Zhanna - Wtzky's beginner's guide to SE Heroes v1.5!

[Wtzky]

Wtzky's beginners guide to Shadow Era heroes

Zhanna


Faction: Human
Class: Priest
Tier: 1.5-2
Utilisation: I’ve placed Zhanna oh so slightly higher than Jericho in my Tier list, only because her ability allows her to survive that much better against some of the better heroes out there. The two Priests are both, in my opinion, very close in strength and play style, with Zhanna only just winning out. She is utilised a lot more often than Jericho, and I believe it is because of her ability allowing her to play more often in the late game where Priests thrive that this is the case.

Pros and Cons (explanations after table):

Pros:	Good crowd control ability 1	Access to good unilateral draw 1	Great card pool with very versatile builds possible 1	Ability that works well with card pool and control style 1
Cons:	Slower style of play which may not be everyone’s cup of tea 2	Relies on allies to do damage3

¹ I’ll cover the pros all in the one point. Priests have a great card pool with a lot of strong cards that can lead to various unique builds. Before we get in to that, let’s check out what the Priest class can do well:

- Heal: This one was obvious for Zhanna but she not only has her ability but Healing Touch to help her heal. Healing Touch is also reasonably priced for what it does, allowing you to heal for 7 damage on t3 if you want to, or giving you more than 14 heal by turn 6 (ability x2, Healing Touch x2-4)

- Attachment removal: Healing touch can work as an attachment removal as well, and so can be quite useful to remove negative attachments on Zhanna or her fatties. She also has (of course) Severed Ties.

- Crowd control: The obvious card is Tidal Wave, which works really well to clear the board when things are looking dire and allows for Priests to get back in the game. Ice Storm is often forgotten here too, but works really when you do happen to have some allies on the board, as they can often mop up after you cast an Ice Storm. Curse is also another good crowd control card, as the -1 damage it provides to all enemy allies can really help you to keep the board under control and allows you to stall a bit further to get to your higher cost cards which healing any damage taken in the process. I have also seen Wrath of Summer used quite well on her, allowing Zhanna to do extra ping damage which comes in handy when in combination with Ice Storm or Kris.

- Unilateral draw: Wizent’s staff is one of the better unilateral draw cards available to use. It has a relatively cheap cost (4cc with 1SE cost per card draw, which Zhanna usually has plenty of SE to spare) and can be a game changer. The downside’s to Wizent’s are that it can easily be destroyed or misplaced. It also suffers from durability loss which is another way to get rid of it for an opponent who faces it.

- Card modifiers: Not used often, but Inner Strength on something like a Sandworm that is behind a Skullborn or Aeon can hurt really badly. Holy Shield is a great way to protect either your hero or really important allies, and even Reinforced Armour can have some uses if you put your mind to it

- Resource modifier: Plague can be a really strong card. Especially going first. You can essentially gain board control, then start a perma-lock on resources so that your opponent can’t catch up. They will need to spend all their drawn cards on sacrificing, allowing you to chip away at their health while preparing for your next Plague. Cobraskin Wraps and Sandra Trueblade can also help you a lot here, creating for a very strong (but inconsistent) Plague lockdown deck.

- Resurrection: Resurrection allows Zhanna to either stall or get a good ally flood happening, and can combine well with Ghostmaker to ensure you have a never-ending supply of allies to play. It also fits well in a stall or plague deck.

- Decent Armours: Already mentioned Cobraskin Wraps as a good addition to a Plague deck, but Zhanna also makes good use of King’s Pride, giving her allies extra health which she can heal if they are getting low. King’s Pride also combo’s well with Ghostmaker

- Decent Weapons: Priest weapons are more useful for their abilities than their actual attack. Wizent’s Staff has already been mentioned as a great unilateral draw. Ghostmaker can really help to turn on the hurt by allowing your allies to flood the board. Voice of Winter can help you to stall by freezing any opposing allies that come to play. Wrath of Summer is less useful but can be used for some board control. Wooden Staff is an OK early weenie defence card. Finally, Mournblade is the only weapon that can dish out some serious damage and combo’s well with Tidal Wave and Ice Storm, but is situational and thus harder to use.

From the above you can see how versatile different builds can get. You can use the healing and protection cards to build a stall deck. You can go for a control deck, utilising the early board controls with cards such as Ghostmaker for late game fatty floods. You can add some resurrection in to your stall or control decks. You can build a weenie rush deck (while it won’t be able to death race as well as your traditional death racers, it is possible to get some decent results) or you can build a Plague lock down deck. Combinations and various strategies are all possible. Your imagination and skill are the limiting factor with this card pool.

Zhanna’s ability works well with the card pool as the cheap cost of her ability allows her to have left over Shadow Energy for things like Wizent’s staff. She can also stall quite well, healing until she gets control of the board and locks it down and then can continue to heal, or heal her allies. Zhanna also has good synergy with Ghostmaker, allowing her to heal up resurrected allies to keep them around for longer (especially useful for those tough late game allies that you want to hang around).

² There’s really not that many cons to Zhanna. She does tend to play much slower and controlled games than most heroes, so if you don’t like this style of play, I recommend not going for Zhanna.

