Iksar was on Twitter this evening talking about Priests and how they are looking at how Divine Spirit could be removed.

  • If Divine Spirit was removed, it would come with other "sweeping changes".
  • Removal would likely take place during a set rotation. (Earliest would be April 2020)
  • This is not a guarantee the card is going to be removed / rotated / changed.

Here are the conversations that took place on Twitter with Iksar.

Quote From Dean Ayala

Priest is fine. [20-0 Winrate]

Priest is 8th place on yesterday's rank 5 and above dashboard. Behind Tempo Warrior, Tempo Rogue, Brann Hunter, Beast Hunter, Control Warrior, Murloc Shaman, and Zoo Warlock (in no particular order). I imagine it's probably worse at lower ranks, would have to dig into it more.

Priest has a favourable winrate in every single matchup in GM except Reno Mage. This feels like the Patron Warrior nerf times to me, the ladder stats aren't accurately representing the power of the deck because the vast majority of ladder players aren't playing it well.

Even looking back on Patron that statement is a little bit of stretching the truth. Great players have high win rates with all decks. We nerfed Patron not because it was too powerful at high levels, but because it one shot people in ways they couldn't play around.

I agree Iksar, you should continue to nerf decks that one shot people in ways they can't play around :)

Yeah, I hear you. I don't love DS and Inner Fire as a forever win condition but it's clearly easier to play around than Patron was.

We have some plans to remove DS, but it comes with some other sweeping changes. If we end up doing that (a big maybe) it will probably be around set rotation timeline because we don't feel like it's as much an issue for current Hearthstone as it is for future Hearthstone. (Source)

Imagine thinking that the ladder stats of rank 5 players are even borderline relevant to anything

I mean, statistically speaking, they are the most relevant to the entire population. That's why we chose R5 and above. Within that range the data doesn't vary much, and outside that range… 1/2.

very low rank play is more about access to cards rather than card or deck balance. And I think players overestimate how different their archetype win rate data is vs groups they perceive to be much lower skilled than they are.

the reality in most all circumstances is that yes, a R5 player vs a High Legend player has a crazy low win rate regardless of deck choice. But archetype win% for those two groups doesn't really vary much at all.

Idk maybe you’re right, stats at high legend are pretty bad too because those players generally suck as well. Maly druid 51% deck btw xD xD

Top 0.1% players will never have a 50% or 51% win rate with basically any top 20 deck.

Sure, but top .1% players had high win rates against other top .1% players when playing maly druid. However total legend to 5 stats had it at like 51% and total legend stats had it at 52%.

Same thing with combo priest, I haven’t watched tons of gm recently but I assume it’s winrate is very high there. Whether you want to call gms top .1% players is another question, but I’d say the majority are at least

Sure, I guess my point is GM players could play Deathrattle Rogue and be very high win rate in Legend. It doesn't really mean anything other than those players are great players.

Yes but gm players could not play deathrattle rogue against each other with high winrate. However they can play priest against each other with high winrate despite the fact that rank 5 players don’t play it at high winrate against each other

Going back to a previous tweet, this is the thing I think is mostly a myth. At least a myth that there is some huge percentage difference between R5 and normal players. (Source)

Just wanna say this ‘ability to play around’ is exactly what makes Combo Priest more tilting to play against than Patron. It’s the most board centric deck ever with the most linear game plan. Easier to play around=All comes down to can you kill the board Anyway, just my 2 cents.

I’ve never liked the idea that dmg-based combo decks are unfun to play against (freeze mage, otk pally, patron, miracle). They create the most intricate scenarios. Playing vs them is unforgiving; gotta be careful and detailed-oriented.

I think it's mostly coming from the perspective of the player that doesn't play enough to understand the plan of all combo decks. They log in, understand Hearthstone mechanics, then get destroyed by some from hand combo they had no idea existed.

That and they tend to feel like there was no way to interact with their strategy in a way there was any control. (Source)

How heavily do you discount ranked games due to the fact that there is almost no competitive incentive to play them right now? I think if we had last year incentives, we'd see a lot more combo priest decks in terms of popularity and win rate.

Honestly I think that is very low impact. The percentage of players pursuing eSports among the 5-L population I would guess is something less than 1%. Also regardless of incentives, people 'not caring' would theoretically affect player and opponent equally.

We've said that there are decks that have vastly different win rates at high and low levels, but we mean very high and very low. There being a >5% different in win rate for an average Rank 5 player vs an average Legend player is basically unheard of so long as the sample size is large enough. (Source)

How do you feel about Divine Spirit? Our very own MrGn0me talked about Priest yesterday in "Priest - Nerf or Overhaul?".