Out of the nine classes in Hearthstone, Priest seems to get the most hate. Maybe it’s because decks like Undertaker Priest or Raza Priest were so dominant that it got old quick. Maybe it’s because out of the good decks it has, they have very little counterplay. Or maybe it’s because players hate Anduin. Whatever the reason for hating the class may be, there’s no debate that the current Combo Priest deck is one of the best decks in the game. Nearly everyone seems to be calling for a nerf so let’s start with that!
Nerfs
Extra Arms was recently nerfed from 2 mana to 3 mana. At the time, the nerf seemed odd since Mage, Hunter, and Warrior also had extremely powerful decks. Sure, Extra Arms was oppressive when played on curve, but it wasn’t a vital piece to the deck. With Mage out of the way and Dr. Boom, Mad Genius nerfed to 9, Combo Priest didn’t have too many bad matchups left and rose to the top despite the Extra Arms nerf. The question now is, does the deck need another nerf?
Who needs arms when your puzzle has already been solved?
There’s a good argument for nerfing Combo Priest as it is one of the best decks right now. This past week of Grandmasters saw Combo Priest in nearly every lineup with only one player opting not to bring the deck. Tournament-wise, Combo Priest is popular as it doesn’t lose to the other tournament decks like Quest Druid, Quest Shaman, and even Control Warrior. The only bad matchup for the deck is the mirror which can often boil down to whoever can stick a Northshire Cleric first. On ladder, Combo Priest may suffer a bit more due to Murloc decks running around, but even with those counters, Combo Priest is a solid Tier 1 deck.
Having good decks in the meta isn’t a bad thing, but it’s important that those decks have a viable counter and right now, Combo Priest doesn’t have any good, consistent counter decks. So, if Blizzard were to nerf Priest, which card(s) should get hit?
Our Nerf Candidates
Northshire Cleric
Northshire Cleric is by far the most popular card when it comes to discussing nerfs and it’s no surprise. When played alongside Circle of Healing and Wild Pyromancer, Northshire Cleric allows you to draw up to a full hand most of the time. This allows combo style decks to find the payoff cards quicker and can create frustrating situations for the opponent. Since Combo Priest wins by having a minion sticking on the board, one of the ways to win against it is to run the Priest out of resources. However, when the deck runs such a cheap, powerful draw engine, that strategy isn’t always viable.
A full hand of fun with Northshire Cleric!
If Northshire Cleric is nerfed to 2 mana will that be enough? It would certainly slow the deck down and give Priest no good turn 1 play. But, Combo Priest would most likely still be a good deck. Even with Northshire Cleric costing 2 mana, players still have the draw combo with Wild Pyromancer and Circle of Healing to refill their hand. But, not having a good turn 1 play will hurt the deck.
Circle of Healing
Perhaps it’s time Circle of Healing got the [Hearthstone Card (Hunter’s Mark) Not Found] treatment and moved away from costing 0 mana. Even at 1 mana, it would slow the deck down as you could no longer play a turn 2 Injured Tol'vir and heal it to full. The same goes for a turn 3 Injured Blademaster. Both are very good tempo plays as your opponent will have trouble dealing with a turn 2 2/6 body with the threat of Divine Spirit as backup. If the goal in nerfing Priest is to weaken the combo deck, then increasing the mana cost of Circle of Healing instead of Northshire Cleric could hurt the deck more. Cleric isn’t as oppressive of a 1 drop as Mana Wyrm was and it only really shines alongside Circle of Healing.
Imagine not having to deal with one of these at full Health on curve.
Divine Spirit
C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker!
If the goal is to get rid of Combo Priest completely, then nerfing (or Hall of Faming) Divine Spirit would be the way to go. At 3 mana Divine Spirit may still be playable, but if you want to never see the card again then nerf it to 4 mana. Divine Spirit has long been the backbone of Priest decks, especially after rotation. Priest has very few win conditions and since half of its cards in the basic and classic sets revolve around healing and stealing cards, Divine Spirit has always been a go-to win condition.
The oldest trick in the book.
The issue of nerfing Divine Spirit is you remove Priest’s last win condition from the Basic and Classic sets. This is fine, but it will require the Hearthstone team to print new cards in each set that provides a viable win condition. This could run into the same issue we have now with Priest board clear cards where it creates an almost too good of a win-con card in every set.
