What are the best decks for priest nowdays ? Didn't play in a long time so I'm not up on the meta.

 

The same list, though I'm considering dropping Antonidas since he's both too slow and not a dragon.

 

is dragon pally viable yet?

 

Not really.

Dragon pally is too slow.

Priest is the best, with Mage probably second best. Control "Dragon" warrior is probably third, but it's really just control warrior with a couple dragon pieces, and kind of unreliable activators.

Lock and Rogue are sort of playable, but they're really malygos decks that just use dragons....because. Both decks with Maly are better without the dragon core, imo.

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Dragon Priest is legitimately a good deck. If you haven't played in a while you'll be missing some of the new dragon cards from TGT that make it as strong as it is.

 

Control priest is also somewhat viable if you're not facing many patrons. It's got a really solid match up against secret paladin and control warrior. But along with dragon priest there is a harrowing tendency to getting roflstomped! by handlock

 

I was under impression that control warrior with justicar just destroyed control priest?

 

Maybe? But ysera has the tendency to lose you a lot of value what with shrinkmeister + cabal, double death deals with a lot of stuff, voljin + light bomb deals with even more, thoughtsteal nets priest a lot of value vs control warrior and priest just got a really powerful midrange minion in the form of holy champion which can net crazy amounts off value vs warrior. It's like half the deck outright counters control warriors, I'm not convinced that just with the addition of one card, Warriors can turn this around. Oh and shadow madness is a crazy efficient way of dealing with sludge belchers.

 

Is there even a viable priest deck outside of Dragon Priest? Their main problem had always been making it to the late game and I feel like even early drop minions for that class are absolutely required for the late game. Shrinkmeister + Cabal/Shadow Madness is really strong to the point I'd be loath to drop a Shrinkmeister early on. But what does that leave a priest aside from Northshire turn 1? Wild Pyromancer is another 2 drop but again, it's needed more as a board clear than a body. And shadow word pain seems like such a terrible play at those early stages in the game.

 

Control priest is playable at least?

Clerics, Zombie Chow (sometimes) for 1-drops, 2-drops are generally combo pieces (Wild Pyromancer, Shrinkmiester), admittedly.

3-drops have a plethora of good options, between Deathlord, Dark Cultist, Injured Blademaster.

Like, early game is kind of a problem, yeah, but... not excessively so. Can run double zombie chows if aggro/early game is a serious problem for you.

I should note that I really don't enjoy playing control priest, so might be a bit biased against it. The only priest deck I've had actual fun playing is an almost all minion mech priest.

 

Maybe it's just playstyle but I never liked choosing Injured Blademaster because it felt so easy to kill unless you combo it with Circle of Healing. And that card again seems so much more impactful as a combo board clear. Dark Cultist is solid but I almost never have a second minion on the board when I play it due to everyone just murdering the Northshire turn 2. And I've never tried Deathlord unless I tried that troll combo deck that does like 32 damage on turn 4/5.

 

Deathlord is solid on the ladder. Seems questionable in tournament play, just because it can lose you the game sometimes, and increasing the variance isn't the best idea.

 

Injured blade master is an essential part of control priest though because it combos so well with so many different cards, light of the naaru, circle of healing, Northshore cleric. It's pretty much irreplaceable in that kind of deck.

Saying that tho the deck is rather inconsistent, maybe a velen deck with surprise mind Blasts? Was decently popular a few seasons back, might be pretty decent.

 

Velen mindblast is far more inconsistent than control priest.

 

Kolento has been playing a really interesting inspire priest on legend this season.

 

Goodbye Patron. Good-fuckity-bye.

 

Pretty dumb nerf, to be honest, but good riddance to Patron at least.

Making it a 2 mana 2/3 or a 3 mana 3/4 would have been better - Warrior is already garbage in arena, so making it a basically worse raid leader is ??? for a class common.

 

Perhaps it's not the nerf we needed ... but it's the nerf we deserved.

Seriously though, I'm not at all sad to see Warsong (and by extension, Patron Warrior) go. The mechanic was dumb in the first place. The change doesn't affect Control Warrior, so I' happy. This should actually reset the meta to a couple several seasons back. It's actually pretty sad how little impact TGT has had in the game.

Hopefully the meta will slow down, but we might just see the rise (or re-emergence) of other aggro decks to replace Patron.

 

I guess it's back to old-school Raging Worgen OTK. Now if only they can do something about that fucking christmas tree I see every two games.

 

I'm a little sad patron warrior is gone. I never had a chance to try the deck out and I wanted to do so at least once. Also, my mid-range druid deck had a good win rate against patron. Now it's going to be all secret paladins and my druid deck struggles mightily against them.

 

Tempo mage will see a lot more play as it can soft counter secret pally.

It should help druid not be utter god tier at a tournament level too which will be nice for variety of viewing - although a little weird timing wise that they do this nerf after the blizzcon qualifiers, when everyone and their mother qualified with basically Patron and Midrange Druid - both which will drop in strength with the Patron nerf.

I'd probably expect to see more hunter too, face and midrange. Secret pally will be even more played than it is now, and hunter does well against tempo mage, and fairly well against secret pally w/ flare.

You /might/ see more priest, with druid and patron both less commonly played, but dunno about that.