The Truth About Class Identity: Hearthstone Quick Take 

We need to hall of fame Forbidden Words because it’s against class identity for Priest to be able to remove 4 attack minions.

Prophet Velan: Double your healing effects. Others: And damage? Prophet Velan: What damage?

Hearthstone: Is time for nerf! *Hunter start to sweat* Hearthstone: YOUR AGE OF TERROR END HERE... PRIEST! Priest main: I guess I concede now!

Appearently the idenity for Priest Is bouncing from One of the best classes to One of the worst every year Edit: wow I never got so many likes thank you all ❤️❤️❤️

In WoW, Shadow Priests are known for their face melting.

Shaman weakness: card draw and card generation Wha...what? Did blizzard have Alzheimer? Did they forgot Hagatha, mana tide totem, or underbelly angler?

"priest identity isn't of being able to deal huge damage frequently" Yeah That's exactly why priest use mind blast combos Because they like Need a way to win the game Unless Blizzard wants priest to IDK Keep healing throughout the whole fatigue Where they still lose to warriors?

"With these cards priest would be able to develop a tempo strategy" > Shows two low tempo minions

Oh god he released a video the day that an expansion announced. What is his luck?

I interpreted the statement as, "this is what we want the class to be" not " this is what it is" So i saw this as "spring cleaning", cleaning up when doesn't fit the decor anymore. And of course deck types are going to be limited by comparison, it's the nature of creating a strong identity. The hope is that the "identifying cards" can become stronger, so the class overall goes sideways instead of nerfed/buffed. Stronger in its niche, weaker elsewhere. It's the kind of balance changes that i love in DotA. Prevents homogenization.

Trust me, as a Priest main. This is perfect Priest identity and Hearthstone is actually going back to Priests identity before Gadgetzan. The worst class in the game by far!

“Maybe, Blizzard is planning ahead, so that that weakness is exposed.” Baku, and Genn just want to speak.

Hey man please dont give up please keep making vids, you're the only one I've ever truly enjoyed.

Only issue I take with penniless' argument is that he cites what priest has been IN THE PAST. I'm pretty sure Blizzard stated that they were going to make changes to standard so that the class identity changed to be what they described. That's their justification for moving the cards out, not that Blizzard felt that the cards didn't fit with the previous identity of the class. These changes were made with the future in mind, not with the idea to ultra nerf certain class playstyles, such as combo priest (at least, that's the way I read the announcement).

So, a couple of things. 1. These changes cannot and should not be thought about with the current meta in mind. Rogue doesn't prolifically use vanish? Priest isn't winning with mindblast decks? That's not the point of this. That would be the point of a nerf, but this HoF is prophylactic. The point is to mitigate classic and basic cards and make them more consistently thematic. 2. On Rogue, the trouble was more than likely that there's a lot of things Vanish does that cards like sap and shadowstep don't do, and it isn't really cheap enough to use it the way you'd use shadowstep or sap. The concept of Rogue relying on cheap spells to mitigate the board and allow for tempo is counterintuitive. Further, vanish is a midrange and control bane. Any meta where Rogue is allowed to control/play for slow combo, it can do so because vanish will physically destroy cards and enable fatigue past a 10 hand size. Given the number of nerfs/HoFs directed at Rogue combo decks, (Leeching poison and Coldlight oracle, to say nothing of Caverns Below) this makes sense as a tool they don't want Rogue swimming with. It's a card that warps entirely how someone thinks about fighting Rogue and about playing minions, and is outright dangerous to maintain in Standard. A lot of cards are, but Vanish also works Uniquely. 3. I played a lot of Raza Priest and Clone Rez Priest, and as far as I'm concerned, good fucking riddance. Mindblast is a terrible card for Priest to have. Yes, one of priest's themes is "narrow but powerful spells", but the damage aspect from that comes from synergy with darkness amplifiers. Why use "your heals deal damage this turn" if you can just run the best face damage burn spell? And then Shadow Essence it? And then Vargoth it? And then Rez Velen twice and cast it a few more times? It's not only inappropriate for the classic set, it's also just annoyingly inappropriate for Priest. Should priest have high, flashy burn combos? High damage out of nowhere? Sure! But let that be from synergy and from emphasizing strong minions, rather than from mage/hunter style combos and burn. Further, all copying gets more and more dangerous if mind blast is around, as Vargoth and Shadow Essence already showed. Shadowreaper Anduin being antithetical to this idea is the point; the death knights were built from the ground up to be corrupted, twisted versions of the heroes. For some, Jaina, Rexxar, Anduin, that meant turning very far away from their class identity, and blizz said that from the start. 4. For a beginner, both of the new classic cards are better than their old counterparts, by a significant uptick. Mindblast is useless without big combo support, Radiance is at least a sigh of relief for a new player, and gives Priest meaningful baseline healing. Vanish is a clunky and useless card for beginners, but the poison battlecry may actually see a lot of play in basic/starter decks! 5. "Limitation" doesn't mean "weak". "Limitation" means "You can do this, but only with a very near and dear mechanic." Paladin CAN reduce cost, but only for specific things or by jumping through prismatic hoops, for example. How good those mechanics are, or how many there are, is irrelevant.

