Worst Class in The Boomsday Project: Decks for Laddering With Priest in the Boomsday Meta

The Boomsday Project meta is beginning to settle and the consensus is that this time the shortest straw has been drawn by Priest. The class is hardly present on the ladder and wins can be hard to come by. Priest simply did not get much from Boomsday and missing out on even a single expansion hurts any class a lot.

The cloning theme with Zerek, Master Cloner and Zerek's Cloning Gallery at the front did not turn out to be meta-defining, or even part of the meta for the most part. The only glimmer of hope for the theme is some experimentation with Big Priest featuring the Cloning Gallery, but that is still unrefined and unproven.

The craze over APM Priest with its action-intensive but admittedly potent Test Subject and Topsy Turvy OTK died down after the initial hype as it turned out that the deck has a hard time surviving until it can pull off the combo. The archetype is basically dead right now.

Mecha’thun Priest with its Reckless Experimenter OTK combo is more alive and much easier to play than APM Priest was, but it too can struggle to survive long enough and only looks unstoppable with an early Hemet, Jungle Hunter draw.

With hardly any solid new archetypes available for Priest, the class has turned to fine-tuning its old classics. It is still possible to find some success with Priest on the ladder, but all of its decks have some glaring weaknesses as well, so you need to pay attention to the meta you are facing if you decide to go with Priest.

Let’s take a look at some builds people have found success with and how they may help you find a Priest deck suitable for your pocket of the meta.

Control Priest (Mind Blast Priest)

The power of Shadowreaper Anduin cannot be denied: Control Priest remains the overall strongest Priest deck on the ladder and a solid choice for some Priestly goodness.

There are several variants of the deck, but they are all within a couple of cards of each other. This particular build does not include any cards from Boomsday, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view. If you don’t have a lot of Boomsday cards, you can play this without any!

Some variants include Omega Medic or Giggling Inventor, but neither is particularly impressive: Omega Medic heal comes very late in the game (although it is a decent three-drop without the heal), and relying on Giggling Inventor as your only line of defense in a meta warped to use and try to counter that card is sketchy. Inventor is no doubt a super powerful card – it has forced almost everyone to tech against it – but Control Priest lacks the support to really make it shine.

Some people opt to tech in Silence, Gluttonous Ooze, or Skulking Geist, but all of these require just the right meta to be worth it.

This build simply wants to cycle through the deck, become Shadowreaper Anduin, and ping some face for up to 16 damage in a turn with two Mind Blasts or even up to 22 damage in a turn with four Mind Blasts from Shadow Visions. There is also some additional reach and healing in the form of Holy Fire. It’s a baseline version that can be teched for your particular meta.

That said, all Control Priests share roughly the same strengths and weaknesses in the end: Druid and Warrior will out-armor your burst and Quest Rogue will come at you hard. Other than that, you have a fairly good chance.

Combo Priest

Combo Priest has largely ditched the Test Subject plan and is back to using good old high-health minions again. There are a couple of variants, either with Mechs or with regular minions, and this build was featured in Blizzard’s own off-meta report just a few days ago. The deck is incapable of OTK – it has to get a minion to stick on the board in order to buff it up with Divine Spirit and Inner Fire to win the game. On the bright side, it has a number of high-health minions and the ability to call them back from beyond the grave with Eternal Servitude to accomplish this task.

It should be noted that Combo Priest does not have a good win rate record on the ladder overall. This build, for example, heavily targets Druid and Quest Rogue, but if you find yourself in a different meta, it can struggle.

For something a bit more widely applicable, the Mech variants have a better overall matchup spread. For example, this build was brought to the APAC Fall Playoffs by three players, and it was the only Combo Priest list present in that tournament:

The deck is as capable at challenging Druid as the off-meta report one, but it takes a beating from Rogue more often than the off-meta variant. On the bright side, it is generally better in a mixed meta, but having a chance in your unfavorables instead of getting completely stomped may still not be enough to reliably climb with it.

Velen Big Priest

Big Priest has not really been a thing lately, but over the past couple of days this Savjz’s build has seen play on Legend ladder. It’s not a traditional Big Priest though. It is a Velen combo version that does not go purely for the combo. It can beat slow decks with resurrected Prophet Velen and Malygos and Mind Blasts, but it can also grind out aggressive decks with Zilliax and The Lich King and bringing back copies of them.

As it is not purely focused on the combo, it cannot get those 60 damage turns to end games even through a fair bit of armor, but it can hope to contest aggressive decks better than a pure combo build can. Tempo Mage remains the bane of this Priest deck too.

Bonus points for being a deck that actually uses Zerek's Cloning Gallery – this is currently the only deck tracked on HSReplay with Zerek's Cloning Gallery in it that has an above-50% win rate.

