Hearthstone
The Hero Power of Galakrond Priest is terrible
I remember people being horrified when Galakrond, the Unspeakable was revealed because its hero power generates infinite value. However, as everyone is already aware off, Priest is in a terrible spot. The meta is highly focused on tempo and aggression and there's a certain very unhealthy deck out there that can kill you pretty quickly with good draws. Decks that attempt to drag the game to fatigue are just not viable.
But that's not the main issue. The real problem is Galakrond's Hero Power (Galakrond's Wit). It just adds random minions to your hand. What sucks about it is the high inconsistency. While certain minions can be good in any given situation (Mindflayer Kaahrj, for example, is pretty flexible), most of them are extremely situational or require the deck to be built around them to be worth anything (looking at you Test Subject). This means you can get some good stuff here and there, but most of the time you will be filling your hand with junk. This makes the invoke cards pretty terrible as they are meant to be low power level on their own but become strengthened by the hero power value. But that's not the case for Galakrond Priest. You are forced to add weak cards to your deck and the payoff may not even be worth anything.
What is even worse about this is that if the hero power was "Discover a Priest Minion" it probably would be just too good. It would pretty much always generate something worthwhile and give a ton of flexibility in your decision making. There's no balance here. With Discover it would be way too good. With no discover, it just sucks. Unfortunately, i don't see how this can become better. Priest got the worst Galakrond, the worst invoke effect and even its invoke payoff card is in a bad position (despite having one of the most broken battlecries out there).
So i wanted to ask you people: what would you do to make Priest's Galakrond better? What hero power would suit it most without breaking the game? Would you change something about the invoke cards?
I believe they could have given him something like: "Lifesteal: Deal 2 damage to a minion". That way it would provide board control and sustain without moving it away from a more control oriented playstyle.
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I remember people being horrified when Galakrond, the Unspeakable was revealed because its hero power generates infinite value. However, as everyone is already aware off, Priest is in a terrible spot. The meta is highly focused on tempo and aggression and there's a certain very unhealthy deck out there that can kill you pretty quickly with good draws. Decks that attempt to drag the game to fatigue are just not viable.
But that's not the main issue. The real problem is Galakrond's Hero Power (Galakrond's Wit). It just adds random minions to your hand. What sucks about it is the high inconsistency. While certain minions can be good in any given situation (Mindflayer Kaahrj, for example, is pretty flexible), most of them are extremely situational or require the deck to be built around them to be worth anything (looking at you Test Subject). This means you can get some good stuff here and there, but most of the time you will be filling your hand with junk. This makes the invoke cards pretty terrible as they are meant to be low power level on their own but become strengthened by the hero power value. But that's not the case for Galakrond Priest. You are forced to add weak cards to your deck and the payoff may not even be worth anything.
What is even worse about this is that if the hero power was "Discover a Priest Minion" it probably would be just too good. It would pretty much always generate something worthwhile and give a ton of flexibility in your decision making. There's no balance here. With Discover it would be way too good. With no discover, it just sucks. Unfortunately, i don't see how this can become better. Priest got the worst Galakrond, the worst invoke effect and even its invoke payoff card is in a bad position (despite having one of the most broken battlecries out there).
So i wanted to ask you people: what would you do to make Priest's Galakrond better? What hero power would suit it most without breaking the game? Would you change something about the invoke cards?
I believe they could have given him something like: "Lifesteal: Deal 2 damage to a minion". That way it would provide board control and sustain without moving it away from a more control oriented playstyle.
"True mastery takes dedication."
Yeah, Priest-Minions rn just suck, but I think if they would have better Invokes it would at least compensate for the Tempo-loss. Disciple of Galakrond is pretty good but that's about it for good Priest-Invokes. Shield of Galakrond and Time Rip are mediocre at best and Devoted Maniac is just terribly bad in Control-Priest.
I think instead of attaching Invoke to a below average Removal-Spell, they should have gone with HEALING. You know, the Thing that Priest is supposed to be good at.
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Galakrond's hero power can't be targeted since Invoke can't be a targeted effect (otherwise it gets weird with Time Rip).
A man is lying on the street, some punks chopped off his head
I'm the only one who stops to see if he's dead.
Hmm. Turns out he's dead.
Yeah, i suppose. Then i really don't have many ideas. It just sucks that they went something as bad as "Add random stuff to your hand"
"True mastery takes dedication."
Restore 2 health to all friendly characters
I think this would have fit the Priest class identity better and have enabled some priest tempo deck.
