The Comprehensive TITANS Preview

 

Grace of the Highfather

A 3-mana spell that heals for 8 is generally not good enough to see constructed play. Flash Heal restores 5 health for 1 mana and barely sees play. The bonus of this spell is that if you overheal, you get to discover a card at the cost of the amount overhealed.

Notice that it discovers “a card”. It doesn’t specify a Priest card or a spell, so neutral minions exist in the pool. This means that the card quality here is very low compared to other discover effects available to Priest. The class has access to so many generation options that we struggle to see how Grace of the Highfather makes the cut. The deck needs to be restricted to running a very small package of minions or is completely desperate for healing effects.

Score: 1

Student of the Stars

A 3 mana 4/3 that doesn’t impact the board is quite terrible. The effect is extremely slow and is one that we’ve seen many times over the years. The potential for ‘infinite’ value and fatigue insurance doesn’t make up for the fact that we’re playing a bad card in our deck. A 3 mana 7/6 isn’t even that good if you find the 2^nd Student later in the game. The “dream” is to summon a board of Students with Ra-den, which should take as much time to execute as the average Priest mirror.

Score: 1

Serenity

A Shadow Word: Horror upgrade, with a permanent attack de-buff on minions that don’t die to the spell. Our issue with this card is that Clean the Scene is so much better, especially later in the game since it scales with Infuse. Priest’s removal toolkit is very powerful already, to the point a situational but strong board clear such as Lightbomb doesn’t even see play in a 40-card Renathal build.

This card isn’t terrible and could be a fringe option if the meta calls for it, but we suspect that Serenity will slip through the cracks if the format isn’t token heavy.

Score: 1

Astral Automaton

Priest gets its own version of Pogo-Hopper, reliant on a summon count rather than a battlecry. It’s important to note that the scaling of Automaton is 50% slower, only gaining +1/+1 on every new Automaton, but this card has a persistent aura like Clockwork Assistant (the Kazakusan treasure). This means that if you have an Automaton on the board and play another, the one on the board will be buffed to update with the new Automaton count.

Priest does have plenty of tools, both class specific and neutral, that could accelerate the scaling of Automaton. There are some problems with the concept though. One is that you have no great way to reliably tutor Automaton to start the copy chain. The other is that you’re risking inserting a lot of cards into the deck that only work with Automaton but aren’t great cards by themselves, leaving you short on survivability.

We’re also not completely sure it’s that great of a win condition if you completely build around Automatons and Ra-den, as it makes your deck one-dimensional. Perhaps it’s a better idea to maintain a control shell and utilize Automaton as a pressure clock, while counting on its other value generators to win a late game grind. That likely requires it to drop Renathal and become more proactive. Perhaps, pigs will fly on August 1^st.

Score: 2

Creation Protocol

Creation Protocol discovers COPIES of minions in your deck, which means you’re not drawing the original minion but generating additional value. If you forge this card, you get two copies of the minion. Control Priest is a deck that runs a very curated package of high impact minions which can be very powerful to get additional copies of, especially when each of them is powerful in a specific situation and you have the option to discover the best choice at the time.

For example, the option to discover more copies of Aman’Thul, Blackwater Behemoth or Astalor, is very enticing to ramp up your late game. Alternatively, an innocent Armor Vendor could come up clutch if you’re playing against a burn-centric deck. And yes, even Dirty Rat looks quite scary in the late game if you can get multiple copies of it, making it less likely you’ll miss your desired target. Obviously, this card is paramount if you’re looking to build around Astral Automaton. Creation Protocol could encourage Priest to a run minion-light build, with just a few high impact threats that it can repeatedly develop.

All in all, it’s hard to see Priest pass up on such a strong and reliable value generator, a big consistency boost to its game plan. Whether you play a standard Control Priest build, or you look to do some Ra-den shenanigans, Creation Protocol should be a core inclusion in your deck.

Score: 4

False Disciple

False Disciple gives you an option to discover a legendary Priest minion that’s rotated out to Wild. On paper, this looks like a high value discover attached to a reasonable early game body. For example, this compares quite favorably to Paparazzi.

But we did take a more thorough look at the minion pool available to Disciple, and it’s not as amazing as it sounds. There are a lot of bad Priest legendary minions, or ones that are reliant on synergies not available in Standard. Competition for value generators in Control Priest is going to be very tight and this is not guaranteed to give us great value. Creation Protocol, for example, is much better than this.

This doesn’t beat the Paparazzi allegations.

Score: 1

The Stars Align

This is a wacky card that resembles Energy Shaper in Mage, only for minions. This effect doesn’t even have a minion attached to it but counts on you getting ahead on board through the random transformation effect. You’re hoping that random garbage that costs (3) less mana can carry you.

We highly doubt this works. You need to run a build with a high density of minions, otherwise you’re not getting enough value for the spell. This only transforms minions in your hand. A high density of minions means less removal and less comeback mechanics. In theory, you’re running this alongside Ra-den and hoping for fireworks, provided you don’t end up drawing Ra-den before you get to Align.

Highly optimistic and likely a meme card on the same competitive level as Energy Shaper.