You are the worst with video timing. Lmfao. But I'll always be here to watch your videos, no matter how many important announcement come out right before your video comes out.

Sylvanas in WoW: "hey, remember that time I went crazy one day, burned through 6 conflicting character motivations then landed on 'evil for lolz'. Was this worse?"

So now priest has a legendary war golem as class legendary wow well done Blizzard! Well done penniless

The removal of vanish hurts so much. All I had was a F2P Tog rogue and now I have 0 board clear and i'm losing a great card for bounce...damn

Im laughing at the "class identity" break down its almost comical Hunter limitations card draw > master's call Mage limitations minion swarms > conjurer's calling Shaman weakness card generation > underbelly angler And the best one! Warrior limitations(lmao) card draw/generation > town crier, omega assembly, dr boom??

Inb4 "What do you think about Saviors of Uldaman?" and "What about that Succubus art change?!"

1) Making a 28/28 from a 1/7 isn't "direct damage from hand", it's a buff and health manipulation, a staple in the class. 2) Mind blast is one of the very few class cards in standard to have an effect meant specifically to damage the enemy hero, and given the health-based tendency and power of priest, it seems hard to justify in my mind. Also, Mind Blast is way too inflexible for a tempo deck like you mentioned. Put in a better late game card instead. The one problem is that board manipulation is a huge theme in rogue and although there is a lot of priest AoE support, none is in classic. 3) Rogue is a combo-oriented class, to be sure, but all of its removals is single-target and/or damage-based. Vanish is neither, and also does symmetric (usually a Warlock theme) clear (A specific rogue weakness like hunter's) and is honestly weird given that Vanish in Wow works more like Valeera Hero card's battlecry.

We won't nerf the actual problem in wild:Big Priest But we will nerf Priest in standard even tho it's not a problem cuz class identity

If in priest every becomes op in the future, just know I main'ed him during this dark time.

I agree. I loved priest but haven’t really been able to play it much. With this it feels like they nerfed a class that was already struggling

Y'all remember Purify? Betcha wish that shit was happening, doncha Priest mains?

What do you think about the thicc cards losing their dummy size?

Wasn't Blizzard always open about not wanting powerful combo decks? It's because the way Hearthstone works combos are often uninteractive for the other player, so if the combo is good then you kind of just can't do anything.

I feel ya. I was floored when Bliz announced their recent card changes. I can only assume they want to take away cards we already have in order to print new cards that fall into similar categories instead of looking to expand class ideas

So I agree with you for the mosy part, but I have some Devil's Advocate arguments. Let's start with shadowreaper anduin. The DK's are, in my opinion, the antithesis to most of the classes, and some of those are extreme. Hunters werent good with control or generation, and got it. Mages weren't good with healing, and got it. Priests werent designed for pings or reach, and got it. And anduin, shadowform, etc, could all be seen as board control tools (gaining pings) more than face damage, even if that's the only way they were used. Think about how few face-targetting abilities have been released for priest: shadowreaper anduin, and....well, healing spells with auchenai. That's it. Mind blast is the most efficient burn spell in the game. Fireball, which is sort of known as THE face spell, is 2 mana more for 1 damage. Mind blast wasnt just combo. It was a permanent staple. Removing it gives design space to print the 'limited' burn spells in expansions without reaching a critical mass with priest. Mind blast made it impossible to ever print damage spells. Think how impossible it was ALREADY to get out of range of shadowreaper, or spellstone OTK priest. Warriors would get to 140 armor and still die. Yes, other combos like that exist, but is that actually healthy? I actually believe priest has always been designed to not have face damage. It just bastardized the control tools it got. And for reference, this is from someone who grinded to top 100 legend with razakhus dragon priest, which used that nice mind blast ping finisher. I wholeheartedly agree with rogue. I agree that they're hurting priest when it already has so little. But I don't agree with them being liars or going against what they've done. It seems pretty in line, from my perspective. But I think there's weight to both arguments, and I enjoy hearing the perspective of someone who dislikes this change, it opened my eyes to the reality of burn priest. And yeah, rip that surrender to madness lackey priest dream :^( Edit: holy fucking wall of text. Typing on mobile made me really not realize the thesis I was producing.

