After Heroes of Azeroth had been out for a couple of months, Priest was not one of the most popular topics to talk about in either Limited or Constructed. Hunter, Shaman, and Warlock dominated the Constructed scene and were the top classes to draft. Priest was difficult to draft because the class did not have enough quality Limited abilities to grab attention, so the class was often neglected. With the release of the last couple of sets, though, Priest stock has skyrocketed. The class is not only viable but is also easy to draft. And when I say “easy to draft,” I mean that the cards you need to have a good Draft deck are not very hard to get.
 

Unlike drafting Warlock, where we need to take class-specific abilities early so that we can cut off the class from other drafters, quality Priest abilities come around late in packs. In picks 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the first two packs, we can be virtually assured that Mind Spike, Shadow Word: Pain, Chastise, and Flash Heal will table and come back around late. This allows us to take quality allies (Latro Abiectus, Kor Cindervein, or Wazzuli Wildmender) and quests (Kibler’s Exotic Pets or Your Fortune Awaits You) earlier in the Draft and worry about getting ally removal later.

With the introduction of Through the Dark Portal, Priest increased its viability a lot. In pack 3, we will continue our trend of trying to table late pick Priest abilities and focus on good allies and, more importantly, quests. A few Through the Dark Portal quests in particular that I like for Priest are Finkle Einhorn, At Your Service!; A New Plague; and Manhunt, which is a personal favorite of mine. The best Priest abilities to look for in pack 3 are Shadow Word: Death and Power Word: Shield. Both are awesome abilities that are played in Constructed and are even better in Limited. Also, in both Drafts in which I participated at Nationals, there was at least one copy of Brainwash, which is a complete bomb that can win a game all by itself.

Now on to the Priest abilities from Fires of Outland.

Commons

Binding Heal

As I said earlier in the article, I think that Flash Heal is playable in Draft, but I did not explain why. Since we are drafting Priest, we may be able to force our opponents to discard a couple cards during the course of a game and not allow them to finish out their curve. This may prevent our opponents from having enough available resources to play their higher drops, making our 5- and 6-cost allies more of a threat to them. Our opponents will be forced to use two allies to attack into our bigger ally, and we can use a Binding Heal or Flash Heal during the second attack, thus turning our Heal into an ally removal ability. Binding Heal also gives the added bonus of being able to heal our hero for 5, which may be important given that we only start the game with 26 health.

Soul Rend

This is Priest’s premier ability in Fires of outland. Soul Rend is good in both the early and late stages of the game. We can use it to keep up with our opponent’s board position if we don’t have an ally to play for a turn. Soul Rend can also help out later in the game by allowing us to keep pressure on our opponent and to continue to deal damage by returning a protector to his or her hand. The thing I like most about Soul Rend, though, is that it does not directly target the ally. So in essence, if our opponent used his or her last card to play either Raul “Fingers” Maldren or Norrund Grovewalker, then we can trade with other allies on the board and essentially destroy an untargetable ally with Soul Rend. Soul Rend is exceptional and the only Priest ability that I would advise taking early for fear that other drafters would hate draft it, since having multiples can be very annoying for our opponents.

Mind Soothe

In Sealed Pack or Booster Draft, our decks will be made up mostly of allies. This makes Mind Soothe not as playable as it might be in a Constructed control Priest deck. If we play Mind Soothe on an opposing ally, it cannot deal damage to our hero, but our opponent can wait until we lay one of our allies and then simply attack that ally into ours. This will result in card disadvantage for us, which is something we want to try to avoid in Draft.

Uncommons

 Holy Fire

This is another decent ally removal ability for Priest. Holy Fire also allows us to deal damage to the opposing hero and continue to deal damage to our opponent every turn. Plus, it’s damage that cannot be prevented, which makes the opponent’s armor useless against it. This 3-cost ability that kills most other 3-drops will make our deck almost every time.

Mass Dispel

Priest has a definite answer to Cat Form decks if it needs it. Being a big fan of Cat Form in Constructed, I was very saddened to see this card released. Mass Dispel is a better Burn Away, able to destroy all opposing abilities and keep ours in play. It will be used primarily as a side deck card, capable of killing off opponents’ Polymorphs, Freezing Traps, and any Poison cards that those pesky Rogues are able to attach to our hero.

Rares

Shadowfiend

This is one of the most explosive allies, and only Priests can play it. It looks as if Shadowfiend costs 2 resources to play, but it really only costs 1 because we get to ready a resource most of the time. Shadowfiend is a recurring Blistering Fire, making it very easy to put our opponents on an early clock, and he is very hard to deal with because only instant abilities handle him effectively.

Pact of Shadow

Too expensive in Draft for what it does, Pact of Shadow could be well utilized in Constructed.

Vampiric Touch

Costing 3 resources to play, Vampiric Touch is expensive for a DoT that doesn’t do anything when it’s initially played. It has much more potential in a Constructed deck that packs tons of Shadow abilities than it does in a Draft deck.

Pain Suppression

Pain Suppression requires us to use a Discipline hero. This prevents us from using the best Horde and Alliance Priest heroes, which are both the Shadow Priests, since they have the most useful flips for Draft. So although Pain Suppression has a great ability for stalling rush decks, we’ll probably want to avoid it in Draft because we won’t want to use heroes that can play it.

Strategy

Up until Fires of Outland, the Alliance Priests were not all that great. Deacon Markus Hallow, though, is one of the best heroes to come out of Fires. Deacon’s flip forces our opponents not to hit their normal curve of allies and may delay them from laying a big ally for another turn to ensure that we cannot steal it. Since we have abilities like Mind Spike and Shadow Word: Pain, our opponents may not be able to stop us from doing so. Deacon is also a Human hero, which is why I said earlier that Manhunt is an excellent quest to have and can possibly make an opponent discard an ally from his or her hand.

A good mid- to late game curve would be suitable for this type of Draft deck, although I do encourage trying to get a bunch of 1- and 2-cost allies that will force our opponents to deal with them and use cards out of their hands.

The best Horde Priest to use is the other Shadow Priest, Omedus the Punisher. We will most likely always be able to use his flip power to inflict an extra 6 damage to the opposing hero, making our allies need to deal less damage to win the game.

When drafting Omedus, I usually like to have an aggressive approach that is similar to the Constructed Omedus strategy. Focus on drafting 1- and 2-cost allies and try to draft a few allies with ferocity. Problems we can run into are bigger allies and protectors that may get in our way. Having a few ways to make our opponent discard a couple of extra cards is helpful, but we also need to be capable of destroying big opposing allies. Some of the Priest abilities may not deal a great amount of damage, so keep in mind that grabbing a hold of Vanquish, Unwelcome Visitor, or even Flash of Steel can be helpful for keeping our opponents on the defensive.

Priest is a lot of fun to draft and can be very frustrating for your opponents when they have to decide which cards to keep and which ones to discard. Next week, I will be going over another class that is also good at healing: Paladin.