I'm not a mathematician, so don't jump down my throat if I get this wrong. Say you have 4 purges in your 36 card priest deck (Spellstripper Relic + a random purge on another item). You start with 3 cards + movement. Their elves won't reach you in the first round anyway, barring catastrophe, so you draw another 2 cards at the start of round 2. The cumulative probability of drawing at least one purge from those five cards is ~47%, ignoring your own card draw from traits, blocks and drawbacks. Good odds, I think, for what amounts to a cheap insurance policy. The trick is to recognise purge as potentially game-saving, and not discard it when it appears early on.
47% seems higher than my experience. You have the chance of 4:36 then 4:35, 4:34, ... so your first card is with 11% a purge or 89% not to have a purge. The chance for the purge increases slightly over time, but basicly it is 89% ^draws to not have a purge. So with your 5 cards it is a chance of 55% of not having a purge. With the percantages I cut, I am on the same value you have. Normaly I try to have at least 6 cyclers in my priest deck and also 6 purges. With that added the chances are 80% ^draws, which means i have a chance of 68% to hit a purge. Nice. So the plan will be to hold on to the purges. Even more since there are now the Force Fields and Nimuses and so on.
I stand by my statement. Purge is very, very good. It is almost never a completly dead card. it is token efficient, it triggers altruism if needed, and say goodbuy to that defender you are hiding. I'm not sure (tell me your thought), but I think much more than 50% of the competitive builds out there heavily relies on many attachment : savage curse for burst wiz, frenzyz for VP warrior, elven maneuver for CoB, talented healer for vampire. may be 3 dwarves control wizard just has cyclers, but I see this deck less these days. You can't say no to a card so usefull. Sometimes i'm stuck in a defensive position and I even use purge to remove the rage on my dwarf to avoid the damage.
The VP warrior you can not really stop with a purge, since they keep the blind rage. Most of the times I am happy to see a purge, since it does mean there is no strong card in the priests hand, like defender's block, inspiring presence and so on. But you are right, purge is token efficient and has good usages.
Entangling Roots has potential, given that all step-attacks are unplayable when halted even if you're already next to the target and could attack without moving.
I've been messing around with roots in the high elo environment for the last month or so. So it's sort of playable I wouldn't run it if I had the divine items I wanted though.
That was looking OP when I first read it thinking that you would change the whole card so that it was: Range 5. hard to block 2 (or something). burst 2. 3 damage. I like the range 6 idea.
When we revised low-level priest cards last November we talked about giving Bad Luck Cone and Entangling Roots Burst 1. Neither of those ended up looking like good ideas.
Roots really doesn't need much to be a solid option. Even just upping the range from 4 to 6 would be awesome.
Even that would make it extremely strong. I'd say range 5 is the highest it should have. With 6 you'd be able to just hang back outside of a lot of things and just snare someone to death.
So, now that EttSC has come out, I've been seeing a lot less of this particular deck, especially not at high ELOs like the 1700 that @exythe originally got to with this deck. The increase in popularity for priests with Radiation Bomb and the new Cushioning Armor have probably helped this trend, as well as new and improved technical warrior weapons. I'm curious, how far is it practical for people to get with this deck nowadays, and are there any inexpensive modifications that could be made to update it to the current meta?
Trade one Bejeweled and rageblood for two double edged. Cushioning crisis averted. Definitely dont bring raging strike to a rad bomb party. If bombs really start flying, the crusty helm could be exchanged for a quick reactions helmet.
Entangling roots burst 1 would be a madman, and bad luck as a cone attack would make some priest items very strong. As it stands now, bad luck is a decent block tease, especially when you see that support character just innocently stroll three squares behind the front line.
If memory serves, it was going to be a range 2 cone attack. The uses of that were going to be a little slim, in my opinion.
I really hope this build doesn't get nerfed or changed at all. I cannot build a warrior that works that isn't a bejeweled shortsword elf due to the lack of guides on the forums for doing so. If someone was kind enough to post one for dwarves and humans I would be able to view them as viable warriors. Elves currently are the only viable warriors for me and I don't play dwarves, ever.