Mecha’thun Priest

Mecha'thun Priest is well-tuned at this point of the expansion life cycle. Hokage recently reached top-200 Legend with this build, but the same builds have been around for some weeks by now.

Mecha’thun Priest has a clear win condition: they want to draw their entire deck and empty their hand until only five cards remain: Mecha'thun, Reckless Experimenter, Coffin Crasher, and two copies of Ticking Abomination. Zero-cost spells are fine, as they can also be played on the final turn. The final turn is then Reckless Experimenter (which makes all subsequent Deathrattle minions die at the end of the turn) + Coffin Crasher (which will die first, summoning Mecha'thun) + Ticking Abominations (which will die last, killing the Priest’s entire board and winning the game).

The key card to accomplish all of this is Hemet, Jungle Hunter, which will purge the deck of all undesirable spells and small minions, leaving only combo pieces and Psychic Screams. The next turns will be some stalling with Psychic Screams while the rest of the cards are drawn, and then it’s time to win the game.

As usual for a pure combo deck, Mecha’thun Priest dies to aggressive strategies. Tempo Mage and Odd Rogue are almost auto-loss matchups, and also Even Warlock and Malygos Druid can be too fast for the deck. At the other end of the spectrum, the deck wrecks all control decks except for Control Warlock, which in turn has Demonic Project that destroys the combo just before it can be played. Facing a lot of Big Spell Mage or Odd Warrior? Look no further, you can pick up this bad boy and enjoy your free wins in those matchups.

Spiteful Priest

What about good old Spiteful Priest? The archetype has seen better days. I could not find top-level decks and, looking at statistics, the performance of Spiteful Priest decks went down the drain the higher up on the ladder my search extended. While old lists can still do well low in the ladder, they are out of their depth already when approaching Rank 5.

Practically all widely played Spiteful Priest decks are too greedy and poorly teched for the current meta. With that observation in mind, I took out some of the greed and teched the archetype properly against Giggling Inventor with Blood Knight and Mossy Horror and ended up with a viable build ready for climbing for those who enjoy a more midrange style of Priest play.

The deck still does not run any Boomsday cards, because, well, Priest just did not get much from the expansion.

Spiteful Priest is one of the few Priest decks without highly polarized matchups. On one hand, this means that you always have a chance. On the other hand, you are not handed any free wins with the deck. As the best decks in any given meta tend to have some free win matchups, this could be interpreted to mean that Spiteful Priest isn’t one of the best decks. Yet, it can still be a solid choice for some Priest action.

Midrange Dragon Priest

Speaking of midrange decks, have you ever missed Midrange Dragon Priest? While the current Standard format does not offer the infinite value of Netherspite Historian and Drakonid Operative anymore, it is still possible to play midrange Priest decks also without Spiteful Summoner, in case you happened to dust your copies back when it was nerfed.

Here’s my take on Midrange Dragon Priest that I used early in September during my ladder climb with good results. Duskbreaker is a solid swing card and Scaleworm can also let you back into the game after Priest’s admittedly weak early game. In the mid-game the deck is capable of building a good board and between Mossy Horror and Mass Dispel, it has tools to break through most defenses.

One card that I enjoy in particular in Midrange Priest decks is Chameleos. It is a game-winning card that gives you a ton of scouting information and can be a key card at the right moment. It is also one of the most misunderstood cards in the game. I never keep Chameleos in the mulligan, while statistics show that people keep it more than 70% of the time. That’s just plain wrong. Chameleos is at its best as a mid-game draw when it can start feeding you relevant information and you will have enough mana to take advantage of the cards it offers. If you keep it in the mulligan, you will start to receive some information, but mostly it is related to irrelevant early-game cards, not the cards that the opponent is holding on to. Furthermore, you cannot use any of the cards early yourself, unless you want to use Chameleos to play some two-drop or three-drop, and that is not going to be worth it. Take good care of your Chameleos, and it can take good care of you.

What to Ladder With as Priest?

Priest has tools to challenge anything in the meta right now, but sadly all lists have their weaknesses as well.

• Want to beat Druids and Quest Rogues? Play Combo Priest.
• Want to beat Big Spell Mages and Warriors? Play Mecha’thun Priest.
• Want to have a good chance against a wide variety of slower decks? Play Velen Big Priest.
• Want to beat anything that is not Druid, Warrior, or Quest Rogue? Play Control Priest.
• Want to have a fighting chance against anything, but never hugely favored? Play Spiteful or Midrange Priest.

The above list highlight’s Priest’s current problem. There are Priest decks for every situation, but when you face a diverse ladder meta, there are no Priest decks that can guarantee success.

Hopefully this showcase nonetheless helps you decide your own Priestly path in the Boomsday meta.

What about you? Have you played any other good Priest archetypes lately? Have you had good success with any of the archetypes mentioned here? Let me know in the comments!