What about simply changing it to "Add a random Priest minion to your hand. Give it +2 Attack". This would make some of the worse outcomes a lot better, Test Subject, for example, becomes a 2/2. If +2 Attack seems like too much +1 Attack could be fine, but I think that buffing the random minion could make it much better and more consistently good
It certainly makes things slightly better, but it doesn't solve the inconsistency issue. The problem with random minions is not just synergy with the deck. Timing matters as well. You don't want to be spending 2 mana in the late game to get 1 drops even if they come with a buff. A 1 mana 2/2 doesn't provide any real value at that point in the game. Some 1 drops you don't want at all. Northshire Cleric's card drawing ability becomes troublesome against classes that can heal because they can force you into fatigue by healing your stuff. Your suggestion isn't bad, but the randomness of the hero power is too much of an issue.
"True mastery takes dedication."
Blizzard won't change it for sure but I can think about many solutios: change it to "add a random dragon to your hand" that way you can easily use dragon synergies and get better cards.. You lose tempo anyway so the payoff better be.. Better.
Discover a minion wouldn't be too broken I think.. It's currently beyond terrible so..
Another option would be a card from opponen't deck at least it would be a good card..
Priest's invoke was probably balanced with Dr. Boom in mind, not to mention the fact that the class has Princess Talanji. That said, it's the least scary Galakrond invoke by a wide margin because it rarely has any impact on early/midgame tempo, which is really when most Galakrond decks want a leg up from their invokes.
I like the idea of stealing cards from the opponent's (starting) deck, but I feel it'd probably still be way too gimmicky to be playable. Generating dragons instead of priest minions would also be a slight improvement, but again too slow. The only way I see the HP be playable at the moment is if it discounts the minions it generates by 1-2 mana so the invokes actually generate some tempo, not just value. In all probability that'd still mean the discounted card comes down a turn later, but at least it'd be overperforming compared to what you paid for it.
because we know how fun it is when an infinite value generator is consistent (See Deathstalker Rexxar and Boom, Mad Genius)
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
The problem is not with Galakrond's hero power, its just that priest's invoke cards aren't up to snuff against aggro and there's not many ways priest can heal a ton right now. The tempo loss from playing invoke cards currently for priest is similar to rogue, except rogue has more tempo cards in its arsenal so it plays much better than priest.
Also, its meta dependent. We are currently facing a surge of face hunters now and it would probably take a while before warrior or druid comes back into force to balance it out and maybe that's where priest can shine a little brighter.
There's probably not many ways you can change the hero power so priest becomes too weak or too OP. By design priest cards are very situational, so unless this is drastically changed I just can't see team5 doing anything about it.
Well there is a mini expansion next month (35 new card) maybe there will be another talanji like card that can make use oof random priest cards.. Or maybe just a win condition..
honestly I'd prefer some non-NOrthshire Draw engine, because right now the real problem is that I can't run all the cool stuff that Fate Weaver enables because I need to make space for a package that actually gets me there.
On the other hand that would enable some degenerate OTKs...so I don't think it'S really an option (You can currently do some pretty crazy stuff with Grave Rune and Wretched Reclaimer.
Hopefully the mini expansions gives them something to do with that doesn't result in a brainded cycle deck once again.
I tried having fun once.
It was awful.
How about "give your minions in play and in hand +2 health"
I’d say one of the bigger problems Priest has is the fact that so many of their healing cards can’t match up to what other classes have in terms of healing/armor. If you want to play a control deck you’d often have better survivability just by choosing another class.
I’d argue that it’s Auchenai that’s causing a lot of Priest’s problems these days, since it means Priest’s healing cards are always being made with that in mind. If Auchenai didn’t exist, then Priest probably would’ve gotten Forbidden Healing and a bunch of other nice healing cards. Priest’s thing is supposed to be healing, but you almost never really see that
Galakrond not helping the class just shows another case of Priest having problems rooted deeply into the class itself.
Who needs consistency when you could have fun?
Sadly the problem relies on the class. Priest is the hardest class to balance. Even the devs have admitted to it in the past. Its either op as shit or dumpster tier
I see where you're coming from WRT Auchenai being a constant design constraint, but regarding self-heals we've already seen numerous cards that can only heal friendly characters in priest specifically so they could print bigger heals that can't be used to kill an enemy with Auchenai. CF: Greater Healing Potion, Radiance & Divine Hymn. Priest can heal itself for a ton if it wants, but a lot of the newer healing cards don't play nice with the Soulpriest, which leads to the question why she's even in classic.