The problem with Mind Blast is that it inflicts DIRECT face damage all in one turn and you being unable to play around it, while the Divine Spirt/Inner FIre combo allows your opponent to respond to the threat. In short, Priest is supposed to lack "burn".

Omfg just when i opened zereks cloning gallery and malygos

Class identity? For over a year Druid could draw as many cards as they wanted, gain infinite armor, kill anything and Blizzard did nothing. But sure. Why not take Priests out back and shoot em.

This always happened before blizzard announce something that was to op with that card. They don't want to limit card desings. I know this are REALY bead news for clasic set but ,maybe something better show up. Also radince is the WORST card in the game...for now.

Penniless... the issue with vanish is that it isn't a *weak* board clear, just a generic power level board clear that lends itself specifically to non interactive play patterns. Combo rogues are typically the go to decks that use it, but historically it has also included Kingsbane, mill rogue, malyrogue, and miracle rogue, which haven't always been *good* decks, but have always been frustrating decks because they often win or lose by very non interactive means. As for mind blast... I think Blizzard is more OK with damage in priest in expansions, rather than the base set, since its easier to meter what level of surprise damage is available with rotating sets, rather than an evergreen card like mindblast. Shadowreaper Anduin is OK because it was only in the standard meta for a year and a half. Divine spirit inner fire is OK to be evergreen because it requires more steps to make it OTK your opponent (having a big minion, having it survive, and collecting the combo pieces). Auchenai is OK because it adds a bulky, inefficient 4 mana card into the mix of costs for combo pieces, and adding it to revive pools is very inefficient since the card itself is not much of a threat on its own, where velen and Malygos are legitimate threats as 7/7s and 4/12s respectively, and good face healing you can aim at the opponent is limited to expansion sets. But mind blast OTKs often don't have counterplay options available for every class, while everybody COULD play around inner fire OTKs with sufficient taunts/secrets/transform/kill/minion combat.

No one actually buys that mind blast somehow violated the sacred, true class identity of priest. It was litterally in there since launch, they've had years and years to decide that mindblast wasn't appropriate.

A lot of people say Priest players are complaining about mind blast being HOF-ed but frankly the problem with why we all are crying foul is what they REPLACED mind blast with

Good to see you're still alive Penniless. I agree with what you're saying, those class identities come really out of the blue. Anchoring a class to a determined identity I think makes the variability in classes very low, especially if they continue to print cards that only fits their 'class identity'. Hard to make whacky ideas like control rogue or whatever work if they only print cards for tempo oriented decks.

Priest's class identity is losing so they had to remove face damage.

While I agree with your conclusion, your premise is pretty distinctly flawed with Mind Blast. Blizzard is saying that Priest is not supposed to deal direct face damage from the hand, while you're comparing that to expensive options/combos that give you the ability to deal more damage to *any* target, through either minions or your hero power, or converting healing into damage. A card in Magic that reads "Deal 3 damage to a monster," "Deal 3 damage to target player," or "deal 3 damage to any target" are vastly different and often incur a higher mana cost.

Why is everyone saying he failed due to the new expansion? The logo can be seen near the end of the video.

Blizzard is pusshing more and more players to ignore standard and play wild instead.

"Apparently, the concept of Priest being anything other than control is a forbidden idea at Blizzard HQ." United in Stormwind Shadow Aggro Priest: *Hello.*

Blizzard: Removes 2 common cards and nerf preparation instead of the aggro deck itself Me : loses hundreds of dollars spent in packs to do cool combo decks that I like that WERE NEVER VIABLE COMPETITIVELY

If preist can't deal face damage. How to are they going to win?

The thing I don't understand is that just because classes have weaknesses doesn't mean that shouldn't have options to help support lessen that weakness. Rogue shouldn't have board clears yes, but they should have access to weak ones, same goes for the case of Preist. The "balance change" was done purely because they just didn't want them in standard.

Hey , Penniless . I've read your last Patreon post regarding your struggles and I am just checking to see if everything is alright . You got a big community that supports you no matter what ! . Loads of love and stay safe .