Class Overhaul
So, we have our 3 possible cards to nerf. While there may be other good candidates, Northshire Cleric, Circle of Healing, and Divine Spirit are the 3 problem cards. Now, as stated before, the Basic and Classic set cards for Priest tend to be on the weaker side with a few cards standing out. Besides the 3 mentioned for possible nerfs, we have Power Word: Shield, Shadow Word: Pain, Shadow Word: Death, Inner Fire, Silence, Cabal Shadow Priest, and Mass Dispel. The other Basic and Classic cards are either not competitively viable or fringe. The issue with nerfing Divine Spirit or Northshire Cleric is you leave Priest with a poor core set of cards. This could lead to Priest getting more oppressive cards down the road to push a competitive deck.
Like it or not, the Basic and Classic sets in Hearthstone is an integral part of the game. It gives each class a core set of cards to work with and cards in future sets are designed around these core cards. Up until now, the changes to the Basic and Classic cards have worked out. Most of the cards changed were overpowered, to begin with and the classes still had other good cards to fall back on. The fact that the class has a weak core set of cards may be the reason it gets hated on so much. Since the core cards are weak, new cards tend to either fall flat or create an oppressive meta deck. To solve this issue, the class as a whole may need a bit of an overhaul.
In an AMA a while back, Dean Ayala stated that they are unsure of what to do with Priest and it shows. Its core cards are a mix of healing, buff, damage spells, minion removal, and deck/hand stealing cards. The healing cards are generally weak, the buff cards are ok, the damage spells are decent, the minion removal is good, and the deck/hand stealing cards are bad. If the Hearthstone team plans on keeping the Basic and Classic sets around, then the Priest class needs a more cohesive design.
Some ways to change the Basic and Classic cards could start with the steal archetype. While the Thoughtsteal type cards may be fun to play with, they have never been competitive and either all need to go or have some replaced with other cards. Another change could be to replace Holy Smite and Radiance with some better cards. Perhaps this could be a 4 mana buff type card or a 3 mana damage spell. One final change would be to change the mana cost of Holy Nova from 5 to 4. This would give Priest a reliable board clear and make Holy Nova usable. It could result in it being too good, but it might be worth it to experiment a little.
So, does Priest need a nerf or overhaul? Right now, there’s a good argument for both. A nerf to the combo deck is a good short-term solution. Long-term, the class might need some reworking to stop nearly every meta Priest deck from being too oppressive.
Comment below with your ideas for nerfs and why you dislike or like Priest!
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Comments
They never decided what priest should be good at so they just made it moderate at pretty much everything.
If we get an overhaul for priest they should remove all the steal stuff (unfortunately including cabal shadow priest) as they already made that rouges thing and that does make more sense to be fair.
Priests are light or shadow based right? so why should we not represent that in hearthstone, the few shadow cards we have had have been bad to sub par at best (excluding Shadow Words) and they already told us we weren't allowed direct damage because "that isn't priests thing" so that kind of ruins shadow priest a lot but lets not write it off just yet.
Healing, Priests "main" thing, other classes have out shadowed priest at this at times in the past, Paladins and Warlocks come to mind here. This is dumb, priest should be the heal class period. No one ever complained about circle of healing before injured tolvir came out so why is it not that card that's the problem? we have always had blademaster, wild pyro and auchenai for circle and no one ever gave shit. put a 2 drop there and everybody looses their damn minds. The new card that restores 6 to everything friendly is overkill as well.
Resurrects, the second most boring thing about priest except the doomed combo. They went so hard on this that they created a forever problem with the class in wild (and still never made it good in standard) because this deck excuse the pun, will never die. It is thematic for the class sure enough but what they did with it was silly and now no one can escape it. Strip it back to basics and let people do the work rather than abusable cards OR just scrap everything except catrina and make n'zoth replace Velen as the classic legendary who is now the most useless class classic legendary in the whole game.
Buffs, never really been priests thing but we get a few that aren't bad but it certainly isn't our forte. Take IF and DS and give us back velens chosen, I would be so happy with that result.
Dragons, Priest does like dragons and at one point it was one of the most broken decks in the game. A less problematic version of this as a base would be a good "package" for priest to have at minimum but Op operative can stay gone.
