Priest and Resurrect

Does anyone else find that Priest's and is increasingly un-fun to play against? Like unless you're also a Priest and have or you're playing equally un-fun Mage secrets, there's no way to deal with it. 

I'm not trying to be salty here, just really tired of running into this. I don't even know how you'd fix it. Nerf Vargoth to 6 mana? Does Blizzard even care enough about Wild mode to do something? 

I'd be with you on the un-fun part, not so much on the "increasingly" part. Given the current meta, Priest barely gets a word in cause they lack the tools to clear the insane early boards many decks generate in Scholomance. Should some nerfs happen to those early boards, I'd still say, as much as I dislike Res Priest, that Raza Priest is a bigger problem. Playing Control against Res Priest is doable, you do need some specific ways to deal with them (ways to transform or steal minions) but they do exist and they can be outcontrolled. Not by every class but by some. Issue is, there's no way you're playing control when Raza Priest exists, because that's a pretty much 100 % loss for you as control.

When the meta is such that control decks can thrive (aggro isn't too fast), that's a meta where Raza Priest can thrive. And Raza Priest will just straight up beat all other control out of the meta as long as it exists. Unnerfing Raza was a mistake IMO. If you're ok with Raza, then you can rejoice in the fact that it's just better than Res Priest, and will tend to crowd it out on ladder. I've spent the better part of this week laddering to legend and saw a grand total of 1 Res Priest. Cubelocks are barely a thing as well. It's all balls to the walls aggro, Quest Mage or Druid OTK, some poor guys trying to make Shaman relevant, and the rest is all Raza Priests.

I literally haven't played against a single big priest since Barnes was nerfed. What game have you been playing where you still see these droolers?

I'd have to ask you the same thing, cause Res Priests have still been very much around all this time. You'd have to play very little hearthstone to literally never see one since that nerf. That's been ages ago, I find that hard to believe.  They're just not as popular as they used to be. They generally tended to hang around certain specific rank ranges along the climb (old rank 5 was infested with them) but with the new ranked system where matchups are determined by your MMR, you can run into them pretty much anywhere. You CAN, you just don't as often as in the past.

I see them occasionally, and i understand the issue, because it's a very polarizing match-up. However, I feel there are far, far worse culprits in wild at the moment, such as Quest Mage that need looking at before Big Priest. If I was going to hit sonething in the deck though, I'd say Shadow Essence, just because how broken that card is in combination with Obsidian Statue, and Vargoth itself.

A potential way to nerf Res Priest, if Blizzard is adamant about leaving the resurrection mechanics intact, would be to simply give more classes more tools to deal with what Res Priest is doing, or better yet, just create some good neutral answers to them. Sure you can play Tinkmaster to counter them, but Tinkmaster is such a bad card in every other circumstance that you'll just never want to run it. Primarily because it picks random targets. If there was a neutral way to just transform a targeted minion, like silence that, instead of removing the text from a card, just turns a card into a blank token with the same stats, the problem would solve itself. If you hit a Vargoth, it becomes just a 2/6 token. When resurrected, all they get is the stats, none of the abilities, since the original Vargoth didn't die, it was transformed. Hell, you could probably make an expensive battlecry minion that does that to the whole board as well, like turns them into golems or statues or something. Suddenly, whenever Res Priest rears its ugly head, you have the tools to bonk it down in any control deck you want to play, you're no longer limited to strictly Shaman, Mage or Priest. Essentially, give us the same tools they gave us to Jade Druid (Skulking Geist) and they can leave the original mechanic and deck intact. The meta will just autoregulate because if ever Res Priest becomes too big of a threat, decks will tech in to counter it so it can never be dominant.

As for just nerfing the entire res mechanic, which has been suggested many times, I don't think they should do that, because there's a lot of collateral damage. Bloodreaver Guldan, Kerenthad, N'Zoth, Hadronox...there are a lot of perfectly fine resurrection cards that would get hit undesirably if, say, you could only resurrect each minion once, or minions retain the stats with which they were summoned (so cards like Twilight's Call or Zerek's Cloning Gallery would actually potentially wreck your N'Zoth resurrects). Those decks don't need to be touched to pay for Res Priest's sins.

I don't know when I encountered the last Res Priest. They are pretty rare, so no problem here. Although I fully understand that this archetype can be very frustrating. The underlying problem with Res in HS is that it was implemented rather poorly. In MTGA you have a refined graveyard mechanic with a lot of tools and interaction possibilities. In HS well you have nothing apart from a couple of cards with Res printed on it. My opinion is that printing res cards without even a crude graveyard mechanic was a mistake. I just hope that they will not print further Res cards without implementing some sort of basic graveyard mechanic (which they will probably not do due to complexity). 