To be clear, I can definitely see the argument for HOFing Auchenai, but it's a bit more complicated than that they can't print powerful healing effects.
Unfortunately, as long as Auchenai exists in its current state, there's no way to prevent it from restricting the design of new targeted healing cards. Even a HoF doesn't do much because they can't ignore balance in wild. Priest is a real mess of a class. They need to rework its basic and classic set to prevent stuff like this from happening (and to stop the need for printing insane cards for the class every expansion).
"True mastery takes dedication."
Just make the healing only affect your own minions and yourself. We already had that card in Greater Healing Potion in the past and that saw play in the raza priest of old precisely for the same reason why priest is struggling now.
Theres no need for a nerf or HoF to Auchenai Soulpriest, so long as the heal effects cant affect the opponent's face. Besides, its the last vestige of direct damage for priest and with the classic cards for priest being as shit as it is, I don't think this will do any good to the class as a whole.
The HP is in a really tricky spot, but one way to make it better is to introduce impactful Priest minions in the next year of expansions, ones that are not deck build-dependent like Test Subject and not oppresive like Raza the Chained, but are flexible like Mindflayer Kaahrj and even Chameleos. But it also depends on the meta; Zerek, Master Cloner was only played for a little bit with the introduction of Clone Priest on Boomsday, and is now seeing experimentation again with the addition of Wretched Reclaimer and Grave Rune.
Well it's over
Auchenai Phantasm and Embrace the Shadow exist in wild for a more combo-able version of the auchenai-effect. I don't think the kind of play those cards reinforce (degenerate OTKs with Velen, mainly) is necessarily a concern for wild, but it's definitely something that affects the power of newly printed healing cards in priest, especially spells. Not having an evergreen Auchenai card would allow the devs to print stronger heals that could go face in wild, whereas the current schema basically forces the devs to print cards that are hard-written to not work with auchenai and/or be weak, forever.
As for the commenter that said that HOTing Auchenai would leave the class even more dead in the water, yes, but I think most people arguing for HOF want to see that happen in the context of a full overhaul of the evergreen priest cards, so the expectation is that priests would get something back in return for losing the shadow priest stuff.
I knew it since release of this card. And I hoped that it would be something like "minions from Opponents deck" and not just "Priest minions". So it could be a meme/fun Steal Priest; this would be more enjoyable than what we have now.
What if the Hero Power was "Add a random Priest minion that costs 3 or more to your hand. It costs 1 less". That way it would reduce a lot of the low-rolls and make it consistently give you something for the late-game. The cost floor could also be moved to something like 5 if that seems like it would work better.
It's less about armo(u)r/healing but about direct face damage that priest can't compensate.
Problem isn't that either, it is bad Classic set of Priest. What Invoke gives me is always Lightwell while rogue's get even better 1-cost cards and warlocks summons 2 demons and shamans got rush minions and warriors got +3 damage..
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At that point why does Auchenai even exist if they’re pretty much only ever gonna print healing that doesn’t work with it? Auchenai was okay for the game back when there weren’t many cards, but these days it’s just a liability.
I feel like this next year it might just be better to rework all the class’s classic and basic sets, either by doing a rotating base set for each class, or changing how a lot of the class cards work, because the problem that the current base set is causing is only going to get worse. A lot of the time we’ll see the same classes having the same problems, because those are the problems that the base set forces on them. If they make it so that they don’t need to keep reprinting the same workarounds they always do then that’d give Wild a chance to get cards that aren’t just redundant
We’ve seen them doing a lot of things differently this past year, adding a lot of stuff people have been asking for, so why not this?
Who needs consistency when you could have fun?
Yeah, but the Auchenai problem also extends to the 2 Mana 3/2 from Rastakhan's Rumble and the 2 Mana Auchenai Spell from TGT. I do agree though that classic and basic need to be reworked. Even something as simple as buffing Holy Nova to cost 6 Mana and "Deal 3 Damage to all Enemies and restore 3 Health to all friendly characters" could solve the problem of having to give Priest good board clears every year. Mage has Flamestrike in classic, which allows them to not print any more Boardclears for them (aside from volcanic potion), whereas Priest gets around one every year
I just found out yesterday that you can't generate galakround invokers by any means..which is great since I don't really want to play around a 3rd or 4th dragon's pack or scion of ruin but in the priest case it makes the hero power just pure garbage.
maybe: "Add a random healing card to your hand."
"You can't lose the game if they can't kill you".
Coming from a former Priest main (I'm refusing to touch the class since SoU), just healing is lame, unless you attach something cool to it (see Light of the Naaru for example).
