Quote:There's already PW:S, Velen's Chosen, Shattered Sun, and 1 dwarf by pick 25, all of which scream that they want an early drop to buff. On top of that it's priest, which can't use its hero power unless it has the board. The deck's already going to do well if it has stuff on the board. It should try to make sure it consistently has the early drops to do so.
That's true - both the general point about priests and the specific point about the buff cards in the deck. There are six early-game drops in total, two (three?) of which are low quality and not really fit for purpose, so shoring up the early game might well matter enough of the time to make it worth picking a vanilla 2 over a better card.
However - I also think that the deck isn't really a tempo deck, and playing from behind isn't necessarily a huge problem for it given that it has such high-quality single target removal. But ofc you'd rather be ahead than behind, especially with buff cards in hand...
I think I'd still hold the position that although the deck needs 2s much more than 4s, Dwarf is enough of a better card than Raptor to make it a close call, and on balance I'd probably take the Dwarf. I still think HA having it as a toss-up is broadly about right.