Introduction
Hello everyone. Today I’m taking a bit different approach to my “how to build” series. I’ve decided to talk about Priest in Un’Goro, as it’s one of the most diverse classes in the current meta. Even though there is no outstanding deck, I’ve already seen 4 or 5 different viable Priest builds on the ladder.
In the article I’ll first identify Priest core cards – basically the cards that make it into every single Priest list. They’re a great start when you’re trying to build any Priest deck. Then I’ll identify a few most common archetypes and talk about the cards that go into them, while giving example deck lists (they aren’t necessarily the only working and best lists, there are multiple ways you can build each deck). If you like the class, you should find something useful here!
Priest Core
Basic Priest core is very simple. Those 9Â cards are played in every single Priest list because of how powerful they are. You can start your Priest deck building by putting those 9Â cards and you will never be wrong.
- Northshire Cleric is the best draw mechanic available to Priest. The thing is, you want to heal your minions anyway, so with Northshire Cleric you can do that and also draw cards – and that’s only for 1 extra mana. If Cleric sticks, you can sometimes draw multiple cards, giving you insane value for just a single mana point. Not to mention the 1/3 body that’s useful in Aggro matchups for the early trading.
- Power Word: Shield might be one of the most powerful cards in the whole game. Pretty much every deck in the game (maybe outside of the face rush decks) would run that card, because there is almost no reason to not to. Having 1 spare point of mana is pretty common no matter what you play and then getting +2 health and cycling a card for just 1 mana is amazing. Extra value in Priest, where the high health minions are usually more powerful.
- Radiant Elemental is the 2-drop Priest needed. You can play it on turn 2 with PW:S to get a 2/5 minion, you can play it with Potion of Madness or other cheap spell to get a tempo swing, you can save it for later for a big Lyra turn etc.
- Shadow Visions – Another Un’Goro addition. Since each Priest deck plays multiple situational cards, having a way to tutor them is really powerful, as it makes every build more consistent.
- Lyra the Sunshard – Very underrated card, which turned out to be very powerful. Lyra shenanigans can turn the whole game around, especially with Radiant Elementals on the board – the amount of cheap spells Priest has is insane and with 1 or 2 mana discount you can easily cycle 10 or more of them in a single turn (so even if they don’t have insane effects individually, if you sum everything up the turn will be crazy good).
But those aren’t the only Priest cards that are played in nearly every build. There is also something I call “Almost” Core. Almost because they are played in majority of the builds, but not in each one of them. You CAN easily fit those cards into pretty much any Priest build, but some of them are doing well without them. They also aren’t always played as 2-ofs, sometimes people decide to run only 1 copy of them.
- Potion of Madness – Flexible removal, the card can sometimes get insane value. The card is most useful when stealing some small drops with an effect or Deathrattle – e.g. Loot Hoarder, Acolyte of Pain or Kindly Grandmother. You can deny a draw or a small minion from your opponent while getting one yourself. In extreme scenarios the card can also be used to OTK the opponent from the hand if you run the combo.
- Divine Spirit + Inner Fire combo – While not every build runs it, it became widespread on the ladder in Un’Goro mostly thanks to Shadow Visisons adding more consistency to the combo. Thanks to it, you can either make a huge minion in the early game when your opponent probably won’t have a way to answer it (something like a Priest version of all-in Edwin VanCleef) or OTK your opponent later in the game if even a single higher health minion survives.
- Shadow Word: Pain – One of the best early removals in the game. What’s great about it is that it can kill pretty much every 1-3 mana minion in the current meta (4 Attack isn’t common in the early game), but it also can get value later in the game. It can clear a lot of the 4-drops and sometimes even a higher cost card. Compared to the standard “3 damage for 2 mana” removals, it works wonders against low attack and high health minions like Priest of the Feast or Book Wyrm.