Big Priest is still as unpleasant as ever to play against, but:

1. It's fairly absent from ladder (much less so in Casual I suspect)
2. You can deal with it with a winrate that goes from sufficiently favourable to very favourable (with few exceptions), if you are playing a decently competitive deck and you know what you're doing.

So the situation is not ideal, but acceptable.

And I am a veteran BP hater.

I made a thread about this not too long ago, it got stuck in the spam filter, so no one ever saw it, but i'll just restate it here. It was based around revamping morkimus' anti-rez tech deck(not the skateboards), into the new expansions because activision clearly has no intention of nerfing the rez mechanic. In fact they're printing more cards like Vectus so priest can abuse the mechanic even more, and more buff cards to where you can rez and buff and use the activate the obelisk quest and be generally annoying all around. I've been testing out some changes, haven't found anything solid yet though.

Potential additions by expansion:

Saviors of Uldum:

Reno the Relicologist

Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron(?)

Zephrys the Great(potential highlander possibility in wild. zephrys can get Cabal Shadow Priest early)

Golden Scarab(potentially more Polymorph)

Descent of Dragons(and Galakrond's Awakening):

Malygos, Aspect of Magic(mainly for Malygos's Polymorph, but eight damage from Malygos's Flamestrike wouldn't be bad either or even Malygos's Intellect for draw)

The Amazing Reno POOF

Ashes of Outland:

Evocation(potentially more Polymorph)

Magtheridon(i would never craft this card for this deck, but it does make sense for the matchup.)

Infectious Sporeling(sounds good but probably doesn't work, priest has removal for things like this)

Terrorguard Escapee(one of the new cards for this deck. Mostly an excuse as to why they haven't nerfed the rez mechanic, but it could work nicely)

Scholomance Academy:

Devolving Missiles(potentially not good enough, but i'll try it out.)

[Hearthstone Card (Lorekeeper polkelt) Not Found](basically freeze mage, play polkelt topdeck blizzard freeze them out for an OTK, Just keep telling yourself the whole time, that running Mindrender Illucia in a rez deck is bad deck design and don't be too upset when they play it anyway.)

Sphere of Sapience(tutor for polymorph effects)

I understand the frustrations with Res Priest. Resurrection overall is a fun mechanic and very Priestly. However with the mana cheating that exists in he game results in high cost minions coming out very early. This isn't a bad thing overall with most of the tools we have. Resurrect, the card specifically, causes an issue here. Giving a cheap way to bring back that cheated out minion multiple times, turn after turn is the disheartening part. Killing one minion for 4 turns and still loosing to it (or at this point multiple incarnations) sucks.

The tools we are given vary and come with issues. Either too slow (The Amazing Reno), too random (Devolve) or too dangerous (Gravelsnout Knight) as summoning stuff for an aggressive opponent just means you die quicker.  I like all the tools and they can be used in fun ways. 

As others have said there are still issues that should be fixed:

#1 is getting a graveyard into the game. Yes it is a lot of work both to develop and to teach players. However with all the Res spells in the game (not just priest) this would be a worthwhile investment for the game.

#2 Big minions getting resummoned at full stats/effects EARLY.  Resurrect being so cheap it needs to have limitations. Example, minions come back as 1/1 versions or come back silenced (which can be useful too) or it can only summon 3 cost or lower minions.

#3  Archmage Vargoth shouldn't cast spells he doesn't see. I like cards like this. It can be interesting and makes you play/build around his ability. However him casting spells he was not aware of (dead, in hand, deck) is too much. Especially when you get multiple going it becomes annoying to shut down. If it was some big set up to get him to cast a spell then fine. But just playing him, hoping he dies and casting 18 mana worth of stuff is overboard. 

Overall I think Resurrection effects are great and work everywhere else at mid-late effects (Kangor's Endless Army, [Hearthstone Card (Booodreaver Gul'dan) Not Found]). The early effects and multiplying big minions in Priest need to be toned down as the tools aren't accurate enough to keep them in check. 

 Terrorguard Escapee has been great in warlock. Easy to deal with small minions he summons and the 3/7 body isn't anything to ignore. Been using him alot in Kenrethad and Galakrond Warlock decks. 

I don’t know what you’re talking about with Vectus being good for Rez Priest, the 1/1 tokens would just be vanilla minions after they’re rezzed

I agree 100%.