The thing is mind blast is a card soley meant for face while the other cards can be used for controlling the board.

Unpopular opinion, dying spontaneously as any control class is no fun, and hurts my soul... It hurts so so much...

Priest is one of those classes that you hate when it's strong but love every other time

Yeah but isn't it super fun losing to the same mind blast combo deck every year? I also love the divine spirit/inner fire deck every year also. Absolutely thrilling.

Man, so glad I found your channel, enjoying the content a lot so far. Cheers from your new sub :)

The worst decision is remove the booty from the secret kepper

I think it would be cool if you did an in-depth analysis of the history of every class in the game

Priest mains: I guess we play wild now... Oh look! Its this insanely op deck called big priest! Wooooo hooooo I can't stop winning! Fuck standard, I'm staying in wild forever!!!! And so more players go to wild

As a combo player, I would love to see a format for hearthstone where they have all the cards in their original state.

Been playing for a few years now, and I played a lot of Mind Blast decks and played against a lot of Mind Blast decks. All class identity talk aside, aren't you a little over the card? It's not exactly like it provides interesting interactions beyond assembling spell damage buffs for it. It's not like you can't still do that in wild.

1:10 ‘hunters can go to face’ made my day

I was like the one person playing Vargoth mind blast priest in legend. Yeah nerf my deck and not warrior, makes so much sense! I was maybe gonna play a bit this season but I guess I'll just sit this one out and do my dailies. Great job Blizzard!

I came back after the new revamp for priest 4:37 Well, Penny, Blizzard just got rid of them all, plus Divine Spirit

I hear your pain but I played the most at the height of Raza Priest, and am still bitter over that

I personally think they should have made a proper board clear for priest to be in the standard set so they don't have to keep printing replacements, it's only gonna get worse in wild ( where priest has like 7 different boardclears)

you are right, but i also agree with bliz that combo decks should not be that prominent. i have played plenty of OTK mage and priest, and while it works great, it feel like playing solo at the mercy of your draw.

To make your point, you need to prove: 1) burn spells are an identity of Priest, and 2) that changing that identity is bad. You never actually made an argument for why the change is bad, just that it is. You said both that class identity is arbitrary and up to Blizzard to define, which leaves room for them to change their mind. You came close when you brought up the other Shadow Priest-themed cards, however you missed one clear distinction: all those cards can deal damage to the board, while Mind Blast can't. Those Shadow cards aren't burn damage, they're control tools. The Inner Fire combos are also significantly different, because the opponent can be proactive about denying them. Mind Blast is the only priest card that exclusively deals face damage. Blizzard initially imagined that as a path to take Priest design, but after several years they realized they don't want burn combos to exist in Priest.

Great video, put into words all the messy negative toughts i had about theese changes

There's plenty of cards that needed nerfing/hall of fame before Vanish/Mind Blast, Savage Roar for example.

Priest can (naturally) our heal everyone and poison rouge sounds legitimate

Mind blast as face damage i think they referring to the fact that it doesn't need the player to Target the enemy hero. So it goes not only through taunts but through "your hero cant be targeted with hero powers or spells" effect (with that neutral minion that i cannot remember its name). So it's the directest face damage that can exist.

Blizzard was right to get rid of vanish. I drop a board of expensive minions, rogue shouldn't be returning it all to my hand at once as if they are a defensive class

Re: Vanish - if you or your opponent have near to or a full hand, every vanished card over hand limit dies. I'm surprised we haven't seen Bomb Rogue pulling off a huge combo by filling the board with bombs, filling their hand, and then playing Vanish.

I know why they got rid of vanish. Imagine: 10 Mana. Hero power, Zephyrs, Vanish. Next turn, repeat, and do so for the rest of the game.

Inner fire doesn't deal damage from hand. It buffs a minion that then deals damage. They're different things...

It's like amputate your kid's feets because he is growing.

4:06 I just want to mention that before leeching poison was nerfed, vanish was oppressively strong in wild kingsbane rogue (at least vs control and midrange decks). This is because the deck would mill you super hard, making the only play for you to dump your hand on the board. But then vanish comes out as an ultra-high tempo card that puts all the shit back in your hand so you resume being milled. The fact this happened means that vanish isn't an inherently weak card, but more dependent on synergies with other cards to show its true strength. When incorporated alongside powerful mill tools, vanish becomes easily the best board clear in the game. But that's such a rare occurrence anyway, especially with coldlight oracle + brann being wild, which are the only two cards that even allow mill rogue to exist. Despite that, it has to be said that vanish existing might limit card development when it comes to rogue decks that don't care about if the opponent has card advantage (as it is with many combo decks). Or your theory, that blizzard hates combo decks, could be reasonable, as combo decks are where vanish shines.