- Kabal Talonpriest – Used by pretty much every Priest deck, simply because of how powerful it is. While it doesn’t fit into the play style of each deck, the 3/4 for 3 that adds +3 Health is just too good to pass up.
Now let’s move onto the specific builds, or “packages” you can run to complement your core cards.
Priest Builds
Dragon Priest
Example decklist was used by MeatiHS to hit top 10 Legend on EU.
First and probably the most popular Priest build in the current meta (although they’re really close, so it’s hard to tell) is Dragon Priest. The deck is basically built around Drakonid Operative, which is one of the most broken cards we’ve ever had in the game. Even though most powerful Dragon synergies have rotated out, the card is still powerful enough to use whatever’s left and play it. Tons of Dragons rotating out have been a hit to Dragon Priest, but at the same time, Netherspite Historian now has incredibly high chance to discover a copy of Drakonid Operative. There are only a few Dragons left in Standard and if you add 400% offering rate of the class cards (and that’s the only Priest Dragon), you can consistently hit 1 or even 2 of them with discovers every single game.
When you add 2x Primordial Drake, which is the only Dragon added in Un’Goro (and it turned out to be great), Book Wyrm and possibly something like Twilight Drake or Ysera (not used in this list, but still a possibility)… then you have a Control Dragon deck. The deck doesn’t run a lot of Dragons, but it doesn’t have to – Dragon synergies in this deck are mostly value-driven, so in the long game vs other slow deck where the value matters, it’s really easy to proc every single synergy.
One more reason to run Dragons in your deck is making your Dragonfire Potion much, much better. Normally it might get pretty clunky in case you’re ahead on the board. When it comes to the Dragon Priest, you usually “get ahead” with your Dragons. There are a lot of the boards where Dragonfire Potion basically clears your opponent’s minions and doesn’t hit yours. This can lead to nice tempo swings, because 5 AoE for 6 mana is incredibly powerful.
This specific build doesn’t run the Divine Spirit + Inner Fire combo, but I’ve seen Dragon Priests playing it. However, generally it’s hard to fit it into already packed deck.
Silence Priest
Silence Priest is probably my favorite Priest build in the current meta. I’ve tried to make the deck work before but it was always a bit short of power. With Eerie Statue rotating out and Humongous Razorleaf replacing it, the deck suddenly got much more powerful. As it turns out, 3 mana 4/8 is significantly more powerful than a 4 mana 7/7 – the 7 attack doesn’t matter if you’re using it for trading purposes in the early/mid game and then the Priest can just play Inner Fire to buff it. But maybe a bit later about that.
The “Silence package” is mostly Ancient Watcher and Humongous Razorleaf + ways to activate them, so usually Silence, Purify and Faceless Shambler. But some builds also run Kabal Talonpriest or Defender of Argus (Watcher -> Razorleaf -> Argus is the ultimate anti-Aggro curve). The main idea is that the “Can’t attack” minions are undercosted for their stats. Ancient Watcher’s 4/5 are the stats of 4-drop and Humongous Razorleaf’s 4/8 are 5.5 mana worth of vanilla stats.
However, those minions are far from the only win condition. After all, there are only 4 of them in the whole deck. If they would be dealt with, then it’s game over. But no, this deck is more than that. Maybe even the more important win condition is the Divine Spirit + Inner Fire combo. It’s a perfect deck to play this package in because of the few things. First of all – no other Priest deck can put such a high health minion early in the game. 8 health on a 3 mana minion is insane. Then, the minion has to be Silenced first, so it adds some surprise factor. When people see that 4/8 on turn 3, they won’t throw everything they have into it. It will most likely survive a turn and Priest can then easily Silence it and start buffing it. Even just a single Divine Spirit + Inner Fire turns it into a 16/16 on turn 4, and trust me, most of the decks can’t deal with that. Even if they can stall the game somehow with Taunts or Freezes or something, you can always copy the stats with Faceless Shambler and have a second huge minion.
