after thinking more about the changes that will be made for TH, having it work with both holy heals and unholy heals i think will make it to OP. you will be able to put both kinds of heals into your deck and get benefits from both from just one card. to me thats just to powerful, but again thats just me thinking out-loud. what i would like to see is a class skill item that just benefits unholy priests and not both. as of right now we don't have any for unholy. and yes the change to TH will do some for unholy, but it will also again help holy priest out as well and i think that they have plenty to help them as it is. i guess what im saying is "show some more love for unholy priests"
I think being able to chain attacks with extra healing is plenty of love. That said i also doubt many priests will go the mix rout because of how much worse that generally is compared to grabbing altruism and going buff healer or mass frenzy and full drain. So i don't expect much double dipping.
I think this might be the build to beat once this gets implemented. Rush the VP, take tons of damage, drain back to full on cantrips, pass for priority next round. This seems like a very good strategy.
Bash/push them away, then ignore them. Drain dps is subpar. Drain spells are more powerful than flat out warrior damage only if the priest is getting healed (so that its a 12 hp swing with -6 hp to your opponent and +6 hp yourself). If the priest is at already full health, its just a 6 damage attack. You can pop frenzy yourself and just attack his warrior/mage instead and kill them. I rather inspire my warrior and get him to punch them in the face. This change does nothing to the actual damage output of a priest per round. Its still lower than a warrior. Sure, making it bursty makes it more useful and there will be cases where you can burst them with a chain, but its hardly better or more consistant than an all out attack + huge damage move.
This is an indirect damage per turn increase, not a damage per round increase. Of course a warrior will out damage a drain priest, but raw damage output =/= power.
For all intends and purposes, unless you can actually burst him to death, raw damage output = power. Its the same in almost every other game. Burst is used to kill. Anything less is wasted. then chance of bursting someone to death with a priest is simply not that high relative to a warrior. If you can't kill him, burst adds much less value. Warriors routinely do 10-12 damage per attack. You need to chain 3 drains to best that. Drain spells are powerful because they create big swings. If you ignore the priest and nullify the heal, the swing is much less. I'm not syaing burst is valueless, you prevent reduce his chance to run away and can sometimes get a kill earlier. But its far less of an impact than you're making it out to be.
That is assuming a lot of things, such as opponents not running optimal builds. Assuming it is an optimal build, you'll likely be seeing 3x priest builds and almost assuredly see mass frenzy being played and kept on the priests 100% of the time. You won't have a mage/warrior to attack instead of the priest, so most assuredly the priest will have taken damage from you at some point. The burst does change the damage output of the priest, assuming you have a way to move away from the priest to avoid all of their attacks -- which you won't be able to do. If he can hit you once, he can hit you with all he's got, and then have another character cantrip move in and do the same.
Thank you! Someone gets it. People are talking about 5-6 damage life drain attacks when in reality any decent team will be boosting those with Mass Frenzy at a minimum(+3) and Unholy Wellspring easily (+3) and Frenzy Aura occasionally(+3, +penetrating). I pretty much always have one of those active on my current 3 Priest team and often two of them and hit for 11 or 12 damage. In addition the Items/Lifesuck Spear divine weapon includes 2 Enervating Touch, 2 Lunging Strike, Impaling Stab and Devastating Blow, all of which are decent attacks. The rare divine item Items/Shuddering Relic by itself includes everything you need to get this build running - it includes only Mass Frenzy, Enervating Touch and a Vulnerable trait to cycle through your deck even faster. You can even get Cause Fumble, Entangling Roots and Enervating Touch on the same item, Items/Tome of the Tree, for a more defensive build. So basically, Priests would easily be able to root you, frenzy each other and cantrip Enervating Touches for 11 damage making them just as dangerous in melee as warriors. I think it's cool, I just think maybe people aren't considering that the same class has access to tons of Entangling Roots, Impenetrable Nimbus, Purge, Mass Frenzy, Unholy Wellspring -and- also now multi hit combo attacks which self heal. I mean come on. XD
Thus far the three priest drain build has been decent and can regularly beat mom. It's been rough against players due to the new maps though. Being able to throw down a few drains, heal and move away has been strong. Unfortunately I don't have a ton of drain cards and none of the shops have any for me! I figure I have the cards for only one true drain priest currently.