Healing by itself is quite useless, since you can't stack it up unlike Armor (unless you print a minion with an effect like "excess healing to your face counts like Armor", but I don't know) and, since right now you can't make proactive moves, you're just hoping that your opponent will end up his gas and concede.
Which is fair, give that this is the goal of any Control deck, but man it is a really miserable way to achieve it.
Spice Lord and self-proclaimed Meme Master.
I don't think it's even up for debate, bad cards/failed archtypes rarely get any attention/buffs I doubt they will buff it, so far buffs have been really rare.. we might get an invoke card in the adventure or even another double invoke abuser, but I think the invoke effect is so underwhelming and sometimes even a liability. So I think nothing can save the priest galakround.. and it's doomed to fail.. unless you get such a HUGE tempo swing from another abuser like Fate Weaver with a lot more impact than any other double invoke card, not neccessarly a tempo impact can be a a big value one!
In short the only hope for this archtype is the 35 card mini expansion and the impact need to be a specific support but with a HUGE impact.. and I hope not.. cause we have shaman,warrior,rogue and warlock who do really well with galakround.
There are some workable options:
1. Add a random Priest spell to your hand
2. Add a random Priest card to your hand
2. Discover a Priest minion (only choose from two)
3. Add a random 3+ mana Priest minion to your hand
4. Add a random Priest minion to your hand. Reduce its cost by 1.
5. Add a random card from your opponent's deck to your hand (maybe not great but still better and supports Thief Priest)
6. Add a random Priest deathrattle minion to your hand
7. Add a random deathrattle minion to your hand
Been shadowing the discussion for a while, and the conclusion I've drawn is that there's no point to changing the Galakrond Invoke/HP. You'd just be poking at a symptom.
The underlying disease, to continue the metaphor, is the lack of direction and theme underlying the Priest class, which has been widely acknowledged by both community and developers. Shadow is hard to really sell in card form - is it targeted removal, card theft, mind control, direct damage? - and healing simply doesn't work as a unifying class identity. Hypothetically healing could work, if it were reworked to be more effective on minions and (more importantly) Inner Fire were HoF'd so as to remove potential abuse cases (so as to promote the board-centric conservative gameplan which looked to be the original design philosophy) but it'd be awkward and anachronistic in today's rush-heavy, board-interactive Hearthstone.
Thus, the problem. With no idea where to take the class, how can you pick an effective hero power? If the class's cards are schizophrenic, how can any hero power support them properly without simply ignoring most of them? In the end, the solution chosen was a shrug and hand-wave - the reason the current HP is underwhelming is that it doesn't actually aim to synergise with anything. It plays the middle ground - if your cards are schizophrenic, generate a lot of them and sooner or later you'll get some cards that work together, right?
The further problem is that this issue goes all the way to the root of the class. It's not something you can actually fix with expansion cards - even if you did manage to create a new class identity (which seems unlikely) it's still a temporary fix until the cards rotate. I don't particularly like the idea, but I'm forced to agree with others on this board and conclude that the only thing that will really fix Priest is a complete redesign from the ground up.
I see you when you're sleeping; I'm gone before you wake
I'm not as good as turn 4 Barnes; But I'm at least a Twilight Drake
Or just "Add a minion from your opponents deck to your hand" for Steal Priest to be viable.
Simple as it is, the Hero Power of Galakrond, the Unspeakable is meant as a raw value generator for lategame, not as a Control tool. It's a bias to assume that anything Priest must be Control-oriented.
And Hagatha the Witch was viable at some point (including Standard Even Shaman), so I don't see why Priest Galakrond shoulnd't be.
Obviously, with Galakrond package playing a sort of greedy role, you want to optimize the rest of the deck around something else, be it Midrange, Control (Highlander?) or even Combo, which is far from impossible tbh.
Priest Galakrond Invoke is obviously not meant as a main wincondition, or a deck backbone, as it is for Shaman, Warrior and Warlock. Instead, similarly to Rogue, it plays the role of additional steam. A secondary package, if you like, where the real perks are embodied by Fate Weaver, Kronx Dragonhoof, and possibly Princess Talanji. But these perks don't win you the games on their own, not often at least, only against slower decks. The rest of the deck wins against Aggro, if you correctly build it.
Long story short, if you build and REFINE a Control/Highlander Priest deck where you slap in the Galakrond package, you should get a viable meta deck. Maybe not the best one out there, but fair enough.
If you don't like it, you can simply play some different Priest decks without Galakrond.