How do you defeat a priest?

[Deleted]

Well to be fair most paladin cards are a pretty good steal for a priest. But you just have to remember that overall the cards are quite balanced as the priest is probably going to suffer stealing from other decks.

I might have the shittiest luck when it comes to fighting priests but it seems that more often than not they steal my Hex/Fire Ele/Lightning Storm. Rather frustrating to play against especially since cards like those where meant to be balanced for the class that has them. Mindvision and Thoughtsteal are just a crappy concept in my opinion. Either the priest gets hosed with some trash cards he can't use because they work best with a class combo they don't have access to or they get even more removal/boardclears than they should have. And everything in between of course.
Now at the moment of writing I might be more than a little bit biased since a priest just coined thoughtsteal on turn 2 and wrecked my Totem + Feral Spirits the turn after with the luckiest rng.

[Vulturia]

I like how all complaints about Thoughtsteal / Mind vision are:
1. You always remember only the best cards stolen and never remember the worst.
2. You always complain about how good the stolen card was, but never mention that you always have it in your deck, while the Priest needs to get lucky and steal it.

[Eon Drache]

Seems like Priests always get my best cards when they use Mind Vision or Thoughtsteal. They always get my removal cards, or card draw cards.

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Uh what? Equality + Holy Nova.

I had a Pyroblast victory against a Priest today. Instead of healing himself to put him at 11 health, he mind controls my minion, and the next turn I just throw a Pyroblast in his face. He prob would have won if he healed, because he had like 4 minions on the board, and I had none.

Would cost 7 mana, they'd get no healing out of it, and chances are they would reduce their own minions to rubble. Most of the paladin cards have 2 or less health anyway except the bigger late game cards. Which would all be hit by Death, excluding a few. I'd still say it would probably be the least desired card out of the paladin toolkit.

[Master Po]

Priest is the last thing I fear with my Paladin deck. Hunter is most annoying but I think I handle them better with my new card deck.

[Ryme]

I like how all complaints about Thoughtsteal / Mind vision are:
1. You always remember only the best cards stolen and never remember the worst.
2. You always complain about how good the stolen card was, but never mention that you always have it in your deck, while the Priest needs to get lucky and steal it.

It's still an exceptionally valuable card, same mana as Arcane Intellect, but you add the additional cards to your deck. This is often balanced around the fact that each deck is tailored to itself, however with how efficient and independently most decks are created to be, this doesn't really work out.

[OrcsRLame]

Priest is one of the worst classes in game right now, probably only beat out by mage. If you're consistently losing to priest it means 1 of 3 things.

1. Your deck is too slow. You can beat a priest with control, but aggro wrecks them.
2. Your decision making is poor.
3. Your deck is bad.

Fixing 1 is easy. Remove late game cards, add early game. This will make you weaker in some matchups.

Fixing 2 and 3 is a little harder. Improving your own play and deckbuilding isn't easy. For starters, I would suggest Googling ESGN Hearthstone. I used to think I was good at Hearthstone and just got bad luck, then I watched ESGN season 4 and 5, and I realized I just suck.

[Sarevokcz]

I like how all complaints about Thoughtsteal / Mind vision are:
1. You always remember only the best cards stolen and never remember the worst.

I dont run bad cards in my deck, even the "worst" cards are good enough for him to get

2. You always complain about how good the stolen card was, but never mention that you always have it in your deck, while the Priest needs to get lucky and steal it.

Yeah, but you cant really predict what kind of combo can he pull of now. did he steal my fire ele and I should play around its battlecry? or was it storm and i will get my stuff cleared even when both novas are gone? was it azure drake? or alakir? or hex? argus?

Its frustrating to play against these cards because suddenly, you dont play against a single class deck anymore and rules about number of removals and boardclears etc are, kinda like in arena, thrown out of the window.

[Raphtheone]

Yeah, but you cant really predict what kind of combo can he pull of now. did he steal my fire ele and I should play around its battlecry? or was it storm and i will get my stuff cleared even when both novas are gone? was it azure drake? or alakir? or hex? argus?

Then play with what you do know. You already know his other cards on his hand, and what combos he's capable of. Just play around them and whatever surprise he'll have from copying two unknown cards from you will be minor in comparison. Besides, just fill in the blanks when you calculate worst case scenarios. 1 + 1 + (blank) = 10. Blank being a copied card. If he didn't copy it (the worst case scenario minion/spell), he can only play worse than expected, and you then have a firmer grasp on what he copied (something that in comparison to what he played was a worse play in that situation).

Parallel to this you'll do the natural parts of the game, like trying to figure out his agenda. The firmer grasp on his agenda you have, the easier it will be to know what he copied. It's like when the opponent plays a secret, and you know with a >80% probability which one it is as soon as you see it played. Through the power of deduction, the longer he sits on the cards, the firmer grasp you'll have on what he copied.

[Fluorescent0]

Uh what? Equality + Holy Nova.

I had a Pyroblast victory against a Priest today. Instead of healing himself to put him at 11 health, he mind controls my minion, and the next turn I just throw a Pyroblast in his face. He prob would have won if he healed, because he had like 4 minions on the board, and I had none.

I presume that what he wanted to say was that it synergizes badly with their hero power which is most useful when used to heal minions after trading up.

[Deleted]

I like how all complaints about Thoughtsteal / Mind vision are:
1. You always remember only the best cards stolen and never remember the worst.
2. You always complain about how good the stolen card was, but never mention that you always have it in your deck, while the Priest needs to get lucky and steal it.

1: Like I said priest can also get bad cards, making thoughtsteal only useful for the card advantage or,
2: he gets cards he really shouldn't have access too. Priests might not have the best decks but I'm pretty sure that if they needed more boardclears and single target removals they should just get them baseline instead of maybe stealing poly/hex/assassinate.

[Sarevokcz]

Then play with what you do know. You already know his other cards on his hand, and what combos he's capable of. Just play around them and whatever surprise he'll have from copying two unknown cards from you will be minor in comparison. Besides, just fill in the blanks when you calculate worst case scenarios. 1 + 1 + (blank) = 10. Blank being a copied card. If he didn't copy it (the worst case scenario minion/spell), he can only play worse than expected, and you then have a firmer grasp on what he copied (something that in comparison to what he played was a worse play in that situation).

Parallel to this you'll do the natural parts of the game, like trying to figure out his agenda. The firmer grasp on his agenda you have, the easier it will be to know what he copied. It's like when the opponent plays a secret, and you know with a >80% probability which one it is as soon as you see it played. Through the power of deduction, the longer he sits on the cards, the firmer grasp you'll have on what he copied.

Unless the priest is loosing and has to throw out everything hes got, he can just sit on the cards and use suboptimal solutions from priest cards just so he can bait you, because you think he might not have the card. Mindvision is okay, since it has fairly limited card pool, but its used often just for the scouting purposes of your enemy hand anyway, but thoughtsteal, especially one used early enough, when you still got most of your pack to draw, is unpredictable and good priest wont reveal his ace haphazardly, especially if he actually got something big as rag, sylvanas, hex or flamestrike.

Thats why its frustrating (not the same as OP), not only you already have to play around plenty of stuff like cabal, madness, MC, DS etc, you also need to play around your own threats now, too.

[Taalyn]

I like to run at least one Big Game Hunter in my decks to deal with large minions. Don't be afraid to use one of your buff cards on their creature to get it above 7 attack if it must be killed ASAP and you don't have other removals.

[Vankrys]

you know what they say, if you can't beat them, join them.

Play a priest, i'm sure the weakness of the class will soon be apparent. you then will be more able to exploit them with your favorite class.