What hurts me most is knowing new players won't get the learning experience of understanding why 5 damage to face is really bad if you don't have a plan. Trying and failing to make Mind Blast work in different decks really elevated me as a player during the first year of playing.

The funny thing is that taking away mind blast from priest makes its class legendary completely obsolete. Prophet Velen is now the worst classic class legendary in standard, being only ever used to double the damage of burn, and now priest has no good burn.

x2 Divine Spirit Inner Fire: 3 card combo that requires a card to stick on board a turn beforehand [And not lose most it's HP] Mind Blast: 1 card

I've gotta disagree here: 'deal 5 damage *specifically* to the enemy hero' is a hunter card.

Penniless was so pissed about Mind Blast that he just peaced out of Hearthstone entirely haha

Hearthstone has been RNG-driven shit since Goblins & Gnomes. The designers have two goals: 1) putting in surprise mechanics, because most of their promoters are streamers, and streaming isn't built around sound strategy and out-playing your opponent, but randomness and memes. 2) Extracting money from players, because they all want to earn their paychecks, and quality cards from the basic set are downward pressure on making money from the tiny fraction of their player base who wallet-warrior their way to victory.

They've been chipping away at iconic elements of the classes for a long time, and for me, this latest round was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. I've never been so *unexcited* for a new HS expansion, but the direction they're taking the game just isn't for me. Their him-hawing about identity when they're actually making changes that gut core parts of the class's historical identities especially grates on me in this case. But oh well. I had a lot of fun during my couple of years with the game.

Fucked up on diablo, on Overwatch,WOW and now HS. Blizzard wants to go bankrupt

I know your upset but I think you’re too generous with descriptions. For all intents and purposes, banish is a board clear, and mind blast is the strongest face damage spell. With that in mind, besides mind blast priest doesn’t have “face damage”. Shadowform and velen can be used for minion destruction, and in conjunction can be used to slowly deal damage over time. As well, inner fire combo should not be compared to mind blast, period. This is like comparing mimirons head with quest mage, just because they’re combos doesn’t mean you can compare. One is direct damage with a spell, the other is a combo of spell cards used to allow a minion on the field to deal lethal damage.

I think your point about class identity being malleable is true, but you also have to recognize the fact that expansions rotate and so those cards that shaped a class' identity in one expansion go away for newer cards to take their place and once again alter the identity of the class. Classic and base set cards will never go away unless they're moved to the hall of fame of course. Blizzard wanted the framework of each class to have a certain identity, and while vanish by itself didn't really alter rogue's identity, mind blast in my opinion (along with Blizzard's) did for priest as no other cars does direct face damage only in the history of priest's collection. Edit: Also, cards that turn healing into damage don't exactly fit inside the same bracket as mind blast. Same with inner fire and divine spirit, as while they do end up being used to buff a high health minion to hit the opponent in the face for massive damage, they're still buff cards at the end of the day and can be used for other things aside from hitting face, as can cards that turn healing into damage. Mind blast is restricted to face damage, the other cards are not. Second edit: Priest doesn't need mind blast to win and their "combo" deck history boils down to hitting their opponents in the face with a beefed up mind blast. They haven't had other combo decks, unless you count anduin priest, which hit their opponent in the face with their hero power until they died...not much of a combo going on there. That sort of "combo" deck, in both cases, doesn't promote interactive play and often only lost to either their combo pieces being burned or their opponent rushing them down with aggro before the priest was able to burst them down.

Vanish was used in fatigue Rogue and Kingsbane Rogue too, not only Quest, fortunately Preparation and the lifesteal poison were nerfed.

-play rez preist -play the discount kelthusad leg -play the guy who casts a random spell you cast last turn -resurect 2 copies of the spellslinger minion -now have 3-4 of the guy on board -play mindblast -25 burst damage from hand

The worst mistake Blizzard made was removing 3 card sets from standard each rotation instead of adding 1 and removing 1

This idea of setting in stone the class identities is an excellent way to make the game stagnate. Aren't Blizz always going on about 'not limiting their design space'?

Well its nice that blizzard eventually redefined priest as a buff class that doesnt have damage with ashes of outland, justifying their decision.