So in conclusion we have a jack of lots of trades master of none class but we have a lot of things to choose from to make the class great and balanced. Healing will die down again once quests and tolvir and shit leaves but will remain a core of the class with a mana change to holy nova as well. If we get some dragons in the base set to trigger early/midgame effects, n'zoth to come in and murder velen and make any deathrattle deck solid at end game and a few thing like velens chosen, cabal shadow priest and the 3 drop that reduced drawn cards costs and things like that and it could be the most fun it's ever been
just my opinion of course but people will not like it because this would make priest too good
Divine Spirit is not the problem. Inner Fire is. Hall of fame it, and problem is more or less solved. Topsy Turvy rotates soon, and while it's still here you can only use the minion if you go face (which retains the combo) but can;t keep it alive against other minions. Having a 16/16 on board as opposed to having a 16/4 on the board is miles away.
A lot of people forget that Inner Fire can be a defensive tool as well...
Yeah, the best defence is a good offence, am I right? :D
People are talking about nerfing northshire cleric to 2 mana, and while this would certainly fix the problem, I don't like it too much. It makes the card too bad, it ruins all of priests tempo and they have no other card to fall back on. I think a better change would be to either change the heal to 2, this way priest still has a decent tempo play on turn one, but it feels more fair to the opponent.
Another option would be to make it say "whenever another minion", or maybe "another friendly minion" so that it wont draw as consistently, this would be a lighter change, but it would stop the priest player from playing a turn one cleric and and turn two hero power.
Changing it to 2 mana is fine, but if they were to do this they should make sure there is another decent (but less good) one drop for priest. I want this card to be nerfed as much as the next guy, but I don't want it to be entirely un-playable.
not that I want Cleric to get the axe, but there's always LIghtwarden, and thanks to Injured Tol'vir we actually have a good 2-drop as well, so it's not like their early game would be ruined.
Not to mention without Divine Spirit the Cleric wouldn't even be a problem...and they would have to give Priest way more draw to compensate anyways
I am in favor of the complete overhaul. Priest notoriously has the worst basic/classic set. And it's by a wide margin. This results in a lot of very overtuned cards and feast-or-famine metagame cycles for priest.
I really do HATE priest class, like visceral! Too many resurrect shenanigans in wild and I still remember the razakus era.
But even so, what do you want them to do, they have been nerfed with no reason in extra-arms and before they killed one of the identity of the class (shadow priest) by sending mindblast to HoF.
If it's going that way, simply substitute the class by a new one, since you are making it worthless.
The class identity BS is rubbish. Ramp druid is gone, vanish is in HoF and prep(plus all the rogue spells) are useless, doomguard and any hope for discardlock also, and so on...
This nerf mania is just useful to make people spend more money on expansions. Paint it as you want, stall meta, non-interactive combos blablabla.
You nerf or hof this now, next month, oh surprise, another one needs a nerf.
Cubelock, tempo rogue, warriors (too aggro or too control, take a pick), mages with combos or with low cost minions, always a deck to pick on.
If it's so good, just craft the damn deck, eventually people will play another one. I personally have all the "meta decks" except druids and priest, and I don't play any shaman or control warrior. Just got tired of it.
Buffs would be welcome again, to shake things up by improving our collections. Do you realize that more casual players can't afford all this nerfs and that we need them for the game to stay with a large base of players? Has anyone made the statistics of the dust cost of top tier decks over the past 2 years, and how many class legendaries enter those?
Stop wasting resources and leave the sad standard priests alone, we have ruined enough classes already
One of the problems with priest is that it's naturally a "control" class, but the signature "Power Word" and "Shadow Word" cards can't generate card advantage. Playing Shadow Word Pain on turn 2 vs aggro is not a great play, because they just play another minion and you don't have your removal any more. You spent a card to get rid of their card.
After the removal of DS/IF and the building of some other kind of win condition for Priests, I'd like to see the Shadow Words and Power Words given Twinspell.
Here's the thing, what is Priest supposed to do in order to win outside of either an Inner Fire combo or Resurrect effects (usually into Inner Fire)?
Last year I had a blast playing Dragon Control Priest. It wasn't unfair/annoying to play against, it fought for the board with minions but importantly, it had a win condition with Alexstrasza + some damage the next turn, usually 2x Mind Blast and something else. Mind Blast is gone and we got a completely useless spell for it in return, so spell damage isn't an option anymore.
If Divine Spirit goes out (which I can understand fully), the only thing left is using Resurrect effects on big stuff or Deathrattles. I've played the latter of this deck with Deathrattles like Mechanical Whelp, Cairne Bloodhoof and Da Undatakah and it's fun, but it simply isn't strong enough to really push very far. It is partially dependant on getting the right minion back and doesn't do much of anything in the early to mid-game. Quest is unreliable. It can work but just prevent Priest from having a minion and not letting them heal and you win the game pretty easily.
