The battle for Alterac valley is upon us – and with comes the last exciting theorycrafting pre-season of the year!
In this article, we will talk about the Priest class and its new card additions. A total of three decks filled with old and news cards will showcase the potential of Priest in the upcoming Fractured for Alterac Valley: Deathrattle Control Priest, Bless Priest, and Control Shadow Priest.
Deathrattle Control Priest
Our first theorycraft list revisits a common Priest theme that involves the use of powerful Deathrattle effects.
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The Quest meta of the last two expansions put Control decks of all colors on the back burner. After multiple balance changes however, Control archetypes will most definitely make a comeback in Fractured in Alterac Valley, and that includes Deathrattle Control Priest.
One of the new card additions for Priest forms the backbone of this list: Xyrella, the Devout repeats all friendly Deathrattle effects that happened over the course of the game, serving as some sort of necromantic version of Shudderwock. Priest has always lacked some sort of heavy board impact; that is why N’Zoth Priest has been a thing in the current Standard year. Xyrella will fill a similar role in our deck, and with it comes a very solid Deathrattle package.
Lightshower Elemental and Mo'arg Forgefiend serve as mid- to late-game Deathrattle sticks, with the all-new Korrak the Bloodrager playing the starring role of the Deathrattle minion triumvirate. This Winterax troll is incredibly hard to remove and incredibly easy to revive: Besides Xyrella, both Raise Dead and Amulet of Undying will definitely help to fill up our graveyard with multiple troll bodies.
The secret powerhouse of this deck though is most definitely Spirit Guide. With almost 20 spells in our deck, this ghastly fiend will always draw two cards on death while serving as a great Taunt wall on turn 5.
Looking at the rest of our deck, Control definitely sounds like an understatement when describing this list. Fill your graveyard to the brim, use your nearly infinite resources with care, and you should almost always be able to win the game in late-game fatigue!
Bless (Combo) Priest
Last year, Priests shed more than one tear when Divine Spirit and Inner Fire left together with the rotation of all Basic and Classic Sets. Over a year later, a new top contender enters Priest city to save the future of Combo decks: It’s time to Bless up!
Despite our very colorful introduction to Bless Priest, it has to be said that, after a first look, this deck feels slightly weaker compared to the old Inner Fire Priest. The main reason for that is the lack of Northshire Cleric. Yes, Sethekk Veilweaver can be used as a card-generating machine, but getting your combo pieces together won’t be as easy.
However, the archetype will definitely have its place in the meta thanks to Bless. The card does what Inner Fire did in the past, and despite its increased cost, it’s more than welcome in Priests current tool kit, especially because of the additional buff to health. Another equally interesting addition to Priest’s spellbook is Shadow Word: Devour. Not only is this spell incredibly cheap for its cost; it also heavily increases our odds in matchups against aggressive archetypes – one of the big weaknesses of Inner Fire Priest back in the day.
What will stay the same though is Bless Priest’s game plan: Try to stick as many minions on the board as possible, and collect your combo pieces as quickly as possible. Stormpike Aid Station is an intriguing new spell that adds at least 6 health to the board and opens up super-early combo plays – but only if you can establish a board early enough. Kobold Taskmaster is a nifty little tech card that provides more health buffs as well as food Sethekk Veilweaver. Again, it’s not Power Word: Shield – but who would complain to see a combo Priest deck anyway, especially if it looks a bit more balanced this time around!
A card that’d agree in that regard is Gift of the Naaru: It’s not a 0-mana Circle of Healing, but it’s still doing the right things by healing and drawing a card.
Other than that, we’re excited to see what the community will do with Bless Priest. Back in the day, Inner Fire Priest was the weapon of choice as a control breaker list – and we’re sure that, in one iteration or the other, it will become at least exactly that again.
Control Shadow Priest
Last but not least, we’re taking a good look at the most exciting addition to Priest since the Sexy Anduin hero portrait: Darkbishop Benedictus and his Shadow Priest archetype!
Shadow Priests around the world are in a bit of a pickle with the release of Fractured in Alterac Valley: They’re seeing some great addition to their toolkit – however, the most reliable Shadow Priest archetype of the current meta, Aggro Shadow Priest, received zero support.
Because of that, we’re trying our best at establishing a new iteration of Control Shadow Priest, the archetype that many believed to become a real meta contender at the beginning of the Standard year. As we all know, it did, in fact, not become a real meta contender. The deck lacked a lot of damage reach as well as reliable ways to stay on and remove the board over multiple turns.
Looking at this theorycrafted list, we quickly see that there’s one new card that is bound to fix all of the archetype’s problems: Xyrella, the Devout. Yes, we are including her because of her Battlecry effect as well. But the main advantage of this hero card is her incredibly powerful hero power. Once every two turns, we’re able to deal 5 damage for 2 mana. Together with Void Shard, four Deathrattles of Shadowed Spirit, and a whole lot of spell discovery tools, we’re extending our damage potential manifold.
Again, this may not look like a whole new archetype – because it isn’t. Over the last few months, several pro players have taken an almost identical iteration of this list to High Legend because it targets control and super-aggressive opponents at the same time – and we will see a lot more of those decks in the coming meta-game. That and the fact that Xyrella, the Devout serves as an auto-generating Mind Blast powerhouse will take Control Shadow Priest on a wild ride to become a more than decent choice against the most popular decks of Fractured in Alterac Valley.
These all look quite interesting… I look forward to trying them all, especially the deathrattle list.
Elwynn boar maybe?
I was just checking to see if they’d added any more support for Boar Priest (there’s virtually none), and I realised that that might actually be a deck that Drek’Thar could be good in. I’ll try him out soon enough, thanks for the suggestion.