You hit the reason at 6:06. Mind blast has always been a part of that plan. They cant make more cards in the vein of mind blast because of mind blast. I'm guessing we will see cards that can fill the void of mind blast printed soon. Though I would rather have mind blast

I kinda agree with the Vanish nerf since it effectively gave "the class with Preparation" a weaker version of Psychic Scream. Yes Vanish is nowhere close to Psychic Scream in terms of power level, but the point still stands that Rogue's ability to deny multiple turns of value was really overwhelming to certain decks. Sap is already regarded as one of the strongest cards in Arena because of the tempo swing, and Vanish is literally Sap over multiple turns. All that being said I think removing Rogue's only tool against wider boards was a really bad move. Rogue should've been given something else like a spell that would destroy a few random minions at once or they could've brought back Rogue secrets and made one that would sap an enemy that attacks you. (Lol Freezing Trap but imo Freezing Trap also really conflicts with class identity)

Instead of helping priest to be playable they say: Anduin go heal yourself

It's pretty sad. My favorite deck type is combo.

I get the kind of argument being made and it does make sense. For vanish, I agree that it seems like it wasn't an issue of class identity as that is within rogue theme, however the issue it probably covers up is in the design space you are allowed to have when rogue has access to that kind of answer. Blizzard has already done this in the past when they nerfed rogues ability to grant stealth to minions to stealth for one turn (conceal, master of disguise). For mind blast however I think I can see what blizzard is going for. Mind blast is clearly on the shadow side of priest, but all the other shadow cards priest has follow the rule of "power with some limitation", shadow words pain and death kill minions for low mana costs, but only some minions. Shadowform makes your hero power deal damage, but you can't heal with it anymore. Forbidden words can kill a minion at any power (up to 10), but it spends all your mana. Mind blast breaks this with a flat, here is some damage, which, is a card that rogue already almost exactly has with sinister strike, at 1 mana deal 3 instead of 2 mana deal 5. I think blizzard definately could have done a much better job of explaining their decisions (I'm not even sure if they know their own class identities at this point) but I think there is an argument to be made for their side of the mind blast hall of fame. Radiance is still really bad though.

This video is very misdirected. Vanish had the same problem as Coldlight, it could burn entire hands and also kill minions, remember how sending to a full hand works? Shadowreaper Anduin was never meant for face, it was meant for board control, hence the battlecry. How the fuck does shadow word death prove that priest does burst? Priest has always been a controlling class, and while radiance could do with some tweaking, I think that the removal of mind blast was needed. The divine spirit inner fire combo isn't damage from hand, its like saying your minions are from hand damage because they came from your hand.

Blizzard : We're removing mind blast! Playerbase : Only took you 6 months after zerek priest doing it's thing Blizzard : We're removing class bias from discover cards Playerbase : WHEN ODD PALADIN WAS DOING TARIM AND TYRION IT WASN"T AN ISSUE?!

Easy there, tiger. You don't have to accuse a game's development team of "lying" when you disagree with a change or the explanation. You can have a difference of opinion on the best direction to take the game -- that doesn't necessarily make it a malicious "lie" on their part.

I mean, typically blizzard hall of fames cards just before they introduce a card that WOULD be a good combo with the card hall of famed.

The issue with mind blast when compared to other damage cards is that it’s efficient face damage with no cost. All the other damage cards come at a cost, either through being symmetrical or by effectively sacrificing your healing. If you ask me, it’d be more fitting for blizzard to have replaced mind blast with a version that simply does 5 damage to both heroes. As for the argument of divine spirit inner fire, that does fit in with the priest identity, because casting spells to support your minions is most certainly a part of the priest identity. Also on one final note, to say that that tempo priest deck you made is ruined by mind blast being removed is extremely narrow minded. There is definitely plenty of aggressive/ tempo orientated priest decks that don’t need mind blast thanks to the extra arms buff.

RIP to our beloved cards. However... a few counter-arguments, if I may. Regarding Vanish: Board clear means the full removal of minions from the board, regardless of the minions' fate - Vanish sure does an awkward clear, but it's that minion denial that Blizz wants to be removed from the class in Standard. Regarding Mind Blast: Unlike Mind Blast, the Inner Fire Combo is reliant on the board state to deliver the OTK. Even if Priest has PLENTY of tools to correct that, the Taunt weakness will always be there and will hit the Priest should he lack those tools at a given time. What I think Blizzard is trying to say in this case is: "Powerful tools should only come from the expansions, and Basic/Classic should give you an initial approach before delving further - Control first, Combo second."