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

[Wtzky]

Wtzky's beginners guide to Shadow Era heroes

Jericho


Faction: Human
Class: Priest
Tier: 2
Utilisation: Copped a large nerf in 1.28 which saw him plummet in popularity in both quick match and tournament play. Interestingly got changed again when 1.5 came out, removing his heal but giving him the ability to also remove negative effects. This subtle but important change has allowed him to climb up a tier to see him sit at around 2. He is competitive with the right builds but still has a few bad match ups that prevent him from being on top.

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
Cons:	Relies on allies for damage2	Not a great advantage to using him over Zhanna (and vice versa)3

¹ NB: This section has been covered in my Zhanna hero guide as well, skip to the cons if you have read that

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: Healing Touch is reasonably priced for what it does, allowing you to heal and remove an attachment from the target being healed.

- Attachment removal: Healing Touch can work as an attachment removal as well as Jericho’s ability, so there are some options here. If you need more attachment removal however, Severed Ties is also now a very nice card.

- Item destruction: Focused Prayer is one of the best item destruction cards in the game, being able to destroy almost all items for only 3 cost! The only thing better than that at destroying items is Ter Adun’s ability

- 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 out. Finally, as mentioned in episode 3 of the State of the Era podcasts, Wrath of Summer is an often forgotten but quite a useful card now, and can often work well with Jericho’s often spare Shadow Energy.

- 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) 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. It can also prevent Jericho from using his ability, which he often does need.

- 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, and a Plague resource lock deck can be devastatingly good. The downside to this sort of deck is that it is inconsistent, but it sure does work well when it gets going.

- Resurrection: Resurrection allows Jericho 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 Jericho also makes good use of King’s Pride, giving his allies extra health and attack. 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 hard 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.

² Jericho especially relies on his allies to deal the damage, as he has neither great burn or damaging weapons. In fact, it is almost his main win condition, unless you go for a stall/plague style of deck. This can be a problem if facing a hero who has great board control abilities as well.

³ This is more of a personal opinion I suppose, but in my eyes the two Priests are the closest in their play style and I don’t see a clear advantage of using one over the other. A lot of decks posted on the forums work just as well using one or the other, and a lot of that does come down to the fact that Priests more than any other class use their Shadow Energy for things other than their abilities, and often play very similar in their style of play (both Zhanna and Jericho are very suited to later game control style). I’ll probably get a lot of Priest players sending me hate mail for this point, but I really do think that out of any class the Priests are the least diverse in their hero play styles.

[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:

5

Jericho needs some experience to make him work well in the current meta. You really do need a good understanding of his card pool and how it matches up against the other card pools. You are probably better off coming back to Jericho after getting experience with other heroes first if you have just started in ShadowEra and are looking for your first hero to start using.

Good match ups:

His better match ups are heroes who will play more of a control style, where he has time to pull off his combo’s, or those decks that rely on attachments:

- Ter Adun
- Baduuru
- Gwen
- Darkclaw
- Logan
- Boris
- Elementalis

Bad match ups:

- Eladwen
- Lance
- Majiya
- Gravebone
- Moonstalker

Best suited style of play:

Jericho is most suited as a late game control hero.

Cost of creating a good deck:

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

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.

Jericho 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 this class. Hopefully he starts up a current Priest tactic’s thread soon, but in the mean time, start here and with his older discussions too.

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....richo-GodSmack – Caitlyn0 is one of the most innovative deck builders in the game, and this is certainly a different take on your standard Jericho control deck. Check it out, but don’t expect beginners to be able to play it right straight away!

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....honor-1-5-deck – some good discussion here and a nice deck to start with

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....ss-Army-Priest – another great read, BlanketEffect’s Swiss Amry Priest gives you a good grounding on how to go about building your Priest deck. Well worth a visit to this thread.

Overall Recommendation:

Probably not the best place to start for beginners. This hero is a lot better for players once they have some more experience with the cards and the meta. Well suited to players who like a control style hero.

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[kentuequi]

Seems like nobody tought it was well written, :P

Keep on the good work.

[Wtzky]

Yes, no love for Jericho

Thanks Kent

[protonium]

I've enjoyed reading all your hero guides so far, Wtzky. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! You released so many, so quickly, that it felt odd to comment on them all.

Poor Jericho, he was popular once upon a time. Even this guide has only had half as many views as the others. Hopefully the new card expansion brings a slew of near game-breaking attachments for him to deal with. lol

[iClipse]

I'm wondering. Why do you put Moonstalker with the bad matchups? I actually feel Jericho can do well vs all heroes with the exception of mages.

[Wtzky]

Apart from the Mages I put Lance and Moonstalker in there as they have better control games then Jericho imo and don't really rely on attachments.

Of course, Jericho is supposed to be able to remove the Anklebreaker disable with his ability but until that bug is fixed Lance still has a decent time of it against jeri.

As for MS, smart use of his hide, fatties and SK should be more than enough control for jeri to come back from.

[Fuzer]

Wtzky, thanks for your post, I enjoy everyone you have made. But i must say, being a priest player, that jericho is not a tier 2 heroe. His ability is very situational, high SE, and with WS, you will use it once per game. I lost all my faith on jericho as a solid heroe after experimenting him with a lot of builds in almost every match up. He lacks of an ability that can sinergy with his gameplay on a specific match.

[pyrogene]

Wtzky, thanks for your post, I enjoy everyone you have made. But i must say, being a priest player, that jericho is not a tier 2 heroe. His ability is very situational, high SE, and with WS, you will use it once per game. I lost all my faith on jericho as a solid heroe after experimenting him with a lot of builds in almost every match up. He lacks of an ability that can sinergy with his gameplay on a specific match.

Well if you just look at commonly used heroes, Jericho's ability works for Amber/Boris, Lance (only for AB and Jas distract though), Eladwen (freeze), Banebow (Poison/Flame), MS (Crippling/Lone wolf). So to be fair, it has some use most of the time.

A class with the best item destruction in game, board wipe and one of the best draw engines will never fall below Tier 2 imo.

[Fuzer]

Well if you just look at commonly used heroes, Jericho's ability works for Amber/Boris, Lance (only for AB and Jas distract though), Eladwen (freeze), Banebow (Poison/Flame), MS (Crippling/Lone wolf). So to be fair, it has some use most of the time.

A class with the best item destruction in game, board wipe and one of the best draw engines will never fall below Tier 2 imo.

Thats exactly what makes jericho a no-tier 2 heroe. You had to say X situations where jericho works, meaning that this heroe does not take advantage of his ability in every match up, but only in some situations (adding to this that you will use your ability only once per game due to its SE cost. Twice if you are lucky and use GM+TO as drawing engine). I agree that priest have the best control cards of the game, but jericho ability and its cost are not enough to make him a tier 2 heroe.