³ Not a huge con, but Zhanna especially relies on her allies to deal the damage, as she has neither great burn or damaging weapons. This can be a problem if facing a hero who has great board control abilities as well.

[Wtzky]

Ease of play for beginners - On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is hardest hero pick up and 10 is easiest hero to pick up:

3-4

You need to know what you are doing before picking up a Zhanna deck. You need a good understanding of the cards, the game and the current meta as knowing what to include and what to leave out of your deck takes some thought and knowledge. Once you have a good understanding of the game though, definitely look to Zhanna as a hero to use, as she can be really strong in the right hands.

Good match ups:

A lot of match ups will be equivocal and depend more on how you build your deck versus how your opponent has built his deck with a bit of luck of the draw involved. Nonetheless she does have some pretty good match ups against the following heroes:

-Ter Adun
-Logan
-Serena
-Darkclaw (depending on the build)
-Elementalis

Bad match ups:

-Amber
-Lance
-Majiya
-Moonstalker
-Zaladar

Best suited style of play:

Zhanna is most suited as a late game hero. You can also try her if you like stall decks or plague lock down decks.

Cost of creating a good deck:

Expensive. You will probably need some expensive allies +/- armours and weapons here, so don’t expect a good Zhanna deck to come cheap!

Combos:

Here I will include some interesting/fun/good plays or combos.

Holy shield + Tidal Wave – Protect your best ally from any damage so that he hangs around while you clear the board

Sandworm + Inner Strength/King’s Pride + Skullborn – ouch. This guy can really hurt people when he has some added damage and is hidden behind a protector!

Ghostmaker + Zhanna ability – A good way to allow your allies to live is to use your ability or Healing Touch to bring their health back up

Weenies + Plague – going first, you can totally devastate your opponent if you play a t1-3 ally, get the board under control and play a Plague on t4. It can really limit what they do, and works especially well for those decks that rely on expensive abilities or weapons (like Logan who needs access to his weapons to get board control happening)

Tidal Wave/Ice Storm + Mournblade – useful to pump your Mournblade up but pretty situational.

Zhanna in the future:

Basically, both Priests have a very even and balanced card pool, and so will remain good choices for the future as their card pool increases and they get more cards. The strength of both Priests will really depend on the meta, and who their weaknesses are, rather than the cards that come out per se.

Good decks to check out on the forum:

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....m-1-29-Version – A good starting place. Soothslyr is an experienced player with expertise in playing Priests in general. Listen to any Priest advice he gives you seriously, because he knows what he is talking about when it comes to Priests!

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....pdated-for-1-5 – A strong Zhanna build, utilising Ghostmaker to its full extent. A GREAT place to start for Zhanna players looking for a slow, control style deck. Highly recommended.

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....-Zhanna-Plague – An example of how to build a Zhanna Plague resource lockdown deck

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....s-of-Dunharrow – Another great deck, and great discussion to be read. Recommended!

Overall Recommendation:

Overall I would recommend this hero to players that AREN’T brand new to the game, but have had some time to get used to it and to get to know the cards and meta.

[Fuzer]

Really well written. Gj.

[Wtzky]

Thanks

[stevevai1983]

i would suggest
Ease of play for beginners scale to be 2~3 instead of 5..
Priest is really really hard to play...

[Wtzky]

Yes 5 may have been too generous but I feel Zhanna is slightly easier to play than Jericho (ever so slightly)

[Harakhte]

I would agree with comparative difficulty for Jeri and Zhanna, but for a complete beginner getting into Priests is really an uphill battle. So many different good cards, so many tiny nuances in when and how to play them, that collectively equal victory or defeat. Something like a overall class difficulty rating in the overall list might be useful.

And thanks for mentioning the Priest Tactics thread, I spent a lot of time bouncing ideas around with Soothslyr in there, a heck of a lot worth knowing even in 1.5. I still keep hoping we'll get a current definitive Priest thread going again.

[FlyingFerrari]

Any good mournblade decks?

[aardwar]

Any good mournblade decks?

I personally haven't been able to come up with one, but not for lack of trying.
maybe some combination of resource destruction + weenie rush + resurrection + mournblade + tw,

mournblade is a very fickle card to work with/rely on for a plethora of reasons:

Tidal wave + mournblade = 10cc, and at least 2 cards needed.
which means in the cases it will work great you have to hold off on your tidal wave until turn 6,
generally these are also those same cases you really want to tidal wave turn 5 to keep from taking damage.

wizents staff:
at t4 wizents staff for card draw and t5 mournblade with 5 durability don't mix well.
you cannot have both cast at the same time, this can hurt in 2 ways, casting wizents on t4
only to draw a mournblade, putting your wizents in the graveyard for draw, then being without draw for 5+ turns

thus, it would seem that to get the most reliable draw with mournblade you'll want to use some combination of TO/honored dead/cobra skins
note that this style of deck wouldn't really rely on, tidal waving the opponents allies, but be some form of 'take board control', cast mournblade as a backup in case the opponent wipes.

(not really familiar with honored dead does it remove allies from the graveyard?)

[Wtzky]

Any good mournblade decks?

Barcafan95 had a great one but I don't know if he has shared it yet.