not die if your opponent left it at 3 or less (would be reduced to 1 at minimum). The idea of this is that if you are behind it gives you a chance to get on the board, or at least is quite costly for your opponent to remove, but is not an overly strong minion in itself. This gives you the opportunity to trade with it the following turn and use your hero power or holy nova (for example) to get back into the game.

 

My second card suggestion is a little more unusual. As a previous world of warcraft player i'm suprised Blizzard hasn't included any damage-over-time (dot) effects. The closest is corruption but because this is minion based the delayed effect is not very useful. So my priest equivalent would be:

 

Devouring Plague: 5 mana, at the end of your turn deal 3 damage to the enemy hero, expires after 3 turns

 

This card would be primarily to provide an alternative win condition for priest (point 3) or to augment some existing ones. It could benefit from spell power effects on the board at the time it deals damage. So you could play this on one turn, then the following turn play Prophet Velen, or Malygos so that the following damage tick does 6, or 8 damage respectively. So without using Thaurrisan you could do Devouring Plague, then Velen+Mind Blast for a total of 3+10+6 damage (19) over two turns. That's pretty strong but other classes can also do 20+ dmg in one turn (as can priest currently with other combos). Effects wouldn't stack so i would say if you cast a second one it would just refresh the duration so that it would tick three more times. Although if Blizzard only wanted you to have one in the deck they could make it a legendary spell

 

I like the idea because it isn't instant, so your opponent may have an opportunity to respond to it (by healing) whereas many of todays damage combos just one shot you (even from max health).

 

So would be interested to see if anyone had comments about these ideas. They might need some number tweaking or just be plain bad/imbalanced but let me know what you think and i won't be offended.

 

Cheers

 

 

 

 

[positiv2 953]

Hi,

lightbomb, Auchenai+Circle and a Holy Nova are good boardclears that can help you catch up on the board. Priests can also gain control of the enemy minions making it easier for you to clear the board.

 

Slowly taking away opponent's health is the win condition of most control decks such as ramp druid. However, Priest has combos (Velen/Malygos + spells), giving you more options to kill the opponent off.

 

The minion seems OK, not too powerful, but still powerful enough. The problem is that the opponent wont attack it, making it just a 3/5 for 4 mana. The only way to make it worth a card slot is combo with Defender/Sunfury, making it another combo for priest.

 

The spell is quite bad. It doesnt help you get a better board state and again, the Malygos/Velen part is another combo. Also, Blizzard said they dont plan on making any legendary spells since they dont represent any character.

 

However, I still agree with you that priests seem weak in the "pro game". They could definitely use some powerful cards.

Edited August 10, 2015 by positiv2

[Thraun 1]

Hi, thanks for replying.

 

You make some good points. I realise priest has some of the best board clears in the game. But i have two problems with Auchenai+circle, 1) it is a combo that you need to draw early (sometimes by turn 4) which makes it quite unreliable and 2) it leaves you with almost nothing (usually just a 3/1 auchenai and often the opponent has more from deathrattles). So while it is 'good', it isn't 'unfairly good' like some things other classes can do.

 

Holy nova i feel is quite weak if you don't have anything on the board. It's just an expensive consecration (healing face not usually significant). So it was kind of the point that the opponent would ignore my 4 drop 3/5 so you have some options next turn, either with trade + holy nova, or buffing with shield, velen's etc. Just something to stop you having dead buff cards in your hand and to let you use your hero power. And it would also be an 'ok' minion by itself. It's probably conservative stat-wise but it's the idea i was more interested in.

 

The spell may be bad, and it is a combo, but i feel late game combos are much easier to pull off because you may have drawn through half your deck by the time you're ready to play it. After all, it's a finisher combo, not one you would play while fighting for the board. And it's true many class/builds just beat the opponent to death, i was just looking for some alternatives that might be interesting or a bit different.

 

Thanks for your input. Fingers crossed for some neat priest cards which can give the class a little boost.

 

Thraun