Score: 1

Shapeless Constellation

Such a shame. This is one of the best artworks in the set, wasted on a card that’s unlikely to see any play. Shapeless Constellation is a “Big Priest” type of card, but this effect needs to happen earlier (around turn 6), to have a chance to be competitive. If you’re building a deck of minions with highly powerful static effects, you’ll find out that Shapeless Constellation doesn’t really provide you with mana cheating. Aman’Thul and Behemoth, Priest’s strongest minions, can be played a turn early.

This doesn’t even work with Ra-den, since the minion Constellation transforms into isn’t the one being played. Just an all-around, strangely underpowered card.

Score: 1

Ra-den

Ra-den’s deathrattle summons every minion you’ve played that didn’t start in your deck, so any minion you’ve generated and played throughout the course of the game. That includes E.T.C band members, for example. This is basically Rommath for minions, being 3 mana cheaper but on a deathrattle, making it less reliable.

We think that spending mana on minions is generally harder than spending it on spells. For minions to be impactful summons from Ra-den, they need to be large and expensive. The only exception is something like Automaton, which might be the best target for a Ra-den resurrection. With Rommath, you can accumulate a lot of cheap spells you’ve cast and get value. There is a greater limit to board space with Ra-den.

This may not be a bad card to run in a slow Priest deck. You can kill Ra-den with ‘The Light! It Burns!’ to immediately generate a board too. Copying Aman’Thul/Behemoth with Synchronize/Protocol and then playing Ra-den to resummon them doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, but it does take a lot of time. Control Priest might be able to afford that kind of time.

Score: 2

Aman’Thul

Aman’Thul is a powerhouse of a TITAN. It could be the strongest one of them all when you consider how easily it can take over a game just by being dropped on turn 7. It has a massive 10 health, which makes it hard to kill, while a couple of its abilities make it even harder to kill.

Shape the Stars also works on enemy minions, which means you can summon copies of them on your board with the small buff. Thankfully, Team 5 is not letting you copy a TITAN with this ability. Otherwise, this might be a little unfair and feel really annoying to play against.

Strike from History is likely going to be the most often utilized ability upon entrance, removing two enemy minions from the game. This ability works like Mage’s Life Sentence, meaning that no deathrattles are triggered and the minions removed do not go into the graveyard. They cannot be resurrected as no history of them dying exists.

Vision of Heroes is a strong ability if you’re playing Amal’Thul proactively. It summons a random 6-drop and gives it both lifesteal and taunt, which protects yourself and protects Aman’Thul from being traded into.

On top of all these powerful abilities, Aman’Thul allows you to discover any legendary minion every time you use an ability, so it works in a similar way to The Primus, accumulating more resources if it gets to cast more abilities.

Any legendary minion means you can discover ones from other classes, which is a very high-quality pool of discover options. That could become overwhelming if Aman’Thul survives for multiple turns.

We don’t think there’s a single Priest deck that’s going to pass on Aman’Thul. It’s an obvious staple in Control Priest decks, but even aggressive decks like Undead Priest will likely top their curve with it. It provides too much board pressure and resources to pass on and demands immediate removal on 10 health. It’s also a clean way to answer other TITANS, turning the momentum over to the Priest. Copying it with Synchronize or Protocol sounds like a powerful line in late game matchups.

Just far too good.

Score: 4

Final Thoughts

TITANS Set Rank: 9^th

Overall Power Ranking:  8^th

Our thoughts on Priest are driven by an expectation of increased late game lethality. Control Priest’s success is often reliant on low inevitability, which was clear to see throughout Festival of Legends. The moment win conditions get nerfed and it becomes more difficult for decks to finish each other off, Priest’s game plan of surviving and grinding out opponents becomes stronger. It’s much more important for Priest not to encounter overwhelming win conditions and intimidating clocks, than whether it got another good discover card or two.

Control Priest might face a predicament. This expansion is introducing a lot of late game mechanics that are very difficult to outlast through attrition. Combine that with a class set that’s relatively underwhelming, and our expectation is that Priest will have a slow start at the launch of TITANS, even with the powerful Aman’Thul by its side.

A key factor to Priest’s ability to adapt is whether it finds it own pressure clock on the opponent. Rather than grinding out opponents slowly, Priest could reinvent itself with a proactive win condition. Astral Automaton stands out as the class’ greatest hope.

Rather than going all-in with a deck that can only leverage Automaton and do nothing else, we think there’s greater potential in running a Control Priest shell with a very curated package of minions that can be consistently copied with Creation Protocol. Blackwater Behemoth, Aman’Thul and Ra-den stand out as powerful targets. This might be a welcomed transition for most players as the mirror matchup may no longer be an endless fatigue battle.

Unfortunately, we can’t identify other new avenues for the class with the current set that don’t seem incredibly gimmicky. It may require some post-launch cooking, as the Priest class tends to be hard to figure out. Undead Priest could stick around, but it barely got any new cards to play with and is already struggling to attract a crowd.

Anduin is about to face a big test. Can he survive TITANS’ upcoming late game battle and continue to force his opponents to press the concede button? Will one little robot be the difference maker? Will we continue to wonder why Aman’Thul has 10 health? Find out in the next chapter of Priest’s battle against everyone else’s happiness.