The Comprehensive Scholomance Academy Preview

 

Raise Dead

Pretty cool card that offers a card draw effect to Priest but doesn’t fit an archetype like Galakrond Priest. Raise Dead fits a faster deck that doesn’t have minion generation, or alternatively a Resurrect Priest deck, where it could bring back your original, synergistic minions to your hand. Its mana cost could also be relevant for Spellburst activations.

Score: 2

Draconic Studies

This card doesn’t have any synergy with the current set. Most dragons are expensive, so even if we ran a dragon deck in theory, this doesn’t seem to be a strong enabler for it. We might have considered this in Highlander Priest, but we don’t believe this archetype will be relevant, so this card is unlikely to see play.

Score: 1

Frazzled Freshman

How can you take advantage of a vanilla 1 mana 1/4? You need buffs, which Priest has plenty of, so they could be leveraged into building a more aggressive Priest deck. This archetype has been around during Ashes of Outland, and it’s not that far away from being competitive, so Freshman offers a strong upgrade at the 1-mana slot for it.

Score: 2

Wave of Apathy

This spell immediately makes us think of Cabal Shadow Priest as well as Cabal Acolyte, another new card from this set. Could be a strong package alongside Lazul’s Scheme to enable some serious shenanigans that your opponent is guaranteed to hate. The problem is that these kind of combo cards require card draw to be consistent, which is something that Control Priest decks just don’t have access to.

Score: 2

Power Word: Feast

Solid early game buff that can be taken advantage of in several ways. We could play a 1-drop, buff it on turn 2 and proceed to make a value trade, putting us in a strong position going forward. We could use this to buff Injured Blademaster or Injured Tol’vir in order to get immediate value. Overall, it’s a nice spell that can fit a faster Priest, and will see play if such an archetype emerges (still questionable).

Score: 2

Gift of Luminance

This buff fits a Deathrattle Priest deck more than an Inner Fire Priest since Gift doesn’t help us get taller on the board and we want to get some value from the 1/1. Could also work with Sethekk Veilweaver, but it’s always very optimistic to assume that our must-kill 2-drop will not be killed. This spell simply has too much competition in the 3-mana slot with Apotheosis and Dragonmaw Overseer available for this kind of deck.

Score: 1

Brittlebone Destroyer

This card is comparable to Vilespine Slayer, even though it’s inferior due to its activation mechanic. It offers more unconditional removal to a deck like Galakrond Priest, which has multiple ways of healing itself outside of the hero power. The only issue is how easy will it be able to activate after we play Galakrond and switch our hero power, giving our opponent better means of counterplay.

Score: 2

Initiation

This might be the worst class card of Scholomance Academy. It’s so slow and conditional that we don’t see any way for it to see play. We’re as confident about this as we were about Imprisoned Observer. Oh wait.

Score: 1

Cabal Acolyte

Powerful enough as a standalone card and has the potential to birth an entire package alongside it. A 4 mana 2/6 is already ‘okay’, but the Spellburst activation on top of it is just simply disgusting. It’s going to be very difficult to develop minions into a Cabal Acolyte when its Spellburst charge is up, and if coupled with a spell immediately, it can completely swing a matchup against an aggressive deck by itself.

The problem is, where does this card fit? That’s why our score for it is low.

Score: 2

Devout Pupil

We think that Devout Pupil’s ceiling in Priest is insane, possibly even higher than Paladin’s, and the only question is whether an archetype that can utilize a large package of buffs can emerge. Pupil fits a Paladin deck that already exists and is proven to be a competitive performer, but the same cannot be said for Priest. Considering that there are several other cards in this set that support such an archetype, it could end up working out. If it does, Devout Pupil is guaranteed to be an all-star performer.

Score: 3

Flesh Giant

There are two major issues with this card in Priest. The first is that Priest doesn’t have a way to easily damage itself, so if it cannot do so, it can also not heal itself very consistently. This means that it should be hard for a Priest deck to discount the card quickly enough. The second issue is that Priest has no card draw, so even if it did discount the card quickly enough, it’s unlikely to draw it consistently. Combining this card with Grave Rune or Psyche Split is just pure fantasy, considering the class’ draw deficiencies too.