Oh, and of course, you can sometimes get an unexpected finisher with a late game Potion of Madness into tons of health buffs into Inner Fire. While it’s pretty rare, it happens. If you like Priest and you enjoy the combo-ish play style, you should definitely check this one out.
Miracle Priest
Miracle Priest is a Priest build that’s concentrated around spells and spell synergies. While every single Priest deck uses Lyra the Sunshard, Miracle Priest is THE deck Lyra works best in. The deck runs 15 spells and each one of those spells costs 2 or less mana. It basically means that if you manage to get a Lyra turn with 2x Radiant Elemental, better start doing it fast, because you will end up playing 20 spells or so. And I’m not even exaggerating – that’s exactly what will most likely happen if you open with few spells from your own hand. Besides Lyra, another spell synergy the deck runs is Wild Pyromancer. The card was commonly used in Control Priest, mainly because of the Power Word: Shield synergy. But this deck is so much more than that. Wild Pyromancer’s ability might not seem that strong, but with so many cheap spells it basically means that you can consistently deal a lot of AoE damage in the early/mid game. You might completely counter a deck like Token Druid by clearing its whole board on let’s say turn 3.
Of course, Lyra is a very solid win condition, but you can’t base your whole deck around it. Not only it’s a single card, but it’s also not exactly the most consistent card ever. In the best case scenario you play a few cheap spells, you get more cheap spells and you continue the chain. But if you happen to get a 3+ mana spells in a row, the chain can break quite quickly. Of course, getting that Free from Amber or Mind Control can turn into tons of value later, but at the same time, you might get cards like Mass Dispel or Shadow Word: Horror which aren’t exactly most useful. That’s why the deck runs the Divine Spirit + Inner Fire combo as the main win condition. Tortollan Shellraiser is played as the main combo target – 6 health is an amazing starting point for the combo and the minion often seems “harmless” enough that it won’t get removed immediately (which is obviously a mistake, but hey).
On top of that, Sjoesie decided to play Elise the Trailblazer, which is a high value card in any class, but it can get pretty insane in Priest. Sometimes a single Elise can win you a value war thanks to the Shadow Visions. Yes, after you shuffled your pack, you can tutor it with Shadow Visions, basically doubling the value you get from the card’s Battlecry. Even though the deck isn’t packed with value, having 2 or sometimes even 3 Elise packs is often enough to make up for that.
So far I’ve prefered the Silence Priest, but after seeing Sjoesie’s success, I think about trying to play this build a bit more myself.
Control Priest
Example decklist is used by Weghuz in his HCT Spring Preliminaries line-up
So, here’s the thing. The deck is not really popular on the ladder, but it seems to get more and more popular in tournaments. I’ve seen a similar Control list in the CN vs EU tournament recently too. This is a bit like a blast from the past – most of the current Priest lists focus on the more proactive play of Divine Spirit + Inner Fire combo, but this one doesn’t. This deck plays much more like an oldschool Priest – it’s a slow, reactive list that often passes turns doing nothing, that has a lot of “situational spells” and “value generators”. The way to win games with this deck isn’t by hitting the opponent for 20+, it’s by simply grinding him out of resources.
The main difference between this and the other Priest list is the addition of extra “value” tools. Most importantly, the deck runs Medivh, the Guardian and Free From Amber. It’s an incredibly powerful combo, but it’s also very, very slow. In the late game, thanks to the Atiesh, playing Free from Amber puts two huge bodies on the board, which is an insane swing, your opponent just needs to have two big removals to drop in a single turn. And then, Atiesh is still quite useful with Holy Nova and Dragonfire Potion – random 5 or 6-drop with a board clear is busted.
