Holier Than Thou

Previously, I looked at the face-melting benefits of Shadowform. However it would seem from many player comments that face-melting is all a priest is good for. Today I'm going to talk about how they fit into their more stereotypical role... healing. Natural healers, the priests who focus on their more holy attributes have a longevity that's hard to beat. Boris Brightbeard exemplifies this aspect of priestdom very well.


While Boris isn't the natural born damage dealer that Omedus is, his ability to heal himself and his allies on the field is second to none. Using his flip ability, he can efficiently heal any amount of damage from any hero or ally, provided you have a number of resources available equal to the amount you wish to heal. And that's just the beginning of Boris' healing spree.

While Omedus tended to avoid using holy abilities, in order to keep Shadowform in play, Boris can thrive on them. With Spiritual Healing in play, Boris can heal multiple allies or heroes with every holy ability he plays. Playing all four Spiritual Healings in your deck would allow you to heal eight damage from your party every time you used one of your holy abilities... some of which may have been healing effects themselves. With Flash Heal and Spiritual Healing combined, Boris can heal one ally or hero for six damage or heal four from one and two from another, all for a cost of one resource played instantly whenever it's most convenient for you... or inconvenient for your opponent, as the case may be.

However, our dwarven priest doesn't have to spend all of his time and effort on healing abilities. With Chastise, you can stop to deal some damage (unpreventable damage, I might add) to your opponent, or you could choose to play Resurrection and revive a much needed ally. The former allows you to sneak past armors or other abilities that might stop your party from doing damage. The latter, though, is very interesting. With Resurrection you can revive an ally "... if its cost is less than or equal to the number of resources you have." This means that you can revive an ally with any cost, even if all of your resources are exhausted after playing Resurrection. It also works well with allies like Acolyte Demia, who would cost more to revive than she does to play from your hand, preserving your resources for other expenses such as her damage-dealing ability.

I haven't focused on them here, but other abilities that trigger Spiritual Healing are Heal, Prayer of Healing, and Smite. All of those cards can be worthwhile in certain situations, but they tend to be less useful than the Holy abilities touched on earlier.

It's also important to remember that Boris still has access to the Shadow abilities that Omedus abuses with the exception of Shadowform. Therefore, while he lacks the full effect of the undead priest's increased damage, his ability to heal makes him just as worthy an adversary, if you take full advantage of it. It's just plain hard for your opponent to win when they can't even kill your allies... much less your healing hero.