Score: 1

Mindrender Illucia

Our prediction for the most hated card of the expansion. Illucia is, to put it in very blunt terms, broken beyond belief. Her utility in every Priest deck is simply ludicrous. Galakrond Priest can now play Illucia in the late game to steal and/or waste every possible card that could prove to be threatening to its game plan. It makes Priest capable of countering combo decks by removing their critical pieces from the game. Just imagine stealing a Wonderous Wand or wasting all the burn that a Quest Warlock is assembling to kill you. There are too many examples to list where Illucia can just end the game. The fact your opponent can play what’s in your hand in response doesn’t matter much: You’re a Galakrond Priest, so most of your hand is filled with randomly generated garbage anyway!

And then in faster Priest decks, Illucia is fuel. She allows you to steal your opponents’ valuable threats and turns them into your threats. She can help you waste critical removal or a card needed for the opponent’s survival. We simply can’t see any Priest deck looking at Illucia and saying “oh, she just doesn’t fit”. We’re ready to be surprised but this is a gargantuan 4 out of 4.

Score: 4

Disciplinarian Gandling

This is a powerful card that just doesn’t fit the class. Priest doesn’t have an enticing deathrattle package, and it cannot run a horde of 1-drops to provide fuel for Gandling since it doesn’t have card draw. An aggressive deck with buffs doesn’t want this card, and it’s a hindrance for slower decks too. If Deathrattle Priest somehow emerges, it will love Gandling, but we’ll be surprised if that becomes a thing.

Score: 1

High Abbess Alura

Much like Devout Pupil, Alura’s ceiling and consistency could be even higher in Priest than it is in Paladin, but the archetype she goes into is what we’re unsure about. It’s all about whether purely aggressive Priest decks that run no removal can succeed in the upcoming meta. If an Inner Fire Tempo Priest deck emerges, Alura will probably be its strongest card. Her synergy with Power Word: Shield and the potential to cheat out a Power Infusion, Apotheosis or Psyche Split could be game-ending. We’re big fans of this one.

Score: 3

 

 

Final Thoughts

Scholomance Academy Set Rank: 9^th

Overall Power Ranking: 10^th

It’s so strange to rank Priest this low, yet to find it so potentially terrifying. On paper, Priest’s set has many question marks. It is relying on an archetype that was gone following the retirement of Divine Spirit, to reappear. It is banking on Galakrond Priest to drastically strengthen despite receiving very few cards it can incorporate into its build and feel good about it.

Then why is Priest so scary? The last balance changes, where almost every class got nerfed except for Priest, somehow saw Galakrond Priest getting worse. After placing Priest last in the Power Rankings in this piece, why would we give Anduin so much respect?

We don’t respect Anduin. We respect Illucia.

Galakrond Priest generates a lot of random garbage, which can make it unpredictable and frustrating to play against, but if there’s one thing that’s certain about the deck is that it usually needs to see you fail. Priest doesn’t proactively kill you often. It likes to humiliate you before it finishes the job. Galakrond Priest is a comic book villain that details his entire evil plan to the hero, giving him enough time to save the day.

But what if just before the hero can save the day, Illucia shows up and says “nuh uh”? The potential of Galakrond Priest disrupting your game plan in a proactive way is something that’s difficult to assess until we see it in the flesh. So, it’s possible that this one card makes all the difference, and if it doesn’t, our ranking of Priest is appropriate.

But, it might be a bit unfair to put all the class’ hopes on Galakrond Priest. We’re very curious about an Inner-Fire Tempo Priest, an archetype that is seeing its card quality continue to increase in this expansion. Freshman, Feast, Pupil, Alura, and Voracious Reader are the cards you want to focus on. They could be enough to diversify Priest, offering a game plan that’s very different from its Galakrond plan: Develop, buff, pressure and kill.

Oh, and that deck’s going to play Illucia too. Tough luck, everyone.