Which leaves me with one very simple question, what is Priest supposed to play exactly?
Control deck? Okay, how does Priest kill the opponent? Where's the damage, the threat?
Combo? With what? All the combo damage cards are effectively gone if Divine Spirit kicks the HoF bucket. (which again, I do understand)
Aggro/Zoo? Might as well play Warlock, they're usually far better at it.
I'd love it if Priest was a class that could *really* make a board stick. They have some healing tools for it, but often enough your minions die after trading once. The actual health buffs that might make something like this work (so you could trade and not lose the minion) are scarce. Power Word: Shield is about it really. Yeah ok there's the 6/6 that gives a minion +3 health. I've never seen it played outside of Arena. And then there are still plenty of board clears that don't care about health or simply do crazy amounts of damage (Hagatha's Scheme for example). And Priest isn't that good at a comeback outside of (again) Resurrect effects.
I'd hate to see Priest revolve solely around Resurrect effects. Players can quickly adapt to this by adding one or two tech cards that pollute the Resurrect pool. I also don't like the random aspect of it. Priest definitely needs something. It's my favorite class, especially with Dragons or Deathrattles, but I'm starting to worry that all the punch is being taken away because it's frustrating to deal with but getting nothing in return once it's gone.
Of all the cards discussed only Injured Tol'vir is a new one: the others are all from the Classic and Basic sets.
Maybe if they could print a decent set for Priest instead of giving it crap, the Class won't be needing to use one of the oldest strategy in the whole game for being successfull.
Is this a 'Wild only' problem?
I feel like I only see them 1 out of every 6 games is a Priest in Casual and Standard, however, pretty much all the rest are either Paladin or Hunter.
Not really. Haven't seen any of them from 15 to 5.
Whenever priest gets something mildly interesting, everyone absolutely loses their minds.
Been like that since day one.
that just shows how much of an annoying class priest is. Even when they are not the best deck they are still frustrating to play against because the entire game feels redundant. They just draw and draw until they deal 25 damage out of nowhere and you are dead, I agree with people that priests basic/classic set need an overhaul. I also wouldn't mind if they adjusted the expansion cards a little, but I don't think that would happen.
I think 0 mana cards have been the most troublesome cards in Hearthstone's history. My opinion is that the current version of Combo Priest would be brought to a quick halt if Circle of Healing had it's mana cost changed to something like 2. Northshire Cleric would be much more difficult to get tons of draw off. Without the crazy draw amount Divine Spirit + Inner Fire loses almost all of its consistency. Wild Pyromancer would be too expensive to create those draws. The injured duo can't be instantly buffed anymore. It's a simple fix but covers a variety of problems while only hitting one card. The deck still plays very similarly and is still powerful. But this way I'm not playing against a Priest with a board of 2 4/7s a 1/3 draw-machine, a full hand, and only 8 cards left in deck on turn 5.
I totally agree with that.
Also: circle without / with a more expensive circle of healing you can actually control the board better with just damaging minions instead of having to kill everything to make sure the priest doesn't kill you in one turn, draw a million cards or both.
Divine Spirit+Inner Fire need to be redone. That Combo is one of the most uninteractive card combinations the game has. It all comes down to the question "can I clear the board or not?"
The stealing cards of priest are total garbage and they don't fit the theme. Stealing should be a rogue thing in my opinion.
Northshire Cleric needs the same treatment as Mana Wyrm.
Circle of healings cost could be changed to 1 mana, but right now it doesn't feel oppressive.
One of the biggest problems priest has with his core set is a valid board clear. I think Mass Hysteria could be moved to the core set with Holy Nova being nothing but a mere laughing stock.
As a priest player I have already thought about the class identity and as a former WoW PvP freak I would say a good theme could be centered around Penance, or cards that mess with your opponents deck. Kind of a combo killer class. In arena priests burned mana, silenced enemies, blocked healing. So anti lifesteal effects could be invented. Another part could be dot spells. A little bit like warlocks Curse card for example, but maybe a little bit more minion centric, which refunds/increases mana at the start of your next turn.
There are enough ways to improve the class. Blizzards just needs to start.
People need to leave us alone..
There's plenty of other terroristic decks out there for ANY class standard/wild.
I believe they should cycle out or rotate the basic sets for classes every year or two, so that we don't get stuck with stuff like Divine Spirit + Inner Fire for the rest of time. It would help to rotate out the bad cards in basic as well, such as Charge, or Light's Justice.