Take what I have to say from the prospective of a player who is a casual gold ranked player.
Every match is either a zarimi dragon priest, a pally using holy spells and the yasdrassil/ursol combo, or a control warrior who stalls the game till +30/+30 kiljaden. I’ve been playing different variations trying to make imbue priest work, and against any other deck I have about a 50% win rate, but against these 3 decks either I lose by turn 8 or I can’t keep up. This post isn’t about the state of imbue priest which is pretty miserable, but it’s these 3 decks and certain interactions.
First of all, dragon priest shouldn’t be allowed to have guaranteed draw, control, and be able to combo 70+ health by turn 8/9. That’s just silly. Make zirimi require 10 dragons, increase the cost of their board clear, narlex shouldn’t be 7 mana but more so 8 or 9, the dragon draw should just be 2 dragons not lowest and highest cost. They shouldn’t be able to win on average rounds 8-10 consistently and have such strong board control.
Next, pally. They have too much mana cheating, too many powerful spells under 2 mana to double cast, and with ursol/yasdrassil combo too much to deal with to protect yourself. How can you possibly keep up with a return to deck card, 5 damage aoe spell, and a +5/+5 3 turns in a row, and that doesn’t event include the dragon and dryad minion. The sea shanty spell is generally 2-3 mana by turn 5, they play free 8/8s generally by turn 5, and their ability to draw their high cost cards with their weapon means they get the ursol combo easily. It’s too reliable, hard to deal with, and too durable all at the same time.
Lastly, control warrior. This is just boring to play against. Dealing with constant board clears, 70+ armor stall games with kiljaden end game.
There just seems to be no care to balance, no care to card design, and no care to what’s fun. I don’t care about wins and losses, otherwise I’d play one of the above 3 decks, but what I care about is fun. These decks are just not fun to play against, and from what I can tell there are other variations of decks even in high level gameplay that just aren’t fun to play against, and I doubt they are fun with play with. (I know zarimi priest isn’t even fun to play because it’s so brain dead simple and consistent).