Hearthstone: Instructor Razuvious Heroic Guide for Priests

Hello my fellow readers. Here I am with another heroic guide for the 3rd and new wing of Hearthstone's adventure mode Curse of Naxxramas, Military Quarter, which was released last night on EU servers. The following guide is for Priests again as it's the best class to beat the starting boss in Military Quarter.

Let me start the guide with a short introduction to the first boss of Military Quarter, Instructor Razuvious. On normal mode Razuvious has 40 health and his hero power called Unbalancing Strike deals 3 damage to a character for 2 mana. However, on heroic mode Razuvious has 55 health and his hero power deals 4 damage to a character for only 1 mana. So on heroic mode you can be sure that he will almost all the time use this hero power, especially in mid and late games.

              

On both heroic and normal modes, Razuvious starts the fight with x2 0/7 Understudy. Just like how it is in World of Warcraft, the idea is to take control of these Understudies to withstand Razuvious' devastating weapon. At the start of the fight, you will automatically be given a card that costs 1 mana which will let you control both of these Understudies, but as Priests this isn't something we will want to do on turn 1 and I'll explain why on the strategy section.

Razuvious starts the fight with x2 Understudy

This crystal will let you take control of them

We have to control these Understudies to avoid 20 damage dealt to our hero

This Massive Runeblade is the most fearsome weapon and it is THE ability that we have to look out for. So x2 Acidic Swamp Ooze is a MUST! On normal mode this weapon deals 5 damage to minions and 10 damage to our hero but as you can see on heroic mode it deals 10 damage to minions and 20 damage to our hero on a single strike. So if we get hit by this weapon twice, we will die. Razuvious ALMOST ALWAYS plays this weapon on turn 2 with coin but if luck is on your side he might play another minion on turn 2 and use this weapon on turn 3. 

This weapon is the exact reason why we won't want to take the Understudy on turn 1 Because they can easily get killed. The idea is to buff at least one Understudy with Divine Spirit or Power World Shield before we take control of them because you cannot afford to wait until turn 3-4 as the weapon will have killed us by then but we also cannot afford to lose these Understudies easily as they will help us develop our board. Let's take a look at the priest deck I used to defeat Razuvious on heroic mode on my FIRST TRY but believe me A LOT OF luck was involved! (Please don't forget that all heroic versions of Naxxramas bosses require a lot of luck so even if you have the best counter decks against them you might need multiple attempts to defeat them, don't let this get you down and don't stop trying!)

Mulligan: You must look for Acidic Swamp Ooze, Divine Spirit, Power Word Shield and Inner Fire. Even if you get Northshire Cleric on your mulligan, send her away!!! Mind Vision is also a great commodity as stealing his weapon can GREATLY help but I should admit that I didn't steal his weapon with my Mind Vision, so simply put in order to win you don't have to steal his weapon but rest assured, it will really help you. Razuvious will ALWAYS have at least one of his weapons in his starting hand, so Mind Vision on your starting hand can prove very useful unless you steal The Coin of course...

Strategy: If you have Mind Vision on your starting hand, use it and hope that you will get the weapon. If you don't, don't start crying as you can still win, but don't forget to curse your luck, RNG, Blizzard and Hearthstone though. We will use our Divine Spirit and Power World Shield on one of the Understudies BEFORE we control them. In my case I didn't have Divine Spirit so I could only buff one of the minions to only 9 health which still died to a single strike. I took control of these minions on my turn 2 and on the next turn Razuvious coined out his weapon and killed both of my Understudies. Sadly I didn't have an Ooze at this time so I had to let him kill both of them but if you have an Ooze, don't hesitate to use it the second Razuvious uses his weapon. Also by this time if you have Inner Fire and an Understudy alive, use it on the minion so if Razuvious is to attack that minion he will at least receive some damage. Again in my case I never got my Inner Fire on time; however, it is not a necessity for early game.

Now this is what I meant by "A lot of luck was involved"; Razuvious has at least 3 copies of this weapon. I've seen him use all 3 of them turn after turn on famous streamers' videos. In my case he only used the weapon once, I had lethal on him when he had only 13 cards left in his deck, so there is a possibility that he might not get his second or third weapon. Of course this RNG helped me greatly to defeat him, but by turn 6 or so I already had an Ooze in hand and a Taunt minion with around 12-14 health so even if he used his second weapon I would still be okay.

This whole fight is basically about mitigating his weapon by buffing our Taunt minions, if you don't lose your Taunt minion to his weapon on its first strike, you will definitely have the upper hand and slowly start taking control of the board. Once his weapon is out of the way, as a Priest you have all the tools required to develop your board and control it as you will have a lot of buff spells and heals for your Taunt minions to counter Razuvious' hero power and minions. Also don't be surprised if you see him using Brawl once in a while. Good luck though, you will need it!

PS 1, Heroic guides for Military Quarter second boss Gothik the Harvester and last boss The Four Horsemen will be uploaded later.

PS 2, I really should start changing the name of my deck for each boss.