Nuba’s Corner – Competitive Resurrect Priest

Introduction

Alright, so today we are going to be discussing a deck that I have been playtesting a lot lately, and with great success: Resurrect Priest.

Basically, barnes based lists have been going all around the ladder lately. People seem to have figured out a lot of cool interactions with Barnes and are playing these lists to a moderate success.

Priests somehow seem to be the best class to take advantage of these newly discovered interactions, and I have been working on a Deck for you guys that tries to be the best possible in… Everything!

Explaining Why it Works

Today everything regarding Hearthstone is oriented towards Tempo. Today all the decks we see doing super good on the ladder are Tempo oriented ones: The players are always playing 3 mana minions for 2, five mana minions for 4 mana, six mana minions for 5 mana and so onwards. Whenever they’re not doing that, they’re playing 5-6 cards a turn that have high interaction rate between each other, generating tons of… Tempo.

Anyway, after we figure out how all the strong Hearthstone deck works, we end up noticing that Priest had absolutely no way of playing like that. What is considered a good Priest play? Paying 6 Mana to remove a minion from the board and putting it in your deck? Well that’s sure amazing value, but how about those other stuff still hitting you in the face while you could only cast one spell this turn?

Resurrect Priest is the way the Priest class found to actually be able to generate Tempo. While still being a Control based deck, filled with board clears, heals and removal, the deck is now finally able to play multiple cards a turn while generating enough pressure to put the board state in check.

Explaining Card Choices and Playtesting Results

First let’s discuss the cards that were cut out of the deck at some point during playtest:

• wild-pyromancer – This was the last card I removed from the deck. The reason was simple: It never actually helped. I played over 20 games and noticed that in none of those games I was actually able to benefit from Wild Pyromancer, meanwhile it literally lost me some games due to messing up resurrect and onyx-bishop, not to mention barnes, completely destroying planned sequencing. The card was replaced by holy-smite, which should do a better job at pinging as well as is a more consistent card.
• ysera – Ysera was a card that I was quick in replacing for confessor-paletress. Confessor allow us to heal up while being a much better late game barnes pick. The simple fact we can’t heal stuff up when we play Ysera makes Paletress a more wantable card in a deck such as this one (remember all that Tempo talk in the last section).

On a situation such as this one ysera would’ve been a worse card. Meanwhile Paletress is capable of generating more Tempo than Ysera, thus the better option:

Now let’s explain the odd card choices here. We all know why cards such as resurrect, priest-of-the-feast and so onwards are here, so i’ll limit myself to explaining the odd ones:

• bog-creeper – A huge Taunt. We can heal up, so this is something that Priests can make a lot of value out. The pair of Bog Creepers quickly replaced 2 random Legendaries (I think they were Sylvanas and Cairne) simply because of the Taunt. Getting them from barnes isn’t a bad outcome also, given we get amazing Resurrect targets because of this (even if it died a 1/1 Taunt, it comes back as a 6/8). The taunt is super relevant in the matter that it’ll stop you from getting completely rushed down.
• Only one entomb – That talk in the last section? Well, it has a heavy effect on the deck card’s choice as well. Dying with two Entombs in hand isn’t cool, and it happens a lot more often than most Priests care to admit. Having two shadow-word-death and only one Entomb seems like the way to go.
• One copy of flash-heal – Most people abandoned this card along the way, but it still does what it’s supposed to do, and I just don’t feel comfortable playing with zero copies of this card in my deck. I just like to have a 1-mana-removal with auchenai-soulpriest on board as well as a “Renew-your-Blademaster” ticket.
• yshaarj-rage-unbound is barnes’ super mega hyper dope combo, that will win you the game because RNGezus is looking over you. The card also happens to be an ok 10-drop if you end up having to play the value game, just try not playing it with onyx-bishops in your deck.

Mulligan

So, I won’t go into details with the playstyle of the deck. Given it is a Priest deck this deck will be heavily skill dependant – meaning there are tons of unique situations where you’ll be forced into unique decisions that won’t be applying anywhere else and should ultimately decide the game – and regardless of the good RNG you can get out of Resurrects and Barnes, your calls should ultimately be the reason why you were, or were not, successful.

I can, however, help you guys with the mulligan, so let’s try getting into it:

Against Aggro-ish decks:

Warrior (you’ll always mulligan as if you’re playing against Dragon Warrior), Hunter, Warlock, Mage and Shaman.

Keep/Look for:

• holy-smite.
• injured-blademaster.
• shadow-word-pain.
• auchenai-soulpriest.
• barnes (if Coin).

  resurrect (if Blademaster).

• circle-of-healing (if Blademaster or Auchenai).

Against Tempo/Control-ish Decks:

Druid, Rogue, Priest, Paladin.

Keep/Look for:

• injured-blademaster.
• shadow-word-pain.
• auchenai-soulpriest.
• barnes.
• power-word-shield.
• priest-of-the-feast (if Coin).
• onyx-bishop (if Coin and Blademaster or Barnes).
• resurrect (if Blademaster, Priest of the Feast or Barnes).
• circle-of-healing (if Blademaster).

This pretty much covers all the mulligan you should be doing. Notice that you don’t want to keep Shield against Aggro because you need proactive plays early on in the game. You also don’t keep Auchenai Against Control because you don’t want to play it early in the game.

Closing

I could be doing an extensive guide about this, as I just love Priests and writing about Priest decks is a blast, but since we are just in the middle of the expansion I think we could wait and see what there is in store for the class a a whole instead of trying to make assumptions and writing guides for a deck that might not even be viable in three weeks.

With all that said, I think this pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about my take on Resurrect Priest, hope you guys enjoyed what you saw and we’ll be seeing each other again very soon with this week’s wing Brews!

Love you guys, see you soon!

Nuba

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