Another big value generator is Curious Glimmerroot. The card is like a mini-Thoughtsteal attached to a minion. Sure, you don’t get 2 cards, but you get a 3/3 body for the same mana cost. It’s basically more value vs more tempo dilemma, which isn’t really dilemma unless you only face the slow decks. Oh, and you actually need to guess the right card, but that’s not hard most of the time, because 90% of the decks on the ladder are meta decks. Of course, the deck also plays Elise the Trailblazer for the pack or maybe even more packs with Shadow Visions, like I’ve mentioned before. It also runs A LOT of AoEs – Wild Pyromancer, Holy Nova and Dragonfire Potion – showcasing its reactive nature even more.
P.S. This seems to be more of a tournament build than ladder build, to be fair. It might not get great results on the ladder, because ladder meta is much more diverse and volatile, it’s harder to play a reactive Control deck on the ladder than in the tournaments, where you can target specific decks.
Other Builds
Yes, there is more. There are other Priest builds, but they didn’t get to the main list for one of the few reasons. They might not be popular enough, they might not be powerful enough, or maybe the article already got too long and I had to cut something :p
- Elemental Priest – It’s more like a one-time experiment, because I haven’t seen it on the ladder ever since Titan has hit Legend with it. Early in the expansion I’ve seen people testing Elemental Priest, but to be fair, people were testing Elemental everything on the first days. In general, Elemental Priest is pretty similar to the Miracle or Silence Priest builds, but instead of the “cheap spells” or “Silence” packages, it runs the Elementals. The Elemental package isn’t huge and it’s mostly focused on activating the Servant of Kalimos, for the value of course. It’s a bit similar to how Dragon Priest is built around Drakonid Operative – Servant of Kalimos can get a lot of value in the long game, especially since it has quite a high chance to chain into another Servant of Kalimos. The build also – of course – runs the Divine Spirit + Inner Fire combo.
- Highlander Priest – Highlander Priest is probably the only “Reno” deck that’s still semi-viable after Reno Jackson has rotated out. Since Priest has access to tons of other sources of healing, no Reno doesn’t hurt it as much as it hurts Mage and – especially – Warlock. Kazakus and Raza the Chained MIGHT be just enough to make your deck much less consistent by running no duplicates. The most popular build is probably the one that Thijs was playing and honestly, it’s the only time I’ve seen someone playing this deck (I’m honest, I have never seen it on the ladder so far). I have to say that the Highlander approach to the decks was always fun, because a lot of the cards that normally don’t make the cut can be played successfully. The deck, obviously, doesn’t play the combo, because it’s not consistent enough with only 1-ofs. So it once again takes the more reactive, classic Control Priest approach.
- Deathrattle/Quest Priest – I’ll be honest, it was hard to find any good list for the deck. Because NO ONE PLAYS IT. Priest Quest turned out to be really weak in the Standard. The Quest is too slow vs Aggro (by the time you finish it the game is most likely already over) and it doesn’t do enough vs Control. There are only a few matchups where Quest is really useful – e.g. against the Burn/Freeze Mage. Many pros were experimenting with the deck early, but most have given up. Savjz tries like 3 or 4 new and unique decks every stream, so well, he was bound to play more Quest Priest at some point. I don’t really recommend this deck for the Standard gameplay unless you’ve opened the Priest Quest and you REALLY want to try it out.
Closing
That’s all folks. I hope that I’ve covered every build, but I MIGHT have missed something. If that was the case, let me know and I’ll add the build to the list. I really like the state of Priest in Un’Goro. While it’s not the Tier 1 class, there are so many ways you can build it so every player should find something that fits his play style. While the rotation hit Priest pretty hard by removing most of the cards that made Dragon Priest a high tier deck from Standard, the new Un’Goro additions – Radiant Elemental, Shadow Visions and Lyra the Sunshard all made the Priest decks better and more consistent. One can argue that most of the Priest builds look really similar to each other, but the truth is that each build has its own, very specific “gimmick”, so even though the builds might be pretty similar, the play style is very different with each of the lists.
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. And if you want to be up to date with my articles, you can follow me on Twitter.
Good luck on the ladder and until next time!
