Very Vanilla Dragon Priest 75% winrate to legend: Season 37

Intro

I’m relatively new to hearthstone and had a 75% winrate from rank 5 to Legendary with this vanilla version of Dragon Priest. I never made it beyond Rank 2 single star before Un’goro playing mostly dragon priest. At the start of the season I played lyra versions of DP, but I was struggling to get beyond rank 4. Then I ditched the radiant elemental lLyra the Sunshard  package and made some tweaks vs the current meta. 

There are 100 different tweaks to dragon priest out there all centered around drakonid OP. Many lists currently include lyra(super cool card) and Radiant Elemental . My deck is a very vanilla dragon deck with simple to play cards without the elemental package. Before un’goro the meta was really fast and you had to play Dragon priest on curve. The new meta is slightly slower and allows for more a bit more control, so you can include cards like Ysera which help greatly with longer match ups like taunt warrior (eating that 8 damage like a boss). 

Card Choices

Most cards in the dragon priest deck are very standard and essential. The core of any dragon priest deck I saw are: 2x Northshire Cleric , Shadow Word: Pain 2x Shadow Visions, 1 or 2x Shadow Word: Death, 2x Power Word: Shield, Northshire Cleric, 2x Twilight Drake , 2x Drakonid Operative  , 2x Book Wyrm ,  2x Dragonfire Potion , 1 or 2x Primordial Drake . These cards are 20-22 out of 30 cards leaving you with 8-10 choices.

The most common match ups I played from rank 5 onward were: Midrange Hunter, Quest Rogue and Tempo Rogue, Control and Murloc Paladin, Pirate and Quest warriors AND dragon priests. These match ups made up 80% of my games. I didn’t play any warlocks or druids. There were a few mage games in there, but dragon priest does well vs all mages, so no need to worry about that. 

The tweaks I made to dragon priest were specifically to counter these decks above.

My Picks: 

1. 2x Potion of Madness .
   Amazing vs hunter (20% of my games) and quest and pirate warriors. With hunter you will want to either keep to board clean from beasts to there is nothing to adapt early game or you will want to steal their rat packs, kindly grandmothers and poisonous beasts. They also work well to clean up after the savannah highmane after you sw:death them. 

   Against pirate warrior you use it to keep your board clean from the get go to prevent as much damage to your face as possible. Against quest warrior you can steal quite a few good cards or even temporary remove their taunt like alley smith to push damage to their face. I think running 2 of these is essential to win most of your hunter games. There are so many 2 attack cards in the current meta that you’ll find use of them in nearly every match up.

   Always keep one of these on mulligan in all match ups. 

2. 1x  Curious Glimmerroot I think this is the most non essential card in the deck. It has some synergy with Twilight Drake and it gives you good information what is NOT in their deck. This can be useful at times when you’re in a longer match up. It’s also a decent card to play late game as you will be able to play the card you pull quite often. It is good vs control paladin and shamans. I picked it over kabal talon priest, because I nearly never have a target for kabal talon priest early game, so it ends up a 3/4 vanilla card and it sucks to pull it late game. 

   You can replace this card with something more specific like hungry crab or golakka crawler if you feel you’re running into a lot of these decks. Always use stats to see how often you play vs these decks in the last games so you can adjust accordingly. 

3. 2x Gluttonous Ooze 
   This card has won so many games for me. All hunters now run eaglebow, all warriors run at least fiery war axe and pirate warriors run the arcanite reaper on top. It’s also essential vs paladin to kill their tyrion properly. I used to run 1 of these, but 2 is necessary. Even medivh is common now, so absolute must include.
4. 2x Priest of the Feast
   There are quite a few decks trying to burst you down. With a few cheap spells like pain, potion of madness and pw;s you can easily heal back up. Almost every hunter will beat you down to 10 hp so having this in will save you. There’s also a mage deck running around that will try to use alexstraza and then K.O. you. You need to save this card and some spells to get you back into the safe area. 

   Don’t feel like you must play this card on curve. It’s fine and sometimes essential to save it until you can cascade a few spells of it. Always keep it in hand until vital vs mage decks.

5. Ysera 
   This has been the MVP so many times. It mostly shines vs taunt warrior. Many times priest cannot win late game vs taunt warrior because you won’t be able to keep minions on the board. This guy sucks up a full rag blow and will help you to keep your board full with extra minions or finish it off with ysera awakens. Aside from quest warrior I found him very useful vs priest(like duh obviously) and paladin decks that went the distance. Many times paladin would have out-valued me, but ysera saved my butt. 

   A really cool combo in longer matches is to get Deathwing the lord of netherspite when you have ysera in your hand. 

Card exclusions

I left out the lyra package. It is too unreliable and you can never cast it mid game. Your radiant elementals will nearly always die before you get your lyra to stick. I think lyra does not fit in the dragon priest deck at all, but save him for silence priest. 

I also left out golokka crawler as I feel there are not enough pirates across all decks and you do really well vs warriors anyway. The priest of the feast + shadow visions will help you out in many matches where your life total is threatened. 

The biggest exclusion is probably kabal talon priest. This card is in nearly every deck, but this deck is not looking to play a strong curve, so many times it was wasted in my hand and there are better 3 drops. Like the gluttunous ooze. So kabal talon priest was very often a 3-4 plain card that occupied an important draw later in the game. I felt the hunters and warriors had no issues to remove a 3-4 card, so it wouldn’t even stick. 

Many people are running Elise. I think elise is great for priests with the shadow visions, but it’s also a bit clunky. Ysera has a more direct impact and also helps you trigger your other dragons. Ysera offers a lot of value that can help you win longer matches like elise would. Also many times with elise you’ll find you need to make space to open the pack and it’s all a bit slow. If you get a crappy pack you might lose. I still think elise is amazing, but not for dragon priest. 

Your mulligans

Other guides have already written extensively on how to mulligan dragon priest, so I’ll just add the specifics. Keep Potion of Madness in every match up. Don’t keep glimmer root in aggressive match ups even though it’s a low 3 drop. Hard mulligan for ooze vs warrior. Keep priest of the feast vs hunter, warrior and mage. Only keep netherspite if you’re keeping twilight dragon.